What?? I am just saying that if you think the world is made of black and white villains vs heroes, you are buying into the propaganda from one side or another. This is not a bold claim, this is basic logic from anyone mature enough to know that no country, and no person, is just simply either good or bad. They do bad things in order to accomplish what they believe to be good things. The US drop two atomic bombs on Japan, a horrifically evil act, but it did so in order to defeat what it believed to be an even bigger evil. Russia invaded Ukraine, a violent, barbaric act that caused the deaths of at least a million on both sides, but it did so because it, like the US, believed to be doing what's right to ensure their country's independence in the longer term since, as they'd been saying for decades, Ukraine must never be allowed to join a hostile military alliance as that would compromise forever Russia's own ability to defend itself from invasion from western powers, when Operation Barbarossa is still very, very alive in their minds to this very day. It doesn't matter if you agree with either the US or Russia on whether they were actually right, what matters is that they themselves thought they were right, given their own circumstances, and people love to ignore that and judge them by their own perceptions of what they should think. This is a sign of immaturity: you probably judge people around you in your life like that as well, by what you see from the outside without any idea what's going on inside their heads.
Ukraine was not joining NATO. Nor do foreign policy professionals, both in Russia and abroad, consider NATO a threat to Russia. Nor does the war have anything to do with Barbarossa or many other historical comparisons; Russian propaganda generally avoids drawing comparisons to Barbarossa because Ukraine was at the forefront of the invasion and the historical parallels between the invaders would be too obvious. The sudden and devastating attack and siege of Kyiv in 1941 was a major traumatic early-war event that occupies a similar place in Russian mass consciousness as Pearl Harbor does in American consciousness. Instead, Russian propaganda frames the war as a continuation of a civilizational mission: the reclamation of "historic Russian lands" and the reunification of the Russian people.
This is at odds with the propaganda for foreign audiences that presents the war as a modern conflict with NATO, but thankfully, people like you who talk about listening to Russia don't actually know what's going on there and flat out refuse to listen what Russians are saying.
For instance, the commander of the 2014 invasion of Donbas is a prominent public figure, a mentor and ideologue, who used to host lengthy livestreams in which he discussed how and why the war happened. Have you watched any of his long talks about the restoration of the Russian imperial province of Novorossiya through war against Ukraine, or do you prefer to pretend that none of this exists?
Not to mention the entire pre-Putin generation of Russian politicians and diplomats, who are very active on Twitter and readily explain how NATO is beneficial to Russia by imposing extensive standards on its members along Russia's western border.
Putin's own former senior advisor recently got so pissed about dumbasses placing blame on NATO that he published a video on his personal Youtube channel explaining why the entire narrative a malicious misrepresentation of the facts and bullshit from the start. According to him, Putin held secret staff meetings (which the advisor attended) about the invasion of Ukraine as early as 2005, which predates the common excuses for the war by many years.
But no. Instead of listening to Russians, you just repeat hollow Russian war propaganda that echoes across the internet without any real people behind it, believing that you have some insight that others lack.
> NATO itself said they would join the alliance back in 2008.
No. That was merely a polite statement without any timetable or actionable steps, made after the allies had decided at the 2008 summit not to invite Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, leaving both countries exposed to Russian pressure and eventual military aggression.
Nowadays, this is widely considered a severe mistake. For example, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO secretary-general, has on many occasions referred to the exclusion of Ukraine and Georgia as mistakes that emboldened Putin to invade them.
Perhaps you should drop him an email to explain that he doesn't know what he's talking about and that Ukraine was "actually" on the path to NATO membership. So much ignorance in the world, ain't there.
so between 0 (good) and 100 (bad), what would be your gray score "badness/evilness" value for the following: Russia, US, China, EU
yes, i know, it's not a linear axis, it's multi-dimensional perspective thing. so do a PCA/projection and spit one number, according to your values/beliefs
