I have never advocated pre-emptive military action on Russia.
What I advocated was a large scale international force being placed in Ukraine to complement the existing Ukrainian Army and free flow of weapons into Ukraine.
To make it unthinkable for Russia to ever invade ever again.
Ukraine should have been fortified like Israel is.
Incidentally Ukraine wanted to buy an iron dome defence shield from Israel but Israel refused because they didn’t want to upset Russia. There are extensive organised crime links between Russia and Israel.
So I was correct about what I said about your stance on sanctions earlier.
Sanctions are our primary weapon and yes they will make a difference if they are stringent enough. Yes they will also inflict pain on the west but that has to be suffered.
Yes of course we need to extricate ourselves from totalitarian regimes.
No it would have been possible. I’ve mentioned Belarus numerous times on this thread by the way and how Russia was annexing it. I stated here four years ago that I believed Putin would effectively annex Belarus.
What Ireland should do now is launch an invasion of Russia by ourselves. It would have the ultimate element of surprise. Nobody would have expected it.
Annexation is wishy washy enough though, there appears to be little enough noise there on a big level.
As my Eastern European friend said today, the populations in Belarus & Latvia won’t scream too loud once fuel & energy prices are cheap which they are.
Okay, the treatment of journalists in Belarus has been wrong & scandalous but the greater majority of these populations are more concerned about their pockets.
Ukraine for all its wealth still has huge poverty & deprivation so it appears to be a train of thought for some that the Russia is bad story isn’t all that correct.
Did the populations of the Warsaw Pact countries or Russia “scream too loud” when they were under the jackboot?
The perception of omnipotence of power is all important for dictators. When that is established, the population generally falls in. It does not mean they do not know they are under the jackboot.
We saw what the people of Belarus really thought of their regime in 2020. Then the jackboot was re-established.
Ukraine is an emerging democracy which like all emerging democracies has a pile of problems. But life is generally better there than in Russia and it improves by the year.
Russia is bad. Very fucking bad. It’s a mafia state where corruption exists at every level, criminality is rampant and indivisible from the state, where the jackboot is applied to anybody who thinks opposing the regime, and Putin and his cronies cream off billions each year. By 2007 Putin was worth over 40 billion dollars, likely now at least 200 billion.
And it refuses to countenance a free democracy next door.
He made a valid point that the so called Great socially lovely countries such as Ireland or Norway fleece their population. Fuel & energy specifically.
The trough counts unfortunately & Putin knows that.