Does anyone really know what Putin is trying to achieve? His stated motivation was to stop the Ukraine joining NATO. I can understand Russia not wanting NATO on their doorstep but how does moving your doorstep next door to existing NATO member countries satisfy that target?
It’s not really anything to do with NATO being on his border. He simply wants a disunited and weak West, and a larger more powerful Russia.
For me, his two most important quotes…
“The collapse of the Soviet empire was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”, 2005
(Although not from a Communism point-of-view since he also once said “communism is a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilisation" - which I do agree with.)
“The cause of Peter the Great is still alive” (2019)
(Peter the Great founded the Russian Empire and was the man who had the biggest aims for a greatest Russian expanse possible. Putin has a statue of Peter the Great on his desk.)
…tell you everything you need to know.
When you look at the main list of things that he’s gone about to achieve his aims, I think it’s clear that a disunited and weak West, and a larger more powerful Russia is what he wants.
Takeover Russian state TV (in Russia and output around the world), spreading misinformation and Russian propaganda. Get this into countries in the West and you tickle the interests of West hating Westerners who think they’re edgy for watching alternative news output. This might seem small, even insignificant, but it’s the basis for many things. You peak the internet of people who you can exploit to do further damage.
Puppets in power in other countries. Yanukovych in Ukraine and Trump in USA were his puppets. Currently, Lukashenko in Belarus and Orban in Hungary are doing his dirty work in Europe.
Meddling in elections/referendums. Every election in Ukraine going back to 2004 has had Russia’s tentacles all over them. The 2016 and 2020 USA elections saw Russian interference towards the Clinton and Biden presidential drives. Also, Brexit…
He’s spread misinformation into the West across numerous topics, making our societies sceptical of everything and gullible to a lot of it with the amount of it there is. He’s not alone in this as it’s very likely China and North Korea also do this.
Off the back of the misinformation, the online war within the West was started that sees two extremes of an topic forever arguing online, or demonstrating their extremism in protests (Brexit, BLM, MAGA, Qanon, ‘cancel-cultre’, woke v gammon, Covid conspiracies, vaccine conspiracies, NATO’s “threat”/“imperialism” etc.)… If any of us could ever work back through to find the first Tweets, posts, threads, articles, videos etc. online of any issue or argument, you’ll probably link back to some far left or far right or West hating tosser who’s been manipulated, paid, forced, or happy to post their Russian (or Chinese/NKorean) misinformation or extreme argument online. And the disagreements spread like wildfire across comments sections and forums and in every day conversations.
There are likely many more things we’ve never even heard of or would consider, that he’s done.
He used the British public to get Britain to leave and weaken the EU, he’s got Orban who’s said he’s going to weaken the EU further from the inside, he used Trump to try and break up NATO by getting USA to leave it… and every **** everywhere is arguing, falling out, pointing fingers on each extreme of every argument.
He was more than winning in disuniting and weakening the West!
With his expansion of Russia:
He’s been after Georgia for years.
He went into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014.
He’s gone into all of Ukraine this year which he’s been planning for a long time (and I reposted something earlier that
@dave_blue12 posted yesterday with reasons why Ukraine and Ukraine’s land is so important and so enticing for Russia to invade and takeover).
This week, he’s threatened Finland and Sweden of doing the same to them as he’s doing in Ukraine.
Moldova? Romania? Poland?
Kaliningrad part of Russia and can be bridged back to Russia by taking over the Baltic countries.
I think Belarus and maybe even Hungary would be easy to manipulate.
He’s talked heavily about the Russian Empire and Soviet Union lands many times, even this week!