Neither. They are pro-authoritarians. The (white) strongman is always right. They have been wet-dreaming of a Putin-style strongman here for years.
Exactly. The modern white supremacist movement has embraced the far right in countries they previously dismissed as having white people because they have embraced right wing messages so strongly (Putin, Orban, etc). They see them as the vangarde of “European” civilization now, since the Western European countries have (publicly, at least) rejected imperialism of the global south, which they view as critical to the survival of the “white race”…
Imperialism has historically been a white supremacist project and it continues to be so.
i talked to an acquaintance of mine last night who is retired from the army–military intelligence. he is married to a ukrainian national who became a naturalized u.s. citizen and he spent a large part of his military career as an aide to a couple of different u.s. defense attaches to russia because of his degree in modern languages (russian). he also lived in cherkasy for a couple of years while waiting for his fiance to get her green card.
he told me back in 2014 that there was no point in getting worked up about the annexation of crimea because the crimeans regarded themselves as russian not ukranian and that making the crimean peninsula part of russia was only bowing to historical inevitability. when i talked to him last night he was very upset at what was happening because “although the crimean was truly part of russia and had been for almost 250 years since it was ripped away from the ottoman turks, the russians have no business in the parts of ukraine they were taking now.” he went on to say that russia was setting itself up for a long bloody guerrilla war which might distract the russian people from their current problems for a year or two but it was eventually going to be like afghanistan, a bloody quagmire that will potentially bring putin down.
we’ll see.
The last part is so interesting to me. I wonder how many Afghanistan vets in Russia (of which there are still a ton) think this is a VERY bad idea? Also, Red Army Lieutenants from Afghanistan are today’s generals. They have to know what the situation would devolve into…
Yes. Historically speaking, this is a very different and much more dangerous situation than Crimea. Putin could have done without the crowd-pleasing referendum rigging and intimidation from “little green men” there and still come away with the peninsula. Not so in Ukraine proper, where it’s going to be as you describe.
Or worse, Chechnya. Kyiv being treated like Grozny is an all-too-possible nightmare scenario. Either way, a particularly nasty conventional war that will bring terrorism into Russian cities as well as grinding up Russian troops in the field.
Damn, does Biden sound ancient.
If assessments are to be believed, well over 2/3 of Russia’s conventional military capability is deployed around Ukraine at the moment. They can only afford to do this for so long, logistically.
There are some retired senior officers willing to say that Russia should not invade.
November 14, 2002 - “The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks or five months. But it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” - Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Creepy. Why don’t the shrubs there grow? 
This is hitting hard today:
Another reason why republicans like him.
The past isn’t even the past.
He never met a vicious autocrat he didn’t like, or, more accurately, LOVE.
Do you think they know that we know they’re trying to gaslight us?
