You have to understand that Russia has been living in an 1984-style alternate reality since 1991:

[DetlefK]

The collapse of the Soviet-Union was a national trauma for the Russians. AND IT WASN'T BECAUSE THEY LOST THEIR STATUS AS A WORLD-POWER.

Imagine the US Civil War to end with the US actually being split into two countries for good. The country you love has been ripped into pieces. The same happened when the Soviet-Union broke up into all these smaller countries.
THAT IS THE REASON WHY THE RUSSIANS HATE THE US.
It's not because of the loss of political power. It's because the break-up of the Soviet-Union was an attack on the very fabric of their society, their culture and their history.

AND EVER SINCE THEN, RUSSIANS HAVE BEEN LIVING WITH THE PARANOIA THAT THE US WANTS TO DESTROY THEM FOR GOOD.
THIS KICKSTARTED A NATIONAL MENTALITY OF PERPETUAL VICTIMHOOD.

"Oh, you are accusing Russia of doping its athletes? You are just doing that because you hate Russia."

"Oh, you are accusing russian secret agents of murdering someone? You are just doing that because you hate Russia."

"Oh, you are accusing Russia of bombing civilians in Ukraine? You are just doing that because you hate Russia."

"Oh, you are putting sanctions on russian politicians for covering up the murder of Sergej Magnitsky? You are just doing that because you hate Russia."

RUSSIA IS NOT LYING WHEN THEY SAY THIS STUFF! THEY ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS!

No matter what you accuse Russia for, they ALWAYS assume that you are being dishonest and just out to get them.







And there is something else: Russian Exceptionalism. The Russians have this christian-nationalist mindset that they are a bastion of peace and virtue in a world of evil. Russia is fighting against things like LGBT-rights and liberal democracy not on moral principles, but because those are FOREIGN, WESTERN ideals. Russia is good, everyone else is bad, which means that foreign ideas are also automatically bad.





I have also noticed in russian media, and when talking with Russians, that sooner or later you ALWAYS will have a conversation like this:
- "I don't get why everybody is upset about Russia's attack on Ukraine! What Russia is doing is no worse than the evil things other countries have done!"
- "So, you are saying that everybody does evil things, including Russia?"
- "No, Russia never does evil things."

Russians have this cynical world-view that everybody is doing bad things, no exceptions... and then they sneak in the exception that Russia isn't doing bad things, because it is unimaginable to them that Russia could be doing something evil.

Everybody is evil. No exceptions. Except Russia.










Russia CANNOT be bombing civilians in Ukraine, because it is unimaginable to the Russians that the russian army would do that. And that's why all the evidence that the russian army is indeed bombing civilians MUST be fake.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Russia has been living with paranoia since 1917. It is an alternative political structure.

Even as a supposed people's republic it was an authoritarian top-down society run by elite bureaucrats. The idea of communism could not solve, and never will solve, the incentive of private property, private production, the fruits of one's labor for oneself. Yes western countries did want to destroy them for good. We are based on private property, they were not. We were not preparing for a proletarian revolution, and who could blame us?

It can be argued USSR took the brunt of WWII, especially in the early years. The west lent them capital but in insufficient amounts and it remained a country with low standards of living even as it competed in science and cultural achievements. We consume more, and pollute more, and use more energy per capita. Russian leaders know this. The fall of the USSR brought criminal networks out of hiding. Capital bought the broken up state and Oligarchs ran with it. So the current situation is not merely a matter of perception or self-deception. There are roots to the conflict with the west. But trying to turn back the clock won't solve it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Since 1812 (Napoleon)? Since 1570 (Ottomans destroyed Moscow)?

Livonian campaign against Rus' (1240–1242), an unsuccessful Teutonic invasion of the Novgorod and Pskov Republics, in order to convert them to Catholicism.
Russo-Crimean Wars (1570–1572), an Ottoman invasion that penetrated Russia and destroyed Moscow.
Polish–Muscovite War (1609–1618), Poland gained Severia and Smolensk.
Ingrian War (1610–1617), a Swedish invasion which captured Novgorod and Pskov.
Swedish invasion of Russia (1708–1709), an unsuccessful Swedish invasion, as part of the Great Northern War (1700–1721).
French invasion of Russia (1812), an unsuccessful invasion by Napoleon's French Empire and its allies, as part of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815).
Crimean War (1853–1856), a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, France, Sardinia and the Russian Empire, including an Allied invasion of the Crimean Peninsula.
Japanese invasion of Sakhalin (1905), an invasion and annexation by the Japanese, as part of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905).
Eastern Front (World War I) (1914–1918), Russia was forced to cede Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states to Germany as the Russian Empire collapsed.
Caucasus campaign (1914–1918), a series of conflicts between the Russian Empire, its various successor states, and the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (1918–1925) and the contemporaneous Polish–Soviet War (1918/9–1921), the Polish occupation of Belarus and West Ukraine.
Japanese intervention in Siberia (1918–1922), an occupation of the Russian Far East by Japanese soldiers during the Russian Civil War (1917–1923).
Operation Barbarossa (1941), an unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union led by Nazi Germany that started the Eastern Front (World War II) of 1941–1945.
Continuation War (1941–1944), an unsuccessful German-Finnish invasion of the Soviet Union, as part of World War II.
Kantokuen (1941), an aborted plan for a major Japanese invasion of the Russian Far East during World War II.
Operation Unthinkable (1945), a proposed contingency plan for an Anglo-American invasion of the Soviet Union developed by the British Chiefs of Staff during the later stages of World War II.

[uponit7771]

2. Since 2016 I've surmised Putrid is still VERY VERY angry about the collapse of the Soviet Union and

... blames "the west" and Jews and others stupidity for it.

He's gone from anger to hate

[SWBTATTReg]

4. Not defending Russia in their god awful and despicable attempts to take Ukraine by force, but

we must remember that Russia suffered an ungodly number of deaths in WW2. Tens of Millions. Something like this does great harm to a nation's mental state / cause them to be paranoid.

With putin, I think it's because he's seen tRump in power and seen what a joke tRump is, on the national stage. Perhaps he got the same mentality that democrats are weak, and thus, took this moment in time to attack Ukraine, and score a quick win.

Ironically, tRump is claiming that the Russians didn't invade until Pres. Biden was in power. I say that the seeds to invade were planted during tRump's reign, where he showed the world just exactly what a worthless leader he truly was, and this impression was what putin thought of US leaders afterwards.

No, IMHO, the truth of the matter is that Pres. Biden is actually wielding the sticks of presidential power as it should be handled and isn't at all like tRump is (as putin expected) so putin and cronies were caught off guard.

No wonder heads are rolled at the Kremlin (besides their pure incompetence and corruption), they grossly misread the differences between tRump, a very weak president and Pres. Biden, who is, so far, proving to be the leader we needed so desperately, contrary to what the GOP leaders are saying in Congress and elsewhere (they're desperately trying to be relevant).

Instead, Putin got a beating from Ukraine and the US and its' allies.

And where were the republicans in all of this? They have long been portrayed as the experts in foreign relations, and instead, seem to adopt a creed that whatever Russia does and say, they agree. Totally opposite of what this political party used to stand for.

Not anymore. This party has reverted totally to a personality cult party, and thus, those that win for the GOP aren't strong leaders at all, and if anything, are the worst the GOP can come up w/, and the only way that they can stand out, is mouth off a few insults, etc., since nothing of importance will ever come out of their mouths anyway.

[DetlefK]

5. I know a Russian who believes that Russia is fighting for its survival in Ukraine.

If Russia doesn't win in Ukraine, then something-something somehow the West/NATO/US will collapse russian society and the country will cease to exist and break up into its various ethnic groups.
(Only the inhabitants of western Russia are the original historical Russians. From the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, the country Russia contains dozens of ethnicities they have absorbed over centuries, e.g. the Chechens.)

[maxsolomon]

10. No doubt he believes that Ukraine is properly part of Russia?

Or at least Crimea and Novorossiya - the Steppe all the way to Odesa.

[Hugin]

7. ...

I just posted something similar below.

Like minds and all of that.

[Hugin]

6. I rarely share my personal experiences and interactions...

With the FORMER (there’s that word again) Soviet Union. Of which I had a few during the ‘80s and until the break up during the early ‘90’s.

One item which is universally overlooked in the West is that between Stalin and the Nazis, an entire generation of Soviets had been erased. Killed off in one purge after another and in a cities leveling grudge match between Stalin and Hitler.

Ultimately this produced a literal nanny state. Where somebody knew everybody’s business due to the generational paranoia.

As an example, on every hallway of every nationalized hotel there was an older woman sitting in a chair 24/7 whose duty was to keep track of who entered and left which rooms and when.

These people were all sincere believers. This was their living. When the wall fell, it was gone and replaced with nothing. An expectation that there would be an unguided transition to a capitalist economy where each of these people was responsible for providing for themselves without any of the system they had known.

Faced with this they eventually drifted back toward what they knew. An authoritarian dictatorship.

[patphil]

8. That sounds like Trump's base. White nationalists who believe he's Gods gift to humanity.

The same kind of mass delusion here as in Russia. It's extremely dangerous.
They believe they have divine right to rule the United States, and Trump was sent by God to put America back on the path of "righteousness".
Putin's base believes he has the right to restore the Soviet Union, whatever it takes.
All bullshit of course, but it allows them to justify or ignore brutality against anyone who opposes them.
Even if directly confronted with the results of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, they're not going to see it.
If the Republicans gain control of the government again, what is going on in Russia could easily happen here.

It's all very much like what went on in Germany in the run up to WW2.

[maxsolomon]

9. In many ways, they have created their own misery.

It wasn't the West that took the Russian Empire and created the Socialist Republics that then became independent nations in 1991. The Soviets did that.

It wasn't the West that oppressed Eastern Europe after WW2 and imposed Communist vassal state status on them. Every one of them ran to NATO at their 1st opportunity.

It wasn't the West that historically oppressed minority ethnicities within the Russian empire and USSR. Nearly every former Socialist Republic defined by ethnicity has tried to escape the sphere of Russia's influence. The Baltics succeeded. Ukraine was attacked because it tried.

[Igel]

11. Not 1991.

For some, yes. I knew some in that category--but I also knew a lot of post-Soviet Russians that thought things would improve.

For them things soured in a few ways. They thought they'd be welcomed and helped, and the help was difficult. (See below.) They didn't expect their society to go wobbly, with organized crime in the city, corruption in the countryside, and wannabe robber barons gobbling up all the assets and authority. They also didn't foresee that their younger population would suddenly go all western, with not just values like more liberty but also things that the more traditional-minded Russians (which were most under morally conservative socialist rule) thought immoral and wrong.

I was in the Czech Republic when it was de-nationalizing a lot of its state holdings. This went in "rounds" (kola). Every adult got so many "units" (or whatever the word was) of the state owned "things" being de-nationalized. What they did with their units depended on how many they got and what they knew to do with them. At the same time that the state was backing away, a lot of things started to charge money--either for the first time (officially) or rates increased. It was hard for all the wages and prices to try to settle down, and for people to figure out how to allocate funds. Suddenly the brother of the mayor who, with his wife and kids, were in an oversized apartment had to pay rent on their oversized apt.

This was painful, and the pain ended. Russia denationalized by privatizing, either selling big chunks of large enterprises to organized criminals (many of whom had started out as Communist Party bosses, last month being a proud socialist trying to build communism, and this month setting up a prostitution ring or running vodka).