Putins real long game - Politico EU

[ffr]

A little over a year ago, on a pleasant late fall evening, I was sitting on my front porch with a friend best described as a Ukrainian freedom fighter. He was smoking a cigarette while we watched southeast D.C. hipsters bustle by and talked about “the war” — the big war, being waged by Russia against all of us, which from this porch felt very far away. I can’t remember what prompted it — some discussion of whether the government in Kiev was doing something that would piss off the EU — but he took a long drag off his cigarette and said, offhand: “Russia. The EU. It’s all just more Molotov-Ribbentrop shit.”

His casual reference to the Hitler-Stalin pact dividing Eastern Europe before World War II was meant as a reminder that Ukraine must decide its future for itself, rather than let it be negotiated between great powers. But it haunted me, this idea that modern revolutionaries no longer felt some special affinity with the West. Was it the belief in collective defense that was weakening, or the underlying certitude that Western values would prevail?

Months later, on a different porch thousands of miles away, an Estonian filmmaker casually explained to me that he was buying a boat to get his family out when the Russians came, so he could focus on the resistance. In between were a hundred other exchanges — with Balts and Ukrainians, Georgians and Moldovans — that answered my question and exposed the new reality on the Russian frontier: the belief that, ultimately, everyone would be left to fend for themselves. - Politico EU

Brilliant on Putin's part. Got to give him credit and the 66 million American HRC voters that weren't duped to his meddling. Question is do we let him and his agent win?

[Cha]

1. K&R

[AmericanActivist]

2. That is the question, do we let them get away with it? nm

[uponit7771]

3. If we had real dem leadership in congress we wouldn't, they are relatively too quite and going

... about shit as the hacking news was just some emails.

[Squinch]

4. kick

[Cha]

5. KICK

[Pachamama]

6. It's critical to remember Russian & European History, Putin's writings in his dissertation & KGB...

...background and that this is the driving force behind what will be coming.

It is a war...and Russia and Putin have been playing the long game...