Ah, he is confusing English with Canadians. I guess we all look and sound alike to him.
Ah, he is confusing English with Canadians. I guess we all look and sound alike to him.
Here's the counterpoint to all that "why sanction ordinary Russians". This is a real conversation between a Lithuanian company's personnel dept. and a Russian applying for a job:
I have a Russian passport
I am 46, my profession is economist, don't have a job, need money.
- I understand. I am sorry, but we do not hire Russian citizens. Also, Lithuania does not give entrance visas to Russian citizens.
Why???? I asked and they said that if there is an invitation they will give the visa.
And why do you not hire Russians? Is that because of the visas?
- Our company does not work with Russian citizens after your country started the war against Ukraine.
- Lithuania has the same position - does not give entrance visas to Russian citizens.
So why me? I don't support the operation and don't want to be here.
I want to leave.
I need a visa and work.
What should I do?
- You can publicly protest to change your government. You can protest so that your government stop
- the war in Ukraine. If you don't do that, you cannot run away, no one will give you a visa
- and the mood towards Russians will only get worse.
That's ridiculous. You are all crazy over there over Ukraine.
You hate Russians, not clear for what
I hope when they will finish with Benderovtsy [Ukrainians] they will get to Lithuania too.
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punishing the Russian citizenry is not out of Russophobia. It's to exert maximum pressure on the government via its citizens to yield. Believe me, sanctions, while brutal, cannot compare to indiscriminate shelling. Putin can solve this by going home, he can stay in power if he wants. It's him staying in Ukraine that increases his chances of being deposed by his people.Sadly, this is what's happening and that is why this world will unlikely to return to how it was prior to the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctioning of the Russian people. Clearly, sanctions were imposed to cause an overthrow of Putin by the people of Russia. Will it work? I don't know. Do you know? Nope. Nobody knows.
punishing the Russian citizenry is not out of Russophobia. It's to exert maximum pressure on the government via its citizens to yield. Believe me, sanctions, while brutal, cannot compare to indiscriminate shelling.
whatabout the British empire? What about the Ottoman Empire? What about the price of tea in China?Tell this to the Iraqis. Was anyone sanctioned? Nope. Oh yeah, it was justified and this isn't.
whatabout the British empire? What about the Ottoman Empire? What about the price of tea in China?
same irrelevancy.
But of course, how silly of me, one should never compare. Putin tried to use this strategy during this interview and each time Simmons just wouldn't accept any sort of comparison. Maybe you should watch it from beginning to end. By the way, check out the comments section, if you knew Russian, then perhaps watching the Russian undubbed version would provide an even better assessment, as the vast majority of posters, Russian speaking ones, were completely behind Putin and praised him for how he managed to handle Simmons's very accusational form of interviewing. This was shot before the invasion of Ukraine. Would Biden permit to be interviewed in such a way? I think, unless he forgot why he was there, he would most likely have walked away. If this was Johnson in the chair, you wouldn't get one straight answer.
The only words I care to hear from Putin are either "I give up", or "I'm pushing the big red button". No amount of spin will ever convince a rational thinking person that he's justified to do this.
You can never rationalize present actions w/foreign comparisons from the past. It's illogical. You want to compare the Vietnam war with the Russian occupation of Afghanistan? Sure, be my guest.