So when does Chechnya get self determination?
Chechnya was an independent state after Boris Yeltsin allowed it to separate. They had a President, and some sort of a government. However the government quickly unraveled; the country became a large safe house for criminals. One day a large, organized Chechen army crossed the border and invaded Dagestan (a province of Russia.) The rest is history. Today Chechnya, as part of Russia, has a stable government. It may become independent again, at some future time, on condition that it behaves as it is proper for a country. But this is not going to happen tomorrow because Russia invests a lot of money into Chechnya; independence is simply not profitable today.
When will Konigsberg be returned to Germany?
As soon as Germany brings back to life everyone who they killed in the World War II? Actions have consequences; otherwise the next generation would be eager to repeat mistakes of the previous one.
I am well aware of the Chechen war. There are nearly 200 nationalities in Russia. Apparently you haven’t noticed that none of them other than Russians get self determination.
Putin is doing what my 5 year old does. He says what’s mine is mine and what’s yours in mine. You object to what the Chechens did but have no problem with Putin’s terrorist assault on Ukraine. FRiend, there is some serious cognitive dissonance going on in your Russophile positions.
Communists murdered over 100 million people in the last century. If Germany is responsible for Nazis then Russia is equally guilty of those murders. Also, the USSR directly supported the Nazi war machine during Molotov-Ribbentrop. Mother Russia has the blood of millions on its hands if you want to play that historical game.
Ignore facts that do not support your pro Russian day dreams if you want. Nobody who knows their history is buying what you are selling.
Indeed, none of them, except: Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Turkmen, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijani... did I forget anyone? Notice also that national regions within Russia have autonomy; they are members of Russian Federation - here is the map. Crimea will become another autonomous republic.
I have no intent to deify Russia here. My point is simple and abstract:
a) You, as a territory, may become an independent country.
b) You, as an independent country, will be judged and dealt with as an independent country.
Nothing else. So what do we see here? Chechnya *was* independent. I don't think you are debating this point. Then, as an independent country, they invaded a neighbor. What, in your opinion, would happen if any country invades another? What, in your opinion, would happen if that country loses the war? My answer to that is simple: it loses whatever the victor wants. In particular, it may lose its independence, by being carved out into smaller countries (see Austro-Hungarian Empire) or absorbed into another country (many examples, like Golan Heights, or East Prussia, or Puerto Rico.) Often the goal of control over the defeated enemy is not just to own whatever wealth it has, but also to prevent hostilities in the future by installing a friendly government.
The situation that we saw first in Chechnya and now in Ukraine is not necessarily related to the big, bad nothern bear. The root of the problem is that they were, or are, failed states. Chechnya was an obvious threat, and that had to be eliminated. (Would you want to have a Chechnya-like state on the US border? Fortunately, Mexico is not there yet.) Ukraine was a lingering, on and off, concern about the status of Russian military bases in Crimea. (For a while that concern was alleviated by money that Russia sent to Ukraine.) The rest of Ukrainian problems are largely domestic - all the governments in Kiev consisted primarily of thieves, and the most recent one does not appear to be much different. We will hear more from Ukraine.
