I’ve been told that Putin is like Hitler.
When Germany hosted the Olympics in the summer of 1936, Hitler was nice and even backed off on persecuting Jews for a while.
The protests in Ukraine and the violence against the protestors in Kiev that led to the pro-Russian government being overthrown and all the events including the war that followed happened during the Winter Olympics at Sochi.
I frankly don’t think Putin was behind the killing of the protestors at Maidan Square that triggered all the following events. Putin was staging his showcase Olympics at the time and was not interested in doing anything bad during the games.
Some outside force or forces created the turmoil in Ukraine that is a Hot War between Russia and Ukraine and a Cold War between Russia and the West.
And creepy guys like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who are buddies with the terrorists in Syria fighting Assad want to draw this nation into the wars in Syria and Ukraine.
Perhaps we need to follow the money trail to McCain and Graham to find out who may be behind the trouble in Ukraine and the Syrian Civil War.....
I’m sorry - how can anyone who’s looked at Ukraine at all not understand that it was going to blow, with or without “the West” being involved in Maidan?
Putin’s stooge Yanukovych was running the show in Ukraine for Putin, and turning, or should I say returning, Ukraine back into a Russian vassal state. Yanukovych botched it totally, but then again, he’d raped the country so badly, the only real question was when the uprising would begin. While I agree Putin very likely did not somehow direct that protesters be shot, I disagree that the shootings triggered all that followed. The protests were already huge, Yanukovych’ power doomed, and an opposition ill-prepared to take power about to get it.
Now, did outside players try to take advantage, to ride the wave and try to direct it? Sure. But their “success” was very limited and spotty. Putin, on the other hand, still got what he thought he wanted anyway: Crimea, and part of Eastern Ukraine.
However, Putin had realized a good part of his goals by means that the West could then use to justify overt “help” against Putin. The interesting and tragic thing is that the West does not provide Ukraine with means to push Putin out, they provide just enough aid to prolong the war indefinitely. At first I thought this was incompetence or weakness, but now it appears to be by design.