A very succinct summary, Boac, and one with which I (and obviously probes) totally agree. Putin is the most dangerous man on the planet at the moment. We (the politicians) in the West are sleep-walking into a very dangerous situation here. I'm no student of history, but I see significant parallels with World War II.
Had Putin's SMO succeeded, once he had installed a puppet government in Kyiv, he would have headed for Poland and the Baltic States, with help from Ukraine and Belarus, and NATO able only to hold meetings and indulge in anguished hand-wringing, as Putin fulfilled his aim of re-establishing the Soviet empire.
There was mention upthread somewhere about Russian paranoia, which reminded me of this little episode some years ago:
Being of Greek origin (no offence intended if you're reading this, RiS
) the word paranoia translates easily into Russian - паранойя - as well it might. In all my travels around the world, I have never come across a nation whose people exhibit such collective paranoia. One day, whilst sitting in the agent's office, which was in a quiet area of Moscow, there was a loud bang in an office nearby. To me, it sounded like a door slamming. It was a warm spring day, windows were open, and it was breezy, so I concluded that the wind had blown a door closed somewhere. Not so the other members of staff, most of whom stopped what they were doing and went to the windows, believing that a shot had been fired. The fact that there was nothing to be seen only fuelled their paranoia further. Two of them went out into the corridor, (not something I would have done if I thought a weapon had just been discharged). They all eventually returned to their desks, with one of them saying, "Anyway, the police will be here soon." I suggested, in English, that it was simply a door banging, but was promptly ridiculed. Of course, the police never arrived, and nothing more was said. For me, it was a salutary lesson. Here was I working amongst intelligent people, many with university degrees and one with a PhD, yet here they were behaving like schoolkids. Reflecting on the incident later that evening, I realised that if you are a government that knows that its citizens suffer from collective paranoia, it is perhaps better if they are not always told the truth. Equally, if you are a citizen who knows that everything you say and do could be recorded, and, if necessary, used against you, paranoia becomes a way of life.
