I don't believe in liberating anyone from authoritarianism that doesn't want to have a free and democratic system. That's why mideast liberation hasn't worked. No one was asking. The Russians want a better life, just ask the ones that come here to study, find mates, and never go back. I know plenty of them from my university, happily married to whoever from wherever, and residing in the US or Canada, working and living peacefully as contributors to society. Russians are quite intelligent people too.
The Russians are probably the least likely to want liberating from what I've seen of all Europeans, but I do think a plurality of Russians would want this. Which justifies it. That said, without this invasion of Ukraine and the danger I feel it presents to my homeland (the US), I wouldn't even be bringing this up. The Russian Federation would be on their own. It's just that the leadership over there is now a danger to everyone else.
Well I think in an ideal world "liberating" would not involve mass murder of the "liberated" population. I am aware that this is a historical weak spot.
Even still - I don't see a problem with countries rescuing other countries from despotism, in principle. I eagerly include my own country in this - if a Putin-like figure arose and I was not permitted to speak out or face death, it would comfort me to know that help was coming. The terror of an oppressive regime is its inescapability.
It has been all over the news, so it won't sabotage anything. Most elderly people from the south-east of Ukraine wouldn't be able to pronounce it as well as they mostly have a very spotty command of Ukrainian.
Apparently even Russian speaking Ukrainians can usually pronounce it as it's a bread commonly eaten at some Ukrainian holiday (source is some random Reddit comment so take with a grain of salt)
I suppose I must have been wrong about generalising it to "most elderly people", but my Granny who had lived in Donbas for 40 years doesn't know about it.
It's just wrong on so many points it's just difficult to argue it.
Russians didn't build castles: they did and they also had castle-like monasteries (even the Moscow stone Kremlin has been built during the Mongol yoke). Using Polish flags of the 16th century as an illustration is also at best misleading
https://youtu.be/f8ZqBLcIvw0
The black plague had almost no impact because the black plague was very limited in Russia.
All this stuff about aristocracy competing for the favor of the monarch just disregards that almost every Romanov monarch was a result of a coup by aristocracy
Russian church was independent till Aleksei Mikhailovich and we still have old-believers.
It completely disregards the fact that during Ivan the Terrible rule Siberia was conquered by an independent knyaz (it was basically a private entity).
Comparing Russia to China is based on economic developments of the last 30 years. 40 years ago Russia was a super-state while China was recovering from its Cultural revolution. We don't know what is going to happen in the next 30 years.
Nowadays Russia in some points is less centralised than even European union.
As it's a popular belief here that Russia is totalitarian because you can't unite shariah state of Chechnya, buddist Khakasia, diamond extorting Yakutia and sea trading Vladivostok in one state without military and other types of oppression. But democracy is unfavorable to Moscow (and most Russians of the Central part) as Moscow's power is based on extorting mineral resources from the lands of conquered/peacefully joint nations. Overall we do not produce much of the economic value. European and other markets are far away. So we can't compete with Poland (or Ukraine) for European low-tech goods. The European part is interested in local manufacturing and import tariffs while Russian Far East is interested in free trade and cheap imports. Just too many conflicting interests in one state.
