I am listening to what the Russians say, albeit not your Russians from "Russian Media Monitor."

Russia is not monolithic. The Baltic State opinion on Russia is not infallible.

You stating that "Obama the appeaser is not a good argument" does not make you correct.

I did extensive research on the "2016 election interference" from Russia. Yes, they tried to affect the election. The Russian efforts listed in Mueller's report were 0.00005% as large as the efforts of US MSM. Meaning they were completely invisible and ineffective. The Russian efforts listed in Mueller's report were demonstrably not trying to effect the election as much as they were just trying to get clicks to make money. More than half the money spent by the IRA was AFTER the 2016 election.

The IRA was actually reported on in 2013 by the NYT, but that article has been memory-holed because it doesn't fit the "Russian meddling" narrative starting in 2016.

Your opinion on Russia in the Baltics is not mine as an American living in Vienna. What is "right" for you is not necessarily "right" for me and the rest of the world.

I've been watching Putin and Russia closely for 3+ decades. I have yet to see a genocide by post-Soviet Russia. In the history of the world, genocidal dictators don't wait 22 years to start their genocides. Putin is a dictator or near-dictator. Brutal? Sure, that goes together with "dictator." Genocidal? No evidence of that.

Putin is not Hitler. Ukraine is not the Sudetenland. 2022 is not 1938.

If you've got some clear, hard evidence of where Putin instructed the Russian armed forces to kill with few/no exceptions an otherwise peaceful group either inside or outside of Russia - I'm open to being proven wrong.

I've don't see much difference between the authoritarian kleptocrats in the institutional West to the authoritarian kleptocrats outside the institutional West. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

I'm certainly not going to say it is worth supporting the war in Ukraine so that Larry Fink and Blackrock make good on their massive investment. Nor am I going to say it is worth supporting the war in Ukraine so that ExxonMobil sells LNG to Germany instead of Russia.

The more I research the causes of unrest in Ukraine from 1991 onward, the more I see it is almost all (not completely but almost all) about keeping Russia down economically compared to the "institutional West."

Shortly put: Russia has a shitton of natural resources. Most of the world wants to buy from them. The "institutional West" is (and has been for 100+ years) trying to break up Russia so that they can control those natural resources and the rest of the world will buy from them instead of Russia. Whatever else Russia has been doing, the efforts to weaken and break-up Russia are to me clearly economic and not ideological at their core.

I'm not your monkey, Lester. I respond with my points. If you don't like my comment, feel free to not respond.