Just going to remind everybody that in no way does any corruption, scandal, etc mean that Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty become justified.

I saw the videos in the first days of civilians being slaughtered in their cars.

Corruption bad. Does not mean invading them is fair game. Especially when the invading country has much more, and more obvious, corruption.

Does it?

The world I’m in, I can practically see the flames licking at my feet…

First of all, my comment was not about the headline so much as all the comments talking about Russia not being ready, so not sure what “reacting” I was doing yo the headline (can you read?) Secondly, the headline does not “seem like” Putin is threatening Europe with war. Thirdly, your “opposite” line at the end is basically the exact same thing as the headline you are criticizing (“we are ready” = “Putin says Russia is ready”)

You’ve wasted my precious electrons thank you

Push Russia out of Ukraine. No need to cross the border into Russia. Totally justified, no threat to Moscow. Sets precedent.

Why would that be so risky? If the answer is because nukes, my point stands.

What indicatiors are those? All the third party analyses that I can find show that Russia is still the second most militarily powerful nation in the world, with a huge reserve of tanks, planes, missiles and manpower to fight with, with production only speeding up.

It’s not all peachy for Russia by any means, but to assume they are weak because of their failures in Ukraine is disingenuous. If they wanted to sacrifice their readiness against NATO, they could absolutely take Ukraine. But no one is going to make their homeland vulnerable for land expansion, it doesn’t make sense.

No one is using nuclear weapons.

But let’s say I’m wrong. We should still not fear them. The reason being that accepting nuclear blackmail destines the human race to even more misery and pain than it experiences now.

Rip the bandaid off. Call the nuclear bluff. Then once it proves toothless and we don’t have fascists at the helm, work on nuclear disarmament so we don’t have any accidents.

To everyone saying Russia can’t go to war with Europe because of their failures in Ukraine: this is just not true, and a dangerous assumption.

Their economy has been on a war footing for some time now, and they don’t sacrifice preparedness for war with NATO to support the war in Ukraine. That’s why they’ve thrown all their old inventory at Ukraine. Use it up to soak up ammunition, shift the economy to build new equipment.

Does everyone really think all this hesitation from Europe is because they think Russia has been neutered?

If the state can’t protect its people from the damage that technology and capitalism can do, they have no right to prevent people from protecting themselves.

Fix climate change. Tax billionaires. Address the housing crisis. Then we can talk about taking away privacy in the name of upholding the law.