YOU report Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the West that Russia would use all the means at its disposal to protect its territory, saying: “It’s not a bluff” (“Vladimir Putin says Russia will ‘use all the means at our disposal’ to protect itself”, thenational.scot, Sep 21). Isn’t he dangerously deranged?
Informed observers will realise he’s playing to his domestic audience and in the vacuum of censorship Russians may well swallow his garbage. Truth is the “bogeyman” West has no interest in encroaching on Russia’s territory. For all we care they can keep it. They’re now international pariahs, and if we could seal borders with them and leave them to their mania we’d likely happily do it and forget about them.
But it’s common sense for nations to cooperate, not only economically but also in the interest of pursuing important global issues, not least of which is climate change and its management.
READ MORE: Many are in denial about the nuclear dimension to the war in Ukraine
The reality is that it’s not the West encroaching on Russia; the opposite is true. It’s Putin’s expansionist forays into his neighbours in his attempt to restore the old discredited Soviet empire, entirely unwarranted and irrelevant in contemporary global politics. The old Soviet territories that gained independence for their nations and ethnic groupings have clearly demonstrated they are looking forward to building their own futures as independent nation states quite prepared to live alongside Russia but not dominated by it (ambitions Scotland shares).
In case Russians haven’t noticed, the war in Ukraine is not being waged on Russian soil. There is no encroachment of Russia, and his hollow veiled nuclear threat doesn’t wash. Doesn’t Putin need to rein his brain in? Either that or his compatriots need to do it for him. Because it’s in no-one’s interests, not least those of Russians, to prosecute this despicable conflict that is trashing the world and isolating and impoverishing ordinary Russian citizens.
Putin might hold the West to be the aggressor as he denounces Nato expansion. Well, Sweden and Finland would not have sought to join the alliance had Putin sat on his hands and shown Russia was prepared to live peacefully in the global family of nations. And doesn’t it seem his real intent is to provoke foreign intervention to justify his inane claims, to shift blame in the eyes of Russians away from himself?
Doesn’t it beggar belief that those controlling Russia are allowing Putin to continue his course of madness?
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
He says, “It’s not a bluff”. I’m beginning to think that quite a lot of what he says is bluff. We’ve been led to believe that he has massive armies at his disposal, but where are they? We’ve been led to believe he had access to unlimited weapons. Where are they? I think the answer to the first question is that Putin is probably putting his soldiers to death or into Siberian “training” camps for cowardice, not to mention them being killed off by brave Ukrainians.
As for their huge arsenal? I think the majority of it is in Ukrainian hands as the Russian cowards run from advancing Ukrainian soldiers.
READ MORE: Ukraine accuses Russia of 'nuclear terrorism' after missile strike
As for their threats of using nuclear weapons. They might well do that because he has no respect for the Russian people who will be killed in their millions by retaliatory strikes by goodness knows how many Western countries. But first he will have to scurry off to a safe place so that he can survive, he’s another coward.
Probably a load of old horsepoop I’ve written, but I just get so sick of his horsepoop and even more sick of why millions of Russians listen to him and believe his horsepoop. But I suppose that’s the power of brainwashing.
Bill Hunter
via thenational.scot
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