I understand perfectly what you are talking about...except that you are still failing to explain what gave putin a right to claim any red lines INSIDE a foreign sovereign state? (How would you react if India began drawing red lines inside Pakistan?) Also, the fact that you dismissing Finland's case shows that you accept at face value put…
I understand perfectly what you are talking about...except that you are still failing to explain what gave putin a right to claim any red lines INSIDE a foreign sovereign state? (How would you react if India began drawing red lines inside Pakistan?) Also, the fact that you dismissing Finland's case shows that you accept at face value putin's NATO argument. If his fears of NATO expansion were genuine, he would have "blown head gasket" over Finland's accession to NATO because while prolonged discussions of NATO membership for Ukraine had been taking place since at least 2008 (actually earlier) with no visible result, Finland managed to slide into NATO at a neck-breaking speed. This provides a tangible factual evidence that for putin, it is not about NATO, but about preserving the ability to dismantle the Ukrainian statehood without suffering any major repercussions - he simply does not believe that Ukraine has a right to exist, plain and simple (I hope you can read the Russian government-controlled media in Russian language - there is a ton of evidence to that effect, and they are far more explicit with their domestic audience). Also you are completely wrong about Finland being decades ago and not being relevant - if it were the case, Finns would not have rushed to join NATO: decades may have passed but the heinous nature of the muscovite regime is still the same. To be completely objective though, I agree with you on one point: by pussyfooting around the issue of NATO membership without doing anything to implement it, Biden did place Ukraine in an untenable position. You either let them in as quickly as you let the Finns in, or you declare that the Ukrainian membership in NATO is not on the table. But that would undermine the standing NATO policy of open doors for democratic nations of Europe; in case of Ukraine, it would also look like a gigantic betrayal since this would consign Ukraine to living in the shadow of the muscovate satrapy and denying it a right to chart its own national course. (I'm not even mentioning that it was thanks to the US, Ukraine voluntarily gave up the world's third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for a useless piece of toilet paper AKA the Budapest Memorandum.)
It doesn't matter who or what gave him the right. we're talking about realistic on the ground situations, not a court of law. If you want to sue him in icc and enforce the judgment be my guest, but in the real world, for better or worse, might makes right and there's nothing you can do about it unless you've got a million-man army armed to the teeth, or if you want to pay for that. You're looking for consistency in Putin's thinking and you won't find it except he seems to think Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are the tripartite successors to east-slavic Kieran rus and everyone else can go to hell, and refuse to take him seriously (like biden and zelensky did) and prepare to go to war. You make lovely beautiful arguments that would do wonderful in a gilded court of law - but that's not where we are.
I understand perfectly what you are talking about...except that you are still failing to explain what gave putin a right to claim any red lines INSIDE a foreign sovereign state? (How would you react if India began drawing red lines inside Pakistan?) Also, the fact that you dismissing Finland's case shows that you accept at face value putin's NATO argument. If his fears of NATO expansion were genuine, he would have "blown head gasket" over Finland's accession to NATO because while prolonged discussions of NATO membership for Ukraine had been taking place since at least 2008 (actually earlier) with no visible result, Finland managed to slide into NATO at a neck-breaking speed. This provides a tangible factual evidence that for putin, it is not about NATO, but about preserving the ability to dismantle the Ukrainian statehood without suffering any major repercussions - he simply does not believe that Ukraine has a right to exist, plain and simple (I hope you can read the Russian government-controlled media in Russian language - there is a ton of evidence to that effect, and they are far more explicit with their domestic audience). Also you are completely wrong about Finland being decades ago and not being relevant - if it were the case, Finns would not have rushed to join NATO: decades may have passed but the heinous nature of the muscovite regime is still the same. To be completely objective though, I agree with you on one point: by pussyfooting around the issue of NATO membership without doing anything to implement it, Biden did place Ukraine in an untenable position. You either let them in as quickly as you let the Finns in, or you declare that the Ukrainian membership in NATO is not on the table. But that would undermine the standing NATO policy of open doors for democratic nations of Europe; in case of Ukraine, it would also look like a gigantic betrayal since this would consign Ukraine to living in the shadow of the muscovate satrapy and denying it a right to chart its own national course. (I'm not even mentioning that it was thanks to the US, Ukraine voluntarily gave up the world's third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for a useless piece of toilet paper AKA the Budapest Memorandum.)
It doesn't matter who or what gave him the right. we're talking about realistic on the ground situations, not a court of law. If you want to sue him in icc and enforce the judgment be my guest, but in the real world, for better or worse, might makes right and there's nothing you can do about it unless you've got a million-man army armed to the teeth, or if you want to pay for that. You're looking for consistency in Putin's thinking and you won't find it except he seems to think Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are the tripartite successors to east-slavic Kieran rus and everyone else can go to hell, and refuse to take him seriously (like biden and zelensky did) and prepare to go to war. You make lovely beautiful arguments that would do wonderful in a gilded court of law - but that's not where we are.