Nail on head
Was thinking the same till it talked about Putins dictatorial regime... I mean I realise western countries have public referendums all the time... especially when thinking of going to war or some other drastic policy... NOT.
This guy is right in that Putin has said Russia is ready to react, but wont invade without provocation.
He is wrong thinking Putin likes being sanctioned and the empty pointless western aggression against Russia... Putin wanted cooperation and trade, and all he got was dictatorial instructions and demands from the west to tow the line or else.
The fact that the west does not play nice is not Putins fault and he has continued to give them every opportunity to play nice but they clearly don't know how.
This is likely to be a replay of Georgia where the Kosovo declaration of independence supported by the west led to Russia opening its borders to South Ossetia and Abkhazia which had been largely closed to respect Georgia, but they were abusing that and so the Kosovo bullshit allowed them to seek better relations... once those borders were open both regions massively improved with trade and Georgia was forced to do something clumsy and attack... and I suspect if the Donbass region opens to Russia and trade boosts their economy and their way of life improves without Russians invading and stealing everything not bolted down, the rest of the Ukraine might have second thoughts and Kiev will be forced to invade like Georgia did and the Russians will just crush them and push them back and just do what they did in their far south.
They wont be stealing any new land, they will be securing former Soviet compatriots from a despotic new regime in Tiblisi and Kiev respectively.
The west will have a shitfit and try to hide the spanners they are holding because the bolted down assets in the Donbass will not theirs for the taking... it is the end of democracy as we know it....
Every time it's a more "calm" and more open to diologue guy than the one he replaced.
Indeed there are plenty offering solutions but the ones less anti Russia seem to be offering the better solutions, but the fundamental problem is that politicians are liars... Zelensky promised peace didn't he? Just like Trump promised dealing with the Russians... not capitulation... but an end to the meaningless hostility and confrontation that is helping no one... but when they both got into power they found they couldn't do what they wanted and fell in to the same old worn path of look at me and how strong I am because putin is the enemy.
Next time it will still be an even more pro russian guy untill Russia places its own pawn.
But that is the point, if you listen to western propaganda the guy kicked out of office at Maidan was pro Russia... but he wasn't. He was pro Ukraine but realised the Russian offer was much better than the EU offer... even more so that the Russian offer could be accepted as well as the Chinese offer, but the EU offer required him to decline both the Russian and Chinese offers...
There can be no pro Russian president in Kiev... they haven't had one this century so far... that is why they are in the mess they are currently in.
It's not like french or US who are starving in their countries will give away industries and jobs to ukraine. And they are probably thinking that russia wasn't that bad.
The west wants Ukraine to be their customer, but the problem for the Ukraine is that Russia was a serious customer of a lot of very specialised products but the last few years have forced them to make their own substitutes. They can't just expect Russia to go back to buying stuff from the Ukraine... a lot of the stuff they probably can't make any more in the volumes and quality needed because most of their stuff is probably sold and the expertise is gone.
More importantly there are Russian companies making replacement stuff that is likely better quality using new technology and new tooling... they are not going to go back to Ukrainian stuff now.
The food producers in the EU are in the same hole, they are the biggest lobby group to reduce or end sanctions against Russia but what they probably don't realise is that letting EU food producers into the Russian market will let all these new Russian food producers into the EU market and their low costs and production quality might be a real problem... they might be able to beat EU producers in the EU market just because of the value of the Ruble and all round food production capacity... the weather outside being too cold for growing food means inside food production so all year round production gives them an advantage in the off season...
Will be interesting... but in the case of the Ukraine and the EU.... Russia has learned to satisfy a lot of its own needs...
Get in line or else...
The Ukrianian Rich and powerful likely thought if they put their weight behind the west they would make more money and become more powerful and instead their country has been destroyed so there will be a lot of them who would really prefer to get back into their traditional market of Russia and go back to making decent money... which is now a "russian backed coup".... amusing considering the only coup there in a while was so openly western supported... but now coups are bad it seems.
NOTE: love how the Ukrainians and the West distort the numbers through the media.
But if there are not Russians there how can they blame them for all their problems... and why hasn't Kiev just walked all over these peasants defending their home and their spoken language of choice?