re: #83 austin_blue

I think Putin has a loftier goal. Helping the Tangelo Spunktrumpet get elected had to surprise him, and now he has set his sites not on just the US, but the EU and NATO. Russia’s GDP is around $1.5 trillion. The EU and the US, combined, is around $40.

Destabilizing the West and returning the Rodinya to its past glory is what he wants, and he has found a large group of useful idiots to help him. He’s a fucking KGB operative, for dog’s sake. Of course he is going to pull whatever levers he can get his hands on.

I grow wary of any attempt to frame Putin in Cold War terms, that was a worldwide rivalry between two competing social/economic systems.

Putin’s goals are to re-establish Russia as the leader of a revitalized Russian Empire, including most of the old USSR, but not to impose any ideology beyond that.

Still, the old Russian Empire included the Baltic states, parts of Poland, and Finland…

I would like to note that the usage of the Oxford comma there to distinguish between all of Finland and parts of it.