"All you had to do was stick to oppressing your own people, and we would've kept looking the other way..."

Well...

For the equal partner bit they'd probably have had to respect election results and stop murdering political rivals.

And that would just be a step too far.

Barely. They were in the G8. Even after being kicked out trade kept going as normal, new pipelines were being built, nuclear power plants were being shut down because who needs a fallback?

Saudi Arabia gets full honors on the international stage, despite publicly executing people for criticizing the government or having independent thought, and cutting up a journalist in a consulate abroad.
- Blood money is still money!
Not too sure about that. We're pals-y with plenty of authoritarian states. Even in the late 2000s and early 2010s we were so desperate to include Russia, corruption and authoritarianism and all, in the international order.

Above everything, you can get in good with the current international order simply by not making trouble for other countries. Russia, apparently, couldn't abide by even that minor restriction.
- Honestly if Russia didn't do a full scale invasion and just annexed the lands they were originally aiming for I think the west would have probably ignored it like all their other activities in the region.
- desperate to include Russia
  
  This is not historically accurate
As long as they kept it to murdering political rivals within the country they would have been fine.

Everybody still does business with PRC, Saudi Arabia, etc
- Outside the country was fine too.
And that would just be a step too far.

Eh. Through the history of the 90s, it looked like they might have a shot at establishing a free and stable democracy.

Then privatization and mishandled foreign aid created their oligarchs, quality of life fell through the floor in basically all the post-Soviet states, people got mad, tired, and scared, Putin stepped in to "stabilize the situation"— Then the politicians and journalists started dying, crazy siloviks and vatniks fully captured what was left of their political institutions I guess, and now they're doing a lot of evil murder and various interesting atrocities.

There might have been/probably were underlying cultural factors that made it impossible for Russia to ever stabilize as a "normal" country at that point. But those are hard to see from an outside perspective, and I guess they're probably pretty hard to see from inside as well.
- Also 2000-2011 was time of "I'm outside of politics" and "let serious people handle situation" propaganda. Kinda also why war happened.
  
  Also a lot of human rights violation that was done with help of "democratic" states, like DPI systems from Israel, theater of security from US and general surveliance from around the world(mostly US, Turkey and Israel).
  
  It got even worse than during Soviet time, because back then there were no option for nomenclature to send kids abroad for better quality of life while enshittify quality of life domestically.
  
  I think first thing after baning "remote digital voting" should be calling FSB criminal organization, lustrations and publishing of everything in archives without exception.
Lolol no they wouldn't. Literally just need to keep the status quo.

I legitimately feel bad for the Russian people as a lot of them don't agree with what's going on and had to either leave the country to avoid getting jailed for protesting or are forced to suffer in silence.

i know few of them personally and generally those who live outside of Russia are against the regime and those who live inside Russia say they are not affected and are apolitical or that all countries to the west are controlled by US and want to steal Russian land + resources.

It's also funny to hear what they get to hear in tv aside from UK like that time they were told that in Europe it is so dry that people don't have water to drink or that people are freezing in winter because no RU gas
- meanwhile in russian crimea, there is no water to drink and the gas line recently got blasted.
  
  gonna be a shitty winter in crimea lol
- Gimme the Russian mud!
I run a, let's say.. "Social Club" on discord (Okay it's an Erotic Roleplay server) one of our regulars is Russian, I actually worry about him quite a bit. He wishes he could leave the country, he's very lucid of the entire situation.

(Edit: I said he was 18+ instead of Russian because I get confused and word association happens. Of course he's 18+. It's an erp server literally everyone is.)
- did you really have to mention that you run an erotic roleplay discord server just to say that some russians want to flee the country?
the majority of Russian people very strongly agree with the invasion, remember, Navalny might be the strongest opposition, but he was for even more radical reconquest of "Rightfully western Russian soil"
True, but it's a minority.
- You're minimizing the effect of propaganda.
  
  The Russians have been subjected to it (about this war) intensely those last five years.
  
  OTOH, and I don't know where you are from, the US people have been subjected to it intensely since 1955 (the US propaganda machine is probably the best in the world, many books have been written about it).
  
  And if you're from the US and it makes you buckle, just consider that it's the same for the Russians that have been indoctrinated for a while.
  
  Anyway, not to defend the Russians, but it's a sad situation all around. And as usual, the civilians are the victims. But they will cheer their oppressors, because they are idiots.

Sadly not a new story, most of the world considered Hitler a great man (He made the cover of Time Magazine) and had an "Aww shucks" attitude to most of the negatives what he did... then he started invading other countries, and even then the first one (Poland) got a shrug at first

"Not In My Backyard!" types have let all kinds of fuckery grow until it became their problem

It's worth reading the actual Times article that they ran with that cover.

https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html

Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years. He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the teeth— or as close to the teeth as he was able. He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.

It's not complimentary. Time's Man of the Year is based on influence. It's not saying that influence is good.
- Same reason Trump was on it during his presidency iirc. Quoting them:
  
  TIME has a long history of featuring presidents on the cover and Trump, whose presidency defied precedents and fractured norms, has been no exception. Eight of the top 10 people to appear most often on TIME’s cover are U.S. presidents.
  
  Nixon, Reagan, and Bill Clinton have all been on more than Trump.
Hitler made the cover of time as a monster, not because he was "great".

The comparison is so f-ing great.

Both were cancer victims who thought they were doing what they had to do because they were going to die (Putin fasttracked the invasion at the worst possible time where it would have likely been devastatingly successful if he had waited for a few more democracies to Trump themselves)
Both began turning against core members of their "family" (Prigozhin) until they were no longer in any way dedicated to what the excuse they set themselves out on but the sunk cost of the worst aspects of themselves. To further drive the point home, both survived their brush with cancer.
Both end up having to appeal to and getting picked off by the new lows of the environment they've set themselves off on (China, North Korea).

All this time Putin has been seeing the world through the eyes of a KGB operative. All the economic and political achievements of Russia didn't matter to him, it was things like being able to get his way and pick off those dissenters and traitors from within those countries, as if that proved how weak those countries were. For all his talk, I doubt he even saw or sees NATO as a threat, viewing it in the same spectrum of bullshitting to use against things he does not respect. He wanted to collapse the world order to cronies under him, a pure power grab. Just like Walter, he will reap what he sows.

Fascism always winds up having to reach outside of its own borders.

Spain kept it going internally for decades.
- Only because they didn't have a choice. The civil war destroyed their already mediocre industry and it was easier to just ally with the capitalists against the communists in exchange for financial aid.
  
  Make no mistake, if it were possible for Franco to invade his neighbors he would have.
- yeah what a paradise that turned into
Evil is uncontainable. If you accept bribe money, corruption will haunt your country.
I mean you're telling everyone that your country is superior to all others then it's just logical that you see others as mere support for your country and even entitled to it.

Eating Chinese pussy is also good.

That's different topic mate. 😅
- I'm just saying, if we're already sucking the dick... why not diversify our genital portfolio a little.

The implication here is that the west has a good relationship with Russia at some point, and that has never been true.

There were a few years of hope of a genuine partnership after the wall fell. That hope remained but arguably became delusional once Putin took charge.
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- My point is that Russia has never been interested in just oppressing their own people, so this meme has never been true.
Yeah, in the nineties there was a lot of optimism and in fact, some decent cooperation.

However, a major flaw is that Russia suffered a lot and people didn't see that prosperity everyone just assumed would follow.

So while in the West, we were partying down about our prospective new buddies, the situation was actually pretty bad in Russia, and Putin found a receiptive audience in that context.
Well, in early nineties it had good relations. Then it stopped having good relation with Russia and started having good relation with oligarchs and later Putin's mafia.
- Kept their space station going for a while, and then built a new one together. What's left of Roscosmos and the old Soviet space program would not exist without the US propping them up.
  
  Not entirely for altruistic reasons, mind you. Didn't want their rocket engineers running off to other countries to make ICBMs. Now that Best Korea has them, though, it's no longer that important.

Yeah, how many times Anticorruption Foundation told "this money is stolen, getting bribes is day job of this official", yet nothing was done. Still not enough is done. Even now sanctions seems to be sabotaged:

Average russian citizen that runs away from being drafted, being killed or killing other people should cross border naked or his posessions will be confiscated. Including phone, shoes and clothes.
Very welcome totaly not putin oligarchs/corruptioners can keep their fleet of BMWs and yachts, while still actively supporting war.

And corporate fuckery:

MacDon given so much food for propaganda by "leaving" country, while they can force-buy everything back for one rouble(about one cent).

Mmmm, I do recall those yachts being impounded left and right in the west whenever they found them
- One of two Putin's yacht was impounded by Italy after second invasion. Putin still has his second yacht. And Anti-Corruption Foundation(started by Navalny) had to fight beaurocracy and legal system to get it impounded.
  
  Funfact: to pay for only one yacht he would need to be president for over 8000 years. Not over 9000, but very close.

But Russia did ask once to join NATO. The americans laughed.

Ego nothing. Russia monopolized oil resources going west and Ukraine started developing their own oil resources. Russia would've been left with no one to do business with but the east. That's why they invaded, to seize Ukrainian oil. Anything else is propaganda.

Lol to "equal partner" the u.s. policy towards Russia after WWII and even after the Soviet Union was of containment. Whether that was necessary considering their history with their neighbors is another story, but the idea that after the wall fell there was a path to E.U. and NATO cooperation on equal footing is delusional. None of this justifies the war, but it remains to be seen whether they'll even bring Ukraine in as an equal partner and not just a battlefield for there war with Russia

And if the world had stopped immediately after the cold war ended this would be a valid statement.

Unfortunately there were 30+ intervening years where the US and other countries did invest in Russia. Stop acting like that wasn't a thing, we've spent the last year plus trying to drag that shit out of russia since they invaded Ukraine.
- Invest in Russia? Bwahahahaha. Did US invest into Russian Public Transit? Into affordable housing? They can't do it domestically, you think they can improve quality of life abroad?
  
  US "invested" into oligarchs that got rich by buying for dirt cheap public property on money loaned by state that was returned by selling tiny fraction of it for real price.
  
  we've spent the last year plus trying to drag that shit out of russia
  
  Depends who "we". Unless "we" are Finland, "we" happily received stolen money. Putin's yacht that costs about 8000 his annual official wages(duh, he has wage) was arrested only after war started. Do you really think nobody questioned that? When person who questioned that was poisoned, US did nothing.
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- Well, Germany wasn't subject to shock therapy in the way that Russia was due to West Germany becoming a capitalist democracy way before neoliberlism was a thing. The USSR collapsed decades later, at a time when the USA was spreading weird economic policies in the most rabid way possible. It was "capitalism at any cost". And the cost could be democracy... and all social fabric. It was shock therapy that largely led to the oligarchs.
  
  Listen, fuck Putin. I fully stand behind Ukraine, but US policy created Putin's opening through shock therapy. The idea that this is just because Russians are inherently violent is absurd.
- Fun fact, the term tankie came about because some "lefties" decided to defend the imperialism of the Russian state bashing down dissident rioting populations in their imperial holdings, generally by driving a platoon of tanks in, and shooting if the crowd dosn't disperse
- Germany was militarily occupied and basically turned into a protectorate of the usa. There are still many us military bases in Germany
  
  edit: added basically
I'm not sure you understand what exactly was going on in the 90s and early 2000s, but considering your comment on Ukraine, I question whether having the conversation would be at all productive.
- It wouldn't be. They don't seem old enough or are just ignorant.
- What happened in the 90s and 2000s then? The west had been propagandized for half a century that Russia was the enemy, so had Russians, so neither side was going to hold out there hand and try for cooperation. If the west was serious about incorporating Russia they would've done some sort of marshall plan to modernize them before bringing them into the fold like Poland. They didn't, they did let a bunch of their business men buy former public property for pennies on the dollar, which I guess is investment but only really for the corrupt officials who got rich off it. There was no path to EU membership, especially after Poland and the baltics joined because they, justifiably, hate Russia for all the imperial oppression they've done over the centuries.
  
  Where am I wrong about Ukraine, do you think E.U. and NATO are going to let them in even after all this? I'm not a tanky , the Russian invasion of Ukraine is horrific and unjustified, that doesn't mean the west's response to it is benevolent and with the ukrainians best interest.
Oh look, the tankies are here

It's a meme so I don't take it seriously cause otherwise it's terribly wrong. West didn't want Russia to join them. Western corporation/families wanted to gain controll over rich natural russian resources. Putin stopped that in 90s. And that's why we're where we're..

The idea that Putin, who has spent the past 20 years entrenching the kleptocratic oligarchy and putting a great deal of effort into welcoming Western investment into Russia, is the one who saved Russia from the evil Western 'corporation/families' seeking 'rich natural russian resources' is... absurd.
where we’re

What a strange use of a contraction not normally seen in English…
- Meh, it's what it's

They get what they deserve, centuries of ruzzian scum...

I used to do business with a lot of Russians right after the Berlin wall came down, we all got filthy rich privatizing the trillions of dollars worth of state industries. They were excited about joining NATO when Putin applied, they thought they were going to be in the club. Point is, they did everything we asked, but in the end they were more useful to us as an enemy, so it never mattered what Russia did, we were never going to let them into the club. Looking back on it now, I laugh. Thanks for the profits, Boris! You fucking rube!

Russia never applied to join NATO.
They were excited about joining NATO when Putin applied, they thought they were going to be in the club. Point is, they did everything we asked

They were never even in a partnership plan, much less doing 'everything we asked'. Nice bootlicking though. Even when nominally satirical you can't help yourselves, can you?
- Yeah maybe if they just simped a little harder and cut us in on a little bit more of the profits we would have accepted them! 😉. I like the cut of your jib.

Equal partner? The EU doesn't even treat their own poorer member states as equal partners. It remains to be seen whose dick tastes better the coming decades.

why the anti-eu shit? Russian dick sounds tasty to you or what?

and which of these poorer countries do you think id worse off since joining the EU? other than maybe Hungary but that has nothing to do with the EU, lol
- We're 100% better off in the EU than we would be out of it, but there is a lot of favoritism and "Rules for thee but not for me" shit that rolls eastward.
  
  Romania and Bulgaria are now suing the Austrian government for blocking our entrance into Schengen despite fulfilling every single point asked of us, and they still turn around and go "Lol no, you're not western EU, you don't deserve to be in this club".
  
  Also, wtf is this shit France is talking about with tiered membership? I fully suspect they'll use this to try and strip poorer EU countries of voting rights if they get their way.
- Worse off I'm not sure, but you bet Greece, Italy and Spain are not treated as equal partners to France, Germany or even Belgium.
  
  This doesn't mean I'm anti EU, I'm just realistic in that Russia would never be treated the same.
  
  I'm also not confident that US/EU will be on top forever. China is gaining ground.
  
  I would advise you to not confuse your preference for the US/EU with reality. And not every form of criticism means advocating for the other side.
We're literally pumping money into our poorer members to get them up to speed
- We're giving them loans, that they have to repay and with the provision that they have to enact austerity. The welfare being cut is being replaced by companies from richer countries, making a lot of money out of it. It's basically the same thing the IMF does to a lot of developing countries.
Please let us know when you find out, comrade.
There is still far too many people hurt by the Cold War or its fallout, which many Westerners forget lead to the deaths of millions, for any partnership with Russia to be anything other than tenuous.
- far too many people hurt by the cold war
  
  And all of those people hurt are a result of the Soviet Union being a hell state.