"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.

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.

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

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.

Eating Chinese pussy is also good.

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

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).

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.

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

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

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..

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!

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.