How United States created Putin

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Rejected by Poland and Baltic States - and violating the rule Mikah was trying to find exceptions from.

I wonder how the Russiaphiles here would feel about actually living under a Soviet system…..

I think many don't realize that the difference is not just flag and language.

From what I have heard, Putin's Russia really started to develop a national, militaristic ideology (based around their defeat of Nazi Germany in WW2) around 2012 or 2013 to rally the people around and to distract from the faltering economy (which had been constantly growing for the first decade or so of Putin's Presidency).

Even so, after watching Pozner's video (I first saw it a few weeks before QFT posted it), I still believe America's provocations or Putin's Russia played a major part in what's going on now.

It's kind of depressing to see how many people in here won't even consider this. Even stranger how so many of the most reluctant are liberal-leftists, who always used to be among the most eager to criticize US foreign policy.
It's like people don't understand that trying to understand Putin's actions is not the same thing as condoning them (which I myself do not).

I remember after 9/11, as horrifying as it was, people were able to accept that America's meddling in the Middle East might have had something to do with it. And when I was a kid, it was readily accepted that the actions of Hitler's Germany might have had something to do with the Allies' harsh treatment of Germany after WWI. Why is it so difficult for people to reason this way with regards to Putin's Russia?

Maybe the weight of Stalin's Soviet Union weights down too much? As in, with Middle East and Germany it was strike one, but with all that Stalin did and Putin causing trouble in the same area, it's considered strike two instead of one? As in, Russia/Soviet Union already got it's chance back in the day?

Tribal politics, black and white thinking.

I do see a difference: I cannot pinpoint any actual harmful actions done by the West on Russia after USSR collapse.
They were invited to join the club of democracies with open arms. But Putin didn't want Russia to be a democracy. He wanted it to be an empire. And we (East European democracies) can't accept this - it's a matter of our survival.