https://www.the-paladins.com/post/fragments-from-a-war-diary-part-261

Fragments from a War Diary, Part #261
The Paladins

I was talking with some crazy American guy tonight. He suggested to me in all these sinister and stupid ways that he was in the CIA. Well, I find that sort of talk very interesting but maybe I know a little bit more than him about all this ridiculous stuff. Yes he had a degree in #Russian and Slavonic Studies and in international relations and in this and that and I didn’t really care; I was yawning because I hadn’t seen this guy before in Lviv and he was talking straight out of some textbook I hadn’t read. This kind of guy should go back home because he doesn’t really get it. He was talking about Vladimir Putin’s notorious 2021 essay in which he says that #Ukraine is really a cultural and political outpost of Russia and he read this rubbish at face value and he thought it represents a principled position on the part of Vladimir Putin. GIve me a break.

Vladimir #Putin has no principled positions. He is an exceptional and excellent autocrat precisely because he has no principles. Russian leaders throughout history are notorious and exceptional in expounding nonsense on stilts, purporting to be principled positions, but in fact not giving a hoot about any of it. Russians don’t think on the basis of principles and rule of law and all the things that we in the West imagine give a veneer of decency to our civilisation. They just don’t care. They talk whatever they want but in fact they are motivated by raw power and by nothing else. They don’t harbour grudges; they don’t care for principles or law; they just want to see who has the stronger position and who exercises power and aggression more effectively. And some guy with a degree in Russian studies can have read all the textbooks he likes but he doesn’t see that Russia isn’t a country based on principles or rule of law at all; it is a jungle in which the beasts roam and the civilised people are devoured."...