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User voted Isolated.
1 vote
May 14, 2015

Russia is now one-man dictatorship, which is the most dangerous form of political system, because it requires from this one man, Putin in this case, a continuous action to prove his legitimacy, and a constant demonstration of his strength.

Putin is a week politician who cannot stay in power by improving economy and life standard -- he's just not smart enough. Russian economy is very weak, so he must show his strength somewhere else. He MUST, otherwise he's gone. He lost his lackey in Ukraine, so it was a perfect moment for him to invide another country having the pretext of "caring about Russian people', which is obviously a humbug.

The sad thing is that majority of Russians support him. It's sad that average people are simply stupid, but Hitler already proved that you can brainwash the masses, even while doing immoral things.

Putin is an immoral man. It's as clear as day. Of course there are many "bad guys" in the world, but Putin is the most dangerous one -- he has nukes and he supports other dictators, in fact every dictator in the world, Bashar al-Assad is still killing people because Putin is behind him.

If the West engages his actions, don't have any illusions that he will stop at eastern Ukraine.

The west must definitely isolate Putin's Russia. Impose sanctions, as much as possible. Give military support (even only weapons) to Ukraine. Don't let them organize international sport events.

Putin is probably the biggest evil in the world at the moment. He's responsible for thousands of deaths. Such man cannot be engaged.

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1 vote,
May 23, 2015
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100
User voted Isolated.
1 vote
Oct 15, 2015

Between the two choices, isolation is obvious. Nobody wants to be responsible for the creation of World War III and thus we must find ways to avoid direct armed conflicts with military superpowers such as Russia.

Actually, that's why Russia and the USA have been engaging in proxy wars for decades. To avoid fighting each other directly and thus using nuclear bombs.

So far, since the end of WW2, history has shown us that countries which are isolated with punitive international sanctions end up being severely crippled. They can't use excessive force because the rest of the world simply won't let them have what they need to do so. They can pretty much only bark, not bite. Of course, they will once in a while engage in small conflicts, but nothing that would reach a WW3 type of scale. North Korea, Iran, etc. are good examples, so far, of the viability of isolation policies.

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0
0 votes
Jun 2, 2015

If you have a least bit of sympathy to russian people that are sane... Isolation won't help. Majority of russian people will support him and dictators like him no matter what. I believe the only option here is intervention.

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User voted Isolated.
main reply
0 votes,
Jun 2, 2015

And by intervention what do you mean exactly? Who should be behind this intervention? How do you see it playing out?

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0
User voted Isolated.
0 votes
Jul 20, 2015

Isolated with economic sanctions

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0
0 votes
Sep 28, 2015

Whichever works.

Putin is a bad dude. Russia's civil society has been devastated by his actions. But he's popular in Russia precisely because he was an alternative to something far worse: The oligarchs, Yeltsin, the mob.

It's not at all clear that isolation has ever been an effective strategy against a dictator. Engagement is of course very risky, but it at least has a chance of working. Giving people alternatives, compromising with them where possible, and building hope is almost always the better strategy.

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