The problem is, russia wants to see Europe subjugated, conquered, its lapdog ripe for governance from russia to have everything stolen by few oligarchs around that clown puttin'.
This is russian modus operandi everywhere, they don't know any better, they never knew. This comes from somebody who grew up behind iron curtain, a country effectively enslaved by russians, forcibly having massive russian military bases and atomic weapons, to be a nuclear battlefield that 3rd world war was supposed to be.
You can't have a fair dealings with them, not when they sense any kind of weakness. Former german leaders showed conjsistently such weakness and desperate appeasing, dragged rest of EU with them and look where it led to. Also, russia as a state is waging 20+ years of asymetric warfare against whole west, but especially focusing subverting EU structures.
I wish we could have normal relationships with them, we really tried in Europe, but they are fucked up as a nation, without any hope in this century for any sort of radical change.
I agree US is right now just a bully and arrogant aggressive a-hole, sowing chaos all around the world and poorest suffer the most. But there are not that many options - fucked up US with no clear leadership change (once trump's support goes to single digits I will restore some of my faith in that nation, not sooner), russia is simply the bad guy globally, consistently, and gulf states are not so reliable as we see. What remains - Venezuela, Nigeria maybe? No good choices, maybe due to resource curse but then again ie Norway managed such free treasure just fine.
This is russian modus operandi everywhere, they don't know any better, they never knew. This comes from somebody who grew up behind iron curtain, a country effectively enslaved by russians, forcibly having massive russian military bases and atomic weapons, to be a nuclear battlefield that 3rd world war was supposed to be.
You can't have a fair dealings with them, not when they sense any kind of weakness. Former german leaders showed conjsistently such weakness and desperate appeasing, dragged rest of EU with them and look where it led to. Also, russia as a state is waging 20+ years of asymetric warfare against whole west, but especially focusing subverting EU structures.
I wish we could have normal relationships with them, we really tried in Europe, but they are fucked up as a nation, without any hope in this century for any sort of radical change.
I agree US is right now just a bully and arrogant aggressive a-hole, sowing chaos all around the world and poorest suffer the most. But there are not that many options - fucked up US with no clear leadership change (once trump's support goes to single digits I will restore some of my faith in that nation, not sooner), russia is simply the bad guy globally, consistently, and gulf states are not so reliable as we see. What remains - Venezuela, Nigeria maybe? No good choices, maybe due to resource curse but then again ie Norway managed such free treasure just fine.