Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

 
So Putin is cleverly reclaiming this ancient legacy to establish itself more in all of these countries.

Not really.  A number of African countries turned to Ruzzia to kick out the French and ISIS and are now finding that the cure is worse than the disease, a lot worse.  Turns out Wagner is hitting a lot of loyalist communities, because they're easier to hit than rebel held ones and the quid pro quo is very onerous, far more so than the French had imposed previously.

Plus it's becoming increasingly evident that even if Ruzzia did actually want to fight ISIS and prop up the African regimes, it does not have the means to do so.

Another thing that I can add to this is that Russians are currently richer than they have ever been since the fall of the Soviet Union. Thanks to a state controlled economy, the whole system is working in a way that is based on military spending. Wages are also good because ¼th of their workforce has left the country and 1/4th is dead in the war of Ukraine. So companies are willing to pay more to keep their employees.
 
So they probably have similar sociological models to gain and maintain influence in African countries. All of this for rare earths and other mineral resources.
 
Personally, I believe that the Soviet Union stood for something despite of all of the lacks that it harbored within itself. So I am still sad to see Putin taping on this legacy to create an absolutely evil type of regime.
 
I am entirely unhappy about Trump too. With this Russian threat rising since the annexation of Crimea, he is pushing all NATO members to spend 5% on their defense (some countries like Spain are objecting). Things like artillery shell production are being boosted in the US. Europeans are also increasing their budgets to be less dependent on the US militarily. Other countries like Eastern countries are probably going to respond in a similar manner.
 
So the defense industry is going to make huge profits worldwide and release huge amounts of CO2 in our atmosphere.
 
All of this in a time when we need some sort of Donald Trump who forces everyone to spend at least 5% on their energy transition and threaten them with economic sanctions if they don’t.
 
If NATO was really NATO, they would perceive climate change as a threat bigger than Russia. Let me end with this
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cooling-down-...37329.html