Azor....the comment concerning Russia was not that "destructive" in say Georgia, eastern Ukraine and now Syria...those civil societies might in fact have a minor disagreement with you on that point.
Take currently Georgia...Russia is involved in an ever so slowly conducted annexation of further Georgian territory by simply crossing the demarcation lines....putting up a new border warning sign say another 500meters or so inside actual Georgian territory and then suddenly moving the entire border barrier in the middle of the night to just right behind the signs....they have now done this three times in the last six months expanding another 1.5kms inside Georgia territory and yet Georgia complains and the West says nothing..absolutely nothing....
Take Syria....the RuAF under the Putin geo political goals is systematically destroying Syrian cities, town and villages doing exactly what Russia did in the two Chechnen wars...exactly the same thing....AND again not a single comment from the West concerning their war crimes and or their support to the Assad genocidal campaign directed against Arab Sunni's.
Take eastern Ukraine.....with their constant and I mean serious and constant attacks on UAF positions with 29 KIA and 97 WIA just for May alone...ALL the while complaining Ukraine does not fulfill Minsk 2 while Russia has not fulfilled a single and I mean a single point in Minsk 2......not so sure the UAF would accept the term..."not so destructive".
More casualties among soldiers and civilians. More often we see civilian areas at or away from frontline being shelled directly
And the use of a tactical nuclear first strike "de-escalation"being exercised in every single Russian "snap exercise" in the last three years is not a decisive enough warning to the West of intent?
Think about it.....BTW this might in fact be the indicator that the so called trying to gain "so called superpower status via aggression" maybe ending sooner than we thought.......
Russians changed their views on what it means to be a superpower since 2014. Now it's about modern economy, not army
https://slon.ru/posts/69277
Maybe Russians after all the massive propaganda thrown at them are finally seeing that food is much more expensive than before 2014, that their salaries have fallen badly since 2014, that the economy has basically come to a standstill, that they cannot afford to even go on vacations as they did before 2014, that pensions are falling and will not be raised any time soon all since 2014....maybe just maybe they are awakening to the fact that to be a superpower it requires a "superpower" economy to support it.....BTW there are indicators that the propaganda being thrown at them is no longer really pulling them in the direction that Putin wants them to go in........
BTW..there is still a lot we do not fully understand about Russian developments under Putin.....
Chilling @novaya_gazeta report on secret Russian interior ministry prison discovered in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia.
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/society/73418.html …