Dan Carlin's Hard Core History has an AMAZING history of Russia... I cant find which cast, but check out his site, as he has free episodes, but in addition - he puts some of the other eps in his shop on sale, for free!
And Constantinople is not Istanbul. The point ant6n made (grandparent post) was about the worldview of the (roughly) conservative old Russian nationalists who are dropping the bombs, and how much destruction they might find acceptable.
“When do you enlist?” is the ultimate skin in the game test. It’s amazing how quiet things get when you ask that question, whether we’re talking about Iraq / Afghanistan 20 years ago or this conflict now.
If you are willing to send other people to die for you then you should be prepared to make the same sacrifice as well because your name may very will come up in the draft.
Almost all analogies are bad and distracting, to some extent.
Itoh, I do think it gets across, coarsely, a point about the sentiment scape. Russian people's tolerance of Ukrainian suffering can't be taken for granted. Kievans haven't attacked them, or given Russians much reason to hate them. Hate is a necessary ingredient for that kind of war.
It's great to know someone else (coarsely) feels this way.
Once people introduce analogies, I give up as they
a) become a discussion about the analogy, or
b) result in further analogies, and further discussions not about the original argument.
