Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
Yes, the difference is that one lies at first and comes out with the truth later and is quite upfront about it while others hide behind euphemisms for the word lie and try to do so ad infinitum. Neither of them do actually act very differently however.

Also a relevant link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonath...b_2624620.html



So trustworthy, it almost moves me to tears.
And we never stop talking about Iraq, do we?

Russians will only tell the truth when it benefits them, otherwise they will lie, Western politicians will avoid lying because if they get caught they'll probably have to resign their position. That means you can sift Western leaders' statements for something close to the truth, where you have to assume the Russians are lying.

The point about this is that Russian politicians will, therefore, assume the West is lying just as much as they are, so when the West says it wants to partner with Russia and has no interest in encircling and confining Russia the assumption is that that is a lie, the West wants something else.

Basically, whatever you tell Putin he assumes you're lying because he's lying, so he'll act on his perception of the situation and not what you tell him; this helps to explain why he invaded Ukraine. The West wanted Ukraine as a bridge to Russia, geographically and culturally (like the UK is a bridge between the US and Europe) and told Russia so. Russia concluded from this that the West wanted Ukraine to join NATO, therefore when a pro-Western government supplanted a pro-Russian one during the crisis last year this was seen as something engineered by Western leaders specifically to drive a wedge between Ukraine and Russia, despite everything the West had said.

So Putin ordered an invasion to counter what he was as NATO aggression.