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Russia is a third-rate trouble-maker these days: it should save it's military shekels and host more Olympics

Discounting Russia as a third rate navy is very daft to start with (you all knew i would say that) but here is why;

U misread my statement: I did not say the navy itself is third rate; I meant the state and it's policies; most notably trying to rebuild the Stalinist politico-geographic buffer-wall by partitioning Ukraine etc. Which cannot work as long as Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are NATO....Ukraine is essential to fiil the gap between Moldavia and Belorus, Russia having failed miserbly at "the great game" in Afghanistan(as we R now) is indulging in 'face-saving' More importantly, Ukraine has one of the top three (black-earth) food growing regions on earth to-boot, second only to the U.S.'s Midwest on a calory per acre basis. The basis of any good politics is....FOOD! https://www.boell.de/en/2013/10/30/land-grabs-black-earth-ukrainian-oligarchs-and-international-investors .