Exactly. In fact, my nation was genocided so hard by the Russians, we don’t even know it happened.

The point is, that there is not necessarily a desire to leave. You are generalising unnecessarily.

Precisely.

And this is why a lot of peoples did not, in fact, fight a war of independence against Russia.

And the Chechens, for instance, wanted independence because they were subjected to a genocide by the USSR when it was ruled by a Georgian, so this is hardly a usual case for the ethnic minorities, since most of them were not genocided.

This is simply not correct. Quite a lot of people would prefer not to separate from Russia.

There are no wars now.

The wars happened when the central government was too weak to deal with them, which supports my point somewhat.

Well, I believe that without Russia, Russian Caucasus will be a worse place overall, and will also have a few wars.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are also worse off than they would be had they remained in Georgia.

It seems to me that this sort of nationalism is counterproductive.

But is this not irrelevant? It seems to me that you believe that North Ossetia should be independent, despite the fact that Ossetians do not want independence from Russia, and South Ossetia should not be independent, despite the fact that South Ossetians would rather not be a part of Georgia.

You mentioned the invasion of Georgia, and it seems from the context like you believe it to be an injust invasion. Is this correct? Do you believe Georgia is entitled to the land it lost?

Well, yes. Maybe I should have phrased it differently: the “balkanisation of Russia”, like actual balkanisation, will be associated with a series of conflicts and deaths, if it does occur.

Also, genocidal is an overstatement. I do understand that using strong words like “fascism” and “genocide” when they are unwarranted is somewhat in fashion now, but believe it is best not to do that.

Yeah, but it is going to be even worse. Russian Caucasus is going to have a few wars at least, hell, it did happen to an extent when the federal government was weak. There are territorial disputes and conflicts that are only suspended for as long as these republics are a part of Russia.

So my point stands: there are reasons to be opposed to the “balkanisation of Russia” and no reasons to support it, unless you want that because you just want to hurt Russia, but in this case be honest with yourself and do not pretend you are doing it for the ethnic minorities.

I am not sure if you remember but the process of “balkanisation” was accompanied by certain unfortunate events, that included a genocide, the bombing of Belgrade, among others. Corruption is not the biggest problem here.

The Balkans are not exactly doing well, are they?

Even if they did separate, there would still be a Russia, and it would not lose as much as one might think.

And even so, it is a bad idea. There are so many disputes between the nations, that we would likely see a few wars. Something like what is happening between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Also, many of them are too small to exist in a meaningful was as independent countries, and I honestly don’t see the harm in them remaining in Russia.

What should it be then?

Quite a lot.

Trump us destroying the international standing of Israel’s strongest ally, this should count for something.

So Trump is a real friend of Palestine, you should say thank you.

If you are a country with a GDP that is 1000 or 10000 times higher it will not be a problem.

You missed my point. Islands are irrelevant. Russia isn’t.

Your great argument has changed my mind. I now see that I was wrong. Thank you.

Lmao, what? Why even?

Well, even then, these islands are not significant geopolitical actors. And tarrifs will certinly not hurt the Russian economy, and I doubt they are going to help the US in terms of geopolitics.

3 billion is nothing.

I wonder how much the EU imports.

Russia exports next to nothing to the US, but it does import things like electronics for obvious reasons.

Tarrifs on Russia will be pointless, really. Russia has been trading with Europe for the most part for obvious reasons until it fell out of favour. So this seems like manufactured outrage.