same with the Albanians in Kosovo

the KLA got their asses kicked in every single battle with the Serbian military, then they went to NATO with their sob stories and the U.S. then bombed Serbia into submission

@mattforney yeah I’ve been researching the Balkans quite fervently at least historically I’m obviously more behind current events but the Kosovo situation I grew up listening to

@Deleted User I meant easier for foreign powers to control

@mattforney gotcha

another fake country is "North" Macedonia

Glad we didn't get balkanized in the 90s, there were some attempts to spark an ethnic war but it fizzled out.

it's half Bulgarian and half Albanian

@mattforney we almost put boots in the ground my marine friend was ALMOST deployed until Serbia gave up

They only changed the name because they wanted to join the EU. Greece would've opposed it but Germany controls their purse now.

and of course we've all laughed at Moldova, the fakest and gayest of countries, consisting of a bunch of LARPing Romanians and Russian transplants in Transnistria

don't forget Gagauzia 😄 Muslim Turks but are actually Bulgarians lol

@mattforney Lol i has to do a report on that country in grade schoo All we found was they plant apples

the borders of the ex-Yugoslav and Soviet republics were designed to foment ethnic hatred and create weak, multiethnic states that would be easily controlled by foreign powers

@mattforney they’re that bankrupt of a culture

Bosnia and Macedonia are prime examples

Agreed Macedonia I would even say is a fake country. It hasn’t been one since Alexander the Great

as is Armenia and Azerbaijan: drawing Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority Armenian region, into Azerbaijan

and drawing Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Georgia

and the massive clusterfuck that is the Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan borders

look at that shit if you want a laugh

@mattforney oh I have it’s funny

Stalin was smart. National delimitation was a booby trap designed to give the minorities of the Russian Empire an illusion of control

The only Slav country that split peacefully was Czechslovakia and that place had a big German minority

Moving ethnic groups around was also part of Tsarist russia playbook

the most stable ex-Soviet republics are Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic states since they're the most monoethnic and have the most logically drawn borders

Also the Baltic’s were all pretty economically stable too

I think Russia will collapse after Putin dies. Chechnya and Tatarstan will be the first to break free, followed by Siberia. China is already financing separatist movements there.

@Waffle Evil Yeah Putin isn’t a paper tiger but his death with sever a lot of Russia’s power

Chechnya is already more or less separate it just needs recognition from what I gather

Putin's successor will be an ethnonationalist who will likely just trade Ciscaucasia away

most Russians don't like Caucasians, they view them similarly to how Americans view blacks: a violent, antagonistic minority that needs massive amounts of affirmative action and PC coddling to keep them satisfied

you can actually go to prison in Russia for "racism" against Caucasians

Yeah that’s what I heard

a post-Putin Russia will also likely see land grabs from Georgia, Moldova, possibly Ukraine

and Azerbaijan

Ukraine might want Crimea back but since Crimea was mostly ethnically Russian that’s a huge maybe

all the "frozen conflicts" in the ex-USSR are being sustained by Russia either indirectly (Nagorno-Karabakh, where the Azeris are kept from invading by the Russian military base at Gyumri) or directly (all the rest)

Ukraine will grab Donbass before they go after Crimea

the LPR and DPR are kept afloat by Russian subsidies

Moldova might end up annexed by Romania