I just have to throw in some facts here.
Russia, in the eyes of the Baltics, and most of the west, is an absolute shithole. You have absolute corruption poisoning the society, basically making it very dysfunctional, extreme poverty and extremely rich thieves. All of this is exactly true.
The thing that makes it so painful to watch is that it's filled with relatively educated, modern human beings that live and die every day in this dysfunctional society. And they still don't see that it's their own people at fault! It's not about the west dominating or stealing anything from Russia, it's Russia looting itself. I saw it with my own eyes when I was in Svetlogorsk and Kaliningrad, supposedly one of the more modern parts of Russia. How the fuck can you guys stand it? I know it's not that easy to travel around, but ffs go and see with your own eyes. Go to Scandinavia, or even the Baltics or Poland. They've had huge huge progress since they joined EU. Poland now, and Poland 7 years ago (when I arrived) has developed immensely.
Nebun is the biggest mystery here. Moldova is the shittiest shithole of Europe, and inside it, an even shittier shithole, Transnitria, which basically is a country run on pensions and cheap gas! (Don't ask me how it works!)
This is what most of Ukraine, and the Baltics wanted to get the fuck far away from.
And OF COURSE Russian propaganda is trying to paint the west blacker than black. Really, yes there's neochocolate chip cookie demonstrations, now and then, here and there, because we are free societies where freak groups like that can actually exist legally. And It's true that when you count in Nashi and the like, you basically have russian version of hitlerjugend. It's not better, actually much worse since it's state supported.
Now about that plane.
I think its like this: Erdogan, the Assad, Kurd and Greece hater, nationalist to the extreme (like other nations with greater pasts..), is looking for an excuse to shoot down a Russian bomber screwing over the bullshit western fight against IS. West has little power over Turkey anyway, and has been letting them play their game in "their" neighbourhood, and Russia arrived to fuck it all over.
Putin doesn't mind at all. Great opportunity, he thinks, to undress the will-less helpless western fight against IS, and at the same time score enough points for the west to let him get away with Ukraine. Turkey and the west simply lost an excellent game of power politics played by Putin. (Who _can_ play such games because he's basically a dictator while the western powers has to meet and talk for ages and ages and ages.. )
