There are ways to prevent wars between hostile groups. The more obvious one is redrawing the border such that each gets its slice, and in disputed areas, allocating them one way or another and forcibly resettling the population (as was done in the aftermath of WW2). It sucks, but it's better than a genocide later.

And why is it a good thing exactly?

like other have guessed, he's very likely NOT seriously thinking of returning.

but, there may be something to be gained by ACTING like you are willing to return, to see what deals the gov is willing to make.

all info you get is useful. whatever they disclose, could be useful, now or later.

I'm 99% sure he has no plans to return. he's smart and there's something else he's got in mind, out of this. dollars to borscht, I would bet on it.

fwiw, do you think any of the 5 eyes (uk, oz, etc) would give him a fair trial?

no such luck!

any time you piss off the spymasters this much, you won't usually live very long, or have a good life. he ran for his life, very literally.

there cannot be a fair trail because you insulted the king and the king is very very mad at you.

to be fair, the women I've met from russia and ukraine were amazing knock-out beauties!

for some reason, I get a lot of 'you might know this person' on linked-in and they often are women from ukraine (more so than russia, for some reason). 95 times out of a 100, they are model-quality in their looks.

so, being in that region of the world could have its good points... ;)

shill detected!

"damage he did"...

you just gave youself away. the US did damage. he just reported it!

another one for the old killfile. thanks for IDing yourself as a stupid government shill.

we can clearly see who is being paid to write dissenting posts, here. its not hard.

he knew enough to be well aware of the fact that the government will not play fair, no matter what.

the fact that you THINK the gov would play fair speaks badly about you. or, exposes your agenda as a shill.

well, another shill to add to my 'sponsored morons' list. welcome!

I'm thinking that the US is simply wearing him down. they can wait, they have time. but he's living in a kind of prison right now, anyway. his freedom is highly restricted. plus, well, russia is a shit-hole. who in their right mind would want to STAY there if you've known and grown up with better?

still, I would never trust this 'agreement'. the US has a hard-on for fucking him over and there will be NO fair trail, you can bet on that.

the US makes up its own rules and it would take an extremely lucky person to walk out of such a situation alive, in one piece and not be always watching over your shoulder.

his life is mostly over, as it is. really sad to have to say that, but living in the US will always be a 'look over your shoulder' kind of life. he will be hunted the rest of his life, if not by government thugs, then by CITIZEN thugs who think they are being 'patriotic' (dammit!).

there is no good move for him. I wish him the best, he's my ultimate hero, but I don't see this ending well at all ;(

As for the alliance - it was very seriously discussed by all sides from March to about July 1939 (UK and France kept talking after that, but Soviets weren't really listening anymore). So they were quite willing to make a deal with a devil. They - well, the Brits specifically, the French were more appreciative of the danger - just didn't want to go all the way in and "provoke" the Germans, especially since most everyone assumed that Soviets would be the next after Poland, so any committed allies of theirs would be dragged into war alongside.

The Brits (or rather specifically George V) actually explicitly refused to shelter Nicholas after abdication. So did the French (granted, not a royal family, but a WW1 ally nevertheless). I'm not aware of any other offers.

so few projects are REALLY collaborations, that old horse gets trotted out far too often.

in my 25+ years in software, I don't know of any single time that I've collaborated, NEEDING or even benefiting from an open office with all the noise and distractions it brings.

if we want to brainstorm, we go into a conf room, whiteboard, take notes and then go back and do our brainwork.

if you talk to me, I get annoyed. I'm deep in concentration. each time you bug me, you break my concentration.

what's so hard to GET about this?

anyone who supports OO is looking for a party at work, not doing real work. I'm 100% convinced about that. the reason every HR says that OO is 'great' is that 'new/young employees think it makes the work environment more like a dorm, which they relate to'. yeah, that gives the real reason right there; youngsters want that dorm feel. us old neckbeards just want to work in peace and not be distracted by every stupid thing someone wants to spout up about. socializing is needed, but go do that at the water cooler or break room. leave the work area QUIET, please!

what is the make-up of the US, these days? and actually, by area of the country, since it varies to much by region.

here in the bay area, whites are not the majority anymore. take a walk down cupertino or santa clara or san jose. its asian and indian, mostly. take a walk thru a silicon valley company; the managers (some) may be white but almost all the workers are from asian countries (counting india in that grouping).

when I would have lunch talks with a group of internationals, both contractors and employees, at the bay area companies - I would often ask them what they think of the mass surveillance that we are now seeing in the US, the fear and FUD from the government about 'terrorism' and they usually have NO PROBLEM with how the government acts, in fact, they want MORE government pressure and involvement 'to keep us all safe'. they have no point of reference of what it was like to grow up here, in schools and societal life, to be brought up with the notion that 'the evil commies' were the ones to ask 'papers please!' and restrict your travel, assume you did bad things unless proven otherwise, where neighbors spied on each other, no one trusted each other and the government was to be feared, not trusted.

what we learned in school, all those decades ago, the foreigners who now work and live here, have no experience with. their own home countries sucked so much worse, they were happy and glad to get a new chance here in the 'land of opportunity' and most still see it that way, even after being here a long time (ie, a decade or less).

and so, if you go by silicon valley populations, the stereotypical 'white guy' almost does not exist anymore. walk the bay area streets and you find mostly asians, and they don't have the same feeling about what made america great compared to someone who was born and raised here.

those born and raised here are pissed off and ready for a revinvation (maybe not revolution but certainly not a warming over of what we already have; we want a re-do!). but those from other lands will not be joining us in any such fight. they are not going to make waves, they are not going to 'bite the hand' and they are ok with how things are. its actually good for them, right now, with all the h1b friendly companies out there.

so, even if mr. white guy is pissed off, there just are not enough of them to even matter, anymore! and it shrinks every year, as more h1b's enter the country.

america, in the bay area at least, has lost a lot of what made it great; the knowledge of what the US was really about. generally you do have to grow up here to know, at the deepest level, what we are about and what we are supposed to be about. but as those who grow up here become the minority, our voice shrinks and we become irrelevant.

note, this is also an unspoken goal of the hi1b-IT-isation of america. sort of like gerrymandering.

Or after a decade of neglect, releasing Space Hulk 3rd edition, only to release 4th edition 5 years later, but making the sets incompatible, and offering no way for people who supported them with the 3rd edition to upgrade, making it orphaned to expansions.

Fuck them to the bowels of hell. Such arrogance to their customers.

Don't even get me started with what they did with Blood Bowl.

Ugh!

How about actually allying with the Soviets against the Germans before WW2 began, and striking together as soon as Poland was invaded?

It was a very likely possibility, and USSR has actively explored just such an alliance. But it demanded a firm commitment to such a joint military action, with full involvement by all sides, that Brits weren't willing to sign up for (because they didn't think that a full-scale European war was inevitable even if Poland were to be invaded). So Soviets walked away and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact instead.

They don't need to develop nuclear weapons, merely acquire them. That's much easier given that e.g. Pakistan already has them, and its military and intelligence services have been infested by Islamists for many years now. Granted, those are mostly people affiliated with al-Qaeda, but who's to say some of them won't switch their allegiance to ISIS? It already happened for large parts of the Pakistani Taliban.

The problem is no-one actually understood what the hell "stabilizing the situation" even means, and most certainly what American forces were doing there wasn't that. Instead, it was all make-pretend that they could actually establish a democratic government run by the locals. But such a thing, built on as shaky grounds as it was, in a country that is by its very nature split, would never have held for long. In other words, with the way this was done from day 1, it wouldn't matter if American soldiers left when they did, or 5 years later, the end result would have still been the same.