Putin is coming to Thailand

This is some strange news indeed and it surprised everyone who read it because of the impression that we get from the news from the parts of the world that we come from. Putin has been offered an invitation to the APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting and he recently accepted said invitation and is meant to be traveling to Thailand for this meeting on the 18th and 19th of November.

In fact, Thailand has done the opposite of what the western world did to Russian diplomats and citizens. While it seems the rest of the world is doing anything they can to impose sanctions on Russia, Thailand has made it even easier for Russian tourists to travel to the Kingdom of Thailand to the point where chartered flights were regularly scheduled from Russia to Thailand and soon commercial flights will be resumed as well.

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_{Ironically, one of these men is welcomed into Thailand, the other one is named Thaksin and is an ex-Prime Minister of Thailand}

From my perspective it appears as though Thailand stays out of global affairs and kind of does things their own way regardless of what the rest of the world is doing. The only real exception to this was in relation to Covid, but they stayed "open" for a lot longer than other parts of the world did and there might have been some international coercion involved in that process. There's no way that anyone could know if that is true or not, but it certainly seemed that way at the time.

The APEC conference is just one of many where various countries' leaders meet to discuss things that they probably wont tell us regular folks about but it is at least in theory, meant for the economic benefit of the members of all nations.

Thailand has had diplomatic relations with Russia and the Soviet Union for 125 years and Thailand doesn't seem to be all that interested in joining the list of nations with sanctions against the gigantic country. When I move around my city of Chiang Mai, I frequently hear Russian being spoken by tourists, so it is evident to me that they are very welcome here and as far as I can tell there is no additional animosity towards them

I say "additional" because Russian tourists were and are kind of regarded as a less-than-ideal tourist because they are generally regarded as quite rude. I don't have any Russian friends although I would do if I were to meet some that were friendly. I have nothing against a person just because of their nationality, even if I don't agree with what their government does. I tend to look at it as not being their fault and no one should be made guilty until proven innocent because of what their government leaders do in the world.

As an American this is the type of scrutiny that I will frequently face. The USA isn't innocent by a long stretch when it comes to global affairs and I hate it when people try to extend whatever ire they might be feeling about my government's actions towards me. This is the same attitude I have towards Russians or any other nationality. It isn't their or my fault that the various governments of the world do what they do.

There has been some rumblings that many Russian men are fleeing to Thailand in order to avoid being drafted into the Russian military, and recently there was an anonymous man who spoke to a news station in Bangkok that stated that this reason was precisely why he entered Thailand, and he expects that many more Russian men and their families may follow suit. This is an entirely different matter though.

Personally, I find it kind of funny that while the rest of the world seems to be going out of their way to exclude Russia and Putin from participating in anything at all and Thailand in the meantime is just doing business as usual. I actually think it is very responsible for them to do so even though I am not a fan of the war, just like most sane people. Thailand, after all, has to look after Thailand first and foremost and if some sort of economic benefit can come from all this, then the people should be in favor of it. What's going on in Ukraine has less-than-nothing to do with Thailand, so why should they get involved in it?

It will be interesting to see what happens at this meeting because while I don't follow the news very closely, I don't think that Putin gets invited to very many international political events these days.