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Absolutely - the problem being that when you talk to gangsters (and this is literally where the current "elites" come from) they don't understand diplomacy or pragmatic. For them it's about demonstrating who's got balls. Therefore the soft approach as presented by most of EU for most of 2000's was a total failure and only encouraged them to grab for even more. If you look for a perfect model of language that works with them - it was 2015 Russian Sukhoi Su-24 shootdown by Erdogan.
