Anything coming from Kremlin is just noise, distraction and lies. Why bother listening when sooner or later all promises, agreements, treaties are just ignored and shat upon.
Case in point, there was a humanitarian corridor and ceasefire agreed on two days. Not only was it not held, the road was mined and road was also bombed during by the russians.
If the west helps too much then in 50yr the next Russian despot will take another crack at it when they think the west won't help.
[1] Barring the plausibly deniable arms shipments and clandestine training that the underdog in any sort of conflict like this gets. Nobody ever starts a war without their enemies sending aid to whoever they started it with. Anyone who's read their history already knows this.
Nation states don't do "precedents" when it comes to helping each other out. They do "what is good for me here and now and maybe on a future timeline I happen to care about". For democracies this timeline is short. For dictatorships and monarchies this timeline tends to be a little longer because nobody wants to leave a giant mess for their kid.
Sending in green beret advisors or the FFL isn't a "precedent". And everybody knows it. It's a one off based on the political realities of the minute.
The kind of political realities that lead to those sort of interventions are short lived decades long things at best.
In contrast, "our country, fuck off" is a solution that will likely live as long as Ukraine maintains some sort of national identity. Nobody's invaded Afghanistan twice.
The Anglo-<pick a random group in that general area> wars are just the baggage that went with their colonization of the Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan) The idea of nation state borders didn't really work well in that part of the word in that century.
In any case they sure aren't interested in wasting returning to the region.
Pretty much all the other colonial powers have a similar "nope, not our problem any more" attitude toward meddling portions of their sphere or influence that they left because the locals made staying too expensive.
Algeria is across the pond and the French want nothing to do with it. Contrast with Russia which is constantly poking and occasionally invading its former sphere of influence.
>Pretty much all the other colonial powers have a similar "nope, not our problem any more" attitude
>Algeria is across the pond and the French want nothing to do with it.
The French are currently robbing the citizens of ~1/3 of all African countries through their central banks and they have assassinated 22 African presidents since ~1970.
I don't think you are qualified to discuss this topic in any depth, most of your earlier claims are patently false. I only picked this one to tear apart due to time constaints.
> Nation states don't do "precedents" when it comes to helping each other out.
NATO is a nation state alliance built on mutual defense and strengthened by precedent. The precedent of defending allies is built into the NATO agreement.
> For democracies this timeline is short. For dictatorships and monarchies this timeline tends to be a little longer because nobody wants to leave a giant mess for their kid.
Great point on the different timelines, I have to disagree on the reason. Dictators/monarchies have a longer timeline because they tend to rule for much longer than leaders in democracies. By definition, democracies involve turning over the ideals and ideas of leadership every few years. Do you believe Putin is worried about leaving things to the daughters that he never mentions?
Russian Empire is known as «Prison of peoples» [0]. It's time to free peoples from the jail. RF is too big to form a proper liberal democracy. It's better to allow every nation inside RF to establish their own democracy instead, and join a union after that, when they will be ready.
Russian Federation is not created on free will, but on force. Nobody asked peoples is they want to become members of RF. IMHO, if an exit referendum will be allowed in RF (they are forbidden), then most nations will take opportunity and escape. Currently, escape is not possible.
For example, Chechnya tried to escape the prison, so Russian used thousands of tons of explosives, FAE's (which is comparable to low yield nuclear weapons) to destroy independent Chechnya state, which was able to escape after first war. Russian FSB bombed their own citizens to provoke war with Chechnya.
I think it's worth noting that the USSR (intentionally) did a heck of a lot to negate that and build a (more or less Russian less christian influence) national identity by re-settling minority groups that didn't like them.
This kind of worked, somewhat, and not for reasons they were anticipating. Turns out that forcibly resettling people doesn't make them like you but it does make them tolerate each other a little bit better because they all now have one thing in common: shared adversity under the USSR. However, in the places where it didn't work it created bigger problems. Places (Chechnya) that could have been clean breakaway republics didn't do so because they had a ethnic Russian minority holding them in and in cases where those nations did break you have the Russian group trying to lean politically into Russia and the non-Russian group leaning away and that causes its own problems (Georgia, Ukrainian breakaway provinces, etc)
Russia is far more unified across ethnic lines than people give it credit for. It's not going to pull a Yugoslavia and erupt into genocide as soon as Putin croaks. That said, it's nowhere near as unified as the US (where you can basically count on any immigrant group becoming functionally "American" in 2 generations).
Yep, Ukraine has already been neutral before and then Russians took Crimea. And now they don’t mind committing war crimes and terrorizing civilians to achieve the annexation of Ukraine so why would they care about any new agreements. They would just wait until pro-Russian figures take over the Western governments and attack again.
I am by no means justifying the armed Russian aggression, but Ukraine was not neutral. There was a forceful overthrow of the democratically elected government in 2014:
and Ukraine has been forming deep military ties to the NATO states since then.
This move to alignment with the West is popularly supported in Ukraine mind you, but the reaction it would elicit has been anticipated and warned about for years.
Democratically elected and populous forceful overthrow are the same thing.
I think Russia has a point to be worried and concerned about a Ukraine in NATO or the EU, however they went about it in a terrible fashion. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Not to mention, they moved to annex Crimea and supported civil war in other parts of the country. What did Russia expect?
tl;dr: Putin (with the help of Paul Manafort) got a Russian puppet elected in Ukraine, once he did a 180 on campaign promises and the populous recognized him from the puppet he was he was deposed and fled to Russia.
A populous overthrow is not a democratic election.. the group capable of organizing the largest protests and riots is not necessarily the group with the most popular support. It could be a minority faction, but just the best organized, trained and funded one.
We hold elections to put every one on an equal playing field, where each person has the same amount of say.
Ah yes, good old fashioned what-aboutism. The staple of Russian foreign propaganda.
Of course we understand, until Russia has killed and maimed at least as many people as the entire west combined, then it’s done nothing wrong. Anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly a hypocrite.
What a pathetic argument, surely you’re paid to come up with something better than that?
Please particularly note the guideline about not posting insinuations about shilling, trolling, brigading, etc.—that's an inmportant one, and you broke it egregiously here.
I am taking care of vulnerable people who are being massacred - if you want a number to keep track of, try this: your comment has saved exactly zero lives.
("Russian-speaking" shows how little you know of this situation. Kyiv is overwhelmingly "Russian speaking", there is step one in your education)
I am implying that those previous events, even if they mark Ukraine as not neutral, did not justify the current armed Russian aggression. The Russian response, as far as I can see, is a substantial escalation/over-reaction.
I'm Swiss, a third of Russian cash is in my country and 80% of oil/ore trading is made in Geneva. My country also has been a CIA office for half a century.
Can you explain me what neutrality is?
As a fellow Swiss citizen i believe it is a lie propagated so our banks can fill their pockets with the dirtiest money available.
Ukraine has not been neutral. NATO integration wasn't proceeded with legally but it did continue. US increased arms deliveries as well as military training. Ever tighter diplomatic bonds were formed. At no point was NATO integration off the table.
Russians certainly do not want to annex Ukraine either. They want to destroy it.
You have to be aware that a war is going on, and there is propaganda from all sides.
Hiding a few soldiers in an evacuation group, attacking russians from a group of civilians, and then blaming russians for shooting at those civilians is just one of many nasty war tactics.
What really happened, we will probably never know.
Where's your evidence the russians were firing on the civilians?
We both have just mainstream media reporting what they want us to believe, which might or might not be true. Soldiers hiding in refugee groups is a thing that has happened before, and whatever they do, it makes the other side look bad, when they shoot back.
There are videos from multiple different media outlets showing ordinary civilian refugees being shelled. None are armed.
Your claim makes no sense. Why would Ukraine want to hide soldiers in refugees leaving the country? Even if they did, then being unarmed and leaving means they’re not legitimate targets.
Here's the key difference between the West and Russia - when people in the West peacefully protest the actions of their government they're not typically jailed. No one is arguing the West is perfect, however the West adopted something akin to the scientific method so that things can get better. Case in point - we're talking about this. Many in the West are looking at this situation and asking what would we do if the roles were reversed or what are we doing that may appear to be similar to what Russia is doing. Free countries have the freedom to improve.
Ukraine never implemented the Minsk agreements. Zelenskiy won the election as a peace candidate who was supposed to implement them, yet even he didn’t. If the Ukrainian parliamentary process was not a race to “who hates Putin the most”, those regions would have gotten their federalist autonomy and there would be much less pretext for Russia to invade now, and less justification to the rest of Russians. Minks agreements had the opposite effect of what you’re claiming, creating a cease fire for 8 years, and we’re a viable compromise with the separatist regions.
That is what is insidious about the terms. The suffering--caused by Russia--is so great, that to many Ukranians the terms may seem a reasonable trade-off for a return to normal life.
But I doubt Putin would be content with leaving the current government in power in Ukraine, even if the terms were agreed to.
Finland like solution would have been the best option (demilitarization? have your army renamed self defense force! denazification? heck, outlaw Nazi symbolic doing humanity a favor)
I mean implementing the damn Minsk deal now seems like fantasy, but no sane person needs this hell to continue!
I agree, it was literally signed at gunpoint, and it always was political suicide for whomever signed it, but wouldn’t any agreement have been better than what’s happening?
How about allowing sovereign countries to remain democratic? How about opposing blatantly illegal, unprovoked military aggression against a sovereign country as forcefully as possible?
Frankly, the people calling for Ukraine to just accept what's happening - those who aren't just Russian trolls anyway - are absolutely disgusting.
>How about allowing sovereign countries to remain democratic?
Are you the aware that the west funded a revolution to overthrow Ukraine's democratically elected leader in 2014 and install a more west-friendly replacement?
That is not what happened. Ukraine elected a leader (with the help of Paul Manafort, who Putin paid for his efforts) that lied about his intentions to join the EU. In fact when he was in power he did an about face on his stated goals and stopped the process of getting into the EU. When he was deposed he fled to Russia - the country that put him in power in the first place.
Basically, Putin subverted Ukrainian democracy by helping to get a puppet elected. Ukrainians did not like that.
They are not nazi because they are Ukrainians.
They are far-right ultras with real swastika tattoos and ideolody. And they are not only in that batallion, they are in Government, and the head of the Army. Moreover they are supported by US and is the most powerful fighting force in Ukraine.
"Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful detention, and torture"
"British political scientist Richard Sakwa writes that Azov's founding member Andryi Biletsky, leader of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly (SNA) made statements about a "historic mission" to lead the "white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival ... a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen", an ideology he traces to the National Integralism of 1920s and 1930s.[96] Political scientist Ivan Katchanovski has compared the group's ideology to that of Patriot of Ukraine, saying: "The SNA/PU [Patriot of Ukraine] advocates a neo-Nazi ideology along with ultranationalism and racism. The same applies to ... members of the Azov battalion and many football ultras and others who serve in this formation."[97]
"
While I think, that this invasion is a big tragical mistake, the political life of Ukraine is very very far of what we call "peaceful democratic country"
They completely lost the 2019 elections, elected a Jew who speak a better Russian than Ukrainian and passed laws to protect Russian in schools. Yeah, he did grew the army and made a big rotation in the Donbass with active military exercises 9n the frontline, but tbh the Russian aggression just validated him.
They are neo-National Socialists but don't seem to have a problem with the Jews serving in the battalion, being funded and directed by prominent Jews, and serving under a Jewish president.
I'm not a fan of National Socialism, to say the least, but they sound significantly different than German Nazis. A few hundred neo-Nazis can be found in most Western countries. Might as well let them fight for now. At least that is useful.
If you keep posting like this, we're going to have to ban you again. You have a long history of breaking the site guidelines and being banned on HN, and it seems you're falling back into old habits. Please correct this so we don't have to ban you.
It's just a Russian propaganda in a compressed form. It's much easier to show contradictions in Russian propaganda by removing unessential fillers, which are used to separate contexts, with the goal for A to be equal to FOO in one context and A=BAR in another context. By extractions seeds of propaganda from different contexts and putting them side by side, it's possible to make a shortcut in the brain of a victim of the propaganda, so he will be confused with question «How it's possible for A to be FOO and BAR at the same time?».
When your brain is not affected by Russian propaganda, then the text above will look like garbage for you.
Shorter text works better than longer, because it's easier to create a shortcut with short text. Also, it's easier to remember, so harder to forget, easier to pass around. We used short anecdotes, single-sentence shortcuts, etc.
I saw about a dozen of Russians with same «some football fans are using Nazi symbols -> Azov battalion is created by football fans -> Azov is Nazi -> Azov is part of Ukrainian army -> all Ukrainians are Nazi», but you did nothing to stop that.
If you think that Russian propaganda enhances your site, then go ahead and ban me.
People sling accusations about propaganda based entirely on what they already believe. Anything they believe counts as truth, while anything the other side believes or supports is propaganda. This is how the human mind works under pressure. Everyone does it, and it's more evident than ever these days. Unfortunately, it's no basis for moderating an internet forum—or at least not this one.
You need to follow the site guidelines the same as any other user here, and if you keep breaking them we will ban you. You can post thoughtfully and substantively even when you disagree with something so strongly as to regard it as propaganda.
As for "you did nothing to stop that" - if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. People can let us know about posts that are breaking the site guidelines by flagging them, or in egregious cases by emailing hn@ycombinator.com. However, someone having a different view, even on a passionately divisive topic, does not automatically mean that they're breaking the site guidelines.
There is difference between beliefs, often created by meadia and news, and witnesses. As Ukrainian, I'm a more authoritative source of information about Ukraine and Ukrainians than other people. When I will see beliefs about me posted by people who never visited Ukraine and formed by Russian state TV, I will post my witness. These posts are not equal. My witness can be used in court, while Russian disbelief cannot.
For example, the majority of HN'ers thinks or thought that «dang» is Chinese name, while very few know that «dang» means «dan g». However, the majority is not an authoritative source of information.
I'm lieutenant of Ukrainian army. Your ban is least of my concern. Russians can ban me forever. HN works well over EDGE, so I can read it more easily than other sites.
It's hard to write thoughtful comments for me right now, because I left my personal notebook at home, with all links and documents, because my internet connection doesn't allow me to browse internet freely, because HN may say that I'm posting too fast after writing long and thoughtful comment.
You are not providing us with tools to fight propaganda, disinformation, and beliefs. I need something like a court system, where everybody can lay out all facts, and then they are accepted or discarded by judges. Otherwise, I'm forced to repeat my comments again and again. Create and iCourt for me, and we will use it instead of your site.
Russia is demanding Ukraine become a vassal state like Belarus. They don't want them forming even economic trading agreements with the EU. Russia is demanding Ukraine remain poor and cut off from the West. For tens of millions of Ukrainians who were born under Soviet occupation, this prospect scares them to the core. This means secret executions, torture, indefinite prison sentences for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, state controlled communication and propaganda, hunger, and abject poverty. They're much more afraid of this life than dying. That's why they're fighting so hard to keep their freedom and independence. I think a lot of the West just doesn't really understand that there are fates worse than death.
He's started trying to undermine the Baltic states a few years ago. If we capitulate now, this is eventually going to happen again in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania too.
If you accept everything someone ask because that person starts killing random people when you don't do everything they ask, what is going to prevent that person from asking more unreasonable things?
You mean like the Budapest memorandum where Russia agreed to:
> [...] security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan
What this shows is that Russia is losing the war, since the rhetoric previously was "denazification" and that "Ukraine is not even a country, it is part of Russia".
Who's "we", you and your nuclear arsenal...? Just sayin', let us know in advance so we can try to reach a place slightly less affected by the nuclear winter (sub-Saharan Africa? Patagonia? Who knows).
Most posts on HN about nuclear war are so comically exaggerated as to merit no serious treatment what-so-ever.
During the post WW2 era a persistent effort has been made to intentionally artificially increase the scare factor of nuclear weapons in hopes that they'll never be used, by exaggerating the end of the world potential.
You could hit Texas with all of Russia's nukes simultaneously and you'd still fail to kill everyone in that state. If you perfectly deployed all of Russia's nukes against population centers in the US, you'd struggle to kill half the population in that one country. The US and Russia set off ~1750 nuclear weapons in less than 50 years and the world barely blinked. If there were an exchange of several thousand nuclear weapons between the US and Russia (highly unlikely even in a nuclear war), the world would keep marching on, despite the vast destruction in several nations. There would be no nuclear winter at all, not even remotely close.
I don't disagree with the use of exaggeration tactics to keep nations from utilizing nuclear weapons. Maybe it's an effective tool. There's no sense in being scientifically ignorant on a forum like this one however, nobody here is deciding nuclear policy for Russia and the US, this forum isn't going to shape world opinion on nuclear weapons. There is zero potential for global nuclear winter from the world's present number of nuclear weapons.
Also, the nuclear winter scenario derives from weapons detonated at ground-level which has the effect of blasting tons of dirt into the atmosphere and blocking sunlight. Most of the weapons in the world's nuclear arsenal are aerial burst. Such weapons maximize the physical damage via heat and wind while minimizing the amount of dirt kicked into the atmosphere.
If you live in a tornado-prone area then you already know how to prepare for an aerial burst deployment. Go to where you would go for a tornado and shelter in place for 48 hours after the burst. If you survived the burst (note that folks who properly prepare for tornadoes die too) and you've sheltered in place for a couple of days afterward then you're likely to be fine. Sure, there's a greater chance you'll be dying at a younger age than you otherwise would have due to cancer, but those are probabilities. If you survive the burst then you'll likely be fine.
Sorry to add to the endlessly repeated refrain of online discourse, but: source?
> You could hit Texas with all of Russia's nukes simultaneously and you'd still fail to kill everyone in that state.
It's not hard to imagine pockets of holdouts who happened to be deep underground or whatever, but could you share the facts and analysis you're basing this assertion on?
> If you perfectly deployed all of Russia's nukes against population centers in the US, you'd struggle to kill half the population in that one country.
"Perfectly deployed," that averages 41 warheads for each of the above 146 counties. I can't find reliable assessments of the average size/yield of Russia's warheads, but directionally, I struggle to understand your claim that even perfect deployment of this nuclear arsenal would have a hard time killing half the US population. (As an aside, killing even 10% of the US population, so ~33 million people, in a nuclear strike would obviously be utterly unprecedented in the history of our species.)
> If there were an exchange of several thousand nuclear weapons between the US and Russia (highly unlikely even in a nuclear war), the world would keep marching on, despite the vast destruction in several nations. There would be no nuclear winter at all, not even remotely close.
Could you provide supporting materials to help me understand the confidence behind these claims?
If Russia is willing to use nukes over Ukraine, what makes you think it won't end in nukes any how? There is no way Ukraine is the stopping point if they are willing to use nukes to secure Ukraine.
Exactly. This reminds me Munich Agreement. Hitler got Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia because west was afraid of war. And yet he still started the war. It was even easier for him because Czechoslovakia was without system of border fortifications.
This is what Putin wants now. Defenseless Central and Eastern Europe. If he wants this agreement he needs to sacrifice something as well, so we have guarantees. He needs to get rid of nukes.
Even if we take your position at face value (which most would, it’s not controversial) that doesn’t invalidate GP’s statement. It just asserts that it’s the general case which applies to all geopolitical power dynamics.
“They” won’t stop unless someone stops them. That seems like a reasonable assertion whether you’re Ukraine or Yemen.
Sure they will stop everything. Russia has never lied in the past and always kept its promises. This is beyond laughable if it wasn't such a grim matter.
Those conditions include neutrality and a prohibition on joining the EU or NATO. The initial ones also included demilitarization, not sure if that is still a part. Nothing would prevent Russia here from finishing the invasion at a later point, it is quite obvious that you cannot trust any security guarantee by Russia.
These conditions also include Ukraine recognizing large parts of their territory as Russian.
Russia doesn't have the right to veto what sovereign states do. Russia invaded a sovereign country here, that is not in any way comparable to sovereign states joining NATO.
> Russia doesn't have the right to veto what sovereign states do.
I'm curious what you mean by your use of the word "right" in the above context.
Whose job is it to enforce that right? Is that right enforced for all countries? Or only if mightier countries take an interest?
It seems that more powerful countries are constantly interfering with the internal politics of smaller countries by doing things like supporting dictators, interfering in elections, etc.
As far as I know, that “promise” was a preliminary conversation, not a legal matter.[1][2] Gorbachev did feel like the expansion was “a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances,” though.[1]
Russia promised to play nice and not seek for expansion again. They were lying all the time from the beginning and countries close to Russian border knew this and looked to protection.
Russia has no right whatsoever over sovereign nations. If you think otherwise, you can depart to the place the Russian warship was sent.
> Russia was promised no NATO expansion when the Warsaw Pact was terminated.
That is factually incorrect. There is no treaty, no memorandum, no statement about that, except for some hearsay from a meeting between Baker and Gorbachev. This is the treaty about east Germany https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/2plusfour8994e.htm and NATO, which the west has respected. Stop spreading misinformation.
What is correct is that Russia promised guarantees of Ukraine's borders in the Budapest memorandum.
It's literally hearsay. Quite literally. Again, is there any treaty, any memorandum, any pact or anything about NATO not expanding eastwards? Any trade agreement, any signed piece of paper between heads of state and representatives of NATO or NATO members about this?
Because again, there is a 1994 Memorandum about Ukraine's borders and nuclear weapons which someone is deliberately ignoring.
I find it both troubling and disingenuous for people to beat the dead horse about the NATO expansion myth while completely ignoring Russia breaking both the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Those weren't hearsay, they were actual agreements which were negotiated and signed.
But sure, 'you can't trust the west'. I'm coming from a former communist country and to be honest, the west never invaded. The Russians did, repeatedly. Across history, the Russians were the only constant invaders. And this is actually why my country joined NATO the first chance it got.
So, if someone is to blame for NATO expansion, it's actually Russia. Actually, this invasion we're witnessing is one of the best advertisements for NATO in history. So, fuck Putin, fuck Russia and their expansionist ambitions. I hope I live to see Putin's head on a pike.
There are multiple memorandums and cable transcripts in the link I posted. Verbal guarantees were given on many occasions but conveneniently forgotten or dismissed later on.
I fail to see how smth like
Bucharest memorandum is so different in terms of importance (in you eyes) provided it was not recognized as legally binding and was described as a "political commitment" by the US in the context of its sanctions on Belarus.
> Across history, the Russians were the only constant invaders.
Which history? It is just a fact of life that smaller countries are more frequently invaded and/or being controlled (not that it doesn't happen at all to bigger ones).
and a meeting 'memo', when you say 'memorandum'. Hearsay is something someone says about what they've heard. Which is what you linked. Also, the plural of memorandum is 'memoranda'.
I still haven't seen any treaty in your links.
> Verbal guarantees were given on many occasions but conveneniently forgotten or dismissed later on.
Putin also said, months ago, that he's not going to invade Ukraine and that the West is creating panic. But we're conveniently forgetting these 'verbal guarantees', right?
> It is just a fact of life that smaller countries are more frequently invaded
Yeah, 'just a fact of life'. NATO expansion into smaller countries, due to this 'fact of life' is a 'fact of life' itself.
There was no signed agreement, I'm not disputing that. And I don't think it's valid to use the term "hearsay" for a transcript.
Putin is putin, he's dictator with no regard for human life at this point.
What I think though, is that the west was ruthless with Russia after SU collapse in the 90s and early 2000s which actually created the resentment we see now.
This talk is a tad dramatic but very well captures the public sentiment I believe.
Unlike eastern europian countries Russia couldn't just join eu/nato and started retaliating only when Georgia and Ukraine were on their path to nato. Not that unreasonable if you ask me.
> Yeah, 'just a fact of life'. NATO expansion into smaller countries, due to this 'fact of life' is a 'fact of life' itself.
As this war (unfortunately) which I believe wouldn't happen if ukrainian leaders were a bit smarter (and it wouldn't mean becoming Belarus - one could be smth like Kazakhstan in terms of foreign policy).
> So, fuck Putin, fuck Russia and their expansionist ambitions
Being a member of nato is like being in a gang whose leader (US) really likes to fight and cripple others (I would say way more than russia in recent history).
It is certainly convenient but hardly morally superior.
Between my country and Russia, I can say for sure that one of them has not bombed/invaded/occupied/ethnically cleansed/impoverished another nation in the past 80 years. So again, fuck Putin and fuck Russia.
Sure, for your country, in the past 80 years. Not for the countries that have influence, power, and nukes that enable them to do what they want, and to make your country do what they want too. All of the major powers are Russias-with-other-names.
It's ironic that some feel Russia is justified in thwarting the expansion of NATO for its national security, completely overlooking the fact that the regions other countries want to join NATO is for their national security.
I've yet to hear why Russia has a better complain to its national security, than say, Ukraine.
This sounds reasonable at a very superficial level, but feels more like misdirection in terms of what NATO represents in the context of the cold war and the balance between two nuclear superpowers.
After all the same argument could be made backwards for the US. Why shouldn't, e.g., Cuba not be free to host Russian missiles? They're a free country. Surely if the US tried anything to prevent that, their security concerns don't trump those of Cuba.
Combine this with NATO ties to the Russian coup in 2014 conducted by some US funded neo nazi orgs in Ukraine (some of which are part of ukraines national guard today):
What would we do if Russia had setup that coup in Canada? We’d have boots on the ground in weeks.
Euromaidan was not a coup set up by the West. From right there it's obvious you've drunk the propaganda quite easily. Putin overplayed his hand pressuring Ukraine to reject EU despite popular will and his stooge was driven out by mobs. If anything it was an attempt by Moscow to directly control the government of Ukraine, Yanokovych who had also been interested in EU fell in line but the rest of the country didn't follow.
> Russia was promised no NATO expansion when the Warsaw Pact was terminated.
Russia didn't even participate in international diplomacy then.
If you mean the USSR, show me the signed, ratified treaty.
If you mean the then-current Soviet leadership was given private assurances by the then-current US Administration, well, why would you expect that to bind anyone beyond the terms of those leaders and one of the involved states?
These actions are just meant to suck the morale for continuing the fight out of the Ukrainian people. More propaganda war out of Russia. They have come too far to turn back now. You don't invade the nation, blow up its cities, burn tens of billions of dollars, kill 10,000 of your own soldiers, bury your country in the worst global sanctions any nation has ever suffered, to then immediately walk it back. Any terms will involve Ukraine de facto coming under Russia's boot.
The correct response to this is for NATO to designate Ukraine a special development partner (double time). Once Russia is defeated, after the occupation and insurgency ends and Russia is forced to withdrawal its military - then NATO and the EU should proceed with fully implementing that special development partnership until it can meet all the qualifications for full membership. In the meantime give the nation a lot more extra attention (to its defense needs and economy) to speed up their recovery and development. NATO and the EU can telegraph that move right now to let the people of Ukraine know their intentions going forward as partners, so everything is clear (the people of Ukraine deserve transparency so they can shape their expectations, makes decisions about where they want to go as a nation). Ukraine will have to go through a lot of rebuilding, which the EU can help with, and NATO can keep them armed in a way that will dissuade Russia from trying again. That should include getting their air force F16s and getting them more advanced proper air defenses. One of NATO's primary tank builders (Germany or UK) should also get them a large batch of modern tanks (the US won't sell the Abrams to Ukraine yet). Part of the point of the new designation would be to let Russia know that in fact NATO will be doubling down and has no intention of abandoning Ukraine. In terms of cost and supplies, NATO can stay in the conflict (as things presently are) a lot longer than Russia can.
When Russia is forced back out of Ukraine, Ukraine should invite a rotation of ~25,000 NATO soldiers (each NATO member would contribute) to take up a permanent position in the country for defensive purposes until Ukraine is rebuilt.
Allies literally force wrote the neutrality clause on to the Austrian constitution after the second world war. Till date Austria is prevented from being a NATO member due to that clause.
Nobody at the time denied that Austria was an occupied state. Which was perfectly reasonable given its position as having started WWII as part of Germany.
Same reason Germany and Japan were both under allied control and occupation for a while after the war.
No, it might also be aimed at Ukranians who have suffered tremendously. Here is a way out of their misery, Putin says, and the price is so small, he says.
If this is really all that Russia wants then this is a really stupid war.
(2) has defacto already happened.
(3) Constitutions can be changed and there's no reason Ukraine can't abrogate the treaty in the future. They were never getting into NATO while in a shooting war with Russia any way.
If you're running from a bear you don't make big sudden movements. You slowly back away until the danger has passed and then do whatever you wanted.
Yes but you have to understand that this part of Putin's calculus. It would give him time to re-assess the military options, clean up a military mess that resulted from unrealistic expectations, prepare the next aggression more carefully, kill key figures of the Ukrainian government (he prefers poison), divide the West, and give him a better international position when he attacks next ("they broke our agreement"). Putin would likely calculate that by constantly threatening the West with nuclear war he could prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and later replace the Ukrainian government by a puppet regime as originally planned.
Putin might very well level Ukraine before he let's it just slide into EU/NATO without a fight. He could then fall back to Crimea/LNR/DNR, state that they are Russian territory, and that any violations of Russian territory may result in a nuclear response (in accordance with Russia's existing policy regarding "First Use"). That might be enough for him to save face at home with his "Special Military Operation achieving sufficient objectives".
Will NATO do a mini-Marshall Plan to get Ukraine back on its feet, or will the Ukrainians end up forgotten, like the ~20 million food-insecure Afghanis who are invisible less than 6 months after we retreated?
I really don't think Putin can level Ukraine, his military so far has barely been able to advance on flat roads. They can occupy more cities, though, in a bloody war of attrition in which the odds are stacked in favor of the defenders. Unfortunately, this war does not seem to end anytime soon.
As for a Marshall plan for Ukraine. If they are able to force Russia to retreat, they'd be in NATO and EU in no time given the current circumstances and there surely would be something like a Marshall plan to build up the country. Personally, I don't think there will be such a win, though. This war is a classical lose-lose scenario and sadly the end result will likely be some kind of eternal cease fire agreement under a never-ending occupation, similar to what was in place since 2014. I think we agree on that.
My hope is that there will be change in Russia, though, maybe in a way that allows Putin to exit in a (from his perspective) reasonable way. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think Putin has planned to and has to stay in complete power of everything until his death.
Russia will end before Ukraine will agree to terms like these. But these terms are not intended for Ukraine, they are intended for Russian consumption and are simply part of the propaganda.
ITT "Russia cannot be trusted" yet putin has been a man of his word from the start .. he warned of consequences for eastward nato expansion.
We knew locking ukraine out of nato was always the goal. No reason to think this isn't genuine. War is expensive and messy, we know it's not going well for Russia. They want to achieve their goals fast and get out.
I'm sure Ukraine will reject at first, and Russia will respond with more destruction. "We'll keep wrecking you until you submit". We may see the 40 mile long convoy start moving again.
Honestly I'm not sure what's the best option here. Should Ukrainians keep resisting and dying in hopes they can outlast putin? Or should they submit, saving lives in the short term but validating the invasion?
Edit: I think the west is going to pressure Ukraine into zero tolerance resistance. It's very bad for "world order" if putin gets away with this, lest other nations start getting funny ideas..
In which case Ukraine may become perpetually war torn. Russia sits and holds eastern regions and just keeps bombarding the rest of Ukraine in a game of chicken with western intervention.
> yet putin has been a man of his word from the start
No he has not.
From Wikipedia:
> On 12 November 2021, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that "Russia doesn't threaten anyone", and on 12 December, he said that attempts were being made to "demonise Russia and cast it as a potential aggressor". On 19 January 2022, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia does "not want and will not take any action of aggressive character. We will not attack, strike, invade, quote unquote, whatever Ukraine." On 12 February, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov described warnings of an invasion as "hysteria". On 20 February, Russia's ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said that Russian forces "don't threaten anyone. ... There is no invasion. There is [sic] no such plans."
Putin himself also said "Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood", and that it was a mistake for the soviet union to spin it out as its own country. Those have nothing to do with NATO.
This pure willful ignorance. In what world would any nation forecast a near term military invasion in advance? Further, many experts believe that few within Putin's inner circle knew about the invasion prior, so its quite possible they were being honest.
W.R.T. NATO and Ukraine, Putin has been broadcasting his geopolitical goals for a long time now.
> I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?
> The president said he would be forced to target Russian rockets at Ukraine in response to a possible deployment of a US missile shield in the eastern European country.
> Putin's words are seen as the latest in an ongoing volley of pointed warnings to the West not to meddle in Ukraine, which has such close historical and cultural ties to Russia that the Kremlin considers the country firmly within its sphere of interests.
> "The Russian leadership is very apprehensive about what it sees as Western moves designed to tear Ukraine away from Russia," says Dmitry Trenin
> Russia is making a last-minute push to derail the integration agreement, which is due to be signed in late November. Instead, Moscow wants to lure its neighbour into its own alliance, a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan that critics have referred to as a reincarnation of the Soviet Union. Russia has made it clear that Ukraine has to choose between the two options and cannot sign both agreements.
> President Viktor Yanukovych's flight from Ukraine in the face of the Maidan uprising, which took place on the eve of the closing day of those Winter Games, astonished and enraged Putin. In his pique, as Putin proudly recalled in a March 2015 Russian government television film, he responded by ordering the takeover of Crimea after an all-night meeting.
> The Russian president accused Kiev of playing a dangerous game and said he saw no point in holding a new round of talks about the troubled peace process in eastern Ukraine on the sidelines of a G20 summit in China next month.
> Putin’s comments stirred fears that Russia, which has been steadily reinforcing Crimea militarily, may be considering new military action.
Almost as hilarious as your support for the deaths of thousands. I’ve been anti-Russia from Day 1. But I’m going to continue to call out bullsht when I see it. Ukraine is fighting a war they can’t win. Not saying Russia is justified but I mean come on. If China rolls up onto US mainland with auto-aim drones, I’m hiding, and if surrendering is on the table then I’m definitely surrendering.
Judging by your post history, that's extremely debatable
> Ukraine is fighting a war they can’t win
Again, debatable. Russia can't 'win' in Ukraine. Whichever way to take it, even if they manage to take the large cities, it is impossible for them to 'conquer' a country, 1800's style. That's just not how things work anymore. You can't stifle dissent at this scale unless you go full nuclear and if that's the case, we're all fucked anyway (including Russia). The more time passes, the more strangled Russians are going to be economically, so there is a non-zero chance of Russia collapsing or Putin getting ousted before Ukraine falls.
> If China rolls up onto US mainland with auto-aim drones, I’m hiding, and if surrendering is on the table then I’m definitely surrendering.
Then I'm glad you're not in charge of US defenses. We really don't need cowards around here.
We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments and for using HN primarily for political/ideological/nationalistic battle. No matter how right you are or feel you are, we ban accounts that do those things because they destroy the curious conversation this site is supposed to be for.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
Please stop posting flamewar comments and using HN primarily for political/ideological/nationalistic battle. No matter how right you are or feel you are, we ban accounts that do those things because they destroy the curious conversation this site is supposed to be for.
> It is sad Ukraine felt the need to conscript teenagers to die and it’s even worse the West has encouraged this massive loss of life to continue
It's weird you don't think Ukrainians are motivated to defend their country from an invader. It's also weird that you think letting an invading army—especially one that is losing—dictate who runs your government, and what's in your constitution, is "incredibly reasonable".
When my apartment building is getting shelled to rubble, changing a few things in my constitution to make the shelling stop is 100% reasonable. I think many people eating up the media right now think resistance is great but they mostly think that because they’re thousands of miles away in their cozy condos ordering from uber eats.
> I think many people eating up the media right now think resistance is great but they mostly think that because they’re thousands of miles away in their cozy condos ordering uber eats.
In the end, it doesn't really matter what we think. If you think resistance isn't worth it, it's your fellow countrymen you need to convince—not us. If Ukrainian resistance dries up, then foreign support for that resistance will dry up as well.
171 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadCase in point, there was a humanitarian corridor and ceasefire agreed on two days. Not only was it not held, the road was mined and road was also bombed during by the russians.
There will be a treaty in the end. Hopefully sooner rather than latter.
If the west helps too much then in 50yr the next Russian despot will take another crack at it when they think the west won't help.
[1] Barring the plausibly deniable arms shipments and clandestine training that the underdog in any sort of conflict like this gets. Nobody ever starts a war without their enemies sending aid to whoever they started it with. Anyone who's read their history already knows this.
Nation states don't do "precedents" when it comes to helping each other out. They do "what is good for me here and now and maybe on a future timeline I happen to care about". For democracies this timeline is short. For dictatorships and monarchies this timeline tends to be a little longer because nobody wants to leave a giant mess for their kid.
Sending in green beret advisors or the FFL isn't a "precedent". And everybody knows it. It's a one off based on the political realities of the minute.
The kind of political realities that lead to those sort of interventions are short lived decades long things at best.
In contrast, "our country, fuck off" is a solution that will likely live as long as Ukraine maintains some sort of national identity. Nobody's invaded Afghanistan twice.
There's about 3 anglo-afghan wars and the more recent invasion and occupation involving Britain.
There's earlier examples but I'm not sure if the place even fully existed as a concept back then.
In any case they sure aren't interested in wasting returning to the region.
Pretty much all the other colonial powers have a similar "nope, not our problem any more" attitude toward meddling portions of their sphere or influence that they left because the locals made staying too expensive.
Algeria is across the pond and the French want nothing to do with it. Contrast with Russia which is constantly poking and occasionally invading its former sphere of influence.
>Algeria is across the pond and the French want nothing to do with it.
The French are currently robbing the citizens of ~1/3 of all African countries through their central banks and they have assassinated 22 African presidents since ~1970.
I don't think you are qualified to discuss this topic in any depth, most of your earlier claims are patently false. I only picked this one to tear apart due to time constaints.
NATO is a nation state alliance built on mutual defense and strengthened by precedent. The precedent of defending allies is built into the NATO agreement.
> For democracies this timeline is short. For dictatorships and monarchies this timeline tends to be a little longer because nobody wants to leave a giant mess for their kid.
Great point on the different timelines, I have to disagree on the reason. Dictators/monarchies have a longer timeline because they tend to rule for much longer than leaders in democracies. By definition, democracies involve turning over the ideals and ideas of leadership every few years. Do you believe Putin is worried about leaving things to the daughters that he never mentions?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_of_the_peoples
The quote is from an essay [1] by the future leader of Communist Russia - Lenin, describing the Czarist Russian empire on April, 1914.
[1] Original in Russian: http://libelli.ru/works/25-5.htm
[2] Google translated: https://libelli-ru.translate.goog/works/25-5.htm?_x_tr_sch=h...
For example, Chechnya tried to escape the prison, so Russian used thousands of tons of explosives, FAE's (which is comparable to low yield nuclear weapons) to destroy independent Chechnya state, which was able to escape after first war. Russian FSB bombed their own citizens to provoke war with Chechnya.
My comment was specific to your quote.
This kind of worked, somewhat, and not for reasons they were anticipating. Turns out that forcibly resettling people doesn't make them like you but it does make them tolerate each other a little bit better because they all now have one thing in common: shared adversity under the USSR. However, in the places where it didn't work it created bigger problems. Places (Chechnya) that could have been clean breakaway republics didn't do so because they had a ethnic Russian minority holding them in and in cases where those nations did break you have the Russian group trying to lean politically into Russia and the non-Russian group leaning away and that causes its own problems (Georgia, Ukrainian breakaway provinces, etc)
Russia is far more unified across ethnic lines than people give it credit for. It's not going to pull a Yugoslavia and erupt into genocide as soon as Putin croaks. That said, it's nowhere near as unified as the US (where you can basically count on any immigrant group becoming functionally "American" in 2 generations).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
and Ukraine has been forming deep military ties to the NATO states since then.
This move to alignment with the West is popularly supported in Ukraine mind you, but the reaction it would elicit has been anticipated and warned about for years.
I think Russia has a point to be worried and concerned about a Ukraine in NATO or the EU, however they went about it in a terrible fashion. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Not to mention, they moved to annex Crimea and supported civil war in other parts of the country. What did Russia expect?
Does that also apply if the "populous forceful overthrow" is being directed by foreign powers?[0][1][2]
[0] It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2014/04/16/why-cia-...
[2] How William Hague Deceived the House of Commons on Ukraine https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/david-morrison/ukraine-will...
I pointed out that this was false / not as your comment implies a few hours ago when you posted something similarly incorrect:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30588114
tl;dr: Putin (with the help of Paul Manafort) got a Russian puppet elected in Ukraine, once he did a 180 on campaign promises and the populous recognized him from the puppet he was he was deposed and fled to Russia.
We hold elections to put every one on an equal playing field, where each person has the same amount of say.
Theoretically
Of course we understand, until Russia has killed and maimed at least as many people as the entire west combined, then it’s done nothing wrong. Anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly a hypocrite.
What a pathetic argument, surely you’re paid to come up with something better than that?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Please particularly note the guideline about not posting insinuations about shilling, trolling, brigading, etc.—that's an inmportant one, and you broke it egregiously here.
I am taking care of vulnerable people who are being massacred - if you want a number to keep track of, try this: your comment has saved exactly zero lives.
("Russian-speaking" shows how little you know of this situation. Kyiv is overwhelmingly "Russian speaking", there is step one in your education)
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Can you explain me what neutrality is?
As a fellow Swiss citizen i believe it is a lie propagated so our banks can fill their pockets with the dirtiest money available.
Russians certainly do not want to annex Ukraine either. They want to destroy it.
Hiding a few soldiers in an evacuation group, attacking russians from a group of civilians, and then blaming russians for shooting at those civilians is just one of many nasty war tactics.
What really happened, we will probably never know.
We both have just mainstream media reporting what they want us to believe, which might or might not be true. Soldiers hiding in refugee groups is a thing that has happened before, and whatever they do, it makes the other side look bad, when they shoot back.
Your claim makes no sense. Why would Ukraine want to hide soldiers in refugees leaving the country? Even if they did, then being unarmed and leaving means they’re not legitimate targets.
We shouldn't forget that there are a lot of places across the world where people could say exactly that about the west.
Heck, there are a growing number of people[0] in the west who say that about their own leaders/governments.
[0] Public Trust in Government: 1958-2021 https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust...
Are you really sure? There are things people in the West don't talk about.
If there were no peaceful people in Mariupol, we'll just turn it into ashes with all the Azov nazis.
Don't you think it is kinda logical for Azov to just not let peaceful citizens go, because now they're like a shield for them?
They already accepted 2 "cease fire agreements" in Minsk after 2014. Putin used them to plan this invasion.
But I doubt Putin would be content with leaving the current government in power in Ukraine, even if the terms were agreed to.
Update: It appears that the demands may have also included a Russian choice of Prime Minister: https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500812687009267712...
I mean implementing the damn Minsk deal now seems like fantasy, but no sane person needs this hell to continue!
Frankly, the people calling for Ukraine to just accept what's happening - those who aren't just Russian trolls anyway - are absolutely disgusting.
Are you the aware that the west funded a revolution to overthrow Ukraine's democratically elected leader in 2014 and install a more west-friendly replacement?
Basically, Putin subverted Ukrainian democracy by helping to get a puppet elected. Ukrainians did not like that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
There seems to be a continuous supply of people joining in to discuss this subject here on HN who haven't done any research whatsoever.
I just wonder how EU citizens(Germans especially) would react when Azov Batallion becomes the part of EU military force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a39281936/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_National_Unity
Then there's Kadrykov who with his calling for the killing of jews doesn't march far from that line of thinking.
And Putin who funded a myriad of far-right and neo nazi groups across europe for the past 2 decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector is not banned and actually is taking part in Ukrainian politics and military.
Did you mean Kadyrov? Where did you find these statements?
They are not nazi because they are Ukrainians. They are far-right ultras with real swastika tattoos and ideolody. And they are not only in that batallion, they are in Government, and the head of the Army. Moreover they are supported by US and is the most powerful fighting force in Ukraine.
If you try to dismantle them, you'll die like Kireev https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/hero-ukraine-peace-...
Some more quotes from the article
"Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful detention, and torture"
"British political scientist Richard Sakwa writes that Azov's founding member Andryi Biletsky, leader of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly (SNA) made statements about a "historic mission" to lead the "white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival ... a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen", an ideology he traces to the National Integralism of 1920s and 1930s.[96] Political scientist Ivan Katchanovski has compared the group's ideology to that of Patriot of Ukraine, saying: "The SNA/PU [Patriot of Ukraine] advocates a neo-Nazi ideology along with ultranationalism and racism. The same applies to ... members of the Azov battalion and many football ultras and others who serve in this formation."[97] "
While I think, that this invasion is a big tragical mistake, the political life of Ukraine is very very far of what we call "peaceful democratic country"
[edit] - they are not in parliament since 2019
Unlike Pavel Gubarev, Kadrykov, Putin himself, etc ...they are not.
Their closest political affiliate National Corps has 0 seats in parliament.
I'm not a fan of National Socialism, to say the least, but they sound significantly different than German Nazis. A few hundred neo-Nazis can be found in most Western countries. Might as well let them fight for now. At least that is useful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
When your brain is not affected by Russian propaganda, then the text above will look like garbage for you.
Shorter text works better than longer, because it's easier to create a shortcut with short text. Also, it's easier to remember, so harder to forget, easier to pass around. We used short anecdotes, single-sentence shortcuts, etc.
I saw about a dozen of Russians with same «some football fans are using Nazi symbols -> Azov battalion is created by football fans -> Azov is Nazi -> Azov is part of Ukrainian army -> all Ukrainians are Nazi», but you did nothing to stop that.
If you think that Russian propaganda enhances your site, then go ahead and ban me.
If not, then propose a solution.
You need to follow the site guidelines the same as any other user here, and if you keep breaking them we will ban you. You can post thoughtfully and substantively even when you disagree with something so strongly as to regard it as propaganda.
As for "you did nothing to stop that" - if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. People can let us know about posts that are breaking the site guidelines by flagging them, or in egregious cases by emailing hn@ycombinator.com. However, someone having a different view, even on a passionately divisive topic, does not automatically mean that they're breaking the site guidelines.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For example, the majority of HN'ers thinks or thought that «dang» is Chinese name, while very few know that «dang» means «dan g». However, the majority is not an authoritative source of information.
I'm lieutenant of Ukrainian army. Your ban is least of my concern. Russians can ban me forever. HN works well over EDGE, so I can read it more easily than other sites.
It's hard to write thoughtful comments for me right now, because I left my personal notebook at home, with all links and documents, because my internet connection doesn't allow me to browse internet freely, because HN may say that I'm posting too fast after writing long and thoughtful comment.
You are not providing us with tools to fight propaganda, disinformation, and beliefs. I need something like a court system, where everybody can lay out all facts, and then they are accepted or discarded by judges. Otherwise, I'm forced to repeat my comments again and again. Create and iCourt for me, and we will use it instead of your site.
(I cannot update previous post now).
> [...] security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
What this shows is that Russia is losing the war, since the rhetoric previously was "denazification" and that "Ukraine is not even a country, it is part of Russia".
It feels like they'll stop when we stop them, at this point.
Most posts on HN about nuclear war are so comically exaggerated as to merit no serious treatment what-so-ever.
During the post WW2 era a persistent effort has been made to intentionally artificially increase the scare factor of nuclear weapons in hopes that they'll never be used, by exaggerating the end of the world potential.
You could hit Texas with all of Russia's nukes simultaneously and you'd still fail to kill everyone in that state. If you perfectly deployed all of Russia's nukes against population centers in the US, you'd struggle to kill half the population in that one country. The US and Russia set off ~1750 nuclear weapons in less than 50 years and the world barely blinked. If there were an exchange of several thousand nuclear weapons between the US and Russia (highly unlikely even in a nuclear war), the world would keep marching on, despite the vast destruction in several nations. There would be no nuclear winter at all, not even remotely close.
I don't disagree with the use of exaggeration tactics to keep nations from utilizing nuclear weapons. Maybe it's an effective tool. There's no sense in being scientifically ignorant on a forum like this one however, nobody here is deciding nuclear policy for Russia and the US, this forum isn't going to shape world opinion on nuclear weapons. There is zero potential for global nuclear winter from the world's present number of nuclear weapons.
If you live in a tornado-prone area then you already know how to prepare for an aerial burst deployment. Go to where you would go for a tornado and shelter in place for 48 hours after the burst. If you survived the burst (note that folks who properly prepare for tornadoes die too) and you've sheltered in place for a couple of days afterward then you're likely to be fine. Sure, there's a greater chance you'll be dying at a younger age than you otherwise would have due to cancer, but those are probabilities. If you survive the burst then you'll likely be fine.
> You could hit Texas with all of Russia's nukes simultaneously and you'd still fail to kill everyone in that state.
It's not hard to imagine pockets of holdouts who happened to be deep underground or whatever, but could you share the facts and analysis you're basing this assertion on?
> If you perfectly deployed all of Russia's nukes against population centers in the US, you'd struggle to kill half the population in that one country.
Half the US population lives in 146 counties, shaded here: https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/bnh1ib/half_of_the...
More info: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/blog/unequal-counties
The best estimates I can find say that Russia has just under 6000 nuclear warheads, e.g., https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-...
"Perfectly deployed," that averages 41 warheads for each of the above 146 counties. I can't find reliable assessments of the average size/yield of Russia's warheads, but directionally, I struggle to understand your claim that even perfect deployment of this nuclear arsenal would have a hard time killing half the US population. (As an aside, killing even 10% of the US population, so ~33 million people, in a nuclear strike would obviously be utterly unprecedented in the history of our species.)
> If there were an exchange of several thousand nuclear weapons between the US and Russia (highly unlikely even in a nuclear war), the world would keep marching on, despite the vast destruction in several nations. There would be no nuclear winter at all, not even remotely close.
Could you provide supporting materials to help me understand the confidence behind these claims?
This is what Putin wants now. Defenseless Central and Eastern Europe. If he wants this agreement he needs to sacrifice something as well, so we have guarantees. He needs to get rid of nukes.
“They” won’t stop unless someone stops them. That seems like a reasonable assertion whether you’re Ukraine or Yemen.
These conditions also include Ukraine recognizing large parts of their territory as Russian.
I'm curious what you mean by your use of the word "right" in the above context.
Whose job is it to enforce that right? Is that right enforced for all countries? Or only if mightier countries take an interest?
It seems that more powerful countries are constantly interfering with the internal politics of smaller countries by doing things like supporting dictators, interfering in elections, etc.
[1] Gorbachev: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all” https://web.archive.org/web/20150331084405/http://rbth.com/i...
[2] “The U.S.S.R. was never offered a formal guarantee on the limits of NATO expansion post-1990” https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-expansion-russia-mislead/312636...
Russia has no right whatsoever over sovereign nations. If you think otherwise, you can depart to the place the Russian warship was sent.
This never happened, if it did please provide a link to the treaty text which proves it did.
That is factually incorrect. There is no treaty, no memorandum, no statement about that, except for some hearsay from a meeting between Baker and Gorbachev. This is the treaty about east Germany https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/2plusfour8994e.htm and NATO, which the west has respected. Stop spreading misinformation.
What is correct is that Russia promised guarantees of Ukraine's borders in the Budapest memorandum.
Because again, there is a 1994 Memorandum about Ukraine's borders and nuclear weapons which someone is deliberately ignoring.
I find it both troubling and disingenuous for people to beat the dead horse about the NATO expansion myth while completely ignoring Russia breaking both the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Those weren't hearsay, they were actual agreements which were negotiated and signed.
But sure, 'you can't trust the west'. I'm coming from a former communist country and to be honest, the west never invaded. The Russians did, repeatedly. Across history, the Russians were the only constant invaders. And this is actually why my country joined NATO the first chance it got.
So, if someone is to blame for NATO expansion, it's actually Russia. Actually, this invasion we're witnessing is one of the best advertisements for NATO in history. So, fuck Putin, fuck Russia and their expansionist ambitions. I hope I live to see Putin's head on a pike.
I fail to see how smth like Bucharest memorandum is so different in terms of importance (in you eyes) provided it was not recognized as legally binding and was described as a "political commitment" by the US in the context of its sanctions on Belarus.
> Across history, the Russians were the only constant invaders.
Which history? It is just a fact of life that smaller countries are more frequently invaded and/or being controlled (not that it doesn't happen at all to bigger ones).
and a meeting 'memo', when you say 'memorandum'. Hearsay is something someone says about what they've heard. Which is what you linked. Also, the plural of memorandum is 'memoranda'.
I still haven't seen any treaty in your links.
> Verbal guarantees were given on many occasions but conveneniently forgotten or dismissed later on.
Putin also said, months ago, that he's not going to invade Ukraine and that the West is creating panic. But we're conveniently forgetting these 'verbal guarantees', right?
> It is just a fact of life that smaller countries are more frequently invaded
Yeah, 'just a fact of life'. NATO expansion into smaller countries, due to this 'fact of life' is a 'fact of life' itself.
Putin is putin, he's dictator with no regard for human life at this point.
What I think though, is that the west was ruthless with Russia after SU collapse in the 90s and early 2000s which actually created the resentment we see now.
https://youtu.be/8X7Ng75e5gQ
This talk is a tad dramatic but very well captures the public sentiment I believe.
Unlike eastern europian countries Russia couldn't just join eu/nato and started retaliating only when Georgia and Ukraine were on their path to nato. Not that unreasonable if you ask me.
> Yeah, 'just a fact of life'. NATO expansion into smaller countries, due to this 'fact of life' is a 'fact of life' itself.
As this war (unfortunately) which I believe wouldn't happen if ukrainian leaders were a bit smarter (and it wouldn't mean becoming Belarus - one could be smth like Kazakhstan in terms of foreign policy).
So why allegedly breaking this 'no signed agreement' held at a higher standard than Russia breaking actually signed agreements?
Being a member of nato is like being in a gang whose leader (US) really likes to fight and cripple others (I would say way more than russia in recent history).
It is certainly convenient but hardly morally superior.
I've yet to hear why Russia has a better complain to its national security, than say, Ukraine.
After all the same argument could be made backwards for the US. Why shouldn't, e.g., Cuba not be free to host Russian missiles? They're a free country. Surely if the US tried anything to prevent that, their security concerns don't trump those of Cuba.
What would we do if Russia had setup that coup in Canada? We’d have boots on the ground in weeks.
Russia didn't even participate in international diplomacy then.
If you mean the USSR, show me the signed, ratified treaty.
If you mean the then-current Soviet leadership was given private assurances by the then-current US Administration, well, why would you expect that to bind anyone beyond the terms of those leaders and one of the involved states?
The correct response to this is for NATO to designate Ukraine a special development partner (double time). Once Russia is defeated, after the occupation and insurgency ends and Russia is forced to withdrawal its military - then NATO and the EU should proceed with fully implementing that special development partnership until it can meet all the qualifications for full membership. In the meantime give the nation a lot more extra attention (to its defense needs and economy) to speed up their recovery and development. NATO and the EU can telegraph that move right now to let the people of Ukraine know their intentions going forward as partners, so everything is clear (the people of Ukraine deserve transparency so they can shape their expectations, makes decisions about where they want to go as a nation). Ukraine will have to go through a lot of rebuilding, which the EU can help with, and NATO can keep them armed in a way that will dissuade Russia from trying again. That should include getting their air force F16s and getting them more advanced proper air defenses. One of NATO's primary tank builders (Germany or UK) should also get them a large batch of modern tanks (the US won't sell the Abrams to Ukraine yet). Part of the point of the new designation would be to let Russia know that in fact NATO will be doubling down and has no intention of abandoning Ukraine. In terms of cost and supplies, NATO can stay in the conflict (as things presently are) a lot longer than Russia can.
When Russia is forced back out of Ukraine, Ukraine should invite a rotation of ~25,000 NATO soldiers (each NATO member would contribute) to take up a permanent position in the country for defensive purposes until Ukraine is rebuilt.
Russia apparently proposed
1. Zelensky remains pro forma president but Russia appoints Boiko as PM
2. Ukraine recognizes L/DNR and Crimea
3. No NATO, Ukraine writing into its constitution to be a neutral state
Zelensky told them emphatically no.
Russia just don't understand that even point 2 alone would be a very tough call for Ukraine, not to mention the rest.
This proposal must be only for internal Russian propaganda.
Same reason Germany and Japan were both under allied control and occupation for a while after the war.
The situations are not comparable.
(2) has defacto already happened.
(3) Constitutions can be changed and there's no reason Ukraine can't abrogate the treaty in the future. They were never getting into NATO while in a shooting war with Russia any way.
If you're running from a bear you don't make big sudden movements. You slowly back away until the danger has passed and then do whatever you wanted.
I am not saying this is what Ukraine should do, just that Putin knows this is what they can do.
It would be an extremely bad deal for Ukraine.
Putin might very well level Ukraine before he let's it just slide into EU/NATO without a fight. He could then fall back to Crimea/LNR/DNR, state that they are Russian territory, and that any violations of Russian territory may result in a nuclear response (in accordance with Russia's existing policy regarding "First Use"). That might be enough for him to save face at home with his "Special Military Operation achieving sufficient objectives".
Will NATO do a mini-Marshall Plan to get Ukraine back on its feet, or will the Ukrainians end up forgotten, like the ~20 million food-insecure Afghanis who are invisible less than 6 months after we retreated?
As for a Marshall plan for Ukraine. If they are able to force Russia to retreat, they'd be in NATO and EU in no time given the current circumstances and there surely would be something like a Marshall plan to build up the country. Personally, I don't think there will be such a win, though. This war is a classical lose-lose scenario and sadly the end result will likely be some kind of eternal cease fire agreement under a never-ending occupation, similar to what was in place since 2014. I think we agree on that.
My hope is that there will be change in Russia, though, maybe in a way that allows Putin to exit in a (from his perspective) reasonable way. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think Putin has planned to and has to stay in complete power of everything until his death.
Especially since support from west has been indirect and at a distance. West seems not to want "skin in the game" in Ukraine.
Perhaps if terms are accepted it will make Ukraine another Belarus. That might be better than becoming like Syria or Afghanistan.
We knew locking ukraine out of nato was always the goal. No reason to think this isn't genuine. War is expensive and messy, we know it's not going well for Russia. They want to achieve their goals fast and get out.
I'm sure Ukraine will reject at first, and Russia will respond with more destruction. "We'll keep wrecking you until you submit". We may see the 40 mile long convoy start moving again.
Honestly I'm not sure what's the best option here. Should Ukrainians keep resisting and dying in hopes they can outlast putin? Or should they submit, saving lives in the short term but validating the invasion?
Edit: I think the west is going to pressure Ukraine into zero tolerance resistance. It's very bad for "world order" if putin gets away with this, lest other nations start getting funny ideas..
In which case Ukraine may become perpetually war torn. Russia sits and holds eastern regions and just keeps bombarding the rest of Ukraine in a game of chicken with western intervention.
No he has not.
From Wikipedia:
> On 12 November 2021, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that "Russia doesn't threaten anyone", and on 12 December, he said that attempts were being made to "demonise Russia and cast it as a potential aggressor". On 19 January 2022, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia does "not want and will not take any action of aggressive character. We will not attack, strike, invade, quote unquote, whatever Ukraine." On 12 February, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov described warnings of an invasion as "hysteria". On 20 February, Russia's ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said that Russian forces "don't threaten anyone. ... There is no invasion. There is [sic] no such plans."
Putin himself also said "Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood", and that it was a mistake for the soviet union to spin it out as its own country. Those have nothing to do with NATO.
W.R.T. NATO and Ukraine, Putin has been broadcasting his geopolitical goals for a long time now.
> I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?
2007 https://aldeilis.net/english/putins-historical-speech-munich...
> The president said he would be forced to target Russian rockets at Ukraine in response to a possible deployment of a US missile shield in the eastern European country.
2008 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/12/russia.ukraine
> Putin's words are seen as the latest in an ongoing volley of pointed warnings to the West not to meddle in Ukraine, which has such close historical and cultural ties to Russia that the Kremlin considers the country firmly within its sphere of interests.
> "The Russian leadership is very apprehensive about what it sees as Western moves designed to tear Ukraine away from Russia," says Dmitry Trenin
2009 http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900838,00...
> Russia is making a last-minute push to derail the integration agreement, which is due to be signed in late November. Instead, Moscow wants to lure its neighbour into its own alliance, a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan that critics have referred to as a reincarnation of the Soviet Union. Russia has made it clear that Ukraine has to choose between the two options and cannot sign both agreements.
2013 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/22/ukraine-europe...
> President Viktor Yanukovych's flight from Ukraine in the face of the Maidan uprising, which took place on the eve of the closing day of those Winter Games, astonished and enraged Putin. In his pique, as Putin proudly recalled in a March 2015 Russian government television film, he responded by ordering the takeover of Crimea after an all-night meeting.
2015 https://www.newsweek.com/why-putin-afraid-ukraine-332276
> The Russian president accused Kiev of playing a dangerous game and said he saw no point in holding a new round of talks about the troubled peace process in eastern Ukraine on the sidelines of a G20 summit in China next month.
> Putin’s comments stirred fears that Russia, which has been steadily reinforcing Crimea militarily, may be considering new military action.
2...
I don't. The Russian aggressors do.
> I’ve been anti-Russia from Day 1
Judging by your post history, that's extremely debatable
> Ukraine is fighting a war they can’t win
Again, debatable. Russia can't 'win' in Ukraine. Whichever way to take it, even if they manage to take the large cities, it is impossible for them to 'conquer' a country, 1800's style. That's just not how things work anymore. You can't stifle dissent at this scale unless you go full nuclear and if that's the case, we're all fucked anyway (including Russia). The more time passes, the more strangled Russians are going to be economically, so there is a non-zero chance of Russia collapsing or Putin getting ousted before Ukraine falls.
> If China rolls up onto US mainland with auto-aim drones, I’m hiding, and if surrendering is on the table then I’m definitely surrendering.
Then I'm glad you're not in charge of US defenses. We really don't need cowards around here.
Same sht they’re feeding the kids sent to the front line smh.
Agree to disagree but let's hope it doesn't end up like some Tiananmen Square massacre in some large city..
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've had to warn you about this more than once before:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23198785 (May 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18536559 (Nov 2018)
It's weird you don't think Ukrainians are motivated to defend their country from an invader. It's also weird that you think letting an invading army—especially one that is losing—dictate who runs your government, and what's in your constitution, is "incredibly reasonable".
In the end, it doesn't really matter what we think. If you think resistance isn't worth it, it's your fellow countrymen you need to convince—not us. If Ukrainian resistance dries up, then foreign support for that resistance will dry up as well.