> Russia has threatened to attack supply chains of S-300 air defence systems to Ukraine after Slovakia announced that it is willing to support Kyiv by providing the said defence system
I'm surprised there isn't some kind of DRM system or backdoor that Russia can use to prevent the system working outside of a geo-fenced area, or if a server declares the licence expired.
It's surprising how good even 30-years old S-300's are (Ukraine has SA-10, SA-13 versions).
Russia launched Iskander missiles with penetration aids and S-300 was able to intercept it. Iskander is a very hard target (hypersonic missile with pseudo-ballistic trajectory).
Erm, not excusing this horrible invasion in any way, but c'mon, this is a near parody of a propaganda rewriting of recent history, but from the other side...
They sought all ways of agreements continuously for 15 years, and which requests litterally the US, the EU and NATO litterally declined to answer in any way ever since Bush II and Candy Rice failed to renew some of START up until 4 weeks before the invasion ?
And then when it did it last January was to dismiss all requests for three weeks in a sterile exchange, at which points Russians through Putin said : "Ok, no agreements, we go kinetic", as the ruthless fiend he is.
> They sought all ways of agreements continuously for 15 years
Are you referring to the period between the Budapest Memorandum[0] in 1994 and the Russo-Georgian War[1] in 2008? I'm not sure what proposed agreements you think the US, EU and NATO should have acquiesced to in that time, or what requests they declined to answer.
- Ukraine was the one asking for NATO membership. Don't they have a right to decide? In all these discussions, people speak as if they have no sovereignty. Ukraine was well aware of the risk of invasion if they tried to join NATO, they spoke about it publicly. So why not let them take that risk if they wish?
- Indeed, wasn't it arguably rational for Ukraine to seek NATO membership, despite the (uncertain) risk of invasion as a consequence of trying to do so? Perhaps the real criticism should be that NATO dragged their feet for too long. Given the context of empire building rhetoric, verifiably unrelated to NATO, inside Russia about Ukraine at the high levels of the Kremlin, and given a history of aggressive and unwanted Russian political interference, maybe they thought that Russia would invade anyway, and this was their only way to prevent that from happening.
- Why should we capitulate and allow one authoritarian nation to dictate the foreign policy decisions of a democratic neighbor? How is such appeasement wise in the long-run?
- How do we know that NATO fears weren't simply a useful pretext for empire building ambitions? Putin is a master at lying, propaganda, gaslighting and sowing confusion, and his spokesmen (Lavrov and Peskov) and propaganda apparatus will reinforce the desired narrative.
- Let's not conflate explanations with justifications. Let's also not conflate full explanations with partial explanations. NATO fears are, at best, a partial explanation.
- The phrase "Ukraine's bioweapons labs" is strongly implying that Ukraine is making bioweapons for the sake of weapons and not for the sake of small-scale research. There is no evidence of this that I've seen, and absent that evidence such a phrasing is misleading. You mean "biological research facilities" which should be uncontroversial until shown otherwise.
(sorry, it's a long one, you caught me on a day off, so I wrote long)
> Don't they have a right to decide? So why not let them take that risk if they wish?
Of course they do, they are recognized as a sovereign nation.
And again, without painting Russia as an innocent dove it ain't : this is why you won't find Lavrov or Putin ever having formally and directly asked Ukraine not to join. They limited themselves to saying publicly it was not something they wanted from their neighbour.
The only thing they asked formally and directly Ukraine not to do was 8 years ago about a planned EU trade treaty which directly contradicted the one they had already had in place for 10-15 years - that helped trigger Maidan.
What Russia has been asking is from NATO : that NATO should agree to never seek Ukraine out as member (which NATO did), or if Ukraine formally asked, to refuse them forever [0] - this was what the entire un-diplomatic ballet we saw last three months was about.
For an everyday's man analogy, see [1] below.
-
> Perhaps the real criticism should be that NATO dragged their feet for too long
I don't believe they did drag their feet (see [0] below). It's just that Moscow threw a monkey wrench into an accelerated entry with Crimea, just as it did in Georgia with Ossetia.
-
> How do we know that NATO fears weren't simply a useful pretext for empire building ambitions?
IMHO this particular attack's public rationale is 2/3rd a pretext (it's indeed geo-economics), and 1/3rd a justification (NATO has been starting wars and "color revolutions" all over the place for 30 years at a sustained rythm, you objectively can't trust them not to continue).
Adam Shiff said it in front of the Senate a couple of years ago: "U.S. backs Ukraine ‘so we can fight Russia over there, and not here"
But in truth/big pictures, yes it's empires (plural) building and management. More importantly, it's cultural and economic systems clashing, as we're living in a networked world more than a world of nations now.
Lavrov made it extremely plain two days ago: "It's not about Ukraine at all, it's about the ordering of the world. The current crisis is a pivotal moment in modern history. It reflects the battle over what the world order will look like,[...]"
-
> aggressive and unwanted Russian political interference, maybe they thought that Russia would invade anyway, and this was their only way to prevent that from happening.
I have a more neutral view.
The country is unbelievably corrupt and disfunctional. Not one person there controls the whole of the state, least of all the president. It's several overlapping influence networks (and mafias). All presidents, ruling cabinets, oligarchs since then were always compromitted to a high degree by either side.
No power bloc ever let the territory Ukraine be truly sovereign ever, even less so after Leonid Kuchma's departure.
As such, NATO did not prevent or "try to prevent" anything. It's just slowly losing this particular battle of interference to armored brigades, while it won others such fights in Ukraine in the past.
For having followed Ukrainian politics for 15 years (friends and work friends), and setting aside his apparently heroic resistance and actual presidential behaviour the last few weeks, I find anybody calling Zelensky anything else than a supremely corrupt authoritarian puppet of Kolomoiski's (and now of any of Kolomoiski's "friends") woefully uninformed. Same as for calling its parliament "democratic".
IMHO, this why what should in fact be the richest, largest country in Europe on paper is in fact the poorest. It is a state without a nation (yet) whose institutions are weak enough for it to not having ever known true independence and true sovereignty.
-
> Why should we capitulate and allow one authoritarian nation to dictate the foreign policy decisions of a de...
I'm not GP, but thanks for this comment. It just shows how we just see one side of the picture in the West.
> Ukraine was the one asking for NATO membership.
Also, if I may add to this: according to polls in 2013[1], popular support for Ukraine joining NATO was very low. Actually, most people saw NATO as a threat rather than protection. This was well after the 2008 Bucharest summit where NATO officially announced that Ukraine will become a member of NATO.
This is to say that maybe it was more like "the US was pushing for Ukraine to be part of NATO" rather than Ukraine (as in the Ukraininan people) "was the one asking for NATO membership".
No problem. Thanks for reading it. It was somewhat cathartic to write.
> It just shows how we just see one side of the picture in the West.
Yes, and feel I could only make sense of the differences because I grew up and lived first half of my life West. As such, I fully understand both cultures and the "feel" of them, but also have two sets of sources for history, general approaches to politics, and news.
I firml believe had I not originally been son of immigrants, it wouldn't have been so.
> Also, if I may add to this: according to polls in 2013[1], popular support for Ukraine joining NATO was very low.
Thanks, I didn't know about that! All this time, based on personal experience, I actually believed outrigh support to be between 35-40%. Eye opening !
> This is to say that maybe it was more like "the US was pushing for Ukraine to be part of NATO" rather than Ukraine (as in the Ukraininan people) "was the one asking for NATO membership".
10 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 35.8 ms ] threadI'm surprised there isn't some kind of DRM system or backdoor that Russia can use to prevent the system working outside of a geo-fenced area, or if a server declares the licence expired.
Russia launched Iskander missiles with penetration aids and S-300 was able to intercept it. Iskander is a very hard target (hypersonic missile with pseudo-ballistic trajectory).
They sought all ways of agreements continuously for 15 years, and which requests litterally the US, the EU and NATO litterally declined to answer in any way ever since Bush II and Candy Rice failed to renew some of START up until 4 weeks before the invasion ?
And then when it did it last January was to dismiss all requests for three weeks in a sterile exchange, at which points Russians through Putin said : "Ok, no agreements, we go kinetic", as the ruthless fiend he is.
Are you referring to the period between the Budapest Memorandum[0] in 1994 and the Russo-Georgian War[1] in 2008? I'm not sure what proposed agreements you think the US, EU and NATO should have acquiesced to in that time, or what requests they declined to answer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
- Ukraine was the one asking for NATO membership. Don't they have a right to decide? In all these discussions, people speak as if they have no sovereignty. Ukraine was well aware of the risk of invasion if they tried to join NATO, they spoke about it publicly. So why not let them take that risk if they wish?
- Indeed, wasn't it arguably rational for Ukraine to seek NATO membership, despite the (uncertain) risk of invasion as a consequence of trying to do so? Perhaps the real criticism should be that NATO dragged their feet for too long. Given the context of empire building rhetoric, verifiably unrelated to NATO, inside Russia about Ukraine at the high levels of the Kremlin, and given a history of aggressive and unwanted Russian political interference, maybe they thought that Russia would invade anyway, and this was their only way to prevent that from happening.
- Why should we capitulate and allow one authoritarian nation to dictate the foreign policy decisions of a democratic neighbor? How is such appeasement wise in the long-run?
- How do we know that NATO fears weren't simply a useful pretext for empire building ambitions? Putin is a master at lying, propaganda, gaslighting and sowing confusion, and his spokesmen (Lavrov and Peskov) and propaganda apparatus will reinforce the desired narrative.
- Let's not conflate explanations with justifications. Let's also not conflate full explanations with partial explanations. NATO fears are, at best, a partial explanation.
- The phrase "Ukraine's bioweapons labs" is strongly implying that Ukraine is making bioweapons for the sake of weapons and not for the sake of small-scale research. There is no evidence of this that I've seen, and absent that evidence such a phrasing is misleading. You mean "biological research facilities" which should be uncontroversial until shown otherwise.
> Don't they have a right to decide? So why not let them take that risk if they wish?
Of course they do, they are recognized as a sovereign nation.
And again, without painting Russia as an innocent dove it ain't : this is why you won't find Lavrov or Putin ever having formally and directly asked Ukraine not to join. They limited themselves to saying publicly it was not something they wanted from their neighbour.
The only thing they asked formally and directly Ukraine not to do was 8 years ago about a planned EU trade treaty which directly contradicted the one they had already had in place for 10-15 years - that helped trigger Maidan.
What Russia has been asking is from NATO : that NATO should agree to never seek Ukraine out as member (which NATO did), or if Ukraine formally asked, to refuse them forever [0] - this was what the entire un-diplomatic ballet we saw last three months was about.
For an everyday's man analogy, see [1] below.
-
> Perhaps the real criticism should be that NATO dragged their feet for too long
I don't believe they did drag their feet (see [0] below). It's just that Moscow threw a monkey wrench into an accelerated entry with Crimea, just as it did in Georgia with Ossetia.
-
> How do we know that NATO fears weren't simply a useful pretext for empire building ambitions?
IMHO this particular attack's public rationale is 2/3rd a pretext (it's indeed geo-economics), and 1/3rd a justification (NATO has been starting wars and "color revolutions" all over the place for 30 years at a sustained rythm, you objectively can't trust them not to continue).
Adam Shiff said it in front of the Senate a couple of years ago: "U.S. backs Ukraine ‘so we can fight Russia over there, and not here"
But in truth/big pictures, yes it's empires (plural) building and management. More importantly, it's cultural and economic systems clashing, as we're living in a networked world more than a world of nations now.
Lavrov made it extremely plain two days ago: "It's not about Ukraine at all, it's about the ordering of the world. The current crisis is a pivotal moment in modern history. It reflects the battle over what the world order will look like,[...]"
-
> aggressive and unwanted Russian political interference, maybe they thought that Russia would invade anyway, and this was their only way to prevent that from happening.
I have a more neutral view.
The country is unbelievably corrupt and disfunctional. Not one person there controls the whole of the state, least of all the president. It's several overlapping influence networks (and mafias). All presidents, ruling cabinets, oligarchs since then were always compromitted to a high degree by either side.
No power bloc ever let the territory Ukraine be truly sovereign ever, even less so after Leonid Kuchma's departure.
As such, NATO did not prevent or "try to prevent" anything. It's just slowly losing this particular battle of interference to armored brigades, while it won others such fights in Ukraine in the past.
For having followed Ukrainian politics for 15 years (friends and work friends), and setting aside his apparently heroic resistance and actual presidential behaviour the last few weeks, I find anybody calling Zelensky anything else than a supremely corrupt authoritarian puppet of Kolomoiski's (and now of any of Kolomoiski's "friends") woefully uninformed. Same as for calling its parliament "democratic".
IMHO, this why what should in fact be the richest, largest country in Europe on paper is in fact the poorest. It is a state without a nation (yet) whose institutions are weak enough for it to not having ever known true independence and true sovereignty.
-
> Why should we capitulate and allow one authoritarian nation to dictate the foreign policy decisions of a de...
> Ukraine was the one asking for NATO membership.
Also, if I may add to this: according to polls in 2013[1], popular support for Ukraine joining NATO was very low. Actually, most people saw NATO as a threat rather than protection. This was well after the 2008 Bucharest summit where NATO officially announced that Ukraine will become a member of NATO.
This is to say that maybe it was more like "the US was pushing for Ukraine to be part of NATO" rather than Ukraine (as in the Ukraininan people) "was the one asking for NATO membership".
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/167927/crisis-ukrainians-likely...
No problem. Thanks for reading it. It was somewhat cathartic to write.
> It just shows how we just see one side of the picture in the West.
Yes, and feel I could only make sense of the differences because I grew up and lived first half of my life West. As such, I fully understand both cultures and the "feel" of them, but also have two sets of sources for history, general approaches to politics, and news.
I firml believe had I not originally been son of immigrants, it wouldn't have been so.
> Also, if I may add to this: according to polls in 2013[1], popular support for Ukraine joining NATO was very low.
Thanks, I didn't know about that! All this time, based on personal experience, I actually believed outrigh support to be between 35-40%. Eye opening !
> This is to say that maybe it was more like "the US was pushing for Ukraine to be part of NATO" rather than Ukraine (as in the Ukraininan people) "was the one asking for NATO membership".
Clearly.