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Comment by hihi123 | Hacker News Reader

Why are you referring to Crimea as a victim? Their desire to leave the Ukraine has been well-documented since the beginning. See this amusing article from 1994 in the NYT for an example [1]:

> A separatist candidate who wants Crimea to leave Ukraine and integrate with Russia won more than 70 percent of the vote today in run-off presidential elections, preliminary results showed. His victory sets the stage for a direct confrontation between Ukraine and Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that is dominated by ethnic Russians.

Russia took Crimea illegally by force, but people of Crimea are hardly victims. Ultimately, the goal of sanctions is to signal that the US is not accepting Crimea as part of Russia. To allow US companies to operate in Crimea would legitimize the annexation. (And as far as the people go - I don't think anyone cares for the people, particularly.)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/31/world/separatist-winning-...

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If, as you say, people want to be part of Russia, what is the difference? Do they need to be punished for wanting to be part of another country?

That's an open-ended question :) If your goal is to keep the Ukraine whole, you generally punish the people whose desire to leave runs counter to that goal.

Russia would severely punish people who wants to be part of other country (not Russia). It is in both countries (Ukraine and Russia) constitution, that it is against the law to separate territory without country-wide voting.

But the discussion is not about what Russia or Ukraine would do, instead, it is about American companies punishing people living in a territory that is now separate from Ukraine.

Discussion is about US government which punishing Russian government by applying restrictions, US companies just follow the law, they don't have any other choice. When governments fight, people suffer.

> which punishing Russian government

They obviously don't "punish the Russian government" when they prevent the people living in Crimea contributing to the open source project.

US government doesn't know if people who access github will contribute, or just take and use including military and government applications.

There's hardly any military work that would involve using code from GitHub in Crimea. All the R&D is done in mainland Russia. This targets common people who use GitHub for their pet projects or just regular work.

In general, this thread demonstrates that here there's very little understanding about the mass psychology of Russians, and, really, any nation other than Americans. No one in Crimea is going to rebel against the Russian government because of the U.S. sanctions against them exclusively. A policy like this only validates the Russian government's narrative of the U.S. going after Russia as such. If the U.S. government wanted to seek allies in Crimeans, they could perhaps focus on sanctioning Moscovian oligarchs. Well, except they won't, because Russian oligarchs that lose leverage in the Kremlin later make for good dissidents to be used by the U.S. as an ideological tool against Russia. And the oligarchic system is keeping Russia from modernizing, which is also in the U.S. interest.

> There's hardly any military work that would involve using code from GitHub in Crimea. All the R&D is done in mainland Russia. This targets common people who use GitHub for their pet projects or just regular work.

I disagree with you, Russia has clear intent to move/restore navy projects in Crimea: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/russian-navy-resu... US government doesn't specifically target github, but all commercial activities in Crimea.

> Well, except they won't

This is not correct, current sanctions target specific list of people and major companies in financial, military and oil industries. The goal of sanctions is to weaken Russia's economy in specific sectors.

> US government doesn't specifically target github, but all commercial activities in Crimea.

And the only "commercial activity" in this case is if GitHub earns some advertising money from the data collection about its user from Crimea.

> The goal of sanctions is to weaken Russia's economy in specific sectors.

And Crimea is not Russia. It's a region which voted to separate itself from the bigger state, just like Kosovo, votes of which were even militarily supported by the U.S. And if the U.S. equates Crimea with Russia... it's as wrong as equating Kosovo with Albania.

> And the only "commercial activity" in this case is if GitHub earns some advertising money from the data collection about its user from Crimea.

And Crimea users can use github as a tool in their commercial endeavors, and military and government applications.

> just like Kosovo, votes of which were even militarily supported by the U.S.

You make things up, Kosovo voted 10 years after US operation, when was under observation of UN peacekeepers which were located there by UN security council resolution (Russia voted for that too).

> Kosovo voted 10 years after US operation

At the moment of the US "operation" (honestly, war) those who had direct military support were some paramilitary troops attempting to escalate the conflict to the level to be taken seriously (specifically by the US) with the agenda of changing the established existing borders.

The war itself was against all UN decisions, it was unilaterally started by the US and NATO. The US fought for the right to enter Kosovo (and make its military bases there) and it won that as the result of its war, not from the UN.

The country from which those on Kosovo voted "out" was already economically destroyed by the actions of the U.S. -- the equivalent would be if Russia managed to not only control Crimea for a decade but also economically destroy Ukraine for two decades and then let the people vote if they want to stay in such Ukraine.

What do I "make up"? And how is that "better" from inhabitants of Crimea wanting to separate from Ukraine, where the political regime just illegally changed before that, exactly in the direction of suppressing politically all ethnic Russians in Ukraine? The inhabitants in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine could surely point to Kosovo as a precedent which gives them right to separate (and even get the military support for that). And contrary to the US in Kosovo, Russia already had a big military base on Crimea.

> how is that "better"

The facts are:

- US had 0 intention to join Kosovo as 51th state, and election were performed under observation of UN peacekeepers which were there per UN resolution

- Russia invaded Crimea using regular army, and within two weeks merged territory in violation of UN statute

> where the political regime just illegally changed before that, exactly in the direction of suppressing politically all ethnic Russians in Ukraine

I disagree with your assessment. Ukraine is a mess, old pro-Russia president and his party illegally changed constitution, which caused chain of events.

> US had 0 intention to join Kosovo as 51th state

Who ever claimed that?

> Russia invaded Crimea using regular army

No. The Russian military base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevastopol_Naval_Base was always there, and especially it was there as a Russian base since the breakup of Ukraine from USSR, so already for a decade and a half before 2014. Moreover, even before 2014 Crimea was an Autonomous Republic in Ukraine, since 1991.

Compared to that, Kosovo was not even a republic, but an "autonomous area" in the Republic of Serbia before the U.S. war, and there was surely zero U.S. military bases there before. Which says something, seeing:

https://i2.wp.com/www.ukprogressive.co.uk/wp-content/uploads... ( found on: https://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/pentagon-keeps-building-over... ) All these also aren't the "fifty first state."

any country would severely punish people who want to be part of another country.

I've never understood why this is true and considered ethical. If a part of your country wishes to govern themselves, or be governed by someone else, why should that be met with violence?

It is a complex system with many actors on different levels.

You can see it on several levels:

- People in power are interested to hold the power as long as they can, and that's why they suppress separatists movements

- Countries which allows such separations become weaker and don't survive, because separation is manipulatable process, and damage country's economy and power

- concept of ethics is very driven by government: they tell people that it is their land, and nobody can take it from them

Serbian constitution didn't allow unilateral secession of Kosovo either. Where are the sanctions against Kosovo then?

if their rights are respected I don't agree with it. See Catalonia and Spain. I don't agree with it because people in Barcelona have every right.

However look and HK and China. I definetely agree for HK to be independent after a referendum.

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