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Comment by nate_meurer | Hacker News Reader

Most of the current sanctions against Russia were a direct response to Russia's paramilitary invasion of a peaceful neighbor and theft of a large portion of their country.

If Saudi Arabia were to commit a comparable offense, I assure you they'd face a comparable response, or worse (remember what happened to Saddam Hussein).

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You don't consider the situation in Yemen comparable?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention...

What Saudi Arabia has done in Yemen is a war crime in my opinion. But it's also part of an ongoing proxy war against Iran, whose government has made it clear that the goal is to destabilize the Saudi regime. So no, not comparable to Russia's ongoing attempt to reassemble its lost Soviet empire by destabilizing and invading neighbors who pose no threat to it.

Go read that wikipedia article you posted. It links to a good explanation of the Iran-Arab proxy conflict.

Crimea is also part of an ongoing proxy conflict between NATO and Russia, where NATO seeks to encircle the latter. The wars with Ukraine and Georgia were about maintaining buffer states (And to serve as a warning to the rest), rather than reassembling an empire.

Or at least, the facts can line up with this interpretation.

Maintaining a buffer is exactly why the Soviets annexed half of Europe after WWII, and spent the next half century brutally oppressing the populations therein. That's the whole point. But regardless, this is such a silly semantic quibble. Who cares why Russia wants to reassemble its empire? The international community is understandably alarmed by Russia's actions, and naturally care little about Putin's justifications.

> Crimea is also part of an ongoing proxy conflict between NATO and Russia, where NATO seeks to encircle the latter.

Fuck, this again? Go ahead and connect the dots for me. Explain what specific actions on the part of NATO, or the countries that have requested membership in NATO, were responsible for Russia suddenly invading a neighbor country that posed no threat to it, forcibly annexing a large part of it, and maintaining a ruinous and deadly guerilla conflict in much of the rest.

Let me reverse that question.

What specific actions of NATO lead you to think that its ambitions for Russia in the 2010s differ from its ambitions for the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s?

What has changed since the Cold War, in those ambitions? What specific actions has NATO taken that make it clear that those ambitions have changed? What reassurance is Russia expected to see that encirclement, containment, and isolation is not the goal of the West? I can't see a single bloody one.

We're going down the exact same road again, the only difference is that the front line is now 300 miles further east. Which is very comforting for Czechs, and Hungarians but unfortunately, far less so for Ukranians.

(Oh, and to answer your question, I think 'US Army bases in Poland' is a pretty good, solid example of why Russia feels threatened. Had the War in Donbas not happened, as likely as not, we'd have been seeing US Army bases in Crimea today. It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. I advise that the best way to win for the buffer states is to either adopt neutrality, or, barring that, to not antagonize the side that's being backed into a corner.)

You're asking for proof of a negative? Proof that NATO isn't nefariously plotting Russia's demise? And "encirclement"? Really? The borders with NATO countries comprise like five percent of Russia's total border length. If NATO is trying to encircle Russia, they're doing a really shitty job.

Honestly, I'm not interested in engaging with this prove-a-negative nonsense. In my humble opinion, invading a neighbor and annexing part of it can't be justified short of a clear, present, and profound security risk. NATO, a voluntary, chronically underfunded defensive organization almost completely subservient to the political gyrations of the US, the leader of which is now actively trying to destroy it, is not that risk, and I don't believe that anybody honestly thinks it is.

Putin will gladly use any action on the part of European countries to justify more invasions. Like the way Sergey Lavrov threatened "military technical measures" in the Baltic region if Sweden joined NATO. Remember that? The Baltic states are lined up like dominos, possibly Belarus as well, where I've heard rumors that Russia is already sending troops. As Trump says when he has no clue what he's talking about, "We'll see what happens".

Soviet Union and Russia have always been incredibly paranoid about the vulnerability of the populated interior.

I believe NATO has the capability to bomb Moscow from Latvia in minutes.

I don't think Russia rates its vulnerability by border ratio vs total NATO aligned country border ratio. They look at how fast NATO could wreck Moscow.

Nope.

Saudis chopped WSJ journalist Hashoggi into parts! literally!

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism#Saud...

Yes, and I believe sanctions would be an appropriate response for that atrocity, as they should be for any state-sponsored murders of journalists or opposition politicians.

Good thing SA did not invade Yemen, had nothing to do with Khashoggi "suffering a paper cut" and absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 neither

You're missing the point.

Yes, thanks, we know. The Saudi Arabian regime is shamelessly and violently fascist, and corrupt at every level. What the fuck does that have to do with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and theft of the Crimean peninsula, and the commensurate response by the international community?

You stated:

> If Saudi Arabia were to commit a comparable offense, I assure you they'd face a comparable response

Offenses were cited to you. Where is the "commensurate response by the international community" to these offenses?

Read my comment again. I said that if SA were to do what Russia did -- invade a peaceful neighbor with no provocation and steal a portion of their country -- then I'm confident that sanctions would be levied against them. Pretty simple proposition, really.

So you don't think the Yemen situation is worse than Crimea (which is a complicated issue in itself?). Or even SA financing the expansion of Wahhabism?

I think SA gets too little sanctions for what they do. Too little.

And by the way, I'm totally in favour of Russia sanctions. I'm not questioning any of that.

I agree. SA is a hugely destructive influence across the Middle East in lot of ways. For whatever reason, the strategic interests of SA and the US align just enough to keep them out of trouble. But if SA were to emulate Putin's foreign policy and annex, say, Kuwait, I promise their luck would run out fast. Funny, I seems to remember something sort of similar happening not too long ago...

What's complicated about Crimea?

Crimea is historically(last 250 years) Russian territory with Russian population which always leaned towards Russia.

During reclaim there were not any resistance from the local population. It says a lot.

Crimea was Ukrainian for last 20 years and before that it was Soviet for 70 years.

And you're wrong about resistance as well.

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