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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> "This is in the hands of our American partners,"

> The United States and other Western countries began imposing sanctions against Russia in the wake of its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Is there any chance they would cede Crimea back at this point? Or, are there other conditions they would have to satisfy for the sanctions to be lifted. Because it seems they can do something too to lift the sanctions.

The last time I remember a statement by Rogozyn was when he said the hole in the space station was deliberately drilled from inside [1]. Presumably, blaming American or other astronauts. It seems like he is purposefully trying to provoke a conflict.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/science-enviro...

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Russia does everything they can to deflect and gaslight. It's their plan. Make aggressive moves in a sphere, change the facts on the ground or the game that is played, and then retreat into deflecting and gaslighting on the international stage until it becomes too complicated for countries to continue their sanctions or whatever.

Their goal is simple, chip away at the spheres surrounding them and carve their own sphere. Classic zero sum.

Worth noting that, over the last 30 years, their sphere of influence has shrunk inward by a thousand miles, all driven by the US encouraging their neighbors to join the EU or NATO.

I'm not saying the USSR was great for eastern europe or anything but it's also unfair to call them aggressors for the couple of times they've resisted this continual inward push from NATO.

Their sphere of influence shrunk because the USSR lost a lot on split up and became the smaller Russia, their economy was in the doldrums for over a decade, and most of what they had was a corrupt oligarchy centered on natural resources.

Why should Western companies not be able to develop the countries bordering Russia if the countries want them to come in?

The problem is that when Western companies come in to Ukraine etc with rules and audits etc, it makes it tougher for the corrupt oligarchs with ties to Russia to operate and extract their wealth through corruption.

If these countries adopt western norms in elections/governance, and adopt western business practices, it leaves very little room for the old corrupt guard of Russia/Soviet origins to operate and squeezes them out of any piece of the pie.

That's why Putin is at odds with it.

I think your reasoning is too simplistic, it's about two agreements that are self contradicting. At least for Ukraine - they had an economic alliance with Russia, they wanted to have another economic deal with the EU which in turn would put Russia and the Eastern population at the loss, then the whole shitstorm broke loose. To cite Nuland - "Fuck the EU" - was exactly how the people in Donbass and Crimea felt. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

There's a reason these countries leaving their sphere of influence aren't a fan of Russia.

Russia did invade Ukraine.

I think that main reason Russian "sphere of influence" has shrunk is that they literally attacked and annexed parts of neighbours, supporting insurgents with their own military.

Hundreds of thousands are dead over last 30 years because of Russian invasions. Millions are dislocated. Be it Chechnya, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova etc.

The picture of Russia and NATO pushing against each other on the Eastern Europe is too simple. It denies the sense agency for the countries in the region. The smaller countries have a long history and aspirations for independence.

Why do so many countries choose to partner with NATO? I will answer with a question: how many people has Russia killed or enslaved in the Eastern Europe over the past centuries?

> I will answer with a question: how many people has Russia killed or enslaved in the Eastern Europe over the past centuries?

A large number. But then again not nearly as many as the Ottoman Empire, which enslaved 10 million Europeans and brutally occupied a large chunk of Europe. Yet the U.S. does not exploit anti-Turkish sentiment or anti-islamic sentiment in order to build military bases in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Greece, which were all under occupation for centuries. And then we have Germany, with its own history of killing and brutality that makes its neighbors -- Poland, Czech Republic, France, Belgium, etc -- weary of German influence and yet the U.S. does not exploit anti-German sentiment in these nations for its own power politics. We could go on, with rivalries between different nations and ethnic groups throughout the region and hurt feelings of past oppression. So yes, the anti-Russian sentiment is real and has a real basis in history, but encouraging and benefiting from these historical animosities is still considered a hostile act.

It's not really just "historical animosity" if the Russian Federation is invading and occupying neighboring sovereign states as we speak.

Occupying, anyway. If they are invading anybody as we speak, I haven't heard about it yet...

I would argue this has more to do with the infancy of America as a country. It's arguably only been a true world-aware power since WWII.

So the US only knows how to exploit anti USSR sentiment because that's the only sentiment it has institutional knowledge of.

Europe however has multiple millenia of various institutional knowledge and history.

It is fascinating to me how the generations transfer, but these strong institutional and cultural memories continue in such seemingly vivid fashion.

What are the odds that Turkey invades Bulgaria tomorrow?

What are the odds that Germany invades France tomorrow?

What are the odds that Russia invades Ukraine tomorrow?

That's why people are concerned about Russia. It's not historical animosity. It's current behavior.

All of the above are zero

Given the last 10 years, one of those is not zero.

Crimea had been run by Russia in one form or another since the 1700s, and it's ridiculously important to them as a port.

Their reaction to losing it was arguably a defensive reaction rather than an offensive reaction, if you're taking the perspective that Crimea is part of the Russian empire.

"Part of the Russian Empire" - so every country gets to attach themselves to an ethnic nation state of the past, and then lay claim to all past holdings. If they don't have it now they need to "regain it" or as the CCP says "commence the great rejuvenation"...

How this won't lead to endless conflict is not understandble to me.

Conflict with whom is the question.

The US Constitution is younger than the Russian claims on Crimea and we're going to try and tell them about it? In between sponsoring coups in Latin America and the Middle East whenever we feel it's in our interest?

》Turkey invades Bulgaria tomorrow

Have you seen news recently? It is happening every few months. Bulgaria had to call army to secure and enforce borders. There were new barriers installed, Turkey used bulldozers to demolish them.

"That's why people are concerned about Russia. It's not historical animosity. It's current behavior."

You are turning this upside down. You are presenting Russia's reaction to NATO expansion as the reason for NATO expansion. It's a circular logic. George Kennan, the architect of the containment policy, has predicted such rhetoric in 1998.

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. … I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. … It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.

THIS IS JUST WRONG.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign-affairs-n...

That is not the whole story. Domestically in Russia, there is a sense of humiliation about losing the cold war and about the 90s. Going from a superpower to a destitute nation, being made to feel sorry for its own history.

The rhetoric of rebuilding its sphere of influence, role in international affairs, regaining its 'colonies' as much as possible is very profitable domestically. As such, it is natural that such former satellite states would wish to protect themselves, i.e. by joining NATO and closer integrating with the EU.

In other words, it seems likely that Russia's foreign policy would be very similar even without NATO expansion. One could argue it would be less aggressive because they would not feel a need to hurry, or more aggressive because they would feel less resistance to their actions. But the general policy trends would likely be very similar.

"Domestically in Russia, there is a sense of humiliation about losing the cold war and about the 90s."

Perhaps to some extent. The reason for that is that the US took advantage of Russia's weakness in the 90s[0]. There was a lot of admiration for the US in Russia[1], 80% view it positively. Eltsin and Putin were talking about Russia joining NATO[2][3] and a free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok [4]. People in Russia thought they shook of communism, adopted democracy and market economy and were joining happy European family. They were told they don't belong -- most importantly excluded from the common security system. That didn't go too well in a country that remembers that the USSR 50 years before lost 26 million people in an invasion from the West.

"The rhetoric of rebuilding its sphere of influence, role in international affairs, regaining its 'colonies' as much as possible is very profitable domestically."

Where did you get that idea? People in Russia want the government to spend money on improving life standards.

"it seems likely that Russia's foreign policy would be very similar even without NATO expansion"

There is no reason to think so.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-is-the-bully-the...

[1] https://www.ridl.io/en/russians-changing-attitudes-to-the-us...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/la-oe-meier20-2008aug20-story.html

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/17/russia.iantray...

[4] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-v...

Russian gov + the corrupt oligarchs are unable to succeed in an open and auditable free international market. Thus they need to expand their sphere and not get swallowed by the western one.

Yeah, right, that's why Russia joined WTO and is already at 28th place in the World Bank's Doing Business rating.

[0] https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/data/exploreeconomies/russi...

Countries join NATO of their own free will, mostly because they are afraid of Russia. So the reason why Russian sphere of influence shrinks is because Russia acts like an asshole.

Russia is not entitled to any "sphere of influence" outside its own borders. Personally I would gladly cut Russia out from the rest of the world with 2000 feet tall wall made of ice, so that Russian zombies can't get out.

It's not entitled, but Russian government sees how it works in practice with others, and wants the same non-entitlement.

It's complicated. Russian government is the enemy number one to Russian people, as it's common for autocracies.

At the same time, as perhaps is the case in China, a significant part of the Russian population is afraid that without the autocracy, there will be disorder that will be worse than the autocracy, as various factions fight for power. They have numerous examples from recent history - including Ukraine. Yes, Russia was instrumental in making sure there was disorder in Ukraine, but who is to say that another power will not do the same thing to Russia should the people get rid of their autocracy? As I understand, the same sentiment is fairly popular in China, too.

Those countries are not Russias to play with as Putin pleases and, if they can be encouraged to join NATO and the west, that is because of the way they were treated by Russia. If Russia didn't want them to be part of NATO they shouldn't have abused them.

Russia is burthurt on this, that cannot and should not be the concern of the rest of us.

> it's also unfair to call them aggressors for the couple of times they've resisted this continual inward push from NATO.

My country was occupied by USSR (aggressors). Now is free and it is not their business anymore. Complayning about that is bullying.

> Is there any chance they would cede Crimea back at this point?

There is a literal 0% chance that Crimea will ever go back to Ukraine unless there is a major collapse of the political power of Russia. It would have to be a collapse worse then the collapse of the Soviet Union with a ruler who was beyond desperate to get Western support.

The Western world can sanction Russia (and likely will for the next 50 years) non of that matters to them nearly as much as Crimea.

The only reason why it was part of Ukraine in the first place is because of inter-politburo power-struggles that lead Khrushchev to simply assign it to Soviet Republic of Ukraine because that was his power-base. For political reason all the post-Soviet states had to accepted their boarders that they had within the Soviet Union.

Sevastopol has been one of the most important power bases of Russian power for hundreds of years, and even while it was officially part of Ukraine, practically it was only just barley so and the easy of witch the Russians took it showed that quite well.

For Americans to get some context on that, when the US declare its independence the Russians annexed the Crimea. Ask yourself how much sanctions the US would endure in order to protect Norfolk Virginia and then realize that Sevastopol is basically the one practical harbor, while the US has 100s on multiple coasts.

> Rogozyn

Rogozyn is targeting a Russian audience, blaming everything on Western conspiracy is basic Russian communication. He is basically fighting to pretend that Russia is relevant in space while the actual institution is being destroyed with corruption.

Under him Roscosmos has continued to collapse and the whole industry is continuing to go down the drain.

> For Americans to get some context on that, when the US declare its independence the Russians annexed the Crimea. Ask yourself how much sanctions the US would endure in order to protect Norfolk Virginia and then realize that Sevastopol is basically the one practical harbor, while the US has 100s on multiple coasts.

In this hypothetical what made the US give up Norfolk Virginia to Canada?

In other words if this port was so important to the USSR why did they give it up to Ukraine, why didn't they take it back from Ukraine when they split up, and why did they wait until 2014 to take it back?

Assignment of Crimea to Ukraine was an internal assignment within the USSR, from the Russian SSR (or whatever) to the Ukrainian SSR. The USSR is kind of a weird beast - it was nominally a union of equal republics, but it was dominated by the Russians. In a certain sense, the transfer within the context of the USSR wasn't important to Russians at all, since it was still part of the USSR and Russians ran the USSR - didn't matter THAT much that it was part of Ukraine (though there still werevarious Russian objections to the transfer throughout the Soviet into the Post-Soviet era), at least from an geopolitical standpoint.

When the USSR dissolved... well, it was definitely a period of chaos. As for why wait till 2014? I have no answer for that.

There's no clean US analogy, since the US doesn't have a singular state that completely dominates its political landscape.

The closest U.S. example I can think of is Liberty Island and Ellis Island.

They are clearly within the boundaries of New Jersey, yet a part of New York (state and city). These also fall under federal jurisdiction as they are homes to national monuments. Yet control has been contested in the federal government at least five times since the 1800s, most recently in 1998 (Ellis Island) and 1987 (Liberty Island).

The Soviet Union practically operated at one entity controlled by the party, but had multiple Soviet Socialist Republics inside it. And of course, before the Soviet Union existed, Ukraine was not a state of any kind, it was simply part of Russian empire.

Ukraine had a brief flirt with 'independence' after the Russian Empire collapsed and the Germans tried be the sponsor of new entity. Ukrainian nationalism was in its infancy then and once Germany was defeated in the East the idea of independent Ukraine was gone quickly. The allies had no interest in the (foolishly) no interest in the idea.

So basically practically speaking Ukrainian independence was never really a serious reality in basically all of modern Russian history. So for Khrushchev to move Crimea from one Soviet Republic to another was not a big deal. For him it was basically like moving some federal facility from one state to another in the US.

The way the Soviet Union collapsed was basically that the party lost its power, and then the individual states politicians realized that without party control they constitution would basically give them the right to succeed. Of course they did this based on the official borders initially.

This by itself was a very, very contentious issue when the Soviet Union was formed. Stalin actually strongly advocated against the idea of these Soviet Republics like Ukraine and wanted to integrate them into the Russian state the same way it was during the Imperial period. [1]

Lenin however was more willing to give nationalism a bone as first of all he knew the party would control everything anyway and he based on ideology believed that nationalism would simply 'not be a thing' once socialism was in power.

Stalin eventually build the Soviet Union based on Lenin lines from 1917 to 1924 as People's Commissariat for Nationalities. Interestingly enough even after Lenin was no longer capable to impact his choices Stalin did not go back and revisit it.

There were of course many different republics and autonomous regions inside of the Soviet Socialist Russian Republic and those all are still part of Russia today.

So Stalin was right to be wary of the nationalities, once they had an opportunity they did exactly what he feared and broke away and devolved communist party and the socialist institutions for the most part. That is also partly why in Russia today, Stalin is viewed more favorably then Lenin.

> why didn't they take it back from Ukraine when they split up, and why did they wait until 2014 to take it back

Because the new state Russia had little power and no money. In fact, even for any of these topics were relevant in the West Russia attempted in many places to roll the collapse, this lecture goes threw many of them [2].

The Russians did want it back very much and they brought it up in negotiations with the Ukraine and United states. However as they had no power to do much of anything about it. And the US had of course preferred as much territory to be removed from the core Russian state as possible, so there was no chance the US would side with Russia on this.

Like the Germans before them they also were interested in creating a Ukrainian state as a counter balance to Russia. The British tried much the same with the Republic of Texas.

The new Ukrainian government agree that the Russian Army/Navy would continue to use the base and of course Crimea was basically supplied from the Russian side. Practically speaking the Russian state and military had the power there.

Russia in the last 20 years regained a part of its former power, while Ukraine remains a basket case. Worst from Russian perspective is that US and the European have serious efforts to get Ukraine to be closer to them and politicians who became popular based on supporting that. This caused fears about long term viability of operating Crimea within Ukraine.

With this action Russia does two things at once, it makes it impossible for Ukraine to be integrated into NATO (as they did with Georgia) and they made sure that even if the Ukrainian state made serious turn towards the EU they could not influence Crimea in any way.

I hope this helps with understanding the situation.

[1] Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umIg0mrsZBs

"why didn't they take it back from Ukraine when they split up"

Because the Ukraine didn't want to give it back and at that time using military force against Ukraine was unthinkable.

"why did they wait until 2014 to take it back?"

Because in the 2014 the US 'mid-wifed'[0] a coup in Kiev which unconstitutionally[1] deposed a democratically elected president of the Ukraine and the threat of losing access to Sevastopol in Crimea had become real.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych#Parliamentar...

That’s like asking if the US would cede San Diego to a foreign power. They are not going to give up their only deep water port on the Black Sea. It’s paramount to their territorial defense/integrity. We, the US, pretend we don't know this.

The Crimea has changed hands over time quite a bit for political reasons and was never really fully Ukrainian but in name. It was Tatar, then others now mostly Russian and some Ukrainian and some others.

> They are not going to give up their only deep water port on the Black Sea. It’s paramount to their territorial defense/integrity. We, the US, pretend we don't know this.

Russia could cede it under the condition that they were allowed continued use of the port.

It's like asking if the US would give up Havana. Russia once owned the Crimea, but it wasn't theirs to give up when they invaded. That's why it's an invasion instead of territorial defense.

Huh... except Havana isn’t 60% American...

So Mexico should take Los Angeles? It was part of Mexico once, after all...

Nope. That rationalization is just a really transparent rationalization of an invasion. Rationalize it all you want, it's a rationalization of something that is unjustifiable.

> So Mexico should take Los Angeles? It was part of Mexico once, after all...

Well, except that Spain has a priority claim to Alta California.

And the rest of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, for that matter.

if they have NUKES to support their claims - they absolutely should

They will not give it up, but neither can the US cancel the sanctions. Both parties must know this, so the sanctions will have to stay until something changes. Or made harsh enough to force Russias hand.

> Both parties must know this, so the sanctions will have to stay until something changes. Or made harsh enough to force Russias hand.

That's what it seems like. I think the West saw an opportunity to punish Russia fully understanding there is 0 chance of Russians giving up Crimea. They may decide to lift sanctions in response to some other concessions in the future.

I think they were added originally so that the west didn't have to do more, or possibly misreading Russia.

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