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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

No, I didn't blank out. What Russia did talks louder to me than what you said.

So Russia has the right to intervene if Ukraine elects an anti-Russia government? Really? Russia gets to decide which governments of Ukraine are acceptable?

And why doesn't Ukraine get to decide what governments of Russia are acceptable?

> US does much worse things for much less - look at CIA getting rid of democratic governments as soon as they decide not to play in US's favour and installing a more favourable regime to their interests.

So, do you think that's morally right, or morally wrong?

This attitude of Russia's - that they have the right to remove a neighboring government if they don't like it - is exactly why so many of Russia's neighbors are desperate to get into NATO. Putin couldn't do a better job of creating and installing anti-Russian governments if he were deliberately trying to do so.

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> So Russia has the right to intervene if Ukraine elects an anti-Russia government? Really? Russia gets to decide which governments of Ukraine are acceptable?

Russia has the right to defend its national security within its means.

> This attitude of Russia's - that they have the right to remove a neighboring government if they don't like it - is exactly why so many of Russia's neighbors are desperate to get into NATO. Putin couldn't do a better job of creating and installing anti-Russian governments if he were deliberately trying to do so.

It's not about who Russia likes or dislikes - if a government acts in a way that could harm Russia why shouldn't they do something about it.

> Russia has the right to defend its national security within its means.

Please explain how do you associate the natural outcome of free and democratic elections in the Ukraine with a "national security " threat to Russia that's serious enough to justify a full blown invasion.

The new government was vehemently anti-Russian and pro-American and pro-NATO.

Russia did not commit a full blown invasion, it annexed a part of the country that had a crucial naval port to use which they had an agreement with the previous government and where the population of that area of the country is predominantly ethnic Russians who self-identify as Russian and didn't support the new anti-Russian government. The only reason that historically Russian land was given to Ukraine in the 1954 transfer of Crimea was due to Khrushev's blunder.

Don't try to pull wool over anyone's eyes here with claims that it was just an innocent change of power. In world politics you can't do things willy-nilly. Ukraine has threatened Russia by going against it, cutting off previous agreements and trying to ally itself with Russia's enemies and Russia did what it had to do stop it in its tracks.

And for your information, Ukrainian citizens are worse off than they were before, whilst the new anti-Russian elite of Ukraine is busy getting rich and robbing the country. But hey, at least they're no longer associated with Russia, right? Because EU and the US cared so much about them in the first place and totally not trying to destabilise Russia's southern border.

> trying to ally itself with Russia's enemies and Russia did what it had to do stop it in its tracks

Russia's enemies are actually its current leaders and the oligarchs that support them. Vladimir Sorokin's Sugar Kremlin is quite telling in this regard.

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