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Comment by bsedlm | Hacker News Reader

the first part of the video by that professor, explains that ukraine is a very divided country, it's made up by two different groups of people, ukrainian-speakers and russian-speakers. So you gotta take this into account when considering what "Ukraine" wants.

> Russian security assurances aren't about trying to defend the country against an encroaching NATO, but rather trying to restore as much as possible the domination of Russia over former USSR states.

well, the video explains better than I could in one comment why this is nonsense. It 100% is all about Russian preventing a rival military base in a border country.

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> So you gotta take this into account when considering what "Ukraine" wants.

Ukraine is a sovereign state with internationally recognized borders.

Whether Russia thinks that Russia is “anywhere Russian is spoken” or “Anywhere Russians live” isn’t really relevant. “Ethnic Russians” living in Ukraine are Ukrainians, and no amount of unrest or even mistreatment of those citizens would be legal a cause for military action.

Either Russia recognizes the borders and sovereignty of Ukraine or it doesn’t. And to be honest, if Russia doesn’t which appears to be the case, then it should probably expect any smaller neighbors to join defense alliances.

Which works democratically, there's people in Ukraine who will support Russia and people who will support "the west"

The point is also that it's borders are badly drawn, there's an air of civil war to this conflict within Ukraine.

...then again, this is just rando interent opinion and I have no stakes in any of this.

> Which works democratically, there's people in Ukraine who will support Russia and people who will support "the west" The point is also that it's borders are badly drawn, there's an air of civil war to this conflict within Ukraine

Absolutely. And a civil war (which you can argue has been a thing for many years now) is a tragedy. But of course - and this is the whole point - no one crosses a sovereign nations borders to aid a side in a civil war, without a UN resolution to do so. And Russia not only actively supports separatists in eastern ukraine, it also more or less started this conflict AND annexed Crimea.

> It 100% is all about Russian preventing a rival military base in a border country.

Not so sure about that. To me this looks more like a diversion from internal political problems, "Wag the dog" style.

It's slightly more than that. Russia (Putin) can't stand a successful democracy on his border, especially one that used to be in the USSR. For some reason, he ignores Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. But Ukraine? It's a direct threat to Putin's power if it is successful as a real democracy, if it turns toward the west. Not just because it diminishes Russia's sphere of influence, but because it shows a path that Russians could take - a path that leaves Putin not at the top of "the vertical of power".

Just to add - Putin defers action on the other neighbors rather than ignores. He'd be happy to weaken them internally or via disinfo campaigns.

Bigger fish to fry at the moment in his USSR2.0 drive.

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