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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Putin is in the wrong here but there are no good guys. US rhetoric on this has predicted a full-scale invasion that hasn't come to fruition multiple times and the media just laps it up. It's reminiscent of the WMD justification for invading Iraq. It's straight up Manufacturing Consent [1].

However, Putin has a point: extending NATO membership to Ukraine is an overtly hostile act by the US and NATO member states. Putin no more wants NATO bases in the Ukraine than the US would want Chinese or Russian military bases in Canada or Mexico.

But Russia is not and never was going to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It would destroy Russia. Trying to do this in Afghanistan, a substantially smaller and less developed country, played a significant factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia wants a buffer between it and NATO and access to the Black Sea. That's it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

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I don’t know where to even start with this. They have already crossed the border.

Almost every point you have raised here is severely detached from reality.

Sometimes it’s ok to just say you don’t know and move on.

If you have nothing of value to add you can just refrain from commenting.

So you're saying the US would be fine with China or Russia forming a military alliance with Canada and Mexico and putting forward operating bases and military forces on the US border?

I’m saying that you appear not to have any real background on this topic and maybe you should speak on it with a little less certainty.

Reading a few Glenn Greenwald tweets doesn’t make you a geopolitical or military analyst and what you have said sounds extremely silly to anyone who didn’t pick up this topic in the last week.

Indeed, it's beyond embarrassing.

The odds of that happening: Cero

You know why ? Long deep cultural and economic ties & support

You know why ? So they don’t form alliances with rogue enemy states

> US rhetoric on this has predicted a full-scale invasion that hasn't come to fruition multiple times and the media just laps it up.

The invasion is happening right now. The "peacekeepers" are Russian troops invading Ukraine, after Putin claimed, "Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood."

I don't think you know what a full scale invasion is.

They've crossed the border into Eastern Ukraine that have been in conflict for years between Ukrainian nationals and Russian separatists. Like I said, not good. But full-scale invasion? Not even close. Not a single shot has been fired that we know about. Or have I missed the missile strikes? Artillery bombardments of Ukrainian forces? Aerial bombardment? Infantry engagements?

Yet US rhetoric on this was basically "Putin is going to glass Kiev and murder everybody". When is that happening exactly?

You understand this thing is literally hours old right?

Do you have any experience with anything military related or some reason why you are trying to speak with any level of confidence on this?

The invasion only just started a few hours ago. It's not like we saw all of the casualties immediately when they last invaded – hell, it was several months later that the a Russian SAM was used to shoot down an airplane of civilians.

> Yet US rhetoric on this was basically "Putin is going to glass Kiev and murder everybody".

No, it wasn't. It was that Putin wants to control Ukraine, and plans to invade. Today he went on TV and said that Ukraine is not a sovereign nation. He annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, and is annexing the DNR and LNR regions as we speak.

If I understand it correctly this is as well the position of Professor John Mearsheimer [1] - he thinks that what Russia is going to do is "wreck" Ukraine and make it a buffer nation. I am sad, that we came to this situation and that our politicians were not able to find a diplomatic way to deal with each other and instead now only sanctions, arms and isolation seems to be considered. Trust is broken, both sides West and Russia consider themselves to be in the right and being handled unfairly by the others. Nationalism is rising and people start to consider each other as enemies. I am afraid that history is repeating itself and I am afraid of whatever leader Russia might get after Putin.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbj1AR_aAcE

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