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You are repeating Russian propaganda, several points of which were repeatedly refuted (for example the polls about eastern Ukraine wanting to join Russia).

And you are simply refusing to see reality as it is because you have biases going in, I'm simply trying to see why this is happening and who really started it but if you keep trying to reduce this to an us-vs-them juvenility then knock yourself out. I have no interest in this region other than figuring out what got us here.

Also I have no intention of backing a country like Russia but I also don't feel any sort of ideological camaraderie just because I am from the West. This coldness is largely how I deal with human attrocities, I take the emotion out of it and reduce biases to accurately gauge reality.

Can't do that when you let somebody tell you what is propaganda or an entire country are the baddies and we are the goodies....I mean that was fun in high school but surely you realize the duality and hypocritical nature of our modern reality....or at least might have been too much to ask during the war itself.

Perhaps when Ukraine becomes part of Russia which it inevitably will be through a forced federalization, will it strike just how badly the Ukranian leadership screwed up in misjudging Ukraine's geopolitical importance—if not obvious from the West's lack of military reaction.

I'm sorry but Ukraine does not produce any derivative goods like Taiwan's semiconductor industry which is of critical strategic importance to the West and one which US signaled military action against China in the event Xi tries to take it.

> I'm simply trying to see why this is happening and who really started it

Great. Do you see the missiles sent in from the territory of Russia to blow stuff up in Ukrain? Or the Russian tanks moving about in Ukraine? Or the Russian attack helicopters delivering troops to Ukraine?

It is happening because someone controlling the Russian military ordered it to happen.

If you have to twist your mind into pretzels to explain that this all happened because Russia felt so threatened that they had no other choice then have at it. There is no rational basis for that.

> entire country are the baddies and we are the goodies

That is ridiculous and nobody said anything like that in the whole thread.

Absolutely fascinating to see brand new accounts (all made within the last ~2 months) repeating the same propaganda here on HN, of all places. And not just one, but several -- exactly the same language, too: "Mexico ICBMs," "Azov Battalion," etc. I don't want to accuse anyone of disinfo ops, but spending literally all my day on social media today (reddit/Twitter/FB/HN/etc.), I've started to notice patterns.

You don’t have to understand these “patterns” as just disinfo though, there’s plenty of reasons why people would make new accounts just to start political debates, other than being “hired by Russia/China” as both the mainstream liberals/conservatives of the US often default to. It’s just that some people want to post their political opinions separate from their main accounts; when they really have some arguments they want to say about current events, they simply create throwaway accounts. And if you’ve ever done even a modicum of Twitter, you’ll know that some people are just very enthusiastic about their political opinions even without any financial incentives (even when what they’re spouting can be very polemic and seem like state propaganda).

I’m totally fine for criticizing the OP in factual, political, or ideological terms, but think that shrugging these comments off as “disinfo” actually deter any civil debate and actively increase the amount of hysteria among people and make things worse (you’ve said you’ve been all day on social media… maybe this is why you’re currently overtly hysterical about paid state actors on the Internet?)

That’s very close to the point made by this blog article, which was posted here yesterday:

https://lt3000.blogspot.com/2022/01/us-vs-russia-geopolitics...

"In recent months, Russia has once again been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with the US and Western media loudly proclaiming (since November) that Russia is planning an imminent invasion of the Ukraine, though Russia has repeatedly denied that fact and it's not exactly clear what Russia is waiting for, or what advantage it could expect to derive from lying about its intentions at this point (the whole Western world expects an invasion and the US has pulled embassy staff from Kiev)."

Given that it's now obvious that Russia in fact has been planning an invasion of the Ukraine, for months, which furthermore undermines the author's later claim that there was some peaceful concession that Putin would've accepted... I'm not sure why I should take this author's argument seriously. They seem naive and under informed.

Well, here’s a talk at Yale that makes the same points. I don’t know if everything in there is factually correct. But it does very clearly why Putin is acting the way he is.

https://youtu.be/8X7Ng75e5gQ

This sounds like justifying aggression with extra steps. Wrapping it in fine words while just saying "Russia is right" won't fly

Funny how everybody is playing the "China in Mexico" strawman. Typical of propaganda talking points.

But please tell me again how bombing Kyiv has anything to do with "liberating" the eastern regions

You can't have your cake and eat it too. The same security concerns that America would face under similar circumstances as described, any rational individual would be cognizant that such logical deduction would be intensely rejected by an emotionally charged why-would-mainstream-media-lie-to-the-ppl types that largely act as amplifiers of pre-packaged ideological responses aimed at producing more fear and miscalculations aka war mongering.

> But please tell me again how bombing Kyiv has anything to do with "liberating" the eastern regions

This is a gross extrapolation based on your own conjectures at this point. I did not justify the bombing of Kyiv, more simply pointing out that your own emotional response towards Russia is creating blindspots in your ability to rationally figure out why a conflict is happening now suddenly.

> The same security concerns that America would face under similar circumstances as described

The fact that Russia cannot "make friends" without stepping on their throat explain how they think Mexico could entertain something as having a Chinese base on it and their corresponding reaction. It's how bullies justify their behaviour.

> This is a gross extrapolation

It is what is happening right now. In the same way the discourse last week was "Russia would not invade" and "they are mere military exercises in Belarus"

Eeh, you could say the same about the US. Please just have an objective view of these, and not taking sides when it doesn't really concern your individual self

No, that's not a strawman at all. International relations are a mess, trying to figure the interests of both parties out isn't a propaganda campaign to justify anything. Actually, not trying to that and painting one side as universally evil seems to be propaganda.

I do understand why this is necessary so, because without unity those conflicts tend to be so much easier to loose. Again, as always, I don't justify Putin's actions here. I try understand hos motivation so, and political leadership around the globe should too, because if it works he won't stop. And Ukraine isn't the only region with disputed borders and conflicting territorial interests involving nuclear powers. If we want to find peaceful solutions for those conflicts, we need to understand them first. Just saying "other side evil and crazy, we good" is too shallow.

Thanks for explaining this much better than me. I totally get why people are upset, watching Twitter feeds and videos can get to some people, perhaps I should've been more sensitive that my opinions might be construed as defending Russia's action which I am certainly not since I have no horse in this fight.

I simply understand geopolitics as a game of power and its easier for me to characterize nations as weaker vs stronger in terms of geopolitical capital when I'm describing my ideas, and some people might have been off put at my description of Ukraine as slave caught between two masters.

> The 2014 invasion was relatively well restrained campaign at reminding who the master of Ukraine is

Nice attempt at justifying imperialism.

> Imagine if you will, Mexico wanted to join China's security umbrella and it was receiving Chinese troops, tanks, hardware right across the US-Mexico border. Next Canada joins the party.

Imagine how much raping, murdering and pillaging the US would have to do beforehand to force Canada seek isolation from the US at all cost.

Whataboutists always seem to forget Russia's past actions. EE countries seeking security guarantees is not something that happened in vacuum.

> The 2014 invasion was relatively well restrained campaign at reminding who the master of Ukraine is which was promptly ignored by the following administrations.

WTF? Ukraine is a sovereign nation.

> Eastern portion of Ukraine is heavily in favor of joining Russia

This is factually incorrect, even today, and it was always so.

http://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/2014_ukraine_survey_...

There is plenty of disinformation around this subject but the whole idea that one day the Donbas region decided that it wanted to join Russia and that those pesky Ukrainians in the Western part of the country wouldn't let them is bogus.

Demographically, Russian speakers in this part were reliant on Ukraine for much of its access to natural resources and capital, there is a sense of being poor and looked down upon by the Ukranians in the West and its exactly this class divide that fuels ethno-nationalism.

To simply whip out a PDF and scream disinformation seem awfully short sighted way to influence people's opinions especially because it is condescending to the average HN user who has access to a plethora of fact finding search engines and social media to judge what the truth is.

It's up to the readers to gather information themselves and find the truths, not have it shoved down their throat in some emotional mania state of us vs them primal instincts.

Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.

> Demographically, Russian speakers in this part were reliant on Ukraine for much of its access to natural resources and capital, there is a sense of being poor and looked down upon by the Ukranians in the West and its exactly this class divide that fuels ethno-nationalism.

You mean: like Latvia. Where it works just fine.

> To simply whip out a PDF and scream disinformation seem awfully short sighted way to influence people's opinions especially because it is condescending to the average HN user who has access to a plethora of fact finding search engines and social media to judge what the truth is.

Yes, the truth is: the Eastern part of Ukraine was the poorest, mostly because of the flow of capital going West-to-East, like in most countries that border even poorer countries to their East and richer countries to their West.

> It's up to the readers to gather information themselves and find the truths, not have it shoved down their throat in some emotional mania state of us vs them primal instincts.

Ah, the 'do your own research' bit. Yes, I remember that from some other context.

> Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.

The same was said of Poland and of the Baltics.

But it's clear what your angle is.

Latvia is, at least for now, a sovereign nation. Not part of one, bigger nation. We have similar issues in Europe, Belgium, Spain, England and Scotland. It seems mankind still didn't figure a way around people's self determination that doesn't regularly end in open warfare since the end of WW1.

Ukraine is also not part of a bigger nation, it is a nation.

As for self determination: as long as it isn't financed and pushed by a foreign adversary I say have at it. But in the case of Ukraine it is pretty clear who was pulling those strings.

Ukraine is a nation, parts that might prefer not to be are no nation. Everybody is pulling strings in Ukraine, the Maidan revolution was supported by the West, the separatists are supported by Russia, organized crime is supporting corruption. And now?

The problem is that NATO and the West lost so much credibility in the last decades that we stand on shaky ground when we oppose moves such as Putin's. The West invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, especially the latter one was totally unjustified. We happily deal with Saudi Arabia and support their war in Yemen. Spain can crack down on their Catalonian independence movement as much as they want, including blocking voting access with police. The EU lets, literally, drown poor people in the Mediterranean. I could go on. Thing is, Russia has no right whatsoever to invade Ukraine. The question is, what is the world going to do about it?

> Ukraine is a nation, parts that might prefer not to be are no nation.

Might is pretty thin ice, here, they didn't and they don't.

> Everybody is pulling strings in Ukraine, the Maidan revolution was supported by the West, the separatists are supported by Russia, organized crime is supporting corruption. And now?

The separatists are a small fraction (best estimates around 23%) in the East and without Russian support they would have been overrun long ago.

> The problem is that NATO and the West lost so much credibility in the last decades that we stand on shaky ground when we oppose moves such as Putin's.

No, the problem is that NATO is a very blunt weapon that doesn't really work well against nuclear armed dictators.

> The West invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, especially the latter one was totally unjustified.

Agreed.

> We happily deal with Saudi Arabia and support their war in Yemen.

Again, agreed.

> Spain can crack down on their Catalonian independence movement as much as they want, including blocking voting access with police.

Agreed again.

> The EU lets, literally, drown poor people in the Mediterranean. I could go on.

And again. But: even if you could go on, you shouldn't because none of these have anything to do with Russia invading Ukraine.

> The question is, what is the world going to do about it?

Apparently, not a whole lot and it bothers me quite a bit.

> The question is, what is the world going to do about it?

>> Apparently, not a whole lot and it bothers me quite a bit.

Me too.

> And again. But: even if you could go on, you shouldn't because none of these have anything to do with Russia invading Ukraine.

Well, I think it does. Because doing the same (TM) thing all over the world, although for different (official) reasons, limits your credibility when you criticize others. And it makes it so much easier for, in this case Putin, to pain the West as the true aggressor (which, in this case, is wrong). In the war of disinformation it doesn't matter so. And it opens up venues within Western society to create, as limited as it might be, support for Russia's actions. There have already been the first demonstrations in Germany with people carrying pro-Putin slogans.

This isn't so much about criticism, it is all about the fact that Putin has nuclear weapons, if not for that this would be over by lunchtime.

> Demographically, Russian speakers in this part were reliant on Ukraine for much of its access to natural resources and capital, there is a sense of being poor and looked down upon by the Ukranians in the West and its exactly this class divide that fuels ethno-nationalism.

Half of Ukraine speaks Russian, including most of Kyiv. It wasn't looked down until Russia started the aggression. If anything western Ukraine (being less wealthy) was stereotypized as less developed and Ukrainian language was associated with that.

It became fashionable for Russian speaking Ukrainians to switch to speak Ukrainian after 2014 which is understandable.

In short you're wrong about almost everything.

> Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.

Ukraine was part of the west for over 300 years and why should it matter anyway? Ukrainians have the right to decide what they want to do.

Actually a good write down, I think it's not to far from the mark as far as Putin's perspective is concerned.

Since more than one thing can be, and usually is, true at the same time, I think one part is exactly as you described. The other is that Putin simply really wants Ukraine back in the fold, among other countries that used to be part if the USSR.

Again, all of that is just a, potential, explanation. It is not, by any means, an excuse or justification.

Here's where I differ and as much as I detest Russia's actions and Putins kleptocracy, he is a chess player, highly rational and calculating.

The idea that Putin wants to reclaim the former USSR border is ludicrous to me because it would mean raiding his own coffers.

He comes across as an opportunistic and a highly adventurous individual focused on wealth building.

I don't know if you read Alex Litvenenko's book but Putin's roots, his associates and friends, wealth was his end goal from the start. Why someone like him would be considered to be capable of empire building (when he could barely contain Chechnya) is beyond me.

Putin is a thug and he cares more about his wealth than the interest of his own country, and the #1 threat to him isn't sanctions but Hague trials.

There is overwhelming evidence that Putin was responsible for the apartment bombings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings), and if the truth came out, it wouldn't be his own people that take him down alone but the combined threat of NATO military action and an emboldened local populace.

Again I am not a psychologist but someone this selfish and material focused (his stupid Versailles 2.0 project that went to crap) is simply NOT interested in restoring USSR glory or anything like that but rather like any good capitalist, obsessed with maintaining his wealth.

Fair points.