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Comment by xchaotic | Hacker News Reader

I have a bit of a problem donating directly to the army. I understand the need to defend but it does end with deaths and bloodshed. I ‘avoid’ the problem by donating to medical supplies as well as simple food stuff for people in Ukraine. We also plan to shelter a Ukrainian family in our house once they get here (we live in Poland)

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It is understandable. I personally choose to donate to UNHCR's Ukraine emergency program (https://giving.unhcr.org/en/ukraine/) while I still have access to my finances.

I have a friend with family who has escaped from around Lviv to Poland Thursday (so they are already in the country). They should have finances to pay for themselves, but asked him just in case.

Medics won't stop tanks.

No, but medics are necessary too, and they contribute to the defense of the country in their own way.

Let the peaceniks contribute to medical and food, we just use the money we didn’t spent on medics and food on arms.

Any port in a storm.

What Ukraine needs is nukes which won’t be sold to them.

They had them, but gave them up for certain assurances iirc

They are fighting in self defense, the moral cost belongs to the aggressor and no one else.

I’m American, but lived in Kyiv for years and was lucky to get out just before the war started.

I was hesitant at first about donating to this fund as well, but the reality is that this is an existential struggle for the Ukrainians. I’m not willing to join their international brigade and pull triggers myself, but I’m down for anything short of that to help kill and demoralize as many of their enemy (which is my enemy also) as possible in the shortest amount of time.

For as long as I’ve been alive there has been either no moral justification for wars America fought or at best a dubious justification. So the idea that one should be anti-war and pro-peace is deeply ingrained. But when an aggressor invades with the express goal of eliminating your sovereign nation and subjugating your people, ferocious violence against the enemy is a moral course of action, as is funding such violence. At least in my personal moral code.

In addition my company is doing all we can to support our team in Ukraine. I hope the combination is enough to help preserve a free Ukraine. If it’s not I don’t want to spend the rest of my life asking myself if I could have done more…

This is an interesting dilemma I've seen on multiple occasions and resulting in almost the exact same position. Many people who work in defense industries, plenty of my former colleagues among them, choose to go into medical tech and other healthcare adjacent fields, either as penance for damage caused, or because it's a less morally grey but still objectively useful way to apply their skills.

This is a phase that many Ukrainians went through in the past 8 years. We've been donating for medical and humanitarian needs but with time everyone understood that you have to destroy enemies to save lives. There's no other way.

I donated to that account and to a refugee org in the Netherlands. Anything helps friend

I too have a problem with donating to any army. Especially if you look at money and a tool for motivation or a tool for voting. Like it's often said vote with your wallet. From those aspects giving money to any army means you want more of what they're doing and while armies do help in natural disasters their primary purpose generally results in deaths of people. Thus in a way you're motivating and voting for more deaths...

I know that many it not most don't look at money like that, but I do, which is why this frightens me.

If anyone ever comes to overthrow your government, bomb your home and kill your family I hope somebody, somewhere is willing to take up arms and fight to protect you.

Sorry, I didn't express myself correctly, what I was trying to say was if you want to support people in need then support organisations that are trying to help people with food, shelter and medical aid.

For the existing humanitarian crisis aspect, that is great, but prevention requires the support of their army.

>> Thus in a way you're motivating and voting for more deaths...

I see your point. But the Ukranians do not want to live under a Putin-puppet government, and they are willing to pay with their lives - but could use more equipment against a (on paper) superior military force.

The least I can do, is to help buy them some bullets.

Yeah if we had admitted Ukraine to NATO this war would never have started.

Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin thought he'd have a cheap and easy victory. If Ukraine was obviously well armed enough to make a cheap and easy victory obviously impossible, he wouldn't have invaded.

Not sure if satire/sarcasm (I don't really know what it's called in English), but to anyone reading the comment above, that's not the actual reason for Putin's actions, this isn't Putin's pet project. There are actual reasons behind, which paint the real picture. Don't get me wrong, it's a FACT that Russian forces are in Ukraine, there's no way about it. But people often forget that Putin has been at the helm of Russia for more then 20 years, he's not as dumb as western media show him as.

EDIT: To people downvoting, Russia is attacking Ukraine because of USA and because of the agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

Putin's actions make more sense if you consider the invasion as serving his interests and not Russia's. None of this is going to play out in the favor of Russians, regardless of how the battle goes.

Putin has been characterized, by some in the US, as genius in his timing. I'm not familiar with any propaganda portraying Putin as dumb.

Younger versions of Putin certainly used to match his chess master reputation. However in the light of this war, people will update their evaluations of him. It’s likely that he has simply gone senile.

Although I understand the rationale for people that do not want to give to an army, I would say in this specific case (no_army == no_country)

Yup. The nation state is premised on the idea that the state has a monopoly on violence. When the state no longer has a monopoly on violence it’s not a country anyMore.

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