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Comment by usr1106 | Hacker News Reader

I think there are 2 independent problems for Germany:

Not delivering weapons to any war zone has been a holy principle for German politics since 1945. Never war again war has had a strong foothold. Even now I grown up in this tradition would ask, is it better to lose the war or more lives. Putin might invade the country now, but he will not stay there forever. Most of Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries show that. Even Eastern Germany.

Germany's dependency on Russian gas is a different problem. They don't dare to do much. Now delivering weapons might prolong and intensify the fights. If the pipeline (it passes through Ukraine!) gets destroyed they don't need to dare to stop financing Putin's war. They will need to solve the problem how to heat their homes.

(German living abroad.)

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That is why Germany’s decision to deliver weapons is much more dramatic than many Germans realise. It is the admission that their previous policy of “Wandel durch Handel” (roughly meaning to gain influence in a country by forming tight trade links) has failed.

Today it’s Russia, but they will have to follow through with China, too, plus a few other countries (gulf states e.g.).

If Putin gets Ukraine he'll definitely stay there forever. He will place his army alongside eastern Polish border and NATO will be forced to fortify the other side.

Germany along with other countries of NATO will be forced to militarize which will cost way more than abandoning Russian exports.

Ukraine is fighting now for less militarized and endangered Europe.

I agree that sometimes it's better to loose a war. Just not this one.

> Ukraine is fighting now for less militarized and endangered Europe.

I hope somebody else can appreciate the irony of this sentence like I do, given that the cause of the conflict is military NATO expansion towards east.

The cause of the conflict is that NATO did not expand to Ukraine. Putin would've never risked it if they were members.

Putin wouldn't have allowed them to become members. And this is effectively what is happening here: Putin is unfortunately destroying Ukraine, and effectively making sure that any possibility of joining NATO is long gone. This would have just happened earlier if Ukraine had tried to join NATO.

Nah, he is just ensuring Ukraine gets support to join immediately, and inflicting enormous damage on Russia in the process. He'll be remembered as "The Man Who Ended Russia in a Week". Russians are going to be embarrassed about their nationality for the next 100 years at least.

There is no chance Ukraine will join NATO in the short term (and possibly ever), let alone immediately. This would trigger an Article 5 invocation that would compel NATO members to send troops to Ukraine, escalate the conflict even more, possibly leading to a global war, which no one wants to do.

Putin has now demonstrated the need for NATO membership to Ukrainians. If they get a choice, my bet is they would join eagerly.

Yes, but this point is kind of moot given that it was NATO membership expansion in the first place to start the tensions.

You can look up articles from 2008 and see that even Germany (Angela Merkel) was adamantly opposed to Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO, because there was no credible threat from Russia and she knew this would create instability in Europe. The fact that there was no credible Russian threat is easily confirmed if you do a Google search for "ukraine russia" before 2008: you hardly find anything noteworthy. The whole narrative only changed around 2014.

Now we're at the situation where the Ukrainian people, and also Russians and the entire Europe (at least economically), are paying huge costs because we couldn't avoid seconding foolish US foreign policy choices.

Ukraine wasn't in immediate danger because there used to be pro-Russian government. But the citizens of Ukraine want democracy, freedom, don't want corruption and want to be included in the Western sphere, and as a sovereign state, this is up to Ukrainian citizens only.

All this bullshit about "NATO expansion eastward" that "Putin warned against" - LOL, this is no "NATO expansion", this is "free sovereign states joining NATO by their own volition to get protection from aggressors", and Putin's opinion doesn't matter at all and his "warnings" only reveal him as the bully aggressor he is.

His place is to sit home and accept what Ukraine's elections decide. He should've thought out his actions and shouldn't have done things that made Ukrainians want to join NATO and EU if he is afraid (more like paranoid) of NATO being too close.

> You can look up articles from 2008 and see that even Germany (Angela Merkel) was adamantly opposed to Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO, because there was no credible threat from Russia

This shortsightness is exactly what got us into this mess. It was crystal clear in 2008 that this is what Russia will do if the pro-Russian government withers away, but business was more important to Germany.

> The whole narrative only changed around 2014.

No, you're very out of touch. Ukrainians wanted freedom, democracy and end of corruption since forever - but they were silenced by the old government.

Trying not to upset an authoritarian to ease tension will only work in the short term. I'm sure Putin felt threatened for many reasons, both internal and external to Russia. Both valid and imaginary.

It seems that many in Europe hoped to turn a blind eye in return for economic success. I hope much can be recovered and ties restored, but probably not while Putin is at the helm.

Ukraine didn't have ambitions to join NATO before Putin attacked it for the first time in 2014.

Stop swallowing Putin propaganda wholesale.

You can watch this to familiarize yourself with historical context of Russia-Ukraine relationships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK-yJD_fAtk

> Ukraine didn't have ambitions to join NATO before Putin attacked it for the first time in 2014

That's just not true.

> NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.

This is from the 2008 Bucharest NATO meeting official declaration. [1]

[1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

I see.

Whay I fail to still see is how it in any shape or form justifies what Putin is doing.

Rather than a justification, I take it as an explanation of why Putin is doing what he's doing, as opposed to the other, often circulated, explanation that he just went crazy and invaded Ukraine for no reason.

I find it way more plausible that he just believes that Ukraine is a birthplace of Russia of mythical and religious significance and Ukrainians are not a separate nation.

It explains way better why he decided wage war that will be devastating to Rusian economy that wasn't doing so well already.

This and access to Ukraine resources because resources is what Russia earns their money from.

That's why he believes sanctions won't be such a big deal in the long run. He thinks Ukraine resources will balance out costs of war.

Talking about NATO agression on Russia is pure and simple propaganda. NATO is a defensive alliance and there's no way USA or anyone could convince other members to invade Russia in peace time.

You seem to fail to see, that the so-called "NATO expansion towards East" is independent, democratic countries, voluntarily joining a defence-alliance.

To large parts of Eastern/Northern Europe, it is either be part of a pretty good (but admittedly imperfect) NATO defence alliance - or have your sovereignty threatened by Russia.

You seriously think the Baltic states would be independent today, if they had not gained NATO membership?

From the Russian point of view that's your mortal enemy that has expanded for the past 20 year and now it's knocking on your borders. How would the US react were Canada, an "independent, democratic country", "voluntarily joining a defence-alliance" with Russia that allowed Russian military to place missiles right on the US border?

I think they would make a deal that no such missiles will be placed there. No need to destroy Cuba.

So you're already admitting that the US would try to influence these two independent countries. What if Cuba refused to accept the deal?

It will be a cold war situation. If one side brings nukes to the border, the other side will do so as well. A possible deal would be something like NATO and Russia removes their nukes from border countries. And maybe make another deal to remove the amount of nuclear warheads.

> I agree that sometimes it's better to loose a war. Just not this one.

If Ukraine can stand up (which I'd hope, but don't really believe) and Putin thinks the same way you think he will use nuclear weapons. And he has said clearly that he thinks the current Ukraine is a threat to the survial of Russia. Which is of course nonsense, but that doesn't matter.

The better support Ukraine gets the closer we are moving to a nuclear war. I'm not sure to say don't support them. But don't underestimate the danger of Putin.

If Putin throws nukes in Europe then the radioactive fallout will reach border countries including russia. And it could provoke a nuclear reaction from NATO, because nuclear fallout over NATO states could be considered as attack.

Sure. But I am not convinced that Putin cares.

As said in many places, Putin will go to history the worst aggressor in Europe since Hitler already. He might have committed economic suicide for Russia already. So don't be so sure he doesn't extend the suicide any further.

If Putin already has decided to end the world in a nuclear war, then there's not much that we can do about it.

But if Putin would be seen as a brutal murderer by many russians, then chance are that there are some who could try to assassinate him, like there were many assassination attempts to Hitler.

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