Some comments are saying we shouldn't put sanctions on Russia or support the Ukrainian resistance because it will prolong the war and civilian casualties.
Putin and Lavrov have said that Ukraine is a historical mistake that should be undone. They want to assimilate Ukraine into Russia. Commit cultural genocide. How is the very existence of a nation and people not worth supporting?
It is just a fact. If you were able to follow some ukranian information channels not aligned with the current regime in Kiev you would see that this pov is not that uncommon.
Speaking of the sanctions. What are the goals? To destroy Russian economy? OK, but it won't help with Ukraine right now. To prevent future "invasions"? OK, but russia will morph completely into smth like North Korea with nukes. Is it it helping anyone now?
The U.S. could not give two shts about the Ukrainian people. They re being used as pawns for a larger goal.
If you think about it, that's really just a way of saying that the community is divided on this topic. Of course it is—any large-enough population sample is. It's the same with every divisive topic, and war is the non plus ultra of divisive topics. What's different in this case is not the mechanics of the discussion or the community, it's the intensity of feeling, which is inevitable and understandable.
The two most important things to understand are (1) the vast majority of commenters here, even when they're repeating points derived from others, are holding their views in good faith—they simply have different backgrounds (personal, geographical, familial) than the people holding opposite views; and (2) if this community is to survive for its intended purpose, we need to remain kind and thoughtful with one another across differences. Yes, even during a war.
I'm not saying it's easy, but it's possible to be firmly on one side of a war while remaining kind and thoughtful with the individual humans you encounter. Not only is it possible, it may even be one's human duty, at least for anyone who doesn't want to pour their little cup of personal influence into the ocean of collective violence. Be that as it may, it's definitely every HN commenter's responsibility, because it follows from the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), which are designed to keep this place alive for its intended purpose.
Many years of experience have shown (1) and (2) to be true in general, and they're especially true now. If it seems otherwise, that's probably because HN, being a non-siloed site, lacks the homogeneous subcommunities that other sites partition themselves into with their follow lists, social graphs, subreddits, and so on. ("Homogeneous subcommunities" are what internet commenters like to call "echo chambers", and that is precisely what we don't have here. We are all in one large room together.)
The irony is that HN ends up feeling more divisive precisely because it is less partitioned. It's necessary to understand this about HN or you will end up with quite a false picture [2]. I wrote a long explanation of this a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. It's even more true now than it was then.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The vast majority of Ukrainians are anti-Russia and pro-EU. Russia's actions since 2014 have also made them pro-NATO.
Arguing against a coup is meaningless given the nuland tapes.
You do not have to be a Russian apologist to understand that this is more complicated than bad vs good.
And it was only a mistake because they trusted the US and Europe that they would keep the promise of not surrounding them with NATO forces.
What Russia and Putin have done is nothing short of a war crime, just like when the U.S. invaded Iraq, but that does not mean we should blind ourselves to their side to do everything we can to avoid war.
Peace come with understanding.