Case in point, there was a humanitarian corridor and ceasefire agreed on two days. Not only was it not held, the road was mined and road was also bombed during by the russians.
Russians certainly do not want to annex Ukraine either. They want to destroy it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
and Ukraine has been forming deep military ties to the NATO states since then.
This move to alignment with the West is popularly supported in Ukraine mind you, but the reaction it would elicit has been anticipated and warned about for years.
Can you explain me what neutrality is?
As a fellow Swiss citizen i believe it is a lie propagated so our banks can fill their pockets with the dirtiest money available.
I think Russia has a point to be worried and concerned about a Ukraine in NATO or the EU, however they went about it in a terrible fashion. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Not to mention, they moved to annex Crimea and supported civil war in other parts of the country. What did Russia expect?
We hold elections to put every one on an equal playing field, where each person has the same amount of say.
Theoretically
Does that also apply if the "populous forceful overthrow" is being directed by foreign powers?[0][1][2]
[0] It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2014/04/16/why-cia-...
[2] How William Hague Deceived the House of Commons on Ukraine https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/david-morrison/ukraine-will...
I pointed out that this was false / not as your comment implies a few hours ago when you posted something similarly incorrect:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30588114
tl;dr: Putin (with the help of Paul Manafort) got a Russian puppet elected in Ukraine, once he did a 180 on campaign promises and the populous recognized him from the puppet he was he was deposed and fled to Russia.
There will be a treaty in the end. Hopefully sooner rather than latter.
The quote is from an essay [1] by the future leader of Communist Russia - Lenin, describing the Czarist Russian empire on April, 1914.
[1] Original in Russian: http://libelli.ru/works/25-5.htm
[2] Google translated: https://libelli-ru.translate.goog/works/25-5.htm?_x_tr_sch=h...
For example, Chechnya tried to escape the prison, so Russian used thousands of tons of explosives, FAE's (which is comparable to low yield nuclear weapons) to destroy independent Chechnya state, which was able to escape after first war. Russian FSB bombed their own citizens to provoke war with Chechnya.
My comment was specific to your quote.
This kind of worked, somewhat, and not for reasons they were anticipating. Turns out that forcibly resettling people doesn't make them like you but it does make them tolerate each other a little bit better because they all now have one thing in common: shared adversity under the USSR. However, in the places where it didn't work it created bigger problems. Places (Chechnya) that could have been clean breakaway republics didn't do so because they had a ethnic Russian minority holding them in and in cases where those nations did break you have the Russian group trying to lean politically into Russia and the non-Russian group leaning away and that causes its own problems (Georgia, Ukrainian breakaway provinces, etc)
Russia is far more unified across ethnic lines than people give it credit for. It's not going to pull a Yugoslavia and erupt into genocide as soon as Putin croaks. That said, it's nowhere near as unified as the US (where you can basically count on any immigrant group becoming functionally "American" in 2 generations).
If the west helps too much then in 50yr the next Russian despot will take another crack at it when they think the west won't help.
[1] Barring the plausibly deniable arms shipments and clandestine training that the underdog in any sort of conflict like this gets. Nobody ever starts a war without their enemies sending aid to whoever they started it with. Anyone who's read their history already knows this.
Nation states don't do "precedents" when it comes to helping each other out. They do "what is good for me here and now and maybe on a future timeline I happen to care about". For democracies this timeline is short. For dictatorships and monarchies this timeline tends to be a little longer because nobody wants to leave a giant mess for their kid.
Sending in green beret advisors or the FFL isn't a "precedent". And everybody knows it. It's a one off based on the political realities of the minute.
The kind of political realities that lead to those sort of interventions are short lived decades long things at best.
In contrast, "our country, fuck off" is a solution that will likely live as long as Ukraine maintains some sort of national identity. Nobody's invaded Afghanistan twice.
There's about 3 anglo-afghan wars and the more recent invasion and occupation involving Britain.
There's earlier examples but I'm not sure if the place even fully existed as a concept back then.
In any case they sure aren't interested in wasting returning to the region.
Pretty much all the other colonial powers have a similar "nope, not our problem any more" attitude toward meddling portions of their sphere or influence that they left because the locals made staying too expensive.
Algeria is across the pond and the French want nothing to do with it. Contrast with Russia which is constantly poking and occasionally invading its former sphere of influence.
>Algeria is across the pond and the French want nothing to do with it.
The French are currently robbing the citizens of ~1/3 of all African countries through their central banks and they have assassinated 22 African presidents since ~1970.
I don't think you are qualified to discuss this topic in any depth, most of your earlier claims are patently false. I only picked this one to tear apart due to time constaints.
NATO is a nation state alliance built on mutual defense and strengthened by precedent. The precedent of defending allies is built into the NATO agreement.
> For democracies this timeline is short. For dictatorships and monarchies this timeline tends to be a little longer because nobody wants to leave a giant mess for their kid.
Great point on the different timelines, I have to disagree on the reason. Dictators/monarchies have a longer timeline because they tend to rule for much longer than leaders in democracies. By definition, democracies involve turning over the ideals and ideas of leadership every few years. Do you believe Putin is worried about leaving things to the daughters that he never mentions?
We shouldn't forget that there are a lot of places across the world where people could say exactly that about the west.
Heck, there are a growing number of people[0] in the west who say that about their own leaders/governments.
[0] Public Trust in Government: 1958-2021 https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust...
Are you really sure? There are things people in the West don't talk about.
If there were no peaceful people in Mariupol, we'll just turn it into ashes with all the Azov nazis.
Don't you think it is kinda logical for Azov to just not let peaceful citizens go, because now they're like a shield for them?
Hiding a few soldiers in an evacuation group, attacking russians from a group of civilians, and then blaming russians for shooting at those civilians is just one of many nasty war tactics.
What really happened, we will probably never know.
We both have just mainstream media reporting what they want us to believe, which might or might not be true. Soldiers hiding in refugee groups is a thing that has happened before, and whatever they do, it makes the other side look bad, when they shoot back.
Your claim makes no sense. Why would Ukraine want to hide soldiers in refugees leaving the country? Even if they did, then being unarmed and leaving means they’re not legitimate targets.