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Comment by andrewflnr | Hacker News Reader

"Balls" have little to do with it. It looks to me like the invasion of Ukraine was the act of a desperate old man whose time is running out to achieve his ambitions, and a mistake based on wishful thinking rather than a sober assessment of relative military capability and popular sentiment of the two countries. This is not a man you can trust to be rational. We should assume he will continue to act out of pride and delusion. If he thinks he doesn't have anything left to lose, we should assume nukes are on the table.

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Unfortunately with that logic then we will never push back against Russia. Putin invades Poland? “Oh we shouldn’t attack because Putin is irrational and might use Nukes, we’ll try appeasement first.” This interview with exiled Russian M. Khodorkovski (who used to be the richest guy in Russia until Putin jailed him for 10 years) is pretty convincing that this fear makes the “West” look weak to Putin and he’ll keep pushing until he’s stopped. https://youtu.be/OX6ISz0FotU

Poland is a NATO member, so invading it would trigger a really massive response of all treaty members to which NATO has been preparing since 1970s at least.

Ukraine is being beaten exactly because it is not a NATO member, but actively considered to become one.

Exactly, but then why doesn’t NATO just start a massive response now to save the lives of potentially tens of thousands of Ukrainians that may die in the next few weeks?

Because NATO doesn’t care enough.

Yep. If we had any justification for military intervention in Ukraine, they wouldn't have been invaded in the first place. We kind of just have to hope this damages Putin's and/or Russia's power enough that they don't do it again. Signs are not entirely unfavorable on that front.

Poland is a NATO member, and an invasion would be treated entirely differently because of that.

Just to write down a thought that nobody likes to express--maybe the best move is to let a nuclear aggressor take whatever they want. I think in retrospect it might seem like the best move if things take a turn for the worse.

Nah, I think MAD and letting Russia eat itself from within is working as well as anything can be expected to.

So if Putin wants to take over all of Europe we should just let him?

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