I think the sympathy for Ukrainians is a bit of a pretext. It's not just a pretext, there is clearly a lot of sympathy in Europe for Ukraine, not the least because of the geographical and cultural proximity, and we all know ukrainians personally. But the real reason for Europe to be tough on Russia is because Russia is now directly threatening EU countries (Baltic states, Poland, etc). And I do not understand how we can justify financing what has become a direct enemy.
Which is why an equivalence with Yemen or any other conflict, no matter how violent it is, isn't really convincing.
But there are many other means to be tough with Russia without triggering an all-out war. Not giving him money or trading with him is a start. Providing an unlimited supply of weapons, intelligence and humanitarian aid to Ukraine is another.
We should also be mindful that staying clear of a direct confrontation with Russia doesn't mean Russia should be allowed to set up all sorts of arbitrary red lines in term of what they claim constitutes an act of war. Providing planes to Ukraine for instance isn't an act of war by any standard. Biden's veto on the transfer of the Migs was really an act of weakness that will call for Putin to define more red lines. I heard general McMaster recently mentioning Russian pilots were shooting at US troops in Korea and Vietnam.
“Ask HN: Ukrainians, why don’t you surrender?”
I don't get how people behave when you try to look from other people's perspective and share your opinion, if it doesn't match with their opinion, you immediately marked as "brainwashed", "troll", "stupid conservative" and so on.
Why on Earth we gave up diversity of opinions and started thinking only one side is always right.
* US can ban mass media - stopping propoganda. any other country banning media - violation of freedom of speech * US invades a country, destroys economy for another 50 years - fighting for human rights. any other country, aggressor * CIA tortures - that's fine, we need to get terrorists. any other country - human right violations. * US says something - right! any other person - ohh brainwashed, troll, as if we don't have a brain and we don't compare actions of governments
As to who decides, I believe it's a combination of user flagging and moderation by a few HN mods.
* George Bush
* Hillary Clinton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz3-OzcExI happy for destroying a nation)
* Joe Biden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=927i2HAgxms telling how he suggested bombing Belgrade)
* Colin Powell (famous lier, who lied to invade another country) and many more stupid politicians.
I don't trust Putin as well, but that's not main issue here, my concern is ordinary people, like you and me are dying! for what? they even don't know. Imagine you wake tomorrow with bombs are dropped in your neighborhood, would you care about what Biden or Putin is talking about? No, you will try to save your family, because they are civilians like you and me. My guess is, this war is because of geopolitical games (not my expertise, just thinking out loud), not because we deeply care about Ukrainian people or Russians, we just care about our pockets, and selfish imperialism. If they don't obey us, let the regime change!
We are human species, we haven't chose Earth, why millions should get killed for the ambitious of very small subset of humans
a) die, or,
b) fight to death with so-so chances of survival.
It is not a choice between:
x) to live under Russian rule(impossible as Russians don’t tolerate life)
x) or die(possible but not a choice).
As such, recommending a surrender is just trolling. Blame Russians for that!
Question sounds pathetic, sorry for that, couldn't find better words, but mostly civilians are suffering in this war, why don't you ask Zelensky to surrender and stop this war?
Here is my rationale:
* every single day of war costing more civilian lives from Ukrainian side
* every attack is destroying Ukraine
* every weapon sent by West as a "help" is going to increase resistance, which in turn makes war to last longer.
* don't expect intervention from West, otherwise we might see nuclear bomb thrown to somewhere
* we can ask same question to Putin, why don't you stop the war, but he started war, so he is not going to stop it unless agreement is reached
Let's talk about different cases of power balance:
1. Russia has more power: that means eventually Ukraine will be capitulated
2. Ukraine has more power: Ukraine will win this war, assuming it won't attack Russia, whole Ukraine will be in ruins, lots of lives lost, but in Russia side no civilians are killed, economy will recover, people will say Putin was to blame, now he died, include us to EU
3. equal power balance: war indefinitely
4. Someone from government kills Putin: Then they can say, look we killed him, we are not responsible, so lift the sanctions, similar situation to Option 2 will happen
Option 2 is unlikely at this moment, even if it happens, Ukraine won't win economically, look at what happened in Libya, Syria their economies didn't recover after war.
Stop the war, don't expect Putin is going to stop this war, don't fuel war with weapons.
But I could offer a concession, at the time, that the solutions were not off-the-shelf available.
Now? The bottom has fell out of the "we can't" argument. Solar just kept going down in price along with batteries. Anyone defending coal power is hardly doing so on the price argument. A solar-based economy is not familiar, no. We will have to build infrastructure that turns on and off daily and seasonally in response to electricity supply-and-demand balance. There are large engineering changes needed... but no cultural ones.
There's no day like today. The energy transition will benefit our friends and crush our enemies.
Yes, there are other oil and gas suppliers. No, Germany and the EU cannot just suddenly switch.
Fools for relying on Russian energy in the first place.
This is a tough one. Yes, but at same time there was and still is a long term benefit to normalizing Russia’s identity as a “Western” power. That’s a long haul project and Germany/EU wasn’t wrong to engage economically with them, mutually, to that end.
Given the history of Germany/Russia in particular, this mutual dependence is arguably working exactly as it was intended - cooling impulses.
Arguably an error to become strategically dependent upon a resource pool you’re not capable of securing for yourself when the chips are down but hasn’t that ever been Germany’s post-industrial challenge? Much to the world’s relief, I might add.
Engaging economically is one thing, dependence on Russian energy is another. It was absolutely insane post-2014 to have an energy strategy with such a profound dependency on Russia. One US President warned Europe and Germany of such a dependence, and they quite literally laughed at him to his face.
At minimum Germany and the EU could have taken measures to ensure optionality in the event that Russia did as Russia has historically done.
>Given the history of Germany/Russia in particular, this mutual dependence is arguably working exactly as it was intended - cooling impulses.
It does not appear (to me) that Russia has cooled their impulses at all.
This is very obviously not a double standard, as the first one directly affects Europeans in a way which the second one does not.
Imagine, Germany bans Russian oil, does it make you a happy if they buy oil from Saudi? For me its same, both sides are killing innocent people, why make a switch then?
No matter how evil the Saudis are, their bullshit does not affect me in the same way that Russian actions do.
That's the reason why Ukraine war happened. We don't care, unless it is happening in our neighborhood! Now it is too late.
when is it simply hypocrisy?
hard questions.
War in Ukraine directly affects European security and pushes millions of refugees into Europe. The Yemeni conflict obviously does not directly affect Europeans.
It's like being robbed at gunpoint and negotiating a deal with the robber about how much you might keep.
Can you name the party?
if you say Russia, put yourself on their shoes and answer the question, if you see NATO expanding to your borders together with the country ruled by people like Geroge Bush, Hillary Clinton (see how she is happy for destroying whole nation and their government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz3-OzcExI), Joe Biden (I was suggesting we bomb Belgrade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vei_18YcC6E) and Colin Powell who blatantly lied about bio weapons and illegally invaded another country, would you believe their word and allow them to expand to Ukraine? Country fighting for free speech who put Julian Assange on jail because he exposed US crime?
I wouldn't believe, I don't agree with Putin on starting war, but I also believe, he didn't wake up with migraine and decided to start a war, no he was pushed to this war
Second, even if there were no nuclear weapons in play, NATO ain't the USA and UK alone. Most NATO states had more or less castrated their military to the point that even successful conventional defense depends cooperation with all other members. That's over since 2014 and even more so since 2022. Putin woke the sleeping giant. Germany alone will more than match Russia's conventional military in the future. Putin created his own opponent. Before that, NATO was structurally incapable of attacking Russia conventionally without a year long buildup of forces.
And finally, if it comes to the thread of a color revolution: Putin has had all the chances to both develop close and lasting ties to the EU and make his own people happy. He had the money and the tools. All he would have needed to do was to stop running the country like a mafia clan. He could have gone down in history as the great Russian reformer but now he will go down as its grave digger.
If you do, then you're a fool.
If you don't, then you're a liar.
"Regardless, the United States publicly maintains that "the Memorandum is not legally binding", calling it a "political commitment"."[0]
"not legally binding", below.
"Media Statement by the U.S. Embassy in Minsk April 12, 2013 Repeated assertions by the government of Belarus that U.S. sanctions violate the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances are unfounded. Although the Memorandum is not legally binding, we take these political commitments seriously and do not believe any U.S. sanctions, whether imposed because of human rights or non-proliferation concerns, are inconsistent with our commitments to Belarus under the Memorandum or undermine them. Rather, sanctions are aimed at securing the human rights of Belarusians and combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other illicit activities, not at gaining any advantage for the United States."[1]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20140419030507/http://minsk.usem...
seems that guarantees weren't worth the paper written on, in the first place, but everyone keeps on talking about them as if they were ironclad somehow.
The sad truth is there was no real guarantees at all, just an empty promise to make it politically feasible for the Ukrainian politicians to sign.