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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

" I have trained myself to ignore the news, or rather I have trained myself to think I can ignore the news, or rather I thought news can ignore me and we both can mutually agree on ignoring without even temporarily igniting the interest or a glimpse of it towards each another."

and then:

"But now, a real war... A war, aggression, a direct invasion is something my consciousness cannot ignore. It devours all my attention, all my thoughts, all my emotions and feelings – everything."

"Pain because of all countless stories, photos, videos, and live TikToks of destroyed cities and injured people, shootings, shoutings, explosions. Pain because I have friends from and in Ukraine. They tell me stories about their families and other people hiding in the undergrounds and basements, or desperately trying to leave their country, without food, shelter, or medicine."

There was always stuff to be scared of on the news. But from his perspective, what's changed? He still doesn't have any personal experience of this war, any more than he had of the previous stories he saw or ignored.

What's happened is that he is bought into it, because of the scale of what is being presented to him on screens.

There are other wars, but somehow those are/were possible to ignore (eg Yemen, Afganistan, Iraq, Ukraine pre-2022, etc). Eg apparently 97 people were killed in Iraq last month: https://original.antiwar.com/updates/2022/03/31/iraq-monthly... ... but this is NOT news.

This war is only special because the media are putting it in our faces. The media is a part of this - they are playing a role. Their role is to increase fear, by bringing our attention to this all the time. It is likely to me that the media reaction plays a role in pushing people to do something - sign up to fight, flee their homes, etc.

I don't trust the media nor what is presented. I'd like to understand better why this war is sucking in all the air, and why we have this being presented to us. I expect that the mass co-ordination of the media in promoting this story, at this time (immediately after covid) indicates that we are being manipulated.

View on HN

That this war is getting so much attentions but other wars is not can seem and is in some sense unfair.

But there are geopolitical consideration which means that this war is of much higher interest to the west than any other war going on. Both EU and NATO has large combined land borders with Russian and Ukraine, and a war on their border is deeply problematic for both organizations, and their members. Which both organizations, and their members actions after the attack bears proof of.

If you look at Europe, the political changes around security policy and that many European countries that have prided themselves on not shipping weapons to war zone have reversed their long standing policies on not doing that, is staggering, and it is clear a seismic shift in policies is happening in Europe.

Then there is the fact that this is the fastest growing refuge crises since the second world war.

All of these and many other considerations is the reason why the war is the story now. It might seem unfair and racist, and in some sense it is, but it isn't the medias fault. The war in Ukraine is the big story because it affects more and has bigger implications.

Btw. Just to be crystal clear, I'm not arguing that the lack of interest in other wars are just, or right. I'm just arguing why there is a difference, and what the reasons for them are.

I don't know where you live but 3 million refugees are pretty hard to ignore if you're in Europe. I was in Warsaw least week, there is 300,000 refugees in a city of 1.5M, many people are housing refugees in their spare rooms, hard to ignore that even without watching one bit of news.

If you're living in the US, maybe it's a good thing you guys hear what goes on around the world. I think foreign news taking up so little time in the US was always fascinating to me and really contributes to many of the wrong prejudices that are held about the rest of the world IMO (although news about war is probably not the best at reducing those) .

> But from his perspective, what's changed? He still doesn't have any personal experience of this war, any more than he had of the previous stories he saw or ignored.

His country began a war of aggression, with not even an attempt at reasonable pretence[0], against a country with people you could probably describe as having a sibling or cousin like relationship with his, for an attempt at an analogy, it would be like Australia invading New Zealand, or the USA invading Canada.

And it's causing schisms with his family members still in his country due to the heavy propaganda they ingest.

That's a fair bit of change there, mate. I'm assuming you read the same article I did, if so, not sure how your conclusion was "Screens bad".

[0]: Before we hit the whataboutism, GW Bush's government tried hard to convince the UN that they had evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Putin just yelled "Nazis!" and went for it.

From Germany it is closer to Kiew than to Rome and 5k refugees arrive every day in Berlin, so it seems very rational that this war is featuring as big as it is.

The big question is why we aren't capable of acting together to stop this war (and the others you are mentioned) without falling in the imperialist trap that Afghanistan was for the last 20 years. How can we stop the murdering Russian/Saudi/Talian regimes if their people can't seem to find the power to do it themselves?

Edit: lol, messed up the distances. Kiew to Berlin is pretty much Rome to Berlin. Anyway, the point was: this war is too damn close to ignore.

(Covid certainly isn't over when you look at the statistics in Europe btw)

> From Germany it is closer to Kiew than to Rome

It’s not. It’s 950km from Munich to Rome. Munich to Kiev is 1700km and Dresden to Kiev is still 1500km+.

>From Germany it is closer to Kiew than to Rome

False. It's ~1210 km from Berlin to Kiev and it's 1180 km from Berlin to Rome. If we are to take closest points between territories, the difference becomes much bigger.

Also it's ~1000 km from Berlin to Belgrad and I do not remember a similar outcry during the NATO invasion.

>How can we stop the murdering Russian/Saudi/Talian regimes if their people can't seem to find the power to do it themselves?

Right after the US and EU citizens will be able to stop numerous invasions by their governments with much higher death tolls.

A couple of days ago there was a similar discussion on Italian television and one of the politicians there was asking questions similar to yours.

Incredibly enough, the TV host interrupted him and said "but they (the Ukraininans) are like us!". They are like us! "They are European brothers", he added. I don't understand how you have the courage to say something like this on TV: if you don't have a better argument keep your mouth shut.

He immediately tried to retract it, saying that he was referring to geographical distance. Of course, when he was made aware that we also bombed Libya, which is way closer to Italy than Ukraine is, he didn't know what to say then.

Just to add context to this "fuoqi" account.

> the NATO invasion

Sometimes, just tiny wording shows beautifully where a person is coming from. And yep, this is Serbian account.

Serbians are very proud of their war crimes and consider being stopped while doing genocide a great slight - they are also allies of Russia.

Yeah, Serbia doesn’t have gas to hold the west hostage. Everything else is the same or worse: Putin is Miloschevitch with nukes.

> How can we stop the murdering Russian/Saudi/Talian regimes if their people can't seem to find the power to do it themselves?

Well first by ensuring there are channels and means for them to get out of the news cycle that keeps so many believing that everything is a-okay.

The massive exit from Russia for entities not covered by sanctions and so many of the senseless actions(TikTok dance to stop the war, banning Russian cats from shows, freedom fries 2.0 with Moscow mule), this basically has only strengthened the power of the news cycle in Russia, made it more credible that there is a conspiracy against Russians. Many Russians that did leave to neighboring countries survive only because of the Mir payment network (Russia's card payment system), those within Russia can't even circumvent the news cycle because they can't get access to VPN services to bypass restrictions.

There are a lot of people who want change in Russia and they need to convince those stuck in the news cycle. But now they can't and increasingly, it looks like the Russian systems support them through this event and the Russian systems alone.

The claimed intent is to punish the government and send a message; all it's done is punish ordinary people who do protest and do work to do exactly what those behind the sanction actions want.

The world is awash in propaganda and feel good moves, and ultimately it just harms the goal of stoppinh such behavior by removing the only power they had to do so in the first place.

I dont think you meant it as a judgement, but try to imagine being in the position where you're expected to enact change, and every resource you'd usually use to do so is taken from you because "you need to learn a lesson". What are people supposed to do?

> The big question is why we aren't capable of acting together to stop this war

Nuclear weapons. It's nuclear weapons. The answer to every "why is..." question here is 1,588 ready to deploy nuclear weapons and 2,889 in reserve.

I overheard a colleague talking to another colleague about it, and what he said was "this is a christian country they're invading!"

I privately raised an eyebrow at the time, but I later understood what he meant and probably what the media is saying: they might be coming for us next, i.e. other culturally christian countries.

We tolerated/ignored the Syrian conflict because we could not see ourselves in them.

I wonder about his opinion regarding the US-NATO invasion of Yugoslavia in which christian Serbs got bombed into stone age to protect muslims and change state borders in the middle of Europe by force.

The Serbs had bad PR at the time, having been seen to be responsible for some pretty awful things. I'm not saying they didn't do them, I'm emphasising that it depends on whether the west sees you as a bad guy like Saddam. Only after the bad guy level does it matter who you actually are in terms of proximity to Western culture. The Nazi regime were also Christian bad guys.

The media apparatus of the west can turn any people into its justified enemy; Christian or not - it really doesn’t matter once the machine gets rolling.

Are you sure it doesn't work the other way around? That is, first the United States government (usually it's them, after all) decides you're getting hit with a war, and then you're portrayed as a bad guy, worse than Hitler, a threat "our democracy" and to all life on the planet — and the people eat it up, put the Ruritanian flag on their profile pictures, and "stand with Ruritania," because we'll fight the bastards to the last Ruritanian. And then we fund the bad guy to fight for us in our next conflict against the real villain.

There was definitely some Christianity amongst the Nazis. I'm fairly certain that Hitler, and most of the leadership, were atheist. Modern Nazis are definitely very Christian.

Not taking sides, I am atheist but not a Nazi. I just don't think saying Nazis were Christians is necessarily correct.

Ugh, such a cringeworthy and blatant lie. Serbia raged wars to prevent former Yugoslavia’s states gaining independence. They committed war crime such as the Srebrenica massacre. 8,000 Bosnian civilians were killed there by Serbians under UN’s watch. And not just Muslims Bosnians, many Croatians were the victims of the war as well. 13,000 civilians were killed in the Kosovo war, including more than 10,000 Albanians. Compared that to 500 Serbian civilians killed by NATO’s bombing.

The are actually two Serbian states: the independent Serbia with Belgrade as it’s capital and Republika Srpska (a constituent state in Bosnia and Hercegovina).

While I’m not denying that there was some collusion between the two, they largely operated as independent entities. The Srebrenica massacre was perpetrated by Srpska forces while the war in Kosovo was waged by Republika Srbija which as a separate event that happened a few years later.

And let’s not pretend that local Serbians weren’t also targets of ethnic cleansing during both conflicts (no I’m not trying to imply in any way that I support what Serbian armies died because of that)

Russia is a Christian country as well.

Ironically one of the direct consequences of the West's intervention in Iraq and Syria was the decimation of the Christian communities in those countries from the ensuing instability. These are some of the oldest Christian communities in the world and they have survived wars and hostile rule for more than a thousand years, but in a short few years the wars started by the supposedly Christian West were more or less able to wipe them out.

Similarly ironic was the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. As the gateway to the outside world, Nagasaki contained the earliest and most significant Christian community in Japan. Again, they have survived persecution for hundreds of years, and was flourishing after Japan opened up to the West, until they were dealt a terrible blow by the bomb (together with the other unfortunate inhabitants of the city).

So judging by the consequences of the actions, the West have not been particularly successful in acting in the best interest of Christians in the rest of the world, and protecting Christians have certainly not been a foreign policy priority for the West for a very long time, if ever.

> This war is only special because the media are putting it in our faces.

You don’t even have to do much work to understand that this is simply not true. 97 people were killed in Iraq, but probably tens of thousands of people were killed in Ukraine in the last month. It’s a two orders of magnitude difference just between these two numbers.

I honestly don’t understand how anyone can not see this unless they are actively trying not to see.

Deleted

We might need to know from where country you are to understand better what your misunderstanding is.

I am from Romania, I don't watch TV, I don read news, but this was is different, nobody forced their media into me, I am going and checking to see what is happening. It is a bias and you can accuse me that I am not a robot and I care for people that are very similar to me (similar past, same religion, similar political insignificance compared with the giants).

So from my perspective some media gives us what we want, they are using their professional team to go and film,talk to people and verify the existing stories that we already find on social media but add their "cofimed or unconfirmed" label on that.

Btw I remember as kid I was watching TV with my grand=father, watching news from Chechnya war, and watching their leader speeches, I could not understand things then but I knew who were the patriots too, so at least here in Romania we always had an interest on who around us are Russians killing now and speculating are we next, or maybe our brothers in Modldova are next...

Check out a history book about the lead up to 1939 (including an afterword why Russia doesn’t think 1939 is a special).

Do you believe there's a real risk of Russia invading and occupying other countries in Europe?

Georgia and Moldova are on the same path as Ukraine, they want to be members of the EU.

All three countries are outside of NATO and EU, so they will have no one daring help them against a Russian invasion.

Putin has shown that he is willing to take on 44 million Ukrainians with the invasion of Ukraine, so it's impossible to know if Georgia and Moldova are also on the list.

Any country not a member of any defense pact are at risk, so membership of the EU is a sound but also dangerous choice.

A regime change in Russia would of course change the dynamics, but that outcome seems highly unlikely.

You are entirely correct, those countries have good reason to fear Russia (with the additional complexity of substantial numbers of ethnic Russians in those countries), but, as I wrote a month ago [1], there is a symmetry here and Russia also has good reason to fear NATO, for the latter, in the last 2 decades, have invaded (directly or through proxy forces): Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan. The sibling post [2] by "chrisco255" summrises some of the arrising issues.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30479658

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30887328

The symmetry of NATO being involved in the named countries is hard to view as a threat to Russia.

Yes, those countries are all in Asia, same as Russia, but apart from that it's a really weak argument that Russia should feel threatened.

In no way can the invasion of Ukraine be justified and yet here we are, nobody can tell if Putin wants to invade Georgia or Moldova.

It requires a paranoid person such as Putin, to think NATO has a master plan for attacking Russia.

> nobody can tell if Putin wants to invade Georgia or Moldova.

Actually… Moldavia would be next, no NATO, no EU, Transnitria is already practically under Russian control.

Russia has no reason to fear NATO - it's ridiculous. No one is going to invade the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

Direct invasion isn’t the only existential threat a country can face.

I know the following hypothetical is implausible as a genuine reality, it’s purely for the sake of illustrating the first step of one possible ultra-Hawkish-Russian narrative:

“How screwed is Russia if NATO countries never end the current sanctions, and NATO slowly increases its sphere of influence until Russia was the only one outside it?”

The domino theory led the USA into Vietnam, after all, and Vietnam was never a threat to the USA.

Considering that in preparation for the invasion of Ukraine Putin more or less emptied his NATO borders (Norway, Baltics) of troops, it seems that Putin in reality is not afraid of any NATO invasion. It's just political rhetoric.

The year Germany and their Soviet allies invaded Poland; just another year in the Russian Empire.

And just a year after the Poles and their Nazi allies invaded Czechoslovakia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Czechoslovakia_(...

If we're going to start counting who gave up what to Germany there isn't a country in Europe that didn't make a deal with the devil hoping someone else would be eaten first.

0.64% of Czechoslovak / 0.23% of Polish territory for a year, shame (rightfully) forever.

"You forgot Poland" [1]

Ukraine and Poland both invaded Irak in a recent war of aggression [2, 3].

Have you contemplated the question of helping to bring to trial the Polish leaders that signed off this violation of the international rule-based order?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidentia...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_involvement_in_the_2003...

After seeing the Ukraine situation, and hearing Prof. Mearsheimer's take on it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4), I've begun to look at the world through a balance of powers political lens. Many of the countries we think of as independent nations, are only pseudo-independent. Much of the Western world has ceded its defense to the United States under NATO in the wake of WW2 and then again after the collapse of Soviet Union.

Ukraine is a pawn, unfortunately. A strategic middle ground wedge point from which NATO hopes to box Russia in and prevent it from redeveloping as a peer competitor. Russia wants to be a peer competitor so that it can have self-sovereignty, and dominating oil fields and the Black Sea is critical for them to achieve that. China does too, that's why it wants Taiwan, as a strategic location in the south China Sea.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, etc. these were all deemed strategic geography by the neo-cons and neo-libs that run the United States. They're playing chess with other people's homelands. The goal, from their perspective, is to contain threats (Iran, North Korea, etc) and prevent other great powers and peer competitors from emerging unless they agree to cede some sovereignty.

The thought is that these sort of behavior will prevent another world war. If you can spread democracy around, after all, it's extremely rare that two democracies that actively trade with each other do war with each other. But I think this grand experiment has proven to be a failure. Not all countries have the culture for democracy. And culture matters a great deal. For these countries, introducing democracy (or puppet democracy, as the CIA is wont to do) is often simply destabilizing.

I honestly hate my country's meddling around the world. I think it was something we reluctantly took on in the wake of WW2, but the whole military-industrial-technocratic-espionage apparatus that has developed in our country as a result of decades of this sort of policy has undermined our own democracy at home. And we're rapidly approaching a new world in which we are far from the 40s where we had 45% of the world GDP. And we've wrecked more countries than we've helped, in my opinion.

But at the same time, I am kinda anxious about a world where the U.S. leaves a vacuum for others to fill. We really won't have a choice, in the near future, though. The financial gravity of this situation will hit us sooner or later, and we'll have to scale back. We've already ceded ground to the Russians and Chinese on hypersonic, EMP, and submarine weaponry.

And I feel for the people stuck in the middle. The world is reverting back to a multi-polar state of affairs. I hope we do not repeat the 1930s and 40s as a result.

The US and CIA have almost zero interest in building stable prosperous and independent democracies. As long as foreign government serves their agenda it does not matter whether it's a democracy or not (Saudi Arabia, the Shah regime in Iran, Pinochet in Chile, autocratic government in South Korea during Cold War). And if a democracy does not follow the US will, well, it's worse for that democracy (see Muslim Brotherhood overthrown by military coup in Egypt and two unconstitutional power changes in Ukraine).

Russia moans about NATO encirclement, but it's being encircled because literally no country around it trusts Russia not to conquer them. NATO isn't a conquering alliance it's a mutual defense pact. The history of the Soviet-era is one of Russian genocide and racism towards literally every non-Russian soviet state, and millions dead in purges and legislated famines.

Russia's national identity has been that it's a victim, because it helps them ignore the fact that it's a national embarrassment that a country with that much natural resources wealth has a GDP smaller than Italy.

Ukraine is being invaded to the satisfy the ego and delusions of a despot who fears democracies and can't conceive of the idea of a free election. Recent events are a real good litmus test of who is worth listening to and Mearsheimer turns out to be yet another pundit running the DC track who spins happy fantasies that everything is "under control".

Quote from him prior to 2022: "If you really want to wreck Russia, what you should do is to encourage it to try to conquer Ukraine. Putin is much too smart to try that".

Another useless DC circuiter in the social sciences with nothing useful to say.

You're missing one important thing - all of the countries controlled by Soviets wanted out. Life at the other side of Berlin wall was objectively better. It is true till today (see protests in Belarus after elections, and as the matter of fact - current war).

This line of argument assumes, that if NATO refrained from expansion, east Europe would be a happy Russian family. That's not true. I'm living in a post Soviet country and I find argument, that we were pawn played into joining NATO repulsive. We wanted to join NATO because it was only way to stop Russia from exploiting us. It came with tradeoffs of course, but it's not directly comparable in any way, shape or form.

Russian propaganda loves this narrative about "geopolitical goals", because it is making them look like equal peer being challenged by expanding west. This is not true. They are bully trying to keep control of their victims.

I’m struck how many times I’ve heard the pro-Russia apologists here evoke Mearsheimer and his speech on NATO’s eastward expansion as a common-sense view of what’s happening in Ukraine. The damage the man has done.

edit: “Simplistic and wrong”: Sir Adam Roberts responds to John Mearsheimer, who recently argued in a guest essay for The Economist that the expansion of NATO was reckless and provoked Russia: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/03/26/sir-adam-...

I find this type of thinking thinking repulsive. Individuals and cultures are not allowed to decide their own fate? I can only assume you're not from a country threatened by a more powerful neighbour.

If you were would you be happy to sacrifice your freedoms, your democratic voice, the future of your children just in case it might annoy a bigger neighbour?

The West largely got over these urges after Vietnam. Invading and bombing the shit out of countries because they voluntarily decide to align themselves with others that we don't like is no longer considered acceptable. This is a hugely positive development and has meant the end of world wars but it clearly irks those who long for a world run along the lines of the 19th great game where a small number of great powers get to decide the form of government or alliances of weaker countries.

To attempt to draw parallels between NATO and the EU and Russia is disingenuous. NATO and the EU are voluntary associations - countries can join or can decide to leave. Countries don't align themselves with NATO or the EU because NATO or the EU threatens them - they do so because others threaten them.

> The West largely got over these urges after Vietnam. Invading and bombing the shit out of countries because they voluntarily decide to align themselves with others that we don't like is no longer considered acceptable.

What about Libya?

I don't see the relevance. Military intervention in Libya was not motivated because the Libyans decided to align with Russia or China or another anti-Western power?

I'm not claiming the West became pacifist after Vietnam, as such a claim would be clearly nonsense. My claim is that the west no longer sees a country's political difference as a justification for military intervention - unlike Russia. Nearly all wars involving western powers since then have either been to intervene in an existing civil war (often misguided) or in response to military aggression.

In the Libyan, case it was the former - a civil war.

So why don’t you count the civil war against primarily Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine which has been ongoing for the past eight years?

Invading a country with mostly non-white, non-christian people: not news

Invading a country with most white, christian people: news

I don’t think there’s any single global conspiracy, just some deeply seated bias in our systems. But when media outlets, governments, and other organizations all individually try to take advantage of or fall into the biases, you get what smells like global conspiracy.

Alternatively: invading a stable, non-aggressor democratic country: news.

I'm not sure if you're serious promoting such a characterization of Ukraine.

Stable is especially egregious, given there's an ongoing war in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

Also, sovereignty is in no way tied to the government system: under international law, you have no more right to invade a dictatorship than a democracy.

Disagree. The conflict in Donbas was started when Russian forces helped those who wanted to take up arms against Ukraine.

Had there been no Russian help, things would look very different.

Unless you don't agree on the definition of "stable", there's not much to say. You simply cannot define a country with an 8 years long conflict as "stable", whichever the reasons for this conflict are.

> Russian forces helped those who wanted to take up arms against Ukraine. > Had there been no Russian help, things would look very different.

What you said is true but it fails to provide the context of why these people took up arms against their own government. This is a complicated topic and I don't have the time nor the will to write an in-depth answer, but had there be no Russian help there would be thousands more dead civilians in Donbas rather than the ~3000 there are now.

You mean the context being that the FSB, in a campaign of bribery and murder, ensured that pro-Russian voices assented, and then when the Russian military moved in, ensured that the referendums of the question of whether to join Russia were "properly observed"?

Just one of those things where the territory bordering Russia, easiest to occupy in a campaign of incremental encroachment of the style Russia was/is running in Georgia, also happened to wind up with a pro-Russian rebel group.

You are conveniently ignoring that a democratically elected government was violently overthrown in Ukraine, with the involvement of the US, and not everyone was okay with it.

After that, those who dissented ended up protesting, and later being supported by Russia. You are not mentioning the explicit discrimination against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, the extrajudicial kidnappings and killings, which were not only not condemned, but often cheered upon by the "new" institutions.

You are making it look like the war in Donbas did not arise from legitimate population concerns/their self-determination will, but rather a Russian operation.

You mean Euromaidan[1] in 2014? In which Russian puppet Yanukovych used riot police to fire live ammo on protesters, after publicly and "bizarrely" backing out of EU negotiations in favor of Russia, who afterwards was just so happened to find sanctuary in Russia and has been repeatedly named as the favored replacement for democratically-elected Zelensky, who Russia has repeatedly tried to assassinate in the past month?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan

Yanukovich was democratically elected as well, but, of course, you are using the adjective only when referring to Zelensky. The fact that you don't like his policies doesn't make it less democratic.

Just glossing over the "shooting protesters" part then?

Nothing stopped him re-contesting the election. Given that he was removed parliamentary vote [1], then disavowed by his own party and then mysteriously enjoyed the assistance of Russian Spetsnaz before he somehow turning up in Moscow.

But you know, apparently none of that counted as democracy - but, to be expected since you've just been parroting Putin propaganda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych#Parliamentar...

> Given that he was removed parliamentary vote [1] [...] But you know, apparently none of that counted as democracy

The source you link says this:

> The constitutionality of Yanukovych's removal from office has been questioned by constitutional experts.[192] According to Daisy Sindelar from Radio Free Europe, the impeachment may have not followed the procedure provided by the constitution: "[I]t is not clear that the hasty February 22 vote upholds constitutional guidelines, which call for a review of the case by Ukraine's Constitutional Court and a three-fourths majority vote by the Verkhovna Rada -- i.e., 338 lawmakers." The vote, as analyzed by Sindelar, had ten votes less than those required by the constitutional guidelines. However, Sindelar noted in the same article that, "That discrepancy may soon become irrelevant, with parliament expected to elect a new prime minister no later than February 24." The decision to remove Yanukovich was supported by 328 deputies.[b][191][194][19][195]

> Although the legislative removal by an impeachment procedure would have lacked the number of votes required by Ukraine's constitution,[193] the resolution did not follow the impeachment procedure but instead established that Yanukovych "withdrew from his duties in an unconstitutional manner" and cited "circumstances of extreme urgency",[191][194] a situation for which there was no stipulation in the then-current Ukrainian constitution.[196]

Yes, ignoring the procedures doesn't count as democracy. Popular support doesn't give you a right to ignore constitution. Just because you feel the other party is a bad guy - and he may well be - doesn't mean you can invent new laws in the spur of the moment.

So where is the US interference? You were adamant it existed, but now your complaint is Ukranians didn't follow their constitution? Yanukovich was voted out and sought no petition with the Ukranian courts to resolve the issue?

How are those rubles spending these days? Dead Ukranian civilian blood didn't lubricate them very well did they?

> So where is the US interference? You were adamant it existed

No, I wasn't? You're confusing me with another commenter, possibly? I just said that the protesters enjoyed the rhetorical support of foreign officials, which is definitely true because I witnessed it myself, living in Poland at the time and remember what Radek Sikorski was saying back then. I also added that they turned foreign embassy - Canadian, to be precise - into a temporary field hospital. I also mentioned that I read on the wiki that the protesters were supported financially by foreign capital, though I'm not sure if it's true or what form did it take.

> but now your complaint is Ukranians didn't follow their constitution?

Yes, exactly. It's not a rule of law if you don't follow the law. Simple as that. I'm not saying Yanukovych was a good guy, I'm saying that by jumping the gun and removing him in an unconstitutional way you played right into the hands of your adversaries. You shouldn't have done that - you should have followed the law to the letter. That's my opinion, you can disagree of course, but then I'd like to know what did you get out of that way of doing things, that you wouldn't get if the new elections were held a month later.

> How are those rubles spending these days? Dead Ukranian civilian blood didn't lubricate them very well did they?

What are you even talking about? Could you please calm down? I'm not your enemy, I'm not pro-russia, and I don't care what Ukrainians do in their own country. I'm doing my best to maintain neutral stance, even though I'm personally affected by the genocide perpetrated by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army under the ideology of Bandera. I'm willing to let it go - it was a long time ago, after all - and remain neutral, but you're certainly not helping me in that.

There's exactly one government on earth currently invested in pushing the notion that Ukraine isn't a democracy, and boy it's been upset since their bought puppet they provided special forces protection and asylum too was ousted from power because his people didn't want to be sold out to Russia.

And mysteriously your only argument is a talking point about how his removal wasn't democratic, speaking nothing of anything which happened since then.

> And mysteriously your only argument is a talking point about how his removal wasn't democratic

It's written on the Wiki page you linked. Don't you think it would be better if it wasn't written there? Don't you think you'd have an easier time afterwards if there were no doubts about constitutionality?

Can't you just say that "yes, it would have been easier to counter Russian propaganda if there were no doubts like this, but we had no other choice" and move on? Or, if you believe that doing things in a way that cast doubts on the constitutionality of the process was not a mistake and helped you, can't you explain to me how did it help you or your cause?

Yeah, it's a "talking point" for Russia. You gave them that talking point on a silver platter. In my opinion, you've made a strategic mistake at the time. That's all. I'm not talking about anything before or after that point. I'm not judging, I'm not supporting, and I'm not condemning. I'm trying to give you an impartial perspective on the specific point in time, based on the description you yourself linked.

I see that you're not interested in such a perspective. You want unconditional support and praises for everything you did. However, I'm not interested in that. Being on the same side - having a common enemy in Russia - doesn't mean we have to agree with everything you did and how you did it. You will have my support because Russia is a threat to me, too. To get my sympathy, however, you'll need to be able to rationally talk about the less glorious events in history and in recent memory, too. Assuming that just because I criticize some development it must mean that I'm on Moscow's payroll is honestly insulting, and doesn't help any.

Mate if you think I'm Ukranian then I'm shocked you're able to function in normal society for the amount of social awareness you have.

I assumed you're Ukrainian and you're involved in or supporting the protesters of Euromaidan. I ignored your insults because I assumed your emotions run high due to your fellow citizens being killed and your cities being shelled and bombed into smoldering ruins.

If you're not, then you're just a mindless troll, and HN guidelines say that I shouldn't assume the latter.

I feel bad for trying to have a rational conversation with you.

This conversation is the perfect example of why it's impossible to have a rational conversation about this topic, even with a demographic (HN) which one could consider "more rational" than others.

Even when you point out factually incorrect information you are automatically on the Kremlin's payroll.

Honestly, it gets very tiring.

Yanukovich was installed by Putin with the help of Paul Manafort. He lied to get elected and when he was found out he was forcibly thrown out of government. Had he fulfilled his campaign promises instead of working directly for Putin this would not have happened. Pointing to this overthrow is not valid as a condemnation against Ukrainian sovereignty & attempt to follow democratic ideals, it is confirmation of the nations strong desire for those things.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-ma... https://time.com/5003623/paul-manafort-mueller-indictment-uk...

Yanukovych won the democratic elections. His Party of Regions was the biggest at the time. He made some unpopular decisions, well within his constitutional rights, and then an armed, violent mob started occupying a part of the capital, a mob that enjoyed all the rhetorical (and, I read on the Wiki, financial) support of foreign officials, up to the point of using foreign embassy as a field hospital. Yanukovych first tried to use force[1] to take care of the situation, which failed. Before fleeing the country, though, he repeatedly tried to strike some kind of deal with the protesters, offering talks and concessions to the other side, including holding new elections in about a month. The opposition leaders took up his offers, only to be ignored by the mob, which demanded removing Yanukovych from office effective immediately. Meanwhile, democratically elected local government of Crimea repeatedly warned that, shall Yanukovych be forced out of office illegally, Crimea will consider seceding. We know how that played out.

Was Yanukovych Russian puppet? Sure. Was he democratically elected president? Yes. Was he and his political circle corrupt? You bet. Was it strange at the time in Ukraine? Not at all. Were there masses of people who demanded his deposition? Obviously. Were there masses of people who opposed the perceived coup d'etat? Yes, there were.

There seem to be deeply rooted divisions in Ukrainian society and perhaps something like the Euromaidan was inevitable. Maybe Ukraine is better off afterwards, I don't know. What I do know, though, is that your comment here is part of the problem, not the solution. Foregoing the nuance, forgetting to consider narratives other than your own, and above all else - giving in to emotionally loaded arguments instead of rationally assessing long-term effects of what happened is exactly what caused the current situation.

[1] EDIT: yes, by firing live ammo at the crowd, which in itself is nothing strange. The guns and live rounds did not magically appear out of thin air - they were entrusted to the police to defend the state from perceived threats. Euromaidan protesters were perceived as a threat. They were aware they were perceived as such. They could have gone home, but chose not to. The effect was 20 dead and many more wounded. All deaths should be mourned, but it's unfair to blame them on just one side while both sides contributed to escalating the tensions.

> yes, by firing live ammo at the crowd, which in itself is nothing strange

Right.

What's strange about a state exercising its monopoly on the use of violence? Are the guns in possession of state officers meant for decoration? Would you vote for the police not to have access to lethal weapons? (For the record: I would, but that's me)

Live ammo at crowd is something else. Don’t you think?

> While the initial protests were largely native expressions of discontent with the new Ukrainian government, Russia took advantage of them to launch a coordinated political and military campaign against Ukraine.[33]

Literally from your own link, second paragraph. Conflict wasn't started "when Russian forces helped".

There is quite a difference between expressions of discontent, which happen all the time, to taking up armed resistance.

The Russian interference helped turn the discontent into the current conflict.

To be fair, both Iraq wars were major, major news. But Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on for a decade plus, Americans got war fatigue. Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451, where the people are so distracted by entertainment, that the news of imminent war barely moves them emotionally.

“We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t, that’s sure!”

― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

We Westerners are mostly concerned about ourselves. Hardly a conspiracy.

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