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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

This is the beginning of a multi decade conflict. The end game is Russia becoming a North Korean style vassal state of China. Every world leader that is speaking about the conflict seems fine with this outcome.

Also, it will take a while for Russia to build enough natural gas pipelines to China.

In practice, those pipelines will be Putin's leash. (He will need China, but they have no need for him.)

I hope Ukraine maintains its independence, but it's just the first battle in a war Putin accidentally created, and will surely lose.

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> This is the beginning of a multi decade conflict.

Germany is currently removing the dependency on russian gas. There is a consensus on this within Germany. The discussion on this topic revolves entirely around the question of how quickly to do this.

If this is or sure a multi decade conflict, what does it matter if this takes 1-2y instead of 1-2 weeks?

Agreed. Many folks in this thread seem to be saying things like “it will only help some” or “it will take a long time” which are not arguments against going back to nuclear power.

> I hope Ukraine maintains its independence, but it's just the first battle in a war Putin accidentally created, and will surely lose.

Putin did NOT accidentally create this war. It's clear that this was intentional and that there are real people suffering because of that intention. He tried opening more doors to see what benefits he could gain. That isn't an accident.

Maybe OP meant it in the way that Putin wanted to just rush over Ukraine, replace the government and be done with it. That would have been a very short war at best. But that is not the war he got, so yes, he "accidentally" created the current one.

“Accident” implies a lack of responsibility, which is not the case.

I meant he accidentally started WWIII at the same time he made it clear Russia's military is collapsing from the inside out.

It probably won't escalate to a shooting war outside of Ukraine, but that's mostly because the rest of the world will probably be able to stop him via a proxy war.

He showed spectacular lack of judgment. I'm sorry if anyone thought I meant he lacks responsibility for his actions. I hope Putin is charged and convicted of war crimes.

By your definition the Korean and Vietnam Wars would have counted as World War Three as well.

There is a kind of an economic world war brewing right now, but I expected China to be on the receiving end from the start...

I agree, there is no way an oligarch just simply starts a war he knows he is going to lose. The least you would expect is that he wants to maintain his power as long as possible, not accelerate his demise

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