You forgot abot deportations to the Russian far East and Siberia.
Compromising with an aggressive dictator only delays that fight while making the dictator stronger
My comment says the war is unnecessary - and that includes the invasion. The civil war in Ukraine between the west and the separatist regions could have ended in a compromise.
Well, to weaken Ukraine; the invasion of much of Eastern Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea were both part of that.
The 2022 “special military operation” was to complete the destruction of the independent Ukraine regime with a decapitation, but failed and was forced to pivot to seizing more land to try to drive the long term dynamic more in Russia’s favor.
Freedom is likewise "unnecessary".
"Ukraine CHOSE to join nato, so Russia HAD to invade."
No, the cause of the destruction here is Russia's invasion. Ukraine can choose whatever allies it damn pleases.
You people are either stupid or dishonest.
According to the existing international conventions of sovereignty that imply recognising and adhering all previous mutually signed declarations, Ukraine actually cannot choose whatever it wants, as it would violate one of the conditions (military bloc neutrality) under which their sovereignty was granted to them by the USSR in 1990 in the first place, which Russia is a legitimate successor of.
The Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine from 1990 [1], states it clearly in Chapter IX: "The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention to become a permanently neutral state in the future, which does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three non-nuclear principles: not to accept, produce or acquire nuclear weapons".
Ukraine's constitutional sovereignty has always been and still is predicated on following the signed conditions until further official negotiations and subsequent referendums, whether you like it or not.
[1] https://zakon-rada-gov-ua.translate.goog/laws/show/55-12?_x_...
You cannot have it both ways, and say that Russia is allowed to threaten Ukraines sovereignty because of a USSR era declaration, when Russia itself is violating declarations that they gave too Ukraine.
If only it was so easy then this would have been over as soon as it started.
Edit: forgot to quote context
With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
In Russian paranoid mind, yes.
In practice, former USSR countries or Finland are joining NATO precisely to be protected from some "brotherly help and selfless liberation" dispensed by the Kremlin several decades down the line.
A collective entity like NATO would have to become collectively mad (not just one president, but many of them) to actively attack Russia, which still has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, theoretically capable of wiping humans off the Earth several times over.
And what would the casus belli even be? The only thing Russia surely has is plentiful natural resources, and it is cheaper and easier just to buy them than to wage an extremely costly and destructive war. The main mining/production regions are deep inland anyway, thousands of miles away from NATO borders.
Unless you buy their idea that "those scheming Westerners envy us our eternal glory and want to force limp-wristed decadent postmodernism and LGBT on us", there are no reasons to attack Russia.
Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized and Russia was taken over by an American puppet.
Theyre determined not to have a round two.
It looks like this time the russians will enjoy the North Korean experience as well. Why would anyone be interested to deal with Russia after this invasion of Ukraine?
Factually, there are opportunities and animosities and hard choices that conditioned explicit positions.
You may want to believe Yeltsin was a US puppet all you want.
That does not change the fact that when the USSR fell, and nations had to compete on an international market, the industry of all Warsaw pact nations was utterly uncompetitive.
That does not change that there is corruption in all levels of Russian administration, and for all this time they have been a drain on Russian people and its economy.
Putin just pivoted a balanced but failing state into a petrostate with him as the head mafioso.
Want to not be easily destabilised? Choose a more reliable and accountable government. Russia had some chances for that. Now Putin has enshrined in law his rulership until his death.
The Russians could have carried on with the previous hybrid war strategy, buying off politicians in the West, spreading their narratives, not-so-secretly augmenting the strange DNR and LNR entities in their chronic war with Ukraine, helping the Germans and others become ever more dependent on cheap Russian natural gas etc.
But they had to go all in with 200 000 soldiers and try to conquer a big country that hates them and would be uncontrollable even if they actually managed to take it.
NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe (and is evidently willing to make good on those threats, as Ukraine is learning the hard way).
> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment on bordering states. And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
Russia was on reasonably good terms with Europe for at least 2 decades.
And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.
The same westerners who are being whipped into a white hot rage about Ukraine collectively shrugged their shoulders about that.
For some inexplicable reason NATO fucking up Libya made Putin paranoid and unwilling to accept the potential for military expansion of this offensive alliance to the most vulnerable sections of the Russian border. I cant think why.
>With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment
Of course they do. Everybody getting caught in this crossfire of western imperialism vs. russian imperialism is scared shitless.
>And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
Hardly. Libya didnt ask to be torn to shreds.
That happened in 2011. Ukraine and Georgia attempted to join NATO as early as 2008 (and other former Eastern Bloc states did join previously), motivated by (among many other things) Russian interference in Ukraine's 2004 elections and Russia's participation in the Georgian Civil War.
Needless to say, blaming NATO's intervention in Libya for Russian interventionism throughout the multiple decades preceding it is about as bass-ackwards of an understanding of causality as trying to assert that wet sidewalks cause rain to happen.
From the dissolution of the USSR until about the NATO-Yugoslav War, which was...a little over half a decade.
Keep on trying to make it as if he had no choice. Or that Russia had no choice.
Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron.
“Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron” can be better expressed as simply “Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years.”
Being on the right side of a war, or feeling that you are, is not a reason to post like this to HN—it's a reason to err in the opposite direction, as the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
You've been posting like this on lots of other topics too, and in fact your account's commenting history is so flamewarrish that I think we have to ban this account until we get some indication that you want to use HN as intended. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
And it's not about NATO at Russian borders ( Russia has no problem with Finland for example).
It's about the gas found in Crimea in 2008 that can replace Russian gas deliveries.
Fyi. Donbas is "by coincidence" very rich in minerals ( eg. Lithium)... What are the odds...
With the horrendous things that Russia has done throughout it's history in eastern europe, it's no wonder that it's neighbors are worried.
That's another funny thing. The only people saying "with the horrendous things the US does..." are either Americans or Russians. People who live in eastern europe are ABSOLUTELY worried about Russia invading them. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukrania of course, Georgia, Chechnia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia. People there don't play this "both sides" bullshit game.
I'm very happy if Russia believes that NATO is an existential threat. We're not pushing them hard enough, that's the problem.
Logically if you want an existential threat to Russia to expand up against Russian borders you must want war, no?
No you see, this isn't "NATO expanding up to"...
Countries are sovereign to choose their allies. And countries in eastern europe are asking to join a defense alliance against Russia.
Serious question, have you considered that number 1 no one is forcing eastern europe countries to join this alliance, and number 2 WHY do they want to join it? If you haven't, I'll tell you the answer: What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO.
NATO isn't expanding up to Russia's borders. Russia is scaring every country it borders, so they're doing something about it.
Oh look, Finland and Sweden are joining NATO https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_197737.htm
Because OF COURSE they do, because otherwise they might be next to be invaded.
I have considered why these countries want to join. It's for much the same reason inner city kids want to join gangs - a mix of a desire for protection and a desire to be the threat for once.
>What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO
Georgia got whacked for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang. Why were we pouring money into Georgia to sway it towards that point? Well, coz it's a standard empire building tactic to stir shit up on ethnic faultlines along the borders of your opponents. Just ask the British.
I fully understand WHY kids join inner city gangs but we generally try to advise them against it for a reason. Those reasons apply here 100% - it can give you protection, but it can also get you chewed up and spat out as cannon fodder in a larger turf war.
Man, Russia is really losing this game then. Because countries keep joining Nato. Findland and Sweden now. Sweden has had a policy of neutrality for 200 years LOL.
Fucking losers. If there's one immutable truth in Russian history, is that its wherewithal has never ever been able to match its ambition.
The Ukraine border area is where the USSR almost lost to the Nazis. It is an exposed jugular. A NATO base in Mariupol could cut them off from their black sea fleet/only warm water ports and their oil fields in the caucausus like the Nazis tried to.
You dont have to be a military analyst to see that Finland and Swedens membership is less threatening than ukraine.
Scaring Finland into joining NATO after their long held policy of neutrality was an incredibly counterproductive strategy for Moscow.
As said above, all nations sorrounding Russia that have joined NATO, have done so because they were and are afraid of Russia.
Right. It absolutely is. Just nowhere near as threatening as Ukraine-with-donbas-and-crimea-and-most-of-its-coast joining NATO.
Theyll probably be more comfortablen with Ukraine joining NATO either if they turn it into a rump state with limited access to the coast and no control over the russian speaking heartland.
Russia has been saying "if Finland joins NATO, there will be consequences" since forever. When Finland actually joins Russia says "yeah no problem it's not really a threat". This is to not lose face, _obviously_, but all these parrots all of a sudden go "oh yeah no problem, you don't have to be a military analyst to see it's not a threat". They're just parrots.
unless those countries are Panama and Grenada that happened to be inappropriately close to self-important US interests.
Where do you get this bullshit? Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting Russians, half of UA armed forces are Russian-speaking.
>> pro-Russian faction has been marginalized and sideswept
Russia destroyed a lot of goodwill by its actions in Crimea and Donbass. People who supported Yanukovich in 2010, do not support Putin in 2022
My post is rather about that the invasion is the final nail in the seam between the pro-West and pro-Russia interests tearing apart, when I don't think that it had to happen. Of course, Putin is responsible for that final nail. His threat of invasion has long been known in a leaked Wikileaks cable, and I think that history could have followed a different path. I think it's similar to how the balance of power shifting quickly has led to blowback like the Iraq War leading to the creation of ISIS where the former generals of Saddam were disenfranchised and resorted to violence to establish an independent state and reclaim political power.