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Comment by timeon | Hacker News Reader

> colonial west

Russian war in Ukraine is about regaining control of former colony. They lost lot of them in eastern Europe but still have some in Asia.

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> regaining control of former colony

This is an oversimplification... How many countries have built nuclear power plants and missile assembly lines in their colonies?

The British built a sizable chunk of the indian railways. In fact to this day there are plenty of British era bridges that survive whereas modern ones crumble within 20 years. Surely you don't imply that the British were not colonizers?

Railways have strategic importance for the military. Think of the Roman empire building roads.

"It's not a colony if you build infrastructure in it" seems like the sort of oversimplification you're complaining about.

The USSR certainly didn't plan to lose Ukraine.

Unlike colonies which West always planned to lose?

It's a bit more complicated than that.

Half of Novorossiya (New Russia) was taken from Turkey and Crimean Khanate by Russian soldiers and later that almost unpopulated land was settled by many ethnicities, but mostly by Ukrainians and Russians. [0]

When Russian Empire collapsed in 1917 this territory became Ukrainian on the basis of predominantly Ukrainian population even though the city population was mostly Russian and Jewish. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya

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

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