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Comment by foepys | Hacker News Reader

You don't even have to go so far back. In January 2022 few believed that Russia would invade Ukraine because Russia was heavily depending on exporting gas and oil to the EU. The sanctions in 2014 for the annexation of Crimea were deemed to scare Russia away from doing so.

Then Russia invaded anyways and is apparently now in the process of doubling down by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of fresh recruits.

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Dictators dream of conquest, often against economic or strategic realities. If the law prohibits that, call it a special operation and not a declaration of war.

Yeah, except that Russia wants raw natural resources from the Ukraine territories it wants to annex. They can kill all Ukrainians and destroy all of their cities and still be able to extract what they want.

Now do that in Taiwan. Are you going to mine semiconductors from under a rock? Do that while an army of Taiwan partisans keeps fighting for decades?

That's not why Russia started the war

Its one reason for sure. Most things come back to natural resources.

Plus...earning more revenue than before on gas and oil.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1028682/russia-federal-b...

True, but with less revenue in the future and higher inflation. Also, they are killing off lots of the men needed in their workforce. Higher revenue is just being burned in $100MM missile strikes.

I agree, I can't see it end well for Russia. Still, we should not forget that even a failed state or defeated country is something to deal with.

Yea Putin is no good but that could be worse. Better the devil you than the devil you don't? He fucked that up by invading Ukraine so somethings gotta give.

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