What does COVID have to do with this? The fertilizer shortage is caused by the war in Ukraine.
This war will cause more deaths indirectly than it does directly, just like almost all large wars.
This war will cause more deaths indirectly than it does directly, just like almost all large wars.
The war certainly exacerbated the issue, but there were already fertilizer supply issues before. I remember well purchasing my 2022 crop year fertilizer in December 2021, which is earlier than I normally get around to it, but was prompted to because the prices had already risen substantially by that time and were predicted to go even higher (which they did). War in Ukraine didn't break out for at least another month after that. Not so much COVID directly, but natural gas prices were a large component, seeing fertilizer plants go offline in the mid-2021 timeframe[1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/business/natural-gas-pric...
Greed of Putin while being detached from reality due to covid fears and paranoia, overconfidence in his army destroyed by his own and his friends corruption, underestimating Ukraine's resolve. He and his men really thought they could conquer Kyiv in few days.
He was trying war land grab for 8 years already and thought he could get big part if not whole country permanently.
Putin rules the largest country in the world. One of the most rich countries also (in real resources, not just printed money and inflated GDP). What do you mean by his "greed"? That he wants to take the place of USA and rule the whole world?
> being detached from reality due to covid fears and paranoia
If he's been detached from reality, how he succeeds ruling the huge country in clearly hostile environment? Don't you ever find a contradiction in this?
> overconfidence in his army
I guess (we all can only guess) that he didn't expect that all the West would supply so much weapons and soldiers of fortune to Ukraine (AFAIK, there're tens of thousands of soldiers of regular army of Poland fighting there, also France, US, and other countries). Still, Russia is prevailing, there's already no young Ukraine men left, there're only 45+ years Ukrainian men left and Western combatants.
And it's almost evident by this point in time that there's no way Ukraine would win that war. There're some scenarios like CIA would be able to organize successful coup de etat and replace Putin with traitor like Gorbachev or Yeltsin or someone of that kind who will simply sell Russia to the west.
But there's no way to win this battle any other way. Not with 45+ years old soldiers riding 100 donated western tanks because Russia already burned down 7,000+ soviet tanks donated to Ukraine during the past year.
COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault, not COVID's.
All of our demands were declined in the most obnoxious manner possible: "You mean nothing, we don't want to listen to your concerns, go away and die silently in your Siberia"
The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either. Only one country is expanding in Europe by force.
NATO is an aggressive military alliance. Ukraine could be friends with EU and US and not be a part of NATO.
> The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either.
Do you really know anything about what happened in 2008? Honestly, not from the media and not from Wikipedia. Because regurgitating the easy-peasy propaganda from media is not interesting in any way.
How can you be so sure that it was Russia that "invaded" Georgia in 2008? How comes that although Russia beat the Georgian military force so easily that we could capture the whole Georgia, we didn't do it? There was nothing to stop us in 2008. How comes that "greedy Putin" didn't take Tbilisi and everything with it?
https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-C...
I think I'm mostly annoyed with these dumb conspiracy theories because they deny agency to the millions of people who actually cast out a criminal and democratically elected their own leadership. "hurr durr, the CIA did it"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state...
Nothing in the call transcript (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957) strikes me as unusual in this scenario. The "fuck the EU" caused a few tut-tut waves.
If you think that Putin is sick, do you think it is possible to rule the huge country with quite big population, huge territory, and a bunch of problems exacerbated by Western sanctions, quite successfully? E.g. the effect of sanctions on everyday life in Russia is negligible opposed to predicted effect. E.g. if you read comments on HN from about 1 year ago, you'll read something like "Russia would collapse in 3 days" (or 3 weeks or 3 months).
Also, is it like some God-like force makes his subordinates to listen to him although "he's clearly mad"?
It's such a primitive train of thought fueled by propaganda, that it never ceases to amaze me, especially on site like Hacker News and not reddit.
A general rule of thumb I follow is if someone who is otherwise successful, particular for a prolonged period of time, is doing something that is purportedly crazy, stupid, reckless, etc, I ask myself if maybe I haven't fully considered the situation.
Even if one falls into the camp of Putin being evil incarnate, he's been evil incarnate in power for quite a while and has presided over a Russia that by almost any metric is vastly improved relative to when he came into power. Whatever you say, Putin is not crazy and he's not stupid.
Maybe, just maybe, Russia found herself in a situation where very severe sanctions and being decoupled from the west, an area they tried tirelessly to forge ties with vis a vis energy, etc, maybe they found themselves in a situation where as bad as that outcome was, not invading Ukraine would be worse. Why might that be? They may be wrong, but more likely than not, this was a choice arrived at reluctantly and from their perspective, all the other options were _worse_ than potential war with the entirety of the collective west, deaths of tens of thousands, etc, etc.
I find that when I think of the actions of powerful nations and people as driven by a coherent thought process, I'm better able to predict their actions. I often think these entities may be wrong, that they may misunderstand some other process themselves, that they may be motivated by internal political considerations, etc, but it's never the cartoon version we hear in the media.
It's strange that people so rarely exercise this kind of thought. Do they still do those exercises in school where one has to argue both sides of a contentious issue? It's an essential skill.
I don't see anyone still claiming this besides neocon warhawks, and they don't really have a source besides other neocon warhawks.
Isolation has clear evidence; https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-....
Paranoia is hard to suss out between public statements that sound paranoid - "NATO is coming to get us!" style stuff - and genuine private paranoia. This one might be the hardest to prove.
"Putin's fault" is fairly hard to argue against without quite a bit of logical contortion.
Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in WWII to be a little worried about this military buildup? I seem to remember a pretty strident response to soviet missiles in Cuba. Why so paranoid?
I don't imagine the US would respond well (and shouldn't!) to a Russian led military alliance with Mexico and other periphery countries that led to a growing mass of military arms in a military alliance that was essentially founded to combat the United States.
The psychodrama stuff is just not a very sophisticated argument here. Countries don't go to war like this because a leader like Putin is scared of COVID. This is something that was and is popular within Russia, Putin is seemingly a more moderate voice on all of this. There has been pressure for a more muscular response to the situation in Ukraine for quite a while internally to Russia.
Because countries asked to join, as is their right as sovereign nations.
> in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so?
No such guarantee has ever existed. The only such agreement violated in all this is the Budapest Memorandum, by the Russians.
> Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in WWII to be a little worried about this military buildup?
Yes. The Nazis were defeated. Largely by that same West. The makeup of NATO is heavily weighted to “former victims of fascist aggression”, including its most powerful core nation.
One might ask this question in the other direction, given past Russian occupation of many of these countries. (Much more recently than 1945!)
> There has been pressure for a more muscular response to the situation in Ukraine for quite a while internally to Russia.
“The other guy wouldn’t have used lube when he raped you. How lucky are you to get me?!”