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Comment by bischofs | Hacker News Reader

The annihilation of Ukraine and the violent expansion of a nuclear armed dictatorship is not a risk in your eyes?

they don't want to expand. The original goal is to have ukraine not in NATO and not pointing missiles at them.

Ukraine although not in nato, had been doing training with nato for a while prior to the invasion.

So Ukraine is moving closer to NATO due to a fear of offensive actions from Russia, and that is your justification for actually attacking them and invading their country? Ukraine was obviously justified in seeking a military alliance to protect itself against illegal invasions.

This argument is essentially denying Ukraine's right to sovereignty. It's a bad and disingenous justification for a wholly illegal and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country.

If you are in an armed standoff with someone, you have to need a lot of trust to let them point a gun at your head in self-defense.

How high do you let the gun get before you consider it provocation?

You're confusing the cause and the effect.

The invasion happened after the unofficial joining of nato, obviously.

Do you really think there is a country that would not react if a very big neighbouring country were to join an enemy military alliance?

Do you mean before the invasion of 2014? (???????)

Not the poster but probably. There were significant NATO policy decisions immediately preceding the 2014 invasion with respect to Ukraine. Further decisions were taken immediately proceeding the 2022 build up and subsequent invasion.

The first was in 2008 when NATO decided Ukraine could start the NATO membership process.

This came to a head at the start of 2014 when Euromaidan revolution lead to a change of government.

In 2014, the Ukrainian parliament renounced Ukraine's non-aligned status.

In 2016, Ukraine was granted a NATO Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP), comprising the advisory mission at the NATO Representation to Ukraine as well as 16 capacity-building programs and Trust Funds.

In 2018, Ukraine was officially given an aspiring member status.

2021 NATO reaffirmed that Ukraine will become a member.

Here is some basic information from the right wing conspiratorial outlet NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/29/1076193616/ukraine-russia-nat...

They have made many very public statements to the effects that they do want to expand, also for example questioning the legitimacy of the Baltic states, and sending many planes on defense-probing paths in the overall Zapad (Western) direction. So you are going to have to work a bit harder at convincing us that they don't want to be doing what they say they want to do, and also atrociously attempt to do.

USA sends planes over Iran. Does it mean USA wants to invade Iran?

> they don't want to expand.

That is laughable. They annexed Crimea in 2014, and now claim Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. Very strange behavior for a country that is just 'protecting itself from NATO'.

Ukraine turned to NATO because Russia had already invaded them, occupying Crimea and eastern parts of the country. That invasion was completely unjustified as well. It started with Russia getting a big mad Ukraine was acting like a sovereign nation and wanted to sign a free trade agreement with a functional economy instead of them.

Russia's problems are all of their own making. They had no need to invade Ukraine. They did so because Ukraine didn't want to be their puppet state like Belarus. The Russian government wants to treat former SSRs like they're still economic tributaries to Moscow.

Russia (Putin) got mad because Ukraine threatened to turn into a functioning democracy. That was a massive threat to Putin because people at home might get ideas - ideas like "maybe that could work here, too".

A democracy should respect popular vote. That isn't exactly what happened in Crimea though…

That might have been the case up until 2008 when NATO put Ukrainian membership on the road map

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