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Comment by D_Alex | Hacker News Reader

>Russia has always been an imperialistic, genocidal and brutal country, incapable of creating anything of lasting value.

Wow dude, that is quite deranged.

>Unless Estonia was in NATO, Russian armors might very well be now in Tallinn.

Russia borders 14 countries, and I don't think it fought with any except over the issue of NATO membership.

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Russia has only fought with the countries who sought to join a military alliance to protect themselves ... from Russia?

Incredible.

You don't think I might have a problem if my roommate joined the anti-pessimizer alliance?

Shocking.

You should start asking why ALL of your former roommates seem to join the anti-pessimizer league. Russian sympathetics like to say "what if Russia puts bases in Mexico" but that's actually a great unintentional example. We treat Mexico like GARBAGE, we had a president suggest that most of the Mexicans crossing the border are murderers and rapists. Yet they still consider themselves a strong ally of ours. They don't WANT to stab us in the back.

NATO is not an anti-Russian league.

Russia has nukes to protect its sovereignty. It has absolutely nothing to fear from NATO.

What Russia does not like, is to be denied the capability to invade and threaten it's neighbours (because they joined NATO).

That's a poor analogy. It's more like you're threatening your neighbours, fucking around with their apartments and they join the local neighbourhood watch. And as a response your reaction is to break into their apartments and cry about their "aggression" against you.

In 2008 Russia attacked Georgia

relations between Russia and Georgia began to deteriorate, reaching a full diplomatic crisis by April 2008, when NATO promised to consider Georgia's bid for membership.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War

I'm starting to see a pattern here - country seeks closer ties with NATO as a means of protection from Russia, followed by a war with Russia.

NATO has a pretty questionable history what with Operation Gladio and the like, but I'm not sure how these are examples of NATO aggression given that Russia was, y'know, the aggressor.

Neither was this war about NATO.

NATO was an excuse.

The war in ukraine is colonial and genocidal war with the intent of eradicating Ukrainian language and statehood and subvert the fee will of Ukrainian people under Russian yoke.

It's strange that they go ahead with making this excuse when everyone could have just consulted you.

Russian state makes publicly whatever statements they feel are judicious. Don't trust anything the Kremlin says.

Note they accepted Finlands entry to NATO alliance without so much as a whimper.

While complete calculus behind the reasons for the invasion may never surface, these offer excellent commentary why more countries joining NATO was not really the real reason for the war.

'Moreover, this is not even primarily about NATO. ... The larger objective is to re-establish Russian political and cultural dominance over a nation that Putin sees as one with Russia, and then follow up by undoing the European rules-based order and security architecture established in the aftermath of World War II. ... If Russia’s main concern had been NATO enlargement, it would have reacted with rhetoric and/or hostile actions in its neighborhood after each step in the NATO expansion process. The largest wave of NATO’s eastward expansion took place in March 2004, when seven Eastern European countries joined, including the formerly Soviet Baltic states. Russia “grumbled,” as the New York Times put it then, by adopting a Duma resolution criticizing the expansion, but no hostile and sustained rhetoric followed about NATO enlargement as a Western plot against Russian interests.'[0]

'Some claim Russia was goaded into acting by the threat of NATO expansion. But Putin himself said in 2004 that 'Russia has no concerns about the expansion of NATO from the standpoint of ensuring security'. Russia, after all, has a massive nuclear arsenal and has no reason to fear any adversary. What is the purpose of nuclear weapons then? In addition, several countries bordering Russia, including Finland and the Baltic States are already entering the alliance, with not a murmur from Moscow.'[1]

[0] https://www.justsecurity.org/80343/russias-new-assault-on-uk...

[1] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-02-21-expert-comment-no-proxy...

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