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Comment by pphysch | Hacker News Reader

It's not just Putin saying this, but also Western leaders (quietly) confirming it.

Merkel, Macron, Bennett, et al. have asserted that Washington+London are more or less sabotaging any diplomatic solution that doesn't involve the inevitable collapse of Russia.

Russia has put their diplomatic cards on the table multiple times, including in late 2021 where they literally drafted a "security guarantee" treaty that, modulo further negotiations, Washington would simply have to sign to get Russian troops away from Ukraine. And Washington didn't even try to call a bluff, they just ignored the opportunity. Yet they constantly miscall bluffs of military escalation. Truly baffling.

It cannot be overstated how utterly nonexistent the diplomacy has been between Washington and Moscow particularly since 2014. Because one side sees the other as a fundamentally inferior state.

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> It cannot be overstated how utterly nonexistent the diplomacy has been between Washington and Moscow particularly since 2014. Because one side sees the other as a fundamentally inferior state.

Perhaps it is because in 2014, Russia broke its promises and stole Crimea with a military invasion and the west figured they could not be trusted and would almost certainly do the same thing again; which they did.

Before that, NATO broke its promise to "not expand one-inch eastward" and to not interfere with Ukrainian sovereignty. There are no good guys here.

By the way, how many people died in the Russian invasion of Crimea and resulting occupation? Surely it was very bloody (like the current war) because Crimeans didn't want it, right?

You are repeating a Russian lie https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/exposing-the-myth-...

There was never a promise.

>Beset by chaos at home, an increasingly beleaguered Yeltsin turned to historical revisionism. He began to interpret the Two Plus Four Treaty as a ban on NATO expansion east of Germany, on the basis that it only permitted alliance activities on East German territory. He (and later Putin) claimed that the failure to mention Eastern Europe, together with the stipulated restrictions in relation to former GDR terrain, meant an implicit Western rejection of eastward enlargement.

Also later

> At preliminary bilateral talks in Helsinki in March 1997, Clinton refused to respond to Yeltsin’s call for binding restrictions on the establishment of NATO security infrastructure in new member states.

> There was never a promise.

ha ha

"Kissinger confirms US verbal promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward"

> verbal promise

"ha ha" indeed.

make up your mind

"There was never a promise"

If you want to talk about promises of not expanding, maybe we should talk about that time Ukraine gave Russia a bunch of Soviet nukes for the assurance they would be left alone to govern themselves.

Here's a hint: Only one of these two promises would even be relevant.

The promise of not expanding NATO never existed, BUT EVEN IF IT DID then Russia should be invading the US, not Ukraine. There is no justification to invade Ukraine as a defense against NATO, as even if you believe NATO controls Ukraine (it doesn't), taking that land merely increases the size of Russia's border with NATO.

But you know all this.

It is supremely disingenuous to imply that Washington's Ukraine policy circa 2014 (before Russia stole Crimea) is in any way compatible with the terms and spirit of the Budapest Agreements, and that Russia was therefore the first mover in violating it.

The US' decisions in no way grant Russia the moral or legal right to invade Ukraine.

This is blatantly not true when the modus operandi behind the restrictions on arms sales is to prevent the collapse of Russia - not of Putin, but of Russia. It isn't mutually exclusive with worries about nuclear escalation, but I've often seen generals and colonels scoff at that in comparison despite the lengthier public discussion. The idea that any strategic planner wants Russia to collapse is the idea that John Bolton is the only type of person to be employed in the state department. You are disparaging thousands of people who dedicated their lives to do the opposite of the cynism you state.

Annexing all of Ukraine's natural gas fields under the guise of saving ethnic Russians wasn't acceptable to Ukraine was it? The agreement you discuss is a defacto conquering of Ukraine.

Here is the actual draft treaty: https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790818/?lang=en

Notice that it is purely focused on security guarantees. It does not say, as you incorrectly asserted, that Russia gets sole rights to Ukraine's natural resources. Both Russian AND Western billionaires would continue to be able to exploit them. Sure, Russian ones might have an advantage because it's on their doorstep and they speak the same language. But that's geography for you.

Ironically, since Washington refused this treaty, Russia will likely gain exclusive economic access to eastern (done) and southern (WIP) Ukraine, and former Ukraine will become landlocked if not dissolve entirely to Poland et al.

This is prior to March 2023, and ignores the annexation of the gas fields, as well as the additions Russia has added to it's constitution since the war began. Being from 2021, what relevance does that document have? Ukraine was not party to that, and had within its constitution a mandate to join NATO. Hundreds of thousands of casualties for what? Here is a map of the gas fields -

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/euobs-media/30196762d9...

Please act in good faith.

> Please act in good faith

FWIW, disagreement does not equate to "bad faith".

The "Russia invaded Ukraine mainly for its natural resources narrative" requires extraordinary cherry-picking of historical fact to support.

- Russia already has oodles of natural resources. They export them to the West for a bargain. This is not Japan in WW2.

- Do a modicum of research on post-Soviet IR in Europe. What were Gorbachev's and Putin's agendas vis-a-vis Europe, based not on Applebaumian psychoanalysis but public statements and action? Study the Budapest Memo, Putin's 2007 MSC speech, Minsk agreements, etc.

- Also do a modicum of research on the agendas from the other side. What was Brzezinski saying about post-Soviet geopolitics? What is Victoria Nuland working on in the Bush, Obama, and Biden State Departments? What was Yalta European Strategy about? How did Zelensky rapidly rise from clown to president? What does the leaked Nuland-Pyatt call reveal?

There is an enormous amount of historical fact that we can build our understanding on, rather than resorting to simplistic Zeihan-tier pseudo-intellectualism.

I mentioned bad faith not out of disagreement but because it seemed like you were dodging the points brought up. This thread began by stating the war was begun by malicious American entities, in its entirety.

They aren't mutually exclusive, but again, the occupation of gas fields, and now the embargo of grain, is about depriving the Ukrainian government. not domestic shortages. That is the thing that makes me mention bad faith. I have researched these agendas, and I recheck the records and rumors frequently. The zeihen doomerism is disenguine hawking of his trade and book, but what makes you think that this war is all an American diplomatic failure brought at the behest of western billionaires? A war is complicated, and simplifying it isn't helpful.

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