Largest natural gas leak from Nord Stream pipeline
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[0]: http://archive.today/2024.02.01-224034/https://www.thetimes....
[1]: https://reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-likely-recession-...
It's pretty well established by now that Putin (and his closest allies):
1: Fully believed bad-faith reporting from their security services about Ukraine.
2: Underestimated the extend by which the west was willing to help.
3: The sheer resistance of the Ukraine military.
Especially #1 can't be easily disregarded, as the leading security office tasked with subduing UA had its upper leadership entirely purged after the first assault had failed.
Before the war, Russia had two possibilities: Align further with the west or become a vassal of China.
Edit: I would appreciate to know why I'm being downvoted. I'm all open to hear more substantial information on this topic.
And now it has just one :)
Russia's capture of the Crimea ~10 years ago went exceptionally well for them.
Russian special forces struck an essentially unprepared country, got control of a number of cities and key chokepoints, and forced the parliament at gunpoint to vote in favour of annexation, and ran a sketchy referendum with 97% support for annexation - all essentially before organisations like the EU even realised what was going on.
Then, presented with a fait accompli, other european nations could either start a war with Russia or not, and they chose not to.
Presumably Putin thought capturing the rest of Ukraine would go just as easily.
Putins story is that he cannot be happy unless Russia controls the world.
In other words: If your nation is your identity, then the meaning of life becomes to expand your nation.
sigh This is a perfect example of "I support Ukraine! (don't even bother to learn what it is and never knew)"
Do yourself a favour, go to Wikipedia and learn about Donetsk, at least.
>> Donetsk [...] The population was estimated at 901,645 (2022 estimate)[4] in the city core, with over 2 million in the metropolitan area (2011). According to the 2001 census, Donetsk was the fifth-largest city in Ukraine.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations
I presume the Mutual defence clause of the European Union played a role as well.
The NATO (and denazification) "arguments" are just bits of rhetorical flim-flam to soften and confuse the opposition, basically.
If someone came and slapped you in the face but:
a) he is 90 kilos full of muscle
b) he is a lanky 55 kilos
would your reaction be the same ?
it is not a perfect analogy of course, but I want to point out the flaw in your reasoning.
Are you here for hacker news, or for spreading propaganda because you're on a payroll ?
Why are most of his comments about russia (if that's the true even): perhaps he is interested in the subject and has a nice attitude of only speaking about something he is knowledgeable in. Or maybe the subject of russia is something he find very emotional and feels an urge to speak about it.
Let me mimic your rhetoric:
Why are all your comments about russia, always pro-russian?
Are you spreading propaganda because you're on a payroll?
That said, they (mopsi) do seem to like to say some rather weird, and also intellectually dishonest things -- such their assertion that it was primarily the Russians, not the Germans (with the help of local collaborators) who arranged for the extermination of Baltic Jewry in the summer of 1941:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141260
Despite all evidence to the contrary.
there is a very long history with NATO expansion, and with Russia being the boogyman of the US military industrial complex.
I find it unnecessary to clarify that I do not support either side and I am against war in general.
According to Hitler (as well as Putin, who really justified Hitler in that same interview) Poland made him start the war by refusing to give up Danzig.
Any dictator in history had a cover story before starting a war. And by spreading such a story you become a part of the aggressor's propaganda machine.
- economically Russia has been doing surprisingly well since the war started. The EU sanctions drove the gas price through the roof last year so Russia could make billions selling it to countries like India and China
- the earlier invasion of the Crimea went pretty smoothly and there were hardly any repercussions
- one of Putin's arguments for starting the war, was that it was to stop the Nato from expanding towards its borders. This argument is not new, Russia also brought it up in 2008 when there was talk about Georgia joining Nato. At that time Russia was able to succesfully overthrow the Georgian government and invade it for a 'peace mission'. So why not do the same thing again? (This one backfired badly to Putin of course, with Finland and probably also Sweden joining Nato)
The counter argument to that seems so obvious I'm surprised I have to write it down:
If you're a government official and pass a law that in a month a cinema will be demolished - the cinema is going to increase its revenue a lot in that month. There are multiple reasons why, for example:
1) People who planned to go to a cinema two months later have to go there sooner. russian resources are cheap, and so people rushed to buy them BEFORE the sanctions will in effect. 2) The cinema might be selling popcorn cheaper in order to sell all its stock. Plus it's not buying new resources for the following months, so operation costs lower. In case of russia, they were incentivized to sell the resources cheaply; this doesn't necessarily mean cheaper than before, but normally at a surge of demand you increase prizes and that didn't happen here. Understanding this is just a temporary surge, and moreover, the trade might fall down considerably below the before-surge times, russia likely scaled its resource industry down, not up.
So it was good for russia in the short term, but everyone, even in russia that is full of propaganda, recognized hard times are coming.
> - the earlier invasion of the Crimea went pretty smoothly and there were hardly any repercussions
Look at the history of USD to RUB exchange.
> - one of Putin's arguments for starting the war, was that it was to stop the Nato from expanding towards its borders. This argument is not new, Russia also brought it up in 2008 when there was talk about Georgia joining Nato.
Georgia has an order of magnitude smaller population than Ukraine. I think what's even more important is size and logistical problems. Was it really so hard to see that before the war?
See e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/21a5be9c-afaa-495f-b7af-cf9370931...
Could you explain to me just *how* would russian economy thrive despite hundreds of thousands of people dying, contracts cancelled, resources being sold for less to China and India and with a mass emigration of intellectual workforce outside of the country?
Some things come to mind:
- prisoners sent to war dying and therefore less upkeep costs for prisons
- people willing to pay higher taxes for war efforts, be paid less, pay higher prices for products... In general the war justifying exploitation of people.
In first case, I'm skeptical this could grant significant savings, as well as I wonder: if it was beneficial, why wouldn't a member of the empire of evil not just kill the prisoners en masse - and if the answer is that it would cause a civil unrest, then maybe we're going to see such anyway - which will yet cause some damage in future.
In second case I wonder: is hardship good for your society? "Hard times create strong men", but on the other hand easy times generate sensitive men; it's hard to be an intellectual if you struggle to satisfy the bottom of Maslow's triangle. And as I already mentioned: some people simply escape to a country that grants them a higher standard of life.
About your other points: I'm not sure why you're mentioning them if you already knew that I'm not defending Russia. I'm against their war, against their government and against how they are treating people, including their own.
On the other hand, this is no excuse to close your eyes to reality. The EU sanctions that were supposed to hurt the Russian economy, ideally by so much that support for the war would stop, don't have the desired effect. In fact they might even have boosted the Russian economy at some point, and also they are driving Russia into the arms of China.
Because an argument is correct or incorrect regardless who makes it.
> On the other hand, this is no excuse to close your eyes to reality...
For example the reality of USD to RUB exchange rate, that went down after annexation of Crimea, and went further down after February 2022.
> ...The EU sanctions that were supposed to hurt the Russian economy,..
And did.
> ...ideally by so much that support for the war would stop,...
Failed here. We need more sanctions, especially as with time russia learns to circumvent them.
> ...don't have the desired effect...
They don't have the desired, as you put it, ideal effect. There is some clear effect however.
> ...In fact they might even have boosted the Russian economy at some point,...
The sanctions like stopping the flights were devastating, so I can't be sure, but I can agree due to the "might" word being used. I'm very open-minded that in the short term such boost may have happened, and I argue how in some ways it's to be expected.
> ...and also they are driving Russia into the arms of China.
The power of China is hugely overestimated by an average Joe. Probably due to Chinese propaganda, people think we (the west) rely on China more than the China relies on us. Which is very far from true. Strengthening China by vassalization of russia is bad, but if russia is forced to become a vassal, it only proves the sanctions do work and hurt it.
I don't see any of the comments discussing the reason I think they felt the need to do this, even though my opinion is not unique it does seem minority. It was only partially about NATO expansion into Ukraine, and not the defence side of that, it was more about EU membership, and it was even more about Ukrainian politics and society. Ukraine has slowly been moving from a corrupt Russian like state to more resemble an eastern European EU member. Long way to go but the direction was clear from 2014 when Russia first rumbled, and it has accelerated since.
With that in mind, Ukraine presents a clear threat to Putin's regime. The potential of Russians seeing the country next door, of similar people with shared heritage and lots of social cross over, transition to a less corrupt, more democratic, western influenced nation. And if Ukraine had managed to join the EU there would have been a flood of investment, which while bringing its own problems I'm sure, would have improved the lives of Ukrainians. A demonstration of "throw out your corrupt leaders and see what you can have".
So the war is to nullify that, and even if it did not pan out in the way Putin had hoped, it's still succeeded in pushing away that particular threat. Even if the west now gives proper support to Ukraine defence, and follows it up with a rebuild, the war has split Ukrainian and Russian social linkage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Directorate_of_Intelligen...
A bloody eighty-year+ history of using Ukrainian nationalism against the Soviet Union/Russia and yet people waffle about “freedom”, “democracy”—the works.
I still dont understand
Step 1: Don’t get high on your own supply. Anyone’s supply.
I’m just here to correct people who are wrong.
Z-enjoyers like to quip that the only true friend the Ukrainian people have is Putin’s soft heart. The good news for everyone but Putin is that the West has enough to send to give Ukropia the 1945 ending, fulfilling the self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing I can do to change that.
Russia's folly is convenient for the West though.
I’m positive that things are going to get quite inconvenient in the EU then. The US, too, God willing. What goes around comes around, and not necessarily from the same direction. Believe it or not, not everyone enjoys life under these regimes as much as you seem to do.
Of course that doesn't mean you are one. The strangest thing about Russian propaganda is that seemingly rational people spontaneously parrot it, even though it doesn't make much sense.
Anyway, you rationally bought the ticket, hope you’ll rationally enjoy the ride. Hope things never stop making sense to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
spoiler: issues around Ukraine neutrality