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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

So then the resolution to this war is simple:

Russia returns Crimea, Donbass etc and Ukraine promises not to join NATO.

Strange that Putin hasn't proposed such a deal.

Not joining NATO is just a way of deferring the genocide. A regional power has no chance to stand against a global superpower on its own. If not NATO, then a different coalition.

I understand what you mean but Russia is not a global superpower. They are not the USSR. Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess, the US and Europe didn't show any real backbone during the decade following the initial 2014 invasion, or during the Syrian crisis before that, or the 2008 invasion of Georgia before that.

Fair, but even if they are not a global superpower, they are a tier above most of their bordering countries. 2014 was a direct result of Germany being dependent on Russian gas.

I wouldn’t argue that EU and the US did not screw up in 20{08,14} though. We did. Massively. We did underestimate Putins long game - had we known how far he wants to go, and I’d argue most post soviet countries knew, this would’ve been nipped in the bud.

Saudi Arabia with snow instead of sand

> They are not the USSR.

One strand of BS I've seen is "Ukraine now is a different country than the one we promised never to invade."

If that's really how it works, Russia should be ejected from the United Nations and apologize for fraudulently casting votes in the UN Security Council, because it's a different country than the USSR.

Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess,

Actually it was Putin's acting and speaking as if he could partially restore the glory of the former Soviet empire (whose collapse he called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century") that got Russia into its current mess in Ukraine.

He does, in any case, consider the current Russian Federation and the Soviet Union to be continuations of "historic Russia". So it's not Western rhetoric. And it isn't the West that is making him invade Ukraine and menace other countries.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Of course Putin is an imperialist. But for two decades his grievances were treated as though they had legitimacy, or as though Russia should be given the same level deference and appeasement that the USSR was. Even holding Putin's opinions constant, the US and Europe should have pushed back harder against the aggression rather than pretending it wasn't happening.

Indeed I did. I thought the referent of "as though they [were]" was "the USSR", rather than "a global superpower".

The second possibility makes much more sense (and is more informative), so I should have assumed that one instead.

You could always just bootstrap a nuclear program in Ukraine instead.

They gave up their nukes in exchange for protection from Russia and the US. Both countries have failed to keep up their end of the bargain, so it's sensible for Ukraine to get back what they gave up.

Great idea. Uncontrollable wars? Rising extremism all over the world? New generation of politicians who never experienced real diplomacy? Moralism, division, hatred... of course... the only things to save us all: the nukes. Let's just get it over with!

Gruncle Vlad is that you?

Ukraine had already hinted that this is in the future.

And I wouldn't blame them.

The West promised to protect them and failed.

A somewhat more-amusing proposal I've seen: Ukraine declares "war" against a NATO nation (e.g. Poland) and then immediately surrenders. Then it starts negotiations to secede while keeping NATO membership without a gap.

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