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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

They should have strengthened their military and supported Ukraine joining NATO instead of opposing it publicly at the Bucharest Summit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Bucharest_summit

> The Alliance did not offer a Membership Action Plan to Georgia or Ukraine, largely due to the opposition of Germany

US govt warned Merkel to wind down purchasing gas and oil from Putin:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-scolded-germany-for...

Currently as it stands for all great chest thumping for "supporting Ukraine" EU as a whole is spending more money funding the war by buying gas and oil from the Russian than helping Ukraine. But somehow in the media domain, they managed to position themselves as great friends and supporters of Ukraine. It's quite baffling.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/03/europe-russia-ukraine-w...

(https://archive.is/1ULVQ)

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This, and they actually invested heavily into building Nord Stream 2 from 2011 onwards. Nord Stream 2 never delivered any gas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2

NS2 was a shameful project, it's best for everybody that it was destroyed.

The world politics specifically US+Germany+Russia is at least one level more complex than describing it as a transaction between these 3 countries.

I dont pretend to understand it but I also dont think you should minimize it to just one or two transactions.

Nobody can predict the future when thinking about international politics. We cannot apply human level rules to interaction between countries.

> I dont pretend to understand it but I also dont think you should minimize it to just one or two transactions.

I think no matter how complicated when it comes to regular citizens, not those who have a political science degree, there should be some basic understanding. One doesn't need an advanced degree to see things things like hypocrisy, corruption and lies.

One would expect that when a politician goes on camera and says "Putin is a killer! We support Ukraine" then turns around and writes $1B to Putin every month, people would be a bit dismayed at the hypocrisy. Especially when they got a fair warning about it. One might suggest that we hide the fact that we supported Putin and strengthened the dependence on Russian energy for so long in order not upset the public too much as it's too controversial and disturbs the peace, sure. However, at some point that made-up fantasy has to collide with reality, and that's what is happening now I think. The longer we live in a fantasy world the harder the crash with reality will be later on.

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