Hacker News Reader

Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

This article was pretty light on the sheer amount of Western aid provided to Ukraine.

The whole thing is a cluster. A ton of Ukrainian people *are* ethnically Russian, particularly in the east. They aren’t exactly going to be ok under a NATO backed regime that’s hostile to Russia.

Russia shouldn’t tolerate NATO troops stationed on one of its longest land borders.

I guarantee if the Chinese worked out a deal to station troops in northern Mexico we wouldn’t be happy.

Unfortunately the conflict has also revealed a disgusting double standard in Western media.

Ukrainians are “European Christians” with names, hopes and dreams.

Not like *those* people who are collateral damage. Burn the village to save it, blah blah.

View on HN

  > Russia shouldn’t tolerate NATO troops stationed on one of its longest land borders.

There weren't any anywhere in Eastern Europe before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Ukraine wanted to join NATO, remember?

1. Wanted in 2008, did not get an invitation, and that was the end of it. Russia invaded in 2014 because of deepening Ukraine-EU trade ties.

2. Most of Eastern Europe has been in NATO for over 20 years and has not seen any permanent stationing of "NATO troops", whatever that means. And the forces that were in Western Europe have seen dramatic decrease since the 1980s, around 5-10x across all key categories (personnel, weapons, etc). The US military is currently undergoing a review with the goal of making further reductions of their presence in Europe.

London has a ton of ethnic Russians who do fine under a NATO regime that's hostile to Russia.

Russia had long tolerated NATO on it's borders in Latvia and Estonia and is now OK with Finland. NATO is really a defensive alliance that has never attacked any of the countries it borders.

The whole Russia NATO thing is mostly BS to justify invasions while really doing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_irredentism.

Given many in US leadership still want to march straight to Moscow, do you believe US troops stationed in Ukraine wouldn’t be used for said purposes?

You can say NATO has never engaged in an offense war, but a majority of its members did participate in the Iraq war as the Coalition of the Willing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq...

It’s literally impossible for Russia to defend a ground invasion staged from Ukraine. Coalition( or whatever they call it) troops could be dining in Red Square within 24 hours.

Well, I said NATO had never invaded bordering countries. Iraq doesn't border and also members of NATO can do their own thing. I think NATO did get roped into involvement in Serbia by the US but it's not their mission.

Re. ground troops dining in Red Square, firstly Latvia is also about six hours drive from Moscow as well so going via Kyiv wouldn't make much difference. Secondly there is the small business of the worlds largest nuclear arsenal and many troops to put off invaders. And thirdly many countries border NATO countries and seem to manage to deal with it without freaking out and invading others.

"The whole thing is a cluster. A ton of Ukrainian people are ethnically Russian, particularly in the east."

Yep. Ukraine is not a Nation state, like Germany, or Finnland, or Sweden. Like Belgium, is is deep divided. The division was reflected in each election. Literally, the east voted for one candidate, the west for the other.

I slept in a Hostel during the war in Kyiv. There ware Ukrainians and Russian Ukrainians. We hung out and had drinks, no problem. And during the night Putin and Klitschko made a pissing contest in the sky...

It appears you’ve been downvoted and flagged.

You see, to the Westerner things must be black and white.

Russia is evil and the West good, despite the last Iraq war having something like 10x as many innocent casualties as the Ukraine war.

Something must be different between Iraqis and Ukrainians to make the latter so much more worthy of concern.

Guess we’ll never know.

I don't think that's a fair assessment of Western perspectives.

If the USA was 6 years into a very messy conquest of Mexico because Mexico wanted to join a trade bloc with China, the West would be very disapproving of American actions.

Similarly the Iraq war is unpopular to Western citizens. Even at the time the British weren't very into it, and the Germans and French outright refused to participate.

>Mexico wanted to join a trade bloc with China,

A trade block of which the majority of it's members are in NATO.

Don't forget John Mc Cain, who never saw a war he didn't like, took a personal visit to Ukraine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-uk...

Do you think he came to hand out cupcakes ?

>the British weren't very into it,

Was that a valid defense at Nuremberg?

Joining NATO is obviously the correct choice for countries like Ukraine, as evidenced by Russia's ongoing actions towards them.

Perhaps if Mexico had a long history of being invaded, divided up, and "Americanized," they would be part of a Military Alliance against American Aggression. As they should.

The German people weren't on trial at Nuremberg.

The US has a very long history of invading and interfering in almost every Latin American country.

It’s hard to keep count, but we just kidnapped the sovereign head of state of Venezuela.

Depending on who you asked we did so to stop a potential foreign military base from being located in Venezuela.

Or we just felt like stealing Venezuelan oil.

Cuba is still embargoed.

The Iraq war had various war crimes. But for some reason no convicted war criminals.

Yeah and? Like I said, if Mexico had the reasons for it, they should join an alliance to guard against USA aggression.

And then if the USA said "we gotta invade Mexico because we're threatened by the alliance they set up to counter OUR aggression," that would be a bit hypocritical I think!

I'm not defending the US, you're preoccupied with attacking them. Ukraine has every right to join NATO because Russia is a threat to them, not because of the US.

True before the war. Putin did manage to make Ukraine united.

The clear majority of Russian speaking Ukrainians support Zelenskyy now.

This must have happened in the last year since I was there in 2024 and this was definately not the case!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com