Beyond Ukraine: Why Europe is preparing for a wider conflict | Hacker News Reader

Beyond Ukraine: Why Europe is preparing for a wider conflict

cnn.com

15 pointsrawgabbit12 comments

What does Russia hope to gain from this? Is there any kind of rational motive, even an amoral one like “grab resources,” or is this driven by a bunch of historical destiny and weird neo-trad Duginist bullshit?

Seems like if Russia had stayed peaceful they could be selling Siberia as a cheap place to put data centers (cold and tons of power) and cleaning up.

  > What does Russia hope to gain from this?

Tie up European military resources and thus reduce the weaponry available to Ukraine.

This also highlights why the US/European strategy of playing chicken and focusing on "de-escalation" is fundamentally flawed: it gives adversaries the initiative and the lever for controlling the temperature. Whenever it gets too hot for them, they can dial it down, whereas the "de-escalation" camp has to dance to the tune of their adversaries.

It's the very same mistake that was made with Hitler.

>Russia remains bogged down in Ukraine. But Putin does not need another invasion on the scale of Ukraine to challenge NATO. He can move up an escalation ladder: sabotage, cyberattacks, assassination plots, drone or missile attacks — and then a limited military operation designed to test whether NATO still means what it says.

So Russia is too weak to conquer Ukraine but wants to risk other countries joining hot war? What for? Get bogged down even more?

You assume rationality when history has shown wars are often started with irrational or no apparent reason.

It's disturbing how much of leadership is based on arbitrary decisions. Military included.

Check that account's comment history.

I don't know, rawgabbit seems okey. What do you mean?

I presume they meant you.

No way

It's just more of the same - "Western propaganda lies, Kiev regime lies, here are 5 links to sources which contradict the article"

You forgot to add something about midwifing.

I don't think you need a reminder, but here you are: the infamous Nuland-Pyatt[0][1] call about midwifing the coup.

"Pyatt: ... But anyway we could land jelly side up on this one if we move fast. So let me work on Klitschko and if you can just keep... we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. ...

Nuland: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president's national security adviser Jake] Sullivan's come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden's willing."

And here is a commentary from the Cato Institute, an American think tank, with subtitle "The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking."[3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland#Leaked_phone_c...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_R._Pyatt

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

[3] https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ukraine-hypocrisy

TL;DR: Because Russia is ramping up hybrid/unconventional attacks, and Belarus is training for an attack on the Baltics. Russia and Belarus are being aggressively hostile; if you want peace, prepare for war.

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