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Comment by istvan__ | Hacker News Reader

Do they have anything? Russia was relatively ok in the last 20 years (except the wars against Georgia, Chechen wars). They never really hide their actions, like annexing Crimea was communicated way in advance to the NATO, like in years. The western media barely mentions it. There was an earlier agreement between the NATO and Russia that we are not expanding to the east direction in the EU and we do not interfere with Russian interests in ex-soviet countries. Anyways it would be good to see more information from WL on these, I am really curious what went down exactly.

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There was not "an earlier agreement between the NATO and Russia that we are not expanding to the east direction in the EU and we do not interfere with Russian interests in ex-soviet countries."

First, you are confusing NATO policy with EU policy. Agreements between NATO and Russia are binding on NATO, not the EU. Likewise, agreements between the EU and Russia are binding on the EU but not NATO, and agreements between Russia and individual states are binding on those states, not NATO or EU.

NATO-Russian relations are broadly defined by the Founding Act(1995)[0]. This calls for cooperation to achieve peace and security, and calls for respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of "all states." Both sides are alleged to have violated this over the years, NATO in the Balkans(Serbia-Kosovo), and Russia in the Caucasus.

EU relations are based on the PCAs[1], but these are generally based on deals with individual countries and do not deal with Russia on the basis of a presumed sphere of influence.

However, the relations between Russia and the West specifically regarding Ukraine are strained by the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances[2]. Western countries claim Russia violated this agreement by not respecting existing borders (annexation of Crimea) and by the threat/use of force. The agreement also specifies that that economic influence should not be used to influence Ukrainian politics. Western countries believe Russian economic influence affected the decision by Yanukovych to pull away from the EU in November 2013. You could counter that EU influence has affected Ukrainian politics, but the memorandum was an agreement between US, UK, Ukraine, and Russia, so there was no guarantee against EU influence.

[0] http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm [1] http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/external_relations/re... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secur...

Thanks for correcting me.

>NATO-Russian relations are broadly defined by the Founding Act(1995)[0]. This calls for cooperation to achieve peace and security, and calls for respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of "all states." Both sides are alleged to have violated this over the years, NATO in the Balkans(Serbia-Kosovo), and Russia in the Caucasus.

As far as I'm aware the only thing Russia's done recently in the Caucasus was in Georgia. While Abhkhazia may be regarded as part of Georgia by the US/EU/West it has not been governed from Tblisi at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union. Another entirely accurate interpretation of the Georgian war was that Georgia took approving noises about it joining NATO from the US far too seriously, invaded Abhkhazia and was completely crushed by Russia.

Just goes to show you can't count on the US, like when Russia, the US and UK all agreed to guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for it giving up its nuclear weapons to Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved.

> Just goes to show you can't count on the US, like when Russia, the US and UK all agreed to guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for it giving up its nuclear weapons to Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved.

Not just US, UK was also part of that agreement, and they also have done nothing to help Ukraine. This is really disheartening because it just shows how much you can trust in these multinational agreements. Why should any other country ever trust US or UK ever again?

I'll play the devils advocate

> Not just US, UK was also part of that agreement, and they also have done nothing to help Ukraine.

Which 'Ukraine'? The government which was democratically elected (and deposed by protests) or the new government. Let's for a second imagine that the "Occupy *" movement was cozy with the Russians, and managed to topple the US administration of the time. Which America is NATO obliged to protect?

Regardless of legitimacy of the current government in Ukraine, which was democratically elected by now, even ignoring that, the actual agreed upon border of Ukraine has been breached by a foreign nation without provocation or aggression on the part of Ukraine. It's hard to argue that regardless of the current state of Ukrainian politics, this deserves action under that original agreement.

Think about it, after this, who would ever be stupid enough to give up nuclear weapons on the promise of US or UK?

> Do they have anything?

Wikileaks claimed they had leaks that would offend the Kremlin itself, back in October 2010. Then the FSB made very public threats, and all of sudden Wikileaks was in no particular rush to leak anything regarding to Russia.

Assange later aligned himself with the Belarussian state (Belarus being, of course, still very close to Russia), the process for which apparently led to a great deal of relative upheaval in Wikileaks after 2010, until the new political alliances within Wikileaks settled out.

> annexing Crimea was communicated way in advance to the NATO

Wait it was? I am genuinely interested. Can you please link to something more about this in either English or Russian?

Sure. I think it started around here:

http://rt.com/politics/russia-ukraine-europe-pressure-440/

The funny thing is, I was reading about this and discussed with our friends but I cannot find any reference in Google about it anymore. It feakin' weird because I am 100% it happened. Right now it is happening again btw:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-warns-...

They did the same thing with Ukraine situation. I am still digging. I can't read Russian anymore though. :)

This was the discussion:

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/10/22/rasmussen-no-n...

At this stage the NATO and allies knew that Russia is not happy with their plans on eastern expansion. I am trying to find a proof that they were aware of the annexation plans.

Russia's general feelings were always reasonably clear, but there's an enormous gulf between "want to annex and complain a lot about the current situation" (lots of states have such positions on disputed territories) and "actually sending in tanks tomorrow"...

That is very clear. Putin gain massive support in Russia with these moves, of course this is melting away after the embargo kicked in. The problem with that is two fold. The embargo directly hurts EU's economy (look at the Mistral class ship deal with France) and the lower oil price triggered a massive buying up operation in China making them even stronger than before. Basically USA's (and more broadly the Western world's) influence hurting their allies and enabling the other parties (China) to gain even more power. This sort of play is not good for us in the long run.

I must be living in a parallel universe, I cannot explain otherwise having a memory of all i said...

I only found the one below about the negotiations between NATO and Russia of not expanding to the east, no article on the warns prior annexing parts of Ukraine. Putyin's reason for the annexation was to "save" Russians from the international interference with legitimate government in Ukraine. This is all available on this side of the internet now.

> and we do not interfere with Russian interests in ex-soviet countries

("interests" decided by Russia)

Do you have some sources for these claims?

Not in English available in Google apparently. I try to dig it up from the other languages + using duckduckgo.

One has to note that NATO is not "expanding to the east". None of the new members were lured into NATO. To the contrary, those are all sovereign countries who wanted to join NATO and escape Russia's bullying. No formerly occupied country wants the Russians back.

(-3 points from RT, how lovely!)

I am not sure what you are talking about when you say lured. This game is very complex. What happens if some secret services decide to infiltrate a government or create political situation that pushes to country towards wanting to join the NATO. Would that qualify for lured? The amount of false flag ops happening I would not be surprised that some of these things were planned in Ukraine.

Russia is not bullying here. What do you think the USA would do if China was deploying ballistic weapons to North Mexico? This is exactly the same situation. The west and the east could live together for almost 20 years with very low friction. Any expansion on any of the sides would leave to imbalance and more friction. And for your information, the country I am from, would be pretty damn happy to get back Russia. See http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/30/us-russia-europe-h...

Almost 50% of the country is pro-russia. There is lots of populism going on and it is so easy to get nostalgic about an era you can barely remember but the beer & bread was cheaper than now.

I think the the NATO should just stay in countries where they were before and not to play with this very dangerous situation. Just a reminder that USA would use nuclear force if the society would not stop it. That would lead to an absolute devastating demolition of entire countries and (worst case) long term nuclear pollution.

Plan of using nuclear weapons by USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTxaGzm_v8Q&feature=youtu.be...

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