[sdfhdhjdw3]

Why is it that in this story, Russia is always depicted as having no agency?

"Ukraine CHOSE to join nato, so Russia HAD to invade."

No, the cause of the destruction here is Russia's invasion. Ukraine can choose whatever allies it damn pleases.

You people are either stupid or dishonest.

[ghostwriter]

> Ukraine can choose whatever allies it damn pleases.

According to the existing international conventions of sovereignty that imply recognising and adhering all previous mutually signed declarations, Ukraine actually cannot choose whatever it wants, as it would violate one of the conditions (military bloc neutrality) under which their sovereignty was granted to them by the USSR in 1990 in the first place, which Russia is a legitimate successor of.

The Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine from 1990 [1], states it clearly in Chapter IX: "The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention to become a permanently neutral state in the future, which does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three non-nuclear principles: not to accept, produce or acquire nuclear weapons".

Ukraine's constitutional sovereignty has always been and still is predicated on following the signed conditions until further official negotiations and subsequent referendums, whether you like it or not.

[1] https://zakon-rada-gov-ua.translate.goog/laws/show/55-12?_x_...

[_kbh_]

Russia also promised not to invade or threaten the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nuclear weapons, under the Budapest Memorandum.

You cannot have it both ways, and say that Russia is allowed to threaten Ukraines sovereignty because of a USSR era declaration, when Russia itself is violating declarations that they gave too Ukraine.

[retcon]

>Ukraine can choose whatever allies it damn pleases.

If only it was so easy then this would have been over as soon as it started.

Edit: forgot to quote context

[pydry]

Russia has agency but that doesnt change the fact that NATO is absolutely an existential threat to it.

With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.

[inglor_cz]

"NATO is absolutely an existential threat to it"

In Russian paranoid mind, yes.

In practice, former USSR countries or Finland are joining NATO precisely to be protected from some "brotherly help and selfless liberation" dispensed by the Kremlin several decades down the line.

A collective entity like NATO would have to become collectively mad (not just one president, but many of them) to actively attack Russia, which still has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, theoretically capable of wiping humans off the Earth several times over.

And what would the casus belli even be? The only thing Russia surely has is plentiful natural resources, and it is cheaper and easier just to buy them than to wage an extremely costly and destructive war. The main mining/production regions are deep inland anyway, thousands of miles away from NATO borders.

Unless you buy their idea that "those scheming Westerners envy us our eternal glory and want to force limp-wristed decadent postmodernism and LGBT on us", there are no reasons to attack Russia.

[pydry]

The goal with Russia is not to attack directly but to destabilize and balkanize over the period of many decades. The goal is to be able to threaten it cheaply along a very long and exposed border not invade it expensively.

Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized and Russia was taken over by an American puppet.

Theyre determined not to have a round two.

[theplumber]

>> Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized

It looks like this time the russians will enjoy the North Korean experience as well. Why would anyone be interested to deal with Russia after this invasion of Ukraine?

[mdp2021]

> Why would anyone be interested

Factually, there are opportunities and animosities and hard choices that conditioned explicit positions.

[alexvoda]

Most of the hardships of that period were selfinflicted.

You may want to believe Yeltsin was a US puppet all you want.

That does not change the fact that when the USSR fell, and nations had to compete on an international market, the industry of all Warsaw pact nations was utterly uncompetitive.

That does not change that there is corruption in all levels of Russian administration, and for all this time they have been a drain on Russian people and its economy.

Putin just pivoted a balanced but failing state into a petrostate with him as the head mafioso.

Want to not be easily destabilised? Choose a more reliable and accountable government. Russia had some chances for that. Now Putin has enshrined in law his rulership until his death.

[inglor_cz]

History repeats itself. The bout of instability that is about to come as a result of this ill-advised, unwinnable war is self-inflicted too.

The Russians could have carried on with the previous hybrid war strategy, buying off politicians in the West, spreading their narratives, not-so-secretly augmenting the strange DNR and LNR entities in their chronic war with Ukraine, helping the Germans and others become ever more dependent on cheap Russian natural gas etc.

But they had to go all in with 200 000 soldiers and try to conquer a big country that hates them and would be uncontrollable even if they actually managed to take it.

[yellowapple]

> Russia has agency but that doesnt change the fact that NATO is absolutely an existential threat to it.

NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe (and is evidently willing to make good on those threats, as Ukraine is learning the hard way).

> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.

With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment on bordering states. And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.

[pydry]

>NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe

Russia was on reasonably good terms with Europe for at least 2 decades.

And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.

The same westerners who are being whipped into a white hot rage about Ukraine collectively shrugged their shoulders about that.

For some inexplicable reason NATO fucking up Libya made Putin paranoid and unwilling to accept the potential for military expansion of this offensive alliance to the most vulnerable sections of the Russian border. I cant think why.

>With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment

Of course they do. Everybody getting caught in this crossfire of western imperialism vs. russian imperialism is scared shitless.

>And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.

Hardly. Libya didnt ask to be torn to shreds.

[yellowapple]

> And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.

That happened in 2011. Ukraine and Georgia attempted to join NATO as early as 2008 (and other former Eastern Bloc states did join previously), motivated by (among many other things) Russian interference in Ukraine's 2004 elections and Russia's participation in the Georgian Civil War.

Needless to say, blaming NATO's intervention in Libya for Russian interventionism throughout the multiple decades preceding it is about as bass-ackwards of an understanding of causality as trying to assert that wet sidewalks cause rain to happen.

[dragonwriter]

> Russia was on reasonably good terms with Europe for at least 2 decades.

From the dissolution of the USSR until about the NATO-Yugoslav War, which was...a little over half a decade.

[greedo]

Putin has always been paranoid. He's ex-KGB, yet all of you apologists claiming that NATO pushed him into the Ukraine war ignore that he's a dictator who invades other countries, assassinates the opposition and media, steals from the Russian people, the list goes on.

Keep on trying to make it as if he had no choice. Or that Russia had no choice.

[sdfhdhjdw3]

> Russia was on reasonably good terms with Europe for at least 2 decades.

Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron.

[dragonwriter]

Paraphrasing the guidelines:

“Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron” can be better expressed as simply “Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years.”

[dang]

You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly in your comments, including by calling names, personal attacks, and flamewar. This is not ok, and we ban accounts that do it. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

Being on the right side of a war, or feeling that you are, is not a reason to post like this to HN—it's a reason to err in the opposite direction, as the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

You've been posting like this on lots of other topics too, and in fact your account's commenting history is so flamewarrish that I think we have to ban this account until we get some indication that you want to use HN as intended. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [e-mail] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[NicoJuicy]

You should really investigate the last 30 years of military interventions of Russia before you claim these things.

And it's not about NATO at Russian borders ( Russia has no problem with Finland for example).

It's about the gas found in Crimea in 2008 that can replace Russian gas deliveries.

Fyi. Donbas is "by coincidence" very rich in minerals ( eg. Lithium)... What are the odds...

[sdfhdhjdw3]

> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.

With the horrendous things that Russia has done throughout it's history in eastern europe, it's no wonder that it's neighbors are worried.

That's another funny thing. The only people saying "with the horrendous things the US does..." are either Americans or Russians. People who live in eastern europe are ABSOLUTELY worried about Russia invading them. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukrania of course, Georgia, Chechnia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia. People there don't play this "both sides" bullshit game.

I'm very happy if Russia believes that NATO is an existential threat. We're not pushing them hard enough, that's the problem.

[pydry]

>I'm very happy if Russia believes that NATO is an existential threat.

Logically if you want an existential threat to Russia to expand up against Russian borders you must want war, no?

[sdfhdhjdw3]

> Logically if you want an existential threat to Russia to expand up against Russian borders you must want war, no?

No you see, this isn't "NATO expanding up to"...

Countries are sovereign to choose their allies. And countries in eastern europe are asking to join a defense alliance against Russia.

Serious question, have you considered that number 1 no one is forcing eastern europe countries to join this alliance, and number 2 WHY do they want to join it? If you haven't, I'll tell you the answer: What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO.

NATO isn't expanding up to Russia's borders. Russia is scaring every country it borders, so they're doing something about it.

Oh look, Finland and Sweden are joining NATO https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_197737.htm

Because OF COURSE they do, because otherwise they might be next to be invaded.

[pydry]

It calls itself a defensive alliance but in the last 20 years it has been exclusively offensive. This is, of course, pretty standard orwellian doublethink.

I have considered why these countries want to join. It's for much the same reason inner city kids want to join gangs - a mix of a desire for protection and a desire to be the threat for once.

>What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO

Georgia got whacked for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang. Why were we pouring money into Georgia to sway it towards that point? Well, coz it's a standard empire building tactic to stir shit up on ethnic faultlines along the borders of your opponents. Just ask the British.

I fully understand WHY kids join inner city gangs but we generally try to advise them against it for a reason. Those reasons apply here 100% - it can give you protection, but it can also get you chewed up and spat out as cannon fodder in a larger turf war.

[sdfhdhjdw3]

> Georgia got hit for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang.

Man, Russia is really losing this game then. Because countries keep joining Nato. Findland and Sweden now. Sweden has had a policy of neutrality for 200 years LOL.

Fucking losers. If there's one immutable truth in Russian history, is that its wherewithal has never ever been able to match its ambition.

[ghostwriter]

> Countries are sovereign to choose their allies.

unless those countries are Panama and Grenada that happened to be inappropriately close to self-important US interests.