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by mopsi 710 days ago
> Since it excludes Russia from the day one I also care very little, and for me that's a liability not a virtue.

There is nothing in the key treaties of the EU excluding Russian membership, provided that it meets the criteria, of which the rule of law and the respect for human rights are the largest concerns. Back when Gorbachev was seeking "Common European Home" with the EEC, European countries were quite open to the idea. Certainly no less than they were open to a good working relationship with Germany only five years after their citizens had been saved from concentration camps. In Central and Eastern Europe, everyone who set European integration as their goal reached it in 10-15 years, and it has been an incredible success for everyone involved.

But I believe we once already discussed that feeling of empowerment from being able to kill people across the world with impunity is more attractive to you than fishing quotas and other mundane things that the EU deals with most of the time to improve the lives of its citizens day by day.

> Again, that's only your opinion with which I disagree. There's Crimea and LPR/DPR and Ukraine has started a civil war against LPR/DPR.

There was no civil war in Ukraine. LPR/DPR are fiction created by Russia to mask their invasion. And this is not my opinion, but facts established by the European Court of Human Rights. A few years ago they had a case brought against Russia by countries whose citizens perished in the shot-down MH17 airliner. Russian representatives tried to spin the old lies about "separatists" in Ukraine being at fault (and thus absolving Russia of all responsibility), but the court found no facts to support that there had been any separatism worth mentioning in Ukraine. Those people were, from the start, like Girkin from Russian secret services, recruits from local criminal gangs working for them, or from the armed forces of Russia without proper insignia, all acting under Russian military command.

Pay attention to the reverse side of the Russian campaign medal awarded to the participants of the invasion of Crimea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_%22For_the_Return_of_Cri... The start of the campaign is incribed as 20 February 2014. That was months before LNR/DNR "declared independence", and even predates Yanukovych running away from the country (the event gopniks call "CIA coup" that started it all).

The truth is that Russia invaded Crimea as Ukraine was in internal turmoil, and then made special operatives cosplay separatists in Donbas and used that as an excuse to invade Eastern Ukraine.

> They should go to Putin and sign some ceasefire or peace treaty with him if they don't like it.

All offers Putin has made so far can be summed up as "let me keep what I've stolen, and add a bit more". Anything less than a retreat from Ukraine is not a serious proposal. You are paying one Afghan war worth of killed every month for the stubborness to admit in the third year of the war that the three-day land grab has failed. The price is only going to rise as European arms factories ramp up production, and more of the fighting is carried over into Russia as restrictions on weapons get looser. The batch of fighter jets that the Netherlands signed over to Ukraine yesterday came without restrictions about their use over the skies of Russia.

> Why come to me. I am not Putin and I didn't even vote for him.

People like you are the reason why Putin has any impact in the world. Putin is not sitting behind a bench in a factory and milling artillery shells that reduce Ukrainian cities to rubble as if a nuclear weapon had gone off. He is not programming Ukrainian power plants into missile guidance systems to make Ukrainian cities unlivable. He is not the one sitting in a jet and dropping bombs on Ukraine. He is not the one torturing minors in cells fitted for children. He is not the one raping, murdering and stealing across Ukraine. Without millions of people acting as his willing executioners, he would be a rambling maniac without any influence on the world.

By choosing to adopt his bunker mentality and spread his lies, you have a part in this too.

Circling back to the beginning, you may disagree with everything, but the way Russians treat Ukrainians in words and actions alike shapes how you will be treated in return. By the way things are going, you will have many more opportunities to complain about humiliations.

1 comments

> LPR/DPR are fiction created by Russia to mask their invasion

Why does LPR/DPR militia fight the Ukrainian army then, from 2014 onwards? Because they totally do. They are among the most motivated troops.

> Anything less than a retreat from Ukraine is not a serious proposal

Then more Ukrainians will die "defending their homes", as well as Russians of course. And have a good day.

> Without millions of people acting as his willing executioners

They just really don't like the state of Ukraine (and post-Soviet borders), but at the same time want Russia to win the war. It's simple.

> Why does LPR/DPR militia fight the Ukrainian army then, from 2014 onwards? Because they totally do. They are among the most motivated troops.

There never was such a thing. The war in the east started on 12 April 2014, when Russian commandos led by Igor Girkin from FSB seized government buildings in Sloviansk. The ECHR did not find any evidence of a militia in Ukraine that wasn't manned, supplied and controlled by Russian armed forces. But you cannot admit any of this, because without the origin-myth of civil war in Ukraine, the whole justification for the invasion would collapse.

> Then more Ukrainians will die "defending their homes", as well as Russians of course.

That's the price many nations in Europe have had to pay for their freedom. It is not too common to see people throw away their freedom and willingly become serfs like Russians have under Putin. There is no greater indictment of modern Russia than the the fact that Ukrainians choose to go through this hell if it saves them from ending up with the kind of life you have.

> They just really don't like the state of Ukraine (and post-Soviet borders), but at the same time want Russia to win the war. It's simple.

Indeed. Simply a Russian version of Nazism. Delusional ideas about rearranging the world put forward by a paranoid dictator, with population that out of deep inferiority complex willingly believes his soothing lies and follows him blindly, united under Z-swastika, in murdering peaceful people across Europe by hundreds of thousands while erasing entire cities from existence. And then you wonder why no-one respects you and why Russia is increasingly seen as a curse on this world.

> when Russian commandos led by Igor Girkin from FSB seized government buildings in Sloviansk

DPR was already proclaimed by then, and I believe most of these comandos were on Ukrainian passports ATM.

> That's the price many nations in Europe have had to pay for their freedom

Then why all the whining? I don't shed so much tears and complain to UN when opening my wallet.

> Delusional ideas about rearranging the world

No - that's just siding with your country and your people.

> why no-one respects you

Frankly, we don't care, because we do not respect you either anymore. And that one will be much harder to undo.

> DPR was already proclaimed by then, and I believe most of these comandos were on Ukrainian passports ATM.

Ukrainian citizenship doesn't prevent one from serving Russian interests. As the ECHR concluded after reviewing facts, there is no reason to consider the people who started the war in Eastern Ukraine as distinct from Russian armed forces. Russian government brought together the people, equipped them, gave them goals to fulfill, and supported them in any way they could. Likewise, the Freedom of Russia Legion is without any doubt a part of Ukrainian armed forces despite consisting mainly of defected Russians.

> Then why all the whining?

It's you and your Führer who are constantly whining how everyone humiliates and deceives you. Just a few days ago, he came up with a new sob story - that the assault on Kyiv failed not because of successful counterattacks at Hostomel and Irpin, but because western countries deceived Russia into a ceasefire that they dutifully followed. How can you listen to that and not think "what a moron"?

> No - that's just siding with your country and your people.

That's what Nazis and their supporters thought too when they rallied around Hitler. Hitler didn't act in Germany's best interests and nor does Putin act in Russia's best interests. The longer it takes you to recognize it, the deeper hole you will have to crawl out from. It's great irony that revenge has put you on track of repeating the 1990s.

For Russians, the 1990s are as coupled to territorial losses and new borders as they are to economic hardships. So tearing down these borders is a case of recovery.

Other than that, molon labe.

> For Russians, the 1990s are as coupled to territorial losses and new borders as they are to economic hardships. So tearing down these borders is a case of recovery.

No, I am not speaking about the mythical 1990s as they exist in the mass conscious in the present day, warped by a huge dose of Soviet nostalgia. I am speaking about the 1990s that people actually lived through. Hyperinflation, shortages, poverty, crime. Breakdown of social order. Life's savings losing value almost overnight. Wages going unpaid for months and months. Abandoned kids sniffing glue and no-one caring. Few people had the luxury to care about issues beyond their immediate survival. Knew a family that had collected enough money for a house. Money lost value in such a short time that they managed to get only an ugly floor lamp by the time reality hit them. Nobody gave a shit where borders ran or if they even existed.

Massive spending on completely non-productive activities like the war against Ukraine while the world pivots away from you in disgust is a solid strategy for reaching such socio-economic deterioration again.

And it's important to stress that the 1990s were not seen as separate chapter at the time, but as the natural endgame of USSR's deep internal rot and failure to provide even bare sustenance to its population. Somehow you managed to run a resource-rich country into the ground during peacetime, and dragged down with you the European nations that you had enslaved during the WWII. And yet, for some reason, you think you've suffered a great injustice and still deserve an empire. Why? You can't run a normal country.