Re:Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces
by rmk on Friday February 25, 2022 @01:34PM
(#30470532)
I'm not saying Russia's actions are legal, morally right, or justified. Russia (or, for that matter, any authoritarian nation-state that's barely accountable to its own people) is a threat to all its neighbors. I'm only saying that a regional power that has traditionally been the hegemon will think this way.
Since my nation was literally behind the Iron Curtain, I can assure you that Russia _has no right_ to invade neighbouring sovereign nations, no matter how "unsafe" they are feeling. Invading Ukraine is an attempt to externalise the cost of having a land buffer, by stealing said land from a nearby nation.
No matter how "cost effective" it is, it has a real price in human blood and suffering. Only a sociopath would agree it's a reasonable solution, if one were to be (or pretend to be) a good-faith geopolitical player. Which is the current perception of the Western stance on the NATO-Russia tensions from the perspective of ~everyone who cares about human rights and the right to national and personal self-determination.