However, we should not forget why this is so.
During WWII and after WWII, the Russians have forcibly moved a very large number of people from the territory that is now in Ukraine, to various unpleasant locations in the Soviet Union, mostly in Siberia.
Then they have brought Russian colonists, who were settled usually in the houses from which the natives had been evicted.
The descendants of those Russians brought in Ukraine, mostly by Stalin, have obviously not been happy with the independence of Ukraine, when they have become a 2nd rate nationality from a previously privileged one, like also the Russian colonists from other former parts of the Soviet Union, e.g. the Baltic countries or Georgia.
I agree that the Russians, now in minority, have their rights like anyone else, and they should not be persecuted by the new majority, but at the same time I do not believe that people who have so recently occupied by force the land on which they live now have the moral right to request "democratically" that their present country should become again a part of the empire which gave them houses and jobs, but those houses and jobs were provided by what was stolen from the former inhabitants.
Is this some grim joke? Had putin wanted to kill civilians, he could use nuclear weaponry in various forms to kill billions.
But putin, like everyone in this world, is limited by various factors, like army morale, or the patience of its neighbors. The economical situation of russia is terrible, but it can always get worse, and making a full scale attack against civilians, would end up with even more dramatic response like even China sanctioning them, or EU sanctioning them completely with complete disregard to own economy (no gas) or some kind of alliance actually attacking a nuclear empire for the first time in history (not counting the Japanese who didn't expect USA to develop the technology so fast), or... Simply putin would be killed by some highly ranked officer.
> Just like the US
What is it with all this symmetrism on HN? putin invaded Ukraine without casus belli.
I don't think we can find a diplomatic solution unless we truly try to understand the enemy. Saying he did this with no reason doesn't help this.
There's always a reason for any war. Bush had a reason to invade Iraq after all, didn't he? What was the real reason?
Putin views this as a proxy war between US and Russia. Cuban missile crisis was similar: US placed nukes in Turkey, too close for Russia's liking. Russia said they'd place nukes in Cuba. After US threatened WW3 a deal was reached and both sides pulled their nukes.
We could have achieved a similar deal and saved countless lived. But for whatever reason nobody wanted to negotiate with Putin. That would be fine if NATO would actually protect Ukraine instead of leaving them to fight on their own.
Actually, I tried to understand Pooking by inducing paranoia in myself. When I did that, all his actions become quite logical. He sees RF as victim of evil NATO. Any action of NATO is a step in evil plan to destroy RF. RF is so smart, so they see the evil plan of NATO, while others are blind, or pretend that they doesn't understand, or are playing their roles in the evil plan. Your text is quite logical when I'm switching to «paranoia» mode.
He wants to keep control over Europe and that would have been an instant loss as soon as production went live.
I believe the takeover over Crimea was primarily for this. The rest was a result of what he thought "preparation" to cement commodities/gas within his influence.
He's a bit jealous of China too. Russia has all this territory and doesn't even remotely gets the respect he screams for, at least he isn't getting it from the west.
It's a tiny man with a big ego.
> UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the war as illegal, saying in a September 2004 interview that it was "not in conformity with the Security Council"
However, I find comparing Ukraine to Iraq simply unconvincing. The latter had a recent history of aggression [2], which largely fueled the suspicion about the "weapons of mass destruction".
Comparing saddam husein [3] to Volodymyr Zelenskyy also fails spectacularly.
The comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis is a miss too: in Ukraine the opposite happened, the nuclear weaponry was removed which was the Ukraine's part of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances [4]. However russia doesn't respect its part:
> 1. The Russian Federation [...] respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
That's why I call it symmetrism: on one side there's an aggressive country, run by a tyrant with proven crimes against humanity, on the other a democratic country that wants to be free and independent and choose its allies. But putin considers it aggression.
It's one thing if it's a valid casus belli - people thinking so I consider to be unreasonable.
Another thing is, that putin calls a lot of things an aggression against russia. Recently he called sanctions such aggression. So now pretty much the entire world, in this madman's mind, has attacked russia and *IF* we accept the casus belli used against Ukraine, we have to accept a cassus belli against any other country putin attacks next. In other words, the idea behind cassus belli corrupted to the point where it's useless. It's like defining "cold" as colder that a quadrillion °C - now everything is cold, even the center of the Sun. The word became useless.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Saddam_Hussein [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
Here’s the situation and the order of events that led to this invasion:
Pro-Russian government was in power pre-2014.
Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.
This caused the mostly ethnic Russian region of Donbass to declare independence and break away from Ukraine, resulting in war.
Russia tacitly supported them, but did not recognise them.
The Minsk Accords was supposed to end the fighting in 2015, but Ukraine has not lived up to the agreement.
Ukraine has been shelling and bombing the region on and off for 8 years now.
Putin finally decided enough is enough and recognised the region as independent.
He sent troops into the area to protect it and his invasion of Ukraine is meant to destroy the Ukrainian military to prevent them from attacking Donbass.
Now its up to you whether you think Putin is sincere or he's just using it as an excuse to grab Ukrainian territory. Geopolitics is complicated and believing anyone is innocent in geopolitics is ludicrous at best.
Sounds about right.
> Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.
That's already where the chain breaks. Ukrainian people, not military, overthrew the government. Of course that can be argued, how do we know that - did the majority agree with the protesters? You could make a poll, but to be sure the results aren't manipulated, you have to make a referendum... Or just an election, in which who was elected? Did Putin send observers to control the elections, did he point out the problems with the system? No? Well, that's where this narration breaks. The world is full of such subtle solutions like election monitoring; it's ridiculous to claim benevolence but skip those solutions and go straight to violence.
This isn't an ethnic genocide. Had Putin wanted to kill civilians you wouldn't have 100s of deaths but millions like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just like the US he is looking to overturn the government.
The reality is that some people in Ukraine (Donbas and large portion of the East) do support Russia. Truth is never black and white.