That's because you only see part of the picture, because you're a Westerner.

You don't see how, under the guise of "anti-corruption fight", most of the local businessmen (part of them also politicians) would get sent to jail and their businesses acquired on the cheap. That would be ok, of course, if the place of said corrupt local businessmen would be taken by other, non-corrupt, local businessmen, i.e. non-corrupt Russians taking the businesses of corrupt Russians and making them better.

Unfortunately that's not what happens, the place of those corrupt businessmen is taken by Western companies and multi-nationals that are not corrupt on paper because they do not posses personhood (at least not when it comes to doing bad stuff), but which are even more evil because bigger (look at Nestle, headquartered on the shores of the idyllic Lake Leman, no-one is bombing that place any time soon).

Now, you could say: "better have evil Western corporations take the place of corrupt Russian businessmen in Russia!" but the reality is that not everyone thinks like that and that's what this ideological conflict is mostly about.

What does that have to do with the West? That is a Russian problem! Since when do Western governments govern Russia? At no point were laws in Russia made and enforced by anyone but the Russian government. And I did not know the oligarchs were Westerners? Yes there was a lot of stealing and shady practices. Which is how you got the oligarchs. Which are Russian.

This is a conflict Russia is having against the West via Ukraine, they're fighting against the Westernisation of Ukraine, they've said as much.

Thank you for making it clear, exactly what I wrote. Absurdity!

> fighting against the Westernisation of Ukraine

What business is it of Russia to dictate what other countries do? Insanity!

In your first comment you spoke about Russia, now that I responded you moved on to Ukraine and it makes no sense either.

Last time I checked, when I was in Ukraine, they want to be westernized.

We can go back to your previous comment, if Russia does not want it, you can do whatever within your borders. Nobody complained, as I mentioned, the West let Russia do whatever with little to no repercussions. Russia is not a victim, it is an aggressor, without any logical reason.

> Last time I checked, when I was in Ukraine, they want to be westernized.

Doesn't matter what they want it the guy with bigger weapons close to them has different opinions, that's how international relations work, that's how wars start, that's why we're in here. It's nothing "irrational" about it, as in we've been doing this for millennia.

On a more general point, I can see your point, you're most probably an idealist [1], I for myself I'm a realist, I personally think that realism is closer to how things actually work when it comes to international relations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism_in_international_rela...

Thank you for coming clear about Russian aggression Which is why we need to up our defense spending, as I said. In your last comment you drop all pretenses. "We can do whatever we want, no arguments necessary".

I'm not sure what you are proud of though, you forced many neutrals or even friends - like me - into an antagonistic position.

> On a more general point, I can see your point, you're most probably an idealist [1], I for myself I'm a realist, I personally think that realism is closer to how things actually work when it comes to international relations.

You start with an attempt of arguments, laudable, but when you find they are easily defeated you jump to in the context meaningless generalities that don't even fit the previous comments in any way.

.

However, your comments do show one thing. There is little room for optimism that sanity and arguments are going to win anything here. I heard even on a German city's market square a German woman selling sausages argue about poor, poor Putin and how the West mistreated him so that he had no choice now but to fight back.

Or just read the comments under a LinkedIn post of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is a friend of Putin. There were quite a few comments there urging Schröder to continue to support Putin, and a lot of insane stuff in support of Putin and against the West. No idea if it was from real Germans, but there is no reason to suspect "bots", there really are plenty of people supporting Putin.

Read the comments and despair: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gerhard-schroeder_der-krieg-u...

> Dear Mr. Schröder, I think you being a close friend of Putin you understand that sometimes a man has got to do what a man got to do. I believe in putin and his insight on the security of Europe as a whole.

Etc etc... not all comments are like this, but many (many are in German) - not least of which are the comments by the Ex-Chancellor himself.

I’m Romanian myself, not Russian, sitting at the middle (ideologically and geographically) of all this madness. This being HN I was trying to “debug” the whole situation as an arm-chair geostrategist, and that entailed, imo, making sense of what drives one side of the conflict, the Russians.

As I said, I don’t think they’re irrational, very, very few international conflicts are irrational on the face of it, nobody goes to war because “they felt like it” or because it “was written in the stars”, that would be trully irrational. I do think though that part of the reason Russia started this war is because they want to fight a war against some aspects of Westernization. They most certainly like Western cars and Western-designed iPhones but it looks like they don’t like certain Western ideologies, like the type of democracy that the West now professes. Again, I don’t see anything irrational in all this.

The irrational part is mixing Puylo, who might be rationally against "the West" for he likes to rule and true democracy does not allow that, and everyone else, who actually needs working courts and laws, but are for the war based on the pretenses Puylo put out. Now those are highly irrational, and they are quite possibly the majority there.

But Russia went to war because Putin did it on a whim. Likely the last wish of a dying man. They could have gone along just fine without attacking Ukraine. It is a completely irrational move on their part.

Yeah but Ukraine isn't Russia and it looks like Russia is finding out that they aren't just going to roll over for them.

Nice attempt at false equivocation and outright propaganda. We won't fall for it. If you like Russia so much, stay in Russia and don't attack countries that don't want to be under your control.

You can see my comments from further down to see that I’m not Russian and, as it happens, I don’t live in Russia. I do live though in country bordering Ukraine, I’ve just parked my car 5 minutes ago behind a car with an Ukraine plate (refugees, most probably), right at this moment me, my SO and a couple who are very close friends seriously discuss on WhatsApp what would be the best strategy in case of the worst (everyone bar me is for leaving the country, I still hope it won’t get to that), all this to remind you that we’re on HN, a programmers’ website, not a propaganda one, where we try to make sense of the world around us, no matter if it’s a nuclear power that neighbors you or nasty computer bugs that you dream about at night.