The continuous colonialism of Western nations to African and Middle Eastern countries? The Zionist occupation of Palestine? The US led invasions on Iraq and Afghanistan? Just to name a few.
As for Western nations in African and Middle Eastern countries: again, for the most part despicable but here too I don't see these as wars of conquest or ways to commit genocide by the West. That does not mean that what they are doing there is in general defensible but there are so many sides to those conflicts that clarity isn't always easy to come by, even the locals disagree on whether or not the Western involvement is a blessing or a curse, and it isn't rare for those sides to change as a conflict evolves.
The 'Zionist occupation of Palestine' as presented is already evidence of picking a side. Personally, and I'm not making any friends with this, I think the founding of the state of Israel and the preceding Balfour declaration were misguided - some of my Jewish friends agree with this - and the state of apartheid there is one that I can not and will not subscribe to. The behavior of Israel is unacceptable and I have no illusions that it is only the United States veto in the security council that stands between Israel and much wider condemnation of how they are behaving there. I do not believe that Israel as a state will survive unless they - and the Arab world around them - will find a way to effectively bury the past, and with every bullet fired and person killed that gets harder and harder. I do not subscribe to the Jewish people having an innate right to certain parts of the world based on religious texts from 4000 years ago, nor do I believe that to commit the same wrongs against people that others have committed to you make a right or can ever lead to an improvement.
But, and this is my point: in all of these situations there is are many factors at play that make me believe that some or all of the problems exhibited or some other form of discord or violence would be present in those regions, and in some cases that may have been far worse than what is going on there now.
Compared to Urkraine vs Russia these are all areas that are most likely going to be at war in one way or another with each other or internally regardless of what the West does to either pick sides or to try to improve things, it's at best meddling and at worst neo colonialism or patronization.
None of that however stops me from deciding - purely for myself - that these conflicts are too complex for me to fully appreciate all of the nuances and all of the aspects of the parties involved, in part because I do not know enough about the regions - though I know more about them than the people that I normally interact with -, I don't feel I'm on solid ground other than to roughly understand the basics and to draw coarse conclusions (see above for some of those).
But the degree of clarity with which I find myself judging Russia for the active destruction of a country closely aligned with Western Europe, a country close to Western Europe, a country that was party to more than one binding agreement and treaty which it did not violate is substantially larger.
I hope that clarifies my position enough for you to understand why this is different for me.
If you don't trust news or social media, that's fine. There are facts out there ready to be found in other ways. There are thousands of twitter feeds, embedded journalist, first person accounts, etc. But if you're not wiling to look for facts, and not willing to receive them from reputable summary sources, then you're an easy target for these kinds of propaganda tricks.
Nothing warrants or excuses the annexion of Crimea.
Keep in mind Putin rolled his tanks into Crimea the day after the new pro-US/NATO regime in Ukraine had thrown out the democratically elected (albeit pro-Russia) government, and rewritten the Ukrainian Constitution[2] to then make it possible to drop neutrality[3] so that they could begin the process of joining NATO. A rule to join NATO is that a nation must be in control of its borders and not in active conflict, so by annexing Crimea, Russia ensured the moves to join NATO would be halted with that action.
Understanding cause and effect is not the same as excusing it. If I poke a bear with a stick, and the bear eats me, it's my fault. Just because the bear went a little overboard doesn't change the fact that it's a bear and I should know not to poke it with a stick.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-constituti...
I don’t see how changes to Constitution which limit the power of President could be related to whether or not Ukraine could be neutral.
Common sense can tell us Putin was itching for an excuse to annex Crimea, but then that leaves us with the very uncomfortable question of why the US pushed Ukraine into this situation knowing how Putin would respond.
Ukraine is being used a pawn in a proxy war between the US and Russia. People need to call it what it is if they actually care to understand it.
If 2014 invasion was somehow related to Euromaidan protests, this 2022 invasion has no relation to internal Ukrainian politics nor to it’s foreign policy — nothing has fundamentally changed. The only reason why Putin attacked now is because he felt he could get away with it — Ukraine was asking for weapons since October and got only light anti-tank weapons to fight insurgency war. Nobody in the West pushed Ukrainians to fight, what West really wants is business as usual.
Yet now it becomes less and less possible due to Ukrainian information war.
Repeating Russian propaganda narratives is not what makes you a sudden expert on Eastern European politics.
There is no "if", unless you are arguing that invading Crimea the next day was a coincidence. That is fact, not opinion. Just like the post-coup regime in Ukraine then officially voting to drop neutrality, clearing the way to join NATO (which is just the international arm of the US military).
As to what has fundamentally changed, well Biden is back in charge like he was in 2014. Biden and family have huge financial interests in Ukraine, as evidenced by the emails that our totally honest media finally acknowledged were legitimate[1][2][3] (only after the election was over of course). And with that, Ukraine was set back on their path against Russia, to poke the bear some more at our behest.
There is a reason Russia/Ukraine was quiet for 4 years under Trump. And its the same reason we had to listen to that tired "Trump is Putin's puppet" conspiracy theory for most of his presidency. He wouldn't play their game. Hell, he was even impeached over Ukraine. Elements of the US government have been orchestrating this game for years, and innocent Ukrainians are the ones left holding the bag. Well them, and middle class US taxpayers who always end up footing the bill.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/burying-hunter-biden-laptop-story-w...
[2] https://ijr.com/ny-times-confirms-emails-hunter-laptop-not-r...
[3] https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-new-york-times-hates-to-sa...
and the time before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30887629
Not to forget: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653796 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30648054
If you'd like to challenge the facts, do so. Pointing out that facts have been posted before in response to the same questions, doesn't change the facts.
Unless you think we can't trust BBC and Reuters...?
As I said:
> this kind of disinformation does not need to even be self-consistent or even that believable. But it does need to be relentlessly sent out.
Not many people are asking WHY its happening.
It's because Ukraine contains three of the nine "gap" invasion pathways into Russia and demographic collapse means if Russia doesn't take those gaps back now they won't be able to field an army to do so in the future. They had all of them before the Soviet Union fell. Invading Georgia gave them back one. Taking Crimea gave them back another. Taking the rest of Ukraine will give them two more.
If anyone decides to invade Russia, they better be super sure about their anti-ICBM capabilities. Just one warhead going through the defense means a leveled city. So, 200k-1million+ casualties.
So, who's taking that chance? For what?
My understanding is that the majority of Russia's large nuclear arsenal consists of "tactical" warheads, with a yield small enough that they can be used on a battlefield containing Russian forces. These are not city-busters.
Countries like the US and UK, whose nuclear doctrine is "no first use" and deterrence, rely mainly on MIRVed city-busters. The UK submarine force includes some cruise-missile nukes; but it's mainly MIRVed ICBMs. If you launch a single missile, you have launched multiple warheads. I don't know how NATO doctrine is supposed to respond to (say) a single ten-kiloton nuke fired at a railhead or marshalling yard.
Putin quoted a song during press conference with Emmanuel Macron in early February about Ukraine:
"Whether you like it or don't like it, bear with it, my beauty."
The full quote from "Sleeping beauty in a coffin" song by Red Mold would be:
Sleeping beauty in a coffin, I crept up and fucked her. Like it, or dislike it, sleep my beauty.
That gives you the mindset of Putin with regard to Ukraine.
Also, some personal note - my grandmother as a little girl had to hide from Russian speaking soldiers who were raping women and girls in my home town during "liberation" of Poland from Germany at the end of WWII. The stories from Ukraine are exactly the same as what my grandmother lived trough.
Bringing the US into the issue seems to be quite the non-sequitur - is self-determinancy a concept that can only be viewed through the lens of US imperialism? Are the rights of Ukrainians (and other states bordering Russia) merely a construct of US policy?
Suppose the US currently had in place an administration which took an isolationist, ambivalent or even "Putin has valid concerns" attitude - this is hardly a speculative leap - would your attitude change? If there is nothing to see in what is happening in Ukraine, why would US imperialism bother you?
There's a history to this "What about this other thing" distraction / derailing technique, and it was fairly common from Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Soviet_Union_and_...
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Whataboutism
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/th...
Can you say you know for sure why it’s happening??
He doesn't like NATO, so his strategy is to invade a non-NATO neighbour. What an idiot. Now all of a sudden, all neighbouring non-NATO countries want to join NATO. What a surprise. Finland applied already, Sweden later this year.
Deals with EU were going great, especially with Germany that is highly dependent on Russian gas. Consequence of the war: EU kicks out (of phases out) economic trade. Nice one.
If Russia hates US so much, why don't they collaborate more with EU? A strong EU-Russia relationship could match US in any sense. But no, Russia prefers to behave like an aggressive lunatic. EU was very much open to work together, see Germany. Now it is clear that was a big mistake.
So yeah, it's because he's an aggressive idiot lunatic.
> he's an aggressive idiot lunatic.
I think there are two mistakes here:
1. Personalising it as being about Putin. 2. Characterising Putin as being stupid or mad.
Nearly everything that Russia (not Putin) has done has been pre-announced by the Russian leadership. In fact, most of the pre-announcement has been by Putin himself, and I wonder whether his generals think that's a good idea. NATO has treated those announcements as bullying bluster; they were wrong. Most of those announcements were based on long-established Russian or Soviet military doctrine. If anyone's an idiot, it's NATO leadership, for assuming it was all bluster.
Characterising your enemy as a mad fool is a standard propaganda technique. There are reasons why the invasion is happening now, not sooner and not later. Both Ukraine and Georgia have loudly declared their desire to join NATO and the EU; it's obvious that Russia would very much prefer not to have NATO on his border. If Russia thinks it needs to invade Ukraine, then it needed to be done now. Similarly, the cancellation of Nordstream II, and the increased deployment of renewables in Europe threatens Russia's economy. The Russian treasury is flush now, but even setting aside sanctions, it won't be for long.
Putin certainly has some odd beliefs, such as his views about the historical destiny of the Rus people. But basing claims to land on historical destiny isn't unique to Russia; there are long-standing US allies that make similar claims (Israel?).
You mean Russia claiming it's just doing some military trainings at the border, and then US claiming it's going to invade Ukraine in the next few days?
> If anyone's an idiot, it's NATO leadership
You mean 2 non-NATO parties fighting each other? Seems like good old divide and conquer strategy to me. After this war, Russia won't have much left to fight NATO. NATO is not affected in any way.
> Russia would very much prefer not to have NATO on his border
This is going to double once Finland joins, which will happen this year. All because of Putin's mastermind strategy.
> the cancellation of Nordstream II
This happened after the invasion. One of the reasons why this was a very bad move on Russia's part.
> a mad fool
The best you can claim is that he was misinformed (hence the arrests and layoffs of the FSB).
Putin made a serious mistake. Now they are rolling with it. Anyone who claims this was a good move on Russia's part is just an idiot.
Calling people (me, Putin) an idiot is itself idiotic, if you are at all interested in understanding the situation. If you dismiss a participant as being [mad | stupid], then you lose the ability to understand and predict his actions.
My view is that Russia, mainly at Putin's instigation, has perpetrated a catastrophic mistake. But how and why did that mistake happen?
I think it's plausible to claim that Putin's ministers and generals are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear. That doesn't make him stupid or mad; that just means he's scary.
So why has he made this mistake, and why now? I think if you read what he has said, and take it seriously - not as the ravings of an idiotic madman - your chance of understanding why we are here, and of making accurate predictions about what might happen next, are much improved.
[Edit] What I think is idiotic is to not take seriously a man that controls 6,000 nuclear warheads. If you check out the guy's career, he's a competent but boring bureaucrat, embittered that nobody recognised his wonderfulness, who got lucky under Yeltsin.
No I didn't think that. But it did seem to me that you thought this invasion wasn't a mistake on Russia's end.
> My view is that Russia, mainly at Putin's instigation, has perpetrated a catastrophic mistake.
So I wrongly interpreted your previous post. We basically agree on this one. So I don't consider you an idiot ;).
> I think it's plausible to claim that Putin's ministers and generals are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear. That doesn't make him stupid or mad.
I think it's here were we differ. He should know better as to how reliable the info is that he gets. If he punishes bad news, he should be smart enough to know that people will not tell him bad news. I call that idiotic.
> making accurate predictions about what might happen next, are much improved
I agree with you on this one. Maybe my "lunatic" was not well chosen, and should be replaced with "psychopath". Because only a psychopath kills or poisons political opposition. But it's perfectly doable to predict an idiot's actions.
For the most part I think we actually agree with each other, it's just the wording that might differ.
It seems Putin was living in his own fantasy land for quite a while. And now that he's getting hit with reality, I sure hope he's sane enough to understand certain consequences.
Poisoning opponents is actually customary in Russian politics. This isn't one man's psychiatric condition; it was Soviet policy. Stalin created units dedicated to the practice.
Rasputin apparently survived a cyanide attempt.
Ivan The Terrible poisoned three of his wives to death.
Putin is an admirer of Russian customs; it's not surprising that he favours poison.
It's easy for a layman to bandy-around terms like "psychopath". He may be a psychopath, for all I know; but I think it's much more likely that he's just a boring bureaucrat, promoted far beyond his abilities, and obsessed with a perverse view of Russian imperial history.
I don’t know about a mad fool. But I think it is pretty clear that the invasion of Ukraine is a bit of catastrophic buffoonery on par with the US invasion of Iraq by Bush jr and his neocon cronies.
If the past is prelude to the present we can predict that Putin’s political coalition is going to be thrown out, in a manner similar to what we saw in the 2016 US presidential primaries / election, which was more a rejection and overthrow of the political establishment than an endorsement of the orange Cheeto man.
This is not in dispute. This has been pretty much outlined explicitly by Vladimir Putin in several writings and speeches.
> I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.
Continuing in reference to the creation of the Ukrainian SSR:
> This immediately raises many questions. The first is really the main one: why was it necessary to appease the nationalists, to satisfy the ceaselessly growing nationalist ambitions on the outskirts of the former empire? What was the point of transferring to the newly, often arbitrarily formed administrative units – the union republics – vast territories that had nothing to do with them? Let me repeat that these territories were transferred along with the population of what was historically Russia.
...
> Why was it necessary to make such generous gifts, beyond the wildest dreams of the most zealous nationalists and, on top of all that, give the republics the right to secede from the unified state without any conditions?
> I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space
- Putin, 21 February 2022 [http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67828]
> I am certain that the true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible precisely in partnership with Russia
- Putin, 12 JUL 2021 [https://tass.com/world/1313223?utm_source=google.com&utm_med...]
The Russian head of state does not deny that this war is intended to dominate Ukraine and bring it effectively under Russian control and end its independence and its drift away from the Russian sphere of influence. You don't have to act like it's a complicated situation - not even Russia is pretending that it is.
Special military operation. ;)
But here we are.
Living in Asia there is definitely not the staunch apposition to the war that you might expect to see.
People here don’t like it but are not lockstep on Ukraines side.
And as a so called and derided “red pilled” guy I’m not going to jump to any conclusions for the next year or so.
We’ve all been seen the ultimate truth and aims and outcomes of the last half dozen wars involving the USA.
Once you live abroad for a significant amount of time you tend to take off the rah rah USA rose colored glasses and see the world from the point of view of other peoples.
A very annoying thing about the news and SJW social media is everyone jumping on the Ukraine bandwagon with nary a thought as to why what is happening… is happening.