Also it’s bonkers that someone thinks Ukraine is untrustworthy this situation. Didn’t they give up all their nuclear weapons in a signed treaty under the guarantee that Russia promised to respect their territorial integrity? Doesn’t Russia now posses territory that’s “historically” German or Japanese, and expects that territory to be respected as Russian, regardless of the history? Ukraine is Ukraine, and the thing preventing the situation from reaching a diplomatic ending, which again is how all wars end, is that Russia can’t bring itself to back down now, and everything else is just excuses from the land of fiction that only work when applied unilaterally.

Russia also has reason not to trust Ukraine and NATO after the Minsk agreement was violated.

And why would Russia back down? They’re winning. NATO is the one who destroyed negotiations and then lost the conflict; so it will have to be Ukraine and NATO who “back down”.

I can’t imagine the entitlement to think the winner of a conflict needs to “back down now” for negotiations.

Let’s try fixing your comment:

> Ukraine is Ukraine, and the thing preventing the situation from reaching a diplomatic ending, which again is how all wars end, is that NATO can’t bring itself to back down now, and everything else is just excuses from the land of fiction that only work when applied unilaterally.

You're going to need some reliable evidence for this and an explanation of what the solution actually was, as well as why the Ukranians aren't making more of this.

That's super, super, super unrealistic, as Russia has not indicated at any time they're willing to vacate Crimea.

Which is the absolute baseline for Russia to do.

Without that, anything Russia is claiming is really just a delaying tactic to let them prepare/re-equip for their next invasion wave.

Furthermore the US even had to help Russia itself with the dismantling and disposing of some weapons over the years. It was in nobody’s interest for yet another country to have nukes when poverty and corruption would have almost certainly led to “losing” them or losing them one way or another.

You’ve commented on the historical territory out of the blue, I don’t see the parent commenter mentioning that. Keep in my mind that Ukraine possesses territory they gained after WW2 as part of the Soviet Union and there’s no indication that they want to return it. Opening up these old territorial disputes is not a good idea.

In general trying to present Ukraine as fundamentally different from Russia as far as corruption or trustworthiness goes when they were both part of the Soviet Union and very close until 2014 is dubious and not supported by facts.

The Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine agrees to divest itself of nukes in exchange from formal guarantees of territorial integrity from Russia, is hardly irrelevant here.

* as a way to show that a country should never give up its nukes. But they were forced and incentivized to give them up.

* as a way of showing Russia won’t honor its agreements. But this is inconclusive. On one hand, Russia did invade Ukraine, but didn’t invade Kazakhstan or Belarus (other signatories which also gave up their nukes). And the agreement is not an official treaty, is not legally binding and doesn’t have an enforcement mechanism.

At the end of the day, Russia will probably respect an official treaty if the incentives and disincentives are right. Much like China or the US IMO.

Sure. Russia later reneged on the incentives by invading Ukraine (repeatedly!). Thus, relevant.

> But this is inconclusive. On one hand, Russia did invade Ukraine, but didn’t invade Kazakhstan or Belarus.

"What about all the murders I didn't do?" isn't a great defense.

> And the agreement is not an official treaty, is not legally binding and doesn’t have an enforcement mechanism.

Cool, then they can stop whining about the supposed NATO "agreement" not to expand, which was not an official treaty, not legally binding, and doesn't have an enforcement mechanism.

The nuclear stuff is also relevant because, again, nuclear disarmament was exchange for security (read: territory) guarantees. In this respect the issue of who can be trusted is clear.

Regarding your final point about both countries having corruption and being very close, sure. I don’t think I follow the point though. One country has invaded the other with an army after promising not to do so. That’s what is relevant here, not black markets or mafia or just a culture of cynicism and corruption. If Ukraine wanted to change and stop doing things the old way in 2014 then that’s good I guess.

Other people have mentioned it bellow me, but see what Merkel herself ("accused" of being on Putin's side, funnily enough) had to say about the Minsk accords.

I assume having Russian equivalent of McCain, Nuland and CIA running around would provoke a more vigorous response

By that point, Yeltsin was universally hated for turning Russia back towards autocracy, for botched privatization, and the Chechen war. His rating rose from 6% to 53% in mere half a year before the elections, with the help of a massive campaign he organized using the stolen money. But the fact that the Clinton administration aligned with him and tried to "help" him with the massive NGO and media work (that's only the overt part) has been remembered by most who supported the democratic change.

Instead of Yeltsin, it could have been Nemtsov, who was truly popular during that time, but refused to run exactly because Clinton+Gore supported Yeltsin... Nemtsov, remember that name? US administration suddenly did, in 2015. Too bad they didn't before.

"Do nothing" was also Russians' response at the time (except for the brief investigation that was quickly stopped by the autocrat), but that was one of the turning points in the people's minds.

History truly rhymes.

Not just being punchy: if you accuse pro-democracy movements of being US-backed coups, then that's a low bar for association.

The US even tries to foist democracy where it's a terribly ineffective idea, from a US interests standpoint, see efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Afghanistan wouldn't be under Taliban control today, if the US had installed a dictator and given them a free hand.

Can we stop pretending these are anything other than resource wars, combined with an excuse to throw money at the defence industry?

Russia looked at US actions in Iraq etc and apparently had an irrational attack of atrocity envy, blended with greed over the mineral-rich areas of Eastern Ukraine.

Neither empire is wholesome and good, but the Russians are completely crap at militarised colonialism while the US is fairly competent at it.

However... Russia is much better at subversion and bribery. Given Jan 6 and the wholesale co-option of the far right of the Republican party - which is most of it - only someone very naive would believe that the US and NATO aren't in danger of being subverted from within.

My suspicion is that Ukraine is part distraction, part attrition campaign against NATO, and part proxy war with China, with Russia as willing (because naively stupid) intermediary.

The real front is the internal politics of each NATO state.

Hungary is already lost, the UK is severely weakened by Brexit, Germany was compromised but is recovering, and the US has some very serious problems with infiltration and subversion. Which aren't being taken seriously enough.

Any sort of peace acceptable to the Ukrainians is going to leave Russia with a lingering casus belli, which only the above (and NATO membership) is going to prevent escalating back into war.

Can you substantiate this? Please provide to specific examples.

The first and most obvious is this: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...

Then comes the withdrawal from various nuclear treaties, the first being this: https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/12/13/u.s.-exit-from-anti...

GWB's attempted placement of a missile shield in Poland (ostensibly to defend from Iran) really heated the waters, although Obama ultimately killed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_missile_defense_...

Then Minsk failed, and Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko's statements haven't helped at all. Merkel's is probably most important (Die Zeit has a paywall, so here is a PDF of the article): https://pdfhost.io/v/e0FRLvfzB_Angela_Merkel___Hatten_Sie_ge...

Most recently for the Russians is probably the seizing of their central bank's assets by the US and EU. I'm not sure how solid the legal rationale at the time was, but either way it happened: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/us/politics/us-sanctions-...

Neither side trusts the other. At all. So ultimately guns and blood will determine the result.

If Russia thinks a verbal assurance from the US SecState to a different country can bind NATO thirty years later as if it were a treaty, they're hopelessly naive. (They're not, of course. They know this is bullshit.)

Regardless of whether you think the Russians were hopelessly naive or full of shit, it is a promise broken. Remember, we're talking about negotiations, so their opinion matters too, regardless what you or I think about it.

None of which are empowered to individually and formally bind NATO to anything, let alone privately and verbally, and each to the Soviet Union, which hasn't existed for thirty years. "We're not gonna fuck with you while you're collapsing" was entirely reasonable and intentionally deescalatory at the time; pretending it's somehow a promise not to do anything while Russia moves into Georgia and Ukraine is silly.

The Budapest Memorandum, meanwhile, is an actual signed agreement by Russia.

Nope. It's a PR meme created for 2007 Munich Security Conference where Putin made his famous speech and needes justifications for imperialistic ambitions. Stunning economic growth before 2008 crisis allowed him to build up an army, and there he declared his vision. Nobody talked about such assurance before ca 2006-2007, and the 1997 founding act on mutual relations between NATO and Russia excplicitly says that signatories must "respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security, the inviolability of borders and peoples' right of self-determination as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents"[1].

Even if we accept the premise that such assurance was given (which Gorbachev denied), then it was given to the USSR, which does not exist anymore. Former parts of that USSR themselves applied for NATO membership. Should their status be bound forever to a non-existing state?

Furthermore, this approach is based on disgusting colonial attitude that Russians are a some kind of master race that has the right to decide over everyone else, while ethnically they made up barely half of the population of the USSR. What about the other half? Do they not have the right to determine their future? Are they forever slaves of the ghost of the USSR?

[1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

No, Russian diplomats were not naive. They knew full well that whatever is not on paper does not exist.

It's surreal that 30 years later, we act like poor Russian diplomats didn't know that some random utterances made during long meetings won't be set in stone as an official policy forever.

Those people making such promises were not authorized to make binding promises anyway (something which Russian diplomats were aware of). There's a reason why agreement drafts undergo extensive analysis, vetting and approval process.

Their conclusion is not really deferent to either side's argument. Russia had every reason to believe in what was repeatedly said and implied, while the US had a justification in going against previous promises as the geopolitical scene shifted quite dramatically from when those promises were made.

Beyond this I'd emphasize in that geopolitical relations it's not like there's any law that forces countries need to abide their promises, whether spoken or written. If somehow there were a secret agreement in which the US overtly and inexplicably agreed to not expand eastward in conditions identical to what happened, so what? Call on the UN to pass a meaningless resolution which the US would just veto anyhow?

And so in international relations, the perceived trust of a nation is ultimately far more relevant than the formality of an agreement.

I doubt Russia wants any such thing, they just want their toy back in their pram and the good feeling that having Ukraine under their heel gave them, as well as any useful resources Ukraine might have - agricultural land, seaports, raw materials. Stuff like that.

They don't want to negotiate with anybody, they just want their stuff (back?) on their own terms and are willing to sacrifice as many Russians as it takes to get it.

The world has moved on from that kind of behaviour though, but lots of 60+ yr old Russians are living in a past they'll never get back to and are blithely ruining Russia's future to get there.

And to be clear here, "their stuff" is (in there eyes) everything that was once part of the Soviet Union. Most of it is currently out of reach, but not attacking Poland next is a tactical decision acknowledging EU/Nato firepower, it's not because "we don't see a reason to attack a neighbor".

It's also interesting to see how strongly the Baltic nations and Poland are pushing to support Ukraine, since they lived long enough under the Soviet heel and they definitely don't want to get back to that.

I have no idea what's up with Hungary though.

1. Leadership is autocratic / non-democratic and thus a natural ally. That's the easy bit, but why does the populous support Russia.

2. Poland and other eastern bloc countries are doing a lot better than Hungary, which makes common folks disaffected.

3. State control of the media is pretty strong, and it blames the west for their problems.

There's a similar narrative for Serbia, but historical reasons also play a big role. The politics and history of that region are "interesting".

The more autocratic a country is the more it is sympathetic to Russia. Autocrats like that autocrats can take what they want.

I assume it's the same thing that's up with the German far right: they consider themselves in opposition to the EU / Berlin and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

While that's also somewhat true for Poland, Poland likely calculates the risks differently based on their specific history with Russia. They don't want to become as progressive as Germany, but unlike a renewed Russian empire they don't see Western progressiveness as an existential threat to Polish independence.

IMO, another big difference is that they have both a direct border with Russia (Kaliningrad), and a larger border with Belarus - a country that is fine with Russia launch an invasion from their territory. When you're next to a country that is openly talking about reforming the USSR by force, and is actively in the process thereof, it can be pretty scary.

In contrast, Hungary is sufficiently far away from Russia that they can afford to focus more energy on more immediate rivals.

> I doubt Russia wants any such thing, they just want their toy back in their pram and the good feeling that having Ukraine under their heel gave them, as well as any useful resources Ukraine might have - agricultural land, seaports, raw materials. Stuff like that.

In a technical sense, I can agree with you. The opening weeks of the war showed that Russia ideally wanted to do to Ukraine what the US did the Iraq in 1990-1991. If they had their druthers, they'd conquer the country without damaging any infrastructure. The only trouble is that Russia's military doesn't have that capability.

And Russia is perfectly willing to fall back on plan b: use artillery, drones, and missiles to level literally every building in the country as they try to conquer it 1 square meter at a time.

That sounds like a Russian Federatiom Boomer generation dragging the rest of the nation down with it to rack and ruin for a nostalgic kick. For those on the ground in the Russian Federation or corresponding closely with those on the ground, is support for the war really mostly stemming from that generation and do they possess the kind of sociopolitical leverage as Boomers in the US?

And the Russian leadership certainly is gerontocratic: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/01/31/the-old-guard

As for the social leverage, I don't think they have much on the national level. However, I feel the lower-rung govt staff is mostly composed of 50-something women, and these also dominate meetings of homeowner associations. The men are either hard at work or already dead, and the younger people are not numerous and don't have much rights.

It's the same situation here. Nobody can possibly trust Putin. He's utterly untrustworthy and any treaty would presumably just be breathing space and time for Russia to continue building up its forces for another invasion, just like Hitler with, for example, the Munich Agreement. The fact is that Russia has invaded Ukraine in an act of imperial conquest under the leadership of Putin, and as a result it's very difficult to negotiate with him.

So I think you are confusing things.

"I thought that the introduction of NATO accession of Ukraine and Georgia, discussed in 2008, was wrong. The countries did not have the necessary prerequisites for this, nor was it fully understood what the consequences of such a decision would have been, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine, as well as NATO and its rules of assistance. And the Minsk Agreement of 2014 was an attempt to give Ukraine time.

Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. An illustrative example was the battle for Debaltseve. At the beginning of 2015, Putin could easily have overrun them at that time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do today to help Ukraine."

Furthermore, Minsk agreement was about much more than just Donbas. Implementing it would mean puppetization of the whole Ukraine - read a pretty damning analysis here: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/05/minsk-conundrum-western...

All the bluster about "denazification and demilitarization" and helping the DNR/LPR aside, this war is entirely about NATO. It would make no difference were Putin replaced, in fact it may be worse since he is (surprisingly) one of the more moderate voices in Russia.

I think you mistake self preservation in the form of support for a war with the will to start one and continue it.

It’s a kleptocracy, most of them just want money.

I’m no fan of the Russian kleptocracy, but a peaceful one would save a lot of lives. Including a lot of Russian lives.

Both Sergey Lavror and Maria Zakharova, in particular, have changed their discourse to be quite a bit more hostile as time has gone by.

Also you’re incorrect in your assessment of most of the Russian elite thinking this war was a good idea, that’s just not true, or you’re making the mistake of taking statements by them at face value, which my Ukrainian/Russian extended family will be the first to tell you to be careful of.

No, this is almost not at all about NATO. This is about Ukraine drifting from Russian sphere of influence to the western sphere of influence. Russia would not allow Ukraine to join EU either, even if it promised to never enter NATO.

In short, this is about making Ukraine another Belarus.

Given Russia's long history of bloody invasions, I don't think this is something Americans can at all relate to. The American Civil War is small potatoes compared to some of the things that Russians (and other continental countries) have been through.

It makes for a very paranoid country.

This is something which most European countries can relate to, but they don't use it (anymore) to justify imperialism.

However, I hope you can understand why a major power like Russia might be suspicious.

Someone is eating the Russian propaganda here. Projection and all.

> However, I hope you can understand why a major power like Russia might be suspicious.

It can be as suspicious as it wants, within its borders.

You need to take a walk, and I'm out too.

And anyway, it's not a war. It's a Special Military Operation. How more plain can you get?

/s