Anti-nuclear energy activists will likely go down in history as villains.
My personal pet conspiracy theory is that those 'activists' were largely sponsored by Russian interests to begin wtih. Cui bono?
They were and still are the useful idiots serving the interests of carbon emission industry, who exploited their amygdala because it's easier to be scared of acute nuclear risks than by diffuse GHG risks.
Constantly doing the least logical and public endearing actions possible without fail.
The same Schröder who would later join the board of GazProm and just paid the Russian Embassy a visit for WWII victory celebrations the other day.
Also, didn't Trump get laughed at by many of his European counterparts when he advised them at the UN that it was against their best interests to go all in on Russian energy.
And yeah, Merkel did her country no favors, in more than one respect.
If you don't like how Russia handled Ichkeria, you are not alone because Russians have exactly that feeling about Yugoslavia as well as Iraq.
To your second remark, I'm not engaging a moral equivocation with Russians, especially the kind who support this invasion over propaganda such as Ukraine's government being run by a shadow cabal of Nazis. Their perspectives have clearly been distorted completely outside of reality. It is completely unsurprising to me that the populace of Russia has this distorted perspective about events like the Chechen War, because they are citizens of an oppressive regime invading its neighbors on false pretenses. "In my view, it's the Jedi who are evil!" did not make audiences suddenly reconsider whether the Sith were the good guys.
The NATO intervention in Yugoslavia is not remotely like an atrocity like the destruction of Grozny. So if Russians "feel" it is the same, I would imagine that is just one of many misconceptions the average Russian supporter of Putin subscribes to as fact. Beyond my sympathy for people stuck in such a regime, I do not care how Russians "feel" about those events, and that has no affect on how I care about the bloodthirsty, criminal war they are perpetrating in Ukraine today.
Why is that?
At least, Russia has rebuilt Grozny since then, whereas NATO just left Serbs to their own devices.
Neither do Russians care that much what people of the EU feel. We have our own mental resources to reflect on the shit we made, so the NATO countries are encouraged to reflect on their own shit and stop nagging us. And take your NGOs with you.
Meanwhile we still have a war to win, or at least to end.
Can you recognize the absolute distortion of perspective it takes to look at Russia invading Chechenya to prevent its independence, destroying its capital to force it to surrender, and then say "well at least Russia rebuilt it after they conquered it!"
>NATO countries are encouraged to reflect on their own shit and stop nagging us
Your country invaded a NATO-friendly nation on the border of NATO. You are not being "nagged" when that country's government calls the world for aid and the world, shocked and appalled at the actions of your bloodthirsty regime, responds.
Look, I won't even attempt to convince you any further - either your government will collapse and the harsh rays of sunlight will expose the truth for you, or your government will continue to close its doors to the outside world until what you believe won't matter at all anyway. I don't imagine I have the rhetorical ability to break through your distorted worldview myself.
You lost this war in 2021. At this point, it's just a question of how many Ukrainian and Russian lives you will waste before accepting it.
They never had any kind of economy other than dwindling oil extraction, but also robbing trains passing through, stealing gas from pipelines, sending false bank transfers (why they were still hooked up to Russian banking system) and taking people hostage for ransom. All of these things are documented in much detail.
Cosmopolitain city of Grozny has successfully expelled most of its pre-war non-Chechen population (including the family of my cousin) and had open slave markets selling whoever they could get ahold of.
Maybe they had a chance if Russia would continue to crumble, but by 1999 Russia got some of its shit together. Ichkeria did not have any economy but had a plenty of armed men, so they just decided to attack the neighbouring province of Dagestan. Putin used this as an opportunity to solve the issue of Ingushetia. Perhaps a more peaceful transition was possible, but with amount of armed jihadists in it, that seems not likely.
I have specifically asked a known Russian historian, Evgeny Norin, an author of at least three books touching the subject, whether Putin has used any kind of provocation or false flag to start Chechen War 2, and the answer was basically what I wrote above. He also told a story of a girl in Voronezh, a daughter of a local businessman, who was kidnapped by Ichkerians for ransom and is still available on social networks, avoiding showing her hands on photos since she does not have some of the fingers intact.
But of course, here am I the zombified and uncivilized Russian who knows nothing about this topic, whereas you are much better informed having read some cherry picked material in the democratic press. My historial probably a paid or intimidated Putin's puppet, whereas your journalists are up to the best practices of fact checking. You also have much better potassium than we do.
Meanwhile, NATO could avoid bombing Yugoslavia entirely. It could also avoid losing Mosul to ISIS and then turning it to fine piece of rubble, not in any way less well done than Grozny or Mariupol (which is also being rebuilt as we speak).
I hope one day Russia and Russians find a way to contribute hope to the world, instead of sad and pointless destruction.
That would be a noble expectation, but you could predict that it will not be uphold. Maybe because it is not possible in practice, or at least highly implausible.
Russans, in general, are people. People go to war when told to do so by their superiors. People rationalize what happens in the moment, to reflect on it and be outraged later.
If you were doing that in a good faith, good for you, but as you can see that's not how the world works.
Actually many do not.
https://www.reuters.com/world/e7urope/where-have-russians-be...
They absolutely do not if they want to be considered of good moral character.
More Germans opposed Nazism than Russians oppose Putinism.
"It has been estimated that during the course of World War II 800,000 Germans were arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activities. It has also been estimated that between 15,000 and 77,000 of the Germans were executed by the Nazis."
Nothing comparable exists in Russia. You like Putin more than Germans liked Hitler.
Might have as well thrown in some other classic Russian quotes about Chechens having "no morals, nothing to distinguish them from wild beasts" (that one is from 1824).
Of course you're blind to how Russian imperialism creates and perpetrates this condition, blinded by imperial greed to acquire and hold onto the lands, while being always brutal, after all they are all "beasts" and "criminals", Chechens, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, whoever else the eye of a conqueror falls onto. Happy that the other countries dropping bombs somewhere else give you a carte blanche to bomb hospitals and apartment buildings methodically and with glee. Being proud of bringing more suffering into this already troubled world.
What do you do? I've described the context.
If you do nothing, Ichkerians will hostage or rob more people and your popular support will dwindle because of your inaction and somebody more eager takes your place.
I am patiently explaining it to you for some reason, whereas in context of Iraq, Lybia and Syria this is completely moot.
The day that Russia stops sabotaging elections, bribing officials, and murdering innocents is the day that Russia will be accepted openly.
But it is true. Europe has increased gas imports from Algeria with the excuse that "Russia bad". Like Algeria is any better.
> In particular, they're not invading neighbours, murdering tens of thousands of civilians or attempting to erase a culture and a language from existence.
Source for tens of thousands of dead civilians in Ukraine?
Btw following this logic what should we say about the USA with Iraq or Afghanistan? The count of dead civilians goes to the hundreds of thousands, and that's only counting those caused directly. If you add the civilians deaths caused indirectly by bombing two countries to ash then this starts to look like a genocide.
Because right now Europe is buying a lot more gas from the USA, all to the USA's profit of course. If the parameter of choice is "number of dead civilians caused by wars" then Europe should still buy Russian gas.
.0 https://ecfr.eu/publication/north-african-standoff-how-the-w...
Nobody has any sympathy as to how Russians feel about anything while they are invading Ukraine.
This started with Koln, Schroeder, and eventually Merkel, which has a disastrous foreign policy track record.
Corruption is probably at play as well, especially on the closure of the nuclear plants.
Look at France, did manage to keep their plants in good order and now it produces most of their electricity form them.
By the way Russia has killed hundreds if not thousands of children, and has wrenched thousands of them from their parents. Just so you remember.
Now I'm afraid my comment came as rather insensitive... my apologies...
I think it's fair to get justice for any war crime, and any crime against humanity, be it from Russia or from US. I just honestly feel that the crime bucket of Russia is fuller than US' one!
I did not mod down your initial response.
Unfortunately, a great many number of people in Russia still do not understand the extent of damage that communism has inflicted on the country and its peoples. So basically you may just ignore me while many Russians still approve what was done not only to you but to themselves, but here my condolences go.
Being from Bulgaria, I've met plenty of Russians. We're friends with another family - guy is Russian, and his wife is Ukrainian. Plenty of baggage but the guy had enough self awareness to recognise what was going on nearly a decade ago when the war started.
Also, as a gamer, I am often matched with Russians on a regular basis. 9 out of 10 are the worst team mates ever. While annoying, I feel sorry for these guys because it's clear they are just victims. I can only imagine the hellish environment they have been brought into.
If you talk about America in the same light or worse he’s totally fine with that.
If you, or anyone, want to know how we think about this question, there is lots of past explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
I think it was vain hope that the cooperation and "playing nice" will cause shift in russia into more civilized country and shift the iron curtain thinking of EU being "the enemy" instead of "partner in making more wealth for the citizens".
yes especially given that the US torpedoed any chance of really nicely getting along with Russia when we go far enough back to a point where Russia could have gone in a different direction
but there where many many clear indications that any such chance had passed since many years ago to a point where it was clear that going forward with the "playing nice" path would not work
Through I guess part of the reason they tried anyway is because while the US is for the EU the most close aligned super power, there are still many differences. At the same time a major US <-> China conflict is on the horizon since decades and the EU is not and likely never will be in a position to go to war with China. Also in some few point the EU is closer to China then the US in their views. To cut it short AFIK an escalation of an US China conflict has a non small risk of the EU being torn up between the fronts (more economically then military), but a EU with strong ties to Russia would be string enough to not fully enter the conflict and in turn might come out more powerful then both the US or China
At some point you got to say "okay, we'll try again with you guys". Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. There's a fine line to walk here, but in the end it's the only option there is other than perpetual hostilities.
Neither options are good, just bringing them up since they have been done in the past.
Ah, those civilians:
>> It was revealed that on 23 May 1996, on Rodionov's 19th birthday, after more than a hundred days of torture, Rodionov and two other soldiers were offered renunciation of their Christian faith and conversion to Islam in order to save their lives. Rodionov refused to convert to Islam and even to remove the silver cross he wore. After that decision, he was beheaded on the outskirts of the Chechen village of Bamut by Chechen rebels. Ruslan Khaikhoroev, the murderer, accompanied by an OSCE representative, later admitted the killing, saying to Rodionov's mother, "Your son had a choice to stay alive. He could have converted to Islam, but he did not agree to take the cross off. He also tried to escape once."[6] Andrey Trusov was beheaded; Igor Yakovlev and Alexander Zheleznov were shot dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Rodionov
It was a sad day when LiveLeak was gone, otherwise you could see 'cosmopolitan civilian's' actions firsthand.
But it looks like you are totally okay with jihadis 'torturing some POW', including beheading on the cam and straight up shooting them, indiscriminate raping of civilians along with a very discriminate ones. Ask Yelena Masyuk how she feels about those 'freedom fighters' she loved before. Hint, it's not mentioned in Wikipedia what they did to her, but I think there are still videos of that somewhere on the Net.
And of course you absolutely ignore (because you don't even know?) what happened before that and how 'civilians of cosmopolitan city' behaved with the people of improper origins. Or what happened after that. Here, refresh your memory: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/09/world/4-foreigners-are-fo...
The west could have simply let Ukraine be invaded without resistance and enjoyed a cozy winter. Afterall, that's how they've reacted to foreign coups, invasions and wars since WW2. In some, they have been the aggressors themselves. Their assistance towards Ukraine is hardly egalitarian. It's good old cut-throat geopolitics.
Ofc, I empathize with Ukrainians watching their country be the latest on the chopping board of global games of chess. I would never wish that fate on anyone. But no European is a "victim of Russia's invasion". They are willing participants in a proxy war that benefits their long term national security goals. If anything, countries are relishing in being able to fight a war with Russia without putting a single body on the front lines.
At the same time the elites who filled their mouths with words like "sacrifice" are those who didn't have to change their lifestyle in the slightest.
It reminds of the tightest COVID lockdowns, rich people would post videos from their mansions/villas telling people who lived cramped in flats to stay home and be responsible.
Just to make sure I've got that right?
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/09/10/ar911.russia...
It is so unfortunate that Europe became dependent on Russian energy.
I was too young to remember these events firsthand, but learning about Grozny in the history books, I am mystified that the world was so eager to cooperate with Russia such a short time later. Putin completely destroyed a cosmopolitan city killing thousands of civilians and just over a decade later Nordstream 1 turned on Europe's money tap for Russia.
And now we suffer the consequences.
HN, this is semi-off topic, and emotional, but this war makes me so sad. Some of my partner's family fled across Ukraine from this invasion. The generational farm she visited as a kid is only a memory now: I will never see it. It's been destroyed. Her grandmother wanted to live out the rest of her days in Kyiv and instead had to flee through Poland for DC where she is confined in a small apartment with my mother in law, watching her country be destroyed on the news.