Hell, look at HN on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. One of the top comments was essentially a dismissal from Kherson edited to an "oh shit."
Because in two hours it went from being "mostly overstated," Ukraine being "not economically strong enough to participate in a war" for a long duration and that Russia being "not interested either," to holy shit the mad king is mad.
I hope I am not biased but it really does not seem comparable to the border situation in Kashmir where both sides are showing aggression towards each other and weighing the costs of going to an all out war.
The Western consensus about the outcome of the invasion that of a rout.
> both sides are showing aggression towards each other and weighing the costs of going to an all out war
Outside an Indo-Chinese land war, the only paths for industrial war emerge from New Delhi. Either in reacting to a miscalculation by Islamabad. Or because India's going imperial. The latter would be shockingly like Russia invading China in both scale and capacity to get drawn out by outside backers.
Indian leadership hasn't been going on TV prior to the Pahalgam attack and putting out bellicose statements like Hindus and Muslims can't live together - Pakistan did. Also India isn't stupid to invade a nuclear armed country with a first-use policy.
The above incursions are the usual dance we see with India and Pakistan (and China), that we see every few years. Except this time, Pakistan triggered it by attacking civilians, just like 26/11, while even Indian support of Pakistani terrorists such as the Balochistan Liberation Army has never led to a large-scale slaughter of civilians in Pakistan.
Pakistan messed up big time, they'll chalk up the L, it will be a few tense words for some time, and then things will get back to where they were before.
Underlaying this line of reasoning is an assumption that Pakistan makes coordinated, coherent, and more or less rational decisions. But Pakistan is run by the military with civilian leadership being a farcical fig leaf. They routinely fall into prolonged periods of martial law, and arresting former prime ministers is the norm. What's more, Pakistan's military is divided into numerous factions which are operationally independent and have their own internal politics going on.
Therefore, any analysis of the form "[hypothesis] is unlikely because it would be irrational and uncoordinated" is extremely dubious.
On a side note, the Gulf states being involved in negotiations pretty much means the end of the US as a diplomatic hegemon for the region.
It was such a great coincidence they had a huge army trained and armed by the west at the same time.
Then leading up to the actual invasion (Which US intelligence called weeks in advance, don't know why everyone is insisting that it wasn't expected, maybe they should reconsider who they pay attention to) the US was convinced it would be a steamroll fight and then Ukraine would run an insurgency, so they provided thousands more anti-tank missile launchers.
It wasn't until Ukraine had mostly stopped the invasion convoy that the west took them seriously, and it took even longer for the west to start providing supplies.
Modi is a different type of beast, he's a long term political power that doesn't need a wartime economy, and is still establishing his internal power. He's going to have to deal with the insane SS brigade he's fostered eventually. Also while Putin and others thought that Ukraine would fall like Afghanistan (quickly), zero people think that Pakistan is going anywhere within this eon. While it's not the graveyard of empires, it's definitely the hospice.
While Putin is undoubtedly deranged, I think his goals with invading had much more to do with delusions of grandeur and trying to rebuild the Russian/Soviet empire than wanting the "benefit" of a "wartime economy". Russia was drastically unprepared for a long war, and its economy, heavily reliant on export of raw materials and import of finished goods, has suffered.
This is a choice though. The decisions aren’t as hard as leaders are making them. Pulling support or giving support would end the war. Neither has actually occurred and support has been drip fed, bleeding both countries.
Is there a statement that is more "armchair-policy-maker"?
In all seriousness, I have a similar sentiment about support for Ukraine, but I'm saying that it's difficult to have a robust policy (especially when it involves so many parties) when you struggle to understand the opponent's perspective.
A long time ago he lamented the fall of the Soviet Union which is especially hilarious as he was very likely involved in and vultured on the remains of it's demise.
> Russia was drastically unprepared for a long war
He, much like all of military officials in NATO at the time, assumed it was going to be over after they landed in Kiev.
I also contest that the economy has suffered: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-economy-shows-s...
The only exception is the pipeline, but then who could have expected that the US would sabotage an ally's ability to heat it's citizens? (assuming you ignore the last 100 years of american doctrine)
Prigozhin had a last real chance, you could see how much common folks and most of army immediately aligned with them. But when they took hostages whole families of his mercenary group leaders, they backed down with predictable results. Interestingly not all aligned generals were executed, I expected bigger purge. Maybe he would be much worse though.
Military officials knew with no doubt whatsoever that the Ukrainians would fight like hell, and that they were better man-for-man, dollar-for-dollar, than the Russians.
NATO officials' first-hand knowledge of the Ukrainian will to fight is why they begged their governments to allow shipments of materiel to Ukraine.
This is something that I hope, in the future, will be seen as no less barbaric than slavery. If people want to fight for their country, then they absolutely should. But if people don't want to fight for their country, then they should never be able to be forced to - it's a mockery of any notion of human rights.
There's many things in this world I would be willing to die for, but a country? The notion feels quaint. Of course I realize this means that any country that does set aside such rights would have a tremendous military edge, but perhaps in such a world where human rights are held as more than a placard of convenience, the notion of dying for one's country might no longer seem so quaint.
They are not a reliable source.
The only question is when to start. And I think May 2023 was probably the critical point in the war. That was shortly before Bakhmut would fall, and also shortly before the Ukraine counter offensive would be launched and also ultimately fail. The war was arguably effectively decided by July 2023. So here are state media from May 1st 2023. You can skim forward using the widget in the top right corner.
RT : https://web.archive.org/web/20230501115431/https://www.rt.co...
Kyiv Post: https://web.archive.org/web/20230501000808/https://www.kyivp...
> human rights
I see where there is a gap in your understanding. Ukrainians and the Ukrainian army aren't fighting for the abstract concept of a geopolitical entity (the country of Ukraine), they're fighting for their people, culture, language, existence, safety, freedom. Russia is proudly performing a genocide in Ukraine [1], and Putin has already stated that Ukrainians are just misguided Russians.
What do you think a Russian occupation of Ukraine would look like? They're already kidnapping children [1] and indiscriminately murdering and torturing civilians.
Yes, it was horrible that every single man of fighting age was conscripted. But desperate times force desperate measures.
1 - in case you've missed the news, Russia is indeed (without trying to hide it, it's all out in the open, their chief of staff and various ministers have talked about it) kidnapping people and specifically children from Ukraine. Those children are being educated to be good Russian citizens, which is genocide as per the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (to which Russia is a signatory), Article II (e).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-...
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...
Also, a lot of the kids are orphans (their parents having been murdered by the Russians). And a lot have parents trying to trace them and get them back (there's a whole association for this).
But I'm not aware of anything of this type happening today. Do the US soldiers in e.g. Rammstein go to police how people vote?
How do you come to this conclusion - have you been studying Putins' speeches in the last 3 years, or analysed some of the policies that led to this conclusion?
Did you see his recent interview on Croatian TV where he discusses this specifically?
EDIT: hey downvoters - is it not valid to study world leaders' directly rather than going through a third party .. ?
Yes. By his ex ante metrics, his war has thoroughly backfired. By the current aims, it's absolutely delusionally revanchist.
So, based on potential future events, you've come to this conclusion.
But I don't see any current evidence to support the claim. Can you clarify your position?
You saw his interview on Croatia TV recently? His statements refute your position.
No. I'm saying by the goals he set out before the war, he has failed.
> You saw his interview on Croatia TV recently? His statements refute your position
Putin is sort of like Trump in that he messages multiple messages. We cannot know what is in his mind. But Putin has repeatedly made revanchist nonsense statements about Russia's sphere of influence and imperial downfall. He's also said that's not what Russia wants. But that's (a) recent and (b) unsubstantiated by the facts ont the ground.
Fine, but what were those goals, where/when did he set them out and what is the current status? I'd like to study this issue myself - so any sources you can provide?
>We cannot know what is in his mind.
Yet you claim to know, which is why I'm interested - if you don't believe his words, what basis do you have to make the assertion that you know his real intentions?
As far as I can tell (and I am merely hours away from the Ukraine border), the land he has occupied is precisely what he set out to achieve, and it doesn't look like that is about to change any time soon.
So please, share your references. I'd quite like to understand how you can make such conclusions with such certainty, while doubting the words of the very individual responsible for it. I remain unconvinced you've observed any of his recent public statements with regards to Russia's position with Europe.
Is that why the best Russian forces attacked Kyiv, including a paratroop landing to capture Antonov airport, which is in the Kyiv suburbs? You don't do that kind of thing if you're not expecting to capture the city. Also, why did Russia need to mobilise if it got what it wanted?
Add in Russia's claims that they're just removing the Ukrainian government, which it accused of being neo-Nazis.
> Putin's address was aired during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on the situation in Ukraine that began on the evening of 23 February.[14][15] At the meeting itself, Vasily Nebenzya, Russia's representative to the UN, stated: "We are not carrying out aggression against the Ukrainian people, but against the group that seized power in Kyiv."[16]
> Our plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_conducting_a_special_milita...
That's called delusional backpedaling by both the Russians, and people like you who seem intent on giving them the benefit of the doubt for no apparent reason. Russia is not a rational actor, and no, nothing that has happened has been to plan, unless you believe their plan included having to mobilise, and losing the Black Sea fleet to a country with no navy.
I'm not interested in the vitriol - name-calling and invalidation of ones intelligence is a limited technique in terms of effectiveness - I am interested in the source of your understanding, such as it is. I work with refugees regularly from various conflicts, including Gaza and Ukraine, so my personal insight is based on on-the-ground assessments from civilian victims of these conflicts, whose voice is not often heard in the masses. What I know so far: nobody in the civilian cadre wants these wars, only their utterly insane leaders do.
So, again, what of the Russian governments' official positions have you evaluated against the reality of the facts on the ground?
Russia got its land corridor to Sebastopol, Crimea, where they continue to operate their nuclear-armed naval base: a requirement they made very clear early on in the conflict.
Russia have gained control over the territories in the east where they claimed that Ukraine was committing crimes against the mostly-Russian speaking population prior to their invasion. A consequence of their actions has been the result where, a significant portion of Europes' population now have a greater understanding of the nature of the various groups involved in the conflict - and yes, that includes a broader understanding of the Ukrainian and Russian extremist groups involved.
And .. a million men are dead because neither side had what it took to actually maintain peace.
>Russia is not a rational actor
By which standard can you make this claim of any nation which has invaded and demolished sovereign states this century? There are literally no states involved in any conflict today which can be considered rational actors.
States are, by very stint of necessity, duplicitous and calculating in their actions - which is why I think it is very selective to make conclusions on the state of the conflict in Ukraine on the basis of public statements and propaganda - from both sides of the conflict. I'd like to have a distinct set of statements which can be verified against the current reality, but this is not forthcoming - so far, the vitriol is getting in the way of rational discussion.
So .. What do you think of Putins' statements made on Croatian Channel 4 TV on Monday, regarding Russia's position vis a vis its relationship with Europe? All lies? Should be ignored on the basis of some masterful application of coffeeshop psychology techniques?
> I want to see the details - not the anecdotes, not the vitriol - based on evidence that can be reviewed and which is not keyed to emotional levers being pushed and pulled depending on which 'side' you are on. /---/ What I know so far: nobody in the civilian cadre wants these wars, only their utterly insane leaders do.
Likewise, saying that the Sevastopol naval base "continues to operate" is quite a stretch when we look at the facts:
* The HQ of Sevastopol naval base was blown up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_strike_on_the_Black_Se...
* The flagship was sunk along with a third of the entire fleet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Moskva https://x.com/HudsonInstitute/status/1765453597829935482
* The remaining fleet has fled to Russian ports (primarily Novorossiysk) on the eastern coast of the Black Sea to escape destruction: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/06/new-sat-images...
* Even there, the situation continues to deteriorate. This week, unmanned Ukrainian naval drones shot down two Russian fighter jets near Novorossiysk: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukrainian-naval-drones-shoo...
Quite a different picture from the victory parade you were trying to draw us, isn't it?
I'm sorry, but you are. Might not be your intention (I strongly doubt it), but you are.
> and I want to see the details - not the anecdotes, not the vitriol - based on evidence that can be reviewed and which is not keyed to emotional levers being pushed and pulled depending on which 'side' you are on.
I linked you a Wikipedia page with the timeline, quotes and Putin's official announcement of the war on kremlin.ru. What do you have to say about that, other than "wanting to review the evidence"? Come on, gave you plenty, go ahead and review it, and come back to us telling us how Russia supposedly achieved its aims.
> So, again, what of the Russian governments' official positions have you evaluated against the reality of the facts on the ground?
Their starting position, which is that they're bringing peace to the bad Ukraine Nazis, and that they're fighting NATO encroachment, both of which are objective failures - Ukraine is still there, and NATO got even closer to Russia with Sweden and Finland.
> Russia got its land corridor to Sebastopol, Crimea, where they continue to operate their nuclear-armed naval base: a requirement they made very clear early on in the conflict.
Cool, and the Black Sea Fleet is still in Sevastopol, right? Wait, there's a Black Sea Fleet, right? Right?
Russia lost the Black Sea Fleet to a country with no navy. It had to evacuate whatever was remaining of it to Novorossiysk, far out of range of Ukrainian drones. They could have saved a lot of lives and their fleet by just moving the fleet there in the first place.
> A consequence of their actions has been the result where, a significant portion of Europes' population now have a greater understanding of the nature of the various groups involved in the conflict - and yes, that includes a broader understanding of the Ukrainian and Russian extremist groups involved.
One party, Russia, invaded and is genociding the other [1]. Ukraine had a negligible problem with neo-Nazis in a militia. Totally the same "extremist groups on both sides", right?
> What do you think of Putins' statements made on Croatian Channel 4 TV on Monday, regarding Russia's position vis a vis its relationship with Europe? All lies? Should be ignored on the basis of some masterful application of coffeeshop psychology techniques?
So, I Googled around, and saw some youtube/facebook/linkedin links talking about that and how Russia isn't Europe's enemy (even though they're literally invading a European neighbour and threatening others, sure mate) and bla bla nonsense. But on further searching... there is no such thing? Grok (not that it's very reliable) says that it can't find any proof of such statements. Googling with HRT 4, the name of the Croatian channel, finds nothing. Their website with the Putin tag shows nothing: https://www.hrt.hr/tag/vladimir-putin
So it's fake... Good job being a useful idiot for the enemy of Europe.
1 Russia is indeed (without trying to hide it, it's all out in the open, their chief of staff and various ministers have talked about it) kidnapping people and specifically children from Ukraine. Those children are being educated to be good Russian citizens, which is genocide as per the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (to which Russia is a signatory), Article II (e).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-...
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...
https://x.com/abhijitmajumder/status/1898423291838128168
Russia is not Europes enemy and anyone parroting that agitprop has misanthropic purposes or seeks to profit in some way from the turmoil it produces.
>Ukraine had a negligible problem with neo-Nazis in a militia.
Another indicator that you are operating under a strict regime of state-sponsored agitprop.
>Child abductions
Lets see the ICJ case.
writing this, followed by a link to “X” is some Grade A trolling, well-done mate, well done :)
You can run the original through a translator as it's still archived. https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
> Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe of our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a de facto civil war, because now brothers, divided by their belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other - but Ukraine as anti-Russia will no longer exist. Russia is restoring its historical completeness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together - in all its totality of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. If we had refused this, had allowed the temporary division to become entrenched for centuries, then we would not only have betrayed the memory of our ancestors, but would also have been cursed by our descendants - for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land.
Note that referring to Ukrainians as "little Russians" is grossly offensive but fits with the big picture idea (which you can see scattered in this very thread! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43913680) that Ukraine isn't a real country or a separate nationality. This year we have been provided a very easy parallel: the rhetoric that Canada isn't really separate and should just be the 51st state. (What a coincidence!)
Hopefully this will finally teach the nations of the world they can't rely on the likes of the US for their protection. If they want to survive and keep their sovereignity, they should really start developing missile technology and stockpiling nukes. If they don't, they will simply get steamrolled by nuclear armed opponents while the US does pretty much nothing about it despite promising to because they're not actually willing to risk global thermonuclear war with Russia over some eastern european country.
When I was in school, one of the history teachers spent a lot of time describing how the Yom Kippur War started. I guess he thought it told something important about how things work in the real world. The lead up to the Russian invasion looked pretty much the same. An ordinary person could not have known if the invasion would actually start this time. But a reasonable person should have understood that if an invasion was about to start, that was what it would likely look like.
Never tell the same lie twice?
Russian invasion was not imminent, it was ongoing.
And for full scale invasion: there were a clear signs of it before it happened.
Putin had already attacked multiple countries before. Georgia, Chechnya, and leads a vast network of para militaries that are fighting all over Africa as well.
Heck, Putin had literally attacked and conquered a whole area of Ukraine itself not even a decade ago.
Anyone who was saying Putin would not attack Ukraine either had no knowledge at all about how Putin operated or was willfully misleading.
India has shown no such imperial intentions that Putin has demonstrated and spoken about multiple times both before and since his attempt to take over Ukraine.
It is important to note when things are not normal. Putin actually invading Ukraine was a very unexpected move.
Unfortunately, we as people are very good at rationalizing after the fact "oh of course this was coming", shrugging our shoulders and just moving on as if nothing happened. "It is what it is, this too shall pass".
With Ukraine's entry into NATO appearing increasingly imminent, they likely felt they could force matters with a semi-bluff thinking they could catch Ukraine by surprise. Then the West jumped in thinking they could catch Russia by surprise. In the end nobody was really "surprised" and so we got a war that I expect nobody, especially in hindsight, really expected, let alone wanted.
Say what? AFAIK, Ukraine wasn’t even eligible for entry due to the organization’s rules on contested territories.
It feels very much like the intent was to provoke, especially when this largely parallels the Cuban Missile Crisis with roles reversed. When the USSR wanted to expand their military reach to Cuba, we nearly started a nuclear war over it. And in that case, Cuba doesn't even share a border with the US! So it's not like we simply lacked the ability to understand why they might have a genuine concern here.
The reason I backdated the article is because when you read that it sounds exactly like Russia is making their intentions of an invasion, if a compromise cannot be reached, rather unambiguously clear. And so if you read it, with hindsight, one might think it was edited with that outcome in mind.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ukraine%E2%80%93N...
Things were obviously headed to a climax rapidly. It was likely going to be war or NATO, or perhaps both.
HMS Defender was sailing from Odessa in southern Ukraine to Georgia. To get there, it passed south of the Crimea peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that has not been recognised internationally. While Moscow claims the peninsula and its waters are Russian territory, the UK says HMS Defender was passing through Ukrainian waters in a commonly used and internationally recognised transit route.
Was it? The scale was surprising, but troop build ups were noted ahead of time and Russia had been fighting in Ukraine for many years.
Am I misremembering?
Buildups were happening repeatedly in the past under the guise of exercises.
Eg. here tanks and ~80k soldiers in 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-russ...
Here was one example: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-invasion-predictions-...
See also: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/21/why-ukrainians-dont...
The US government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen, the Ukrainian government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen, and the Russian government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen. The mainstream media warned everyone the invasion was going to happen, and the financial markets responded.
Some people don't have the sense to come in out of the rain.
Those people included almost all western governments who had blithely assumed Russia was not threat, did not react to the previous invasion (and some took the stance Russia had the support of the inhabitants of ethnically Russian areas), did not react to the invasion of Georgia, and generally just assumed it would be OK - which Russia took as a signal the west would be fine with an invasion of the rest of Ukraine.
Quite contrary, the Ukrainian government was publicly saying that it was all bluffing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60174684
Zelensky repeatedly said that the West was creating a panic. Ukraine's repelling of the attack was heroic and legendary, but the truth is that if it wasn't for the astonishing incompetence of the Russian assault, where there was a massive traffic jam almost all the way from Belarus to Kyiv, it really would have been a quickly conquered nation.
>and the Russian government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen
But they didn't. Russia kept portraying the build-up as drills with Belarus.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-crisis-putin-says-militar...
Western intelligence predicted Russia's plans perfectly, but a lot of people were very in denial about it.
Regarding Russia: did the strange televised meeting of Putin's war cabinet (whatever it would be called), wherein everyone went around the room and voted "yes" to invasion even though a couple of them looked like they were in a hostage video, happen before or after tanks rolled into Ukraine? In my mind that's a "prewar" thing but maybe I got the sequence of events wrong? (I'm finding it hard to google this even though it was a fairly important event. Weird.)
> Western intelligence predicted Russia's plans perfectly
I remember thinking the white house handled communications surrounding the invasion very well, kind of a rare foreign policy bright spot for them. Too bad it didn't make a difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B0mWzB4GOQ
(I recalled it as well and with normal searching could not find it, even with date winnowing, but asking Gemini 2.5 Pro and it immediately gave me that resource)
This meeting happened just before the invasion. Far too late for anyone to really do anything, and long after most of the "are they/aren't they?" discussions happened. Up until that point Russia was repeatedly denying their "special military operation". Just as they denied their invasion of Crimea and their little green men in the Donbas.
As an aside, that absolutely bizarre security council meeting is virtually indistinguishable from the North Korea-style Trump administration meetings that we now see weekly, where it's a circle of embarrassingly laughable platitudes and servitudes by a cowed and pathetic administration.
>I remember thinking the white house handled communications surrounding the invasion very well
They did.
> As an aside, that absolutely bizarre security council meeting is virtually indistinguishable from the North Korea-style Trump administration meetings that we now see weekly, where it's a circle of embarrassingly laughable platitudes and servitudes by a cowed and pathetic administration.
To be fair there was a lot of this during the first Trump administration, only moreso near the end when plenty of the cabinet secretaries weren't real secretaries, just "acting" secretaries of various sorts. It's just that now they're all operating on that level.
I still have no idea if it was serious, or a fake "look at us helpless and not preparing at all". It was reported in media that he was given early warnings and briefings from the US about the incoming attack. There are so many cases like that that were may never learn about for sure...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64664944
It is just shocking incompetence by Russian forces that Kyiv wasn't taken in days. Russian units faced negligible resistance right to the outskirts of Kyiv, where their own lack of training, planning and logistics stalled their efforts.
https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-russias-failure-to-take-...
Ukraine is now a potent military force and Zelensky is a bonafide hero, but they were in a profound state of denial and got incredibly lucky in those early days.
As always, westerners leave in an information bubble. Chechnya was always a part of Russia. It was a civil war. Ukraine was always a part of Russia until 1991, btw, there was never a separate country called "Ukraine" before 1991 - you can easily find that even in Western history books, although I'm sure they'll be rewritten in some way soon, if not already.
Georgia launched attack in 2008, it is easily confirmed by:
1. News from that time (there was a several days delay between Georgia attack and when Medvedev decided to respond, during that time Putin called a press conference and said: "Georgia has started an attack and is bombing civilians, but Western press is silent about it". You can still find recordings of that press conference on video hosting sites, I believe.
2. There was an independent EU investigation that also confirmed that Georgia started the attack in 2008.
3. Last year Georgian government itself confirmed that they were attacking first.
It never cease to amaze me in what distorted information reality people live.
BTW, it's for the best, because it was the reason why West could coerce Georgia into starting a war in 2008. All the population, including the top politics lived in an alternative reality, so they basically said to Georgia: "Russia is weak and corrupt, they have no army, no weapons, they have only shovels, and even their shovels are rusty. So you'll easily get what you want without any resistance."
Actually, more or less the same repeated in 2022. Just read HN comments from 2022: "Russians are surrendering by tens of thousands a day, they don't want to fight with warm and welcoming and kind Ukrainian soldiers", "Ukraine burns thousands of Russian tanks and armored vehicles a day: here's a photo proof", etc, etc.
So this distortion of reality works the other way round, when West bases its actions on it. There are lies from top to bottom, and then everyone makes all kinds of decisions based on those lies.
Countries are not a fact of nature. They change, come and go for a large number of reasons. The Ukrainian people are constituted in a country and have repeatedly expressed they don't wish to be part of Russia. If you want to force them to be at gunpoint, at least be open about it instead of hiding behind a historical pseudo-argument.
Also Russia as an independent state ceased to exist in 1922. So it’s hardly that different. Both Russia and Ukraine only became independent countries in 1991 when they decided they to leave the USSR.
Russia is allegedly entitled to own half of Europe due to some deranged reasons. Everyone who disagrees with that is supposedly a nazi or something similar.
The concept of hypocrisy is entirely foreign and incomprehensible to anyone who honestly supports Russian imperialism..
Königsberg(Kaliningrad) was always German. Kuril islands were always Japanese.
While Russian army is distracted - Germany and Japan should get their territories back now.
No it wasn't. Here's a quick timeline of Estonia.
1219–1346 (127 years): Danish Kingdom
1346-1561 (215 years): Livonia, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
1561–1710 (149 years): Swedish Empire
1710–1917 (207 years): Russian Empire
1944–1991 (47 years): SovietsRussians are good at creating false narratives.
By your standards there was no separate country called Russia between 1918 and 1991. So how is this different?
Also absurd argument. There was no country called Belgium until the 1830s. So what?
> So this distortion of reality works the other way round
So your justification for distorting reality is that other people are allegedly doing that so it’s fine for you to engage in that as well?
Btw that is simply not true. There has been independent Ukraine few years by the end of WWI. Unfortunately, eventually they lost the war to the red army and been occupied by Moscow .
People underestimate what a clusterfuck of ethnicities pre WW2 Eastern Europe was. Resettlement after WW2 created much cleaner ethnic maps and arguably the reason we had 80 years of mostly peace (Yugoslavia was last country with mix of ethnicities and wars in 90ies cleaned up it too).
While this is categorically not true (WWI, the Ukrainian SSR), it's also irrelevant. There wasn't an independent Czechia or Albania either, or Turkey, or Greece, or Italy, or Germany, until there was. Historical non-existence of a state doesn't mean that with the rise of nationalism in the 19th and 20th century those states didn't become entities people wanted to belong to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Ukrainian_langua...
Here's a chronological list of various supressions of the Ukrainian language. There has been a semblance of a Ukrainian identity long before the 1990s.
> Georgia launched attack in 2008, it is easily confirmed by:
Interesting, the timeline does not add up with the independently sourced Wikipedia article on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
Is it wrong? Feel free to update it.
> 2. There was an independent EU investigation that also confirmed that Georgia started the attack in 2008.
link?
> "Ukraine burns thousands of Russian tanks and armored vehicles a day: here's a photo proof",
Yeah, where are the Russian battle groups? Where are the modern tanks? Why did last year's 9th of May parade have so few armoured vehicles?
For very limited definition of "always" - Ukraine existed in different forms since like 9th century, including being a part of Duchy of Lithuania, and then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, until 1795. Then in 1918 western Ukraine became part of Poland again. Ukraine with the borders as we know them today (OK, pre-2014) was created after WWII, as a part of Soviet Union.
So no, Ukraine was never "a part of Russia", excluding the short periods when Russia conquered them by force.
>India
Interesting how in one case it's the leader of the country doing the invading and in the other it's the country doing it without the leader behind it mentioned.
My understanding is that China and India don't tend to get along politically.
The latter still makes the news in the West sometimes, not every year. HNers from those countries might give us some insights about how much their people feel it important.
If you meet an asshole in the morning, you're unlucky. If you meet nothing but assholes all day, you're the asshole.
But by the time the US were hunting Bin Laden a lot had changed and support has been trailing off.
Now most recently Trump has been growing the US pro-Israeli - and basically being broad-stroke anti-every-kind-of-muslim - policy and actions in the gulf and has put the now-meagre levels of ongoing US aid to Pakistan completely on hold.
Buying Russian gas on the cheap, buying French, American, Russian military equipment.
Maybe this time the us would back India as part of a proxy war.
Poland refused to negotiate on a land bridge to East Prussia and a compromise on Danzig governance because daddy Britain said they didn't have to.
Germany's brutality was not justified, but it's not as if it happened suddenly.
Man A is pushing man B repeatedly and yelling at him as a bar dispute escalates. Man B pulls out a gun and shoots man A.
Overreaction? Yes. Sudden? Not necessarily.
Poland saw what what Germany did to Czechoslovaquia, decided that negotiations would only happen after a demilitarization and de-escalation.
But it's true it wasn't sudden, poland was preparing for the war, the attack from both side (cooperation between Germany and Russia) is what took them by surprise
I was strictly illustrating a counter example to the implied notion that overreaction implies suddenness.
To further demonstrate that this is a misunderstanding on your part, it wouldn’t even make sense for me to have A and B correspond to the Germany/Poland situation - that would make my argument circular!
It isn’t very kind to take an interpretation that would set the speaker’s argument as circular, when an alternate and trivially-demonstrated-as-more-valid interpretation is also available. I believe the advice is often stated as - assume good intent.
On your second point - this is an elementary school tier interpretation of history. Poland itself did not have anywhere close to sufficient leverage to make such decisions about delaying negotiations. They were able to do so solely due to Britain’s backing their decision with force. Why did Britain back them? Why do you believe the history book written by the winners so easily on a topic so fuzzy as motive?
And I'm not a huge fan of Weinberg (and most pre-2000s historians), I think he was too 'furetien' in his vision of Nazism, but everything he wrote was backed by facts and actual written sources, and that Poland (and most of the world, including Romania) was more than miffed by the destruction of Czechoslovakia a year after the Sudetenland was annexed is a fact, and more than a few diplomatic cables show that.
Also, Beck was quite convinced of Poland's ability to hold until the french attack on the other side, and thought USSR would come to their help (especially after Memel, and probably because the French were persuaded of it too), thus convincing Carol to throw himself with the 'peace Front' (hindsight is 20/20, and Ribbentrof the most competent Nazi, probably because he was not ideologically one, which helps). England actually pushed for Poland to make concessions, and multiple cables from Poland responded to the English in the summer 39: 'we want, but they won't meet us'. I think they threw a last hail Mary: fully open borders in the area (no treaty at all, just a policy change) to show that they were open to negotiations, but it was too late.
To respond to your actual question, Britain backing was in name only (compared to France), and mostly prevented a France-Poland-Ussr alliance originally (after that Daladier came back USSR alliance was a bit farther, than anticipated, but still). Britain (and US) were aware that Germany was stronger than France, but thought the gap was small and tried to limit French diplomacy to keep it that way (limit continental European powers was a major mandate). They misjudged the balance of power. But they certainly didn't pit Poland against Germany, pushing relentlessly for negotiation instead, unlike the French
India is bombing Pakistan, Pakistan is shelling India, but so far no army invaded another country.
Beside both Germany and Poland didn't have the atomic weapon.
If it weren't for mens like Vasili Arkhipov, who disobeyed direct orders to launch a nuclear torpedo against ships of the United States Navy, and the many other men during different incidents, we would be all dead.
What is frightening is that we, the humanity, keep going that close from our death by atomic warfare over and over, yet make no adjustment whatsoever.
I'm no expert but when I went close to dying a few too many times on my motorbike, broke a few bones, etc.. I was smart enough to realize you can't cheat statistics. At one point I wouldn't be lucky and there wouldn't be a second chance to save me, so I stopped driving recklessly.
On the other hand, the number of nuclear weapons didn't decrease, there are more actors now involved, and the kind of fantasized Pakistani and indians nuthead are really frightening.
I don't think there would be a Vasili Arkhipov over there, they're completely nuts.
There are enough "tense diplomatic situations" happening all the time, and given a long enough timeline eventually some will fail and end in disaster.
The analogy isnt a great fit.
Germany hadn't previously invaded Poland (and vice-versa) many times leading up to that point.
A missile strike and an invasion are on completely different levels.