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Responding as someone that has spent a good amount of time there, having trained a long time to fight Russians. > We rightly stand in solidarity with Ukraine

Responding as someone that has spent a good amount of time there, having trained a long time to fight Russians. > We rightly stand in solidarity with Ukraine Which Ukraine? There are actually two of them! The eastern half is culturally, economically, philisophically, politically, Russian and in Russia's sphere of influence. The western half is like continental Europe. This is why I have joked w friends there, calling the East "Little Russia", or, "Western Russia". This was before all the recent wars too. > Imagine living somewhere where your future just got vaporized and if you speak up about it, you risk ending up in a gulag. It’s a nightmare. The Russians on the Wastern Front really defeated the Nazi War machine of Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe & SS, not us Yanks & Brits on the West. They did this at a huge cost and lost ~8-10M men, ~20M in total, in the process. This is actually seared into the Russian memory. They will never permit a hostile enemy this close to their borders again. Particularly not an enemy that promised a number of times never to move NATO Eastward [1] [2] , and has recently fomented color revolutions [3] in a number of their allies, and, is regularly enlisting NGOs to attack them. Nope, we gave them casus belli a long time ago, and the US mainstream media regularly stokes the fires of Russophobia [4] Remember, it is the same Pro-Nazi Azov Battalion [5] that found a prominent place in the Western Ukrainians military, and then promoted them to SF, and gave them western advisers and western arms. > "Although Moscow had little choice but to acquiesce to the admission of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into NATO, Russian concerns grew as enlargement continued. It didn’t help that enlargement was at odds with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s verbal assurance to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 that if Germany were allowed to reunify within NATO then the alliance would not move “one inch eastward”—a pledge Gorbachev foolishly failed to codify in writing. (Baker and others dispute this characterization, and Baker has denied that he made any formal pledges.) Russia’s doubts increased when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003—a decision that showed a certain willful disregard for international law—and even more after the Obama administration exceeded the authority of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and helped oust Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011. Russia had abstained on the resolution—which authorized protecting civilians but not regime change—and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates later commented that “the Russians felt they had been played for suckers.” These and other incidents help explain why Moscow is now insisting on written guarantees." [6] Yet, here we are, literally getting in bed with Nazis for the sake of NATO adventurism. This is why I am against getting involved. [1] https://mltoday.com/new-document-us-promised-not-to-expand-nato-eastward/ https://mltoday.com/new-document-us-promised-not-to-expand-n... [2] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-01-27-22/h_190327bbaa80435566e3164ef6dc4ed1 https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-01-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution [4] https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/ https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/ [5] https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ab7dw/azov-battalion-ukraine-far-right https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ab7dw/azov-battalion-ukrain... [6] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-crisis-liberal-illusions/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-cri...

Paradigma11 5y ago
The whole Nato expansion promise thing seem a pretty strained argument. The same parties negotiated and signed various treaties regarding this issue in the following years (paris charter, budapest memorandum, NATO foundation act with russia). There russia and other signatories guarantee ukraine their souvereign borders and free choice of military alliance. NATO has an open door policy since its inception 1949, nothing changed there. Why would anybody think that NATO would be bound to this verbal musings that are clearly superceded by signed treaties? @4) "...This is scarcely surprising because, for all the expectations of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine predicted as imminent by President Biden and Boris Johnson, this has not occurred. Supposedly, Russians commanders leading 190,000 Russian troops had received definitive orders to attack at the weekend, and by now their tank columns should be racing towards Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, but in fact they have not moved." This did not age well. @5) Yep. Ppl tend to get radicalized if they are in an protracted existential war against a superior enemy.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and to join NATO, it needs the confirmation of 30 countries. Because Russia has strong ties to many of the countries in NATO, NATO is not likely to confirm Ukraine membership. Putting a powerful alliance on your borders, and moving missiles close to your borders is a casus belli We Americans have moved to blockade Cuba (but calling it a quarantine to be PC) when the Russians did the same with Cuba. [1] > This did not age well. They are not seeking to destroy Ukraine, only to capture it. This is not a repeat of the Nazi's capture of Ukraine in which much of the cities were destroyed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
  - Paradigma11 5y ago
    How can it be a casus belli when russia signed multiple treaties explicitely allowing ukraine free choice of military alliance. The cuba missile crisis was pretty bonkers from the US side. We were lucky that there were more level headed people on the sowjet side. Yes, you are right that ukraine acceptance into NATO was not going to happen soon, most likely many decades away. Nobody would allow a country in that has open territorial conflicts with russia. Putin wants to annex belarus and ukraine, all other words out of his mouth are just tactical blabla.

Paradigma11 5y ago

The whole Nato expansion promise thing seem a pretty strained argument. The same parties negotiated and signed various treaties regarding this issue in the following years (paris charter, budapest memorandum, NATO foundation act with russia). There russia and other signatories guarantee ukraine their souvereign borders and free choice of military alliance. NATO has an open door policy since its inception 1949, nothing changed there. Why would anybody think that NATO would be bound to this verbal musings that are clearly superceded by signed treaties? @4) "...This is scarcely surprising because, for all the expectations of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine predicted as imminent by President Biden and Boris Johnson, this has not occurred. Supposedly, Russians commanders leading 190,000 Russian troops had received definitive orders to attack at the weekend, and by now their tank columns should be racing towards Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, but in fact they have not moved." This did not age well. @5) Yep. Ppl tend to get radicalized if they are in an protracted existential war against a superior enemy.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and to join NATO, it needs the confirmation of 30 countries. Because Russia has strong ties to many of the countries in NATO, NATO is not likely to confirm Ukraine membership. Putting a powerful alliance on your borders, and moving missiles close to your borders is a casus belli We Americans have moved to blockade Cuba (but calling it a quarantine to be PC) when the Russians did the same with Cuba. [1] > This did not age well. They are not seeking to destroy Ukraine, only to capture it. This is not a repeat of the Nazi's capture of Ukraine in which much of the cities were destroyed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  How can it be a casus belli when russia signed multiple treaties explicitely allowing ukraine free choice of military alliance. The cuba missile crisis was pretty bonkers from the US side. We were lucky that there were more level headed people on the sowjet side. Yes, you are right that ukraine acceptance into NATO was not going to happen soon, most likely many decades away. Nobody would allow a country in that has open territorial conflicts with russia. Putin wants to annex belarus and ukraine, all other words out of his mouth are just tactical blabla.