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Sanctions have to hurt to be effective. Europe foolishly integrated with the Russian energy economy in the 80s. We are rightfully reversing course on that mista
by ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
Sanctions have to hurt to be effective. Europe foolishly integrated with the Russian energy economy in the 80s. We are rightfully reversing course on that mistake, but doing so inherently involves substantial pain. But not willing to pay the price is a furtherance of Russia's power, control, and mass murder of Ukrainians.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoI'd prefer sanctions where it hurts them more than it hurts us. Especially, since the current ukranian conflict is no different than eg the war in afghanistan, syria, libya, and as putin says it, also kosovo/yugoslavia. Those were all the wars for US power, control and mass murder of all those people, and we silently supported all those wars, even sent our own soldiers to fight there.
- Wyoming23 4y agoThis is ridiculous. The wars are incredibly different in literally every way. Every war has horrible tragedies and innocent lives lost or harmed, but to suggest invading a stable democracy to annex it is even remotely the same as supporting a locally led uprising against a murderous dictator like in Syria is absurd and offensive.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
- synu 4y agoYou can find embarrassing far right extremists and parties in every country these days. Ukraine is hardly a new nazi Germany.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoHow many of those far right groups were integrated into national armies, as Azov was?
- synu 4y agoLots, of course. Authoritarians are attracted to militias and militaries. Even in the US: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/inside-u-s-military-s-battle-white-supremacy-far-right-ncna1010221 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/inside-u-s-military-s-.... https://www.vice.com/en/article/akv4qp/oath-keepers-us-capitol-stewart-rhodes-far-right-military https://www.vice.com/en/article/akv4qp/oath-keepers-us-capit... has examples from more western countries (I don’t really know what particular evidence you’re looking for that would convince you, but there’s lots out there.)
- somenameforme 4y agoI don't think these sort of things are very comparable. Of course you'll always find extremists in militaries. But in this case the military itself integrated a real Nazi militia as an independent state force. It would be like if the US marines officially recognized the Aryan Brotherhood and gave them their own unit, including with integrating overt Nazi symbols as part of their uniform.
- synu 4y agoSure, I would definitely agree they are worse in a lot of ways. I don’t really agree their existence is proof that all of Ukraine is a new Nazi Germany and therefore the invasion by Russia is justified. Maybe that’s not what you’re saying either, but that’s where this conversation started.
- somenameforme 4y agoNo, that's definitely not what I'm saying. And I also didn't read the original post that way. There are a lot of problems in Ukraine (outside of this war) and they have also done some pretty awful things. Many of the things that go unstated in our media can go some way towards explaining the war, but there's a difference between explaining and justifying. And I increasingly feel that that nuance is being lost in society, which divides us all even further.
- pydry 4y agoAzov isnt unique because it has extremists. It's unique because: * It was founded by a nazi and most of its members appear to be nazis. * It committed atrocities in a civil war against ethnic russians. * It was instrumental in keeping ethnically russian majority areas of Ukraine under Ukraines control. * It was made an official part of the army and lavished with praise by poroshenko despite being largely nazi and having committed atrocities because territory. * When Zelensky came to them asking them to lay down their arms and help end the civil war they told him no and denounced him as a traitor. Officially they have little power or democratic mandate but they told the president that the war shall continue until its bitter end and he capitulated. In the west nazis dont have that kind of power.
- xedrac 4y agohttps://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-with-it-b7f12cc53b6f https://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-... The Nazis were just as much far left as far right, if not more. It's funny to me how people are unwilling to acknowledge this.
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- synu 4y agoThey seem to mainly be celebrated by people today (at least by the types who celebrate that sort of thing) for their white supremacism rather than their leftist policies.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoThe authoritarian far left and far right are very close together, with a tiny bit different politics, but the same end results. It's not a coincidence that the commies and the nazis started the WW2 together... somehow the modern left forgets the soviets/communist involvement.
- 5ersi 4y agoAhh yes, bad Ukrainians because they fought against "russian minorities" annexing Crimea and eastern regions. /s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
- synu 4y agoThey said “Crimea and eastern regions”.
- vkou 4y agoI understand that Donbas may be a western region from where you are standing, but it's an eastern region of Ukraine.
- tigershark 4y agoYou can always tell when someone is polluting HN with Russian propaganda from these small details other than their obviously toxic pro-Putin narrative…
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoAs I said 15 times before, i'm from slovenia. Ukraine was attacking russian minorities in donbas and lugansk. I'm not pro putin, i'm just saying that we're not any better than him, while acting so, and that we're destroying our own countries with sanctions, that don't hurt putin but hurt as. Maybe we deserve them though, but i'd prefer better economy for us.
- reducesuffering 4y ago“Donbas and lugansk” is not a thing. You are incorrect about very basic details in these issues, that I’d advise actually listening to people that know “Donbas” refers to both Donetsk and Luhansk Republics, for starters, unlike yourself.
- throwaway894345 4y agoOf course, these Russian minority casualties died as collateral from Russia and Russian backed separatists as well as from Ukraine. And more saliently, Russia is the aggressor so none of those people would have died if they hadn’t put Ukraine into an existential position.
- thriftwy 4y agoBut the same reasoning works for Assad: all of his victims are collateral from fighting Western-supported rebels as well as ISIS. He has every right to say that the West (and a bit of Turkey) are aggressors and he is defending his country by bombing cities in it.
- throwaway894345 4y agoNonsense. Assad deliberately used chemical and kinetic weapons on civilians, moreover neither the US nor other western countries are using this as a pretext for annexing Syria. There is no analogue.
- thriftwy 4y agoUkraine deliberately shelled civians for 8 years, so what? Their routine tactics of dealing with rebels is to bomb civians dear to those rebels. When they don't hope to make territorial gains, they wish to inflict some damage and civian targets are way easier to hit. This week, they're using freshly supplied M777 to bomb areas of Donetsk they could not reach previously. Such as by hitting four schools in a single day. How is this principially different from Assad?
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago> Assad deliberately used chemical and kinetic weapons on civilians So did NATO in 1999 bombing of yugoslavia. https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/may/08/balkans https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/may/08/balkans <- cluster bombing a (farmers) market https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/24/balkans3 https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/24/balkans3 <- tv station, "Serb TV station was legitimate target, says Blair" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing <- civilian train and bridge (and having to speed up the video, to make it seem non-intentional) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48134881 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48134881 <- even a chinese embassy http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/07/nato.attack.01/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/07/nato.attack.01/i... <- "school, a monastery and other civilian facilities" http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/14/refugees.02/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/14/refugees.02/inde... <- albanian refugees http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/01/kosovo.military.02/ http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/01/kosovo.military.... <- bus etc.
- simonh 4y agoAzoic is a tiny group relative to the whole population that barely registers as a factor in Ukrainian politics. Using them as a reason to invade the nation of Ukraine is a ridiculous excuse. How can a government be nazis if their leader is Jewish? It’s contrived conspiracy theory nonsense.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoWeren't they integrated into the national army?
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y agoThey were. Most of the right-wing elements (there weren't that many of them as Kremlin propaganda would like you to believe) were purged as part of this process, or left the battalion themselves. There's a decent article on this (from a strongly pro-Ukraine publication) that expounds on this theme in a relatively neutral way (IMHO). The sad thing it's in Russian, but should be readable through the magic of google translate if you're interested enough. https://meduza.io/feature/2022/04/17/ot-bandery-do-azova-otvechaem-na-glavnye-voprosy-ob-ukrainskom-natsionalizme https://meduza.io/feature/2022/04/17/ot-bandery-do-azova-otv...
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- somenameforme 4y agoThis [1] is an article from Time in 2018. You can find other countless similar articles elsewhere. You'll find that the narrative before and after the Ukraine war took an extremely hard 180 to the point of absurdity. Just one segment from the article: "After the worst such [anti-Islam terror] attack in recent years—the massacre of 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019—an arm of the Azov movement helped distribute the terrorist’s raving manifesto, in print and online, seeking to glorify his crimes and inspire others to follow. .... It might seem ironic for this hub of white nationalists to be situated in Ukraine. At one point in 2019, it was the only nation in the world, apart from Israel, to have a Jewish President and a Jewish Prime Minister. Far-right politicians failed to win a single seat in parliament in the most recent elections. But in the context of the white-supremacist movement globally, Azov has no rivals on two important fronts: its access to weapons and its recruiting power." There's also stuff like [2] which is a freedom-of-information act report from the Department of Homeland Security. They're concerned about the fact that "Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azo[v] Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists (RMVE-WS) to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia". This whole thing is becoming increasingly absurd where the information warfare is gradually moving from propaganda to 1984. [1] - https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook/ https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook/ [2] - https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=22022879 https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=2202...
- skinnymuch 4y agoIs the west’s [silent] support of Yemen’s slaughter any different? That’s a travesty just as much as Ukraine. To be clear, I don’t agree we shouldn’t sanction Russia. EU should remove its dependence on Russia since Putin doesn’t seem to be going any where and if he does, we don’t know what that means
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago> EU should remove its dependence on Russia But our politicians are fucking up that too... just look at the german fight against nuclear power, while being happy to buy coal-generated power from poland. We have a nuclear powerplant in slovenia, and we're talking about expanding it for literally 30 years now, and all the arguments against it are "this will take 10years, that is too long, we need power now". ...well, and austrians protesting against it.
- skinnymuch 4y agoI always feel bad my Slovene friend and I only talk about world or US stuff. Now I have something to talk about for her country! Sucks that the topic is not a completely positive one though. Hopefully some progress will be made
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- skinnymuch 4y agoSome one posted that Yemen is complicated. It really isn’t. If the exact same Yemenese conflict was happening to a white country or a country involving China or Russia no matter what, the world would be all over it.
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- sudosysgen 4y agoIf you think the US actually acted in Syria to increase human rights and reduce bloodshed I have a few bridges to sell you. From the very beginning the "locally led uprising" was 50% Islamists. And by the way, Turkey is essentially annexing Syria right now. Unlike Ukrainians, the Syrians can't meaningfully fight back because Turkey is in NATO, so their forces have absolute safe harbor. Beyond this, there is no reasonable moral argument that an annexation is any worse than installing a puppet dictator.
- maleldil 4y ago> Unlike Ukrainians, the Syrians can't meaningfully fight back because Turkey is in NATO, so their forces have absolute safe harbor. NATO won't protect Turkey if they are the aggressors. NATO is a defensive alliance.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoWho exactly was nato defending when they bombed yugoslavia in 1999?
- reducesuffering 4y agoThe remaining Kosovar Albanians Muslims after 8000 were killed by Serbia.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoYou also need to read this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200319062355/http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200319062355/http://www.michae...
- reducesuffering 4y agoParenti is a Marxist https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08854309808428215 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0885430980842821...
- petre 4y agoIt's different because Russia could invade Eastern Europe tomorrow. Of course you might not care, but I live there. The only nazis are the invaders.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoI live in the balkans, I had american planes flying above my house, bombing a country (that we were once a part of a same country) ~400km away, for mostly the same reasons that putin is attacking ukraine now for.
- petre 4y agoYour co-nationals shouldn't have massacred Bosniaks. Ukraine did not engage in ethnic cleansing.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoYou're probably an american, but in 1999, when the bombings took place, the war in bosnia was already over for ~4 years.
- petre 4y agoNo, I am your Northeastern neighbour. Tito was a commie, but he did the right thing uniting people. The Serbs are still stirring things up in Bosnia. Stop now and embrace Tito's genius.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoSo americans bombed serbia/yugoslavia in 1999 because of bosniaks? You learn something new every day...
- Paradigma11 4y agoBasically. Nobody cared about Kosovo but even more so did nobody want to be responsible for letting a rerun of Srebrenica happen.
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- Termitiono 4y agoFor you perhaps but I know a few Ukrainian people and I'm from Germany. We are much closer to this. Also guess who might have joined Russia after Ukraine? You don't think having Russia suddenly as your neighbor doesn't matter?
- blub 4y agoAssuming you’re talking about Poland and Romania, the consensus was that Russia’s initial plan would have been installing a puppet government. So they wouldn’t have had Russia as neighbor, but a Russia-friendly country, just like they did for most of the rather brief time Ukraine existed as an independent country. Or another Belarus, which Poland at least is already neighboring. I get why these countries are nervous but Ukraine’s very very different from Romania or Poland or any other EU country.
- synu 4y agoThat Ukraine doesn’t actually exist is what you hear on Russian TV, but is it actually true? I don’t think it’s quite that simple.
- ratsforhorses 4y agoHonest question , how are they "very different from Romania or Poland"? Do you mean bigger? Also hypothetically if Belarus wanted to join the EU (after a regime change ofc) what would your objections be?
- concordDance 4y ago"Wars for US mass murder" really hurts your argument here. Makes you seem like someone blinded by hatred of their outgroup.
- thriftwy 4y agoWell, the USA has used an awful lot of depleted uranium shells, which burned down and now deposited in Iraqi children lungs. Not to mention all of the bombed weddings.
- 5ersi 4y agoThis is hand-waving nonsense. You are presenting no argument and none of the things you mentioned actually support what you are trying to say here. Also, who gives a f*ck what Putin says?!?
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoI care what I pay for gas, power and food, no matter what putin says. If the sanctions hurt me more than putin, I canot stay quiet about the sanctions.
- tigershark 4y agoStop your bullshit please, this is not Facebook or Reddit. Anyone that doesn’t drink Russian propaganda every day can see what you are trying to do here..
- ben_w 4y ago> Sanctions have to hurt to be effective. While true, I think it’s the wrong criticism in this case, as the necessity of hurt has to be at the target of the sanctions rather than at the one imposing them. Rather: The sanctions that appeared after the Russian annexation of Crimea were the painless ones. The current situation is so much worse for EU interests that the EU feels it needs to demonstrate that it is willing to experience at least some discomfort in order to prevent Russian aggression.
- popcube 4y agoobviously, Russian government trust Europe people don't want to suffer any inconvenience before invading.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago> EU feels it needs to demonstrate that it is willing to experience at least some discomfort in order to prevent Russian aggression. The problem here is... are we really stopping the conflict by eg. banning import of russian oil? Russia is just exporting it to eg. India and China, them having cheaper oil is making their economies stronger, russia still gets the money, and europes economy is going down. So, we're hurting our economy to not hurt the russian one while helping china and india.
- flaviut 4y agoThere's no pipelines from Russia to India and China. Russia has to ship the oil. That's way more expensive, and there's just no infrastructure for that right now.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoHow many piplines do we (EU) have from other countries that will provide us oil, after we totally stop importing it from russia? Won't the price hike hurt us too, possible even more than russia?
- 4y ago
- FpUser 4y ago>"Europe foolishly integrated with the Russian energy economy in the 80s" Europe and the US also "foolishly" integrated with China and whole lot of other countries who are not exactly shining beacons of freedom. Either crawl to your own hole and do not deal with anyone or admit that there is a world around us and it sometimes does not conform. Besides Europe did not become rich just by being nice. It and UK in particular had raped the rest of the world in the process. It does not seem to mind "mass murder" either when it is done by "right" countries to a "bad" ones.
- xkcd1963 4y agoI can't help but think it's a war of ideology. Nobody of us westeners (people that use hackernews are in a way entangled with the west more than lets say an Afghan or Syrian citizen) would care about a remote fight between two Arabian countries who have no real democracy established. But here its 1# close to the 1st world countries and 2# evolving democracy versus totalitarianism. Its not really to safe the Ukrainians, that is just a farce.
- monetus 4y agoI'm in the west and humanism is a significant part of our local community. Rapt attention to tigray and DRC among others right now. Please be precise or use a disclaimer when you make an offensive generalization. Edit: locals have been at it for yemen in particular.
- xkcd1963 4y agoI'm not sure what you mean by offensive generalisation. If you were in charge of saving Ukranians' lives, could you have done things differently from what has been done? Instead of provoking your much stronger neighbour for decades in false believe of security, could you maybe have made decisions that would lead to a less precarious situation? I think so. It would have been better for all Ukranians if this war didn't happen. Would their general freedom suffer? Probably, but at least it wouldn't be as bad as now. EDIT: Ok I see now what you took offensively. Most of us Westeners I should have wrote. Most regulars peoples' attention as example diverted much more to the case of Johny Depps' Trial than to the war in Ukraine.
- monetus 4y agoYou got the edit right, thanks yeah. Playing over the what-ifs of how this could have been diffused is painful; And considering how some high profile people against the war in Ukraine had previously committed atrocities is more than a little frustrating - Henry Kissinger and John Bolton come to mind. That being said, it is a, "the milk has already been spilt, lets clean it up" situation. If a monstrous person says the war shouldn't be, that doesn't mean the war should have began. Your points of criticism of the past dickheads can be construed as trying to excuse or divert blame for current atrocities there. It is kind of incendiary, people will just disengage and drop back to insults. General butt naked also comes to mind. The horror of what he did is hard to overstate. In his mind does his current occupation make him a purely self interested hypocrite, a person working to help his community, or both? If their self interest isn't in conflict with the humanism then sometimes it really is both, at least in their view. Focusing on not having had justice for the critics, i.e. vengeance or reparations, feels like it sows doubt in the thread about the good faith intent of your posts. It sucks because this is the kind of thing where communication really helps inform people rather than make them dig in their heels at perceived misinformation. Similarly, the past shit heads being so high profile really detract from getting consensus about the future and understanding the faults of the past. Age of information, not communication and all that