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> I don't understand Have you genuinely attempted to understand the Russian perspective in all this? Like listened to what Moscow has been saying for the last
by pphysch 4y ago
> I don't understand
Have you genuinely attempted to understand the Russian perspective in all this? Like listened to what Moscow has been saying for the last decade? Have you ever read a single one of Putin's speeches, for example?
Reading Anne Applebaum screeds in The Atlantic is not seeking understanding, by the way.
How can you understand something if you don't attempt to understand it?
> What evidence is there for this?
No smoking gun, just cui bono + timing + no other plausible explanation has been put forth
> On the contrary, should the EU find that the US was behind the explosions it would cause an absolute rift between the US-EU relationship, and in particular with Germany.
If Europe had strong leadership. Even Merkel didn't really stand up to the spying revelations.
The nuclear brinkmanship is textbook deterrence. Whenever Russia escalates, expect nuclear threats to deter a full-blown NATO entry.
- yakshaving_jgt 4y agoI've listened to plenty of Putin's speeches. He's a compulsive liar.
- pphysch 4y agoCan you give 1-3 examples of verifiable lies he's told?
- yakshaving_jgt 4y ago1. We are not going to invade Ukraine. 2. We did not invade Ukraine. 3. We are not at war with Ukraine. It takes a special kind of stupid to take Putin’s words seriously at this point. You know what, I’m actually disappointed you only asked for three. There’s a mountain of knee-slappers even just from this year. “We’ve lost nothing” after 50,000 of his soldiers died. It’s like the guy is a fucking five year old.
- eshch 4y agoWell, seems you don't give yourself a chance that your idea of Putin might be a mistake. Not a very comfortable position to think rationally.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yakshaving_jgt 4y agoI live in Odessa, Ukraine, and I have had to go to shelter from missile strikes and suicide drone attacks several times in just the past few days. I have also lived in Russia. It can be awkward when the Ukrainians see my old Russian visa in my passport when I cross the border. Where do you live? Ukraine? Russia? How close are you to this issue personally? Got any skin in the game? How many blatant lies are you going to ignore so your Nazi-apologist worldview isn’t compromised? How would you like to see this notification near enough every day, sometimes several times a day? В ОДЕССЕ И ОБЛАСТИ ОБЪЯВЛЕНА ВОЗДУШНАЯ ТРЕВОГА, ВСЕ В УКРЫТИЕ ЧИТАТЕЛИ СООБЩАЮТ, О ВЗРЫВАХ В ОДЕССЕ И ПРИГОРОДЕ. Уточняем информацию ПРЕДВАРИТЕЛЬНО ЕСТЬ СБИТИЕ 2-х РАКЕТ
- int_19h 4y agoThey have also said several times that there won't ever be a mobilization, including at least once by Putin personally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhnE4VQs7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhnE4VQs7c
- pphysch 4y ago1-3 are predicated on an "official" declaration of war, which obviously hasn't happened yet. USA hasn't technically "invaded" Syria either, even though it is currently occupying parts of it. Russia is framing their military operation in a way consistent with Washington, which hasn't formally declared war on anyone since like 2003. Do you have any examples that don't require clear technical misinterpretations?
- yakshaving_jgt 4y agoLavrov? Is that you? Alright, you dismiss my first three examples. Care to explain the fourth example I provided?
- pphysch 4y agoThe fourth example is just plain bad. I challenge you to find a single wartime leader that hasn't downplayed their losses. You are being deeply disingenuous if you think Putin means literally zero Russian soldiers have died. It's wartime morale management 101. Literally everyone does it, including your favorite world leaders. What I'm really after is if you have any evidence of Putin (or Lavrov, now that you mention him) lying on the scale of "Saddam is gonna nuke the West" or "NATO will not expand one inch eastward". Or has Putin ever openly boasted about his lying prowess, as fmr Secretary Pompeo and fmr Ambassador McFaul did recently? These would be convincing examples.
- yakshaving_jgt 4y agoAh, so my suspicions were correct. You are an apologist for fascism. Good day sir.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pphysch 4y agoYour bad faith posting is against HN rules. Please do better.
- mrighele 4y agoI think that Merkel and the other "strong" German leaders are the reason we are at this point (no surprise though, a good amount of them are/were on the Kremlin's payroll). All the energy related decisions in the past 20 years seems to have been made with the purpose to make Germany dependent on Russia (Nuclear, lack of LPG terminals, etc), and to make sure that countries included in the imperialistic ambitions of Moscow (like Ukraine) could affect influence this relationship (NS1, NS2)
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoI genuinely attempted to understand Russia’s perspective and tended to sympathize with it until February of this year. But the current war doesn’t fit into that understanding at all and I don’t know how to begin to reconcile it. Why spend months insisting you’re not going to invade, then invade while publicly insisting you’re not invading, then call up a partial general mobilization without identifying any goals for your war that you insist isn’t a war? Maybe there’s a master plan that has to be secret and continually lied about, but if that’s so then listening to more Putin speeches won’t help me understand him anyway.
- petre 4y agoRussia's perspective is that NATO (the US) has put military installations in former Soviet satellites (Poland and Romania) and that they're being pushed into a corner as NATO expands to the East. In fact those installations are purely defensive and Russia has become less relevant as a superpower largely because of corruption. This is even more obvious now as they have failed to properly execute a war against their neighbour. Putin and the Russians who support the war are frustrated because they've lost the former glory of the USSR and that Russia is becoming a second rate player in geopolitics. That's why he started this war. He wants the USSR restored. What he will get instead is even more dissent and separatist republics.
- int_19h 4y agoI'm Russian (both ethnically and citizenship). The Russian perspective is basically, "we had an awesome empire, now we want it back". All the rhetoric about teh evil NATO etc is just dressing that up.
- DSingularity 4y agoIs that so?
- int_19h 4y agoSure. It's quite obvious, too: how many Russians has NATO killed?