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I will reiterate. Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, are constantly harassed and reminded that Russia doesn't really see them as sovereign states. They fl

I will reiterate. Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, are constantly harassed and reminded that Russia doesn't really see them as sovereign states. They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. It actually invaded Ukraine for the second time in a decade! And even as this is all going on, Russia happily says, "hey Latvia, or Finland, you guys better stand to attention or you are next". Refugees on the border suddenly seems like a nice problem to have.

foverzar 4y ago
> They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. Your argument would be valid, if this was something exclusive to Russia, and not a common mutual thing between Russia and NATO. NATO bombers just as well fly into Russian airspace, NATO deploys military manoeuvres at Russian borders, and NATO states politicians are just as keen to ramble about nukes as anyone else.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  Yes I forget. Russia is the bullied one here. And is constantly attacked by NATO, in Georgia, Ukraine... Seriously poor Russia for being so unfairly treated. Even now, if only those pesky Ukrainians would stop shooting back at them, peace could be introduced overnight.
  - foverzar 4y ago
    > in Georgia Russian peacekeeping corps WAS attacked in Georgia. The EU fact-finding mission, had blamed Saakashvili: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-report-on-russia-georgia-war-eu-investigators-debunk-saakashvili-s-lies-a-652512.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-report-on-rus... https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-shattered-dream-in-georgia-eu-probe-creates-burden-for-saakashvili-a-630543.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-shattered-dream... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/30/georgia-attacks-unjustifiable-eu https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/30/georgia-attack... It's insane how this truth has been erased in the last 14 years, despite being publicly available and easily googlable. This wiki article should provide a good enough context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian%E2%80%93Ossetian_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian%E2%80%93Ossetian_conf... But hey, why bother with studying facts when you can study propaganda memes, am I right?
- jcranmer 4y ago
  Russia has, in my lifetime, conducted no fewer than five invasions, all of which could be fairly characterized as driven by naked territorial aggression ("this land deserves to be ours"). In the same time, the US has invaded three times, none of which could be characterized as naked territorial aggression, even if you squint at it really, really hard.
  - foverzar 4y ago
    > In the same time, the US has invaded three times Like at least four, and if we use the same counting logic you did for Russia, it would be at least 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili... > naked territorial aggression Well, that depends on what you consider to be worse: pushing neo-colonial policies by installing puppet governments through war and staged coups on the other part of the world, or resolving local conflicts created by dissolution of the SU along the administrative (instead of historical, ethnical, or national) borders, while granting citizenships, providing social infrastructure, or at least allowing states to gain sovereignty (if Kosovo can be independent under UN's self-determination principle, why can't Ossetia, who had been at odds with Georgia for ages and was only territorially related to it, because at some point the Soviet Union decided that budgeting that way is easier?) Besides, considering the US geography, it's kinda hard for it to have territorial disputes, even if it really wanted to. On the other hand, you can ask Mexicans what they think of US law enforcement openly operating in Mexico.
  - pandaman 4y ago
    I don't see how is this possible, are you counting each operation as a separate "invasion" so you get two invasions in Ukraine (2014 and in 2022) for Russia, then I imagine Syria and Georgia? But what is fifth - is it Transnistria/Abkhazia/Ossetia in 1990s? Then the US had 20+ invasions in the same sense (Yugoslavia, multiple ops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and various countries in Africa) over your lifetime.
    - foverzar 4y ago
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  >NATO bombers just as well fly into Russian airspace What's the source on that claim?
opwantx 4y ago
Is there a citation for the threat of invasion apart from unhinged Russian TV commentators? For example, the most hawkish interview with Dugin (Pozner is the interviewer) is from 2014. The interview is in Russian and Dugin is clearly enraged about the Maidan events, so he is more straightforward than in English interviews. If the English subtitles are correct, Pozner explicitly asks which countries should be part of the "Greater Russia". Dugin unambiguously excludes the Baltic states, Poland and Finland. He wanted the eastern Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan in a Eurasian union. So if even the hawk who is always cited as an expansionist does not want Latvia/Finland/Poland, who does? The U.S. does military manoeuvres and close fly-by missions in the South China sea. The people in charge in Russia grew up during the cold war and believe that NATO is a threat. It does not matter to them what people on Twitter who were born in 2000 think. I don't think either that NATO is a threat in the case of Russia (unlike for Kosovo, Iraq, ...), but they don't care. If someone is in the business of foreign policy, he has to take the opponent's thoughts into account. Russia's unlimited expansionism is a narrative that is supposed to obfuscate the mistakes that foreign policy has made since 2008.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I don't think either that NATO is a threat in the case of Russia (unlike for Kosovo You think NATO is a threat to Kosovo?
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Of all places, TIL from FIFA that the Kremlin line probably is that Kosovo is part of Serbia, which would make gp semantically consist. If that is the case: «ты всё Россию прославляешь; а лучше б мусор выносил!»

foverzar 4y ago

> They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. Your argument would be valid, if this was something exclusive to Russia, and not a common mutual thing between Russia and NATO. NATO bombers just as well fly into Russian airspace, NATO deploys military manoeuvres at Russian borders, and NATO states politicians are just as keen to ramble about nukes as anyone else.

rich_sasha 4y ago
Yes I forget. Russia is the bullied one here. And is constantly attacked by NATO, in Georgia, Ukraine... Seriously poor Russia for being so unfairly treated. Even now, if only those pesky Ukrainians would stop shooting back at them, peace could be introduced overnight.
- foverzar 4y ago
  > in Georgia Russian peacekeeping corps WAS attacked in Georgia. The EU fact-finding mission, had blamed Saakashvili: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-report-on-russia-georgia-war-eu-investigators-debunk-saakashvili-s-lies-a-652512.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-report-on-rus... https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-shattered-dream-in-georgia-eu-probe-creates-burden-for-saakashvili-a-630543.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-shattered-dream... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/30/georgia-attacks-unjustifiable-eu https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/30/georgia-attack... It's insane how this truth has been erased in the last 14 years, despite being publicly available and easily googlable. This wiki article should provide a good enough context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian%E2%80%93Ossetian_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian%E2%80%93Ossetian_conf... But hey, why bother with studying facts when you can study propaganda memes, am I right?
jcranmer 4y ago
Russia has, in my lifetime, conducted no fewer than five invasions, all of which could be fairly characterized as driven by naked territorial aggression ("this land deserves to be ours"). In the same time, the US has invaded three times, none of which could be characterized as naked territorial aggression, even if you squint at it really, really hard.
- foverzar 4y ago
  > In the same time, the US has invaded three times Like at least four, and if we use the same counting logic you did for Russia, it would be at least 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili... > naked territorial aggression Well, that depends on what you consider to be worse: pushing neo-colonial policies by installing puppet governments through war and staged coups on the other part of the world, or resolving local conflicts created by dissolution of the SU along the administrative (instead of historical, ethnical, or national) borders, while granting citizenships, providing social infrastructure, or at least allowing states to gain sovereignty (if Kosovo can be independent under UN's self-determination principle, why can't Ossetia, who had been at odds with Georgia for ages and was only territorially related to it, because at some point the Soviet Union decided that budgeting that way is easier?) Besides, considering the US geography, it's kinda hard for it to have territorial disputes, even if it really wanted to. On the other hand, you can ask Mexicans what they think of US law enforcement openly operating in Mexico.
- pandaman 4y ago
  I don't see how is this possible, are you counting each operation as a separate "invasion" so you get two invasions in Ukraine (2014 and in 2022) for Russia, then I imagine Syria and Georgia? But what is fifth - is it Transnistria/Abkhazia/Ossetia in 1990s? Then the US had 20+ invasions in the same sense (Yugoslavia, multiple ops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and various countries in Africa) over your lifetime.
  - foverzar 4y ago
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
>NATO bombers just as well fly into Russian airspace What's the source on that claim?

opwantx 4y ago

Is there a citation for the threat of invasion apart from unhinged Russian TV commentators? For example, the most hawkish interview with Dugin (Pozner is the interviewer) is from 2014. The interview is in Russian and Dugin is clearly enraged about the Maidan events, so he is more straightforward than in English interviews. If the English subtitles are correct, Pozner explicitly asks which countries should be part of the "Greater Russia". Dugin unambiguously excludes the Baltic states, Poland and Finland. He wanted the eastern Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan in a Eurasian union. So if even the hawk who is always cited as an expansionist does not want Latvia/Finland/Poland, who does? The U.S. does military manoeuvres and close fly-by missions in the South China sea. The people in charge in Russia grew up during the cold war and believe that NATO is a threat. It does not matter to them what people on Twitter who were born in 2000 think. I don't think either that NATO is a threat in the case of Russia (unlike for Kosovo, Iraq, ...), but they don't care. If someone is in the business of foreign policy, he has to take the opponent's thoughts into account. Russia's unlimited expansionism is a narrative that is supposed to obfuscate the mistakes that foreign policy has made since 2008.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> I don't think either that NATO is a threat in the case of Russia (unlike for Kosovo You think NATO is a threat to Kosovo?
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  Of all places, TIL from FIFA that the Kremlin line probably is that Kosovo is part of Serbia, which would make gp semantically consist. If that is the case: «ты всё Россию прославляешь; а лучше б мусор выносил!»