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Arguably the war in Ukraine was influenced by the unrest against Lukanhesko after his poor handling of covid-19...and by Russians thinking that was yet another

Arguably the war in Ukraine was influenced by the unrest against Lukanhesko after his poor handling of covid-19...and by Russians thinking that was yet another example of NATO attacks against their security.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
This war has one primary cause: Putin. Anything else is a very distant secondary. COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault, not COVID's.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Putin's motivations predate the war, too; the invasion of Crimea was in 2014, and before that was Georgia in 2008.
  - knewter 4y ago
    I always find it interesting when people being up the 2014 Ukraine situation without referencing the call from Victoria Nuland discussing who the US was going to put in charge ("surprisingly", those ended up being the government the people elected) https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-Call-To-Ukraine-Geofrrey-Pyatt-(2014):2 https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-C...
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      Likely because people who know anything about the region know that that supposedly damning call happened after three months of violent protests against the most corrupt government in recent European history.. the reference to Klitchko being made deputy PM means it was recorded after Jan 26th which was when Yanukovych was trying everything to stay in power, including bringing opposition leaders into his government (and working with Russian intelligence to bug US diplomatic phones). He was doing so because many regional offices had already been taken over by protesters and his police forces had already shot several people. The leader who the US diplomats were talking about was already a popular opposition leader, so it's entirely unsurprising that Yatsenyuk was part of government post-Maidan. I think I'm mostly annoyed with these dumb conspiracy theories because they deny agency to the millions of people who actually cast out a criminal and democratically elected their own leadership. "hurr durr, the CIA did it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state_administration_occupations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state...
      - anticodon 4y ago
        [flagged]
      - knewter 4y ago
        Hurr Durr the CIA did it
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      The aggression in Georgia long predates that call, and the US expressing a preference in an election is hardly unusual. Are we to believe Putin didn't have a preference in the Ukrainian elections? Nothing in the call transcript (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957) strikes me as unusual in this scenario. The "fuck the EU" caused a few tut-tut waves.
  - anticodon 4y ago
    Putin's (I'd say Russian) motivations were stated open and clear in 2021: we want NATO to stop expanding to the East. We asked West to discuss this thing and put an end to NATO expansion. All of our demands were declined in the most obnoxious manner possible: "You mean nothing, we don't want to listen to your concerns, go away and die silently in your Siberia"
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Just like I don’t get veto power over your friendships, Russia does not get to decide who other sovereign nations get to be friends with. The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either. Only one country is expanding in Europe by force.
      - anticodon 4y ago
        > Just like I don’t get veto power over your friendships, Russia does not get to decide who other sovereign nations get to be friends with. NATO is an aggressive military alliance. Ukraine could be friends with EU and US and not be a part of NATO. > The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either. Do you really know anything about what happened in 2008? Honestly, not from the media and not from Wikipedia. Because regurgitating the easy-peasy propaganda from media is not interesting in any way. How can you be so sure that it was Russia that "invaded" Georgia in 2008? How comes that although Russia beat the Georgian military force so easily that we could capture the whole Georgia, we didn't do it? There was nothing to stop us in 2008. How comes that "greedy Putin" didn't take Tbilisi and everything with it?
- debacle 4y ago
  > COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault I don't see anyone still claiming this besides neocon warhawks, and they don't really have a source besides other neocon warhawks.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    There are three claims in that, which are you contesting? Isolation has clear evidence; https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-19-vladimir-putin-has-become-almost-invisible https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-.... Paranoia is hard to suss out between public statements that sound paranoid - "NATO is coming to get us!" style stuff - and genuine private paranoia. This one might be the hardest to prove. "Putin's fault" is fairly hard to argue against without quite a bit of logical contortion.
    - arghnoname 4y ago
      Why do you think NATO was ceaselessly expanding eastward, in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so? Why do you think they were putting missiles, etc, in the former Warsaw pact countries? Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in WWII to be a little worried about this military buildup? I seem to remember a pretty strident response to soviet missiles in Cuba. Why so paranoid? I don't imagine the US would respond well (and shouldn't!) to a Russian led military alliance with Mexico and other periphery countries that led to a growing mass of military arms in a military alliance that was essentially founded to combat the United States. The psychodrama stuff is just not a very sophisticated argument here. Countries don't go to war like this because a leader like Putin is scared of COVID. This is something that was and is popular within Russia, Putin is seemingly a more moderate voice on all of this. There has been pressure for a more muscular response to the situation in Ukraine for quite a while internally to Russia.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        > Why do you think NATO was ceaselessly expanding eastward… Because countries asked to join, as is their right as sovereign nations. > in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so? No such guarantee has ever existed. The only such agreement violated in all this is the Budapest Memorandum, by the Russians. > Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in WWII to be a little worried about this military buildup? Yes. The Nazis were defeated. Largely by that same West. The makeup of NATO is heavily weighted to “former victims of fascist aggression”, including its most powerful core nation. One might ask this question in the other direction, given past Russian occupation of many of these countries. (Much more recently than 1945!) > There has been pressure for a more muscular response to the situation in Ukraine for quite a while internally to Russia. “The other guy wouldn’t have used lube when he raped you. How lucky are you to get me?!”
- anticodon 4y ago
  I'm always perplexed when reading such opinions: do people writing this ever tried to consider anything, just to sit and think for 1 minute instead of retranslating propaganda by media. If you think that Putin is sick, do you think it is possible to rule the huge country with quite big population, huge territory, and a bunch of problems exacerbated by Western sanctions, quite successfully? E.g. the effect of sanctions on everyday life in Russia is negligible opposed to predicted effect. E.g. if you read comments on HN from about 1 year ago, you'll read something like "Russia would collapse in 3 days" (or 3 weeks or 3 months). Also, is it like some God-like force makes his subordinates to listen to him although "he's clearly mad"? It's such a primitive train of thought fueled by propaganda, that it never ceases to amaze me, especially on site like Hacker News and not reddit.
  - arghnoname 4y ago
    You're right, people don't think about these things from a more open perspective. A general rule of thumb I follow is if someone who is otherwise successful, particular for a prolonged period of time, is doing something that is purportedly crazy, stupid, reckless, etc, I ask myself if maybe I haven't fully considered the situation. Even if one falls into the camp of Putin being evil incarnate, he's been evil incarnate in power for quite a while and has presided over a Russia that by almost any metric is vastly improved relative to when he came into power. Whatever you say, Putin is not crazy and he's not stupid. Maybe, just maybe, Russia found herself in a situation where very severe sanctions and being decoupled from the west, an area they tried tirelessly to forge ties with vis a vis energy, etc, maybe they found themselves in a situation where as bad as that outcome was, not invading Ukraine would be worse. Why might that be? They may be wrong, but more likely than not, this was a choice arrived at reluctantly and from their perspective, all the other options were _worse_ than potential war with the entirety of the collective west, deaths of tens of thousands, etc, etc. I find that when I think of the actions of powerful nations and people as driven by a coherent thought process, I'm better able to predict their actions. I often think these entities may be wrong, that they may misunderstand some other process themselves, that they may be motivated by internal political considerations, etc, but it's never the cartoon version we hear in the media. It's strange that people so rarely exercise this kind of thought. Do they still do those exercises in school where one has to argue both sides of a contentious issue? It's an essential skill.
saiya-jin 4y ago
That's... not true in any sense. Reasons are quite simple and have been explained ad nausea. Greed of Putin while being detached from reality due to covid fears and paranoia, overconfidence in his army destroyed by his own and his friends corruption, underestimating Ukraine's resolve. He and his men really thought they could conquer Kyiv in few days. He was trying war land grab for 8 years already and thought he could get big part if not whole country permanently.
- anticodon 4y ago
  > Greed of Putin while being detached from reality Putin rules the largest country in the world. One of the most rich countries also (in real resources, not just printed money and inflated GDP). What do you mean by his "greed"? That he wants to take the place of USA and rule the whole world? > being detached from reality due to covid fears and paranoia If he's been detached from reality, how he succeeds ruling the huge country in clearly hostile environment? Don't you ever find a contradiction in this? > overconfidence in his army I guess (we all can only guess) that he didn't expect that all the West would supply so much weapons and soldiers of fortune to Ukraine (AFAIK, there're tens of thousands of soldiers of regular army of Poland fighting there, also France, US, and other countries). Still, Russia is prevailing, there's already no young Ukraine men left, there're only 45+ years Ukrainian men left and Western combatants. And it's almost evident by this point in time that there's no way Ukraine would win that war. There're some scenarios like CIA would be able to organize successful coup de etat and replace Putin with traitor like Gorbachev or Yeltsin or someone of that kind who will simply sell Russia to the west. But there's no way to win this battle any other way. Not with 45+ years old soldiers riding 100 donated western tanks because Russia already burned down 7,000+ soviet tanks donated to Ukraine during the past year.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

This war has one primary cause: Putin. Anything else is a very distant secondary. COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault, not COVID's.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Putin's motivations predate the war, too; the invasion of Crimea was in 2014, and before that was Georgia in 2008.
- knewter 4y ago
  I always find it interesting when people being up the 2014 Ukraine situation without referencing the call from Victoria Nuland discussing who the US was going to put in charge ("surprisingly", those ended up being the government the people elected) https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-Call-To-Ukraine-Geofrrey-Pyatt-(2014):2 https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-C...
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Likely because people who know anything about the region know that that supposedly damning call happened after three months of violent protests against the most corrupt government in recent European history.. the reference to Klitchko being made deputy PM means it was recorded after Jan 26th which was when Yanukovych was trying everything to stay in power, including bringing opposition leaders into his government (and working with Russian intelligence to bug US diplomatic phones). He was doing so because many regional offices had already been taken over by protesters and his police forces had already shot several people. The leader who the US diplomats were talking about was already a popular opposition leader, so it's entirely unsurprising that Yatsenyuk was part of government post-Maidan. I think I'm mostly annoyed with these dumb conspiracy theories because they deny agency to the millions of people who actually cast out a criminal and democratically elected their own leadership. "hurr durr, the CIA did it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state_administration_occupations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state...
    - anticodon 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - knewter 4y ago
      Hurr Durr the CIA did it
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The aggression in Georgia long predates that call, and the US expressing a preference in an election is hardly unusual. Are we to believe Putin didn't have a preference in the Ukrainian elections? Nothing in the call transcript (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957) strikes me as unusual in this scenario. The "fuck the EU" caused a few tut-tut waves.
- anticodon 4y ago
  Putin's (I'd say Russian) motivations were stated open and clear in 2021: we want NATO to stop expanding to the East. We asked West to discuss this thing and put an end to NATO expansion. All of our demands were declined in the most obnoxious manner possible: "You mean nothing, we don't want to listen to your concerns, go away and die silently in your Siberia"
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Just like I don’t get veto power over your friendships, Russia does not get to decide who other sovereign nations get to be friends with. The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either. Only one country is expanding in Europe by force.
    - anticodon 4y ago
      > Just like I don’t get veto power over your friendships, Russia does not get to decide who other sovereign nations get to be friends with. NATO is an aggressive military alliance. Ukraine could be friends with EU and US and not be a part of NATO. > The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either. Do you really know anything about what happened in 2008? Honestly, not from the media and not from Wikipedia. Because regurgitating the easy-peasy propaganda from media is not interesting in any way. How can you be so sure that it was Russia that "invaded" Georgia in 2008? How comes that although Russia beat the Georgian military force so easily that we could capture the whole Georgia, we didn't do it? There was nothing to stop us in 2008. How comes that "greedy Putin" didn't take Tbilisi and everything with it?
debacle 4y ago
> COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault I don't see anyone still claiming this besides neocon warhawks, and they don't really have a source besides other neocon warhawks.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  There are three claims in that, which are you contesting? Isolation has clear evidence; https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-19-vladimir-putin-has-become-almost-invisible https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-.... Paranoia is hard to suss out between public statements that sound paranoid - "NATO is coming to get us!" style stuff - and genuine private paranoia. This one might be the hardest to prove. "Putin's fault" is fairly hard to argue against without quite a bit of logical contortion.
  - arghnoname 4y ago
    Why do you think NATO was ceaselessly expanding eastward, in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so? Why do you think they were putting missiles, etc, in the former Warsaw pact countries? Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in WWII to be a little worried about this military buildup? I seem to remember a pretty strident response to soviet missiles in Cuba. Why so paranoid? I don't imagine the US would respond well (and shouldn't!) to a Russian led military alliance with Mexico and other periphery countries that led to a growing mass of military arms in a military alliance that was essentially founded to combat the United States. The psychodrama stuff is just not a very sophisticated argument here. Countries don't go to war like this because a leader like Putin is scared of COVID. This is something that was and is popular within Russia, Putin is seemingly a more moderate voice on all of this. There has been pressure for a more muscular response to the situation in Ukraine for quite a while internally to Russia.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      > Why do you think NATO was ceaselessly expanding eastward… Because countries asked to join, as is their right as sovereign nations. > in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so? No such guarantee has ever existed. The only such agreement violated in all this is the Budapest Memorandum, by the Russians. > Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in WWII to be a little worried about this military buildup? Yes. The Nazis were defeated. Largely by that same West. The makeup of NATO is heavily weighted to “former victims of fascist aggression”, including its most powerful core nation. One might ask this question in the other direction, given past Russian occupation of many of these countries. (Much more recently than 1945!) > There has been pressure for a more muscular response to the situation in Ukraine for quite a while internally to Russia. “The other guy wouldn’t have used lube when he raped you. How lucky are you to get me?!”
anticodon 4y ago
I'm always perplexed when reading such opinions: do people writing this ever tried to consider anything, just to sit and think for 1 minute instead of retranslating propaganda by media. If you think that Putin is sick, do you think it is possible to rule the huge country with quite big population, huge territory, and a bunch of problems exacerbated by Western sanctions, quite successfully? E.g. the effect of sanctions on everyday life in Russia is negligible opposed to predicted effect. E.g. if you read comments on HN from about 1 year ago, you'll read something like "Russia would collapse in 3 days" (or 3 weeks or 3 months). Also, is it like some God-like force makes his subordinates to listen to him although "he's clearly mad"? It's such a primitive train of thought fueled by propaganda, that it never ceases to amaze me, especially on site like Hacker News and not reddit.
- arghnoname 4y ago
  You're right, people don't think about these things from a more open perspective. A general rule of thumb I follow is if someone who is otherwise successful, particular for a prolonged period of time, is doing something that is purportedly crazy, stupid, reckless, etc, I ask myself if maybe I haven't fully considered the situation. Even if one falls into the camp of Putin being evil incarnate, he's been evil incarnate in power for quite a while and has presided over a Russia that by almost any metric is vastly improved relative to when he came into power. Whatever you say, Putin is not crazy and he's not stupid. Maybe, just maybe, Russia found herself in a situation where very severe sanctions and being decoupled from the west, an area they tried tirelessly to forge ties with vis a vis energy, etc, maybe they found themselves in a situation where as bad as that outcome was, not invading Ukraine would be worse. Why might that be? They may be wrong, but more likely than not, this was a choice arrived at reluctantly and from their perspective, all the other options were _worse_ than potential war with the entirety of the collective west, deaths of tens of thousands, etc, etc. I find that when I think of the actions of powerful nations and people as driven by a coherent thought process, I'm better able to predict their actions. I often think these entities may be wrong, that they may misunderstand some other process themselves, that they may be motivated by internal political considerations, etc, but it's never the cartoon version we hear in the media. It's strange that people so rarely exercise this kind of thought. Do they still do those exercises in school where one has to argue both sides of a contentious issue? It's an essential skill.

saiya-jin 4y ago

That's... not true in any sense. Reasons are quite simple and have been explained ad nausea. Greed of Putin while being detached from reality due to covid fears and paranoia, overconfidence in his army destroyed by his own and his friends corruption, underestimating Ukraine's resolve. He and his men really thought they could conquer Kyiv in few days. He was trying war land grab for 8 years already and thought he could get big part if not whole country permanently.

anticodon 4y ago
> Greed of Putin while being detached from reality Putin rules the largest country in the world. One of the most rich countries also (in real resources, not just printed money and inflated GDP). What do you mean by his "greed"? That he wants to take the place of USA and rule the whole world? > being detached from reality due to covid fears and paranoia If he's been detached from reality, how he succeeds ruling the huge country in clearly hostile environment? Don't you ever find a contradiction in this? > overconfidence in his army I guess (we all can only guess) that he didn't expect that all the West would supply so much weapons and soldiers of fortune to Ukraine (AFAIK, there're tens of thousands of soldiers of regular army of Poland fighting there, also France, US, and other countries). Still, Russia is prevailing, there's already no young Ukraine men left, there're only 45+ years Ukrainian men left and Western combatants. And it's almost evident by this point in time that there's no way Ukraine would win that war. There're some scenarios like CIA would be able to organize successful coup de etat and replace Putin with traitor like Gorbachev or Yeltsin or someone of that kind who will simply sell Russia to the west. But there's no way to win this battle any other way. Not with 45+ years old soldiers riding 100 donated western tanks because Russia already burned down 7,000+ soviet tanks donated to Ukraine during the past year.