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Everything aside (i mostly agree), your take on Ukraine is rather naive. It is clear that Putin wanted to occupy Ukraine - the whole lot of it - in some way an

Everything aside (i mostly agree), your take on Ukraine is rather naive. It is clear that Putin wanted to occupy Ukraine - the whole lot of it - in some way and anex parts of it. Destroyed convoys with riot gear were biggest tell. The anexation was done according to plan even on lands not controled by ru. There was no room for negotiations there. There is not much room in negotiations with russian anyway. They will take your wallet and then negotiate how much they should give back if you apologize for calling them thieves. Nobody who was serious about geopolitics entertained idea of Ukraine joining nato or eu. Finland didn't join nato as to not provoke russian (but russian had forced their hand and they joined now for obvious reasons). > It beggars belief that a neutrally motivated reporter would still be gung-ho about sending in the troops before thinking. The media is to be used as source of facts, their opinions are not source of anything good. For most parts its either simplistic take or outright propaganda.

roenxi 3y ago
I think everyone agrees that once the Russian army started moving it was to late to stop them invading Ukraine. The issue I have is that "Putin wanted to occupy Ukraine" is too simplistic. We should be asking why he felt forced to occupy Ukraine. Russia can't realistically afford to do what they're doing, it is ruinous for them too and they all know it. The US strategy is to bleed them white while expending Slavic blood on both sides. Which to be honest is a pretty good and cost-effective strategy locally speaking, I'd actually say it was a good idea except Russia has nukes, oil and strategically the US really need to be working on isolating China which this failed spectacularly at. Russia underestimated how active the US was in Ukraine. They weren't expecting the level of resistance they encountered and it is pretty obvious that Ukraine would have folded immediately if the US wasn't backing them. Given that the Russians are probably moving from fear of NATO and it turns out NATO was conspiring against them in Ukraine, I have difficulty accepting that "Putin wanted this". It looks a lot more like "Putin thought he could find a diplomatic solution and realised the only option left was to invade, but it was too late and didn't send enough forces". If their rationale was the obvious one (fear of NATO moving in Ukraine) then the invasion revealed that not only are those fears justified, but they were in fact underestimating the threat.
- simion314 3y ago
  If you are not Russian then I am so sorry for you falling for their conspiracies, Russia is not the victim here, they always think of themselvees as a super power that God himself given them the right to screw smaller countries over. I do not think diplomacy could have solved this, only way this could have been prevented if is Kremlin would not have been so corrupt and incompetent, if Putin would have known that the 3 day operation would be at least a 3 year one he would not have started this war. (or special operation if you live in that democratic country where you are not allowed to name a war a way ). I was just reading this https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/12/28/russian-poet-sentenced-to-seven-years-in-prison-for-anti-war-verse-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/12/28/russian-poet-sen... Putinists explain how Russia was forced to put people in prison for their opinions.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    > Putinists explain how Russia was forced to put people in prison for their opinions. Only if those poor people did not have opinions - said heartbroken krenlin apparatchik It boggles my mind how people can come up with victim narratives for a conquest war, but here we are.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  > We should be asking why he felt forced to occupy Ukraine. We can certainly think about that academically, but it matters about as much as why Hitler invaded Poland. The reason matters far less than the fact that sovereign nations have no valid reason to attack another sovereign nation without being attacked first or defending an ally who has been attacked.
- mopsi 3y ago
  > It looks a lot more like "Putin thought he could find a diplomatic solution and realised the only option left was to invade, but it was too late and didn't send enough forces". Ironically, this is the simplification that you speak of. It is an extremely simple narrative that people are trying to sell as a sophisticated analysis. It completely ignores the immediate 70 years of history still in living memory, and the preceding five centuries. No "scholar" and "expert" pushing this narrative ever speaks about Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and others, about the secret protocol between the USSR and Germany that divided Europe for half a century; about occupied countries and genocide committed by Russians, and the legacy of all that and its influence on the present day. Completely missing. For example, explain within your framework why in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden abandoned neutrality that they had maintained since the Napoleonic era.

roenxi 3y ago

I think everyone agrees that once the Russian army started moving it was to late to stop them invading Ukraine. The issue I have is that "Putin wanted to occupy Ukraine" is too simplistic. We should be asking why he felt forced to occupy Ukraine. Russia can't realistically afford to do what they're doing, it is ruinous for them too and they all know it. The US strategy is to bleed them white while expending Slavic blood on both sides. Which to be honest is a pretty good and cost-effective strategy locally speaking, I'd actually say it was a good idea except Russia has nukes, oil and strategically the US really need to be working on isolating China which this failed spectacularly at. Russia underestimated how active the US was in Ukraine. They weren't expecting the level of resistance they encountered and it is pretty obvious that Ukraine would have folded immediately if the US wasn't backing them. Given that the Russians are probably moving from fear of NATO and it turns out NATO was conspiring against them in Ukraine, I have difficulty accepting that "Putin wanted this". It looks a lot more like "Putin thought he could find a diplomatic solution and realised the only option left was to invade, but it was too late and didn't send enough forces". If their rationale was the obvious one (fear of NATO moving in Ukraine) then the invasion revealed that not only are those fears justified, but they were in fact underestimating the threat.

simion314 3y ago
If you are not Russian then I am so sorry for you falling for their conspiracies, Russia is not the victim here, they always think of themselvees as a super power that God himself given them the right to screw smaller countries over. I do not think diplomacy could have solved this, only way this could have been prevented if is Kremlin would not have been so corrupt and incompetent, if Putin would have known that the 3 day operation would be at least a 3 year one he would not have started this war. (or special operation if you live in that democratic country where you are not allowed to name a war a way ). I was just reading this https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/12/28/russian-poet-sentenced-to-seven-years-in-prison-for-anti-war-verse-en-news https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/12/28/russian-poet-sen... Putinists explain how Russia was forced to put people in prison for their opinions.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  > Putinists explain how Russia was forced to put people in prison for their opinions. Only if those poor people did not have opinions - said heartbroken krenlin apparatchik It boggles my mind how people can come up with victim narratives for a conquest war, but here we are.
TheCleric 3y ago
> We should be asking why he felt forced to occupy Ukraine. We can certainly think about that academically, but it matters about as much as why Hitler invaded Poland. The reason matters far less than the fact that sovereign nations have no valid reason to attack another sovereign nation without being attacked first or defending an ally who has been attacked.
mopsi 3y ago
> It looks a lot more like "Putin thought he could find a diplomatic solution and realised the only option left was to invade, but it was too late and didn't send enough forces". Ironically, this is the simplification that you speak of. It is an extremely simple narrative that people are trying to sell as a sophisticated analysis. It completely ignores the immediate 70 years of history still in living memory, and the preceding five centuries. No "scholar" and "expert" pushing this narrative ever speaks about Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and others, about the secret protocol between the USSR and Germany that divided Europe for half a century; about occupied countries and genocide committed by Russians, and the legacy of all that and its influence on the present day. Completely missing. For example, explain within your framework why in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden abandoned neutrality that they had maintained since the Napoleonic era.