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> How often you you come across people saying any of that, though? I'm paraphrasing, but I have friends that believe 100% of Russian propaganda they hear on th

> How often you you come across people saying any of that, though? I'm paraphrasing, but I have friends that believe 100% of Russian propaganda they hear on the Internet and 0% of western mainstream media. "What the BBC is saying is just propaganda!" is a common comment I hear from people quoting Russian disinformation verbatim. > likely outcome of NATO's persistent expansion That is literal Russian disinformation. If they cared about NATO expansion, they would have invaded Finland to stop them joining. Or would have bolstered their border defence with them instead of reallocating the local troops to go fight in Ukraine, as they have. They only cared about Ukraine joining NATO because that would have stopped them invading, as they were planning for over a decade and are doing right now. A thief that plans to rob you cares deeply about your security system being upgraded! Not upgrading your security to appease the thief will not stop the robbery. PS: Alexander Lukashenko accidentally let slip in early 2022 that the next target for invasion after Ukraine would have been Moldova. Guess which country Trump suddenly thought shouldn't be joining NATO right after meeting Putin? Not any other country in Europe. No. Just Moldova, very specifically. Trump was very concerned about it, a country he would not have known the name of or been able to place on a map the day before that meeting. (Or, most likely, even after that meeting.)

roenxi 2y ago
[flagged]
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  > Do you want to see Moldova invaded? You’re wilfully ignoring the reality that Moldova was always going to be invaded. Not because it might join NATO but because Russia has to invade it “while it still can.” The same applies to Ukraine, and all of the -stans. This. Is. The. Stated. Plan. PS: the same people that believe Russian disinformation now will also believe the made up bullshit excuse China will cook up for invading Taiwan, something they’ve been planning and practising for literally decades now. PS: I know a sociopath narcissist. She’ll make up a hundred reasons why she did something bad and argue them vehemently, but always pivoting on a dime and switching arguments mid-sentence if proven wrong. The real unstated reason is always “because I wanted to”, but she can’t say that so instead everyone gets an endless stream of ever changing “logic” of why things had to be so. Russian arguments for invading Ukraine are precisely this, and Chinese arguments for Taiwan will be the same.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > Not because it might join NATO but because Russia has to invade it “while it still can.” Your argument here appears to literally be that Russia invades countries randomly. Not just without provocation, but for no reason and with no ability for countries to comply with their demands rather than being invaded. You might want to come up with a better theory before trying to put it to people. This type of nonsense is why the so called "disinformation" does a lot better - it involves the Russian government having motives and acting in a reasonable if stupid manner. I've found people struggle to come up with a motivation that isn't NATO expansion. One fellow said it wasn't NATO expansion it was that Ukraine was about to integrate with the EU which is a bit ... we can call it EU expansion if that makes people more comfortable. Same difference. Big lump of people who turn out to be disturbingly cheered at the thought of killing lots of Russians. Lots of US funding. > Russian arguments for invading Ukraine are precisely this, and Chinese arguments for Taiwan will be the same. I mean, sure. But you're not grappling with the obvious question of why did Russia decide that it wanted to invade Ukraine. In the 90s it decided it "wanted" to give Ukraine independence [0] and through the 90s and 00s decided that it was happy to have Ukraine as an independent state. Even in the 10s as the situation started to deteriorate Russia didn't abandon negotiating. The issue here is that like everyone else they have 30+ years of experience watching how the post-USSR NATO and they had some idea of what was about to happen, ie, Ukraine folded in to the greater anti-Russia military alliance. Obviously they are still a bit naive given that Ukraine was much better prepared than they expected. [0] I wouldn't say that was acting out of sociopath narcissism on that one. More it was forced to.
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      > Your argument here appears to literally be that Russia invades countries randomly. Not just without provocation No, not randomly! There's has been a plan in motion since well before 2014 to reinstate the former Soviet Union. Putin has repeatedly said that this is his "dream". These countries aren't picked at random, they're all former members of the USSR. Look at it this way: Belarus is a puppet state without border controls, a part of the new Russian empire all but officially. Ukraine very nearly fell within days during 2022. If it had, the Russians would have kept right on rolling through Transnistria and into Moldova. Kazakhstan or one of the smaller -stans would be next, and so on, until the former USSR was reformed. > Not just without provocation. Countries can be invaded even if they didn't "provoke" it. I want you to pause for a second here and think about what you just said. Are you the type of person to believe that everyone that gets punched in the face "provoked" it somehow? Or every woman that got raped was responsible by "provoking" the rapist? I ask you to ask yourself these questions because there are people that think that YES, every woman that got raped was at least partly responsible for it. Are you that person? If not, why does the same logic not apply to Ukraine? Must they have "provoked" Russia? And if they did provoke them somehow, was Russia justified in killing hundreds of thousands of people in response? What... exactly... was the thing that Ukraine did that justifies 200K dead, 500K+ wounded, millions displaced, etc. Please be specific, outlining how the provocation is somehow a worse outcome for Russia than the dead and wounded they have caused. Just to reiterate: before you go off on a tangent, please very specifically explain how Ukraine joining NATO has a "greater material impact" on Russia than hundreds of thousands dead and wounded. By specific, I mean: "If Russia hadn't invaded, they would have lost N million people to X because Ukraine would have done Y, and the evidence for this is Z." Make sure 'N' is > 200K and the source of the information predates 2022. > In the 90s it decided it "wanted" to give Ukraine independence [0] and through the 90s and 00s decided that it was happy to have Ukraine as an independent state. At no point was Russia happy about the USSR member states leaving, and Putin has repeatedly stated that this is the "greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century". You're arguing against the core motivation stated by Putin himself repeatedly in personal interviews. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-collapse-demise-historical-russia-2021-12-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-colla... https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/12/putins-long-war?lang=en https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/12/putins-long-w... Etc...
- pjc50 2y ago
  Moldova is already occupied (Transnistria). > The issue is there is no reason for there to be any wars involving Russia Do they know that? Russia (well, Putin, who is the state) seems to think there is a reason for Russia starting a war involving Russia.

roenxi 2y ago

[flagged]

jiggawatts 2y ago
> Do you want to see Moldova invaded? You’re wilfully ignoring the reality that Moldova was always going to be invaded. Not because it might join NATO but because Russia has to invade it “while it still can.” The same applies to Ukraine, and all of the -stans. This. Is. The. Stated. Plan. PS: the same people that believe Russian disinformation now will also believe the made up bullshit excuse China will cook up for invading Taiwan, something they’ve been planning and practising for literally decades now. PS: I know a sociopath narcissist. She’ll make up a hundred reasons why she did something bad and argue them vehemently, but always pivoting on a dime and switching arguments mid-sentence if proven wrong. The real unstated reason is always “because I wanted to”, but she can’t say that so instead everyone gets an endless stream of ever changing “logic” of why things had to be so. Russian arguments for invading Ukraine are precisely this, and Chinese arguments for Taiwan will be the same.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Not because it might join NATO but because Russia has to invade it “while it still can.” Your argument here appears to literally be that Russia invades countries randomly. Not just without provocation, but for no reason and with no ability for countries to comply with their demands rather than being invaded. You might want to come up with a better theory before trying to put it to people. This type of nonsense is why the so called "disinformation" does a lot better - it involves the Russian government having motives and acting in a reasonable if stupid manner. I've found people struggle to come up with a motivation that isn't NATO expansion. One fellow said it wasn't NATO expansion it was that Ukraine was about to integrate with the EU which is a bit ... we can call it EU expansion if that makes people more comfortable. Same difference. Big lump of people who turn out to be disturbingly cheered at the thought of killing lots of Russians. Lots of US funding. > Russian arguments for invading Ukraine are precisely this, and Chinese arguments for Taiwan will be the same. I mean, sure. But you're not grappling with the obvious question of why did Russia decide that it wanted to invade Ukraine. In the 90s it decided it "wanted" to give Ukraine independence [0] and through the 90s and 00s decided that it was happy to have Ukraine as an independent state. Even in the 10s as the situation started to deteriorate Russia didn't abandon negotiating. The issue here is that like everyone else they have 30+ years of experience watching how the post-USSR NATO and they had some idea of what was about to happen, ie, Ukraine folded in to the greater anti-Russia military alliance. Obviously they are still a bit naive given that Ukraine was much better prepared than they expected. [0] I wouldn't say that was acting out of sociopath narcissism on that one. More it was forced to.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    > Your argument here appears to literally be that Russia invades countries randomly. Not just without provocation No, not randomly! There's has been a plan in motion since well before 2014 to reinstate the former Soviet Union. Putin has repeatedly said that this is his "dream". These countries aren't picked at random, they're all former members of the USSR. Look at it this way: Belarus is a puppet state without border controls, a part of the new Russian empire all but officially. Ukraine very nearly fell within days during 2022. If it had, the Russians would have kept right on rolling through Transnistria and into Moldova. Kazakhstan or one of the smaller -stans would be next, and so on, until the former USSR was reformed. > Not just without provocation. Countries can be invaded even if they didn't "provoke" it. I want you to pause for a second here and think about what you just said. Are you the type of person to believe that everyone that gets punched in the face "provoked" it somehow? Or every woman that got raped was responsible by "provoking" the rapist? I ask you to ask yourself these questions because there are people that think that YES, every woman that got raped was at least partly responsible for it. Are you that person? If not, why does the same logic not apply to Ukraine? Must they have "provoked" Russia? And if they did provoke them somehow, was Russia justified in killing hundreds of thousands of people in response? What... exactly... was the thing that Ukraine did that justifies 200K dead, 500K+ wounded, millions displaced, etc. Please be specific, outlining how the provocation is somehow a worse outcome for Russia than the dead and wounded they have caused. Just to reiterate: before you go off on a tangent, please very specifically explain how Ukraine joining NATO has a "greater material impact" on Russia than hundreds of thousands dead and wounded. By specific, I mean: "If Russia hadn't invaded, they would have lost N million people to X because Ukraine would have done Y, and the evidence for this is Z." Make sure 'N' is > 200K and the source of the information predates 2022. > In the 90s it decided it "wanted" to give Ukraine independence [0] and through the 90s and 00s decided that it was happy to have Ukraine as an independent state. At no point was Russia happy about the USSR member states leaving, and Putin has repeatedly stated that this is the "greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century". You're arguing against the core motivation stated by Putin himself repeatedly in personal interviews. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-collapse-demise-historical-russia-2021-12-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-colla... https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/12/putins-long-war?lang=en https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/12/putins-long-w... Etc...
pjc50 2y ago
Moldova is already occupied (Transnistria). > The issue is there is no reason for there to be any wars involving Russia Do they know that? Russia (well, Putin, who is the state) seems to think there is a reason for Russia starting a war involving Russia.