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> 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

> 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...

roenxi 2y ago
If you want to know why people don't take the BBC seriously and have a bit more respect for the Russian position, it is because 60% of those arguments are just not taking a serious situation seriously. Armies don't just charge out because Putin has his "dream", and certainly not sustaining the sort of punishment that the Russians have had to undergo in Ukraine. We can see from the response to Prigozhin's coup that the military actually supports the war to a significant extent; if it was unpopular then Putin would have been rolled by now. You aren't trying to understand the Russian motivation; this is unhelpful straw-manning and caricaturing. And othering the Russians with irrational motivations is stupid. As a culture we've passed up too many opportunities to calm the situation down because of a russophobic attitude out of the US. Years of unhinged rhetoric from 2016 onwards turned out to be unhelpful in de-escalating a dangerous situation. > Countries can be invaded even if they didn't "provoke" it... I'm not going to quote specific parts but addressing the points you raise from this onwards - nearly nothing justifies war. But what does happen regularly is unfair war. The lesson out of something like the Afghanistan invasion in 2001 is if a major power tells you to do something you have about a month to comply before something unjustified happens and the faster the weak roll over the better it is for them. If I can swallow that and stay friends with my US friends - which I can - then I can handle almost anything. > 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". That would be like the British PM lamenting the fall of the British empire. I don't see why believing that would lead to a war or even bad feelings. I do see why NATO expansion into Eastern Europe would though, especially given that with hindsight we know NATO sees Ukraine as an arena to inflict crippling losses on Russia. People in the Russian military probably have sleepless nights worrying about NATO. And I note you didn't link to speeches by Putin. That'd be wise, it is rare to see a western media outlet accurately representing even western politicians. Not as a partisan thing, but as a blanket failure. It is better to go to the source material.
- mopsi 2y ago
  You are ridiculously overintellectualizing the situation by trying to construct a rational argument for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There isn't any more rational argument for it than there was for the German murder of Jews by the millions. Just a dictator with unhealthy obsessions in either case. During WWII, Russia first allied with Germans and together they rolled over entire Europe until there was no-one else left and they attacked each other for the final deathmatch. Out of two bad choices, the US supported Russia with massive military aid against Germany. As an unintentional side-effect, that aid allowed Russia to prevent half of Europe from restoring their independence as Germans were defeated, and enabled Russians to dig in to dominate and exploit Central and Eastern Europe for 50 years. Entire generations of Russians, including Putin, grew up thinking that it was the norm. When the domination withered away, Russians saw that as a great humiliation and historic injustice that they are trying to reverse. There's nothing more to it, really. All that huffing and puffing about NATO is only because NATO stands in the way. Drop the ambition of enslaving Europe again and NATO isn't an issue anymore. Russian complaints about NATO are best summed up as thieves complaining about neighbourhood watch.

roenxi 2y ago

If you want to know why people don't take the BBC seriously and have a bit more respect for the Russian position, it is because 60% of those arguments are just not taking a serious situation seriously. Armies don't just charge out because Putin has his "dream", and certainly not sustaining the sort of punishment that the Russians have had to undergo in Ukraine. We can see from the response to Prigozhin's coup that the military actually supports the war to a significant extent; if it was unpopular then Putin would have been rolled by now. You aren't trying to understand the Russian motivation; this is unhelpful straw-manning and caricaturing. And othering the Russians with irrational motivations is stupid. As a culture we've passed up too many opportunities to calm the situation down because of a russophobic attitude out of the US. Years of unhinged rhetoric from 2016 onwards turned out to be unhelpful in de-escalating a dangerous situation. > Countries can be invaded even if they didn't "provoke" it... I'm not going to quote specific parts but addressing the points you raise from this onwards - nearly nothing justifies war. But what does happen regularly is unfair war. The lesson out of something like the Afghanistan invasion in 2001 is if a major power tells you to do something you have about a month to comply before something unjustified happens and the faster the weak roll over the better it is for them. If I can swallow that and stay friends with my US friends - which I can - then I can handle almost anything. > 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". That would be like the British PM lamenting the fall of the British empire. I don't see why believing that would lead to a war or even bad feelings. I do see why NATO expansion into Eastern Europe would though, especially given that with hindsight we know NATO sees Ukraine as an arena to inflict crippling losses on Russia. People in the Russian military probably have sleepless nights worrying about NATO. And I note you didn't link to speeches by Putin. That'd be wise, it is rare to see a western media outlet accurately representing even western politicians. Not as a partisan thing, but as a blanket failure. It is better to go to the source material.

mopsi 2y ago
You are ridiculously overintellectualizing the situation by trying to construct a rational argument for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There isn't any more rational argument for it than there was for the German murder of Jews by the millions. Just a dictator with unhealthy obsessions in either case. During WWII, Russia first allied with Germans and together they rolled over entire Europe until there was no-one else left and they attacked each other for the final deathmatch. Out of two bad choices, the US supported Russia with massive military aid against Germany. As an unintentional side-effect, that aid allowed Russia to prevent half of Europe from restoring their independence as Germans were defeated, and enabled Russians to dig in to dominate and exploit Central and Eastern Europe for 50 years. Entire generations of Russians, including Putin, grew up thinking that it was the norm. When the domination withered away, Russians saw that as a great humiliation and historic injustice that they are trying to reverse. There's nothing more to it, really. All that huffing and puffing about NATO is only because NATO stands in the way. Drop the ambition of enslaving Europe again and NATO isn't an issue anymore. Russian complaints about NATO are best summed up as thieves complaining about neighbourhood watch.