this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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If this war was about having NATO on their doorstep, why is it an invasion of a non-NATO country twenty years after the first neighbours of Russia joined NATO? It's never seriously discussed because it's either a lie or unfathomably stupid, and whichever of those two it is doesn't much matter.
Just for a second, imagine you're a neutral country in eastern Europe. Russia has been fucking with Georgia and Moldova since the fall of the Soviet Union, and now it invades Ukraine for the second time within a decade. Russia has never touched a NATO country despite bordering several of them for literally decades. And then Russia acts all shocked when you say you want into NATO
Yeah and Russia protested strongly every time. But Ukraine was their red line. Just because you didn't read it in western media doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I don't condone the invasion but it was predictable and a colossal "failure" of diplomacy if you look at it charitably. At worst it was a long term plan to force Russia into a conflict with the aid of western media to obscure the reason why this war was happening. Russia is acting just like the US would.
So invading Ukraine fixes what for Russia, exactly? The fastest way to make more of Russia's neighbours join NATO is to show them that they're safer in NATO. Like Finland.
Ukrainians mostly weren't interested in joining NATO until Russia took Crimea. Russia pushed Ukraine towards NATO.
"Ukraine applied to integrate with a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych". Then the Euromaiden protests happened. Then Crimea etc.
It's pretty safe to assume that both Russia and the US meddled in the respective election through NGOs and whatnot. My point is that these are geopolitical games which both sides play and which should be reported as such. Then we'd have a chance to protest for peace negotiations. But as is there is an overwhelming amount of pro-war sentiment.
Public support for joining NATO among polled Ukrainians was very clearly the minority up until Russia invaded.
There's an overwhelming amount of anti-invasion sentiment. People that support arming Ukraine support Ukraine's right to not have chunks carved out of it just because its neighbour has a bigger army.
they couldn't join NATO because of crimea, explain what they really want
What are you talking about? There were no concrete plans for Ukraine to enter NATO prior to the invasion in 2014.
See first paragraph. Russia has protested NATO eastward expansion and warned for decades.
So what? My point was that there were no concrete plans to expand to Ukraine when Putin took Crimea in 2014. If the problem is NATO expansion why invade a country where NATO is not expanding to?
Please explain how exactly do you force someone (who suggests to be reasonable) into conflict, basically force them to invade anyone.
Did the Poland "forced" Hitler to start the WW2 the same way?
It's hardly unprecedented. The USA felt forced into an aggressive response to the Soviets putting missiles in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was the other way, the "Cuban" missile crisis happened when USA wasn't happy when USSR responded in kind to USA placing missiles in Turkey. So it should be called "Turkish missile crisis" and really "USA missile crisis".
Just the western popular propaganda conveniently omits who was the instigator of entire issue, but it's not that hard to find.
So it was Soviet plan to start the aggression? Is it the same with Finland? When can we expect Putin to invade it?
I don't get it, what do you mean?
Read the message you were replying to. I asked specifically how do you force a country to invade a other country (that is not yours). You told about Cuba, so naturally I wanted to confirm if you mean the situation was caused by desire of Soviets to start the aggression.
Well imagine if China were to make a military pact with Mexico and started delivering "defensive" weapon systems to them. There would be protests, sanctions, meddling and attempts for regime change, and if those didn't work there would be invasion.
For the US to invade another country it actually takes far less. Getting bombed is super easy.
Imagine justifying real war by imagining things.
These sentences don't make sense as the response for the quotation.
Do you live in some alternative reality where the US didn't invade Irak and Afghanistan? And is bombing countries all over the world for whatever reason? Oh let me guess that is TOTALLY different!
I doubt many here will defend the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither of these invasions should have happened, BUT no they are not the same. In case of Afghanistan the US supported the Northern alliance in a pre-existing civil war. Iraq was lead by a brutal dictator who had been involved in wars of aggression (Kuwait) and genocide (Kurds).
I could list some of Russia's justifications for invasion, but they are just as flimsy as the US justifications for killing hundreds of thousands of people and devastating many countries.
My point isn't to justify Russia or the US, it's pointing out without a popular push for peace these wars will keep happening. Instead we're seeing a completely brainwashed majority scream for total war and just eat up the propaganda.
We all live in a reality where the US did invade Iraq and Afghanistan. And here is the thought process of me trying to understand your reasoning behind mentioning these events in current context:
The US asked many times for Iraq and Afghanistan to not try to oppose them. According to the US, Iraq and Afghanistan bombed its own citizens (who call themselves the people of the US) for several (at least 8) years and finally the US decided to intervene.
But in fact it must have been caused by someone else, like China or Russia. They provided Iraq and Afghanistan with weapons and/or proposed them the place in alliance against the US, which is why the US didn't have a choice.
From the very start of those invasions, the whole world decided to stand against the US and provided Iraq and Afghanistan with all the weapons and resources they could need in order to protect themselves. Massive sanctions were applied against the US to stop its war machine.
The US massively increased pressure on free speech and started to jail its own citizens who speak against the war. This also caused at least 1 percent of the US population to migrate elsewhere.
Because this all (or at least some of it) happened with the US, there is no problem in assuming that it would be fine to happen with other country (like Russia) and nobody should say a word against that country's right for protecting its interests.
If this is what really happened then you are correct and this not "totally different" but exactly the same.
But if there are differences, I hope you can explain them without involving any kind of "injustice" towards Russia.
Geography? Hey wait, you're trying to trick me! If I explain the differences I loose the debate!
My point is that from Russia's point of view (true or not) NATO is a hostile military alliance that has slowly been encircling Russia for the past decades. Russia's protests were ignored so after the 2014 coup supported by literal Nazis (from their point of view) they started to use military interventions. US / EU / NATO did double down on arming Ukraine with weapons so they saw themselves "forced" to invade.
I'm not excusing any of this - but these choices and events made this war predictable and inevitable. I'd go so far and say that if Putin hadn't invaded Ukraine he would have been deposed by the militaristic powers he cultivated. It's like poking a bear and then crying foul when he eats your face.
Thus my example about China arming Mexico. The US would react in the exact same way, and we have ample historical evidence for that. And it's not my point that this excuses anything, it's that these things are predictable so we do carry a responsibility to deescalate, demand negotiations so Ukraine gets their land back while Russia gets security guarantees. But judging by the complete troll answer in Tuckers Putin interview that isn't in the cards right now.
But there was no resistance to this geopolitical "gambit". And now everyone is presenting a completely false version of history.
You don't know what you're talking about. Putin's point of view does only represent a sad guy who lives in lies and outside of real information from the outside world. Real Russians have almost no interest or connection to their own country and decisions "it" makes. They're only trying to survive. They only know about NATO from state media. There was even an interview (possibly not one) that NATO gave for Russians to make them understand what's really happening. But state media is not interested in such things or would have called it all lies. Logic they force on citizens is always twisted and there is no point in last 10 years at least where I could say Russians actually had a point of view of their own.
It also expanded last year. When do you think Putin will hit Finland? Why did he not protest before that happened? Oh right, you only want to describe Russia's point of view, not the logic behind it.
The quote is also not much different from something like "NASA has been slowly washing people's brains for past decades". You can't seriously explain someone's actions while assuming it's fine for them to be out of touch with the reality.
You sure? They have been arming Ukraine before the invasion? Did they also not arm the rest of Europe? Putin allowed that?
I'd ask you to provide sources on this. Are there any reputable experts or otherwise sources that correctly predicted the war? Are there so many of them to call it obvious? Why was it not at all obvious to Russian citizens at the very least?
We have historical evidence for something that never happened?
Where is the logicality in your comments? Did you mention the US invasions to Iraq and Afghanistan to say how they were predictable? That some other countries could prevent those from happening by giving the US security guarantees?
Why not mention how Poland provoked Hitler to start the world war, according to Putin?
I guess ignoring how Ukrainians ran the russian puppet heading their country out of the country just before the Crimean invasion of 2014 is convenient for your point.
Appeasement does not work. It has never worked. It didnt work in Sudetenland, it didnt work in Crimea, and it would never have worked with Donbas, either.
Portraying Russia as Nazis is convenient for your point.
"appeasement"... "sudetenland" lol who do you think you're fooling.
Oh no, i compared facsists to other fascists. But keep going with the false equivalences, thats certainly the way to convince the voters thats working for u.
In case u other readers havent been paying attention, russia is still threatening Poland, Lithuania, and Finland just as they have been for their whole history.
My hole point is that Russia is portrayed as a demonic, irrational Hitler that can't be reasoned with. So all their demands are irrelevant and negotiations useless. And nato and the US empire is just a well meaning benevolent force that nobody has any reason to oppose. So we have to keep the war going!
That is the propaganda. And so far all the replies have basically confirmed this.