This live map started 8 years ago and has been updating all the time since, showing all daily incidents that never stopped happening. It also followed ISIS wars in Iraq and Syria and so on.
This makes me wounder how far we are from having real time high resolution satellite coverage of events like this. Some of the events reported in liveuamap are already based on high res sat images to identity military camps and troop movement.
If anyone is interested, seems like SentinelHub offers a tool called EO Browser that is able to explore multiple high resolution sat image for free, those images seem to be pretty update.
Most of SentinelHub's open access data comes from Sentinel-1 (radar) and 2 (optical) satellites constellations, which offer a 6-days or shorter revisit time over nearly any point on Earth (for S-1, this is currently longer, as one of the two S-1 sats making up the constellation is out of order).
This is not quite high resolution data however - in the 10 to 20 meters per pixel range, i.e. medium resolution. Sentinels are not reconnaissance satellites, but are rather tasked for mapping and collecting large amounts of data globally, for which the main use cases do not necessarily need high resolution imagery (agricultural monitoring, deforestation, natural catastrophes...).
Reconnaissance satellites have much finer ground resolution (sub-meter per pixel, down to a couple dozen centimeters... from what is publicly available), and some constellations feature daily revisit cycles.
>as one of the two S-1 sats making up the constellation is out of order
I'm having a really hard time calling 2 dots in the sky a constellation. Does 1+ satellites equate to a constellation in satellite owner/operator parlance?
The IAU cites Wood L., 2003 who defines a satellite constellation as "a number of similar satellites, of a similar type and function, designed to be in similar, complementary, orbits for a shared purpose, under shared control" [1]. So, Sentinel-1 is a two-satellite constellation, yes.
The Sentinels share the same orbit. So far with only one there is a revisit time of 12 days with one, and 6 days with two, with more (planned) even less. But you could have searched that yourself, or not? I wonder what you think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TanDEM-X & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraSAR-X ?
Unless those satellites are sending messages like "10-4 good buddy", you might upset CW McCall[0] for using the term convoy. There are certain words/terms that evoke a vision in one's mind. Convoy just says 18-wheelers. Fleet conjures multiple ships. Constellation conjures more than 1-2 and constantly visible.
PS. it's not a matter of what I can or can't look up. People here are too uptight and want to correct everyone else. Sometimes, conversations can be had on not whether a word is actually correct, but whether it leaves one with the right "feeling" (ugh, is that allowed on HN, feelings??).
Yah, well. Now that you are saying it, and seeing the frame from that movie, I probably have seen it sometimes. But it didn't stick. CW McCall didn't ring any bells for me. Convoy is just a saying for many vehicles riding together, almost bumper to bumper. It's done for marriage from some ethnic groups. Or after a soccer game. But it's also said for just two vehicles driving together, at least around here. Sedans and SUVs, no Trucks(Semis?) necessary. (Shrug)
And no, feelings are disallowed because 'Resistance is futile!' & 'Prepare to be disassmbled for scanning and upload into the Protomolecule' ;->
> I'm having a really hard time calling 2 dots in the sky a constellation. Does 1+ satellites equate to a constellation in satellite owner/operator parlance?
I'm having a really hard time calling 2 servers in the DC a cluster. Does 1+ servers equate to a cluster in server owner/operator parlance?
> The most common size for an HA cluster is a two-node cluster, since that is the minimum required to provide redundancy, but many clusters consist of many more, sometimes dozens of nodes.
You clearly don't have an access to a search engine.
We already do, with companies like Planet Labs, etc the question is if the parties involved are allowed to publish it. I guarantee the sat imaging folks get the equivalent of National Security Letters whenever they come across anything “interesting”.
That's where imaging radar (SAR most specifically) comes in handy, as it is able to image through clouds in most circumstances. Image intepretation isn't as straight forward as with optical imaging though.
Thanks everyone for support
If you want somehow to support Ukraine, please join savelife.in.ua patreon, which is a volunteer rehabilitation services done for Ukrainian soldiers
Again thanks everyone for everything
How do I know that this money is going to where they say it is going? I'm happy to support it at the top level, I just want to make sure I'm not accidentally funnelling money into Russia's disinformation campaign.
Savelife service continuously publishes financial reports for all their activity. You can find that on their website. (We know that it's not user-friendly especially for English speaking users, updates will be soon). For example, this one is an income and expenses report for 2021-2022 years [1].
Indeed, some external validation would be great, from Patreon or any other organization.
The membership levels are also.. Disturbing? If I select "Projectile" membership (with a picture of a grenade missile or something) it says "You started saving lives!". All memberships are munition for weapons ("Bullet", "Projectile", "Bomb" and "Missile"), not exactly something you associate with "Saving lives".
Yeah, it feels strange to have these images.
There are already discussions to change them in Ukrainian community because it's not really connected to what organization do.
People from Ukraine IT community don't care because they got all the information about the organization without language barriers, but this images seems to be a problem from the outside perspective as this is the first thing that people would notice.
Anyway, thank you for your feedback (I'm not from the organization, I know a few people who help there)
> All memberships are munition for weapons ("Bullet", "Projectile", "Bomb" and "Missile"), not exactly something you associate with "Saving lives".
In a simplistic view they don’t save lives, but without them what do you fight with? What keeps Russia from thinking they can just easily take over a country?
(sorry for delay, my account is for reads and I hit the limit of replays in HN, had to wait)
back in 2014 when sht hit the fan and Ukrainian army was very weak, ppl made it back strong with everything they could, donating money equipment and food, there was alot of volunteer organizations back then and these ones was one of the most well know, still operating to this day
Ok well that wasn't quite enough for me to believe you 100%, but it was enough for me to believe you 98% and that's enough for me to sign up for the top teir. If you're lieing to me or if someone is lieing to you, then even though I'll be dissapointed I'll forgive them or you.
I wish there was a better way of scaling trust online right now and I hope this war ends soon.
Edit: But I'm happy to believe I'm really supporting Ukraine with this donation.
You are welcome. If you'd like to chat please let me know. I stayed for a month in Kiev and I'd apreciate talking to a hacker from the region. I'm best reached on Twitter, since my email gets so much spam.
For those unaware of Russian propaganda campaigns, the comment above is basically the same as the "I saw Confederate flags at the trucker protest" strategy of dismissing the legitimate interests of millions of normal people.
I'm not sure if there's a name for this strategy (beyond "whataboutism"), but it's annoyingly effective and can be used by both the left and the right. An example of the latter would be claiming that all racial justice protesters (and Democrats generally) are Antifa rioters and looters.
It seems to work by exploiting the "ultimate attribution error" bias in human psychology.
Yes, there's a huge incentive to launch a false flag operation in order to give a justification for dismissing (or attacking) a wider group, but unfortunately the strategy works even if there is no false flag.
Has there ever been a protest movement that was big enough to gain attention but didn't have some small minority in it that went too far? Sadly nowadays there are probably people who just want to watch the world burn and will turn out to commit crimes under the cover of any protest, no matter the politics of the protest itself.
When politics (and the media) are so polarised, it's easy to highlight the worst examples of "the other side" while ignoring any inconvenient examples of one's own side, if necessary by erroneously attributing those examples to false flags.
The right to protest cannot meaningfully exist in a society where the powerful get to write the narratives about who the protesters are and what they are doing.
The thing with movements that are/were big enough to gain attention is that they get infiltrated, and those infiltrators are pushing farther to discredit them.
So, yes, political, but on the other hand a cool piece of tech?
I've not seen this kind of visualization of a developing situation publicly available before, and a cursory glance shows that the data sources are at least one level beyond 'naked propaganda'...
Live maps like this of ethnic conflicts in Kenya made a huge difference with the civil unrest there. This conflict is very different, but being able to present evidence of what is happening could have a great influence not just on the conflict itself but all that comes afterward.
But, the immediate reflex on HN is to downvote such tools into oblivion. When I 'vouched' for this submission, it was flagged, I assume for immediate deletion.
It's quite interesting that 'free speech' advocates are so, eh, limited in what they actually consider to be such...
Ukraine conflict stories have mostly been quickly flagged and down ranked. To minimise virtual tensions and conflict, here on HN. This link is essentially a collection of Ukraine conflict news, so it too was flagged. However, this site is also an interesting techy tool, besides. And enough people vouched for it that it got some hang time on the front page.
My big picture opinion on the Ukraine Conflict: Dictators Putin and Jinping are ramping up invasions of Ukraine and Taiwan to capture new territory as free nations have done nothing to support their previous subjugation of Crimea and Hong Kong. Adolf Hitler in the 1930's used a similar strategy of gradually conquering more and more territory while free nations twiddled their thumbs. Hopefully, a leader like Winston Churchill will rise again to fight for freedom.
Does anyone know which areas of Ukraine have the large proven reserves of Lithium, the element needed for EV battery production? I know that the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts have or are near to large coal deposits.
Putin is currently playing out the same game as he did in 2008 in Georgia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia aren't formerly part of Russia; their existence merely guarantee that Georgia cannot be part of NATO. That's the plan: preventing forever Ukraine from being part of NATO. That's been the constant demand or Russia since Gorbachev, Yeltsin, etc. So the pseudo-republics of Donetsk and Luhansk will remain forever, just for this purpose.
Exactly. That's the real reason behind all of this.
Just like the US didn't want soviet missiles in Cuba, the Russians don't want American missiles in Ukraine.
What missiles were going to end up in Ukraine? In Cuba, there was an actual plan in progress for missiles. This is just an excuse to invade the Ukraine.
> Putin is currently playing out the same game as he did in 2008 in Georgia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia aren't formerly part of Russia; their existence merely guarantee that Georgia cannot be part of NATO.
They don't actually guarantee that, there is no formal bar to admitting a country with active disputes to NATO; and even if there were it would take agreement of exactly the same parties as are required to admit a new member to either eliminate or modify the formal requirement.
Also, the new regions aren't necessary for that if it was a bar because of the occupation of Crimea since 2014.
>
They don't actually guarantee that, there is no formal bar to admitting a country with active disputes to NATO
There's no formal bar, but it would be politically difficult. (Because now you either need to ignore your newest member's problems, or commit to a war that you didn't even want to fight.)
The former significantly undermines confidence in the organization, the latter... Ties it to actually fighting a war (with all the nasty ways in which it can escalate), as opposed to muttering about sanctions.
Out of the US, France, the UK, and Germany, which of those four countries do you think want to fight a shooting war with Russia?
At the moment, the answer is 'none of the above'. Implementing sanctions is comparatively easy, though.
I've actually been surprised how State Department propaganda ("anonymous sources within the State Department / Pentagon / White House") is transmitted unfiltered on the media, particularly after so many incidents of it being wrong (WMDs anyone?). It's also so sad to see how pro-Imperialist the suppposed Left is. Worse is how easily so many seem to accept this narrative.
The US promised NATO wouldn't expand east in 1990 and then immediately reneged on it and has done so repeatedly since to the point where NATO is knocking on Russia's door. Russia absolutely does not want Ukraine in NATO. I guess that's the line in the sand.
This draws predictable "It's Ukraine's choice" calls but when you provide an analogy like "How would the US feel about China or Russia building military and forward operating bases in Mexico or China along the US border?" it gets dismissed like "that would never happen", which of course doesn't answer the question.
Yep, Russian troops have entered Ukraine and that's bad. But it's not a war... yet. And Putin isn't a madman. This is a high-stakes move to keep Ukraine out of NATO and the West really needs to reconsider our position on this because it's not unreasonable. More to the point, is it worth igniting a war over Ukraine? Really?
No, it didn't, at least in any way which anyone who is qualified for even an entry-level position in any diplomatic service on Earth would mistake for a binding commitment even on the then-current administration, much less indefinitely into the future. (The most commonly cited statement on this is actually a reference to deployment of troops within United Germany in the near term post-unification, and the second most commonly cited does refer to NATO expansion but is a communication of items that could be on the table for discussion if Russia was willing to come to the table on German unification, not a commitment; but there also some claims that some other private communication not reduced to a binding international agreement occurred.)
If it had made such a promise to the USSR in a binding way, we could discuss, based on the specific form of the agreement and the subsequent diplomatic action relevant to it after the fall of the USSR whether it was still binding between any parties and which nation or nations were the USSR’s successors in interest and what were the legal effects were of any potential disunity between those parties.
But since it didn't, the whole set of questions is moot.
> and then immediately reneged on it
NATO expansion to Eastern European nations beyond the former East Germany didn't occur until 1999, which is not “immediately” after an event alleged to have happened in 1990.
>No, it didn't, at least in any way which anyone who is qualified for even an entry-level position in any diplomatic service on Earth would mistake for a binding commitment even on the then-current administration, much less indefinitely into the future.
Oh yeah? From the former Ambassador to Soviet Union (1987-1991), Jeff Matlock [1]:
>One persistent U.S. demand is that Ukraine’s territorial integrity be restored. Indeed, the U.S. is party to the Budapest Memorandum in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for Ukraine’s transfer of Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia for destruction in accord with U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements. What the U.S. demand ignores is that, under traditional international law, agreements remain valid rebus sic stantibus (things remaining the same).
>When the Budapest memorandum was signed in 1994 there was no plan to expand NATO to the east and Gorbachev had been assured in 1990 that the alliance would not expand. When in fact it did expand right up to Russia’s borders, Russia was confronted with a radically different strategic situation than existed when the Budapest agreement was signed.
What annoys me about this discussion is that people continue to say none of this matters because there wasn't a treaty signed with Soviet Union - an entity that does not exist anymore - and this somehow means that anything said in the past also doesn't matter. It certainly matters in the minds of people escalating things in Eastern Ukraine right now. So it certainly isn't "moot". How in the world is that question "moot" if it's the driving reason behind Russia's perspective in this? You can disagree with Russia's security perspective, and that's fine. But to just toss out the NATO expansion as "moot" is both historically inaccurate, and borders on deliberately ignorant as if Russia is not allowed its own security concerns in the first place.
There's several other dimensions of this discussion that aren't happening at all - e.g. what NATO is even supposed to be doing in the 21st century 30 years after its raison d'être evaporated, what continued maintenance of American Empire in Europe means for both Europe and the United States and whether that's really in everyone's best interest, and how the alliance actually stacks up against a recalcitrant China in the Pacific Theater or if it is really even charted to do that - because we're so obsessed with Russia for reasons that are probably best left unstated for now. Inb4 I get accused of "apologizing" for Russia's actions here, I'm not. What they're doing is imo a long-term strategic blunder that will cost lives in the near-term. It's also wrong that the default position in the West right now is "Russia's concerns aren't legitimate QED".
">One persistent U.S. demand is that Ukraine’s territorial integrity be restored. Indeed, the U.S. is party to the Budapest Memorandum in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for Ukraine’s transfer of Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia for destruction in accord with U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements. What the U.S. demand ignores is that, under traditional international law, agreements remain valid rebus sic stantibus (things remaining the same).
>When the Budapest memorandum was signed in 1994 there was no plan to expand NATO to the east and Gorbachev had been assured in 1990 that the alliance would not expand. When in fact it did expand right up to Russia’s borders, Russia was confronted with a radically different strategic situation than existed when the Budapest agreement was signed."
And this gives Russia permission to invade a sovereign nation? Ukraine's independence is not just a matter of the Budapest Memorandum, it's a matter of the wishes of the Ukrainian people who have wanted independence from Russia for centuries, something many Russians don't want to acknowledge.
So far, NATO has not invaded Russia or violated its territorial sovereignty but Russia has violated the borders of multiple boarder states, so it's a bit rich for Putin to complain about NATO when he's clearly just trying to reincorporate border states that were conquered by the Tzars.
>And this gives Russia permission to invade a sovereign nation?
Nowhere did I suggest this, and Matlock does not even imply it in his essay. I was pretty clear that the problem I have with this discussion at this point. To put it bluntly: we will get nowhere with diplomacy if our line continues to be "your concerns are fake and made up, so do what we tell you". That's the attitude I see in here, in MSM, and from politicians (mostly in the US). Russia needs to be punished for what they're doing, but I want to see an end to these conflicts. The greatest geopolitical blunder since the end of WWII is the utter failure of the West to come to terms with and reintegrate Russia into a joint-security sphere after the fall of communism and Soviet Union. It's bigger than the Iraq War even, since Russia actually does have nukes.
>...it's a matter of the wishes of the Ukrainian people who have wanted independence from Russia for centuries
Some of these people in Ukraine are hardcore neo-Nazis, and we are giving them weapons. Some a genuine I'm sure, and I haven't been to Ukraine, and only have a few friends from there. So it's hard for me to gauge exactly how genuine any of this is given how toxic coverage of anything even tangentially related to Russia is in the West.
"Some of these people in Ukraine are hardcore neo-Nazis, and we are giving them weapons. Some a genuine I'm sure, and I haven't been to Ukraine, and only have a few friends from there. So it's hard for me to gauge exactly how genuine any of this is given how toxic coverage of anything even tangentially related to Russia is in the West. "
Well I have been there and I can tell you that Ukrainian patriotism is much broader than just the far right. Some of the people in the US are hardcore neo-Nazis but nobody assumes that they drive American foreign policy.
Good, I'm glad to hear it. I genuinely hope all involved seek peace. I've seen war, and I'm praying for them and their families.
>Some of the people in the US are hardcore neo-Nazis but nobody assumes that they drive American foreign policy.
Probably because they don't. The only reason I brought it up is that I take issue with the framing of Ukrainian militias in the western press, where the ... troubling nature (to put it lightly) of some of these organizations is ignored. This is largely irrelevant to the greater point about the history here though (sorry I brought it up), and I wish more in the West broadly but in the United States in particular would read history that goes back farther than 1938.
>Some of these people in Ukraine are hardcore neo-Nazis, and we are giving them weapons
And still, there is Trump in the US who won the race and mass shooting from nazis. Why does the US get any weapons?
It's strange rhetoric because there are many nazis in the US with regular hate crimes in media, but it will be hard to find any hate crimes in Ukraine.
Politically, nazi apologists in the US government got much more support than in Ukraine. From the last news after parliament election
>The main mouthpiece of the nationalists, Yarosh scored 0.7% of the vote in the presidential elections. In Russia, Sobchak (one of the opposition leaders) scored about the same. The number of seats in the parliament is 1 (one) for the nationalists from the "Samopomich" party, while the pro-Russian "OB" has 6. There is no right sector (nationalist supporters) at all in the new gathering.
Even with Putin's message that there are "no country like Ukraine, no Ukrainian language and culture, no Ukrainians as people at all," all that things that black people also can see in the US, there are LESS nationalist supporters than Russian supporters (a country, who started proxy war for 8 years already) in Ukraine.
> what NATO is even supposed to be doing in the 21st century 30 years after its raison d'être evaporated, what continued maintenance of American Empire in Europe means for both Europe and the United States and whether that's really in everyone's best interest, and how the alliance actually stacks up against a recalcitrant China in the Pacific Theater or if it is really even charted to do that - because we're so obsessed with Russia for reasons that are probably best left unstated for now.
NATO's raison d'être evaporated? Pretty sure Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland (at a minimum) don't agree with that. It's the same it's always been - keep Russia from marching west across Europe. A bunch of countries in Europe still think that's important, and that it needs a credible military force to accomplish it. Russia's actions in Georgia and Ukraine do not give warm feelings of security to small countries on Russia's periphery.
NATO was not created to protect Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Those countries were part of Soviet Union at the time, and joined after its collapse.
> what NATO is even supposed to be doing in the 21st century 30 years after its raison d'être evaporated
How can you even say this with a straight face as Russia invades neighboring countries? You know why Russia doesn't attempt this land grab with NATO countries? NATO.
> what NATO is even supposed to be doing in the 21st century 30 years after its raison d'être evaporated
NATO raison d’être was providing a shared framework for European security and preventing another general war in Europe, largely by tying West Germany into a durable common framework with other European powers.
It would be rendered redundant if replaced with a common EU security framework, but not by the collapse of Soviet bloc.
Yes, precisely, and "West Germany" is now simply "Germany". I'm not sure what point you're making.
>It would be rendered redundant if replaced with a common EU security framework, but not by the collapse of Soviet bloc.
I've seen this repeated in a dozen different places, and I can't parse what it even means. Alliances come and go. That's just the normal course of history.
It is painful to see the Kremlin propaganda has taken root as part of its cognitive warfare.
> How in the world is that question "moot" if it's the driving reason behind Russia's perspective in this? You can disagree with Russia's security perspective, and that's fine. But to just toss out the NATO expansion as "moot" is both historically inaccurate, and borders on deliberately ignorant as if Russia is not allowed its own security concerns in the first place.
This has nothing to do with Russia security, or would you think that the UN would attack Russia? Its a defense organization.
The mistake people make is thinking its a country like France or Germany, but just a bit different. You need to understand that Russia is ruled by a gang of oligarchs and has nothing that functionally resembles the institutions we take for granted. Putin gets what he wants from the parliament, even unanymously when he wants that. There are no laws for Putin and his crownies, the law applies only to his enemies.
The Russia state is a strange amalgamation of intelligence (Puting rose to power from the KGB) and a small group of extremely powerful oligarchs. Then there are layers of smaller oligarchs below that one that run deeper layers of corrupt officials. Its bribery and theft all over the place, its a hugely dysfunctional state. Independent/foreign media outlets have been expelled or terminated, many Russians don´t consume the news anymore. Trust has been lost.
That something horrible would rise from the ashes of Stalins dystopia is not entirely unexpected, but still there are aspects that are really unnerving, like the fact that organised crime runs through all the state affairs, and some oligarchs run even private armies (read up on Wagner for instance). The state kills, tortures and poisons anyone that stands in its way.
Putin needs to feed this whole gang, and the oligarchs take the majority of the economic output for themselves. The economy is segregated. Russians are poor. Russia (like any autocratic state) is severely lacking development, it main income is the export of raw materials like gas and oil. Its BNP is the same as that of the Benelux countries. Mind boggling poverty.
The trouble with this system is the same, it eats everything at home and it needs to find food outside of its door. Thats why you see Russia taking control of neighboring countries, appointing pro-russia puppets to scavenge them. You see the same with Belarus, its president lost control as the people revolted, ran to Putin to keep him in power and thus handing Putin the keys. It is a total surrender. Now that Russia has an even firmer grip, this country will soon be sliced up among the oligarchs.
The people of Ukrain voted to join the EU, it has been doing the needed reforms for a functional democratic country with rule of law. It has been weighting down on Ukrain oligarchs. The economic ties with the Kremlin were weakening and trade started to shift to the EU. Ukrain was making real progress, and the people turned out to be not wanting in the Russian influence.
That is the moment Putin annexed Crimea and started a war that is taking 8 years already. And is not enough. And if you listened closely yesterday, it will never be enough.
The majority of the proxy states around Russia would rather join the West. Putin cant handle a democratic success scenario in one of the former Soviet occupied territories, it has already to handle enough civil unrest in its proxy states.
The whole NATO argument is bullshit, the buffer idea doesn't even make sense in modern militarily reality. Its PR from the Kremlin and its highly effective. Unfortunately.
This system needs to grab economic output from other nations, and will keep doing so. There is only hope for Russian people if the Kremlin is going down, its getting worse there as it always does for autocracy in the end. This never ends well.
At first, I would've agreed with your position but I don't at this point.
Russia said they wouldn't invade Ukraine because:
-Russia is holding military exercises, you're being paranoid
-Nobody invades a european country on a wednesday (ok, that's true. They did it on a tuesday)
-Russia is pulling back troops.
-Russia will pull back troops as soon as the military exercises are done. So (previous) sunday. (or not!)
-Russia isn't invading Ukraine, we're just sending peacekeeping forces into the region that we declared independent of Ukraine.
etc... These aren't negotiation tactics to resolve future NATO membership concerns. These are stall tactics to position their military.
What Russia did strengthens the resolve of Ukraine to seek an alliance with NATO although they wouldn't qualify for membership. The more likely reason is that Russia hopes to undermine NATO. By taking Ukraine and putting themselves at the border of NATO countries, they can test if there's going to be a 2 tiered NATO. Countries for which the alliance is willing to invoke art. 5, and countries they are willing to abandon to avoid a world war.
Technically, Ukraine joining NATO would have also put Russia at the border of NATO countries. And it seems obvious to me that it would prefer a neutral buffer zone, instead of encirclement. Removing the first option from the table in 2013 forced the question of the second one.
I can't see how any of this could have worked out well, starting from the moment that Ukraine membership in NATO became a serious political subject.
> Technically, Ukraine joining NATO would have also put Russia at the border of NATO countries
Technically, Ukraine’s entire population being whisked into another dimension and its borders being impassable walls of force would also put Russia at the border of NATO countries (as would, for that matter, NATO not expanding after 1949), because Norway (1949), Lithuania (2004), Latvia (2004), Estonia (2004), and Poland (1999) all exist (and Lithuania and Poland surround a non-contiguous piece of Russia, even.)
And that's just counting land borders, otherwise you have to also consider the USA (1949), Turkey (1952), and Bulgaria and Romania (2004).
> More to the point, is it worth igniting a war over Ukraine? Really?
That's a very good question for Putin, try asking it and enjoy gulag or sudden inexplicable death/disappearance.
What the fuck gives one state (Russia) right to dictate what sovereign countries do and don't do? I get this cold war mentality, it was the heyday of Russia, moving pawns, fighting wars, being global badass with some serious respect unlike now, doing whatever they wanted. That's over for 30 years, and the only one to blame is Russians themselves, and their fucked up mentality. But Putin would like some 21st century version of the same.
In same way I hated US for the invasion of Iraq based on pure lies, which were clearly lies to everybody I knew even when Bush jr was presenting them in UN (remember the US senators' cries about changing 'french fries' to 'freedom fries' when France and Germany refused to support this bullshit? Look where it led Iraq and surrounding countries. Not even going into topic of Afghanistan).
I come from eastern Europe. We were invaded overnight by russian (and V4, but mostly russian) troops in 1968 for the great sin of wanting to live in freedom from communist terror of previous decades. Just like Hungarians a decade before. This ain't something to forget. Even if I wasn't alive back then, my parents were and its very good to listen to elders in such cases, they have good stories to tell, lessons to learn. Hard earned lessons of oppressed lives which could never reach their potentials.
Realistically, the Western Powers not giving shit and not doing anything effective about both all the previous Russian invasions and this one gives Russia the right.
And make no mistake, the West is quite fine with sacrificing us (everything east of Germany) all rather than doing anything effective.
So much attention is paid to the hazy question of technicalities of NATO membership, I think it's important to note that Russia agreed to very specific terms with respect to Ukraine and accepting it's borders and rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine
1. The Russian Federation, the UK and the US reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine
2. The Russian Federation, the UK and the US reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
3. The Russian Federation, the UK and the US reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
> But the recollections of those involved aren’t always consistent. Roland Dumas, who served as the French foreign minister in 1990, would later say that a pledge was made that NATO troops would not advance closer to the territory of the former Soviet Union. But the U.S. secretary of state at the time, James Baker, has denied that any such promise was ever made – a claim that some of his own diplomats, however, have contradicted. Jack Matlock, who was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time, has said that "categorical assurances" were given to the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward.
Even if you deny that such a promise was made (and broken), you should be able to understand how having a hostile military alliance literally on your border is unacceptable and the US would never accept it were the tables turned. That's the point.
There are no good guys here. Go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. There's a popular narrative of the US being provoked. But the truth is, the US instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by deploying strategic nuclear weapons to Turkey (interestingly under the auspices of NATO, a "defensive" pact). Cuba was reciprocity. Those missiles in Turkey were quietly removed.
"(interestingly under the auspices of NATO, a "defensive" pact)"
According the grand strategy of the cold war, those missiles were defensive. Their presence was requested by Turkey and when they were removed there was a diplomatic stink about it because the Turks argued that this was the US no honouring their agreement. There was nothing "quiet" about their removal.
This isn't comparable to Ukraine however. The US isn't trying to put nuclear missiles in Ukraine (and there aren't NATO nukes in any other former SSR either.) And it wouldn't matter if they were, because the range of ICBMs has increased since 1962. Russia isn't invading Ukraine to prevent nuclear weapons from being deployed on its doorstep; it's doing so to reestablish its control over its former empire.
It's not about the range of weapons but about the reaction time of counter measures.
And it is comparable. Ukraine is at Russia's doorstep and plays a major role for the access to the Black Sea.
That's why Russia annexed Crimea in the first place.
problem with russia is not nato but putin's head. if you had listen to his speech yesterday, nato is just a pretext because people need enemy to unite against. in reality he wants ussr back (he was complaining yesterday that republics were allowed to leave ussr to easily and ukraine is not a real country but something made up by lenin and stalin). he wants back the glory of soviet empire.
Not really. However the position of Russians has been absolutely constant. See these excerpts from talks between Gorbachev and James Baker, Baker and Chevarnadze, with the famous "verbal assurances":
However, Yeltsine nearly died in 96, and his election relied entirely on manipulations at a large scale from the CIA. Therefore, Clinton thought he was free to proceed with NATO extension:
and many others, Michael Mandelbaum,Richard T. Davis, John Lewis Gaddis, even Thomas Friedman thought extending NATO was a serious mistake.
> Privately, though, a few more perceptive officials acknowledged that relations with Russia had not been handled well. In his memoir, Duty, Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, made some interesting admissions. “When I reported to the president my take on the Munich conference, I shared my belief that from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of the Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War…” Yet even that blunt assessment given to Bush did not fully capture Gates’ views on the issue. “What I didn’t tell the president was that I believed the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George H.W.] Bush left office in 1993.” Among other missteps, “U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.” In an implicit rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”
This is a very well known agreement. Search for writing on HW Bush's Secretary of State James Baker agreeing to Gorbachev that NATO would expand "not another inch" eastward. Much has been written about this, and it is considered ~first principles~ level knowledge on the topic of Russia/Ukraine. Putin came of political age when that agreement was reneged, and it is speculated that this is weighs heavily on his list of grievances with the US.
The absolute hubris to declare this "first principles level knowledge on the topic of Russia/Ukraine" and telling people to catch up on it first and yet get it clearly wrong making false statements. Gorbachev is literally on record saying there was NOT an agreement. You've barely made it past complete ignorance on this history.
It is amusing to hear that in a comment chain about how US told it wouldn't expand to the East yet it did and how the current situation is a direct consequence of those talks.
> how the current situation is a direct consequence of those talks.
Putin just said it's a consequence of Lenin creating the fake entity of Ukraine on territory that should be Russian exacerbated by Stalin transferring additional territory that should be Russian to the fake entity of Ukraine.
Sounds like Russia (or at least Putin, who definitely has a l’etat, c’est moi thing going on), thinks the fundamental problem is the fall of the Russian Empire, not NATO, which is just an impediment to restoring the Empire.
> "Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."
At least that one really believed himself.
If you believe in Putin's words directed to the most dumb (and thus extremely patriotic) citizens of his [own] country then I have no stakes here anymore.
How has the "US" expanded to the East? The US is bound by shorelines. I think your slip of the tongue is revealing of the propaganda against NATO. It's a membership driven club unlike actual invasion and annexation.
Sovereign countries choose to join the club. Besides, why would it be amusing for Russia to punish Ukraine for (perceived) grievances against the US?
>That's...not how binding international agreements are formed.
Thank you, this is exactly the point I arrived at as well. It's an admission that the primary tool of the US State Department is to make friendly, reasonable verbal agreements in front of the press and public, then do the dirty move they really wanted to do when the news cycle has moved past. This maintains the appearance to the US public that their foreign policy is always just, and never cynical or deceitful.
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I think in a lot of ways this is a continuation of the Poland-Russia rivalry to be the savior of the Slavs. This rivalry has been a major factor in Ukraine’s history, for instance the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth absorbed a large Western chunk of Kievian Rus during its disintegration at the same time Moscow consolidated much of the Eastern Rus principalities. It may simplistic to say this is the reason Ukraine and Belarus have separate histories but this was at least a major factor.
They have different histories because of the swamps that were only eradicated in 20th century. Try to find autmobile maps in 1930s - there are virtually no roads along the current border of Belarus/Ukraine.
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Would awareness and publicizing information like this discourage war? It would definitely create more public disgust but I am not sure how much that translates to pressure on political leaders.
Some of the most compelling data work is coming out of US funding and interests. For instance the working relationship between Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council.
We know in the past, the CIA has worked through traditional international and national media sources. I'm curious what they are up to in the era of data journalism.
I wonder, what is the current state of satellite technology available to military? Can they stream near real-time hi-res images that would "prove" that one side or the other is effectively responsible for a certain escalation?
An (non-existent) international institution to analyze and take action is the other part of the puzzle.
Imagery satellites fly at a low altitude and effectively cannot "hover" over a site in the same way a drone can.
That said, one can correlate the passes of imagery satellites (optical, radar) with other spaceborne RF sensors, and sensors on airplanes & drones (optical, radar, RF etc.), and data from implanted sensors on the ground, to construct a real-time view of the battlespace.
The Full Monty of these capabilities, especially data fusion from disparate platforms, would never be released to the world.
Fun fact: US overhead systems (NRO satellites) are sometimes quietly used to aid search & rescue activities. A friend of mine, a USAF E-9 who had been read into many compartments during his career, used to do this with the Coast Guard after he retired from the Air Force. Pretty cool stuff.
Like you mentioned, they do use their capabilities for some things other than just GEOINT:
>In addition to using GEOINT for U.S. military and intelligence efforts, NGA provides assistance during natural and man-made disasters, aids in security planning for major events such as the Olympic Games,[9] disseminates maritime safety information,[10] and gathers data on climate change.[11]
It does make me wonder what the NGA does with a ~5 billion dollar budget then, in my head most it was allocated to new sats. Other than buy approximately 10 3080s I mean ;)
I'm in Ukraine right now, where I've been living for the past few years (Canadian Citizen born and raised in Toronto). This is completely overblown nonsense.
This "live map" makes it seem like there is some kind of war starting. There's nothing of the sort. War started 8 years ago, and this move by Putin last night actually ENDS the war decisively.
The rebel-held regions which were backed by Russia have been in constant conflict for 8 years. There's nothing new here on this map. Putin's decision yesterday to make it officially Russian-protected instead of shadow-backed actually de-escalates tensions and finally ends the 8-year long conflict. Now that Donetsk and Luhansk are officially Russian-backed, the Ukrainian army will no longer attempt to keep recapturing it (confirmed by President Zelensky today -- said we will not be fighting Russia head-on). Therefore no more Ukrainian body bags, which is great news, though not the ending we wanted.
Yea, that's a bullshit. Ukrainian-Ukrainian here. Russians now claim that they will "protect" the entire Donetsk and Lugansk regions and expand if needed to do so. People die right now MORE than in previous "peaceful" times. They already fucking shelled a kindergarten, school, and killed a civilian (was a rarity before).
The President of Ukraine and all official channels say they do NOT believe a full-scale invasion will happen. Only America says it will happen. We lost Donetsk and Luhansk a long time ago. It's gone now. Hopefully this will end now.
> The President of Ukraine and all official channels say they do NOT believe a full-scale invasion will happen.
This is part of Ukraine’s lobbying effort for strong preemptive, rather than reactive, sanctions against Russia; Ukraine is arguing that Russia can be dissuade from invasion by tougher pre-general-invasion action, and is acting (whether they believe it or not) like they believe that their lobbying effort to Western powers for this approach will succeed in getting the desired policy which will, in turn, dissuade Russia.
So far, whether or not they are right that it would work, they seem to be largely unsuccessful in lobbying, with the US, especially, offering only limited sanctions for the actions related to the separatist regions but holding back the massive general sanctions threatened in case of a broader invasion as a reactive contingency.
Ukraine’s official channels are very clear that they view decisive factor in Russia’s decision making the strength of immediate Western action.
Viewing the Ukraine statements about not expecting a full-scale invasion without this context is...misleading. They are saying if an invasion happens, it is because the West failed to be resolute in the ways Ukraine expects them to, not that Russia does not intend to invade.
> So far, whether or not they are right that it would work, they seem to be largely unsuccessful in lobbying, with the US, especially, offering only limited sanctions for the actions related to the separatist regions but holding back the massive general sanctions threatened in case of a broader invasion as a reactive contingency.
Well, a couple hours later and this part is outdated, as the US has now announced the first set of general sanctions on Russia and described existing Russian actions as the beginning of the invasion that was always described as the triggering condition for such sanctions.
I think you're reading the sentiment backward. Of course Ukraine wants stronger sanctions against Russia in any case, because an invasion already happened, not because they believe a full-scale invasion will happen.
They explicitly say (including in the tweet from the FM that I cited) that strong action now is important because Russia’s future action depends on what other countries do now.
Yes, they think an invasion already is ongoing, but that's explicitly not the only factor in their call for action. It is directly tied to impact on Russian escalation.
The oblasts are larger than the regions within Russian territory. This is just a straight violation of the sovereign territory of Ukraine. You do not, as a country, get to unilaterally redraw internationally recognized borders just because some people sympathetic to you or who share a language live on the other side.
> You do not, as a country, get to unilaterally redraw internationally recognized borders just because some people sympathetic to you or who share a language live on the other side.
I never said Putin had a right to do it, I'm saying he already did it. Of course it was a totally illegal invasion, but it's done now. What I'm saying is we believe this is the end of the conflict. The official position of the President of Ukraine is that we do not believe a full scale invasion will happen, as do most Ukrainians I know.
It already fell apart once, post-USSR, and it recovered. Russia is like China: it's too culturally coesive over too big an area not to eventually coalesce into a powerful entity sooner or later.
> The President of Ukraine and all official channels say they do NOT believe a full-scale invasion will happen.
First, he is a politician. My rational explanation for his words is to cooldown the emotions. Back in last week, you could see news about many oligarchs departing the country, while others trying to cash out every asset they have. Standing enemies at the borders is economically tragic for the whole country. Trying to sell other, non-catastrophic vision is his duty.
Secondly, there were many variants of the invasion. The full-scale operation often means the Russia forces will attack the entire Ukraine - eastern, central and the western. Many experts say this scenario is highly unlikely, because there will be too many casualties on both sides.
Full-scale might not happen, but it absolutely does not mean any kind of peace. There is no interest for russia to stop daily shelling and keep capturing in small pieces. Russia has zero interest to stabilize the situation they walked away from all the agreements and negotiations.
Brother, I believe it is in their interest to stabilize the situation now that Donetsk and Luhansk are officially protected by Russia. Previously the shelling continued for 8 years because of the rebellion.
The assumption is that the actual borders of DNR and LNR will be solved by diplomacy, and Kyiv has hinted that it will try to find a diplomatic solution.
Ukrainian-American here. Depends on how you look at it. Comparing Donetsk to Crimea for instance, Crimea is in much better shape: no active war for the past 8 years.
I second the opinion that this isn't the ending that people wanted, but hopefully it is the ending nonetheless.
For the record, I do not condone the annexation of Crimea, but I also do not support giving it back to Ukraine, as it just creates unnecessary tension at this point.
I understand, how globally we should not just be ok with countries taking parts of other countries, but at the same time the reverse transaction will bring more misery to people of crimea.
Makes for interesting strategies for a country wishing to expand.
If you go in fast and settle the issue quickly, it's a fait accompli and anyone seeking to "reverse the transaction" is just bringing misery.
If you can't settle the issue quickly, support a local insurgency until the international community stops paying attention and then go in. Everybody will be grateful.
It's kind of how the Soviet Union and the west divided up Europe after WWII.
"It's kind of how the Soviet Union and the west divided up Europe after WWII." - first question: "define Europe", 2nd question: "who exactly is west?", 3rd question: "did you just compare WWII to what exactly?"
Note how the western allies (The US and UK, mostly, plus France, Belgium, Netherlands, and so forth) controlled Italy, France, the Low Countries, and the western half of Germany. The USSR controlled Finland through the Balkans and eastern Germany.
The person they are replying to identified themselves as a Canadian citizen living in Ukraine.
The person who described themselves as "Ukrainian-Ukrainian" is implying that their own assessment of the situation is likely to be more accurate since they are not just an expatriate.
There are at least four kinds of Ukrainians. Russians with Ukrainian citizenship (a lot of these in Crimea and L/DNR), Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and Western Ukrainians, who did not live in the Russian Empire or Soviet Ukraine before 1944, and have Roman Catholic-controlled faith based on Orthdox rituals.
The first three groups form a continuity and is not perfectly correlated with loyalty to Ukrainian state.
Romanians form with ~500K the third biggest minority in Ukraine. Again, a situation where USSR conquered and draw the map as it wished, since they live in teritory formely belonging to interbellic Romania.
One fact which people forget: Ukraine decided to end support to minorities, as such there is no longer possible to study in native language. This type of nationalism should not be supported at all. Ukraine is no saint.
This is not true. In 2020-2021 curriculum year in Ukraine there were 874 schools that that had languages of minorities as a language of instruction.
In 9 different languages - Russian, Bulgarian, Crimean Tatar language, German, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Moldavian.
I had a friend who I referred to as "my Russian friend". When my uncle married a Russian woman, I showed her a picture of my Russian friend from one of his kids birthday parties, and she said, "I think he is from Ukraine". I asked why she thought that and she said because of the lettering of the sign in the background - apparently they have a different (but similar enough to my non-Russian reading eyes) alphabet, too.
Just FYI - like you, I grew up hearing it called "the Ukraine" (like "The Philippines" or "The Netherlands") but apparently that's changed and it's just "Ukraine" now.
I'm Canadian as well but I'm in Canada. I was led to believe the biden warnings of imminent russia invasion were war mongering and not true. Clearly not true anymore. Russia is an aggressor.
From my point of view, it seems Canadians are team Russia here, especially our prime minister.
What led you to believe those things (the idea that the Biden Administration's claims of an imminent invasion were war mongering, and the idea that Canada has aligned itself with Russia)?
>What led you to believe those things (the idea that the Biden Administration's claims of an imminent invasion were war mongering,
That's a great question, but I don't know if I know the answer.
Overall, the US as world police, Obama and his nobel peace prize and 7 wars, and virtually entire existence of the USA they have been at war. It's kind of easy to see this point of view.
However, I would generally say our media was saying the invasion wasn't imminent. Largely reporting the Ukraine government denied any invasion was coming.
This I would say as well was the story across political lines.
The only thing really covered was how Trudeau was being actively excluded from diplomacy by Biden.
It is public knowledge that the liberal party are members of the WEF. So is Putin. Both Putin and Trudeau have done keynotes. They are publicly linked.
It's a whole different thing to say this is some evil cabal or some diplomatic war-supporting effort. For all I know Trudeau is a mole and we are still complete allies to the USA, if not protectorate.
But frankly, I look at the last week. Russia invaded and Canadians are under an unjustified national emergency with the government seizing bank accounts with no due process or redress. We do have political prisoners and global celebrities from across the political spectrum are calling out Trudeau as Hitler.
>Your PM just got a taste of authoritarian despotism so it would make sense.
I'm going to show my left-wing bias but Bill Maher and Jimmy Dore both called Trudeau Hitler. They are objectively right, but what happened?
Canada had some ineffectual blockades, but at the time of the emergency being invoked. Those were gone. So the emergency was ONLY the protest in Ottawa.
The justification for the emergency is the military occupation and they used the givesendgo hacked data to analyze that around 50% of the raised money was from the USA. The allegation is that the USA is somehow doing this? This is absurd but why is Trudeau overreacting to all this? What did he fear?
> (confirmed by President Zelensky today -- said we will not be fighting Russia head-on). Therefore no more Ukrainian body bags, which is great news, though not the ending we wanted.
Oops. Your comment aged really poorly in one day. It turns out Russia wanted all of Ukraine and you are fighting them head-on.
Russia recognises the independence of the whole Donbas and Luhansk, not just the parts held by the rebels. And now they're going yo take them by force.
This is a really bad reading of the situation and you won't have to wait very long to see why. Putin did not go through this massive hoopla just to get a small strip of land.
Yesterday's moves were just the first step. Within a few days they'll escalate by doing something like claiming the entire regions, by staging a false flag, Triggering an insurrection outside the regions etc. Once they have threatred their way into making it look as if Ukraine is the aggressor, they'll move in widely.
I don't know where he'll end up, but the ultimate objective is the humiliation of the west and subjugation of Ukraine. What I think you'll see is a wide areal campaign destroying most of Ukraines military equipment, a take over of the entire black sea coast making Ukraine landlocked. Finally there'll be a "peace" treaty making Ukraine a substantially smaller landlocked country, forcing them to demilitarize, pay tribute etc.
This isn't about the humiliation of the west and the subjugation of Ukraine, this is about national defense strategy. The way the borders were set after the breakup of the USSR were based on certain assumptions that don't hold true today, and as a result Russia does not have a defensible border. With these annexations, they do. Additionally, it's a way to test what sort of response they'll get and prepare for similar responses in the future.
> The way the borders were set after the breakup of the USSR were based on certain assumptions that don't hold true today, and as a result Russia does not have a defensible border.
In the thirty years since the USSR dissolved no one has so much as bothered Russia or even pretended like they wanted to bother Russia. Most NATO members in Europe vastly reduced their militaries and defense spending. Everyone was content to just buy shit from them as business relationships are far cheaper than invasions and annexation. NATO only expanded east because of Russia's posturing about reclaiming former SSRs.
The only people worried about "defensible borders" are old Soviet hardliners pining for some past glory that didn't exist. They either see or pretend to see the specter of foreign invasion because it whips of nationalistic fervor. They use it to distract from their shit show governance and to blame "the West" for every self-inflicted problem they have.
The most baffling part is literally no one wants to invade Russia. Outside of their propaganda machine no Westerner has any interest in Russian territory. No one is super excited to occupy Siberia or fish the "waters" of the Aral Sea.
> Most NATO members in Europe vastly reduced their militaries and defense spending
Most western members did. Eastern ones, meanwhile, ramped it up very significantly. Which is the only reason Western countries could get away with it, really - NATO is supposed to feed the American defense industry.
> NATO only expanded east because of Russia's posturing
More like because of the bordering countries clamoured for protection, even when there was no threat whatsoever (since the Russian military was in utter disarray). In a way, they were right: the ones who didn't manage to escape Moscow's orbit back then (Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus stans...), are now enduring dictatorship or war. In another way, they fuelled the Russian paranoia that fed Putin's nationalism, eventually ensuring that the doomsday scenarios did, in fact, materialize.
> The most baffling part is literally no one wants to invade Russia.
It's not just about immediate military occupation. Gazprom is an important piece of Putin's kleptocratic powerbase, and Gazprom needs to be free of Ukrainian control of their pipelines. If NordStream2 can't happen, because the Germans have to obey their American lord-protectors, then Putin must establish an alternative to the South - which doesn't need to be entirely in Russian hands, but rather in a position where Russian troops can secure it in a matter of days if necessary. In my view this is the real endgame.
This, obviously, on top of putting the strategic Crimean ports in a safer position; because NATO might not want to invade Russia, but Erdogan's Turkish troops are not shy about "securing" stuff (any sanctions against them carving up Syria? Not that I'm aware of...).
Besides what another commentator already said, I'd also include China. Russia and China, despite the apparently good relations right now, have actively disputed regions that the Chinese believe were stolen from them on one of the unequal treaties.
The US has 6 border disputes with Canada ongoing. It is the longest nonmilitarized border in the world.
Border disputes are par for the course when you're a state managing a nation and territory. These disputes come up when other concerns are dealt with. They're bargaining chips. Right now China and Russia need each other. Later maybe they fight over them or they resolve them peacefully.
> The US has 6 border disputes with Canada ongoing.
For those interested in the details, Wikipedia lists 5 current disputes[0], almost entirely relating to maritime borders, with some uninhabited islands being the only land in dispute.
What kind of argument is that? Because the empire lost its buffer colonies, it needs to re-acquire them again? Because it feels "vulnerable"? Vulnerable against whom? Against the countries the previous iteration of that empire sought to destroy?
This "national defense strategy" is just a made up tale, another episode of russian propaganda that keeps poisoning generations after generations.
>
What kind of argument is that? Because the empire lost its buffer colonies, it needs to re-acquire them again?
It's how empires operate. It's not fair, but it is what it is. For an example of how this turned out when the shoe was on the other foot, look at Cuba. The world nearly ended in '63, because the American empire needed a 'buffer colony'.
It's been a lifetime since the revolution, communism as a world ideology has been dead for a generation, but Cuba's still paying for the consequences of flipping allegiances. (The western world, sans the United States has normalized relations with it a very long time ago - so it's not an ongoing ideological problem...)
No. Nations don't throw national resources away, especially in modern times. If they're spending money, their lives, political capital on this they're profiting from it in some way.
Russia has to control the black sea and they have to control territory all the way to the Dneiper river. If Ukraine realigns to Europe and NATO they have to at a minimum have control over that territory to have a defensible position. This has been true since the days of the Russian empire, and this is one of the historical reasons for a Russian ethnic majority east of it.
Ukraine aligned with the West may be a security issue for Russia only if Russia itself is not aligned with the West which it absolutely does not have to be.
If Russia did not get an ex-KGB absolute monarch traumatized by the fall of the Berlin wall, the country could've joined NATO by now. Pretending that this particular made up "national defense strategy" is the only one possible, is just caving in to the Putin's propaganda.
Even if Russia for some dumb reason chooses to be perpetually against the West even after the fall of communism, it does not mean that the West automatically becomes interested in invading Russia either. Even in this case the "national defense strategy" is just a cover-up for the unprovoked aggression.
Goal of NATO is “to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. … to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.” [1]
Russia joining NATO in good faith would change it for sure but would not make it obsolete.
That’s your argument? You googled and pasted in their mission statement?
Who would that alliance be (ostensibly) protecting themselves from? China? Taking that kind of stance (EDIT: against China) would not be in Russia’s interest.
The West was not manufacturing regime changes out of thin air, it was supporting factions in the internal political conflicts. So did Russia, but for some reason that never counts.
Geostrategy is about more than just invasions. It's about military assets, natural resources, artificial resources, trade routes, cultural influence, the ability to attack from and defend certain geography and plenty more I didn't name. And it's more than Russia playing the game.
It's not a national defense strategy, it is a national security one. They need to control the paths for gas exports to Europe to maintain Europe's reliance on them for heat in the winter. It makes them powerful.
If you look at national strategies for nations and territories, even beyond the time the current state has ruled, for every major or minor power throughout history, you'll find similar strategies because the underlying realities remain the same.
This is definitely about humiliation of the West and subjugation of Ukraine.
Putin doesn't care about defensible border with China. In fact they don't care about the Chinese ambitions in South Siberia at all. And those ambitions are much clearer than any idea that NATO or European countries might want to invade Russia.
Putin's only worry is avoiding the fate of Sadam and Qaddafi and for that, in his mind, he needs to keep waging wars around Russia (and support struggling dictators all over the world, but that's unrelated to this conflict).
Exactly, if Putin really worried about protecting borders, he'd never move most of his Asian army units to the Ukrainian border, exposing huge vulnerability to the powerful autocratic nuclear regime who actually kinda wants these exposed lands.
The fact that he did it means that either he really believes that NATO is scheming on invading Russia proper, in which case he's just gone mad, or all this pseudo-historical pretext is just a bunch of crap he feeds the world to legitimize his personal quest for glory and give his worldwide supporters ("useful idiots" as they call them in KGB) a reason to let him off the hook for that.
They don't care about a defensible border with China because they are allied with China currently. If that changes you'll start seeing militarization of that border also.
> as a result Russia does not have a defensible border
So it should be easy for NATO to go on the offensive here and teach Russia a lesson? If that isn't true, then why would Russia need to invade a country to "make itself safer"?
> Putin did not go through this massive hoopla just to get a small strip of land.
He achieved his political objectives by just threatening invasion, without actually invading. An actual full-scale invasion is something nobody wants, least of all most ordinary Russians who have relatives in Ukraine.
> you won't have to wait very long to see why
I'd bet you on it if you set me a date. Westerners have been raising the alarm about a potential Russian invasion since time immemorial.
I'm down for a friendly or small sum bet. You'll see a major escalation in about a week. Russians will be firing missiles and artillery and dropping bombs in Ukraine proper in March.
You're on! $25 USD by TransferWise. There will be no further Russian military incursions into Ukraine proper by March 31st, except perhaps some shuffling around of the Donetsk/Luhansk border.
Note I'm not expecting Putin to stop playing chess, he will never stop with his political power moves, he might blockade Odessa, but there will be no bloodshed. Mark my words. I look forward to peace in Ukraine, for the first time in 8 years.
The assumption is that the actual borders of DNR and LNR will be solved by diplomacy, and Kyiv has hinted that it will try to find a diplomatic solution.
"The rebel-held regions which were backed by Russia have been in constant conflict for 8 years. There's nothing new here on this map. Putin's decision yesterday to make it officially Russian-protected instead of shadow-backed actually de-escalates tensions and finally ends the 8-year long conflict."
How so? Doesn't it just turn a pro-Russian insurgency into a pro-Ukrainian insurgency? In other words, the "insurgents" and the "legitimate local militias" just switch places.
"Now that Donetsk and Luhansk are officially Russian-backed, the Ukrainian army will no longer attempt to keep recapturing it (confirmed by President Zelensky today -- said we will not be fighting Russia head-on). Therefore no more Ukrainian body bags, which is great news, though not the ending we wanted."
As long as Putin stops at the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk.
And, by the way, it's good there are no Ukrainians in Donetsk and Luhansk.
It should be good news for everyone unless Russia makes a full-scale invasion (which seem very unlikely), no? By everyone I mean every average, civilian person. All of them should want peace, no matter if their passport says Ukraine or "X Republic of the Russian Federation".
Dude Putin said today Russia recognizes the separatists' claimed borders of Donetsk and Luhansk which extend far beyond the borders the separatists actually control. Which means unless Ukraine decides to cede a shitload of territory to Russi...I mean the totally grass roots and not at all Russian run separatist governments, Russia will fight with Ukraine.
Because this isn't Risk. They don't care about capturing all territory within a state's borders, they care about a defensible border position. It's strategic.
The same reason the Himalayas are the border between China and India, the swiss and Italians border in the alps, the US and mexico border along the Rio Grande, and the Arab countries have foggy borders. It's the reason you see ethnic groups bounded by geographic artifacts. You want a natural barrier as a defense. You expand or contract to an easier to defend position. You'll note nations with artificial borders such as latitude lines are at peace with one another, and ones that aren't, such as several African nations who's borders were decided by the French and English are in constant strife and flux.
I think his (perfectly reasonable) point is that, in the long run, a natural border might make it easier to establish and maintain a legal border, and will likely favour internal cohesion by forcing connections to go certain ways.
Obviously it is not a prerequisite for statehood, which is a complex construct that goes beyond territorial claims (since Woodrow Wilson at the very least, in legal terms).
Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him? Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea had 70%+ ethnic Russians with pro-Russia sentiment. Everywhere else in Ukraine he is hated, there's no way he will want to expand into territory that jeopardizes his own stability.
> Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him?
Because distracting people with a project to restore the greatness of Imperial Russia, repudiating the losses it suffered at the hands of hostile foreign powers (and even Soviet leaders—he’s blamed, e.g., Lenin for “creating” Ukraine from “Russian” territory and Stalin for giving Ukraine control of additional “Russian” territory) is Putin’s central political strategy right now, and he’s already laid out the public case for why Ukraine ought to be Russian on that basis.
That's definitely a factor. Another factor is the refusal to make NordStream2 operational. Gazprom must be free of Ukrainian influence, and if it can't be North it will be South - the spice must flow, and so does the gas.
For money, of course. Donetsk region is full of good quality coal and benefits coming from controlling the Black Sea are definitely very tempting.
> Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him?
Please change your optics. People never matter in Russia/Soviet Union. Even, if there will be 70-80% of people who are dreadful opponents to "new goverment" then what they would do? Take it to the street? Strike? Please remind yourself how it looked in the Kazakhstan in early January 2022 (you will get shot, just because you left your home to buy some food) and in Belarus 2021 (mass protests, thousands of people being thrown in jail for no reason, very often beaten, many found dead there). Coup d'état? Poor joke, especially if we look at the latest events in Africa (for example Mali), where armed Russia's Wagner forces helped to take over the whole country.
Edit: As a person who lives in Central Europe, your question made me sad, because it means western mass-media is crap these days - they cannot explain a very silly thing why this ongoing conflict for 8+ years takes place.
> As a person who lives in Central Europe, your question made me sad,
Reading the GP's other comments they're either a "useful idiot" (in KGB parlance) or a Russian-supporting astroturfer. There has been a lot of coverage of Russia's actions in Ukraine in "the West" for the past 8 years.
This isn’t a constructive comment. There isn’t a point to accusing people of being propagandists or <insert nefarious Soviet intelligence term here> unless you have proof.
Unhappy populations can be dealt with sufficient application of repression. Or, worst case scenario, genocide--history has shown that the international community is extremely reluctant to do anything about genocide other than moralize after the fact about how wrong it was. I mean, there's already precedent for Russian genocide against Ukrainians...
No one in the modern era has attempted to take a country with a population that's 1/3 of the invading country. If he incorporated Ukraine, that's 40 million angry citizens. It would absolutely be the end of him especially because most Russians see Ukrainians as brothers.
He justifies Luhansk, Donbass and Crimea because of the 2014 revolution and they fact they were always culturally Russian.
Edit - I should also add that it's in Ukraine's interest to simply let these regions go. Prior to 2014, Ukrainian elections always flip-flopped between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions... Now that most of the pro-Russian support no longer votes in Ukrainian elections (due to being part of Russian or breakaway), Ukrainian politics are almost entire pro-Western.
Most Russians very much don't see Ukrainians as brothers after 2014. Russian propaganda works reasonably well.
As for angry citizens... for one thing, not all of those citizens will be angry, especially in central Ukraine. Not the majority, but enough to supply informants etc to keep the rest in check.
But also, why do you say that no-one in the modern era has attempted that? This exact thing happened during WW2 - or is that not sufficiently "modern"? And if not, then what makes the difference?
All the Russians I know view Ukrainians as brothers and are against the idea of Slavs fighting Slavs. Anyhow I'm not spending the time to find a comprehensive poll but it's you believing the propaganda that a majority of Russians actually want to fight Ukrainians.
> Russian propaganda works reasonably well.
Yeah right, I've never met a Russian that believes any news, no matter the side lol. Ditto for Ukrainians. Distrust in authority is basically a cornerstone of Slavic culture...
That's simply not true. Many Russians are swallowing uncritically whatever Putin says. I've personally met on my Elbrus expedition in cca 2016 quite a few in our team (russian agency, I never go with western ones when mountaineering), who seemed otherwise smart, but praised him uncritically like some saint. I couldn't listen to it whenever we switched otherwise normal topics to this.
Not everybody gets their news from internet. And those young folks were from Moscow / St Peterburg and used internet like everybody else.
> are against the idea of Slavs fighting Slavs
Bullshit, army men do what they are told. In 1968 Soviet, mostly russian army invaded Czechoslovakia. Soldiers had no qualms with shooting to ie teenage girls riding across the street on their bicycle, harmless as one can be. Hundreds of cases like this, nobody was armed or posed any threat. Nobody was ever punished, there are tons of memorials across whole country(ies).
There is a lot of wishful thinking in your statement, and I hope its meant in optimistic way. I wish there was really this fabled slavic friendliness since I am also one of those, but I see it more a nice myth which works mostly on language grounds, and falls apart as quickly as problems arise, see ie Yugoslavia.
> No one in the modern era has attempted to take a country with a population that's 1/3 of the invading country.
Saudi Arabia invading Yemen. Syria invading Lebanon is I think around the ⅓ mark. Iraq invading Iran--note that Iran was the larger country then. All of these are conflicts that were intended to induce suzerainty if not outright conquest, and all of these are undeniably in what you'd call the "modern era".
Although I'll note that "modern era" is usually given as since about ~1789, which means we can throw in all of the wonderful aggression conflicts that make up World War II, such as Germany attempting to incorporate the populated bits of the USSR into its own territory, after killing off the current inhabitants of course.
> they fact they were always culturally Russian.
IIRC, he claims that Ukrainians are themselves no different from Russians, which means this gives him casus belli to incorporate all of Ukraine on the same grounds.
The Saudis aren't invading Yemen, they're just bombing and destabilizing it. Last I checked Lebanon is also still Lebanon, not Syria.
> IIRC, he claims that Ukrainians are themselves no different from Russians
Saying something and believing it are two different things. Also, it depends what you mean by 'no different'. Ethnically they're almost identical. Culturally close. But there is a bit of a difference, mainly that much of "Ukrainian" identity comes from regions that had been been invaded by both Poland-Lithuania and Austria-Hungary and spread to the rest of the country since independence.
Anyhow, not even the Ukrainian President thinks Russia will invade all Ukraine...
> The Saudis aren't invading Yemen, they're just bombing and destabilizing it. Last I checked Lebanon is also still Lebanon, not Syria.
The word you said was "attempted" which includes failed attempts as well as successful. There have been no successful attempts post-WW2 that I can think of, but that doesn't mean there haven't been any unsuccessful attempts.
> Ethnically they're almost identical. Culturally close.
You can say the same thing about the US and Canada. Yet Canada successfully resisted both US invasion attempts, and even today, you would likely get a pretty vehement response if you suggested that the US and Canada ought to be part of the same country.
In an abstract sense, sure. But once they start putting the nuts on the bolts, they are going to get cold feet. The USA is vastly different from Canada is many tangible ways. It's not the conservative utopia people think it is.
Plus, given the political issues involved with integration of the two countries, I suspect serious concessions would need to be made by Canada.
> It's not the conservative utopia people think it is.
And Canada's not the liberal paradise people think. We're leaving, personally.
The quality of life here is pretty shit - think LA or Seattle cost of living (SF if you're in Vancouver or Toronto) with Nebraska wages (actually that would be generous)...
I think the bigger issue for Putin is his army and his support. That will beging to fade if he goes into an area that is not supportive and then Russian soldiers start dying. It's all good 'capturing' territory without a loss of life, but are the Russian people going to put up with dead soldiers just for them to occupy Kyiv?
For the "why" you would ask him, but didn't he stress in his speech yesterday, that he considers the whole Ukraine a part of Russia?
So yes, if the Russian troops do nothing beyond settling the status, it might be good for the local population. But what if not?
Why would he need such a huge army just to consolidate those regions, why army in the Belarus? I guess we will see what happens (and I wished things stopped where they are now).
Putin has repeatedly made clear his (weird) belief that NATO will base hypersonic nuclear missiles in a free Ukraine. Yesterday he claimed Ukraine will develop its own nukes.
These claims would suggest that Putin will stop at nothing short of total regime change in Kiev.
Invading a country is easy, occupying it and annexing it is extremely difficult. The only times it seems to be viable is when the local population is already within your cultural sphere, speaks your language, and is ethnically similar. Putin certainly could go on an annexation spree but he would be stymied very quickly by local resistance in places that aren't 80%+ ethnically and culturally Russian.
Why would he feed another country? Crimea is a strategic territory, LNR/DNR protect access to RF borders, and both are home of ethnic Russians, but the rest? Only throwing away good money.
In his strategic interest he would let the West to continue throwing finances here.
He would need support of local population for that. And if locals want it, why not? Right for self-determination, after all. At least that was the excuse when USSR/Yugoslavia/etc were broken down.
But it is not that simple; any such territory would be a drain on Russian economy. For now, it is tactical advantage to keep Europe and US to drain theirs here. (One of reasons, why opolchentsi stopped before Mariupol few years ago).
Ukraine is has fantastically fertile crop land, and Russia is today a net importer of food. Food has never been a trivial concern for Russia or Russians.
> Crimea is a strategic territory, LNR/DNR protect access to RF borders, and both are home of ethnic Russians, but the rest?
Odessa is the biggest port in Ukraine. Controlling it (and Mykolaiv) will make Ukraine a land-locked country, in addition to providing Crimea with reliable access to electricity, water and supply routes (in addition to connecting Russia with Transnistria). These are only the rational reasons, but Putin apparently has fears and complexes that go beyond those.
> Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea had 70%+ ethnic Russians with pro-Russia sentiment.
The absolute majority sans the single digit percentage of ethnic Russians hate Russia with passion.
And I am not even talking about ethnic Russians within Ukraine, but Russia itself.
Russian Far East very seriously wanted to seccede.
South Russians don't count themselves as the same ethnicity as Russians living in the Moscow at all.
People in Urals, besides attempting at Urals Republic in early nineties, are still very unhappy about Urals, and Western Siberia being the poorest part of Russia, while their resources allow Muscovites bathe in Champagne.
All other ethnic republics will secede in no time as well if given the opportunity.
Russia will be the next Yugoslavia. This is what we actually need to be talking about
Russia losing its oil/gas, or Putin getting assasinated, or just any major crisis = Yugo with nukes, and a civil war 10 times worse.
>This "live map" makes it seem like there is some kind of war starting. There's nothing of the sort. War started 8 years ago, and this move by Putin last night actually ENDS the war decisively.
What a lot of folks in the West don't realize is that Ukrainian soldiers have been at war with Russian Mercenaries and Russian Soldiers since 2014. It's been a slow burn war and every week there have been Ukrainian KIA but it never made the news. We can only hope that you are correct about the war being over but I'm not so sure. My opinion is it will never be over as long as Putin and his mafia are in power. There is just too much at stake for them to hand over power to a new guard because of the hundreds of billions they have stolen from the Russian people.
>The rebel-held regions which were backed by Russia have been in constant conflict for 8 years.
I don't think anyone believed that the Separatists/Russians in Ukraine were some home grown group. They were funded, supplied, and reinforced with Russian Mercs and Army from the beginning, it's just that the world didn't give a shit because there was too much business going on between Europe and Russia.
I still don't believe the West is going to take this or any future aggression seriously, strongly worded disappointments is about all they can muster in the face of evil. NATO and the West are toothless, America has no appetite to take on an enemy like Russia or China and those countries know it. Even now any reaction is just theater without any real consequences. What this means for the future is that it sets a precedent, There are millions of Russians seeded throughout Eastern Europe and it leaves the door open to separatism. Taiwan is also fucked, the Chinese will take it in a day and the USA won't do a single thing. Just saying, always hoping I'm wrong.
> America has no appetite to take on an enemy like Russia or China
We should remind ourselves that "taking on" such entities might well mean the end of the human race.
In many ways, we got lucky that Hitler and Mussolini appeared before the atomic bomb was invented. Since 1945, the world effectively lost the option to "take on" certain countries, even if they were to succumb to pure evil.
Because Taiwan has such a large export of stuff the USA desperately wants/needs, I'm not sure you are right that the USA will let China take Taiwan. See TSMC for one example :)
What does the USA need/want from Russia, other than for them to stop being antagonistic against the USA? Nothing that I can see.
If Taiwan military blows up critical parts of fabs upon invasion, China can promise whatever they want, its just empty words. Also, as we can see here, promises mean less than fart in the wind to states if its lucrative to break them
Notice dashed lines on the map. Those are boundaries of regions. Putin claimed "independence" of the whole area of 2 regions. It's MUCH larger than currently controlled red area. It's all the way up to north and also a significant area to west of the red zone.
Yes, it is a part of Donetsk region. It's a city of around 0.5 mil citizens. And a very strategic location. They wanted to capture it in 2014, but failed.
It's marked because, as a de facto Russian-controlled territory, it is likely to be used as a bridgehead if Russia decides to occupy the entirety of Ukraine.
I finally read up on these regions, and know that I'm not done given that all sources are questionable and no consensus has been reached.
But I do understand that Donetsk and Luhansk both have petitioned for more autonomy in an amended Ukranian constitution (that would give all administrative-districts more autonomy). This has failed but apparently Ukraine is in the process of becoming more decentralized with their own constitutional amendments, pursuing a concept of Federalism/Confederacy similar to Switzerland, which Donetsk and Luhansk would benefit from but that idea of satisfying those districts has long passed, now that they handle their own affairs and also receive Russian passports now.
So because the desired constitution has failed, when that chance for diplomacy was available, and they already receive Russian passports, what exactly is the goal here?
Are they supposed to be on the map as their own countries? Are there two new countries on the map? Is there an accession to Russia?
I get Putin's words look more like a piecemeal approach of chopping territory back from Ukraine, until it and all former soviet states are simply Russian states. But I think most of that is just grandstanding to sound cool to his own people. I also think any opportunity of affinity towards Russia will be seized upon, especially when there is a direct border.
I'm purposely avoiding the discrimination against Ukrainian-speaking people and actions against dissidents, given the area is reported as being lawless for some time now. And focusing on the geopolitical element.
So with that in mind, what does recognition as independent even mean? They get Russian passports and citizenship and freedom of movement and work in Russia already. Are they simply saying that civil and criminal justice can't be appealed to either Ukraine or Russian higher courts? Going to go with the autonomous region concept until a future referendum of accession into Russia?
I can't get an answer from my Ukrainian friends either, "its just hybrid war, American news making it bigger than it is, Biden making misinformation". I watched Putin's speech, but okay, maybe my translation was wrong, seems like denial to say Biden is just making a big deal though, but I guess I too wouldn't care about a border region full of people that aren't interested in my country's values. This last point seems to be what another comment from someone transplanted to Ukraine is saying.
> I'm purposely avoiding the discrimination against Ukrainian-speaking people
Bear in mind that it's not as simple as discriminating between those who speak Ukrainian and those who speak Russian. A significant proportion of the Ukrainian population speak Russian primarily, but otherwise have no political affinity for Russia.
> Going to go with the autonomous region concept until a future referendum of accession into Russia?
This is most likely it, though it could further escalate into an even more egregious invasion, which would trigger a military response from Ukraine, which would then give Russia the casus belli they are looking for.
> A significant proportion of the Ukrainian population speak Russian primarily, but otherwise have no political affinity for Russia.
The best counterpoint for most westerners to understand is this: most Irish people speak English as their primary, if not only, language. Yet English-speaking Irishmen were (and still are) vehemently against being part of the UK.
thank you for including examples of people - on both sides of that conflict - who will not stop fighting their neighbors, no matter what the century. We used to say long ago, "what is so funny about peace, love and understanding?"
Not the same. My understanding is Ireland has always been culturally separate from England, and as you said, wanted to be politically separate for many centuries. Ukraine is a very young independent state, with its borders changing significantly throughout the last 100 years, but for the most part it was happy to be part of Russia/USSR until the USSR collapse.
I'd even say Ukraine is probably more like California, (or Texas) in relation to US, rather than Ireland in relation to GB. And just like I wouldn't mind if California separated from US, I don't mind Ukraine being separate from Russia, but the cultural ties are probably similar to the ties between CA and the rest of US.
Ukraine may be a young state, but the ethnic identity is considerably older. And yes, of course there are significant cultural ties due to shared origin - so what? Serbs and Croats are even closer, which did not preclude them from trying to ethnically cleanse each other in Bosnia.
> it was happy to be part of Russia/USSR
It was so happy in Imperial Russia that the authorities saw it fit to severely censor publications in Ukrainian:
Most large nations have these kind of issues from time to time. US had the civil war. Still, I wouldn't say that historically Ukraine wanted to be completely separate from Russia in the same way as Ireland has (from UK).
Nationalists are usually the loudest minority, while the bulk of population does not really care.
The only time I can think of when Ukraine as a polity expressed the desire to be aligned with Russia was the Pereyaslav Rada during the Hetmanate. And that one was really a choice between Russia and Poland, so the only question they answered is whether Ukraine is culturally closer to one or the other (no surprise there, given their religion). It did not preclude the subsequent hetmans from seeking foreign aid against Russia in further rebellions.
The definitive relationship between Ukraine and Russia was established when Russia very deliberately arranged to starve 2 million Ukrainians to death by the expedient of driving in and stealing literally every bit of agricultural product they could get their hands on, and killing anybody in their way. Many thousands fled where they could to places with difficulties of their own, often also of Soviet origin.
Shortly after, Germans rolled in and devastated the country. Then, the Russians came back through, treating everyone still alive as a Nazi collaborator (because "how could they still be alive, if not?"). Ukrainians who had been drafted by the Nazis and forced to serve as cannon fodder, but survived, were shot or deported to the GULag as traitors (because "how could they still be alive, if not?").
Ukrainians do not think of themselves as Russian even so much as Irishmen consider themselves English.
The Ireland/England example was meant to be an example of how speaking the same language is not indicative of having the same culture.
Culture is really hard to pin down, and there are examples of distinct national identities that are really hard to differentiate in ethnographic terms--the US and Canada are the example that comes readily to mind here.
As for the "Ukrainians happily being part of Russia/USSR" bit, I think the sibling comment does it more justice than I can.
My father is a Ukrainian immigrant in North America. He does not share your opinion. So you probably shouldn't speak for all of them.
As for Holodomor, it was caused by a bloody dictator who killed a lot more Russians than Ukrainians during the same period, so I'm not sure it proves anything about Russian/Ukrainian relationship. To him it would not make any difference if Ukraine was not part of Soviet Union (see how he treated Poland).
I've seen it as well. My guess is that Covid made a huge dent (Low gas prices and economic problems). Putin has to direct this anger somewhere.
This is the swan song of the Russian state. People living in the Soviet sphere see how other countries are developing. Ukraine had a higher GDP per capita than Poland - now it's 4x lower. It's true for every single place from Kaliningrad, Caucasus to Vladivostok. They are worse off than their neighbours for purely political reasons.
Only thing that holds everything together is the authoritarian regime with strong military and natural resources. The problem is the world will become less dependent on fossil fuels and mining in Siberia is more expensive than pretty much everywhere. Russia won't be able to pay for the army.
This is an existential threat to the Russian state. My prediction is that around 2030 there will a civil war, 2nd Chechnya.
it's not about covid or money - its about Ukraine becoming stronger, more independent than ever from russian influence as old corrupt politicians are getting off their political power so he no longer have a leverage over Ukrainian government the way he used to have
its about the choice Ukranian ppl made in 2014 and strong independent Ukraine is a direct threat to russian kleptocracy as russain ppl might have ideas they could make this push too
Putin desperately had to be seen, in Russia, as doing something that seemed to indicate strength, in order to be able to retain power. Facing off against NATO, and getting them to offer him concessions, served that purpose. Invading another country served that purpose. Holding bits of Ukraine, and the fates of people in them, are very much incidental. The concessions were not necessary, but the offers of concessions were all-important.
The Dissolution of Czechoslovakia (Czech: Rozdělení Československa, Slovak: Rozdelenie Česko-Slovenska) took effect on January 1, 1993, and was the self-determined split of the federal republic of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both mirrored the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic, which had been created in 1969 as the constituent states of the Czechoslovak Federal Republic.
The Catalan independence movement (Catalan: independentisme català;[a] Spanish: independentismo catalán) is a social and political movement (with roots in Catalan nationalism) which seeks the independence of Catalonia from Spain, along with in the movement supporting the independence of Northern Catalonia from France, and Alghero from Italy (among other Catalan-speaking areas, referred to as the Catalan Countries).
The Basque conflict, also known as the Spain–ETA conflict, was an armed and political conflict from 1959 to 2011 between Spain and the Basque National Liberation Movement, a group of social and political Basque organizations which sought independence from Spain and France.
There are a few counter-examples and Czechoslovakia is definitely one of them.
The Catalan and Basque independence movements, however, have been successfully contained by Spain. They lacked external support and could not compete with the strength of state suppression. If a neighbor ever chooses to get involved we might see independent Basque and Catalan countries.
As I thought about it today, maybe a better example might be the en/exclaves in the India/Bangladesh borderland established after the partition. It looks like these might have been rationalized in the last 10 years.
Inside the main part of Bangladesh, there were 111 Indian enclaves (17,160.63 acres), while inside the main part of India, there were 51 Bangladeshi enclaves (7,110.02 acres). Under the Land Boundary Agreement, the enclave residents could continue to reside at their present location or move to the country of their choice.
What a terrible claim. For one, if you take a look at their other comments and submissions they don't talk Russia much for propaganda. For two, if they were, I'd like it if their paymasters wasted more money on them. Feed a troll, bankrupt the Ruskies!
An annotated version would be interesting. TL;DR is that it's a mix of truths, omissions, and lies. He's not wrong that some of the modern borders of Ukraine are a Soviet creation, for example, but completely ignores the fact that it was already in the process of establishing itself as an independent country before the Bolsheviks (as the Ukrainian People's Republic).
Speaking more broadly, one needs to get into fairly ancient history to make sense of various territorial disputes between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland, and how it all contributed to ethnogenesis of Ukrainians. In particular, look into Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Ironic, given Ukraine wouldn’t be in this situation had it not given up its nuclear weapons on the back of promises—from the U.K., U.S. and Russia—that its territory would be respected [1].
U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the agreement to protect Ukraine from a Russian invasion in exchange for it's nuclear weapons. However the agreement was never submitted it for ratification by the U.S. Senate. So in effect in the words of the Brooking institution it became a 'politically binding but not legally binding agreement.'
The tl;dr is not true however. There is binding international law affecting certain treaties, and some kind of treaties and parties do expect ratification from each signatories' internal legislative body.
(e.g. totally random example https://www.jta.org/archive/french-senate-ratifies-lausanne-...)
Your body is correct though:
Now why the US follows a counter-pattern and why Ukraine did not ask for ratification is another discussion, that I consider to be long term harmful.
From the Ukraine's side/pov: it will be politically not wise for the U.S.A. to back out of the protection treaty. There is good will capital that is lost, just for allowing this 8 year situation to occur.
The 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was specifically a memorandum, not a treaty. It was never intended to be submitted to the US Senate for ratification.
> Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was specifically a memorandum, not a treaty
Nobody in this thread claimed
it was. A signed memorandum is still a promise and an agreement, even if not ratified as a treaty. We broke an agreement with Ukraine, letting her get sacked. We didn’t breach a treaty.
Lies on a handshake may not get far in court. They’re still lies.
In what sense were they Ukraine's nuclear weapons? They were physically inside Ukraine but controlled by Russia, as the article you linked makes clear.
They were Ukraine's in the sense that they had physical possession and unlimited time to circumvent the locks ("permissive action link", PAL). It's true the PALs may have been very non-trivial to circumvent (e.g., some PALs require a code to decrypt firing parameters), but I haven't seen anyone argue that this wasn't still vastly easier than developing weapons from scratch. Ukraine had substantial nuclear weapons expertise; it was not just a physical hosting site of the weapons.
It is hard to guess because politics is complicated and it is a hypothetical, but I'd be surprised if they really had unlimited time to circumvent the locks. If they hadn't given them up peacefully, for all we know somebody might have decided to take them by force.
Can you give some examples? I brought up Chechnya because it declared independence literally at the same time as Ukraine, and Russia waited for 3 years before finally sending the troops in (and that turned out to be a huge mess!).
Hitler mainly. Napolean? those are the classic examples. Both thought Russia was an impotent land of peasants. It's not like Russia has been invaded that many times.
If soviet russia's PAL locks were built anything like US's security measures where it's actually subtle timing information they would have to rip out and completely rebuild the explosive shell that trigger the nuclear reaction, at which point you essentially are creating new nukes from scratch.
1. It's not obvious to me you can't reverse-engineer the necessary timing information, especially when you have a bunch of nuclear weapons experts and a huge stockpile allowing you to take apart a few and use that knowledge on the rest. To my knowledge, the PAL system was intended to prevent weapons from being detonated by rouge officers or thieves; it wasn't designed to thwart states.
2. Even if all the conventional explosions are worthless, you still have all the nuclear material and other extremely sophisticated equipment involved with boosting, etc. It's not like creating new nukes from scratch.
I think for this conversation to continue productively, we need experts to weigh in on these issues.
They're not movie bombs where doing something wrong sets them off. PALs were very much the fail safe kind of device because if messing with them could set off the warhead then you've just discovered the way to detonate the warhead which a PAL was designed to prevent from happening. Nukes are also relatively safe in that it requires a very carefully timed sequence of explosion to properly implode the core so an accidental triggering is just a dirty bomb instead of a nuclear detonation.
It depends on what level the detonation was triggered at. An accidental detonation that actually triggers the primary device detonation mechanism could result in the bomb actually going off.
If an accidental detonation means just triggering some of the explosives, then yes, you'd get a dirty bomb. However, it's actually more likely that the bomb would actually detonate than the explosives being partially set off... they're designed specifically to be hard to detonate unless the actual detonator mechanism is used.
Honestly, the biggest risk in failure is that the missile gets launched, but the payload is a dud. So now, your country gets the punishment for launching a nuke, but none of the benefits.
Mostly if you're not smart enough to work remotely in which case you're probably not the person to be trying to bypass a PAL in the first place. And again they're not designed to trigger the bomb incorrectly if messed with because the whole point is to make them unusable unless you have the PAL code.
One might easily imagine an energetic disabling event that doesn't result in nuclear yield. Just fire one detonator.
That said, Command Disable mechanisms on modern weapons don't result in a loud bang. However, there's no guarantee those mechanisms are all that are used in mechanisms which may deter physical penetration of vital areas of the weapon.
It's easy to imagine but also it makes these immensely more dangerous to house and transport. Why fail dangerous when scrambling the timing information is as effective at preventing a nuke from being used?
Or the nuke does an intentional fizzle (sets off the implosion in an intentionally asymmetric manner resulting in plutonium being spread all over, but no nuclear criticality) which seems like the most serious-but-still-plausible "fuck you for trying this" mechanism I can think of.
How much of nukes is even hardware vs software? I'd naively think that you'd probably just rip out the core of the device and wire up a new thing that can zap it to go boom.
Nuclear bombs are strongly disinclined to "go boom" unlike say TNT. Turning the energy from splitting atoms into a large explosion, which is what you want from a weapon, will require precise timing. If you get it wrong either nothing happens, or you maybe create a small detonation, and cover a modestly sized area with dangerous debris from the failed attempt. Just throw a box of grenades into a waste water treatment plant or something instead for a fraction of the cost.
For reference, there have been a number (dozens, at least) of nuclear devices dropped accidentally all over the world (some of which landed in the USA), but none have ever accidentally detonated.
This was a plot device in the popular Fallout games. Where a city had built up around a nuclear bomb which failed to detonate during a nuclear war.
The timing of the explosives around the core is extremely important to actually getting a nuclear detonation instead of just a dirty bomb so the precise timing and triggering of the detonators is a very critical part of the bomb. They're not just simple fuses you can light and run away.
Then use rad-hard arduino/esp-32/cortex-m0/RittzkenfaiiV/whatever equivalents running NTP / Precision Time Protocol(PTP) in a cluster, with the elements embedded in the individual explosives. Maybe read about https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+fourth+generation+nuclear+weapons and how that could be applied to the material at hand, Ka-Boom!
You can, but it's not as simple as it sounds. Since the timing of the explosives is critical to achieving a nuclear explosion, you can't really do the timing all in software. You need a specialized network of switches that splits the detonation signal several times so that all the explosives go off at exactly the same time. Even the wires have to be cut to the same length with a tiny margin of error.
You can replace the timing and electronics mechanism prior to that network, but probably any sort of tamper resistant mechanism for a weapon will remove part of that network of switches if removed from the device. The rest of the controls are just too easy to replace to be effective at keeping someone from a roll your own type solution.
I think about nuclear physics and high performance aerospace as the distinction between hardware and software shrinking to zero.
You're effecting physical operations (movement, explosions) on such tight timescales that the software becomes part of the hardware. You can't just run the code on a different setup: the code is defined by the hardware it's running on, because it's orchestrating the physical properties of the hardware it's running on.
As an analogy, think about programming early video game systems or computers, where a single clock cycle was critical. Is the software just software? Or is it intertwined with the hardware it's running on? (See: emulators having to mimic actual hardware performance)
“Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate. Their use was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
> Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate
If Ukraine had held on to those nukes, disconnected, an engineer today could re-work them to function under Kiev’s command. (American PALs from the era have de-classified weaknesses that merited upgrades. Post-USSR nuclear safekeeping was roundly criticised for decades [1].)
Even barring that, possessing fissile material is no small feat. It would give Kiev the credible capability to e.g. threaten large sections of Russian agricultural production. That’s the sort of thing that deters tanks.
> “Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate. Their use was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system”
I don't know where they got it, the book author cited in Wiki. The man cited read too much Tom Clancy I guess.
USSR nuclear weapons had no permissive action links as such
Kazakhstan's, and Ukrainian's nukes were fully operational, sans confused nuclear weapons officer command chain.
The launch codes were employed, but they were used solely for checking the authenticity of launch, and targetting commands.
> They were the Soviet Union's nukes. That organization ceased to exist.
I agree with some of what you say, but "the Soviet Union ceased to exist" is too simplistic. The codes necessary for firing the weapons (without modification) were controlled by military leaders largely in Russia.
> the agreement not to expand NATO towards the east
This is a myth. There was a discussion in the midst of a negotiation that mentioned this. The final agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, which everyone is presently violating, did not.
There were multiple assurances made throughout the years in diplomatic comminques that were later declassified including James Baker's famous "not one inch eastward".
Lots of ideas were mooted and abandoned in the transcript [1]; it's revisionist to fixate on that one.
If you and I are negotiating the purchase and sale of a car, I say 10, you acknowledge my 10 and say 20, and we settle on 15, my heirs can’t later claim you said 10 and so agreed to it. That is the nonsense argument being raised here.
Even Gorbachev, to whom these statements were made, concurs he never understood there to be an agreement.
Most people recognize Russia to be the successor state to the Soviet Union, much like how they recognize that the Fifth French Republic is the successor state to the Fourth French Republic.
> In what sense were they Ukraine's nuclear weapons? They were physically inside Ukraine but controlled by Russia, as the article you linked makes clear
Possession is nine-tenths of the law [1].
Soviet weapons in Ukraine serviced by Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved had no clear owner. Russia would have had to seize them to gain control. Ukraine would have needed to develop or contract out servicing expertise.
To say nothing of the threat even inoperable nukes pose. If Ukraine had unserviced warheads in 2014, do you really think they would have found nobody who could get them working again?
Ukraine also probably had half the engineers and scientists that built the damn things in the first place considering how much of the Soviet nuclear industry was located in Ukraine at the time.
They ended up with the 3rd largest nuclear stockpile and whilst they would probably would get invaded by both sides if they didn’t surrender the nukes and attempted to assert operational control over them they surely had that capability.
Also back then the primary fear was that some of those nukes would end up on the open market, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, North Korea heck even South Africa back then were all likely buyers.
Those were simple gun-type pure fission weapons (~6 kiloton), which are two orders of magnitude smaller than the typical thermonuclear weapons (~1 megaton) left by the USSR in Ukraine.
They actually posted a video on their twitter of a mushroom cloud somewhere last week, then deleted it. I followed them for a long time, but recently they have gone full conspiracy-theorist. They frequently post videos, photos, or rumors with no source, and when you ask them the source they just say "you should trust us". These aren't UN observers, they are quite extreme and scaremongering on their twitter.
They only forbid Russian residents from having direct access to production servers. That means sysadmin and devops roles. Russians are employed in other positions.
Wrong. On the contrary, Trump administration imposed additional sanctions that prevented Nord Stream 2 from being complete — which Biden administration have reversed.
Western media portrayed Trump as "pro-Putin", but if you look at the actual decisions by administrations, he was the one who really pushed back against Putin, compared both to Obama and Biden.
Actually, trump was being anti-NATO and working against the alliance, trying to alienate US allies. He was very pro-Putin, he still is - he spoke about how brilliant Putin's strategy in Ukraine is during this latest escalation of conflict (https://www.rawstory.com/trump-putin-ukraine/).
Biden has been a much stauncher anti-Putin-aggression ally than trump ever was. The coalition of nations adding synchronized sanctions against Putin's regime was extremely well done, as was Biden's repeatedly calling out of Russia and saying exactly what they were going to do ahead of time for the past month. JB has been very impressive in forming a coalition with US allies to enact a strong, unified, response to Putin's aggression. This is made possible by actually working with allies - like not blocking a project they desire - earning and keeping their trust.
In an alternate reality where trump wins election he likely trash talks NATO and does not help Ukraine at all (especially since they did not make up dirt to smear his political enemies). In fact I think Putin was relying on the weakened status of NATO, an environment created by trump, to allow him to do what he's currently doing with fewer consequences. If trump were in office this would likely lead to the breakup of NATO entirely.
> He was very pro-Putin, he still is - he spoke about how brilliant Putin's strategy in Ukraine is during this latest escalation of conflict (https://www.rawstory.com/trump-putin-ukraine/).
Having an opinion about brilliance of someone's strategy is not a value judgement. There were plenty of brilliant strategists who were awful people and fought for awful ideas.
I remember how western media attacked Trump after he praised Lee as a great general, making it look as if he supported confederacy — which in context of his speech was clear he did not. In both cases, it's either a gross logical fallacy or a weak manipulation, and just as I can't take the media that reported it seriously after that, I can't take your arguments seriously after this either.
It's clear that trump was cheerleading Putin's actions and mocking the US. He even "joked" that we should do something similar on our southern border:
"And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border."
His surrogates like Tucker Carlson are also praising Putin and suggesting that liberals are your enemy, not Putin (https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1496290844797992960). This attitude among the American right became prevalent at trump's direction, and it is not an accident.
This may not seem like much to a non-American, but it's a shameful change in our national discourse for a political leader to cheerlead an enemy like this in the middle of a crisis. If you ignore this, fine - but my other point still stands, trump was anti-NATO and wanted to get out of it:
"‘Yeah, the second term. We’ll do it in the second term,’ then-president reportedly said"
My thought on the entire situation - Putin expected trump to win again and pull from NATO, and then he'd kick this shit off. That didn't happen but he didn't expect Biden to be able to lead a strong, unified response (sanctions etc.) after the disastrous years of trump poisoning the relationship the US has with Europe.
Unfortunately Putin just has to wait until western nations to elect fickle / Russian aligned leaders (like maybe trump again in 2024) to win out.
No, Trump was absolutely "pro-putin", and sanctions were imposed in spite of his protests. The administration could not help but be staffed by competent Russia hawks, since those same folks were needed to push Trump's desired agenda on Iran, but with regard to "being tough on Russia", Trump himself often had to be dragged kicking and screaming.
I should point out that the Trump administration's small and ineffective sanctions aimed at Nord Stream 2 are the exception that proves the rule. Nord Stream 2 brought together a unique set of issues that inspired Trump: hatred of Germany and Merkel, hatred of NATO, and his religious love of fossil fuels, manfiested in fear that Nord Stream 2 would wipe out his dream of shipping natural gas to Europe on tanker ships.
But the stubborn reality is that Nord Stream 2 was built on Trump's watch, and in the end his sanctions did exactly nothing. They threatened only a tiny fraction of the uncompleted prohect-- a couple hundred kilometers-- which were simply completed anyway by a Russian company instead of a Swiss one.
I'm having a hard time understanding your objection. From the article "Trump touted these as major achievements", but because he complained privately to his staff they .... somehow don't count?
But because Biden something something something, when he removed sanctions that somehow doesn't count either?
Since when do actions not speak louder than words?
(Not to mention these tell all Trump books are unlikely to be reliable sources.)
That something involved acknowledging that the pipeline was mere months from being completed, and that the US could do nothing to stop it, so why continue to waste diplomatic capital in a fight that we've already lost. Especially since that diplomatic capital may soon be critical in persuading Germany to withhold certification of the pipeline.
And if you have any specific criticisms related to the accuracy of Bolton's claims, which align nicely with what we know of Trump from his public statements, feel free to explain.
You come from a mindset where motivations matter more than actions.
It would take a lot of work for us to speak the same language, and I don't think HN is the place for that.
Edit: I did not flag you BTW. If you still need an answer to your question read the other comments in the thread. If you still don't understand the answer, then I don't know how to explain.
I didn't ask a question. What I did do is make a logical assertion with a wee little bit of outside support. I then pointed out that you seemed unable to articulate a material response, which is still the case.
What matters is the end result. And just as you showed yourself, if american voter wanted to put pressure on Putin, he should've voted for Trump (and his administration) and not Biden.
Technically it says trump and then gives the admin as evidence.
Given what I read in Michael Lewis's excellent book about his administration I do not believe the two are anywhere near as correlated as they would be for (say) Clinton and the Clinton administration or Truman etc. Even bush who was an edge case because of Cheney.
No, at pain of pedantry, the grandparent said this:
> Western media portrayed Trump as "pro-Putin", but if you look at the actual decisions by administrations, he was the one who really pushed back against Putin, compared both to Obama and Biden.
The lack of distinction between Trump and the rest of his adminstration is exactly what Trump is now using to claim that he was "tough on Russia".
Putin just recognized the full Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, 2/3 of which is currently controlled by Ukraining troops. Hard to see how this doesn't escalate into a full on war now?
Like all racketeers, Putin will lie through his teeth and will grab anything he could grab waiting for opportunity to grab even more. He'll never stop voluntarily. He can't produce, he knows only how to steal and rob.
So their best chance is to push back and to look for allies who could help put Putin back in place that he belongs - near the latrine.
We don't know that - and sadly, it's not that unlikely. But if they don't retreat from those regions while it's still an unknown, it will just give Russia pretext to invade entire Ukraine. They don't have a lot to lose by retreating and potentially everything to win if Russia backs off. There's not a chance anyway they would be able to take those regions back.
> If they don't retreat from those regions while it's still an unknown, it will just give Russia pretext to invade entire Ukraine.
According to Ukraine, Russia invented the pretexts it has already cited for the “need” to intervene in those two regions, so from Ukraine's perspective, avoiding given Russia a “genuine” (given Russia’s nakedly illegal claims) pretext has zero marginal cost, since the absence of a “genuine” (even given Russia’s preexisting propaganda position) pretext has no evident impact on Russia’s willingness to act.
Given that, Ukraine has little rational reason to consider providing a pretext under Russia’s propaganda framework to be a significant factor.
You don't scede territory in hopes that it might make your adversary content. That has basically never worked historically. Russia already has invented a pretext for "pacifying" Ukraine. The response must be sudden and overwhelming force.
Put another way, when someone has broken into your house at night when it is obviously occupied, you do not hand over your wife or children in hopes your own life may be spared. You respond with an escalation of force.
Is Putin even interested in making them into sovereign states? I don’t see how it achieves any of Russia’s goals. It hardly widens the Volgograd Gap.
I think concessions from the West would be better for Russia. But since they aren’t giving them any, Putin seemingly had to go in with his “peacekeeping force” or be called on his bluff.
I think Putin might plan to invade Ukraine to the point of making a land bridge to Crimea. Because I don’t see how Russia’s position has been improved with this move, even if Ukraine backs off from Donetsk and Luhansk completely.
> Their best bet is probably to give them up, in hopes Russia will not invade the entire country.
The concessions Russia is looking for from the West are retreat from the NATO countries of Eastern Europe so that Russia can do (or, turn them into puppets with the threat of doing) the same thing to them that it is now doing to Ukraine.
The first part is nakedly overt, the second part is not even all that subtle in their intent. They’ve been very clear that Russia is entitled to a sphere of influence around its borders under its effective exclusive direction.
But how does this make logical sense. There's a number of European countries that are not in NATO that are now going to be signing up to NATO. All that Russia has gained is to veto Ukraine's NATO membership but it has lost this bigger battle.
The question is how much it will cost Ukraine? In my opinion the conflict is already lost, now the Ukraine should concentrate on minimizing the losses and avoiding full scale war.
Except if you've followed Ukrainian politics since, say, 2000, you'd also know that those regions were always very pro-Russian. Yanukovych came to power twice (including after the Orange Revolution politicians self-destructed) because of it.
Without them voting in Ukrainian elections, the entire political scene in Ukraine has shifted towards the West and become somewhat more stable... Ukrainian politicians can't admit it but they don't actually want those regions back.
Only part of Eastern regions is occupied by Russia since 2014. "the entire political scene in Ukraine has shifted towards the West" is reaction to the russian agression. They more Russia attacks Ukraine, the more Ukrainians hate Russia.
> Abkhazia and South Ossetia would seem to be the more relevant examples that go counter to your implied argument.
Yeah, if you were advising the government of Ukraine, you could make that argument in 2014 about why yielding in practice without formally giving up Crimea made sense.
But, given Crimea, if you were Ukraine in 2022, you’d have to consider the balance to have shifted back to the Munich/Danegeld position.
Crimea is gone and it's not coming back. That much has been clear pretty much since day 1 of annexation. It's a strategic port, and there was a chance of a color revolution handing it to NATO. I could imagine the Kazakh cosmodrome driving a similar wedge, depending on how and if unrest grows there. Neither would imply Putin or the Russian leaders more broadly want something like "lebensraum".
In fact, Russia can't sustain an Afghanistan level war/quagmire, which is what a broader Ukrainian invasion would be. Even if they had designs beyond Abkhazia/SO style "independence movement support", I don't think they could afford (militarily, not economically) to follow through. Maybe I'm wrong and this will be like the 2nd Chechen war. I think it won't. Plenty of Western powers are already more than happy to supply "lethal aid", i.e., weapons and munitions, to Ukraine, even with neo-Nazi groups involved. The same could not be said for the Islamic fighters in Chechnya (AFAIK).
And I don't think Minsk 2 was a bluff. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are honoring it. Ukraine needs to stop implementing discriminatory language and education laws, and seriously seek to implement some form of regional autonomy. Russia needs to withdraw its forces (it was pretending it hadn't deployed any). Neither side wishes to "give in" to the other. Neither side are "the good guys", or a "beacon of democracy", or "anti-imperialists", and deserving of military support.
I wish that there had been more focus on the fact that the West could have relatively easily applied pressure to make a more serious attempt at implementing Minsk 2. But instead, everything is reduced to a battle of good and evil.
What is relevant is that the action now in Donetsk and Luhansk demonstrates that the approach of tacit acceptance taken in response to the occupation of Crimea is not (contrary to what one might assume if only looking at Abkhasia and South Ossetia as indicators) sufficient to forestall further Russian territorial aggression.
I agree, Crimea is not relevant to the discussion of whether the most likely analog is Abkhazia/SO or Munich/Danegeld. That was my point in bringing it up. It was a conditional part of your argument, but I think it was an orthogonal issue.
My other two points were that there are strong practical reasons why a full Ukrainian invasion is quite unlikely and why a full withdrawal was quite unlikely ("quagmire" and no Minsk 2 implementation, respectively).
I'm not a fan of terms like "territorial aggression", not that it's not apt (Russia invading is clearly aggression, even a meaningful threat is "aggression" according to the UN charter), but such phrases are often used as a substitute for the actual motivating factors, and hence, used as a way to obfuscate the substantive issues. I still think there is a more straightforward and practical explanation.
> And I don't think Minsk 2 was a bluff. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are honoring it. Ukraine needs to stop implementing discriminatory language and education laws, and seriously seek to implement some form of regional autonomy. Russia needs to withdraw its forces (it was pretending it hadn't deployed any).
Putin is not consumed with abstract "territorial aggression", looking at a globe with flames in his eyes (I'm not accusing you of that, I'm just having fun, and making a broader point about some of the international relations phrases that are kindof weasel words in my opinion).
Well I appear to have been implicitly quite wrong. While it’s not clear Russia will try to hold Ukraine (“quagmire”), it does appear to have launched a full invasion. Supposedly to “demilitarize” it — who knows what that will turn out to mean, but hopefully it does not involve a long term occupation. In terms of minimizing loss of life, at best we can hope for a Gulf War level annihilation and then speedy withdrawal, targeting the Ukrainian military, and mass destruction of civilian fundamental infrastructure, and worst of all, lots of civilians killed. There appear to have been many war crimes in that war, so I don’t offer it as an example of a “good war”. But I’m also not optimistic that even that example will be the maximum extent.
Biden was pushing and pushing and gave no assurance to Putin and we're here now. I'm not sure who pulls Biden's strings, but it could just be his old self when we was Obama's vice president and actually started the Euromaidan. As an US taxpayer, I'm ashamed my taxes go to support stirring of conflicts abroad with known outcomes! Just like the bombing of the sovereign Syria and the desire to separate it into two. Suddenly, what Russia is doing (and we've attempted and have done successfully in the past ourselves) is bad! Until we act the the world's bully, nobody will truly respect us, and world peace would just be a pipe dream!
Russia will probably invade the entire country, because...well Ukraine could still join NATO and would likely now have the votes (they just can't be in a state of war.) Also Putin made pretty clear yesterday he doesn't believe Ukraine can exist without it being Russian.
Invading the entire country would be very costly. Russia has a superior military but Ukraine’s is still very large, and the attacker needs superior numbers to begin with (a general principle). And they would have to deal with a lot more insurgency warfare as they move into the west of the country.
I think Russia might possibly have ambitions of conquering the east of the Ukraine up to Dnieper but no further. Which is still a large area, to be sure.
Russia has a tremendous air advantage if they were to invade, and NATO can't help without sparking a major conflict. The HQ of their Naval Force was already taken with Crimea and the Navy itself is very small; there's also a good bit of Russian apologists in Ukraine especially in the East that would probably make moving close to the Capitol fairly easy. From Belarus it's essentially a straight shot to Kiev. I hope you're right, but Putin seems to have indicated he wants it all. I think it might start in the East but spread.
What would they want with the whole country, lol? Believe they would be happy if the EU adopts that economically ruined part any time, without threatening them further by pulling more and more countries .. ah anyway.. So many armchair politicians and strategists with so much far off comments here, it is getting hilarious.
And yeah, a lot of pain that will now ensue likely could have been avoided if that NATO thing hadn't started now, or maybe even taken Russia in when they pleaded for it 20 years ago? But yeah, now go on and push them more and more into their corner, where either one of us or them will soon do something really stupid.
I know I will be downvoted to oblivion, and Russias move now is very bad, but the hypocracy and the US-pinked armchair geostrategic world view here is really so one sided, cannot believe it.
Western Ukraine is much more wealthy than the East, and also the Western part can still join NATO...what's not to understand? I'm pretty well versed on Ukraine and have been following this since 2004 with the Orange Revolution. There's nothing to "armchair." Listen to Putin's speech and what he has been saying for the past decade on the matter. He doesn't believe in Ukrainian independence at all. Since the 2014 Revolution (and it occurring during his Sochi Olympics) Putin has plotted his revenge, after he lost control. I don't think that stops with only taking half; I hope it does and Russia is pushed out entirely...just don't see that has Putin's overall plan.
So, don't you think Ukraine was asking for this all the time? Maybe now the speculations about Zelensky being a Putin's puppet make more sense; he's a good actor, no doubt his past career, but you had to be really stupid not knowing what was going to happen. At the end of the day, we all expected Putin to recognize these republics back during the Euromaidan. I'm pretty sure a lot of the Russians in East Ukraine felt betrayed all this time. So, often you can postpone certain events, but they will eventually happen - like it or not. And this is no surprize for anyone.
The interesting thing about Putin's presidential decrees [1][2] is that they do not actually say anything about what the borders of DNR/LNR are. They just say, "recognize ... as a sovereign and independent state".
I rather suspect that this is deliberate, to allow for flexible interpretation as needed. On one hand, it's obvious justification for pushing beyond the actual territory controlled by DNR/LNR. On the other, if they don't actually do that, or try and are stopped, they can always claim that that was the plan all along, and "mission accomplished".
I'm not even sure who you're replying to. Looking at the other comments plus the front-page ranking, seems as if there's plenty of interest in this map on HN.
