Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

"The memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers: the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents."

It is a bit unfair to blame it on US, France and UK only, when russia signed the document, too - and was the actual party to violate it by attacking ukraine already in 2014.

(russia's position is, that since Maidan 2014 the state with which they signed the treaty, does not exist anymore)

And they have been stupidly playing politics and investing in "green energy" while buying ever more gas from Russia and shutting down their own energy independence.

In the middle of the winter, economic sanctions have their hands basically tied. What is Europe going to do? Turn off the gas? I don't think so.

Maybe at least France will stop D%#$ing around and finish their reactor. The only question is can Putin put down the insurrections in Ukraine faster than the rest of Europe can untangle their energy dependence, or will it just be another Crimea where everyone forgets about it in a year or two, and Putin can pull it off somewhere else in another 5 years.

No one said it was legitimate insofar as that means ethical. I am simply curious about the huge wave of groupthink sentiment that makes no attempt to fill everyone in on the context of the situation, and whether this was actually a logical (absence all ethics) move by Russia. One of the replies to my comment offered an interesting perspective. We live in a real world with real events. Just because us westerners have been shielded from war for most of our lives, and because war is immoral, does not mean that it won't happen, or that it isn't interesting to think about it objectively.

Makes one wonder if the fact that most Ukrainians are white people living in an industrialized society has anything to do with the scale of the outpouring of emotion on HN and elsewhere.

"In fact, the US has had to tread very carefully simply to place missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Poland, which is a neighbor of Ukraine."

This is Russian disinformation. Aegis Ashore (which is the system being installed in Poland) is designed to launched SM3 missiles that are designed to intercept ballistic missiles. They aren't nuclear armed at all. The Russians have been claiming that the silos could also launch Tomahawk missiles, some variants of which are nuclear armed. There have been no plans for this to happen, and the US has even offered to allow inspections.

It's interesting that people think that when an enemy country (as most people in the west think of Russia) attacks a neutral country (after endless warnings and the ocupation of a sizable part of its territory several years prior, so it's not like this came out of the blue), that they should intervene as if they were the world police who decides who can attack who. Or some kind of righteous peace force who is above it all, that can attack anyone who attacks anyone else, not seeing the irony in their position of attacking others who do something they don't like.

This thinking really needs to go away. No, it's not ok of Russia to attack another country. But if your country then counter-attacks on behalf of Ukraine, you should expect Russia to then declare war on you immediately. This sounds far-fetched, but that could actually happen. And something like it did happen numerous times in history and we all remember very well how that ended (well some of us do, others seem to have never even heard of that).

We like to think Germany was defeated in WWII and the West and the Soviet Union (for those few who remember the USSR actually arrived in Berlin first, in fact - but lost more lives than everyone else combined) won... but that's not true; no one ever wins a full-scale war like that. Everyone loses, some just lose a bit less than the others... Germany was nearly flattened, but not before most of the rest of Europe was as well - priceless property, artistic treasures, not to mention lives, were lost well beyond anything that someone who claims to be a "victor" may admit. This is what happens when a country "helps" others just to stop a bully they don't like (and then the other side's allies help them, and so on).

I really, really hope Europe will never get flattened again, but seeing what is happening in Ukraine, and how people react online (some of whom may one day be in a position where they can actually act) makes me very doubtful of that even in my lifetime (I still have quite a few decades ahead, I hope...).

I don't think we should sit and do nothing! But please stop asking our leaders to lower themselves to the same level as the aggressor and just drop bombs on other human beings!

Let's show Russia that while they may, on the very short term, win a battle, that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable anymore in the 21st century, and that for a long time ahead, Russia should find itself isolated form the greates economies of the world, politically, financially and in any way possible to make sure they understand that they must never do this again, and anyone watching should take note that no one is above the law (that includes the USA!)... if you use violence, we will not use violence against you (well, not until we're the direct target of the aggression, even I would concede), but we'll see you with utmost distrust from then one and make you regret deeply to have behaved like that.

If NATO had from the beginning worked this way, we wouldn't have found ourselves in this situation... most things went on as normal after Russia took over Krimea. And Putin was not completely wrong in saying NATO has expanded a lot in the last 30 years, which entailed planting bombs right at the Russian's doorsteps from all directions, flagrantly provoking the bear knowing very well that this was not making them happy, in a behaviour quite similar to the bully of the story.