971–980 of 1001 posts
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To take action to end it. We are in "unstoppable force vs immovable object" situation. Putin does not have an option to lose. We don't have an option to lose the country once again. These things historically are only resolved by genocide and mass population displacement. Alternative is removing a single person from power.
This doesn’t answer my question: how is every Russian passport holder responsible for this conflict? Responsibility is a very precisely defined concept: how are they all responsible?
By not having removed Putler from power.
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To take action to end it. We are in "unstoppable force vs immovable object" situation. Putin does not have an option to lose. We don't have an option to lose the country once again. These things historically are only resolved by genocide and mass population displacement. Alternative is removing a single person from power.
Nazi Germany wasn't stopped by any of those.
It's a bit alarming that some HN posters are saying that Ukraine never applied to join NATO. That they did is the central seed of the John Mearsheimer lecture 'Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?' [1], which got about another 2m views in the last 48 hours. Mearsheimer provides a direct quote demonstrating NATO's resolve to eventually incorporate Ukraine, which was pledged at the Bucharest 2008 summit. Bush was also push…
Yeah, I've seen linked all over the 'Net in the last week. Overwhelmingly predominantly by raging pro-Putler trolls, so you'll forgive me if referring to it doesn't exactly increase your standing in my eyes.
> Mearsheimer's narrative depicts a cornered Russia determined to make Ukraine so politically toxic and disrupted that it would cease to qualify for NATO membership.
Heh, guess I'll have to watch it, after all... But, judging from your summation here for now: So that means it's only "the West's fault" in the sense that they didn't immediately accept Ukraine into NATO back when they applied, right?
Arsehole dictators don't understand "soft-power" reasoning and pleading; they need to be faced with fait accompli.
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I know you’re going to disagree with this using some silly rationalization, I won’t respond to after this because it fundamentally sounds like you don’t believe is Ukraine’s right to self determination and you think that they should be bound by deals the US or Russia have made on its behalf in the past which Ukraine had no say in. Here it is, NATO is fundamentally a defensive organization, and Ukraine is a democratic…
They did, in 2014 their democratically elected president chose to stop/delay EU talks because it would cost the country much more at the time (Russia was giving them 1/3 price for the gas and much more money than EU wanted to give). Then Maidan happened and the rest is history. I agree with you in principle, but it is a sad reality that we live in a world where it is not the case. If you had a bully in a classroom, y…
Sounds like he severely misread the room, turned dictator in the people's eyes for wanting to sell out their freedom for thirty pieces of silver, and was deposed in a revolution. You know, like sometimes happens (and sometimes not) when democratically elected leaders turn dictator.
> If you had a bully in a classroom, you would not go around provoke him, you would try to live with him even though you don't like him.
Maybe you wouldn't. But that never works in the long run; sooner or later someone has to give the bully his comeuppance. Better sooner than later.
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If the sanctions didn’t work before, I don’t know why they would work now. I don’t have the answers, but certainly any move toward more militarization of the world is usually a bad thing.
> If the sanctions didn’t work before, I don’t know why they would work now. Because these are different and harsher sanctions. That's why people are complaining more about them now, and why they might might perhaps finally work. > I don’t have the answers, Yeah, that's becoming abundantly clear. > but ...you like to bloviate? > certainly any move toward more militarization of the world is usually a bad thing. "Every…
Please, be trollish elsewhere and waste someone else’s time.
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From Russia’s point of view, they had many reasons to annex Crimea. It wasn’t just a random act of aggression. Having studied this situation a bit, my conclusion is that both sides are to blame, with Russia being considerably more culpable due to choosing the violent option. Geopolitics isn’t simple and thinking that one side is entirely to blame is just naive and falling for propaganda. By escalation I’m referring t…
> From Russia’s point of view, they had many reasons to annex Crimea. Oh they sure did, and all of them were of the militaristic and imperialistic variety. > Having studied this situation a bit, my conclusion is that both sides are to blame How can Ukraine/the West possibly be responsible for Russia launching an imperialistic annexation war? Nothing can excuse that.
Again, as I said in my initial comment, most of the blame here is on Russia. Nonetheless, the world isn’t black and white.
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Spending effort on convincing their family and friends that the state propaganda is not to be trusted is probably the best middle-term investment a Russian can make right now.
Have tried it with my parents, unfortunately, they eat all this crap from Putin's TV. People who are brainwashed can't really be talked into reason. Politics start and end wars, but a person can break ties with his family irreversible because of those in-family political discussions.
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My brother was on the verge of traveling to Russia from Latvia recently as a tourist. Apparently you can get a bus from Riga to St Petersburg that takes a few hours. I presume you could take one in the other direction to get around the lack of flights etc, but I have no idea about visas etc.
You can get to the border, but it will be hard to impossible to cross it legally right now.