Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

One Year into the War in Ukraine

acoup.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 190 posts

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#161

Post by mopsi »

leereeves wrote: post #157
RivieraKid wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an accurate summary. The separatists are under Russian control. The Russian army has been fighting alongside them since 2014, when they invaded Donbas. In the 1991 referendum, voters in Dontesk and Luhansk overwhelmingly voted against being part of Russia. Per your source, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas, 75% want to be part of Ukraine. In the Russian-controlled part of Donbas, 57% want to be…

> The separatists are under Russian control. I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice. > In the 1991 referendum... A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now? > First point, why such stark difference? An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enoug…

> I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice.

Does not dehumanize at all. Ukraine fell into political turmoil similar to January 6 riots in the US, and Russia used intelligence operatives to instigate further violent riots, quickly invaded parts of Ukraine taking advantage of the confusion, and established a military occupation. The so-called separatists were directly funded and supported by Russia in the earliest days, and then under the full control of the military admin after tanks rolled in.

As I've told before, the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed the same when they were investigating whether Russia is responsible for MH17 shootdown, which happened on occupied territories. Since Russia had full control, ECHR found them responsible.

Locals have had as much freedom to choose their future as Parisians in 1940.

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#162

Post by leereeves »

mopsi wrote: post #161
leereeves wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The separatists are under Russian control. I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice. > In the 1991 referendum... A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now? > First point, why such stark difference? An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enoug…

> I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice. Does not dehumanize at all. Ukraine fell into political turmoil similar to January 6 riots in the US, and Russia used intelligence operatives to instigate further violent riots, quickly invaded parts of Ukraine taking advantage of the confusion, and established a mil…

You've conflated two different issues. The ECHR has ruled (and I think they're right) that Russia is in control of the region.

That tells us nothing about whether the people of the region want to be part of Russia.

For that, we have to look to polls, like the one I cited, which tell us that the people living in the region do support Russia.

Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#163

Post by mopsi »

leereeves wrote: post #162
mopsi wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice. Does not dehumanize at all. Ukraine fell into political turmoil similar to January 6 riots in the US, and Russia used intelligence operatives to instigate further violent riots, quickly invaded parts of Ukraine taking advantage of the confusion, and established a mil…

You've conflated two different issues. The ECHR has ruled (and I think they're right) that Russia is in control of the region. That tells us nothing about whether the people of the region want to be part of Russia. For that, we have to look to polls, like the one I cited, which tell us that the people living in the region do support Russia. Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supp…

The so-called separatists don't represent the people no matter how you approach them. In the earliest days, they consisted of local thugs, the kind of people who come out just to destroy something at protests. Then intelligence operatives like Igor Girkin were quickly installed to direct the violence against Ukraine and its institutions in a controlled way to achieve Russian goals, and then regular armed forces took over. At no point did it have anything to do with people and their will.

Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions where people can get murdered for publicly supporting some of the answers. I wonder what Parisians in 1940 would've answered if they got a phone call asking if they wanted to be a part of Germany - while people were disappearing.

> Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.

Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament. It's as if Congress had voted Trump out of the office after January 6th riots, Trump fled abroad and some unhappy Trumpers stormed further goverment buildings, and then Mexican army rolled in to support "separatists" and occupied Arizona and Texas, and then Mexican intelligence operatives cosplaying as independent freedom fighters asked Mexico to annex Arizona and Texas into Mexico.

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#164

Post by leereeves »

mopsi wrote: post #163
leereeves wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've conflated two different issues. The ECHR has ruled (and I think they're right) that Russia is in control of the region. That tells us nothing about whether the people of the region want to be part of Russia. For that, we have to look to polls, like the one I cited, which tell us that the people living in the region do support Russia. Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supp…

The so-called separatists don't represent the people no matter how you approach them. In the earliest days, they consisted of local thugs, the kind of people who come out just to destroy something at protests. Then intelligence operatives like Igor Girkin were quickly installed to direct the violence against Ukraine and its institutions in a controlled way to achieve Russian goals, and then regular armed forces took…

> Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions...

That's a fair point - polling is difficult and unreliable in a contested region - but what other evidence can we look to?

Perhaps this: "an occupation against a hostile local population requires far more soldiers than a peaceful occupation of territory" as we've seen recently when Russia occupied regions not controlled by the separatists.[1]

And the Russian forces in the separatist regions before 2022 were far from sufficient to hold the regions if the local population had been hostile, especially with Ukrainian forces also fighting them.

> Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament

This isn't accurate. "On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych ...left the capital for Kharkiv, saying his car was shot at as he left Kyiv, and travelling next to Crimea, and eventually to exile in Russia."[2]

Then, because he had fled, "the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him from his post...on the grounds that he...effectively resigned."[2] He was not impeached.

It's more accurate to say that he was driven out of office by the riots, a fact that Parliament merely recognized.

(Also, your analogy to Jan 6th makes no sense, because in any such analogy, the rioters have to end up with the President they want, just as they did in Ukraine.)

1: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/01/politics/ukraine-assassinatio...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#165

Post by yucky »

int_19h wrote: post #160
yucky wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Donbas is the entire justification is it? Also, we probably had even less justification to invade Iraq yet we stayed for 20 years. Makes it really hard to take any of the moralizing from the US & NATO seriously.

It's hard to say what the "entire justification" even is in this case, since the goalposts have been moved so rapidly since the beginning of the invasion that it's basically all blurry. Remember back when they said it's totally not about taking any land from Ukraine? But, anyway, Donbas is the primary justification for the population of Russia. The other one - that this is all a pre-emptive strike to forestall some k…

  > It's hard to say what the "entire justification" even is in this case, since the goalposts have been moved so rapidly since the beginning of the invasion that it's basically all blurry.
Is this referring to Russia in Ukraine, or the US in Iraq?

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#166

Post by mopsi »

leereeves wrote: post #164
mopsi wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The so-called separatists don't represent the people no matter how you approach them. In the earliest days, they consisted of local thugs, the kind of people who come out just to destroy something at protests. Then intelligence operatives like Igor Girkin were quickly installed to direct the violence against Ukraine and its institutions in a controlled way to achieve Russian goals, and then regular armed forces took…

> Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions... That's a fair point - polling is difficult and unreliable in a contested region - but what other evidence can we look to? Perhaps this: "an occupation against a hostile local population requires far more soldiers than a peaceful occupation of territory" as we've seen recently when Russia occupied regions not controlled by the separatists.[1] And the Rus…

The same kind of resistance as described happening in Kherson in the linked article happened in LNR and DNR too. Eventually Russian forces abandoned Kherson not because of local resistance, but because of military factors. Kherson garrison was too close to the frontline and couldn't be protected from HIMARS strikes. If you are trying to use the fact that Russian forces were not driven out of LNR and DNR by local civilian population as an evidence of their views, then I don't find that convincing, because driving Russians out has required grueling coordinated military action even in those regions of Ukraine where the support for Ukrainian independence is universal without any doubt.

The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism, seizing the oppurtunity that internal turmoil offers. The specifics of that turmoil are largely irrelevant.

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#167

Post by [deleted] »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #134
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask Americans how long the war in Ukraine has been going on, they'll almost all say “about a year”, whereas Ukrainians would say “about nine years”.

Because you aren't defining the word, "war". The invasion in 2014 was generally limited to Crimea. After that, Russia held its ground, allowing some level of peace and stability. The current war, that includes active invasion of the entire country, started in 2022. The conflict began much earlier, but semantically, "war" is generally inferred to mean the current conflict specifically.

[deleted]

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#168

Post by leereeves »

mopsi wrote: post #166
leereeves wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions... That's a fair point - polling is difficult and unreliable in a contested region - but what other evidence can we look to? Perhaps this: "an occupation against a hostile local population requires far more soldiers than a peaceful occupation of territory" as we've seen recently when Russia occupied regions not controlled by the separatists.[1] And the Rus…

The same kind of resistance as described happening in Kherson in the linked article happened in LNR and DNR too. Eventually Russian forces abandoned Kherson not because of local resistance, but because of military factors. Kherson garrison was too close to the frontline and couldn't be protected from HIMARS strikes. If you are trying to use the fact that Russian forces were not driven out of LNR and DNR by local civi…

> The same kind of resistance as described happening in Kherson in the linked article happened in LNR and DNR too.

Do you have sources for that? It's the first I've heard of it and I'd like to learn more.

> The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism

Ok. Then to use an analogy that actually happened, perhaps the US invading Cuba under the "pretext" of separatism from Spain?

Or the US sending the navy to Panama to support its independence from Columbia (in exchange for the canal zone)?

Perhaps the best analogy is the Mexican-American war, in which the US took Texas (already de facto separate from Mexico but still claimed by them) and other territory from Mexico.

Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#169

Post by RivieraKid »

leereeves wrote: post #157
RivieraKid wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an accurate summary. The separatists are under Russian control. The Russian army has been fighting alongside them since 2014, when they invaded Donbas. In the 1991 referendum, voters in Dontesk and Luhansk overwhelmingly voted against being part of Russia. Per your source, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas, 75% want to be part of Ukraine. In the Russian-controlled part of Donbas, 57% want to be…

> The separatists are under Russian control. I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice. > In the 1991 referendum... A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now? > First point, why such stark difference? An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enoug…

> I think this dehumanizes them.

No. I said they were under Russian control. Not that they're not human. The invading army is under Putin's control, that doesn't imply they're not human (although they regularly commit inhuman acts).

> A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?

The poll is heavily skewed by Russian propaganda in areas under their control.

> An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.

First, area of control is primarily determined by military, not civilians. Second, why would there be such a stark difference in opinion within Donbas? Doesn't make any sense.

> If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.

I don't mean that, it depends on the specific situation. But the separatists are just a distraction, it's not what this war is about. Russia invaded the area which was against joining Russia, simply because Putin wanted to subdue Ukraine. He couldn't care less about the separatists, they're just a tool. In fact, he brutally crushes actual organic separatist movements (Chechnya).

> so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia

You feel wrong then. What Russia is doing is bordering genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr...). The US is doing everything to help them. If Ukraine succeeds and becomes a prosperous liberal democracy, it would make the alliance of liberal democracies stronger and the US would benefit from that. That doesn't change that it's mostly right to help Ukraine.

Russia is effectively a dictatorship run by a psychopath who kills his opponents and uses mass torture to achieve his goals. The US is a democracy whose current leadership has a normal level of empathy.

> only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia

That's a majority... In any case, the annexation by Russia was wrong and should be reversed. After that, there may be talks about independence and a proper referendum.

Re: One Year into the War in Ukraine

#170

Post by RivieraKid »

leereeves wrote: post #157
RivieraKid wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an accurate summary. The separatists are under Russian control. The Russian army has been fighting alongside them since 2014, when they invaded Donbas. In the 1991 referendum, voters in Dontesk and Luhansk overwhelmingly voted against being part of Russia. Per your source, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas, 75% want to be part of Ukraine. In the Russian-controlled part of Donbas, 57% want to be…

> The separatists are under Russian control. I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice. > In the 1991 referendum... A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now? > First point, why such stark difference? An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enoug…

> My ideal solution would be a fair and binding vote on separation for all the regions in question, but I know no party would accept that.

What are the regions in question?

Should the about 25k of civilians murdered by Russia in Mariupol be automatically counted as votes against joining Russia?

Post reply on HN