Why does this feel like projection?
Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
221–230 of 267 posts
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#222See also Anne Applebaum: > Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable…
Russia has been holding the same military drills for over a decade without triggering this panic. [0] Also, calling Ukraine a democracy is a bit of a stretch. They shut down 3 tv stations critical of the government, and imprisoned a political rival. I am sure there are people here that would love to shutdown RT, but we don't do that in a democracy. [0] 2020: Russian Military Exercises Near Ukraine. 100 to 120 thousan…
Seems different this time.
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#223The Economist has traditionally the worst coverage of Russia amongst Western media. To the point where it starts looking like it is something personal for the editors: always the same narrative, facts and opinions that not fit in the picture are conveniently ignored etc. This article has a lot of pure speculations, that oversimplify the internal politics and decision making process in Russia. Yes, there’s a relativel…
> for the same reason we do not believe in the world government, it does not make sense to believe in this war conspiracy
I fail to see what the same reason is. We don't have a world government. War seems quite likely.
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#22453 points from 2 hours ago but already off the front page This piece is clearly war mongering propaganda, but the discussion in the comments here is somewhat decent. It’s too bad HN immediately kills any concrete discussion about world events like this.
>This piece is clearly war mongering propaganda
I fail to see how it is mongering any wars. It's saying Putin may seek war but not advocating for that.
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#225I read this as why the economist and friends want russia to want war. but maybe im just cynical and jaded?
Russia annexed Crimea and has been engaged in a proxy war in Donbas for 8 years. The Kremlin has now amassed 100K - 200K troops at Ukraine's border. Yet, the Russian propaganda machine continues to claim it's the West that wants war. Can you explain how the West is the aggressor here?
There is a sort of aggression in that the West, and most the world's people really, like human rights and democracy and oppose the murderous dictator for life thing. Obvs that threatens Putin and he doesn't want that stuff setting in too much in his neighborhood.
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#226Why does this feel like projection?
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please stop that? It's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and we ban such accounts regardless of what they're battling for or against.
If you or anyone want further explanation, see these links:
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems to be a popular edgy opinion but I think it's useful to occasionally remember who has thousands of soldiers massed on the border.
HackerNews has a weirdly pro-Russia bent, at least in these comment sections. People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) and how Crimea is and has been Russian, even though the Russians invaded and conquered it in the past decade... Really odd. Not just making arguments against US involvement but flat out repeating false, pro-Russian propaganda.
You don’t have to be pro-Russian or pro-Putin (two different things!) to be critical of the current US and NATO policy. When Germany was cautious about reacting to Russian military deployment on Ukrainian border, Americans started calling its important NATO partner as unreliable. Europe may have different perspective on what is going on and how to resolve the crisis. In an equal partnership everyone has the right to speak and and common policy is developed through consensus rather than by one partner dictating to others what to do.
Russian government did a lot of wrong things, by fueling a civil war in a neighboring state and covering up war criminals that have shot a civil airplane. It does not mean they are going to go to war that will not help them to achieve anything meaningful. Also, it is a fallacy to assume that anyone calling US government statements a warmongering and wrongdoing is repeating pro-Russian propaganda (after all, those statements are simply opinions and interpretations - current administration never presented Russian invasion as a matter of fact). The very same facts presented by US intelligence can be interpreted in different ways, and even Ukrainian government sees them differently than United States.
The US interpretation is doing more harm than good: stocks are falling, flights are being cancelled and brain drain from Ukraine is accelerating. Should we blindly trust them or at least try to do some homework to verify their claims and approaches?
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) Ok, I have no "pro-Russia" bent at all, I think they are to blame in this whole story as their concerns could've been addressed by diplomacy like most European leaders have been trying to say... but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine and how it might think war is a…
GP: >> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) You: > but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine Why would Ukraine want to align with NATO instead of the country that just invaded it? > While I may not agree with the Russians, I can absolutely understand why they think war is justifiable Why? > it might be pru…
It's hard to communicate, it seems, when people seem to do all they can to not understand the other side. (talking not only about this exchange, by the way).
Your quotes of me are disingenuous.
OP asked why NATO shouldn't expand. I answered that doing so will surely trigger a war, as Russia made clear already.
> Why would Ukraine want to align with NATO instead of the country that just invaded it?
I suppose you mean "wouldn't", and I would agree that they want to align with NATO as the current government is very anti-Russia (notice that Ukraine goes back and forth on this, it's not always the way it is now). But what a country wants is not always what they can do. I am sure Georgia would love to join NATO too and make sure Russia never invades it again... but is NATO willing to go to war with Russia over Georgia? Or over Ukraine? The answer is no. NATO already said so: they will not support Ukraine militarily if Russia invades.
So the real question is whether it's worth letting Russia invade Ukraine simply because NATO cannot meet the Russian demands to say Ukraine will not join NATO.
> The why go to war over something symbolic?
You must've misread something... NATO meeting the Russian demands would be symbolic in my understanding (again, because NATO didn't have concrete plans to let Ukraine join it... Russia just wants NATO to make that official - a mostly symbolic act). But NATO not meeting this demand will cause a war for sure, which has nothing symbolic about it. Children will die (have you seen the faces of the soldiers on the front line, FFS they are children, 18 yos).
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) Ok, I have no "pro-Russia" bent at all, I think they are to blame in this whole story as their concerns could've been addressed by diplomacy like most European leaders have been trying to say... but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine and how it might think war is a…
GP: >> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) You: > but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine Why would Ukraine want to align with NATO instead of the country that just invaded it? > While I may not agree with the Russians, I can absolutely understand why they think war is justifiable Why? > it might be pru…
> The why go to war over something symbolic?
They are not going to war. They just expand their presence on the borders to make a point. If NATO feels menace with those deployments, they are expected to understand that Russia feels the same. If NATO is not making commitment on paper not to expand and to scale down their current presence, Russia will not make commitments to stop those annual military exercises they have been doing for years.
Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you're too cynical, but we can have our own takes. From what I was able to piece together, Russia isn't the one starting this conflict, in action. It's NATO aligned countries trying to get Ukraine to join NATO. Russia made it very clear, that ain't happening and they'll go to war over it. So who's still agitating for war? The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propa…
And Russia gets to decide whether another sovereign country gets to join a military alliance…why? Because they can? The amount of laundering of Russian propaganda on here is depressing if not surprising.
well, you answered it. "because they can"