Why does Putin try to invade parts of Ukraine ? What's its interest ? Is it economical ? is it for interior politics ? is it to destabilize Europe ? does someone can conjecture a bit ?
It was originally part of the USSR. Putin has said many times he thinks breaking up the USSR was a huge mistake and wants to re-acquire those territories. But yeah why does anyone start a war? Power, control, money, distraction, madness, idealism, etc. Probably a little of everything.
Putin said in his recent speech that he thinks Lenin made a mistake in breaking up the Russian Empire into independent nations (that then joined the USSR). I think Putin is more after restoring the old Russian Empire than restoring the USSR.
Finland is in the EU - a much stronger alliance than NATO
I disagree, the EU doesn't have an army. So if Finland is invaded they can send their "thoughts and prayers in these difficult times".
Also agree. It's also an alliance mostly built on trade and laws, with some intelligence thrown in if the parties feel like it. The EU has stayed away from military allegiance.
Would be interesting to hear from any russians in here, because i can't help to think that large majority of russians are complicit to what seems to be a dictator going mad as much as the dictators in his neighborhood (aliyev, khomeini, taliban etc)
Or Bennett, Netanyahu, and other Israeli maniacs targeting Palestinian people. Illegal Israeli settlers are for sure complicit to these.
You're correct, but are distracting the conversation from the matter at hand.
Having just watched the Finnish president and prime minister address the situation, the press' pressing questions about joining NATO were continually downplayed, as is customary. Finland is almost militantly neutral, since that was the original condition to independence in the first place. On the other hand, Russia just voided the Minsk agreement with Ukraine to attack, so... Imagine being Russia's border neighbor, m…
Being a border nation with Russia now, without a staunch pro-Russian government, is pretty scary right now. Even if you are a NATO member, because I don't trust NATO to go to war with Russia.
At least Finland doesn't, to my knowledge, have a meaningful amount of Russian population to "liberate". Compared to countries that used to be soviet republics, I'd say they are relatively safe.
Finland is in the EU - a much stronger alliance than NATO
I disagree, the EU doesn't have an army. So if Finland is invaded they can send their "thoughts and prayers in these difficult times".
Germany and France have much better reason to actually defend Finland. The Euro.
Basically if a Euro country gets invaded and the other countries do nothing that crashes the value of the Euro which would destroy the economies of the other Euro countries. And the non-Euro EU countries have a good reason to follow the same logic as Euro crashing would also destroy their economies.
Yeah, and send a message that says "you can kill American troops without consequences"? And if that's your strategy - why send them there in the first place?
So.... Afghanistan? How many soldiers from several Western nations died there, and of the US in particular? Only to recently withdraw unconditionally and even hand over lots of military equipment to the enemy they had been fighting for decades? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...
Nobody seemed willing to fight for the government and the taliban were hiding in pakistan waiting for the US to leave. Sometimes you just have to call it quits.
> Ukraine in NATO means US nukes on Russia border, tipping the balance. No, it does not. A number of Eastern European countries are in NATO and none of them have American nuclear weapons. Where does this silly idea come that after joining NATO, American missiles somehow appear in the new member? Modern-day NATO is a cooperation platform for joint exercises etc, not some missile club that starts delivering ICBMs every…
But when a country has joined NATO, it can later declare it will host nuclear weapons loaned from other NATO countries. Russia is powerless to stop this, since any attack on a NATO country would likely trigger a counterattack. Hence, instead, Russia must prevent these countries joining if they want to ensure no nukes on their border.
And a way to achieve this is to make friends with your neighbours and enter mutual beneficial treaties....
Or you can just beat them up any time they look at other options.
Russia does not care about Ukraine joining NATO, Russia has nukes. Russian politicians care about Ukraine being a prospering democracy and a model for russian citizens. That's it.
This is unfortunately highly unlikely. A lot of EU politics depends on the pockets of rich Russian oil firms. Just look at Austria, very rich but obviously Russian run EU country. (latest prime minister got fired by Russians even though Russia cyberarmy helped him win the elections. They decided he was no longer as compliant, so they leaked data many years after elections, Russian scandals several years before that e…
> latest prime minister got fired by Russians even though Russia cyberarmy helped him win the elections. Actual source? This "russian disinformation" and "russian election manipulation" has zero credibility if you read and listen to anything other than CNN at this point. Please send me actual proof before making claims like this.
I dont think CNN ever reported something like this.
Would be interesting to hear from any russians in here, because i can't help to think that large majority of russians are complicit to what seems to be a dictator going mad as much as the dictators in his neighborhood (aliyev, khomeini, taliban etc)
You are right about large majority of Russians being complicit, and right when saying "what seems to be a dictator going mad". Because it's not a dictator going mad, in fact Putin has quite clear goals and is quite predictable. He repeatedly was warning the West about the balance of power being skewed in their favor and Russia's interests being neglected since 2007.
I'm not going to get into much details, and I feel I will be downvoted no matter how I try to reason Putin's behavior, but there are clear reasons behind it. I think with right political moves Russia could achieve the same goals, however looks like Russian diplomacy is in much worse shape than the army, thus there's this conflict going into hot phase.
Western media again as always are portraying Putin as a crazy dictator who just needs more blood, however I hope YCombinator folks being critical thinking and curious enough will dig a bit more into the history of this conflict and try to understand the motives of each side. As usual in this world there's no bad guys vs good guys, there's hundreds shades of grey that are actually interesting to research if you wish to.
Similar problem is Taiwan by the way.