Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

I don't agree with Putin either, but I also agree that his actions make sense within his own frame of reference.

It's not just about whether the Ukrainian's lives would be better from any observer's opinion. Nor is it a matter of them 'being under ... influence' as though they have no agency and are simply chaff blown in the wind. This conflict is fundamentally not about influence over Ukrainians, but about the Ukrainian people's right to self determination.

This whole situation is often framed as the power and influence of great powers over regional pawns. That is not at all what this is about. Until February this year the USA as a nation barely even registered that Ukraine existed, let alone whether they had any influence over it. Ukraine was a patch of land along the route of a Russian gas pipeline, and that's the only reason it was important at all. The USA couldn't have cared less. It was an addendum to a footnote in their foreign policy, hence the feeble and deliberately ineffectual response to the annexation of Crimea.

What triggered the Russian annexation of Crimea, was it US foreign policy shifts? A buildup of NATO forces? No, it was the Maidan protests in Kyiv bringing down a pro-Kremlin regime, and free and fair elections in Ukraine clearly indicating the Ukrainian people wanted to turn west. It was action by the Ukrainian people that triggered that response, not NATO. They are the ones driving this shift, and that's why all of this is even more maddening for Putin because he sees this as a traitorous betrayal of Russia by Ukrainians, by daring to think that they have any right to do so.

This is why I talked about "signing up to the same view of the status of Ukraine and therefore the Ukrainian people"

If you had a 1,300 km land border to defend, which of those branches would you prioritize?

The original Left Alliance was like that, but the current party has very little to do with that heritage. The younger generation started a slow coup in the late 90s and eventually pivoted the party to a completely new direction. In the process, they lost many of their old supporters. The left-wing conservatives who had traditionally voted communists didn't really feel at home in a party of liberal environmentalists.

> Even Ukraine said they aren’t interested in fighting for the eastern parts of the country because the local population will likely be hostile and make their jobs much harder.

Source?

This is simply not the case, their is intense fighting in the Donbas region by both UA and Foreign legions, and places like Bucha and Kharkiv are all on the East and are all subject to the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas of mainly Ethic Russian Ukrainian citizens in what are some of the worst crimes against of Humanity seen since maybe the Croatian-Serbian conflict.

These places may not be as nationalistic as Lviv, very few places are in fact, but it would be absolutely foolish to say that considering this [0] was just released last month which specifically states it's intention to de-occucpy Crimea from Russia.

And after what is seen in Bucha, Irpin, Kharviv, Mariupol etc... there are no Russian speaking regions who think they are going to be spared from the indiscriminate and needless death they have seen of women, children, men. They now see them for the violent murderers that they are. Those that remained probably left for Russia.

Even the dissenters posting on social media are being tracked down by the Ukrainian military and being arrested/detained which honestly is fucking terrifying, but consistent with it's actual intended use--State surveillance.

This isn't 2014 anymore, where it was mainly the Azov holding off things in the Donbas against Russian sponsored separatists and sympathizers, things have drastically changed and while I doubt loyalty is 100% to he Ukrainian government it's really crazy how united that country has gotten since the invasion. I had mixed feelings of Azov because of how they violently dealt with Russian-leaning supporters back in 2014, but after what they've done in Mariupol it goes to show that it's not something they tolerate any longer. They sacrificed themselves in order to protect them in the steel mill and are bravely still the only thing left from total Russian occupation of Mariupol.

People around here don't know this but Bitcoiners were some of the first non Government affiliated volunteers in Ukraine to help back in 2013 during the Maidan Revolution and then 2014 for the war in the Donbas. This is where our technology got battle tested for real, hence why it has played such a pivotal role in distribution for funds when the Ukrainian Central Bank suspended withdraws of UAH on the day of the invasion just as it did during the capital controls and hyper inflation in 2013/14.

I won't go into a tirade about it, but this is why many of us Bitcoiners get so upset when we hear some misinformed arm-chair coder in the comfort of his apartment in SV tells us why 'bitcoin doesn't matter, no one uses it' type diatribes. It's a waste of my time but all it's all there for people to see that it was critical in both 2014 and 2022 to support Ukraine.

And the fact that you can make such blatantly misinformed statements reflects the level of ignorance on all of the aforementioned topics.

0: https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/1172021-37533

It's too easy to sleep happily in oblivion. Yet the russia's war against Ukraine effectively started 8 years ago in 2014 with annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas region. No NATO mentions were anywhere at the time, it was the Budapest memorandum that supposedly was 'reassuring' safeties for Ukraine and was also signed by russia...

Land and resources grab is what drives russia's objectives. Has been like that since the empire times - this state is stuck in the obsolete colonialization mindset but now even without ideology to offer (no one can sanely consider the 'russification' aka 'russian world' as ideology).

The whole Western world has not been sleeping happily since the start of Cold war - the russia's nukes have not been detargeted, and now are being openly used for strike intimidation once again.

It only points out that russia simply is unable to integrate into the modern world, neither politically nor economically. The only choice (barring its own implosion) is containment, thus NATO is relevant again, as so far there are no viable options especially for the neigboring states, just as for Finland and Sweden.