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Comment by drran | Hacker News Reader

RF is extremely predictable. Its behavior was well predicted two decades ago. If you are predicting «happy path» only, then anything that deviates from «happy path» will surprise you. Peace time job for military headquarters is to predict «unhappy path» and prepare for it. Russian tactic is well known among former USSR and Eastern Block countries, so it was easy to predict what they will do:

Will try to return post-soviet countries back to «USSR 2.0».

Will capture Belarus somewhat.

Will station army across Ukrainian border.

Will try to circumvent Kyiv, while distracting Ukrainian army at the South.

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This is just fearmongering based on XIX century thinking. There is no expansion drive by default, however there are couple strategic "red lines", which, when crossed make Russia react aggressively.

1. Hostile military block on the borders (expansion of NATO or any moves that may be treated as towards the expansion or challenging the status quo, as in Ukraine with Crimea).

2. Status of Russian population and Russian language (Georgia in 2008, Ukraine - Donbass, Baltics - low intensity information war).

For the neighboring states they are the keys to their own security: addressing those fears of Russia by diplomatic means, those countries can bring more peace than arming themselves against the invasion.

Where does this obsession with the external come from. Russia has the largest national landmass yet still they look outwards despite the many improvements that they could make internally. It's bizarre to me.

They are not looking for expansion outwards. The only real expansion that has happened so far was Crimea, which was part of Russia before, has significant Russian population which at least once voted for independence, but more importantly it is vital for Russian defence on the south.

The Philippines was part of the US back in the day too. Itd also provide a convenient base for countering China. Should the US invade and annex it?

This is not the same. Imagine a different situation: in 1950 USA gives Florida to Mexico. In 2010s as a result of political transformation, Mexico wants to leave trade agreements with USA and join economic and military alliance led by China, opening possibility for Chinese military base in Miami. Would USA invade in this case?

Based on what we know from the history, yes, USA could do it, as they did in the Bay of Pigs. In fact, USA invaded with military forces in Latin America so many times that by now they should have lost any credibility in democratic world.

Should the US make the previously annexed Hawaii free and let it become The Hawaiian Kingdom again?

The goal of Great Russian Civilization is to protect and expand the Gorgeous and Mighty Russian Language.

The Russian Empire was known as «Jail of Nations», because they captured so many different nations across a huge area. To consolidate them, they are erasing their identity by forcing all of them to speak a single invented language, called Russian, which is based on Old Slavonic Church language, which is based on South Slavonic dialect as spoken near to Salonika (Greece) a thousand years ago. This is somewhat different from behavior of some other empires (Spanish Empire, Great Britain Empire, etc.), because the language was invented, so it was not native language for anyone, so nobody had an upper leg and nobody can be clearly blamed as invader.

Those, who switched to the new language, invented reasons about why Gorgeous and Mighty Russian language is superior to their laughable and weak native languages, so they have strong beliefs that they need to help those minor nations to escape the hell of speaking them and join the Great Russian Civilization.

Russia(now Ukraine) used Russian (now Ukrainian) language, which was a modernized version of Old Slavonic language, so they refused to accept archaic language. In 1912(?) Folk Assembly of All Russia (now Ukraine) declared rename of Russia (now Ukraine) to Ukraine to avoid confusion with Russian Empire or its language. (It's well hidden fact). Ten years after that, Great Ukrainization started, so millions of Russians (now Ukrainians) switched to Ukrainians, then Great Ukrainization aborted by Russians. 20 millions of Ukrainians were recorded as Russians again, 7 million adults (and 23 million children) were murdered by starvation in Holodomor.

Russian language, Russian culture, etc. are very new. For example, there are 0 (zero) folk songs in Russian language. Russians are studying history of Russia (now Ukraine) instead of history of their own nations. This makes them wonder why Russia now called Ukraine, and why their motherland is captured by Ukrainians. This makes them mad about Ukraine and Ukrainians. Nobody tells them real history, of course.

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