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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

This seems well intentioned but overly dramatic to the point of being false.

Other nations have been training Ukrainian Troops and supplying Stinger missiles and so on. Lots of diplomacy and financial sanctions happening.

The step to actually involve an external Army in killing Russian soldiers has big ramifications that shouldn't be ignored.

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Germany sent 5000 hats to Ukraine. It also prevented the export of actual military equipment to Ukraine from the baltics. And it shot down sanctions related to the SWIFT banking system.

With friends like Germany, who needs enemies.

They must be scared of losing gas access. And they need gas more than Puțin needs money. That's why he allowed himself this gamble at this time. And it seems to be working.

This is surely the cause. Germany has foot-gunned itself horrifically when they gutted their nuclear power generation. The idea was to replace it medium-term with natural gas.

Natural gas is also quite common in germany for building heating + cooking.

Bingo.

They didn't even send the helmets, now they are citing logistical issues to be the reason for their lack of support. They are feigning incompetence to hide their unwillingness to actually do something

Edit: Now it seems they are actually underway

Maybe you should focus your ire on the leaders of the countries doing the invading? Taking the opportunity to attack one of the invaded nations allies for not doing enough seems unhelpful to the point of being counterproductive.

I have never wanted the ability to downvote a comment more than I do after reading yours.

Critiquing does very little against someone who has committed to invade a country. Rarely has it stopped a bullet, much less a tank. Russia has already accepted the cost of being criticized.

But for the record, Putin has shown himself to have little regard for anything besides ending up in the history books next to Stalin & Hitler.

And yet there's nothing you could think of to say that didn't equate Germany and Putin as Ukraine's enemies?

This is all very reminiscent of "Hillary is just as bad as Trump". Seems to be a common logical fallacy that you can't have something that is better than the alternative but still not good enough.

Instead people have to exaggerate to make the better one just as bad, which then has the implicit claim that the worse one is just the same as the better one in this metric.

Whatever Germany is doing or not doing, it seems unlikely to approach the same level as invading Ukraine and killing a whole bunch of people.

Europe and the US's energy dependence on Russia emboldened Putin to attack because now sanctions will harm us as much as they harm him. No, we're not the ones attacking Ukraine, but we are complicit.

I have not equated Germany with Russia. Don't strawman me.

I am however pointing out that Germany is delaying and holding back the response to a European country being invaded.

> With friends like Germany, who needs enemies.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/with_friends_like_these_who_n...

"An expression indicating that one's close associates prove more adversarial than one's opponents."

Probably just an unconscious idiom, but the use of the word "enemy" in context of an invasion seemed to be a bit too loaded a term.

> With friends like Germany, who needs enemies.

Threaten to cut them off from SWIFT and kick them out of NATO. Their military is a joke, and they're clearly freeloading.

Direct military intervention increases the risks of massive nuclear or cyber war. Given the frailty of power grids and the season, the US can't justify the risk of death and chaos over supporting Ukraine.

Hopefully anonymous and independent hackers don't escalate to infrastructure attacks.

If Putin wins, I think we'll get an even higher chance of nuclear or cyber war. He has no reason to stop at Ukraine and has no moral issue with using whatever weapon he can get his hands on to win.

> Other nations have been training Ukrainian Troops and supplying Stinger missiles and so on. Lots of diplomacy and financial sanctions happening.

A lot of that has been too little, too late (e.g. last minute transfers of some equipment). Some of it was an embarrassment (Germany sending hats).

IIRC, the US gives far more military assistance to Israel than it ever has to Ukraine. In retrospect, that really should have changed circa 2014. Most of Europe continues to live in a fantasy-land where war is unthinkable and Putin cares about the easy half-measures they're willing to take.

Putin's done a bully thing by making one of his demands that his victims be kept weak. The Western powers more or less obliged him.

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