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Comment by maratc | Hacker News Reader

I think that Russia may have a two-prong strategy: either make sure Ukraine is not joining NATO, or make sure that Ukraine that joins NATO is completely wrecked.

In the alternative reality, where Ukraine promises tomorrow not to join NATO (ever), the Russian targets for this war may be considered achieved, and everyone could simply go home, probably throwing in a couple billions deal for Ukraine recovery. This would be the best outcome for everyone. But this will not happen tomorrow.

If this won't happen at all, the Russians can always wreck Ukraine later, and this is where their air force may play part.

In short, I think the Russians are showing some restraint, for now, to make sure the quick outcome still can happen.

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I doubt that Russian demands about NATO are in good faith. It's hard to believe that the goal of this invasion was to prevent encirclement, given how Finland and Sweeden's reactions were completely predictable.

I think the goal was annexation. The demands put out right now are intentionally unreasonable, but even if they were met, it would not stop the fighting.

There seem to also be natural gas reserves in the sea west of Crimea.

If Ukrain joins NATO Russia would not be able to hold onto Crimea and could become a Petrol state.

With renewables replacing part of the Gas energy demand long term (10/15y) this could mean that Ukrain could replace all Gas imports previously done from Russia. At the same time a modern and well-working Ukrain could influence Russia (as a unintended side-effect) in a destabilizing way (anti-authoritarian Government movements).

So if my info is correct a stable NATO Ukrain could, in a decade or so, lead to a situation where Russia is making very little money, no longer being able to afford much military besides for self-defense usage. That there is also a shrinking populating constantly reducing the amount of "potential soldiers" isn't helping. Neither is helping that a lot of middle tier and upper middle tier Russians have left Russia in the last many years (I think, not 100% sure), this reduces the chance for economical growth through new businesses.

If all of this is true (I'm not sure) then Putin might believe that they have to either take over or majorly destabilize Ukrain if Russia like it's currently is want to continue to exists. (This doesn't mean it would disappear, but it would need to change likely at the cost of the current oligarchs.)

OTOH we don’t have any evidence of Russia having any beef with either Georgia or Ukraine, up to 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, where NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would be accepted as members. Georgia was wrecked in half a year after that, and Ukraine since 2014, since the Orange Revolution.

The annexation argument came after the fact.

The Orange Revolution was in 2004. The one in 2013-2014 started with Russia pushing their semi-friendly semi-puppet Ukrainian president to abandon an association agreement with the EU. He pursued that agreement quite vigorously until mid 2013, when derailing it could have been quite easy (stop a few laws from passing, or don't sign them, or put poison pills into them that won't be acceptable to the EU and wrangle over wording for years, etc). Maybe he also believed Russia only cares about NATO, but EU is fine. Anyway, eventually Putin told him in no uncertain terms to do a 180, which he did. The protests that followed eventually escalated into him trying and failing to assume dictatorial powers, ordering a slaughter of ~100 protesters, and promptly fucking off into the dustbin of history.

So it's not really about NATO, per se.

see also: Belarus (russia stopped quite pro russian, but democratic opposition)

problem is - its either nato or russian puppet (e.g. russia would force ukraine to invade moldova)

I think there's a third option -- that of independent Ukraine, unassociated with anyone (Swiss-style). The option of NATO -- as is clear from Russian actions -- isn't acceptable to Russia, but this third option may be.

(And I don't get into the argument of whether Russia should have a say in Ukraine's future — you and I may completely agree that it shouldn't, but Russia clearly thinks otherwise.)

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