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Comment by lnxg33k1 | Hacker News Reader

I mean europeans I think have a background of waiting until it's too late, like Britain and France didn't look the other side while Hitler was annexing countries in central europe? Just to wake up when the nazis were in Paris? I think he has a point, Putin destroying Ukraine and taking on Baltic states is not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN

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I think it is foolish to try to predict what Russia/Putin is up to once Ukraine has been dealt with (which, I assume, it/he will have achieved at some point in time). There are numerous reports of fact as well as opinion pieces published over the decades since the fall of the SU by esteemed and respected strategists which or who pointed at/predicted Russian military intervention, if NATO did not call off its eastward expansion plans. We have arrived at that point in 2008 already, and then again in 2014, and now finally also in 2022.

For those wanting to involve NATO and set off WW3 along with the nuclear apocalypse, I wonder - why the rush? We can still nuke this planet's civilization to scraps after Russia's/Putin's plans for re-establishing the "Great Russian Empire" have materialzied - or rather, if they actually do.

Please excuse my cynical undertone, but this reckless calling for intervention that may very well lead to a kind of catastrophic escalation that human history would never ever recover from REALLY scares the shit out of me :(

> For those wanting to involve NATO and set off WW3 along with the nuclear apocalypse, I wonder - why the rush?

1) Atrocities are being committed and innocent civilians are being killed right as you type this tone-deaf question.

2) Appeasing dictators only leads to escalation, and early intervention minimizes damage. This is not theoretical, just look at Putin's belligerent last decades.

3) The risk of Russia unleashing nuclear Armageddon over Ukraine is very small. For all intents and purposes the West is already involved militarily - doing so overtly would not fundamentally change the equation.

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