Comment by atdrummond | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atdrummond | Hacker News Reader

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If this were true the time to engage was Crimea. Or arguably in the 90s when they began this long con with the frozen conflict zones in Transnistria, Abkhazia, etc.

I’ve spent considerable time in the Donbas, especially in Donetsk and Luhansk. I don’t condone anything the Russians have done but many of my former colleagues and friends there identify as Russian and speak Russian. They view their Ukrainian identity as an accident of modern geopolitics than an accurate reflection of their true lineage or historical allegiance(s).

Furthermore, I’ve had to watch as friends in Kyiv have had their means of speaking out publicly and engaging in politics completely shut down via the dictatorial edicts of the current administration, who is conveniently using this war to consolidate power. And let’s not get into the massive cognitive dissonance it requires for Occupy Democrats types to post “Slava Ukraina” on Twitter while condemning Republicans as Neo-Nazis; meanwhile the Ukrainian states have not only supported an openly Neo-Nazi militia (Azov battalion, who have a decade long affiliation with Atomwaffen and others in the esoteric/Eurasian Nazi/Fascism scene) but have nationalized and integrated it into their army as an example of an exemplary task force.

(EDIT: The response here is hilarious. I’m devoting my own funds and time, having moved to Chișinău full time, to working on the ground in Moldova to provide remote jobs and housing for people displaced by this very war. The lack of substantive replies (instead choosing to drive-by downvote), on the other hand, is not helping but is rather furthering an inaccurate and harmful Western narrative of the conflict.)

Yup. The history of Ukraine goes way back. It's not like Putin decided to wake up one morning and invade it. Russia has long held that Ukraine is simply "southern Russia". The regions of Ukraine under Russian control have large Russian populations.

The enmity runs deep (on both side) and it goes back well over a century. To simplify it as "Russia invaded Ukraine" is foolish. There is way more to it.

> Russia has long held that Ukraine is simply "southern Russia".

That isn't for Russia to decide. Quoting from the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlos M. Cipolla:

"Let me resort once again to a banal example. Tom hits Dick on Dick's head and he derives satisfaction from his action. He may pretend that Dick was delighted to be hit on the head. Dick, however, may not share Tom's view. In fact he may regard the blow to his head as an unpleasant event. Whether the blow to Dick's head was a gain or a loss to Dick is up to Dick to decide and not to Tom."

(This was included in the recent printed version, but isn't in the version online at http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit... )

It's also worth pointing out that while the regions Russia has had defacto control of for years have high concentrations of Russian-speaking people, many of whom might prefer to be part of Russia rather than Ukraine, Russia did not try to conquer just those regions, they started their invasion with a direct assault on Kyiv. They would have taken the whole country if they could.

> That isn't for Russia to decide.

*yawn*

What happened on March 17, 1995?

I seem to recall Ukraine not doing much but yelling after Russia took crimea in 2014. Funnily enough the current hot conflict occurred after Russia declared Ukraine was a fake country and people and tried to blitzkrieg Kyiv.

If Russia had actually kept to the naturally Russian ethnic area this would be a much muddier and ideologically partisan discussion. But as they tried to take the whole country, and had sights on Moldova too, it’s pretty clear cut who the bad guys are now

This is not the answer for the previous question.

But judging by downvotes someone here knows what happened at that date.

It’s an answer in that I reacted to the event you were slyly trying to imply. The Ukrainians arrested the local leader of crimea and forced them to rewrite their laws to follow the Ukrainian constitution. When Russia took that region and Ukraine did nothing but yell, Russia had a much more solid argument in terms of it always being Russian land and wanting it returned.

They lost that veil of plausibility when they decided to go for the rest of Ukraine in their attempted blitz of Kyiv

Ah, so amusing. "Slyly", "forced to rewrite", "local leader".

Okay, okay, just because russkiez bad anything Ukraine did or does is okay, I got it.

Is Ukraine forcing the Crimeans to rewrite their laws not bad? And is local leader not accurate?

I can see taking the word “slyly” in umbrage, but the rest are accurate accounting unless you have some extra information you’d like to share

That is a curious piece of history, especially since neither Ukraine, nor Russia (!) would want it to be a part of a part of the public narrative.

(referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Crimea_(1992%E2%80... )

> To simplify it as "Russia invaded Ukraine" is foolish.

Lol wat? It is that simple. Claiming that land other people live in, has its own language, and it’s own nation with internationally recognized borders, doesn’t make it not an invasion when you send troops over those borders.

Is China incapable of invading anyone because their past empires held the view that they were the Middle Kingdom and all land was Chinese but just didn’t know it yet? Does only Russia get this ability to invade but not have it be an invasion?

So when Vietnam invade Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, we should have defended the Khmer Rouge’s “territorial integrity”?

Or was that “different”? Somehow when people are clamoring for war, it's always "different" this time. That's how we ended up in Vietnam.

"It's clear that China and the USSR are looking to take over SE Asia. Today it's Laos and Vietnam, tomorrow Malaysia, then Australia. We have to back South Vietnam as the security of the free world is at stake!"

Of course you know how silly that sounds because you have 20/20 hindsight. But that's how it was explained the public at the time.

Sound familiar at all?

Your rule that territorial integrity must be defended no matter what doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It's not a "red line" that we have to start a war over.

> So when Vietnam invade Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, we should have defended the Khmer Rouge’s “territorial integrity”?

There are plenty of arguments to defend Vietnam in that instance. There are zero to argue that it wasn’t an invasion.

> Sound familiar at all?

Nah it doesn’t because that was America getting involved in a revolutionary/civil war for our own interests entirely. We were the invaders then, like Russia is now. And guess what, the US wasn’t the good guy in Vietnam just like Russia isn’t in Ukraine.

Sending war material to a people defending their homeland against invasion is a war I am completely comfortable getting behind ethically. Come back to me if we start putting boots on the ground in the region or Ukraine start taking Russian regions and it’ll be a lot more gray for me

> There is way more to it.

Thank you for that nuanced point of view.

The history of that region is indeed very long and very complex, and the black and white picture painted by both western and Russian media is downright frustrating.

To give examples, Crimea was historically neither Russian nor Ukrainian, it was Tatar, and Ukraine is itself a weird cultural patchwork of Poles, Lithuanians, Prussians, Russians and a long list of other minor ethnic groups.

If you want to get more historical it was greek, and whoever was there before them, and so on and so on. Is there any bit of land on earth that has only been held by one people ever?

Russia invaded Ukraine, a sovereign country with internationally recognized borders. It is simple.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine broke international law, and it will be punished by the international community for its war crimes, including the tactical use of rape, genocide, terror and destruction of civilian infrastructure. To put it simply.

You personally can choose to spread the propaganda of the enemy, or get on the right side of history and oppose the enemy. That may not be a simple choice for you. If you're Russian, you can oppose your government. You could be free someday. Not simple, though.

Yo, I’m into your argument except this whole binary “us vs the enemy” thing. Isn’t that thinking awfully flawful?

Man, there's no bothsidesing this. Sometimes one side is just wrong.

The wrong side here does all of this: invades a sovereign nation; kills, rapes and tortures its inhabitants; uses terror against civilians and civilian infrastructure as a tactic of war; moves orphans into their own territory to be raised there rather than finding relatives; forces residents to fight against their own countrymen; threatens nuclear war. That side is not Ukraine. That side, the wrong side, is Russia.

Russia could leave Ukraine any time, but by it's own free choice, remains in Ukraine fighting for lebensraum.

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