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Comment by wsc981 | Hacker News Reader

> I think the moment you say this you kind of lose the ability to say that you have a balanced view of the conflict.

This Ukraine / Russia conflict could have been avoided. NATO could have respected Russia’s views towards expanding to the east.

USA has been warned time and time again this would cause a conflict at this point. Even USA state officials [0] warned against it. Yet NATO decided to ignore all warnings and keep expanding eastward until it became too close for comfort to the Russians.

In a way quite similar to the Cuban missile crisis.

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[0]: https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-w...

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What about Georgia and Chechenya, where was the NATO expansion there? Why did Russia invade them? What about Finland, why didn't Russia invade them when they decided to enter NATO? If this entire war is about stopping NATO expansion?

> This Ukraine / Russia conflict could have been avoided. NATO could have respected Russia’s views towards expanding to the east.

If Russia cared about this so much they could have either formalised there views and asked for an international agreement.

Or joined NATO itself, they did neither.

I disagree. Russia has been where it is all the time, and it’s been able to reach all of continental Europe with it’s missiles for the past half century. NATO has been able to do the same thing in reverse for decades. Sharing a land border is just a formality. Besides, we were kinda at the point where nobody really wanted to invade Russia to stop them from doing anything.

Besides, say Ukraine joined NATO, how is the effect different from Russia taking over Ukraine. We’ll end up with a shared land border.

Obviously it’d be preferred by Russia that they occupy the place, but the war was a non-starter from the beginning. The end result is exactly the opposite from what I expect Russia was hoping to achieve (unless Putin’s aim was to make Russia a second North Korea). Ukraine has never been closer to NATO, and Russia never more reviled.

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