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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.

If that does not happen, these sabers will be rattling from time to time. If Russia's (and China's) immediate borders are packed with countries armed to their teeth, there would be wars.

Buffer states happen for a reason.

I believe USA kind of understands this (see how they reacted to Cuba) and EU surely understands this too (see how Sweden reacts to any signs of Russian militarization), but they have trouble projecting it on other countries or still believing they can coerce these countries into "dealing with it".

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> If Russia's (and China's) immediate borders are packed with countries armed to their teeth, there would be wars.

I like this Putin's style of passive threats like "there would be wars". Just say the threat explicitly, Russia would invade their western neighbors.

> Buffer states happen for a reason.

Ukraine was a buffer state, yet it was invaded by Russia three times in the last 10 years. People have now justified doubts about this model.

If these countries are "armed to the teeth", Russia will invade some of these countries. Both sides will point fingers at each other while some Eastern European homes burn. Eventually the prospect of horrible death while grasping the Western-provided arms will dissuade these countries from being armed to the teeth. I sincerely believe the preferred lifestyle of Eastern Europeans is sitting on a porch of their nice tiny house, not dying from a mortal wound in a ditch.

Arms do not win wars without people holding them, and even then, fighting off an agressor does not mean your country isn't ruined.

Ukraine was in the process of ditching its buffer state status by choosing a side. They bragged for a decade how they are going to do that. Needless to say it didn't go so well for them, and only them so far. Other countries in thir position turned out to be smarter as not to win the first Russian invasion target prize.

Please note that I'm not asking for a moral judgement because everybody else who may pass it has worse skeletons in their own closet than Russian Ukraine affair.

There is no scenario where Eastern European countries, who had been living under Russian tyranny for several centuries, only recently to secure their independence and security as part of the EU or NATO, are going to unilaterally disarm just to please Russia.

Other countries just managed to join NATO fast enough before Putin lost his mind. Ukraine's mistake was joining too slowly. Now Russia and Ukraine both suffer for basically no reason other than the fantasies of a senile 71 year old man.

>Please note that I'm not asking for a moral judgement because everybody else who may pass it has worse skeletons in their own closet than Russian Ukraine affair.

I don't know if that is true, the Ukraine War stands out as particularly evil. Russia is guilty of particularly evil crimes against humanity in this war that they chose to start.

> who had been living under Russian tyranny for several centuries

Most of these countries Russia never touched, or fought off of Turks and then let them be. They never lived under Russia's anything. Were it Czechs live under several centuries of Russian tyranny? Because these ones are particularly obnoxious now, despite many years of feeding off of Russian statesmen in Karlovy Vary.

I don't think you even remotely understand what you are talking about, and people are going to die in great numbers before they start reading history books instead of NYT columns on the subject.

> stands out as particularly evil

I guess they just don't hand out history textbooks in the child care...

> Most of these countries Russia never touched, or fought off of Turks and then let them be.

Does the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact ring any bell? Do you know what the Baltic states went through? Did you hear about the Prague spring or that glorious sister republic in eastern Germany? Fuck, do you know about the Holodomor?

It’s a bit rich to say these countries never knew Russian oppression. It may not have lasted very long, but it was particularly brutal. The first thing they did is get away at the first occasion and all of them are traumatised to this day. Ukraine and Belarus tried to play nice. Belarus is now subservient and annexed in all but name, and Ukraine is being torn apart. So tell me why those Eastern European countries would not do anything they can to stay out of Russia’s reach?

I'm not sure what's wrong with socialist Czech or DDR. They've got the Communism lite try before you buy inoculated package and now they squeal like a pig being butchered. Russians saw many orders of magnitude worse things than any of the stuff DDR or Soviet Czech was up to. The way Eastern Europeans are trying to show how they require special treatment is a disgrace to any Russian. They literally complain how Soviets curbed their access to white privilege they were entitled to.

XX century was a disaster, you had to grind your teeth and survive through it. Holodomor is a pathetic Ukrainian attempt to privatize a much greater Communist hunger and frame it on its victims. They do so because they believe that they should get a specific, better treatment than everybody east of them. Rings any bells?

Needless to say Russians did not invent Communism and you can find a huge number of fans for it in any HN thread. Russians sincerely believed they have a traumatic experience of struggle to share with the rest of "socialist camp" only to discover that the whole 500 million strong camp frames it on their small ethnic fraction.

Belarus is a paradise now compared to Ukraine (and to extent Russia). You can do whatever you like and there is no fear of draft. There are also jobs and industry intact. You can cross the border if you are male but is not economically obliged to do so.

Czechs were only part of the Russian Empire for about 45 years, and only in the 20th century. Could have been worse.

I think you just struggle to understand how fundamentally your country is hated by Eastern Europeans. Russia is like Germany, if Germany still was proud of its Nazi heritage. You just don't get it, it's sad, you're so hated but you have no idea why, you're just so blinded by ultranationalism. Russia could have chosen to enter the 21st century but instead decided to enter the 18th. Meanwhile most of your people outside of Moscow and St Petersburg don't even have indoor toilets. It's honestly tragic what a gigantic shithole your country is, and yet you're so proud of it being such a gigantic shithole. Just tragic.

I think I don't struggle to imagine how Eastern Europeans loved Russia, Soviet Union and Communism just 40 years back. 80 years back, Eastern Europeans just loved Germany and Hitler. Now they are huge fans of the USA. This time it's for real. Genuine Eastern European feeling and honest hatred for everybody who came before.

The problem with most Eastern Europeans is that they'll sing and dance on anybody's 5 cents. You can buy and sell them and they will always be eager to serve.

That is frankly revolting to Russians who are able to maintain long term loyalties, and will be heartbroken to betray long term commitments. Russians do not hate Eastern Europeans, neither do they want to invade and occupy their countries, but Russians do despise Eastern Europeans now. Every stupid thing you say gets laid on these scales.

Oh, loyalties? Do you know Russia is committed to defend Armenia thru the CSTO, but apparently just said meh and now Armenia is on their own?

Armenia is run by a US-backed stooge, so Russia expected the US to defend Armenia. But whoops, the US chose to win a favor with Turkey by backing Azerbaijan instead :)

Armenia has suffered a national tragedy which they then turned into circus by their accusations against Russia. They neither recognized Karabakh as their own nor did they put up a serious fight. But they can's shut up telling everybody how they expected somebody else to fight instead of them.

Still, Russians did not write Armenia off completely even after all this.

That "writing them off completely" is even on the table shows that this "ability to loyalty" is BS. It's like if you have a boyfriend that say "well, at least I won't leave you over this" every day. Don't make you feel very secure do it?

I won't call the bearded Pashinyan "a girlfriend", but it is the other way around:

Armenia basically tell Russia they break up with them to join another relationship. However, the other side does not look like they want Armenia. No breakup exchange of personal effects happens. In the end, Russia lingers there to see what happens and is not closing the door yet. Again, it is a bad analogy because even the closest country to country relations are not monogamous.

The reason of why the breakup is discussed: your bearded girlfriend taunted another girl (with a mustache) and got serious bruises in return. Now she thinks you should've fought with that another girl instead of her doing so. Your girlfriend was the cause of the fight but you do think the mustached one has overreacted.

Lol. Like I said, you just don't get it. The Russian slave mentality is as strong as ever.

Good that we established who was, is, and will be the aggressor. I'm looking forward to the mental gymnastics about those who invade being actually the ones who defend themselves. As is the tradition in the Russian propaganda, invasion of Finland, Baltics, Poland etc. were all just defensive wars.

But I'm more optimistic about that and don't believe your empty threats. If the NATO strengthens its eastern border, Russia's military has simply no chance there. It's a suicide, it doesn't make sense to bang your head against the wall. Russia has many other weaker neighbors it can abuse instead.

> Ukraine was in the process of ditching its buffer state status by choosing a side.

Ukraine was invaded because it wanted to get closer to EU in the form of the association agreement.

Interestingly, the roughly analogous CIS was never a problem in this concept of "buffer state". Or does "buffer state" actually mean "Russia-aligned"?

And that's the crux of the issue. You can stay as a buffer state only as long as you're a Russian puppet.

All small countries are someone's puppets. The US tried to take a puppet state away from Russia and somewhat succeeded so far.

The first move was at the end of the Cold War. The drunken President Yeltsin took the existing administrative map of the USSR and created a new state that had artificially attached Russian regions. This set up the time delay fuse. Second was the US-backed coup in 2014. And third - what we have today. The US is good at playing the long game. Only China is better.

Downvote away, it seems to make you happy. But maybe before you write this off as "Russian propaganda" go read what Solzhenitsyn had to say on the subject. Yes, that Solzhenitsyn, the dissident who wrote "Ivan Denisovich".

> There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.

Look, we tried normalising relations. In the end, Russia just takes what it can. It’s lunacy to believe that everything would be better if European countries just rolled over, accepted being bullied, and just gave Putin what he wants. It’s insane.

I just don't remember any of those attempts. Which year was that? I remember the disastrous Obama's great reset which caused these relations to deteriorate at greatly accelerated rate.

I also remember how bad they were during COVID time, etc.

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