Hacker News Reader

Comment by gbriel | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

The main difference here is that Russia is not funded by western nations nor is it an ally to most of NATO countries. The gripe many of us have with Israel's actions is that we enable them directly by providing money, weapons and manpower. No nation in the west will hesitate to condemn Russia's war crimes, whereas just recently we started seeing some manner of blowback to Israel's.

> The main difference here is that Russia is not funded by western nations

Incorrect.

The west still buys Russian gas. Half of Russian gas exports go there.

https://energyandcleanair.org/august-2026-monthly-analysis-o...

> No nation in the west will hesitate to condemn Russia's war crimes

The US doesn’t condemn Russian aggression, and try get the current administration to say that Russia invaded or is committing war crimes.

The situations are not the same, but western nations are absolutely funding Putin’s actions through oil and gas imports.

Despite a lot of posturing, and a fair amount of presumably sincere effort, billions continue to flow.

But considerably less than before the war and the EU are making efforts to decouple themselves, it's just not a switch that could be turned off, certainly not in the same way that support for Israel could be or could have been in the past decades.

How much more do we need to talk about it?

For one thing, there isn't a major, bi-partisan, pro-Russian-war-crime lobby with a controlling interest currently sitting in government.

I support Ukraine with all my heart (and a little money) but whatabouting will get you nothing. This is a thread about the hamas-israeli war. There's no reason to change the subject and it doesn't take away ability to talk about Ukraine elsewhere.

Actually some people have mentioned the invasion and occupation of Ukraine in this comment section to draw parallels or make distinctions

Reply on news.ycombinator.com