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Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

Russia can absolutely leave a militarized Ukraine intact. Give back the pieces of the country they tried to steal, pay war reparations, send some people to The Hague to get fitted for new ties. Move on.

No one wants a war with Russia, even now. The whole "the West will invade" trope is just a way to keep Russians from focusing on their own situation. If the populace paid even knew a little of what Western media said about a potential conflict between the West and Russia, they'd realize this... "The Day After", etc.

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> the West will invade

Year after year the west issue attacked. How many times has Russia attacked its neighbours?

Russia believes they have to attack their neighbours, because they believe they need to push all the way to geographic boundaries like the sea or mountains.

Unfortunately this is how dictators think. Nobodies die for their ambitions and tahts what we see.

Putin believes he needs the boundaries to be what Stalin took after WW2 from the old and sick Roosevelt who gave him too much of Eastern Europe.

Have you watched too much of Peter Zeihan? Dude is mostly talking nonsense confidently while hiking. As someone living in Ukraine I can tell you he understands literally nothing about our politics, defense capabilities etc but talks very confidently about it.

I am not a Putin supporter and i hope he rots in hell, the sooner the better, but that doesnt change the fact that he does wish to recreate the USSR and its satellite state system.

Im sorry your home country cant be left in peace but those are the facts.

Putin has said the dissolution of the USSR was the greatest political tragedy of the 21C.

USSR bit might be true, but the Russian invasion so far is the top contender for the greatest tragedy political or not of the first half of the XXI century.

You didnt read my response. I simply repeated what PUTIN said, im not talking about actual reality. The two are very different. In Russia only one persons opinion or will matters and thats PUTIN.

Not sure how what you said is related to what I said. You are saying "no, you are mistaken", but I didn't make any of the claims you attribute to me.

Transnistria/Moldova 1992, Georgia 1992/1993, Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014, Ukraine 2022.

I don’t think Putin can. He certainly doesn’t believe that would be a better outcome than continuing to fight (although he’s definitely not being realistic about that). That would be complete defeat, and he can’t admit that.

Why would Putin care what ordinary Russians think ?

Every single Russian citizen is scared of Putin, because they know he owns everything including their lives.

They also know that most of the dead and fighting are not even European white Russian, most of the unfortunates are from the many other cultures and peoples that have been conquered.

I think russian government cares a lot about population support, and despite the efforts of the few Russian anti-war heroes, war still has broad support from a population, so it buys time for russian super rich to enjoy their position in society. Moreover, historically russian government used wars as a means to raise support, 1999 Ichkeriya war was used as a vehicle to prop up Putin popularity, 2008 Georgia invasion was able to gain widespread support for Medvedev, and of course 2014 invasion, and to lesser extent Syria invasion, repelled all the mass protests that were happening in early 2010s. Large chunk of population enjoys warmongering, hails strongmen and genocide. This does not extend to all Russians citizen, but likely majority of them.

I dont recall seeing protests from the Russian public demanding that the government perform the 1999 Ichkeriya war.

I recall second war very well, despite I was a child. Ukrainian TV was broadcasting Russian news at a time, so I saw resident buildings explosions and learned from the reports that evil Chechen terrorists were behind them. A humble but purposeful prime minister worked hard to stop these terrorists, and I was then fully on his side. This was years before I learned about sugar bag drills in Ryazan.

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