It’s a liberal cesspool full of people who refuse to listen when you speak. I explained how the SMO in Russia was justified going all the way back to fucking WWII and Stepan Bandera to Russia not wanting Ukraine in NATO and some dickhead told me to “tOuCH gRaSS”. Didn’t even address any of my points, just that “dEnAziFIcaTioN iSnT a gOoD rEasOn, iT’s aS bAd aS wMDs”.

Fucking moron. I hate that fucking place so fucking much.

  • andrewta@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Russia didn’t want Ukraine in NATO but invades Ukraine and effectively kicks the door open to basically force NATO to let Ukraine into NATO.

    Law of unintended consequences?

    • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      so we’re just gonna ignore that NATO has said 4 times now that Ukraine will not join them. Geopolitics is easy when you just deny reality and substitute your own 🤓

    • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      to basically force NATO to let Ukraine into NATO

      If NATO is being forced to let in Ukraine, then why is Ukraine still not a part of NATO after all this time?

      If you said this about Sweden I could understand. But everything about Ukraine joining NATO has been speculative saber rattling. As I see it they will never allow Ukraine to join.

      • andrewta@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The vote will happen once the war is over that has already been publicly stated. The only reason it won’t happen while the war is happening is it would create a situation that put NATO in direct conflict with Russia. Right now it’s just handing the arms to Ukraine.

        Had Russia not invaded this most likely wouldn’t have happened.

        • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          NATO has said 4 times Ukraine won’t get to join, and has been dismissive of any timeline, and you still believe them when they say “yeah it will totally happen after the war trust us guys just hold on and eventually it’ll happen pinky promise”

        • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          So, by attacking Ukraine to prevent it joining NATO, Ukraine joining NATO can only happen after the war is over (probably, maybe, perhaps)? That’s the opposite of your “unintended consequences” claim, even ignoring how Ukraine’s entrance in NATO is still not even guaranteed after this war ends.

      • hitwright@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, but it brings the whole NATO to war by default. Since that is an escalation no one wants to play, so the Ukraine continues to suffer alone.

        • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          So if the war means Ukraine cannot practically join NATO, and if Russia is unlikely to leave Ukraine in a state where it could join NATO after the war, is it likely that invading Ukraine will lead to Ukraine joining NATO?

      • andrewta@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Once the war is over they will be. The invasion of Ukraine basically created a situation where NATO said enough is enough and has agreed that Ukraine can join. Had Russia not invaded this would most likely not have happened.

        • Red Wizard 🪄@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          Lol this isn’t a marvel movie kiddo and this war isn’t going to be “over” where the “good guys” win and the credits roll. It’s going to end the same way the Iraq war ended. 20 years of bloodshed, every Ukrainian killed, irreparably traumatized, or radicalized, with Azov insurgencies armed to the gills with NATO and US assets with a deep hatred of all three parties involved.

          It’s natural landscape raped for it’s resources, it’s “reconstruction” privatized by Global Financial Capital, it’s people’s “identity” will be nothing but a shallow husk of its former self.

          Don’t forget what Iraq looked like prior to the deathgrip of imperialism:

          In 20 years, the then 20 year olds born around the time of the war won’t even know why we were aiding them, or why we would bother to help a “dirty” “under developed” nation like Ukraine. Just be ready to show them photos of what it looked like before NATO and the US wrapped their filthy, oily hands around their throats and choked them blind.

        • Soviet Snake@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          Ukraine will never join, Ukraine is just cannon fodder that the US bourgeoisie is using to make money, if you think they give 2 fucks about slavs you are past the point of recuperable brain damage.

        • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          Were they not on the cusp of joining before Russia invaded? I thought that was one of the reasons for the invasion, to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO?

          • andrewta@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            There has been talk for years. But it never went anywhere and was never going to. I don’t remember right off hand why ( I just woke up and my brain is still foggy) but I do know it was never going to happen. Putin just wanted more land and believed that since NATO was never going to vote to have Ukraine join, it was going to be a quick conflict and the thing would be over. He took Crimea and the world did nothing. If it worked once why wouldn’t it work again?

            Man was he wrong.

              • andrewta@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Because if Ukraine is part of NATO and Ukraine is being invaded then NATO basically has to directly join in the fight. Which means direct conflict between NATO and Russia. That is never a good idea.

                And there is no civil war. Well no more then there is in the US. There are certain groups in the US that want to break away. Obviously that won’t happen. They never gain any real traction.

                In Ukraine they wouldn’t have gained traction either , but Russia decided to back and also arm the separatists. That was done for the sole purpose of giving Russia an excuse to invade and annex Crimea.

                • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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                  In Ukraine they wouldn’t have gained traction either , but Russia decided to back and also arm the separatists

                  So it’s okay for NATO to arm Ukraine, but it’s not okay for Russia to arm people who are being killed by their own government?

                • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  You’re missing some facts here. There was a civil war. 14,000 people killed. 30,000 injured. 1.3+million displaced. All reported by the UN.

                • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Except that there was and still is a civil war. A large part of those fighting on the Russian side are Ukrainians, and not just from the Donbass either. The civil war started in 2014 after the Maidan coup, and the first rebels had virtually zero support from Russia, they had to fight with whatever they could get their hands on. Most of their equipment was actually acquired from units of the Ukrainian military and police who deserted to the side of the rebels, and from the units they went on to defeat. Russia was heavily criticized by many of the people living and fighting in the new Donbass republics and by more hardline Russians for not doing more to support the rebels at that time, and even intervening to stop their advance when they had just inflicted a massive defeat on the Kiev regime forces. It was because of Russia’s insistence on stopping the fighting and trying to get a diplomatic resolution that the rebels had to leave the liberated Mariupol - one of the first cities that rose up against the Maidan - which then was re-occupied by Azov Nazis who went on to torture and brutalize the local population for years until Russia finally recaptured it last year.

                  And why shouldn’t Russia arm the side of the civil war which chose to reject the undemocratic, western engineered fascist coup that overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine if the West was backing the other side, giving them money, weapons, training and more? Why the double standard? By the same logic you could say that without western interference the coup would not have succeeded in the first place or that the regime would not have survived after the coup.

                  The fact that you see the Maidan regime as legitimate, and the rebels (who by the way did not start out as separatists, merely as people who rejected the violent overthrow of a government they had elected and whose initial demands were merely for autonomy; portraying them as “Russian backed separatists” to delegitimize them is a characteristic of pro-Maidan propaganda) as illegitimate just shows which side you stand on.

            • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Have you taken a look at Russia on a map lately? Why would Russia need or want more land? More than anything else newly liberated regions are a massive financial burden on Russia. They would have required huge reconstruction efforts even without a war as they have been neglected for 30 years by the succession of kleptocratic, neoliberal, post-Soviet governments of Ukraine since 1991. Russia didn’t “take” Crimea, Crimeans voted to re-join Russia in a referendum after a fascist coup overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine and replaced it with an ultra-nationalist russophobic regime. Crimea being majority ethnically Russian feared having the same shit happen to them as happened in Odessa when the Nazis burned dozens of people alive for protesting the coup.

              The notion that Putin simply decided to attack Ukraine one day because he wanted more land or just felt like conquering someone is incredibly childish, not to mention it requires that you purposely close your eyes to all of the actual real factors, all the events, all of the history that led up to the intervention, and all of the vital national interests and concerns that Russia had and which any government would have been compelled to act on.

              If Putin just wanted land why wouldn’t he take it from say, Kazakhstan, which is far less supported by the West, has a much weaker military than Ukraine - which at the start of the conflict was the second strongest military in Europe - and whose mostly empty land is nowhere near as defensible as the highly urbanized and industrialized regions of eastern Ukraine and yet far more rich in natural resources?

              And why did he spend eight years refusing to allow the Donbass republics to join Russia - something that the people living there were practically begging for since it became clear that they could no longer live in peace under the post-Maidan government of Ukraine - and instead insisting on trying to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine by entering into agreements like Minsk I and II?

            • Nocturne Dragonite@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              1 year ago

              “Putin just wanted more land” has to be the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard about this conflict. How do you even imagine this happened? He was just sitting there bored one day and decided “you know what, more land sounds great!”

              Do yourself a favor and look up the Euromaidan coup.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          “When the war ends, Ukraine will join NATO.” + “Russia can not allow NATO on its borders.” = “Russia has zero incentive to ever end the war and has every incentive to fight the war indefinitely.”

          By promising to admit they have actually made Ukraine into a permanent warzone, turning what was a regional dispute into an existential threat to Russia’s national security. And that was the point. Maybe they actually would let Ukraine join after the war, but that’s why they don’t want the war to end. Ukraine has now become a pit where they can throw in money in exchange for Russian blood and treasure.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Ukraine was already becoming a de facto member of NATO before Russia intervened. NATO infrastructure was being built on its territory, interoperability was being established, it was being armed and trained by NATO and NATO operatives were already embedded in their military and intelligence apparatus. The same is true for Sweden and Finland too hence why their formal joining makes little to no difference. Russia intervened to prevent a genocide in the Donbass and to reverse the NATOization - aka Nazification and militarization - of Ukraine.

      Ukraine is being treated as a de facto member of NATO as the entirety of NATO is bending over backwards to send them every scrap of military equipment they can scrounge up, to send them intelligence, to train them and help them plan military operations, and inject thousands of “trainers”, “mercenaries” and “volunteers” aka NATO soldiers in disguise into the battlefield. This is not much different than what NATO would do for an official member. They also would have tried to impose a no-fly zone if they thought they could do so without their air force being absolutely wrecked by Russia.

      At this point Russia has no incentive to end the conflict before Ukraine is either completely annexed so it can no longer be weaponized by NATO against Russia, or until it capitulates to all of Russia’s demands, which will include the removal of the Nazi regime in Kiev and the installation of a pro-Russian government that will enshrine Ukraine’s neutral and demilitarized status into permanent law/treaties. The notion that Russia should have just let the situation in Ukraine continue to fester and worsen because their intervention has pissed off NATO is infantile and naive to the highest possible degree.

      Russia already tried the diplomatic route from 2014 onwards with the Minsk agreements and that turned out to be a complete sham on the part of the West and Ukraine. If anything Russia should have intervened much earlier, ideally gone in right after the Maidan to restore order and the legitimate government of Ukraine, but hindsight is 20/20.