> "NATO has been aggressive in it's expansion towards Russia. Russia warned NATO to back off many times, and as late as January the two negotiated, Russia laid down the terms to either back off or it will invade, and NATO called Russia's bluff."
I'm sorry, what? How can anyone write such absolute nonsense?
Russia attacked Ukraine. Ukraine wasn't going to join NATO, it was explicitly stated and agreed upon years ago. Finland and Norway weren't going to join NATO, because they had zero interest in doing so. But Russia attacked Ukraine, so they applied into NATO, it's a direct consequence of Russia's actions. That's not Russia "pushing back".
> But none of that even addresses my argument, Russia opposed NATO expansion, Russia threatened severe consequences, NATO gave no signs that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO or entered any kind of negotiations, Russia delivered on its promise.
I don't understand what you are talking about. NATO did exactly what you suggest: at the request of Russians, shut the door to NATO for Georgia and Ukraine. Russia used the opportunity and shortly thereafter invaded both of them. Russia has not invaded a single country that actually joined NATO.
Seeking NATO membership is the best strategy to prevent a Russian invasion, hence why Finland and Sweden decided to join. It was a particularly notable policy shift for Sweden, because Sweden abandoned 200 years of neutrality.
This has been widely known for 25 years that it would lead to war. This is also why the Russian border states not threatening to join NATO are not under attack. Only Ukraine.
> The result is that their promises about not attacking someone if "they stay out of NATO" are worthless crap and the only way for smaller European countries to stop them is with force of arms and help of a big military alliance.
The sequence of events: 1) Ukraine government states that it is their priority to join NATO 2) Russia amasses troops at the border, states "don't join NATO, there will be consequences" 3) NATO and Ukraine say "you are bluffing, we'll do whatever we want" 4) Russia invades.
That one was just a lie. It has zero to do with nato.
It is ideologically against westernization of countries around Russia against their souverenity and for making them authoritarian puppet states responding to Kremlin.
But encroachment by NATO thing is nonsense. It frames Russia as vicrim od nato, but that is not what it in reality was. Even nato enlarging was because countries actively seemed membership, pushed pleaded pressed. Because they have seen nato as only available protection.
> The only time they made a major retreat was when they overstretched and Kyiv offensive that was expected to be quick failed.
Yeah, that's false. Google is your friend on this one. Next time pay attention to the war you want to comment on.
> No connection to anything related to NATO. If anything "NATO enlargement" rhethoric is just a coverup. Estonia is part of the NATO and it's bordering Russia with travel distance of 210 km to St. Petersburg.
Also false. Nobody in IR actually believe this propaganda. But yeah, there are many other things Russia also wants. I linked the comment where I outlined some of them.
No matter how many times you say this it doesn't make it escalatory.
Why do you (and other pro Russians) view an alliance that effectively was created to combat Russian aggression view its expansion as aggression against Russia.
I'll quote someone to tell you why.
>>> Of course Russia and Russian presidents hate NATO, it stops them conducting imperialistic wars against the countries that they wish to subjugate.
>>> No one should care what Russia thinks, it's clear not allowing countries like Georgia and Ukraine into NATO just causes Russia to invade them anyway
> Oh I dunno, appeal on the United Nations security council (just as they futitely tried to prevent the invasion of Iraq), in public speeches that US media refuses to broadcast (unless they can take a tiny clip out of context).
The UN uploads all of there clips to YouTube yet your claim is unsourced.
> Suppose Russia wanted to do everything you and US propaganda claims to Ukraine (up to and including apparently, genociding all Ukrainians, restoring the Soviet Union or whatever is asserted and critically accepted, just like “weapons of mass destruction” and “they hate us for our freedoms”)
This isn't a claim by me but rather by the Russian TV I'll link the video.
> Then why did they not invade in 2015? Why wait 8 years? The only answer I got here is “well Russians are strange”.
> If we didn’t expand NATO and train Ukrainian paramilitaries to kill Russians
You keep using these words like it's some sort of gotcha.
The Ukrainians are being trained to defend their home from an imperialistic invasion against from a country that talks about how many millions of them they will have to kill to subjugate them.
Talks about how they aren't a real country with a real culture and really just Russian lands that have been unjustly taken from them.
> then the worst that would happen is Ukraine would implement the Minsk II agreements, and its fate would have been even better than Georgia after 2008
Why would Ukraine implement Minks II when Russia violated Minsk I and the Budapest Memorandum?.
Did Russia pinky promise that this one time specifically they will actually follow the treaties they sign?
Or was it another step out of Russias playbook to try and freeze the war in a way that was advantageous to them?.
> Also, if Russia did nothing, rather than arming rebels, they would probably have been far better off.
They did a lot more than arming rebels as Igor Strelkov says.
> At the start of this summer, 90 percent of the rebel forces were made up of local residents, Strelkov was quoted as saying. However, by early August, Russian servicemen supposedly on "vacation" from the army had begun to arrive, he said.
> According to Strelkov, the assault on the Black Sea town of Mariupol in September, which prompted concerns in Ukraine and the West that Russia has entered the conflict on a large scale, was conducted mostly by the Russian military "vacationers."
> I criticize both Russia and USA both as imperialists. You criticize Russia BUT NOT USA. That’s the difference.
90% of your content is devoted to criticising America and down playing Russias involvement I the war.
Hell you won't even admit the Russian army was involved in Donbas's in 2014, then the person who was the _leader of the breakaway region_ tells you they where.
>You are delusional. NATO doesn't want anybody to join.
They stated very clearly at the Bucharest conference in 2008 and again in Brussels in 2021 that Ukraine will join.
I'm frankly appalled at the number of times I have had people tell me that Ukraine "would never have joined NATO". It was well on its way to membership.
Im also terrified at the number of people willing to be dragged down on a path to nuclear war by NATO trying to secure a strategic advantage on Russia's own border.
> how we promised Russia we wouldnt do an eastward expansion of nato
This purported promise is a myth, see my comments here [1]. (TL; DR No treaty or public comments. Russia, on the other hand, signed a treaty promising not to invade Ukraine when she denuclearised. Talk of broken promises is a red herring.)
Russia has a realpolitik interest in creating buffer nations between it and the West. What it's doing--invading Crimea and now threatening to take the rest--doesn't further that goal. It does, however, serve Putin's political agenda.
> NATO's primary goal was to protect member nations territorial integrity against Russian incursion. Who here still believes NATO will do that
There's a big difference between annexing (parts of, or even all of) Ukraine (which isn't a NATO member), and Poland (which is not only in NATO, but also the EU)
> Ukraine didn't have ambitions to join NATO before Putin attacked it for the first time in 2014
That's just not true.
> NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.
This is from the 2008 Bucharest NATO meeting official declaration. [1]
> all the NATO trainings occurred during the war, after Russian aggression against Ukraine began.
Wrong. NATO had at least one Partnership for Peace exercise in Ukraine in October 2002, a few hours drive from L'Viv. I was there and have a few news clippings (in Norwegian) and a certificate of appreciation, unfortunately nothing seems to be online and/or public any more.
And just to be specific; this doesn't justify any aggression on Russia's behalf, sovereign nations are free to decide who to ally with.
> It's one thing to say, "Ukraine was never going to be in NATO, trust us."
No one ever said that. Ukraine is going to be in NATO if they want to be in NATO. The claim that Ukraine would eventually be admitted to NATO is not the bullshit.
The bullshit is that NATO is offensively directed at Russia; the only reason Russia isn't in NATO and covered by its defensive shield (Russia joined the onramp Partnership for Peace program in 1994) is that Putin decided he didn't want it to be, made known-unacceptable demands to bypass the accession process, was rebuffed as he knew he would be, and used that as a reason to stop any work toward joining.
> but they've been sold a narrative that NATO's expansion into Ukraine was an existential threat to them
When the war started there were no talking what's so ever about NATO expansion to Ukraine. After the war started Finland joined NATO and it is the longest border between NATO and Russia and nobody from Russia said anything about that.
> Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia
Putin has told the world many times that the Ukrainians (and other former Warsaw Pact countries) aren't real countries and destined to be colonies at best. All his actions align with these sentiments. For example, Belarus never threatened to join NATO, but they were invaded and subjugated all the same. This is 100% on Putin and Russia.
Absolutely false. We cannot prevent wars if we refuse to engage with reality as it is not as we wish it to be. https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/17000929447142730...
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