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Joined 3 months ago
Cake day: June 2nd, 2026
  • tired_fedora@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•"Violence is never the answer" unless it is white people doing itEnglish
    14·
    10 hours ago

    I feel like our interpretation of events differs enough not to really warrant further discussion. Nevertheless, here are the responses to your requests:

    • Most importantly, I don’t think we will agree on whether a revolution or a coup happened in 2014 Ukraine. Of note here is that 73% of the parliament voted the president out of office, which gives this “coup” a pretty decent democratic basis.
    • In addition to that fundamental disagreement, I think we are circling a hen-an-egg problem here, because I can always bring up some earlier aggression from Russia / the Soviet Union and then you can bring up some earlier aggression by NATO. They were in a cold war: There’s plenty. Fact is, both the invasion of 2014 and of 2022 were illegal by international law and by the very agreements that Russia had signed before.
    • By all statistics which I’m aware of you are correct that most Crimeans wanted to join Russia in 2014. To make sure that was also reflected in the polls, multiple records of manipulation have been recorded by government and non-government organizations, the most severe IMO being to take away people’s identity documents. Various sources linked on the wiki, e.g., this one. The referendum was also held after Russian troops invaded the peninsula, whch is definitely not okay: Irrespective of the outcome of a referendum, Sweden could not just seize St. Petersburg and then hold a referendum there; that’d be absurd. And all this is irrespective of the genuinely difficult question whether such a referendum is binding. Neither the Ukrainian constitution nor the international agreements of 2003 (co-signed by Russia) contain such a mechanism. Secession is also not considered a general right by international law and it would probably lead to chaos if border regions constantly changed hands. However, I understand the semi-normative appeal of a referendum and I concede that most Crimeans are probably alright with being Russian for now. You may contrast the parliamentary decision I quote further up with this referendum and you are right to do so. Legally speaking, one of them just changed the government of an existing state while the other one moved the borders; the latter of which is much more invasive to the international order. The first one also asked the representatives of that whole country (alas, did not ask every single person in that country), while the second one only asked the region in question.
    • This also leads to my next point: It seems that most of Ukrainians want to associate with Europe. If Russia is so big about letting people choose whom they want to associate with, why invade Ukraine in 2022? The same argument works for the occupied part of Georgia. Or for the regions predominantly settled by Crimean Tartars.
    • And if we do bring up the middle east for some reason, it also applies to the Kurds. However, I don’t think bringing up the middle east contributes much to the topic at hand. Are you saying Russia was protecting countries in the middle east by carrying out military maneuvers over the Swedish airspace? Sweden and the Baltics didn’t really play an instrumental part in any of these campaigns. Did the US illegally invade some countries? Oh for sure! And they totally did pull NATO countries into some of these campaigns (e.g., Operation Enduring freedom). But how does that justify regularly threatening the Baltics or Sweden (the latter of which even used to be neutral before its chagrined association with NATO due to growing pressure from the East)?
    • Are you suggesting the Baltics and Sweden should’ve allied with Russia to prevent them from being invaded by Russia? (Edit 2: That worked our really well for the democratic movement in Belarus… /s).
    • In my reading of history, the Baltics and Sweden suffered both under Nazi occupation and Soviet occupation and both are commemorated with much pain and suffering in those countries; Nazi occupation of these countries, although a terrible part of history, is not really related to this discussion, though.
    • Finishing with a petty little point on the side: Russia is not fighting NATO right now. Russia is fighting Ukraine, which receives weapons from NATO. With NATO boots on the ground, this conflict would look very different very quickly. However, NATO is demonstrating that, at least for now, it remains a defensive alliance that only springs into action when a member state is attacked by a foreign state adversary (or in the case of Operation Enduring freedom “a foreign state adversary”).

    Edit: Adding this for completeness: I brought up Sweden and the Baltics because the second strongest military in the world (Russia) has much less reason of being afraid of the 26th strongest military (Sweden), than Sweden has a reason to be afraid vice versa. Even saying that Russia was afraid of the USA by proxy doesn’t change this much, A) because the US is not in Sweden, they could just project through Sweden, while Russia could actually march at Sweden if it wanted to, but more importantly, B) because number 2 vs number 1 is a much less drastic difference than number 2 vs number 26. Ranking linked here. Before 2022, everyone thought Russia could just overrun its neighbor states (like Ukraine) whenever it wanted to and this drove many of them into the arms of NATO, which has yet to invade a member state.

  • tired_fedora@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•"Violence is never the answer" unless it is white people doing itEnglish
    19·
    14 hours ago

    Alright, here goes the sarcasm. I must’ve forgot the NATO invasion of Crimea in 2014. Sorry 'bout that. Wasn’t there this whole story of NATO stripping the voting rights of Crimean folks who wanted to join Russia just before the impromptu post-hoc referendum to justify that invasion? I must’ve also forgot about the NATO invasion of Georgia in 2008, darn! But I’m pretty sure I remember the invasion of Donbas and Luhansk in 2022 quite right.

    As for your second argument:

    what do you think a state should do when the most prolific invader in the world gathers weapons and military personnel on its borders

    Great question! Now do the same for the Baltics or Sweden. You’ll be surprised how nervous smaller countries get when one of the strongest armies in the world regularly executes larger and larger maneuvers at their borders and in their airspace. They might even think about joining a defensive military alliance. If Russia doesn’t want that, then it was not the brightest move to double down and invade Ukraine.