Companies Shut Ukraine Operations and Watch for Sanctions as Russia Attacks (slashdot.org) 146
Danish brewer Carlsberg and a Coca-Cola bottler shut their plants in Ukraine on Thursday following Russia's invasion while firms making goods from jet engines to semiconductors warned that supplies of key raw materials could suffer. From a report: Carlsberg, which has a 31% share of Ukraine's beer market, halted production at all three of its breweries in the country, while Coca-Cola said it had triggered its contingency plans which included shutting its bottling plant. Britain's biggest domestic bank Lloyds, meanwhile, warned that it was on heightened alert for cyberattacks from Russia while companies operating in Ukraine were looking at how to shield their staff from the conflict. Russian forces invaded Ukraine by land, air and sea on Thursday, confirming the worst fears of the West with the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War Two. Many companies with significant exposure to Russia said they were still waiting to see the full force of Western sanctions before deciding on any action, although backers of the suspended Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline were already taking a hit. Washington imposed sanctions on the company behind Nord Stream 2 on Wednesday and European Union leaders are meeting later on Thursday to decide what punitive measures they will impose as retribution for Russia's attack
All or nothing (Score:2, Interesting)
If there's ONE corporation who would not stand behind democracy and cut ALL Russia off from its services, it's all going to be in vain.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
this war was completely avoidable by simply keeping Ukraine out of NATO
What? Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Ukraine is not a candidate for NATO membership. Ukraine aspired to join but never had a realistic path. Ukraine's (non-)membership in NATO was a totally phony issue.
Re: WTF? (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it isn't.
During the negotiations for re-unification of Germany, the fact that East-Germany would become NATO territory came up, and the Russians didn't like it one bit. Both German and US negotiators made promises to the Russians that NATO would not expand eastwards.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason this was left out of the written contracts (it remained a verbal promise). It didn't take long for NATO to break its word.
If anything, Russia not trusting anyone to simply SAY "ah, that's not on the table" is entirely rational and understandable.
Russian diplomats claim there was a promise, no one else does. Most likely they said something like "don't worry, there's no plan to include them" (which there probably wasn't at the time).
And Yeltsin didn't even initially oppose the expansion of NATO to include Poland and even agreed to further expansions [wikipedia.org].
So no, I don't think that hypothetical informal promise that Russia ignored in writing means anything.
Russia promising, in writing, not to invade Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes? Now Russia did flagrantly break that promise.
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Put yourself in a Russian oligarchs shoes though - Its does not much mater if there was a promise or not, NATO expansion can't be seen as anything other provocative. Its also true you are not going to enter into a mutual defense pact with one group of nations and than tie your economic interests to one of their principle antagonists. So Russian leadership also see NATO expansion as a rather permanent loss of international influence. It is not surprising they would chose to portray what may once have been
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Its does not much mater if there was a promise or not, NATO expansion can't be seen as anything other provocative.
Ukraine is someone's ex girlfriend pounding on a neighbor's door on a rainy night.
See, that's the only reason he beat her, because she started acting out like that.
Across the street, a neighbor says "They shouldn't have opened the door, they should have turned the lights off. It's just going to provoke him. She's really going to get it now. Why'd they do that to her?"
You have a choice. Don't be that asshole.
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Russian diplomats claim there was a promise, no one else does.
Wrong. Both german and american people present at those negotiations have given statements to that effect to the press. That promise is most certainly not a russian figment of the imagination.
Russia promising, in writing, not to invade Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes? Now Russia did flagrantly break that promise.
That's true. Though it may have been suicidical stupid of the Ukrainian representative at the recent Munich security conference to mention that his country is seeking to obtain new nuclear weapons.
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Basically what happened is the US and NATO had an internal policy to not expand eastward due to negotiations between the West and Russia.
Ooooh, an internal policy. Ok then, that settles it.
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Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well maybe Gorbachev should have gotten it in writing at the time. These countried desired to join NATO because, well, they feared future Russian aggressive expansion and Russia as of today is proving they were absolutely correct in their desire to join the alliance.
Russia knows there is a 0% chance of NATO invading their country so the only reason they would have to oppose NATO expansion is because they want to be able to bully their neighboring countries, aka "the buffer states". I am not saying Russia doesn't have a right to feel antagonized by NATO expansion, but it's really Russia's problem that they are so easily antagonized in the first place.
What Russia should and could have been doing is making a cooperative economic block with all those former Soviet states and use that combined economic power to broker multilateral trade agreements with the rest of the world.
Instead those countries turned to the West themselves because thats where the trade, the money and most importantly the diplomatic stability is.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Nice job cutting the history lesson short.
Baker and some of his European counterparts, during the negotiations for East Germany, did indeed raise that as a possibility of prohibiting NATO expansion, which Gorbachev was warm to. Baker reported back to Bush on the negotiations and
to support a policy that would flatly deny countries the right to self-determination and demand that they stay in spheres of influence subject to their neighbors. The negotiations continued for months and not once did the USSR demand that it be put in. The treaty was completed and signed. The USSR knew damned well what was in that treaty and what had been rejected from inclusion. This whole retcon that banning NATO expansion was their #1 most critical issue but somehow got "tricked" into not including their number one in the treaty that they negotiated, and just decided, "Baker's notion from some preliminary negotiations months ago is good enough" is farcical.
Furthermore, for all those years, and for all those countries that joined NATO, this supposed "top priority" miraculously never came up. Don't take it from me - take it from Putin himself.
Putin in 2001 [govinfo.gov]: " What we differ in is that we differ in the ways and means we perceive that are suitable for reaching the same objective. And given the nature of the relationship between the United States and Russia, one can rest assured that whatever final solution is found, it will not threaten or put to threat the interests of both our countries and of the world. And we shall continue our discussions."
Putin in 2001 [npr.org], asked whether he opposes inclusion of the Baltics in NATO - his conclusion: "So what I am trying to say is that while Russia acknowledges the role of NATO in the world of today, Russia is prepared to expand its cooperation with this organization. And if we change the quality of the relationship, if we change the format of the relationship between Russia and NATO, then I think NATO enlargement will cease to be an issue -- will no longer be a relevant issue. I guess that would be my comment."
Asked for followup, to clarify whether he was opposed: "Not only I am not opposed to it, I actually don't think it makes any sense. If we were to deal with increasing its national security, NATO enlargement does not make sense. We of course are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way. But I don't think that enlarging or enhancing NATO mechanically makes any sense."
Putin in 2002 [google.is]: "I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day, the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners."
Remember that Poland had already joined NATO, and two years later in 2004, the Baltics joined NATO. Yet Russia was still doing the "NATO is a partner, not a foe" language, with no complaints about expansion far la
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The good old days when Putin still had to answer to a free(er) press and the Russian public.
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Nice post, good research. +10.
Re:WTF? [Friend of Putin Subject?] (Score:2)
I concur with most of the content and with the favorable reactions I noted, but I wish you had done something about the vacuous Subject.
I speculate that the vacuous Subject came from a friend of Putin. Might be a useful idiot, in which case the sincerity of the ignorance doesn't matter. Might be a paid troll, in which case it matters even less.
What matters is that Ukraine needs help and America's house is so divided it can barely stand on its own, let alone provide real help to anyone else. Whatever Putin i
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Their attempt to join NATO was to get veto power and make it as useless as the UN is.
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No, it isn't.
During the negotiations for re-unification of Germany, the fact that East-Germany would become NATO territory came up, and the Russians didn't like it one bit. Both German and US negotiators made promises to the Russians that NATO would not expand eastwards.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason this was left out of the written contracts (it remained a verbal promise). It didn't take long for NATO to break its word.
If anything, Russia not trusting anyone to simply SAY "ah, that's not on the table" is entirely rational and understandable.
Gorbachev who was then the leader of the Soviet Union and handled the negotiations has denied this https://theconversation.com/uk... [theconversation.com]
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No, it isn't.
During the negotiations for re-unification of Germany, the fact that East-Germany would become NATO territory came up, and the Russians didn't like it one bit. Both German and US negotiators made promises to the Russians that NATO would not expand eastwards.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason this was left out of the written contracts (it remained a verbal promise). It didn't take long for NATO to break its word.
If anything, Russia not trusting anyone to simply SAY "ah, that's not on the table" is entirely rational and understandable.
Listen to yourself. This is whining about that dude that stole your girlfriend. He took her? She left you. I say it again, Ukraine left you. She doesn't want you. The reason she started dating that other big dude, might be, because of you. Repeat after me, Ukraine can date whoever she wants, Russia doesn't decide.
Did you even get Putin's memo? He's on a peacekeeping mission to provide stability for the independent DPR and LPR regions that Ukraine is gentrifying, genociding, they're eating babies or
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I'm not commenting on the whole war, only on one specific thing put forth here.
Politics is complicated, most of what politicians say in public isn't truth but carefully crafted marketing picked by a staff of experts in PR and propaganda, and right now we see clearly the effects of propaganda on people - on all sides.
But after some of the negotiation details became public in the last five or so years, we do have a clearer picture on the 2+4 talks and the whole NATO east expansion, and quite a few people who
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This doesn't even rise to the low low bar of being armchair analyst accurate. I feel dumber for having read that.
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This was was completely avoidable had Russia not invaded Ukraine in 2014. Full stop. Everything which is happening now falls on Putin's shoulders. He is the one who invaded 8 years ago, he is the one who has been supporting the terrorists in Donbas and Luhansk, he is the one who has been repeatedly using cyber attacks agasint Ukraine. Any other excuse for why this war happened is just
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"Also, "stand behind democracy" is a meaningless phrase, Ukraine is/was not a bastion of democracy, this war was completely avoidable by simply keeping Ukraine out of NATO (thus providing Putin with a buffer country), Russia has survived under sanctions for decades and knows how to deal with them, and..."
No, the Ukraine was not a bastion of Democracy. It seemed headed that way, to me.
But what are it's chances now? If it is absorbed into Russia, zero.
This whole situation is cl
What about operations in Russia? (Score:3)
If sanctions doesn't trigger a similar response to operations in Russia, they are not hard enough.
Cease issuing visas to Russians (Score:4, Insightful)
Measures have to be unprecedented and quick. One of the key punishments can be building of the Iron Curtain from the side of the developed world. You have to minimally behave, to deserve participation in the civilized cooperation. Another task - to review composition of the international institutions. Russia can not be present and even guiding UN Security Council, when it is invading neighbors: it is ridiculous. Out must it go in shame.
Re: Cease issuing visas to Russians (Score:2)
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The U.S. never attempted to take over Canada or Mexico just because it could.
Uhhh, yes we did. The US attempted to take over Canada in 1812.
We took half of Mexico in 1848. I live in the former Mexican province of Alto California.
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Sorry, I should've clarified that in modern times the U.S. never attempted to take over Mexico or Canada.
Since you clearly know your history, you know that this sort of thing used to be commonplace during colonialism, etc. but is extremely uncommon now. I'm fully aware that the U.S. does all sorts of shady stuff in the world stage, but simply declaring a neighboring nation as illegitimate and taking them over by force is definitely next level for any nation, no matter how corrupt.
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People really seem to have an issue with the concept of both saying the US's foreign policy and international meddling is bad AND Russia taking aggresive expansion upon it's neighbors is also bad and very much worse in context.
You can in fact hold both positions and there is nothing hypocritical about it.
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It's a double dose of stupid. The lefties who have built their ideaology as "America Bad" even if it means siding with a far right autocrat and the righties who just cannot put aside their seething over Biden winning the election so they will in fact support Russia before standing with the current President (although many of them like the way Putin runs things)
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Except that its really not. We spent the bulk of the 20th century engaging in coups and setting up friendly puppet governments anywhere we could - even in Ukraine around about 2012...Holly crap you want to talk about 'election interference'
I am not saying we are the 'bad guys' we are not but this is state craft stuff. Kinda like how the Equation Group is the NSA...not like that is all exactly above board. I think most American's have a very warped view of how the world operates due to the Pax Americana th
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Sorry, I should've clarified that in modern times the U.S. never attempted to take over Mexico or Canada.
The context was in the last 50 years, so you probably shouldn't have needed to. I mean, the US has still done some pretty awful stuff in that timeframe, but this is a war of conquest. It's a whole different animal.
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The U.S. never attempted to take over Canada or Mexico just because it could.
Uhhh, yes we did. The US attempted to take over Canada in 1812.
We took half of Mexico in 1848. I live in the former Mexican province of Alto California.
is that the best you can do to illustrate american duplicity? you're not trying very hard. Forget the fact that those are both >150 years ago, the war of 1812 was fought because the british kept kidnapping american sailors to fight napoleon. Better examples might be the invasion of grenada, panama, iran, cuba, and iraq (2003). In any case, even if you take the most cynical interpretation of those conflicts at face value, none of that excuses the invasion of ukraine.
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No, we did not. Madison only wanted the Canadian capitol taken over. He did not want all of Canada.
However, as he found out, militia are not to be relied on. Twice, if not three times.
Re: Cease issuing visas to Russians (Score:2)
We took half of Mexico in 1848. I live in the former Mexican province of Alto California.
If you're going to mention this in the context of Ukraine, Texas settlers fought independently for their independence, in 1836.
Texas had an embassy in London. This is not exactly the same state of affairs as eastern Ukraine today.
Mexico of course didn't recognize the independence. As Ukraine does not. When Texas joined the United States, the US and Mexico had a spat over where the new border was.
That's about where the similarities end. The US did not invade Texas the day it recognized it's independence.
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And the Canadians burned down the White House in retaliation. Looted it as well. Most of it had to be rebuilt from scratch.
Though, to be completely accurate, Canada didn't exist at that point.
Only the South Wall is pretty much still around, and still bears evidence of the fire.
Russia's invasion does not have allied support (Score:2)
While I actively protested the Iraq War from beginning to end(?), I have to say Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a totally different act of aggression. Bush, Cheney, and Powell arm-twisted 48 allied countries into supporting and participating in the invasion as members of the "Coalition of the Willing." Russia's Ukraine invasion is entire
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No, but it DID do exactly that with Iraq and Afghanistan.
No, it didn't. The U.S. doesn't share a border with either of those countries, and both of those countries still exist, which likely won't be the case with Ukraine in a couple months. I'm not making excuses for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars...they were both B.S., but we're talking about two very different things here.
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You are right, there is an important difference there. I was wrong.
Watch for 3rd parties (Score:2)
Blackhole Russia (Score:3)
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The list of Russian IP ranges is several thousand entries long. Not sure I want to put that in my
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I have a website. Is there an "easy and simple" way to block all visitors and e-mail from Russian IP addresses and .ru referers?
The list of Russian IP ranges is several thousand entries long. Not sure I want to put that in my .htaccess file.
Use a pfSense firewall with the pfBlockerNG [netgate.com] extension. If you don't want to manage a separate firewall and only use .htaccess, you might be able to extract the IP ranges you are interested in from the above package.
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Ukraine does a lot of software dev (Score:2)
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Ukraine is (was?) a hub for software development for a number of multinationals. I know Samsung and few other companies have 100+ dev teams based in Ukraine. Russian military action will have a lot of long-term effects due to this.
They are (although I only know of smaller companies but with a high number of Ukraine employees). There's been articles in my local financial press about companies worrying about the safety of their employees that I've now noticed have been removed from the website; I imagine at the companies request. The cynic in me says those deemed important enough have been or is in the process of being evacuated while the other jobs are moved to the next cheapest place so it's not obvious to me here will be any signifi
Watching closely... (Score:3)
My (US based) company's dev and QA team are based in our St Petersburg Russia office - I'm genuinely worried about what's going to happen if /when the US cranks down sanctions hard.
Our team is a really great bunch of brilliant coders etc.. and they personally have nothing to do with the situation but I worry about their livelihoods as well as how it might affect our releases
Of course my bigger concern is for the people of Ukraine - especially the LGBTQIA+ community if Russia succeeds in this - we only need to look to Crimea for an idea of just how bad it can get...
The whole situation is pretty crappy for just about everyone - but hey the price of oil is up to like $100 a barrel and I'm sure lots of billionaires are going to get marginally more rich from it... hooray for late stage capitalism! or something /sarcasm
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Yeah quite a few of us are on edge. We have worked closely with Gazprom and Rosneft in the past and today had a lovely all hands meeting with our legal council about what possible sanctions could mean for our future work. Our office pulled back all employees out of Russia early last week, it was a good call.
This sucks after many years of relative peace in Europe.
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The situation between Rusia and the Ukraine is historic. [foreignpolicy.com]
No shit Sherlock (Score:2, Insightful)
Our species has been inching towards Democracy for around 500 years now after centuries of monarchy. Putin and Xi (and Trump to be honest) are trying to drag us back.
Is that what you want? If not you better get ready to do something about it. You don't need to pick up a gun. Nothing so exciting. You need to do something far, far more difficult: voting. And worse, you need to pay attention to wh
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The situation between Rusia and the Ukraine is historic. [foreignpolicy.com]
The situation between every pair of countries that share a border is historic.
It usually doesn't result in invasion.
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It's about more than a "border", and anyone telling you different is ignoring history. [youtu.be]
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It's about more than a "border", and anyone telling you different is ignoring history. [youtu.be]
The Kenyan UN ambassador had a few wise things to say about historical borders and the Ukranian situation (speech made 2 days ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I see nothing in your link that justifies invasion.
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Russia has historic grievances with just about everyone on the European continent. In fact, using historic grievances as a pretext for war is directly out of the playbook of the Hitler and Mussolini.
Make no mistake, if the invasion of Ukraine happens quickly and easily and the western response is weak, Putin will only feel further emboldened to settle more of his debts. He wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union, has been in power for 20 years, and is not getting any younger.
Re: Our foreign policy has been too weak (Score:2)
What isn't? Ukraine has its own language FFS.
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I see you left out military spending. Russia and china has hypersonic glide vehicles, nuclear powered cruise missiles, rail guns, rocket propelled torpedoes, quantum radar technology and many other advancements to their weapon systems that we do not have.. How do you propose we counter those advanced systems to prevent Putin from "rolling into NATO countries" with massive infrastructure spending alone? Yes it's much cheaper for them to develop those systems that the west however should we just not develo
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We'll ignore the strategic nuclear element, since I think we all agree nobody's intent on touching off the destruction of the US and Russia.
They do have some neat toys. But they're also broke as fuck.
Russia has 14 5th generation fighter jets to our 1000. We could pump out another 1000 before they could afford another 14.
They have 1/14th the economy we have, and their people survive on 1/3rd of what most first world citizens do.
For
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I see you left out military spending.
You're kidding, right? The US spends more on the military then most of the rest of the world combined.
In fact, it's not only the #1, it also spends MORE than the runner-ups COMBINED - https://www.pgpf.org/chart-arc... [pgpf.org]
Russia and china has hypersonic glide vehicles, nuclear powered cruise missiles, rail guns, rocket propelled torpedoes, quantum radar technology and many other advancements to their weapon systems that we do not have.
How is that possible if the US spends several times their military budget, and has been doing so for decades? Either they are total geniuses for developing next-generation military stuff on a (comparatively) low budget - or the US budget is being spent by complete idiots.
How do you propose we counter that?
Wait. Here! Me! I know
I don't care how big anyone's army is (Score:2)
So stop your fearmongeri
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and too pro-Russia. Part of that is Trump. Part of that is we weakened ourselves by fighting 2 pointless wars in the middle east (Bush Jr).
I don't think the issue is that they weakened the US. But the US invasion of Iraq was the invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no real threat to the invader. It destroyed the US's moral credibility and it created justifications and precedents for Putin's subsequent invasions.
Now, to be clear, what Putin is doing is incomparably worse than what Bush did. Attacking a peaceful democratic nation for the purposes of territorial expansion is so far beyond trying to depose a dictator. But if you're looking at
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It's ok to be "pro-Russia" and "anti-invasion." A good portion of the Russian population is exactly that, after all.
Ukraine is a sovereign nation (Score:2)
Congrats, you just got outmaneuvered by an Ex-KGB spy. I mean, it's not really a surprise, misinformation and propaganda were literally Putin's specialty. But it would be nice if you'd acknowledge that Putin is a tad more on the ball than a random
And if you're wondering where I get off saying that, being a random
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OK, I'll play the game.
Do you truly believe giving in to Putin's demand for a guarantee that Ukraine not be a part of NATO would result in him standing down? Typically giving bullish near-dictators what they want doesn't stop them from wanting more and more and MORE. Do you really think it would appease him to the point where this wouldn't be happening? I would speculate, while emphasizing this is speculation, not fact, that he wanted that guarantee so that the NATO nations wouldn't side with Ukraine whe
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Do you truly believe giving in to Putin's demand for a guarantee that Ukraine not be a part of NATO would result in him standing down?
I honestly don't know. Just like Kennedy did not know if nukes going to be removed from Cuba [wikipedia.org] and Khrushchev didn't know if JFK would follow up on his promises. Yet they did it anyways, because the alternative was escalation leading to MAD.
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Expand? You do realize that Ukraine is a former USSR republic and up until 1991 was part of Russian territory? What do you think US reaction would be if 80s-era Canada attempted to join Warsaw Pact [wikipedia.org]?
If the US had invaded Canada, stole all the resources, and justified it all because we have shared history, then only lost control due to how insanely inept the kleptocracy became, even citizens with shared decent are opposed to US control again and are begging anyone for help while the US is invading again?
In that case screw what the US answer would be, not only would it be justified to have russian troops in Canada, it would be on the US for such reprehensible behavior and hopefully would be backed by th
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Does anyone know what they offered as compensation and security, to both NATO and Ukraine in exchange for granting such a request? Or is this another one of those secrets for us armchair diplomats to never know? Surely it was something better than "or else."
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Your statement is the equivalent of saying that a kid who got beat up by a bully is at fault because he could have avoided the fight just by giving up his lunch money willingly. It's hogwash.
The way to avoid Russia invading Ukraine is for Russia to not invade Ukraine or any othe
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Russia has no right to ask for US guarantees that Ukraine won't join NATO.
Morally? You are correct, they have no right. Geopolitically? They do have UN veto, nukes, and a large military. So yes, Russia has an ability to impose their will on neighboring countries.
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And the US also has the same right to impose our will. And our will is that Russia is not to invade any other country NATO member or otherwise. The current situation is that either the US imposes it's will or Russia imposes theirs. We have many problems in this country and our foreign policy is historically pretty poor. But we are angels compared to Putin and Russia. So we have the ability to impose our will, and I wish we would have setup a demilitarized zone that extends to within twenty miles of Russian territory. And enforce it by any means necessary.
I recommend you run for US President, seeing how you only slightly incoherent with only occasional signs of mild metal decline, you would be an improvement over Biden.
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2022 Putin says he wants Ukraine NATO question resolved now [aljazeera.com]
2021 Putin demands West ‘immediately’ guarantee no more NATO expansion [nypost.com]
2019 Ukraine President Signs Constitutional Amendment On NATO, EU Membership [rferl.org]
2018 Putin warns NATO against closer ties with Ukraine and Georgia [reuters.com]
I can keep going, but this is not a new demand.
It doesn't have to be "new" (Score:2)
NATO is a defensive agreement. It says "you attack one of us, you attack ALL of us". That's NATO in a nutshell. Any and all Democracies should be able to be admitted to NATO. And despite what Tucker Carlson says Ukraine is a democracy.
Putin knows damn well the west can't say "No Ukraine in NATO
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Watch this: https://rumble.com/vvrd3t-the-... [rumble.com]
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The problem with majority of suggested titles is, that third party, read Putin, has demands in them over sovereign country, which dreams of escape from Russian orbit, just like many countries of Slavic ancestry further West did manage. And live happily after.
You can't ban one such country to dream on its better future. While at the moment, the very deliberate aggression on one's neighbor does display the astonishing noncompliance with the basic norms of coexistence in present, advanced, age. It is rude and
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This is the same argument you made before. If an armed robber comes into your house, rather than defend yourself, you should offer them extra money and also they can sleep with your wife if they want? For the same reason that the intruder in your house should be apprehended by the police and deadly forced used if necessary to protect the occupants.
Your reductive analogy shows complete lack of understanding of geopolitics. Who is The Police in the current scenario?
There was no issue to de-escalate other than Putin behaving in a way that should have been stopped with the full force of the US military.
This is absolute insane suggestion. Direct US-Russia military confrontation would easily spiral into a nuclear war.
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But such a response *should* have been on the table.
What are your plans for post-nuclear apocalypse? Mine are spending eternity as a radioactive skeleton in a rubble of a large city.
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And today is a sad day that the US did not come to the aid of a democratic ally.
Not really true. It is widely known, that US does aid Ukraine with whatever it can afford for quite some time, not excluding recent year. Additionally, there has been additional aid passed on to Ukraine indirectly from countries nearby, sharing their arms at hand for the sake of clearly prepared aggression, which does take place right now. It is hard to digest, it is in the middle of the Europe, it takes place in XXI century, and it is shame as to the event, its form and armed bandit, conducting the act of
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I, like many, would rather live in a post-nuclear apocalypse than live under Russian-style tyranny. Our choices are have a nuclear war before we give up Ukraine or afterward.
You clearly lack capacity to evaluate events and response with rationality. Our choices are to risk civilization-destroying nuclear war or give up Ukraine. There will be no nuclear war afterward unless liberal hawks like you like manage to start one.
You are reacting emotionally such response will only make things worse. You are failing to rationally acknowledge that existential threat to Ukraine is NOT a significant threat to The West.
What happening in Ukraine should be responded with compassion and e
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What a brilliant plan, it only lacks 3. Profit for completeness. If this was feasible, without high likelihood of a nuclear war, why do you think something like this wasn't tried against Soviets?
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The US came *very* close to nuclear war with the Soviets on multiple occasions including the Cuba missile crisis. The Soviet leaders at the time, for all of the faults, could at least be reaso
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First they came for Ukraine, but I didn't use thermal nuclear weapons because I was not Ukrainian. Then they came for Latvia but I did not use nuclear weapons because I wasn't Latvian. Then they came for Canada but I did not use nuclear weapons because I wasn't Canadian. Then they came for me and I didn't even bother to use nuclear weapons because there was nothing left. No thank you.
You are certifiably insane.
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Both nuclear parties involved do understand, that exchanging applications of the nuclear means, is way too destructive, and nobody will enjoy the final outcome of such. It would be proper to take it as parties themselves do: as a last, and undesirable resort. Out of discussion should it be.
What US do believe in, are changes in the economic conditions, which would make Russia struggle, as US would in the same place. There is, however, difference in lifestyle, making Russia less demanding and less vulnerable,
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