Brasilia, Aug 2 (EFE).- The war in Ukraine proves that the world needs a new system of global governance, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Wednesday. In his first press conference with foreign journalists since he took office on January 1, Lula said the United Nations had failed to assume its “responsibility” because …
Why did Russia need guarantees to NOT invade a sovereign nation they had existing “guarantees” to not invade?
Maybe this
Or this
Might be some subjects in which guarantees would’ve averted the SMO.
Source
Citing Putin’s own speech like a valid source is pretty hilarious. Thanks for the giggle.
I mean, it’s the speech in which he lays out to his people why they’re going to war. He’d be hard pressed to justify the SMO to all the soldiers if they didn’t have all those well known grievances, don’t you think?
Edit: wait, aren’t things government officials say not valid sources for what the government thinks or wants now? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this one. Do you know of a valid-er source for what the Russian government and military wanted as guarantees to not have this war?
Well known grievances? I simply cannot agree with you there. Those are points for which we only have the Russian governments word, and dozens of denials from other governments across the globe.
Not to mention, the reasoning for the war has changed dramatically over and over, from “stop the Nazis!” To “oh they were totally going to join NATO and attack us!!!” To “The security of Europe!” And now “they were gonna get nukes!”
Never mind the fact that the Ukraine already gave up their nukes in exchange for Russia’s assurances they wouldn’t do exactly this. Or the fact that NATO obviously doesn’t need the Ukraine as members since Russia can’t even win a land war with a military a fraction of their size right across the border. Or any of the other facts Russia has bald faced lied about repeatedly.
Given the above factors I find it highly unlikely Putin was looking for or interested in any diplomatic out. He was looking for an excuse.
All three are on the speech from the very beginning, no change there. But here’s some English sources in order.
Nazis: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimir-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946
Join NATO: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/why-nato-has-become-flash-point-russia-ukraine
Nukes: https://ria-ru.translate.goog/20220301/ukraina-1775795745.html
You’re free to believe those grievances are not based in reality, but to claim that those grievances were not well known ever since beginning of the war to the Russian public is either dishonest or just lazy.
You people keep saying that, and yet Russia seems to be winning this war for like 16 months now. Ukraine in NATO means nukes within minutes of Moscow and Russia completely surrounded on the western borders except for Belarus, it is definitely something I would want if I were NATO.
An excuse for what, exactly? What, in your perspective, does Russia, both the government and the people, gain from taking part in this war that is so much more important to them that what was officially in the speech declaring the SMO in the first place?
Even if you believe Putin personally hates Ukrainian people or something and would risk his entire government just for that, those grievances are the basis of the rhetoric used for justifying the war internally, and guarantees from NATO about those (remember why we started this discussion?) would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of any war effort. War is just the extension of politics.
Dude, your Nazi reference article title literally says “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t”. For starters he is very vague about the nazism part. You can find Nazis in any part of the world and while that is unfortunate that is not justification for one country to invade another. Now maybe if there were Nazis in the governing apparatus, then maybe. And I can see someone saying “well, that’s Azov brigade. so Putin was right”. Except that’s not entirely true. While the original founder of the volunteer battalion was a known to have ties to nazis in both Russia an Europe he was removed from command before the battalion was formally incorporated into the national guard. But then you could follow up that while the leader was removed the members of Azov are still nazis. "Paradoxically—at least for purveyors of Kremlin propaganda, which holds that Ukrainians have been oppressing ethnic Russians—most Azov members are in fact Russian speakers and disproportionally hail from the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.. Why would Ukrainian “nazis” be Russian speakes, especially if they’re supposedly oppressing Russians? Doesn’t really make sense. So the entire premise of going to denazify Ukraine is false.
As for joining NATO. Do you know who is the biggest motivator for countries joining NATO? Russia. Poland and the Baltics joined because of the historical precedent Russia has set. Poland famously was ripped apart by the secret MRP pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR. And the Baltic states publicly stated they want neutrality, which just lead to the USSR giving them an ultimatum: join voluntarily or we will invade. There’s a reason baltic states consider their time in the USSR as a time when the country was occupied by foreign forces. Since the collapse of the USSR, despite what Putin says, Russia has chosen to not have good ties with it’s neighbors. Literally the reason Finland joined NATO and Sweden is in the process of joining is because out of nowhere Russia decided to threaten those two countries (who so far have had no intention of joining NATO). And of course Ukraine. I can’t find it right now, because it’s a very specific thing to search for, but there are polls done in Ukraine about joining NATO and around 2014 those polls went pretty quickly from not wanting to join NATO to wanting to join NATO. What happened between not wanting to join NATO and wanting to join NATO? Just the annexation of Crimea and the Russian backed war in Donbas. The one country keeping NATO relevant is Russia themselves. Prior to the war in Ukraine there was a growing sentiment if NATO is even necessary anymore, but the war in Ukraine justified the existence of NATO to many of its members.
And your nuke reference doesn’t work so I can’t really comment about it. If it’s about the statements from the Ukrainian ambassador and Zeleneskii about maybe reconsidering the budapest memorandum in regard of giving up nuclear power if security guarantees are not met. That was a maybe and if Russia was actually worried about that, then perhaps they should’ve acted in accordance to the Budapest memorandum and not annex Crimea? Once again we get back to Russia creating this situation in the place.
Those grievances are either false or indirectly created by the Russian interference. I don’t see how anyone could take those grievances seriously.
Except that’s not entirely up to NATO is it. Every single neighbor of Russia could choose not to join NATO. Ukraine didn’t want to join until Russia annex Crimea, Finland and Sweden didn’t want to join until Russia threatened them. This “net” around Russia is because of Russia and not because NATO wants this. If we talk about NATO as an extension of American imperialism then American has bigger problems than Russia, primarily China. If there’s any part where the US would want to increase its military presence it would be on the eastern coast of Asia, not eastern Europe.
To regain part of their imperial hegemony that they lost to the EU during euromaidan? Ukraine was in the backpocket of Russia until the maidan revolution, do you really think Russia wouldn’t want that power back? This was their shot before Ukraine joins NATO, because Russia can’t touch them once they’re in NATO (which is why they haven’t tried to take the Baltics back, as it’s another region I’m sure they’d want back). I think it’s obvious they’d do that, because they did go into Belarus (and I think also into Afghanistan) to quell the upcoming revolution there. Russia is the living example of “War is just the extension of politics”.
Cool, at least you now acknowledge that those claims have been known since before the SMO and therefore that guarantees over it would have helped prevent it happening even if Putin really wanted it by taking away wind from the sails of the government.
It doesn’t go into much detail other than “they say they’re not racist, some Jewish people even drink with them sometimes.” Yeah, there is disagreement over the role of the Nazis, and the first source I provided was specifically one that shows that there are indeed Nazis not only in society but as part of the government, even if I disagree with some of their conclusions there. Azov is a far-right paramilitary that has been specifically targetting Russian-majority regions like Donetsk since 2014 when they tried to become an independent republic after the 2014 coup. Have something from the time talking about their war on a separatist group, which is not very nice in my opinion.
Besides not having anything of substance other than “they’re nice lads to me personally,” your source also includes this line, which I think is a terrible look no matter who is saying it.
Not only is "speaking better " a really weird way to put it, but just because they know a language doesn’t mean the represent the people there, specially since both Donetsk and Luhansk voted to become independent before they went there. Either way, the fact that there is a paramilitary with explicit Nazi symbology occupying a separatist region and destroying monuments to those who killed the Nazis in the first place, while also celebrating known Nazi collaborators like Bandera should at least be cause for concern.
The USSR and the Russian Federation are entirely different things. In fact, the guy who made Putin who he is now is Yeltsin who is famous only for illegally dissolving the Union and selling out the entirety of the country. To skip over that and pretend they are a continuous government is misleading. You are probably referring to this article in which it’s shown that NATO was seen as a threat in eastern Ukraine. After the Euromaidan coup, those eastern regions promptly either tried to get independence (Donetsk/Luhansk) and have been at war with Ukraine since, or in the case of Crimea have joined Russia and have very high polling opinions of their own referendum. And we must always remember that NATO has backed the 2014 coup, which is a common cause for the Crimean annexation that people often ignore. Guarantees such as removing Azov members from the government and military and banning Nazi symbology (instead of the currently banned communist ones) could have helped de-escalate the conflict.
No idea what happened there, Google failed me. Here’s a fixed one on yandex. I’m not sure on the official “why” of getting nukes in Ukraine, but it was something that was discussed at the time, and is a huge threat to the Russian national security, specially considering the previously ongoing Donbass war. Imagine if during the Cuban missile crisis Cuba was actively at war with Puerto Rico or something of the sort. Guarantees such as “Ukraine will never have NATO nukes” would have been great de-escalation tactics.
Yes, it also depends on both the government of Russia and Ukraine, but most notably not the Ukrainian people. There has been no referendum on joining NATO since the promise in 2014. Russia could’ve chosen to de-escalate, but the NATO-backed Ukrainian government could also have tried to de-escalate themselves. That’s what the “guarantee” you were so flabbergasted about a while back could’ve been.
Yes, which is why NATO is not participating directly in this conflict, but using it as a proxy war to throw western ukranians at eastern ukranians with minimal cost to their own personnel. This war is basically a risky investment for them, if it succeeds, great, if it doesn’t they cut their losses and leave Ukraine in shambles, and it won’t impact them at home much. Specially the USA who won’t have to deal with the blowback from the Azov battalion like the EU will.
But either way it doesn’t matter much because NATO can act in two fronts at once. They are still acting in the South China sea while this war is ongoing, though it doesn’t fit as neatly into the news cycle. In the case of Ukraine, Ukraine itself along with the EU can focus there more, while in China they can better use the resources from Australia and Japan. They’re big enough to do multiple things at once.
Those grievances are the moral justification for the war, whether you believe that they are based in reality or not. Although I don’t have hard data on this at hand, I think it’s very likely that the Russian foot soldiers at least believe these grievances on some level, and such a risky SMO would not happen without military support. By making guarantees such as “1) Azov is disbanded, 2) Ukraine won’t join NATO, 3) the war on Donbass will end, 4) no nukes for Ukraine,” the Russian government would have a much harder time getting their people to willingly go to the front lines. Those are just some random ones I can think off the top of my head, but the smart ambassadors probably have some better compromises to be reached. However we both know that NATO has been wanting this war since 2013, since Russia is a critical ally of their enemies such as Syria, China, Cuba, Venezuela and now Niger and compromising would actually reduce the chances of their desired outcomes.
You might want to read this paper on the Maiden massacre before claiming it was a “revolution.” Long story short, protesters and police were shot at by snipers from far-right paramilitary groups, which was then covered up by the new government and the NATO-affiliated press, to make it seem like they were murdered by the (democratically elected) government. Then this government which was friendlier with Russia and tried to maintain neutrality got toppled, and US diplomats directed the appointment of the interim prime minister, which led to unrest and revolt in the eastern parts of Ukraine that did not support the coup, including armed insurgency in Donetsk and Luhansk, and then we got the Azov paramilitary being sent there to quell this revolt.
Following this rough timeline you can see how the war has very little to do with “USSR imperial hegemony” as if the USSR wasn’t always voluntary union from the very start. The official and moral casus belli of this war is still to maintain broader Russian national security and to support the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (and Crimea), against the encroachment of the NATO-backed government allied with the Azov paramilitary that is known for destroying anti-fascist symbols, banning/imprisoning political opponents and imposing their unpopular government on the separatist eastern regions (PDF), not to mention banning elections.
To call that a “revolution” would mean that things changed for the better and the current government better represents the will of the people. If that were the case they’d be really popular in the east and wouldn’t need to send brownshirts to fight there, right? You frame Ukraine-Russia amicable relations as “being in Russia’s pocket,” but how would you argue against the opposite claim the the previous democratically elected government was just following its democratic mandate of ensuring neutrality and amicable relations with both the EU and Russia, without having to swastika-tattooed soldiers to kill dissenters?
This all started with “what guarantees should be given” and I’ve shown you some which you have not really refuted. All else is just bonus information to get you thinking a bit more.
I don’t think here’s anything for me to reply. I think it’s pretty obvious you take everything Russia says at face value and without any question of whether it’s actually true or not. With the guarantees you even go as far as to say it doesn’t even matter whether the concerns are true or not as long as Russians believe it, which means there’s nothing even to address because Russians will believe what they want to believe.
And when Russian statements get questioned you drown out the criticism with an information dump that may or may not be related to the actual criticism. It would take me days to go through everything you wrote to explain why something is wrong or why it’s not even relevant to the discussion. It’s a common disinformation tactic and it would be a waste of my time to respond to that because you’re going to reply with another information dump.