aguaviva 3 days ago

which has now escalated into 1 million dead in Ukraine

So mere hours after appearing in the WSJ, "1M are now dead or injured (but actually about 80k Ukrainian, 200k Russian dead)"[0] is being misquoted as simply "1M dead", and not so coincidentally in tandem with another misconception (that gets repeated on HN almost daily it seems):

when it could have been resolved w Minsk Accords or anything negotiated in Normandy or Turkey since then.

"Could have been resolved", that is, by granting to Putin permanent sovereignty over whatever territories he happened to be sitting on at the time, if not then some, and other non-viable concessions (with no guarantees that they would even work to stop him from simply grabbing more land and/or just keep bombing Ukrainian cities whenever it might suit his fancy):

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41568861

Reply View 11 replies
  • EGreg 2 days ago

    Fair enough, I was inaccurate in saying 1M dead, should have said “dead or injured”.

    However, you are WILDLY inaccurate suggesting that the Minsk agreements would have ”granted to Putin permanent sovereingty over” Donbas. He was not “sitting over it”. The entire Donbas would have been an autonomous part of Ukraine. Kyiv officials didnt want to grant this autonomy, but more importantly, Angela Merkel admitted the West cynically “used the peace agreemnys to buy time and arm Ukraine!”

    https://www.news18.com/amp/news/world/ukraine-war-merkel-say...

    Now you may say that “Russia would have kept Crimea and that is why Ukraine must fight to the last Ukrainian to return it” but you don’t know the history of Crimea.

    The vast majority (94%) voted to be independent of Ukraine every chance they got, starting in 1991, 1992, etc

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Crimean_sovereignty_ref...

    They put it in their constitution in 1992

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Crimean_constitution

    and referendums showed strong desire to be independent of Ukraine

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Crimean_referendum

    and they only agreed to be part of Ukraine if guaranteed autonomy (and Russia agreed to recognize it on that basis). After that, though, Ukraine broke the agreement, invaded Crimea with 4000 troops in the 90s, arrested their leaders, forced them to change their constitution, etc. But they got to keep Crimea anyway with not a peep from the “democratic West” (cause the West is biased):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Crimea_(1991%E2%80%...

    Crimea has been an unwilling hostage to Ukraine but if Ukraine is doing it then it’s OK because the West never reports on it…

    I mean heck, NATO integration was wildly unpopular among the Ukrainian public, it was only happening because Yuschenko was an unpopular stooge who was ramming it through anyway, since Bush vowed that Ukraine and Georgia would be in NATO:

    https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/03/29/ukraine-says-n...

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/127094/ukrainians-likely-suppor...

    And that was still the case years later

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/167927/crisis-ukrainians-likely...

    But Bush was vowing to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO anyway, obviouly to flip Russia’s “red lines” neighbors against them, a sort of reverse Cuban missile crisis: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-ukraine-bush/bush-vo...

    This came to a head in 2008 with Georgia when Medvedev - not Putin - was president. The war had the same EXACT elements: two breakaway Georgian republics (Abhazia and Ossetia) being shelled by Mikhail Saaakashvili hoping to be in NATO. They asked Russia for help. Russia invaded with tanks going to the capitol.

    The difference is that it was over in a week because Nikolas Sarkozy (the French President at the time) negotiated a peace agreement. Georgia is fine now, I’ve been there. (Saakashvili is in Georgian jail now btw.) Abhazia and Ossetia are not just fine, they’re happy to not be under Georgian hegemony. Imagine that. The matreshka doll of self determination can go more than 1 level deep, which the West and NATO knows really well in the case of Kosovo. (But it’s an “exception” of course, cause it’s them doing it.)

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_independence_preceden...

    Anyway, that is the outcome you are told to “fear”. Russia didn’t go on to annex Georgia, or further, emboldened. They reacted to stated NATO expansion, and shelling of people on their border who asked them for help. They asked the government to cut it out, then intimidated them with tanks. If they backed down and stopped oppressing the two breakaway republics (same as Serbia and Kosovar Albanians) then they stopped also. It’s a valid approach and results in more peace for everyone.

    And in fact, in the 2022 invasion, the role of Nikolas Sarkozy was played to the T by Israeli PM Naftali Bennett. He says in a tell-all interview that he was negotiating with Putin and Zelensky directly and could have had the war halted a mere 1-2 weeks in. But he was specifically told by the Western leaders to stand down and let it play out. That “Putin was not to be negotiated with, he was to be defeated.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yma0LxyVVs

    So much for “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”. Actually, the war must go on, so we can weaken Russia. Ukraine is the new Afghanistan (mujahideen, stinger missiles, a decade leaving 2 million dead civilians).

    ====

    Speaking of the casualties:

    If you want to go by official UN casualty numbers, this war has the SMALLEST civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios I have ever seen (something like 20 militants to 1 civilian!). Both sides want to avoid killing civilians, likely because 11 million Russians have relatives in Ukraine and vice versa.

    By contrast, the urban warfare in Gaza has (in my estimation) a 4 civilians to 1 militant ratio, while the worldwide historica average is 9 civilians to 1 militant.

    But militants are people too, especially if they are regular men being grabbed off the street and conscripted against their will. As a man, I understand that men are expendable in war, but as a libertarian, I have to count those deaths as involuntary in most cases.

    The longer this goes on, the longer the Ukrainian nation is decimated. The women are abroad, the men can’t leave. The young women end up marrying successful foreigners. I know, I see them all over the place in USA, Canada etc. The children are half-Ukrainian. It’s not only that the men are being killed, but Zelensky’s war and policies of forcing the men to fight are reducing the Ukrainian nation as a while. If he allowed the men of Ukraine a choice, most would opt out of this war, even preferring to leave Ukraine than be drafted.

    That’s why I am against wars as a libertarian. It’s politicians deliberately failing to avert a conflict, and the plebs have to pay the price while the politicians get rich and give speeches about how “we must all sacrifice”. Somehow the talking heads on TV never get drafted either!

    Reply View 2 replies
    • aguaviva 2 days ago

      However, you are WILDLY inaccurate suggesting that the Minsk agreements would have ”granted to Putin permanent sovereignty over” Donbas.

      You are WILDLY misquoting me already in the very first sentence of your riposte. I never said that that's what the Minks Protocols said. I can understand how it might sort of seem like I said that -- that is, if you're hastily skimming, but not actually reading. Just read my words again, carefully this time please.

      He was not “sitting over it”.

      "Sitting on it" I said. Either way, it's just another way of saying "occupying" it, which of course he was and still is.

      As to the other stuff you're saying -- look, you're going off on way too many tangents here (many not even about Ukraine), and presenting way too many twisted mischaracterizations of the historical record along the way (including even more WILDLY inflated body counts, this time in Afghanistan). Like any other contorted, vituperative, ideology-driven libertarian rant.

      Not something I have time for, or see any purpose in. You're free to make of the world what you want, though.

      Reply View 1 reply
  • Aeolun 2 days ago

    > by granting to Putin permanent sovereignty over whatever territories he happened to be sitting on at the time

    I think the one thing I can agree with is that it’s debatable whether it’s ultimately worth it. Is Putin’s Russia so much worse that it’s worth 80k deaths to prevent it becoming reality in those regions currently occupied?

    Reply View 7 replies
    • shiroiushi 2 days ago

      I guess it depends on whether you think it's OK to be forced at gunpoint to abandon your culture and language and adopt your invader's, and to live in a totalitarian autocracy rather than a very imperfect democracy.

      Reply View 4 replies
      • Aeolun 15 hours ago

        I don't think anyone would enjoy that, but they'd probably enjoy the war even less. I'm inclined to believe that for most people not all that much would change. You still go to work every day, you still go to school, you still get paid.

        Like, I feel like the war has value for not allowing Putin (or any other leader) to just walk all over another country, but whether a specific place is called Russia or Ukraine, Germany or France? Maybe not so much. It just feels weird we're essentially fighting a war more for an ideology than a physical location/group of people. I guess that's always been the case though.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • EGreg 2 days ago

        I mean, that’s literally what has happeneed throughout history everywhere?

        Lots of groups currently live as part of a larger country - Basques, Catalonians, Kurds, Tibetans etc. does this mean they have to lose millions of people fighting for total independence and sovereignty?

        In Ukraine, for instance, Crimea was an unwilling particpant, ever since 1991 we know 94% voted to break away from Ukraine. Ukraine invaded them in the 90s, arrested their leaders and changed their constitution.

        Going further back, Galicia was part of Poland, but then Ukrainian communists took it. And Poland used to rule Ukraine, which Ukrainians chafed under (Bogdan Khmelnitsky revolt).

        Ukraine has been a tinderbox of many cultures, incouding Kossacks, Orthodox Christians, Greeks, Russians, Catholic Poles, religious and secular Jews, Red athiest Communists, and more.

        In 1919 it was briefly a Cossack Hetmanate, if you can believe that!

        Actually, communist Bolsheviks (except for Stalin) are the ones responsible for reviving Ukrainian language and culture, as part of their program of “korenizatziya” throughout the USSR. The opposite of what you’d expect:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainization

        The culture of “hating Russians” was there among some nationalists, such as Petliura, Bandera and Schuhevych, who took the opportunities around world wars to try to fight for independence. But they were also deeply wrapped up with hatred of Jews, Poles etc. The two guys I mentioned are responsible for killing many Jews, Poles, etc.

        After WW2, the Soviet Union had lost 30 million people but emerged a victor over nazis. The USA in a few scant years had made NATO with formerly-nazi Germany as a founding member, against USSR. In 1954 USSR formally asked to join, before starting the Warsaw Pact. Incidentally that same year Khrustchev’s Presidium unilaterally gifted Crimea from Russian SSR to Ukrainian SSR “in a spirit of deep friendship”.

        USA and CIA preferreed to work with literal nazis against the eastern bloc. (Operation paperclip, Pinochet in Chile, etc etc.) Radio Liberty was a CIA-funded program to keep the opposition to USSR alive in Ukraine, usually among the far-right elements who sympathized more with the nazis who had lost, and whose grandfathers fought on that side. It didn’t matter to USA, because USSR was their geopolitical rival now.

        Same as it didn’t matter about sponsoring jihadists (which is what “mujahideen” means in Arabic) in Afghanistan and getting 2 million civilians killed in a needless civil war, spending billions radicalizing and arming people together with Saudis and leading to the explosion of Wahhabist Islam around the world, ending up later ravaging Iraq, Syria, Nigeria etc.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwpR6ngoSjQ

        It’s not about “preserving culture”. That’s the cynical explanation. It’s about proxy wars and weakening the rivals throuh endless quagmires. USA and its architects of proxy wars do not actually care about the people on the ground:

        https://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and...

        Reply View 2 replies
    • nradov 2 days ago

      Who is doing the debating? The Ukrainians will have to decide for themselves how many deaths they're willing to accept for national survival.

      But as long as they're willing to fight we should give them everything they ask for. The Russian empire is bleeding to death in Donetsk. That suits our interests regardless of the ultimate outcome.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

      You previously wrote this on HN, and I think it is a great response to this question:

      You are essentially saying “Shit is bad, give up on it ever improving.”

      Reply View 0 replies
Aeolun 2 days ago

I never thought I’d say this, but there is a distinction between neo-nazis and criminals/murderers.

The first have the potential to do bad, the second have proven beyond a doubt that they’re evil.

Reply View 0 replies