> 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?
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.
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...
I guess wikipedia and all mainstream news are Kremlin propagandists?
What did I say that was a lie? I try to be as accurate as possible.
You think US doesn’t have propaganda? “They hate us for our freedoms”… “weapons of mass destruction”… “unprovoked and unjustified”… whenever you hear the same line repeated over and over verbatim, it is propaganda
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.
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.”
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.