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Are people actually arguing that NATO membership is the reason for Russian attacks on neighboring nations?
Putin literally said he wants to restore the old Russian Empire. What the fuck was thay suppose to mean, then? A joke?
Jfc the number of people who don't believe the terrible things Dictators say they are going to do is too damn high.
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Tankies need to toe the party line.
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NATO membership was pootins public reason for war
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One of the listed reasons, yes. Other reasons:
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Protecting russia-speaking people of Donbass (almost identical reason Hitler gave for invading Austria and Sudetenlands in 1938)
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Historical and cultural justifications, Putin claimed Ukraine is not a legitimate state (also an argument used by Hitler in 1938)
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To stop "aggression of Ukraine in Luhansk and Donetsk" (Hitler accused Poland of the same in 1939)
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Reclaiming rightful territory (Hitler referenced the Treaty of Versailles as reason for his wars)
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Claiming that diplomacy failed and that Putin has no choice but to invade (also said by Hitler)
It's almost as if Putin is Hitler reincarnated.
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I thought it was Gay Nazis or something.
I've honestly not even heard Putin mention NATO on Ukraine.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Relations_between_Georgia_and_the_West
During the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, American president George W. Bush campaigned for offering a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine. However, Germany and France said that offering a MAP to Ukraine and Georgia would be "an unnecessary offence" for Russia.[99] NATO stated that Ukraine and Georgia would be admitted in the alliance and pledged to review the requests for MAP in December 2008.[100] Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Bucharest during the summit. At the conclusion of the summit on 4 April, Putin said that NATO's enlargement towards Russia "would be taken in Russia as a direct threat to the security of our country".[101] Following the Bucharest summit, Russian hostility increased and Russia started to actively prepare for the invasion of Georgia.[102] The Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Yuri Baluyevsky said on 11 April that Russia would carry out "steps of a different nature" in addition to military action if Ukraine and Georgia join NATO.[103] General Baluyevsky said in 2012 that after President Putin had decided to wage the war against Georgia prior to the May 2008 inauguration of Dmitry Medvedev as president of Russia, a military action was planned and explicit orders were issued in advance before August 2008. According to Van Herpen, Russia aimed to stop Georgia's accession to NATO and also to bring about a "regime change".[83][104]
There is a direct cause-effect relationship for Russias invasion of Georgia and it seems that at the time France and Germany were aware of this, while Bush pushed for an escalation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Geopolitical_impact
The 2008 war was the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union that the Russian military had been used against an independent state, demonstrating Russia's willingness to use military force to attain its political objectives.[287] Robert Kagan argued that "Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point" because it "marked the official return of history".[288] The failure of the Western security organisations to react swiftly to Russia's attempt to violently revise the borders of an OSCE country revealed its deficiencies. The division between Western European and Eastern European states also became apparent over the relationship with Russia. Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries received a clear message from the Russian leadership that the possible accession to NATO would cause a foreign incursion and the break-up of the country. Effective takeover of Abkhazia was also one of Russia's geopolitical goals.
The war also affected Georgia's ongoing and future memberships in international organisations. On 12 August 2008 the country proclaimed that it would quit the Commonwealth of Independent States, which it held responsible for not avoiding the war. Its departure became effective in August 2009.[291] The war hindered Georgia's prospects for joining NATO for the foreseeable future.[87][292] Medvedev stated in November 2011 that NATO would have accepted former Soviet republics if Russia had not attacked Georgia. "If you ... had faltered back in 2008, the geopolitical situation would be different now," Medvedev told the officers of a Vladikavkaz military base.
According to academic Martin Malek, western countries did not feel it was necessary to aggravate tensions with Russia over "tiny and insignificant" Georgia. He wrote in the Caucasian Review of International Affairs that Western policy makers did not want to alienate Russia because its support was necessary to solve "international problems".[38] The May 2015 report by the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament stated that "the reaction of the EU to Russia's aggression towards, and violation of the territorial integrity of, Georgia in 2008 may have encouraged Russia to act in a similar way in Ukraine".[294] The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought the memories of the Russo-Georgian War again into a broader geopolitical focus. In an opinion piece published in The New York Times on 6 March 2022, the incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson stated that Russia's actions in Georgia in 2008 was one of the lessons of the past that the West has failed to learn
This isn't just "Putin said". There seems to be a quite clear understanding of that being the trigger point for Russia among foreign policy politicians and experts in Europe.
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You realise that Russia invading people for even considering the chance to a mutual defence pact isn't Western escelation, right? If anything it is proof that Russia has been planning to invade them since long before all of this.
Russia isn't at any risk of NATO countries attacking them because NATO countries have no obligation to protect an aggressor member-state. They became hostile because they were losing their chance to warmonger.
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Putin said that NATO's enlargement towards Russia "would be taken in Russia as a direct threat to the security of our country".
Security Dilemma in action: One party wants to strengthen their own security, the other party considers that a threat to theirs and responds in kind.
Instead of mutually agreeing that they've both reached a point of military capacity where actual war would be more costly than lucrative, the respective leaders conveniently overlook who would be paying that cost and keep posturing, and the arms dealers keep making bank.
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Putin literally said he wants to restore the old Russian Empire. What the fuck was thay suppose to mean, then?
It meant simply alliances. NED installing nazis and calling it democracy to instigate war on Russia isn't going to be welcome.
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I’m glad we have a tankie here to give us the Russian propaganda line.
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Hmm, invading territory and forcing into alliance is totally what you do with an alliance member
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This is a weird comma, usage.
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The Goose is usually yelling motherfucker in this meme. The operation apparently had complications.
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If he is addressing the simpleton and using that as his name, then it makes sense.
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While Russia is the belligerent actor and it is their fault, pre-2014 Ukraine was hardly "neutral", having mulled both NATO and EU ascension discussions. The latter being the actual provocation rather than the former. (This isn't at all to say any of this is Ukraine's "fault", only to point out they were not "neutral")
In early 2013 the Ukrainian parliament agreed to make legal steps towards EU ascension (source 2014 pro Russia unrest in Ukraine)
Which is what Lord Robertson, the former Secretary General of Nato, has stated was the start of the crisis:
"One theory, propounded by realists such as the academic John Mearsheimer, is that Nato expansion in eastern Europe was the reason that Putin invaded Ukraine. Robertson dismissed the idea. “I met Putin nine times during my time at Nato. He never mentioned Nato enlargement once.” What Robertson said next was interesting: “He’s not bothered about Nato, or Nato enlargement. He’s bothered by the European Union. The whole Ukraine crisis started with the offer of an EU accession agreement to Ukraine in 2014.”
Putin fears countries on Russia’s border being “fundamentally and permanently” changed by EU accession. “Every aspect [of society is affected] – they woke up very late to it… I don’t think they ever fully understood the EU,” Robertson said, adding the caveat that the EU was not at fault because accession was what Ukraine, as a sovereign nation, wanted." [end quote]
Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2024/05/george-robertson-nato-why-russia-fears-european-union
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Ukraine is a sovereign nation. It is allowed to make treaties with other sovereign nations.
Or do you believe the US should invade Brazil because it is part of BRICS?
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I feel you've not read my first paragraph (or last quoted sentence) closely enough..
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Cuba is, like, right there. The prime example of what happens when countries in the western hemisphere try to enter into military alliances with non-us countries such as the soviet union
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I guess its worth mentioning that Ukraine was never "neutral" to begin with. Since the fall of the union Ukraine had been in the Russian sphere of influence and they were neutral only to the extent where it wouldn't undermine Russian control over Ukraine. That's why the EU accession agreement started this, because it undermined Russian power and Russia was not okay with losing that power. Russia never wanted neutral buffer states, Russia wanted countries that they could control.
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Yes good point
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Literally leasing a very important port city (Sevastopol) to the Russian navy counts for nothing?
That's so much more cooperation than talking with NATO or "aiming to get closer ties with the EU". Not to say that Russia had tons of trade deals with the EU, so does Morocco and everyone who wants something in that region.
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If I had to guess if say Putin saw NATO expansion as a problem but rather slow and so not urgent. Whereas EU expansion could actually be a worse because of how quickly it spreads. Not least because countries seeking deeper trade ties with the EU are basically committing themselves to anti-corruption reforms and thereby slipping from his grasp long long before any serious talk of NATO is happening (see: Georgia, or my long summary elsewhere in these threads)...
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In early 2013 the Ukrainian parliament agreed to make legal steps towards EU ascension
EU, unlike NATO, is not a military alliance.
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You're not thinking forth dimensionally, Marty!
Putin feared the EU because it was expanding far faster than NATO. EU expansion offered valuable trade links to former soviet countries and in turn required they implement anti-corruption legislation, and in the words of NATO secretary general Robertson above "changed every aspect of society". That's what Putin was afraid of.
Look at what happened to Georgia.
Old soviet regime runs economy into the ground. In 2003 pro-democracy NGOs help organise a peaceful student protests that culminates in the Rose Revolution. Autocratic government out, democratic government elected for first time, immediately start plans to align with EU to recover the economy.
2006 signs joint statement with EU on economic cooperation. Also opens pipeline cutting out Iran and Russia and delivering Azerbaijan oil directly to EU friendly Turkey.
So in 2008 Russia invades Georgia's Tskhinvali and Abkhazia regions in an attempt to destabilise the country. Fortunately this fails.
2013 Georgia signs deeper level of EU cooperation. Ukraine parliament makes legal guarantees it'll start to align with EU.
Putin was out of time, his Caucasus route to the middle East was closing forever, economic influence via the black sea was closing off, so he grabbed Crimea. It was the EU not NATO that surrounded him.
And that's what the NATO secretary general said.
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The EU treaties actually do have a military component much like NATO, and the "ever closer union" is actually making it a reality, with Western and Northern European militaries actually merging into blocks.
Actually the EU is a closer alliance, as NATO intervention allows for both the attacked party to not ask for aid, and the countries aiding to give as much aid as they deem necessary. The EU mutual defence clause gets triggered immediately on aggression, and requires assistance by member states with all the means in their power.
The US could technically drip-feed aid like with Ukraine, while Germany would have to send in the Bundeswehr immediately if Poland got attacked.
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The whole Ukraine crisis started with the offer of an EU accession agreement to Ukraine in 2014
I think the crisis technically started with a military invasion. If not that, then we could go back and forth on this to the founding of NATO and before.
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Them saying that is like someone who beat their wife to death saying "it all began with her having glanced at a man who walked past."
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I think on this occasion I'll defer to how a secretary general of NATO chooses to phrase it
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That's a very interesting take I haven't heard of before. My understanding was that a primary reason Russia invaded Crimea was due to the oil reserves there that Russia wanted. I guess it extends beyond that.
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Russia doesn't need the Crimean oil reserves, it's more than they wanted Ukraine to not have it. Even then, energy security wasn't as much a motivator as was securing access to Sevastopol, a critical warm water port and the only place capable of housing the black sea fleet. Although control of that port, in turn, is largely to do with projecting energy control over a wider region.
Russia was leasing Sevastopol from Ukraine (til 2042). It had become increasingly important to Russia's other objectives being a staging location for supporting the incursion into Georgia, and also Russia's involvement in Syria. Both of which are key to Russia's broader goal of region control and energy security (not Ukraine per se).
It may be that Russia was far more sensitive to EU membership than NATO because EU membership travelled much faster and was already outflanking them (see map at bottom)
In the early 2000's, increasing ineffectiveness of the old Soviet style leadership in Georgia was bankrupting the country and making corruption rife. This was increasingly apparent to international businesses there and a student population that enjoyed (somewhat miraculously) the relatively free press in the form of TV stations critical of the regime and its corruption.
Subsequently, foreign NGO presence helped organise and contribute to the peaceful 2003 Rose Revolution which saw the older soviet influence brushed away in favour of new democratic parties. (Put your favourite conspiracy / neocon / deepstate analysis hat on, a major financier of the NGOs was George Soros)
The new leadership sought to put Georgia on better economic footing and in 2006 together with the EU issued a statement on the 5 year Georgia-European Union Action Plan within the European Neighbourhood Policy which was a major snub to Russia.
Russia's desire to maintain a foothold within Georgia subsequently provoked the 2008 Russia Georgian War over Georgia's northern 'South Ossetia' region. Not only because Georgia is the gateway to projecting power into the Middle East, but more immediately because in 2006 Georgia opened the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline which cut Iran and Russia out of the picture and connected Azerbaijan oil fields up directly with EU friendly Turkey.
Russia failed to make anyway headway with their support of South Ossetia. Then in 2013, Georgia and the EU took the next step in closer alignment, an Association Agreement. With Russia's efforts to expand influence into the Caucasus region curtailed and weakening in power to project strength over energy producing regions, Putin saw the need to permanently secure Sevastopol as becoming critical.
The Ukrainian parliament had begun legal alignment with the EU the same year.
Hence in 2014, Russia took Crimea.
(If you look at the map of EU plus Georgia, you can see how close EU alignment could be seen to have 'provoked' Russia to act. Though very much only in the sense that they are anti democratic and imperialist)
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Unlikely. If oil was a question Russia would've probably invaded Azerbaijan instead. The things I've heard is that because black sea fleet is stationed there and it couldn't have been a thing in a NATO/EU country. And Putin loves his boats, like, the whole Assad regime is basically a Putin's little gas station.
Another is that Crimea is populated by majority of ethnic Russians who want to be in Russia. How it came to be is a bit different topic, and it was a referendum at gunpoint with falsifications, just as usual for Russia, but there is no doubt that even without those, it would've still passed.
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While this may be correct, it is worth pointing out that NATO member states (especially those on front lines) host soldiers from other NATO states. That means Americans would be in Ukraine (as they are currently in e.g. Estonia). The EU does not have a similar military component.
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Putin has modeled his rule after the Csarist monarchy of the Russian Empire. He notably despises communism and blames it for the collapse of the USSR. He calls himself "president" but many within the state Duma believe the title to be an embarrassing western descriptor and would prefer to bestow on him the title of "pravitel" or "ruler".
But Putin ran into a bit of a problem. Just as to be called Caesar you need to rule Rome, to be called czar you need to rule over all of Rus. For him, the cultural, historical, and religious significance of Kievan Rus was just too large to be ignored.
When it existed, the Russian Empire tried to erase the other eastern Slavic languages from their shared cultural memory. They acted as if there was no Ukraine and never had been, just as with Belarus. According to the Tsarists, Ukrainians had always been Russians and had no history of their own. The Ukrainian and Belorussian languages were banned. Ukrainian nationalism was a threat to the underlying myths of Russia and threatened the czars' attempts at creating an “All-Russian People.”
Putin is emulating their rule and presents himself as a tsar-like figure. He’s built a massive, opulent palace for himself, with gold-plated double-headed eagles, a clear Imperial Russian symbol, everywhere—even in his personal strip club. Similarly, the Russian Orthodox Church helps him pacify the population and supports whatever myths Kremlin wants to glorify. He wanted to go down in the history books as a grand unifier of Russian lands—if not under the same government, then definitely as the hegemon of the Russian world.
Putin wants it both ways, to take credit for the Soviet legacy and, at the same time, be viewed in the same light as the emperors and czars of old. Therefore, he's had to bring back and reaffirm the old, imperial myths and values—and to do that, he has to get Kyiv under his thumb. After all, it was the restored Kievan Rus that became Russia, the "Third Rome." Ukraine going its own way, claiming Kievan Rus as its legacy, moving away from Moscow, getting autocephaly for its own orthodox church—all this runs contrary to Russian state mythology.
These imperial myths are what define Russia, what it even means to be a Russian. Without them, Russia just stops being Russia in the eyes of many. Putin is convinced that if this social glue is disrupted, then Russia will just split up in pieces again—and if he allows that to happen, then his legacy is ruined. For him, there can be no separate Ukrainian language, culture, or history.
That is where his mind is at, stuck in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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And Budapest memorandum means... Nothing?
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It wasn't worth the paper it was written on from the start:
"Another key point was that U.S. State Department lawyers made a distinction between "security guarantee" and "security assurance", referring to the security guarantees that were desired by Ukraine in exchange for non-proliferation. "Security guarantee" would have implied the use of military force in assisting any non nuclear party (Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan) being attacked by an aggressor (similar to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty for NATO members) while "security assurance" would simply specify a promise of non-violation of these parties' territorial integrity. In the end, a statement was read into the negotiation record that the (according to the U.S. lawyers) lesser sense of the English word "assurance" would be the sole implied translation for all appearances of both terms in all three language versions of the statement."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
It has always read "I promise pinky promise swear I won't use military action against you but if anyone does I'm not obligated to come to your aid".
Ukraine signed it not because they misunderstood this, but because it wasn't their priority. They saw the nuclear weapons as a liability in themselves. They didn't have the skill or access to maintain or control them (Moscow had always retained operational control and the launch codes) and so they just wanted rid of them. They gave them up in exchange for massive energy deals, not a defence pact.
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The EU deal agreed by Yanukovich was sabotaged by US dominated IMF. It is a categorically false narrative that peace in Ukraine requires rejection of EU trade or membership. It is fair to say it is not Russia's preference that EU expand to CIS/USSR states. Though a clear problem with EU governance is US appointing all of its representatives based on NATOism.
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Vlad yearns for the days of the Russian Empire. Apparently he doesn't know how things ultimately panned out for the tsar.
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Sure he does. But like all strongmen, he believes he’ll be the one that ends up different.
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And by "neutral buffer state" they mean a Russian territory, that can't elect its own leaders, has no control over its resources and lives under a permanent Russian occupation.
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I still remember a short period of time in the first half of 2022 where even the most tankiest of people clearly felt unease from the war Russia started. The sheer evil of it broke through the propaganda they had integested, and for like 3 months they weren't sure if they should support it or not.
But eventually they got around to supporting it somehow. The mind can explain black to be white or perhaps some of them got actual instructions how to communicate. 1968 Czechoslovakia all over again.
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The pro-Russian propoganda on social media clawed them right back. The climate went from "How can we help stop the atrocities in Ukraine?" to "Why are we sending so much to Ukraine when our own country/veterans need help at home?" and other such bullshit they've never truly cared about or contributed toward.
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Oh this isn't on lemmy.ml or lemmygrad.ml? I'm so surprised! /MEGA-S
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This meme seems to undercut its own argument. No one can honestly argue that post-Euromaidan Ukraine was intent on remaining a buffer between Russia and NATO. In 2014 Ukraine made it clear that it was resolved to go to the Western camp and was sick of Russian influence. So what exactly is the argument here?
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I'm not going to entertain the thought of what "neutrality" would mean, because the entire "neutral buffer" argument is just Russian propaganda. Ukraine wasn't neutral before 2014, it was squarely within the Russian sphere of influence since the collapse of the union. Let's reverse the situation. Let's say Russia wins, dismantles the current Ukrainian government and sets up the "legitimate" Ukrainian government, would Ukraine become a "neutral buffer"? No. It would become a vassal state of Russia because Russia can't give Ukraine the autonomy to make their own decisions, otherwise they might decide to turn westward again.
Maybe that's the hypocrisy the meme is pointing to, that the neutrality argument in its entirety is bullshit because Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.
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The argument you make ignores a few - well, many - ENORMOUS caveats. The key question is security neutrality. Ukraine may have been considered in Russia's "sphere of influence" economically, culturally and to some degree politically, but on the matter of security that is absolutely not the case.
Since independence it has straddled the line, with several attempts to push closer to the West due to structural security disputes with Russia left over from independence. Just for one example, a nation that was in the Russia sphere of influence would not have sent troops to aid the US occupation of Iraq, an invasion Russia opposed, in order to win favor with the Bush administration.
I really dislike the attempt to frame very commonly use concept of neutrality, which is a term that even NATO scholarship on the issue uses to refer to Ukrainian non-alignment, as "prooaganda".
I dislike even more when discussions about the history of th issue are met with counterfactuals and hypotheticals. Then it becomes a counterproductive polemical debate where one can claim that Putin and Ukraine would be lovey-dovey besties forever if not for NATO expansion or that Putin would absorb Ukraine in a neo-Soviet Anschluss and march on Riga and Warsaw if not for NATO. It's not useful framing at all.
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Why do the Russians think they need a buffer between themselves and NATO anyway? Are they planning on doing things that would make them seem like a threat to NATO, and don't believe NATO have supersonic planes or something?
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Check out libya sometime.
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Russia is the bad guy in this conflict. 110%. But there's no reason to start making up reasons why. Ukraine was not a neutral non-NATO buffer state after the euromaidan coup, and it doesn't need to be for the annexation of Crimea and the ongoing invasion to be wrong, which they are. All made up reasons do is give your opponents ammunition.
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Indeed and Putin's Sock Puppet will green light the next Russian invasion of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
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Then what was it AFTER 2014, idiot?
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So when do we regime change Russia?
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They just regime changed us, so that'll be tough.
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How often does that technique actually improve things in the long run?
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Right now. But, to have any chance of people following you, you'd have to be either be in Russia, or be an ethnic Russian. If you don't have either, PM me and I'll issue you a formal invitation which would allow you to stay in for the whole 90 days. Good luck!
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What did Obama and Clinton do in Ukraine to prevent it from staying as a buffer state?
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I think you need to open a history book and see who was running Ukraine when Obama was in office and who he was politically aligned with. As far as when Clinton was in office, that's when Russia gave Ukraine their assurance that they wouldn't invade in exchange for Ukraine's nuclear weapons.
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I don't understand this meme. Ukraine was more or less a neutral state before 2014 and then there was a pro-Western coup that removed the democratically elected gov and set off the violence that is still going on. That's what drew Russia into the conflict.
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Former President Viktor Yanukovych actually denied democracy by choosing not to sign a trade agreement with the EU, which was overwhelmingly approved of in parliament and by the public, in 2013 and he was ousted by Ukrainians. The Russians then became involved by fueling counterprotests and annexing Crimea.
AFAIK there were no US sponsored groups, no boots on the ground, but vaguely some 5Bn USD given to Ukraine for defence between 1991 and 2014.
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First there was an EU agreement. But then IMF added conditions to make the agreement impossible. That is what caused it/whole to be rejected. Nazis committing a black flag execution of protesters blaming it on government was the coup that caused Yanukovych to flee. The US installed coup rulers imposing apartheid against Russian speakers, and the Odessa massacre is what caused Crimea to leave, and Donbas to demand autonomy.
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Good satire, I almost fell for it. 9/10.
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What did I get wrong? What do you disagree with?
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The past leader of Ukraine was in Putin's pocket. Zelensky actually changed this and obviously being annexed kinda makes it hard to be neutral, so I'm not sure where you got that from.
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So was Ukraine neutral before 2014 or not? The meme seems to be saying it was neutral and I'm also saying it was more or less neutral.
Are you disagreeing with the meme?
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Holy Russian apologia Batman!
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Which details do you the think I got wrong
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- Misuse of meme format.
- Ungrammatical while insulting others' intelligence.
- Additional relevant things happened in Ukraine 2014 than the annexation of Crimea. Do you know what they are?
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- There’s nothing wrong with insulting intelligence. As long as you don’t use it as a counter argument, it’s not even an ad hominem.
- Tankies are fucking idiots.
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There’s nothing wrong with insulting intelligence.
I was pointing out how it's funny to make basic grammatical errors while doing so.
Tankies are fucking idiots.
Excellent contribution to the discourse.
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We caught one!
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?
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2014 is the exact date of US coup and change of Ukrainian alignment.
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You mean the civilian revolution of almost 1M citizens that restored their constitution and took power away from Putin's sockpuppet, who then tried to claw back Crimea in retaliation? It wasn't neutral before 2014, and Russia won't allow it.
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Nah, obviously the US, which has shown by electing Trump twice that it has its shit together, concocted the devious plot and paid off everyone involved just to attack Putin, the benevolent ruler of Russia.
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Yet another mentally deficient tankie.
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Pleonasm.
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