Add Kazakhstan to the list. Our diplomats abstained in the vote and refused to send any troops to Ukraine for exactly the same reasons. We share the longest land border with Russia. There's a large Russian diaspora here. Last year there was a heavy propaganda campaign in Russia where they were trying to spin up a story as if the Russian-speaking population was heavily discriminated against here. As a native Russian speaker, I assure you this is completely made up. But now I know why they were doing it and I'm afraid we're next.
It's a pretty difficult situation and it will be interesting to see how the government is going to work around it. Personally, I am looking for a way out before it's too late. There aren't very many of them with my citizenship, though.
Not to diminish anything you said, but your word order might imply something you don’t wish to imply. Kazakhs have the longest border with Russia, while the longest land border is the US-Canada border.
Didn't Russian military just suppress an uprising in Kazakhstan in January? Of course there wouldn't be a peep from Kazakh government against Russia after they just saved their asses. But as we all see, deals with Russia never come without strings attached, so Kazakh government should ponder when is their turn to be "reunited" and "reabsorbed" into Putin's Empire.
And yeah, getting out is a good idea if love for Putin is not the only thing you seek in life. Because in Putin's Empire there wouldn't be many other options left.
I'm of Russian-Ukrainian ethnicity, I was born in Kazakhstan and I'm living here for 35 years. I wasn't discriminated, not once. I'm not a very chatty person, and, of course, can't answer for other people experiences, consider it my anecdote.
The only thing that I felt some discrimination is gradual reducing of Russian language usage. For example in hospitals there are often only Kazakh labels without Russian translations. I don't like it, but that's not a big issue and it's not wide-spread.
That said, I don't exactly remember what heavy propaganda campaign 5e92cb50239222b talks about. I must have missed it, I guess.
Heh, my ancestors also come from Ukraine. Some Russians seem to have problems with everybody no matter where they are located.
> gradual reducing of Russian language usage
I'm guessing you're from Almaty? The situation may be somewhat different there due to completely different demographics, although my Russian friends from the south never had any complaints.
I am a bit closer to the Russian border, which worries me immensely now.
> what heavy propaganda
The Russian news was filled with this bullshit for a couple a weeks. Back then I thought they were gathering political points before the coming election, but now I'm not really sure.
Armenia lost 0.17% of its population in that war, mostly young conscripts. And tbh it was a war that could be stopped rather easily by threatening to sanction AZB. Instead there was more talk about how effective drones are at killing armenians. And the alignments in the region are all over the place. Georgia is invaded, AZB is tied to turkey but also to russia, iran is in russia's axis. Probably one of the worse positions on the map right now.
If we take international law as a basis for our arguments, then Armenia has illegally occupied territories that de jure belong to Azerbaijan [1], brutally massacred civilians [2], destroyed and looted cities [3][4], and left more than 700,000+ people homeless [5].
To further add detail, the un resolution is focused sqarely on kelbajar region, which in any negotiation logic (madrid, kazan, etc) was slated to return to Azerbajan once the status of Karabakh was determined
> Calls for the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of all occupying forces from the Kelbajar district and other recently occupied areas
853:
> calls on the withdrawal of the occupying forces from the district of Agdam and other recently occupied areas of the Republic of Azerbaijan
874:
> Reaffirms sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Azerbaijani Republic
> calls for the preservation of the ceasefire, cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of forces from recently occupied districts of the Republic of Azerbaijan
884:
> calls for the "withdrawal of occupying forces" from the Zangelan district and the city of Goradiz
I'm sorry in advance for perpetuating the flamewar.
Disclaimer: Turkish here. I do not deny the Armenian Genocide, or think it was right for Azerbaijan to reclaim Karabakh with this way.
You are falling to the same fallacy as the Turkish government:
* Claiming Khojali massacre is a lie, disregarding the documented facts. Do not bring yourself down to the same level as genocide deniers; they will beat you with experience.
* The "they did that too" argument; as if any horrible act legitimizes the other one.
So, it makes a much better discussion if we all agree on documented facts and try to move forward from there (if there is any solution to move forward to). The "Armenian Genocide didn't happen" versus "Khojali Massacre didn't happen" discussion seems childish at this point, and it is not going to help either side in the long run.
Armenia invaded the said land for some time. You may be unaware but West (NATO) has been on Azerbaijan's side on the disputed land, at least officially on paper.
To be brutally honest, I don't think the West has given it much thought. It's one of those places that maybe 2% of Americans could find on a map, and even fewer could spell correctly. Turkey obviously has a strong opinion, but they're sort of the odd duck in NATO.
There's an enormous difference between what a US voter can find on a map / wants to invade (almost nowhere, absolutely nowhere) and where the State Department can find on a map / wants to invade (absolutely anywhere, almost anywhere).
The point is that the land that was fought over was part of Azerbaijan that Armenia took in a war after the fall of the Soviet Union. You can say that the border should have been something else, but that's the same argument to made for Crimea. I don't think the rest of NATO took Azerbaijani's side because of corruption, you are just cherry picking an incident in Germany and ignoring the fact that the occupation was not supported.
It's very sad and I agree that the second war was also terrible, unjustified and the whole thing would best be solved by negotiations.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Azerbaijan expelled or downright massacred the Armenian population living in Baku in the 1988 and 1990 pogroms. Nagorno-Karabakh population also used to be a large majority of Armenians until the government promoted relocation of Azeri people in the region, causing the Armenian population to be heavily discriminated.
This mini-thread accidentally explains why the West don't, won't, and can't care about Azerbaijan/Armenia violence: it's fucking incomprehensible. Tribes killing each other for generations, for complicated reasons that no one without a relevant PhD will understand. It seems intractable, so we throw up our hands and focus elsewhere, somewhere with a simpler narrative.
Everyone gets uptight about the word "uncivilized," but this kind of generational tribal conflict _is_ a failure of civilization. I don't know what causes civilization (it sure ain't skin tone), but without clear villain/victim narratives, and heroes to root for (brave Ukrainians fighting for their own liberation), no one will care. And that's tragic, too, but it's not a commentary on the underlying tragedy of human suffering and death, that people in every nation hurt the same.
The land in question consists of two parts. The former Nagorno-Karabach Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) and a region which is de jure part of Azerbaijan, which was captured in a war that resulted from Azerbaijan's invasion of the NKAO.
The NKAO is not a de jure part of Azerbaijan, as can be seen from the Soviet secession law of 1991, which is the law which permitted Azerbaijan's secession from the Soviet Union. The law itself can be found in English translation on http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1991-2/shevarnadze-resigns/shev... , but basically, autonomous oblasts vote separately from Soviet Republics, and do not automatically secede with their republics unless they hold a separate vote to do so.
When Azerbaijan seceded from the Soviet Union no such vote was held in Nagorno-Karabach. In my view the correct legal interpretation is thus that they remained part of Soviet Union until it was dissolved, at which point they became an independent state.
This is very important, because Azerbaijan has been shooting people in the NKAO for no reason whatsoever, and I assume that's it's purely a matter of killing Armenians, so it can't be part of Azerbaijan: this makes the legal situation very convenient-- countries like Spain, which does not want to accept a separate Catalonia, or Basque country would not make themselves into hypocrites, or set a precedent against themselves, by recognizing the NKAO, or Artsakh as it now calls itself.
A long story but to cut it short, the UN recommendations for the final solution of NK status is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Principles which proscribe a solution not much different from the current status. this war could have been avoided if both parties had been willing.
That is a good post. Likewise the situation in Ukraine could have been avoided. Compromise was needed. Both parties weren’t willing. Now both are suffering.
Stop with this "both sides" bullshit. Putin decided to invade, and short of completely surrendering in advance, there was absolutely nothing Ukraine could do. All the plans were drafted, the propaganda filmed and the orders shipped way before the "talks" even started, all of it were just for show to form a propaganda context and fool people like you. There's only one side's decision that made the war happen, and that side is Russia.
> Likewise the situation in Ukraine could have been avoided.
Sorry, but no. The demands and even the Minsk agreements were completely incompatible with Ukrainian sovereignty. It would have been easier to demand Ukraine recognize LDNR and Crimea, than to implement Misk 2 in its form.
I can easily lay blame on Germany for being so nindmumbigly stupid with forcing Minsk 2 on Ukraine. You've seen how well Russia played Merkel, when Ukranian president snapped a pencil.
And finally - there was no goal of letting Ukraine make its own decisions on Russian side. This war was inevitable, since western powers refused to provide proper defensive capabilities to Ukraine - specially AA.
It has become pretty obvious that there wasn't any realistic "compromise" (other than complete submission) that Ukraine could offer. Putin wants Ukraine and is determined to get it by any means. The suffering is 100% on his head.
There are a lot of regions in the world with disputed land and unless there are truly horrible acute humanitarian reasons to intervene, an invasion and a new never reduces the overall suffering. There are better ways to solve problems.
Today, war is really bad policy because it kills the young! Demographics are bad enough in our aging world, sending the youth to go die only makes it worse. Maybe in the past, war might be a population stunting tool, but today it just makes your population distribution worse.
These kind of stories reveal how brutal geopolitics are.
Nation states are organized by power laws. Out of the 200+ countries, more than 150 are effectively "irrelevant". These small "sovereign" countries are geographically outside the main power blocks (US/Canada, EU, SE Asia, Russia) and thus have fragile security.
Which means they're not really sovereign. They're forced to align with a power block (in a rare case multiple ones) to get access to trade in exchange for security.
Sounds like a mob deal really. Give me access to your commodities (most of these countries are commodity producers, not advanced economies) or you get no aid in security. Some countries are so irrelevant that despite trading commodities, they still get no security when the need is there. Not worth defending.
Or, the aggressor is too big to take on, so we stand by and do nothing. Altogether it's a geographic lottery of arbitrary nation-states.
There is also an obsession in that part of the world with Geopolitics. It's no coincidence that some of the most popular youtube geopolitics channels are from that region. I think it's more a remnant of soviet mentality and the fact that (absent the ideology of communism) territorial gains/losses seems to be the only motivator. China for all its rhetoric has not changed its borders in many decades, yet russia/ turkey are using militarism and territorial conquest as an end rather as means to prosperity.
I've travelled a lot and if there's one thing I learned it's that we're all the same. We all share the same ideology: to live a dignified life in peace, in good health and in reasonable wealth.
It's what we all desire and have in common. It's not even an ideology, they are common sense motivators for any living thing in general.
Everything else is learned behavior: nationalism, culture, religion. False ideologies that divide instead of unite.
In my mind the main takeaway from this article is that these things are so nuanced we need to be very careful in passing judgment on these third parties that are tangentially related to the conflict.
It’s relatively easy for us in the West to call balls and strikes for some actors, but much more tricky when it comes to other third parties (like Armenia).
My take away was to be cognizant the each country (and even each individual) has their own motivations and conditions on the ground to deal with. Sometimes it is a historical or geographical context that isn’t readily apparent from the outside.
But in some circumstances, the message sent by abstaining from a vote can be just as loud (and brave) as voting yes or no.
> It’s relatively easy for us in the West to call balls and strikes for some actors, but much more tricky when it comes to other third parties (like Armenia).
Along the same lines I think it’s easy to forget that imposing sanctions and voting against the interests of a major power is, in a way, a privilege because it always has a cost. Even among some of the major European countries like Germany you can see that the economic realities of sanctioning Putin ran the risk of being too burdensome. If a country as wealthy and influential as Germany needs to coordinate among all of their allies (and still be prepared to bear a significant cost at home!) in order to make sanctions against Russia feasible I’m not sure how Russia’s smaller, non-EU neighbors could possibly be expected to do the same.
Context from Wikipedia (because the article doesn't have it):
"The main combatants were Azerbaijan, with support from Turkey and foreign mercenary groups on one side; and the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh and Armenia, on the other. It was the latest escalation of an unresolved conflict over the region, which was annexed to Azerbaijan during the Soviet era and internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but partially governed by Artsakh, a breakaway state with an Armenian ethnic majority."
It was 90% Armenian in the 1920s; the Azerbaijan SSR promoted immigration of Azerbaijani in the region between then and the 1980s, but it never went below 75%.
30 years ago isn't that long - there are still people alive in Azerbaijan who own property deeds for houses in Karabakh, and who were born and grew up there. At the time there were 684k displaced Azerbaijanis (UN number), most of which are still alive today.
When I had the honour of visiting your country a few years ago, my friend said to me that if he could only wish one thing for Armenia that it would be relocate the country away from its current geographical position.
I hope that people in the outside world will understand the dilemma Armenia is in, sitting as it does between hostile neighbours Turkey to the West and Azerbaijan to the East. National security is not an abstract concern here, it is an everyday reality. I hope one day it will be different for you and your people
> The West was unable to stop the war. But Russia did stop it.
I don't understand. Azerbaijan took Nagorny Karabakh by force. What exactly Russia stopped there? Advance of Azerbaijan deeper, into undisputed Armenian territory? I don't think so.
They took some of Nagorno-Karabakh by force, not all. There are Russian troops there to act as the authority preventing escalation from either side. Yes, this is something Russia was able to accomplish better than other western countries, but only because they have immense control over their neighbors (see Ukrainian invasion), so there's little to commend them on. Also, from the Azeri POV and internationally recognized borders, they are securing their own territory, like Ukraine would if the government was able to enter separatist held Donbas. With that said, while the issues here are complicated, I will almost always side with the people's being aggressed upon. The matter of fact is that there was peace for many years until Azerbaijan sent military troops into Nagorno Karabakh, starting the conflict and many deaths, and that is inexcusable.
I agree it is not fair to make accusations at this point. The world is a complex place. I don't think any regular person who sees the reality will support starting war.
I think another interesting dilemma is that the Armenian diaspora is living in large numbers in two world powers. I feel like they can get more powerful economically and politically than the regular Armenian folks living in Armenia. Thus there is a foreign(?) influence in their democracy. (I'm not an expert...)
Lastly, maybe I'm optimistic, but I think there is an opportunity for peace in the region. I support recent forward-thinking and peaceful messages from Turkey and Azerbaijan. As a Turk, I want to see peace, friendship, and economy flourish between the nations. This will only give more options and prosperity to all of us who live here, and take options from others.
> I feel like they can get more powerful economically and politically than the regular Armenian folks living in Armenia.
Definitely. Unfortunately that meant that an ethnic Armenian became head of RT, Russian's premier state propaganda vehicle, who is currently supporting the war on Ukraine.
Hear hear. Ukraine, as bad the situation is, is nothing compared to the Caucasus. The Caucasus is on the same level of shittiness as the Balkan or the Palestine if you zoom out in time.
I mean no offense. They are all important sites in the history of humanity, with multiple people having legitimate claims to the same land. And they hate each other with passion.
Seeing as this post is getting on HN, as a long term Caucasus resident, I'll take a moment to give some love for the publisher. OC Media are a fantastic outlet, that provide a home for top-notch journalists in a region where the wrong sort of reporting can get you into big trouble. Worth a follow, or a donation if you're feeling flush.
This one’s closer to Stockholm syndrome. Russia sells weapons to Pakistan; it’s devolving into a Chinese vassal. India notices this, hence its purchases of e.g. French fighters, but it’s less a dilemma than a bad position.
If I remember well, they also have a long tradition of not aligning on either side (Russia or America). Isn't that doctrine the root of the "third world" idea, even if somewhat sadly it devolved to a sadder meaning of underdeveloped country?
Ottoman Empire had the same dilemma that Russia has been facing. It's economy was struggling, parts of it was turning into nation-states and it was involved in long wars in which it had no clear dedication.
Russia (or Putin, to be frank) chose to try restoring the empire. Ottoman Sultans were trying to do the same as well, and failing. Atatürk, saw this and decided to create a Turkish identity, which was far from the main identity of the Ottomans. Some minorities were also integrated into this identity, using the language or religion.
The Armenians however, being one of the oldest settlers in Anatolia, shared none of these. As well as the Kurds and the Greek. Many were displaced (and yes, it was a genocide, I'm not dancing around the word) and suffered a lot more than it's imaginable today.
So I understand why they are afraid of their neighbor, and therefore skeptical towards NATO.
Most of the Turkish (the minority I'm in, being the exception) don't want to accept any stain on their saviors history, so they deny any wrongdoing with passion. Their (well, our) whole identity is created through that process, you have to understand the sensitivity. Many like me are coming to terms with what actually happened, but it's hard. The religious barrier is also not making things easier for many others.
I really wish eventually Turkey will recognize what happened, and some signs of diplomacy will start to show. Until then, I totally understand the Armenian position.
I'm living in another country now, and my favorite restaurant has Armenian owners. We are good friends. They do support Ukraine in this war, but still show sympathy to the Russian ambitions. These things are hard to change and are ingrained in our brains when we are growing up, and we should be okay with it. This is how being respectful to other peoples opinions work.
Disclosure: I consider myself of Turkish origin, not that I don't have my identity crises every now and then.
Awesome. As part of the diaspora, I have met a ton of open-minded Turkish people. Especially in the US, if they have an artistic or educated leaning, we tend to have a lot in common. The more people who can see beyond national pride and try to know other groups of people, the better.
I think it will take another generation, but Turks will take that step vis a vis the Armenians because in this world countries have to follow the German example of self-criticism to be seen as mature and responsible.
1. Russia wants to eliminate Ukraine, and Armenia is the sole explicit supporter
2. Russia did the same in 1915, arming Armenian Dashnaks to kill 500K to 1million of their neighbors; Turkish or Kurdish civilians unprotected due to Ottoman war against Russia.
3. Russia in 1990 punished Azerbaidjan protests in Baku and used Armenia as a puppet which occupied not only Karabagh but an additional 20% of Azerbaijan land and killed and displayed 100K to 1million people.
4. Ataturk's presence and war against occupants from Italy, England, Greece, France starts in 1919 long after the world war 1. So your interpretation is wrong.
Finally yes I'm sad for the deaths, like everyone in Turkey. But we're sick of people who omit 5 million Turkish deaths in Balkans and Caucasus.
5. My several best mates in Turkey are Armenians. I love their everyhing. But I think Armenian nationalist heritage of Russia supported aggresiveness hurts all neighbors including Georgia too.
Armenia's sole friends are Russia and Iran - and that is not a coincidence.
Counter-historical as in not corresponding to history?
1. What?
2. Genocide denial talking point straight from the hurriyet. Massacres had been going on for 20 years in 1915.
3. Armenia didn't occupy anything until 1992. In 1990 people in NKAO were speaking of independence as were people in the rest of AZSSR, in 1991 Soviet Union with the support of AZSSR was ethnically cleansing parts of AZSSR of Armenian militias. It wasn't until 1992 that after being besieged for a year NKAO defenders broke out and started occupying anything.
4. The civilians that were death marched into the Middle East were causing those millions of deaths?
Unfortunately, this post is maddeningly accurate. Keep in mind that Putin signed a military alliance agreement with Azerbaijan the day before he invaded Ukraine. I perceive that this is an unveiled threat to Armenia: do as you are told, or we'll look the other way when you get invaded and (most likely) massacred by our new ally.
A widespread opinion is that the 2020 war was enabled/allowed by Russia to punish Armenia for its drift towards the West. Personally I find this scenario reasonably probable.
As a result of mass protests prime minister resigned. Emergent leader of the protests won elections and became prime minister. At some point later after vote of no confidence he won elections again.
It's not drifting to the West, it's changing government by elections, what made Russia to put pressure to Armenia
The vote of no confidence occured already after the war, if I am not mistaken. Or, rather, he resigned to enable new elections and confirm his legitimacy after the military disaster. The bet paid off, mostly because the other main candidate was a Russian-backed ex-president who is almost universally hated for the corruption during his tenure.
I do find that Pashinyan's drift towards France and the U.S. was quite pronounced, by the way.
Armenia has already an alliance with Russia as a member of the CSTO (and sent troops to Kazakhstan as part of it in January). That did not prevent Russia from looking the other way in 2020.
That's because Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is internationally recognized as being part of Azerbaijan. Even Armenia itself does not officially recognize the independence of Artsakh. Thus from a Russian point of view, Azerbaijani military attacks on Artsakh are an internal matter for the Azerbaijan government and not an act of aggression against Armenia proper which would trigger their mutual defense treaty.
During the war, both Armenian and Azerbaijani forces were doing a kind of kabuki dance, provoking the other side into bombarding either Armenia or Iran, to trigger either regional powers' intervention in the conflict.
It's a sad reality for the Armenian people that they were never truly independent and sovereign, but always a protectorate of the Iranians, Romans, Byzantines, Turks or Russians. I think everyone in Western leadership circles (or at least those who can actually place Armenia on a map) recognizes that and there is not the antagonism against them that, say, Belarus or to a lesser extent Serbia is experiencing.
Russia looked the other way because it was in the interest of Russia to look the other way. I believe the recent events in Ukraine have demonstrated that international law is held in pretty low regard. If Russia found it in their interest to intervene or prevent the war, they would have certainly done that. Instead, they chose to step away from one of their few allies/hostages.
Of course, but in this case they were technically in the clear, unlike Ukraine where one of the smartest things the Biden administration did was to preemptively blow the false flag operations that were being planned to justify the invasion.
The Azerbaijanis were certainly in close coordination with the Russians to establish what the Russian red lines were, and go right up to them, but no further.
You don’t understand how deeply ingrained their hatred for Armenia goes. It’s literally what they spend surplus money on.
First, Turkey and Azerbaijan are effectively dictatorships flying under the radar using oil money and “west-friendly” trade policies.
Second, Armenia has been Christian for as long as Christianity has existed. Turkey and Azerbaijan are Muslim. There are millennia of wars and conflict over forced conversion that have resulted in “Armenia is the devil” propaganda making its way into the Turk cultures.
Third, in the Turk and Azeri mind, Armenia is the one threat to their “Turkic manifest destiny.” They believe the Caucus should be theirs in order to create a unified “great” Turkic civilization.
So yes, when these countries have the means to buy very efficient weapons, Armenian lives become at risk.
The core ideology of Azerbaijan is armenophoby, and they do not really hide the fact. Their claim is that Armenians are not native to the, eh, Armenian highlands, and thus should be expelled at the very least. During the 2020 war atrocities such as decapitation of soldiers and civilians were common, as well as cutting off and collecting ears of Armenian PoWs. There have been multiple reports of Armenian churches being demolished or having the Armenian inscriptions erased (talk about cultural expropriation). During the victory parade in 2020, Aliyev and Erdogan were praising Enver Pasha, who was the architect of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Also the very "peculiar" expo of the victory museum. Also the threats to take Armenian provinces by force, if political demands are not met. I believe this paints a more or less complete picture why I don't have any optimism regarding the fate of Armenian civilians should that country fall, although probably people who favor Azerbaijan in this conflict can come up with plausible explanations for every item in this list, including decapitations and tortures of civilians.
A complete picture would also mention that Artsakh obtained its de facto independence for 100,000 Armenians at the cost of ethnically cleansing 700,000 Azeris, Kurds and other ethnicities from the region.
It is also worth to mention that before that 300,000 Armenians were expelled from Azerbaijan, and people from the regions around Artsakh were expelled during a war which have started because Azerbaijan have attempted to deport the remaining 160,000 from Artsakh too.
it is safe to say that the world needs some history deleting virus. if we woke up with no knowledge of history and relations between nations, all this disputes would disappear over night.
Surprisingly large number of people believe that if people in the neighbouring city vote to speak on their language and govern themselves locally, they deserve punishment up to death.
And there is similarly large number of people who believe that it is noble to die for a line on the map.
So forgetting history would have a very small effect only on a very small number of conflicts.
To complete the picture you might also mention that the vast majority of the displaced were not from the disputed region but from the surrounding Karabakh, which is where the fighting spilled once NKR forces pushed back the Azeri army after almost losing everything in 92.
I'm from India, and we are in a soup too. The geopolitics governing our decision to abstain at every UN vote and prioritization of interests over principles is quite nuanced. Here is a soft paywalled explanation.
This is simply because Armenia and Azerbaijan have weak de facto sovereignty, just like Ukraine, by being neighbors with Russian sphere of influence. Russia can tell these countries to knock it off or there will be Ukrainian invasion level of consequences. The west has no hard power or appetite for it in this region. It's only because Putin is a warmonger.
I hope you don't think I've only just heard of these Putin propaganda 101 remarks...
It's not because he's a warmonger he's controlling the Armenia-Azerbaijan issue. He controls the Armenia-Azerbaijan issue because he's a warmonger and they're scared of the Ukrainian invasion level of shit he will do to them if they don't comply.
Surely this Russian invasion has dispelled all doubt on the NATO argument here. Every country like Poland and the Baltics that requested to join NATO got to live in peace free from Russian invasion. Ukraine wasn't able to and was thus invaded. 5,000+ are dead because of this. A country being in NATO is unacceptable to Putin because it then means they can't be threatened and invaded. From the ashes of the USSR, Poland and the Baltics have been prospering into great standards of living, while the kleptocrats that control Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia have pilfered their people's country enriching themselves. Every country has requested to join the alliance. While Russia invades multiple countries who aren't. It's pretty simple and clear what's going on.
Discussions between Baker and Gorbachev, that were rebuffed by diplomats as infeasible when checking if it could be put in a treaty, and which Gorbachev and other Soviet diplomats did not care to put in the treaty, are no way to conduct global diplomacy. Every treaty will start with countries' diplomats discussing things and seeing what deal they can work it. You can't bind people to everything they say in first talks. Insane. Meanwhile, Russia breaks multiple signed treaties, like the ones respecting Ukraine's territory for giving up nuclear weapons and invading when there's the Minsk Protocol. These are legally binding agreements, and yet you're hung up on something that was briefly approached 30 years ago. Also insane.
PS. You should know that Russia will be closing the borders soon and you will be stuck in a place where criticizing your government will land you 15 years in a gulag. Feel free to join the 100 other countries where you can talk shit about any government any day of the week on the news. Obviously it is a scary and huge undertaking. However the standards of living offered by western countries will be unparalleled by the currently crumbling Russian economy. I'm talking about 30,000,000 ruble/yr compensation in the US and we'd love to have you contribute.
In addition, according to statements by some of the employees, Zaporozhye NPP transferred some nuclear materials for scientific research related to plans to develop Ukrainian nuclear weapons. The IAEA inspections were aware of the transfer of nuclear materials for military needs.
When a free and independent Cuba placed nuclear missiles under America's belly, no one cared about its free and independent status.
When Russia defends its state interests, I only hear that I am going to the Gulag. no one will talk about how many people will never be able to leave Guantanamo. No one will count how many wars the US has unleashed. no one will remember the bombing of Yugoslavia.
if you're really interested in my contributions, you'll get them from whatever country I want. if you just don't want to see the existence of Russia, you just continue the stories about the Gulag.
PS I also see how other countries close their airspace to Russia, and not vice versa.
By the way, if the author is here: Please use a real blogging platform and not this un-indexable, privacy invading mailchimp crap. Hell, even medium is better.
The thing with authoritarian regimes is that they all look stable, but there is a lot of hidden fragility. Eventually all authoritarian leaders will make catastrophic mistakes. Mainly due to the high amount of corruption, the lack of push back and barriers, and the lack of transparency.
I believe the war with Ukraine is Putins catastrophic mistake. The danger is that he will drag down his neighbours or maybe the world with him.
It's a pretty difficult situation and it will be interesting to see how the government is going to work around it. Personally, I am looking for a way out before it's too late. There aren't very many of them with my citizenship, though.