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A defense of... what, exactly? Haiti, Ukraine, and the Calculus of Sovereignty
Imagine that tomorrow, by some insane folly, Brazil decides to invade and annex Haiti. Brazil in general is... not great. Lots of poverty, questionable rule of law, wild swings in politics in recent years. But compared to Haiti, whose government is a strong contender for worst in the world? Living in a society merely as flawed as Brazil would be an incredible improvement. So okay, in our imagination, Brazil definitely annexed Haitian territory through unprovoked aggression. But would we encourage Haitians to resist? Put Haitian flags in our Twitter bios? Would we support a government that is failing its people? Or would we ask whether Brazilian rule, however illegitimate, might offer Haitians marginally better prospects? So there's the question: Under what conditions does a state's right to sovereignty outweigh its failure to secure the welfare of its people?
This is the question I keep trying to answer for myself on Ukraine. In 2022, I didn't know much about Ukraine but my stance aligned with the general consensus: Russia's invasion was a brazen violation of international law, and Ukraine's territorial integrity demanded defense. But after three years of stalemate, over 500,000 casualties reported, a failed counteroffensive, and no plausible path to Ukrainian victory, I'm asking "What's it all for?" The conflict will ultimately end in negotiated concessions. Crimea retained by Russia, Donbas partitioned, security guarantees exchanged. Why prolong a war of attrition that sacrifices a generation to marginally adjust the terms? Why fight for Ukraine at all?
Poland vs. Ukraine: Reform and Stagnation
For contrast, consider Poland, a nation that, like Ukraine, emerged from Soviet domination in 1991. Both inherited corrupt, centrally planned economies and oligarchic rot. Yet Poland since then has been growing like crazy and today boasts a GDP per capita around $21,000. Ukraine, by contrast, basically didn't advance at all, and was at $4,500 per capita pre-war. As I said, I was ignorant about the details before, and I am only slightly less ignorant now of the specifics of these two countries' trajectories, but as a big believer in Adam Smith's economics, I am convinced that a GDP of $4,500 indicates something really, really wrong with Ukrainian governance.
So if Poland were being invaded by Russia, I would see their post-Soviet trajectory as something worth dying for. I would feel like they were fighting to stay on the one true path, all that is good and right about liberal democracy. But Ukraine? "Fighting for all that's good and right" is definitely the vibe on Twitter, but where is the evidence that Ukraine is on the path to becoming Poland? Okay, they elected Zelenskyy in 2019, but what has he done? What have been the fruits of Ukrainian reforms?
Conclusion
Shouldn't the hypothetical Brazilians invading Haiti be greeted as liberators? It truly would be hard for Brazilian colonial rule to be any worse than the current government of Haiti. Ukraine isn't the basket case that Haiti is, but its pre-war stagnation, evidenced by a $4,500 GDP per capita, casts doubt on its claim to be a bastion of liberal democracy, an ideal actually worth dying for. I see no virtue in increasing this war's death toll merely to tweak an inevitable settlement's borders. Russia's aggression is unjust, but if Ukraine's fight preserves only a corrupt stasis rather than a transformative future, why are we supporting it? It used to be that more cynical people said the US supported Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and it's good for us that their soldiers die. But now we just hear the idealistic case. Is the idealistic case strong?
I was hoping the American Grand Strategy in Ukraine was to bleed Russia dry, at the expense of Ukraine. I think it has basically worked, as beyond WMD, I think Russia has very little in their arsenal to threaten the West with. I am surprised, however, by the turn of events where Trump accuses Ukraine of having started the Russian invasion. My hope remains that Trump is playing 4D chess with Putin, softening him up for a triumphant blow, but my hope wavers. It seems clear that Ukraine would be a much more likely and loyal ally than Russia could ever be.
In my view, here are the American interests in the region:
American fears:
The Biden strategy seemed pretty reasonable if tepid in light of these points. I'm not sure what Trump would think of the above.
This comment is high up in sort-by-controversial, yet seems eminently reasonable to me. Can some of the downvoters explain their disagreement please?
Note that I don’t think the sort functions work until the scores are published a day later. I did some experiments and it just sorts by new.
Not sure. Do you mean sort-by-new and sort-by-controversial are the same for comments posted within 24h? There's a clear difference for me.
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Russia is stronger now than they've been in decades; Russians currently possesses the best army in the world which has been battletested by what was likely the 2nd best army in the world. Because Europe and the US have drained their armories, Russia is now deeply acquainted with NATO weapons and has developed effective countermeasures (e.g., the success rate of HIMARS is less than 10%). There are only a few weapons which the US and NATO have held in reserve, but there is little reason to think they will perform much better. In fact, the war has exposed NATOs reliance on fewer more advanced weapon systems will not work against a peer adversary. Even if these weapons were impressive, and they're not, there are simply too few of them and too small an arms industry to produce them in numbers which will significantly affect a serious conflict. When Europe drained its armories with promises of (subsidized) replacements from the US, they're getting contract delivery dates (and these are already being pushed back) in the 2030s. Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly demonstrated effective hypersonic missiles which the West has no counter against. Instead of a bled Russia, you have a resurgent and invigorated one.
This war should be a bat to the side of the head of the US military and defense industrial complex and its satrapies that what they're doing is the wrong direction, but it's currently not even being perceived as a stiff wind.
Your hope is misplaced. Trump is pivoting towards the Pacific and a Great Powers game between China, Russia, and the US, with Europe being irrelevant because they are. Trump is abandoning the tut-tutting moralism empire and reestablishing sovereignty over core interests. IMO, Trump is going to use Ukraine to get a deal with Russia to counter Chinese influence. Putin will get additional land he's currently not occupying, Ukraine never in NATO, an end to the sanctions regime, some other concessions, and if I had to guess both the US and Russia will get some reparations from Ukraine in the form of mineral or other rights/payments. Ukraine is gone, destroyed, finished. It's a husk of a country only propped up by authoritarianism and foreign money.
I can see why Ukraine is in the Europeans' interests, and they can put-up or shut-up about it. The US should have never signed onto or encouraged this idiocy nor in expanding NATO past its sell-by date which was decades ago. The West got a gift when Putin took power; a person who could end the deracinated chaos which had befallen post-Soviet Russia but who was so pro-West he was almost a Europhile and wanted to integrate Russia into the market economies of Europe. Putin-lead Russia repeatedly attempted
reproachrapprochement with Europe from trying to get into NATO to willingly and seriously participating in any European organization it was allowed to enter for years and years. They sidestepped the US to build infrastructure to strengthen ties with Europe (especially Germany). Instead of genuinely working with Russia, the Americans and Europeans constantly took advantage of their weakness and rapprochement attempts.A greatly weakened Russia is not in the United States' interests because the United States should want Russia to counterbalance the Chinese in the coming multipolar world.
Joe Biden's (or really the faction of the US regime he was the puppet of) strategy of pissing off Russia and making them turn to China is catastrophically stupid politics. What's worse is it was entirely predictable that Russia was going to win the war from the word "go," that the Europeans were never going to do what was necessary to stop that, and instead Ukraine and Europe would repeatedly try to get the US into direct conflict with Russia which the US would bear the brunt of. What we saw was a laughably incorrect view of the situation and the world; it is sadly humorous listening to American and European statements about this war and predictions of it over the last few years.
So not only were mountains of treasure and weapons now burned in a giant heap of trash (or stolen), but NATO and the US lost badly and embarrassingly. The Biden admin has already burned through so much of the US's advantages which would have enabled a far better negotiated outcome. This whole endeavor was catastrophically stupid and costly and totally unnecessary. It's not as stupid and costly as the 2nd Iraq War and Afghan War, but when all is said and done it won't be far off. Here are predictions I made months ago about how this would play out.
Can you please explain the contextual framework which can make "Russia currently possesses the best army in the world" appear true?
E.g. China, India have much large numbers to brute force their attacks with. USA has much more advanced tech, most of the prominent AI developing companies, control over chip producers, control over a world-spanning satellite internet system. To some degree this applies to China too. Israel has decades of war experience, and has shown hypercompetent achievements in its last stage as well.
What does the Russian army have, or done, to merit being classified as the best one among them?
How can you know what he truly wanted or didn't want?
(to prevent misunderstandings, I am guessing you meant "reapproach")
And if we judged by his actions, then he started sabotaging Europe almost as soon as he more or less concentrated power and built up his authoritarian regime. Most prominent of all by invading Ukraine in 2014.
Infrastructure-related ties are not necessarily a good thing, if other conditions are not being met. As we've seen with how Russia has been blackmailing the same Europe when the latter was reliant on it for fuel imports.
How did they constantly take advantage of Russia? Please rely on concrete and valid sources when answering this question, rather than on hearsay.
How do you know this? Wouldn't the true capabilities and stocks be classified info?
Same with this.
Similarly, that the truly bleeding edge technology and capabilities would not have been shared with Ukraine to be exposed to rivals and potential enemies?
I'll be honest, I'm pretty hesitant to write an effort post in response to a user who will delete half the dialogue later especially when their comment is 90% questions.
Did you read that article you linked? Which part was the hearsay? The author admits exactly what Putin is accusing American (and NATO) officials of doing in the first few paragraphs, then writes it wasn't written down in a treaty which means it doesn't matter, and then throws a bunch of confetti in the air about the Soviet Union not being entirely dissolved at the time, and also NATO talked about enlargement in 1995 years later when Eastern block countries asked, and then Russia signed a document which in no way, shape, or form, endorses or acquiesces to NATO enlargement in 1997, but NATO enlargement didn't happen until 1999 (I suppose that the Russians opposing and protesting this at the time using the previous assurances wasn't important enough for this gem of an article). And also, like there was some intra-NATO debate about adding new members which undermines the "myth of betrayal" except this fact is irrelevant to the Russian's claims about betrayal of the assurances the author already admitted in the sixth paragraph. Wow, that's a great example of European media. Hopefully something significant was lost in translation.
And I meant "rapprochement," I'll correct the message and thank you.
Not the dialogue, but the user account. On this engine it should make the posts themselves remain, AFAIK.
And is it really an effort post? Mostly I'm just asking for you to back up the multiple claims that you've made in your original one. Which I think should be expected by default, no? And if you did back them up previously, I can't know that either, because 1) there are no references to those supporting comments in your current one and 2) your comment history is private, so I can't be Ctrl+F-ing through it to try finding the relevant parts.
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Very interesting, but Russia seems much weaker now than in 2022. Heavily sanctioned, big stagflation, and fielding laughable armor deployments and infantry tactics. Quads, donkeys, motorcycles, and "camels". We've been assured that the 3 day Special Military Operation is still going according to plan. They've evacuated Syria, Wagner is a shadow of its former self, and are they still conscripting and fielding prisoners or is that well too running dry?
If Russia was going to roll into Poland, what do you think that force composition looks like?
Agreed, this seems pure fantasy. A battletested army? Well if it's a test it's pretty clear they have failed spectacularly.
I have no idea what Trump thinks, but I'd say the US military and other 3 letter agencies will be largely very pleased with the outcomes of this.
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who "assured" you of the "3 day" SMO? shucks, that would have been nice because then Russia wouldn't have run out of ammunition after two weeks and resorted to human wave attacks using shovels for weapons
one of us it going to have reality smash through our perception of it on the ground in Ukraine and hopefully we'll both think harder about where we consume information and why we believed it in error when it does
I'm referring to Putin's statements after the disaster at Hostomel and the decimation of the armor columns rolling towards Kiev in the first few days of the war.
Here is a video analysis of the SMO in that regard:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=r0Ji7KqqEqg?si=r1-39lGmPvkNgM3l
Putin assured you the SMO would last 3 days? Or did you get that from somewhere else?
this didn't happen; although one of the funnier parts of the war was Ukraine announcing they destroyed the VDV at Hostomel only for an American journalist to walk up to a group of soldiers asking them where the Russians were to find out they were Russians and an entire intact, organized, and fighting unit of VDV at Hostomel
I'm not sure if I've seen that video, but I recognize the youtube channel and his twitter account and I'll just say if your sources are the war archive, Oryx, ISW, and "journalists" at bellingcat, I can see why we have such different perceptions of the war
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I think what is causing some confusion here is that "sovereignty" is a bit of an innuendo in the Ukrainian context.
The contentious element of "Ukrainian sovereignty" is not the right of ethnic Ukrainians to rule themselves domestically, it's about Ukraine's right to join the Western block via institutions like the EU and NATO.
It's this element of foreign policy that Russia is concerned by and sees as a strategic threat - the loss of (somewhat) independent buffer states and Western domination of the Black Sea etc. Likewise, the Western block wants to pull Ukraine closer, and prevent it being dominated by Russia, for largely the same (mirrored) reasons.
So, when you see people talking about "Ukrainian sovereignty", remember that this is what we're really talking about. It has almost nothing to do with domestic rule, GDP growth or the welfare of the Ukrainian people. It's about Great Power politics and spheres of influence.
No, it isn't. Since the beginning of the war, Putin has been saying that he wants to "denazify" Ukraine, which in his language means changing the government to a pro-Russian one. There are four aims:
All these goals have something to do with the loss of sovereignty. This is obvious for (4), but also for (1) and (2). And anyway, the very concept of a sphere of influence is very anti-sovereignty: it means that a great power should have a say in what a lesser power does, so that lesser power is typically not sovereign.
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Yes, that's part and parcel of sovereignty. To be able to rule yourselves domestically but to have another power control your foreign relations means you are not sovereign.
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Incidental quibble that if anything supports your main point: Haiti isn't just poor because of bad institutions. It's just a standard-issue West African country but it's in the Americas. The demographic base of the country is West African, the economy is West African, society is pretty West African with bizarre superstitions, political dysfunction, coups and gangs of comically vicious criminals with very silly names (remember the cannibal named Barbecue who was strongest man in the country?). Brazil can't fix West Africans, it has a significant amount of West Africa syndrome as well and associated dysfunction. So if they tried occupying Haiti it would ultimately be pointless. The US occupied Haiti and built infrastructure, ran the place properly in the 1920s when colonialism was fashionable. It doesn't work. Haiti is West African.
Ukraine has real proven potential, it's a fairly well-developed region with industry. They make tanks. They made that gigantic Antonov plane for moving the Soviet Space Shuttle around. They exported military equipment, including an aircraft carrier to China. I saw an anecdote of Ukrainian kids coming to a French school and were bemused by how the French were years behind in terms of maths. They fight like Europeans. They are Europeans.
But Ukrainian governance has been truly terrible, the country has been trapped in this ongoing, spiralling crisis of weakness and foreign influence. The whole sordid affair with Hunter Biden being on the board of a Ukrainian gas firm is indicative of serious problems and excessive US influence. There are ultranationalists running around who really want to get stuck into Russia. There are a bunch of Russians who wanted to get back into Russia. There was the entire USAID/NED/Soros/deep state goon squad taking great interest in the country, their corrosive effect in a poor country is immense particularly when there's lots of highly exploitable history to draw upon. In terms of 'splitting Russia and Europe' - mission accomplished! But as usual there's a lot of blowback and complications that make the whole thing into a net-negative for everything.
In what normal country does a comedian who played the piano with his penis become national leader because he pretended to be an honest politician on television? It's a broken country that really needed someone vaguely authoritarian to crack down on the worst of the corruption and implement sane foreign policy. Alas the US would've probably found ways to suppress a Ukrainian Lukashenko.
Haiti's problem is human capital, in that it has none to speak of.
Ukraine's problem is its a poorly partitioned state. You have ethnic and cultural Russians in the east and south and the ultranationalist Ukrainians to the west and central, then some other lesser groups like random Hungarian communities or Romanian in the west as well. It's torn between two groups pushing in polar opposite directions. It's not Russian enough to fully join Russia's orbit, and not Ukrainian enough to join the west (though arguably Ukrainians aren't western enough to join the west) not in it's entirety at least. Solution would be to just give the Russia speaking parts in the south and east, from Odessa to Kharkiv to Russia. Then integrate what is left with Europe.
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Haiti's problems aren't solely attributable to its demographic base- Jamaica, the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, etc are black Caribbean societies doing much, much better.
You mean Yanukovich? Yeah, about that...
The Dominican Republic is significantly whiter than Haiti, as is Jamaica. Even the Bahamas is only 90% black and relies heavily on tax fiddles for its economy. Wikipedia notes also that white and brown men ran Jamaica:
Yanukyovich is a good example of a suppressed politician IMO.
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The U/R v.s. B/H comparison misses crucial details. E.g.:
1. U had several specific agreements with R about mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity: ([1] [2] [3] [4]), whereas B/H don't.
2. The U-R war destabilises EU (and the world in general) much more than what a B/H war would.
3. B wouldn't be on its way of becoming a superpower once it captured H, threatening the current superpowers and the status quo (more destabilisation, eventual return to cold-war era atrocities).
4.
One of the current superpowers hasn't specifically declared their recognition and support of H's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Essentially egging them on to do go ahead and resist the aggressor, knowing that they would have such a backup.
5. B hasn't been known to carry out extrajudicial murders / murder attempts on EU soil. And in a manner so grossly incompetent as to leave other people sick or dead from radiation poisoning. [2]
6. AFAIK, B is not currently carrying out a large hybrid warfare / psyop campaign vs. EU and US populations.
7. There's an unstated, unproven implication that, circa 2014, quality of life in R was significantly higher than in U.
8.
Same with this one.
Imo: severe, systemic violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, crimes against nature. Internal policies, which present a serious risk for the neighboring countries or planet as a whole -- e.g. incompetent handling of nuclear technology, failure to properly regulate and police weapon smuggling, and so on.
These should be proven to be taking place. Unfortunately, anything less than that will incentivise the invader to manufacture such violations to get themselves a casus belli, e.g. like R was doing with the supposed discrimination of R-speaking population in Ukraine.
This comparison is inaccurate also. E.g.: P was much further away from R's sphere of influence. Enjoyed a certain extent of protection from being a NATO member. Was not being controlled by an R puppet for a large chunk of its post-USSR existence.
U was not being given a chance to advance as much as it could. The ousting of -- a corrupt -- Russian puppet followed very closely by the Russian invasion and war, which pretty much has not stopped since then.
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As you've pointed out, there are clear cases where more or less everyone either agrees that an invasion was justified e.g. the Vietnamese invading Cambodia to end Pol Pot's reign of terror or clearly unjust e.g. Iraq invading Kuwait, with a large grey area in the middle. Personally, I would say that for a place like Haiti anything would be an improvement over the current situation (if Haitians weren't black someone would have probably done something by now, but they hold back out of fear of being seen as racist/colonialist, and so I think progressive ideology deserves some amount of blame for the continued dysfunction there, but I digress), but that past a certain level of basic economic development where people aren't starving or completely lacking in basic healthcare or infrastructure that being merely poor (by first world standards) is not sufficient grounds for someone to overthrow your government, whatever their economic policies may be. That is, the US has no right to take over Cuba by force even if by doing so we could raise their GDP per capita to the level of Florida's. This isn't because I wish to consign the people of Cuba to poverty or believe in some absolute form of ethnic self-determination, but because I don't trust governments to make judgements about whether the citizens of neighboring countries would be better off under their own stewardship in good faith, and would rather they avoid doing this outside of edge cases like people being herded into death camps or cannibal gangs overrunning the capital, where either the government in question will ask for help directly or some multinational deliberative body can agree on an intervention.
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I think the principle of ethnic national sovereignty is a bad idea. My questions would generally be “are people living there better off under whatever government happens to rule them?” And “Is the rest of the world more stable under the regime in question.” In such a light, assuming that Brazil could bring stability, rule of law, and resources for the reconstruction of Haiti, Haiti would be much better off under the Brazilian regime than as an independent state. Ukraine as well seems much better off split off from Crimea and Donbas but not at war, or in an alternative not offered, under a Russian puppet state but able to govern all of its territory. There are plenty of other cases proving this out. The Palestinians who accepted Israeli and gained citizenship are worlds better off than the ones who keep banging their heads against the IDF in hopes of an independent sovereign state. Add in for most of these failed states the loss of international stability as the people flood other countries to flee instability, criminal pirates or gangs trafficking drugs into other countries or simply rob shipping lanes. Is that really better than the bad old days of colonialism where these states that are basket cases full of drugs were modernized and crime was dealt with? If Haiti were French, is that terrible?
In Haiti the life expectancy is currently 64 years on average. That’s about 60 years higher than the four year life expectancy of the slaves that were shipped to Haiti to work there. So yes, I would say Haiti is much better off as independent country than as a hellish French sugar gulag.
By this definition hospice homes are the worst hellholes on the planet.
(Or, to put it another way: this fails to take into account the mean age and health of said slaves that were shipped - it was not 'a representative sample of newborns from the population'.)
(I am well aware that even when taking this into account conditions were still hellish. Just making the point that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison.)
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But Haiti was French, and Haiti being French is arguably the reason that Haiti is Haiti nowadays. If Haiti were never French (or Spanish either), then Haiti today might not be the Haiti we know. I imagine it's not like France just sheepishly gave up their colony for reasons of un-based-ness or whatever, there was a literal slave revolt. Perhaps the French thought they were slavedriving for the best interests of themselves and their slaves, but the Haitians/Taino clearly didn't see it that way.
Haiti was French 200+years ago, and Latin American societies under colonial domination for longer are significantly better off.
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Broadly speaking, I think the a state's right to sovereignty ranks very highly, as long as the way it expresses that largely aligns with the wishes of its citizens, and doesn't directly impose externalities on its neighbors (this is why I don't view Palestinian sovereignty as particularly sacrosanct, as it's pretty much entirely directed towards starting unprovoked wars with its neighbor).
I guess you could make a case for violating sovereignty on utilitarian grounds, such as in the example you gave of Brazil taking over Haiti, which would almost certainly involve a substantial increase in living standards for the Haitians (as long as they were absorbed as full citizens into the new Brazil++). When it comes to Ukraine, it's not entirely clear to me whether you're talking about the potentially higher welfare of current Ukrainians if Ukraine became part of Russia, or simply if Ukraine stopped the current war with Russia. I suspect the latter, although the latter corresponds more with your Brazil/Haiti analogy.
Isn’t that the ball of wax with Ukraine? It is far from clear the eastern provinces were okay with the Kiev crew. It was a nation state but one with a slow burn civil war.
If you define a foreign supported filibuster, supported by armed interventions, as a civil war, I suppose.
Don’t be cute. Of course Russia supported the eastern province just like the US supported Kiev. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t on going kinetic activity by Kiev against the eastern province
That's not being cute, that's being clear on what happened, including not making silly false equivalences on the nature or even timing of support.
The separatist republic conflicts weren't a result of there being an organic uprising, and then the Russians moved in forces. The totally-not-Russian-government-supported Russian paramilitaries using Russia military equipment moved in forces to seize control (the filibuster element), and then when those forces failed to instigate a popular uprising and were being systemically pushed back by the Russians sent the army to directly fight to preserve their seized enclaves. It was only after the Russian military intervention that the filibuster-installed governments began to mobilize / conscript the locals in appreciable number.
Calling it a civil war before that point would simply be obfuscating the nature and role of the Russian instigation of the conflict, and calling it a civil war after that point would be obfuscating the nature and the role of Russia in directly intervening to secure and preserve those republics, whose claim to local support was, shall we say, lacking in externally verifiable evidence.
For the American support of Kiev to be just like the Russian support for the separatists, the Americans would have needed to instigate an filibuster invasion of Ukraine from the border, and then sent in armored columns when said filibuster force was resisted. This, notably, never happened.
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Isn't one potential argument here that Ukraine was wanting to take the same route as Poland, but didn't have time to really do that before 2014? I think even Kulak made that argument early in the war, that Ukraine saw what happened to Poland and were like "Orthodox Jesus, I've seen what you done for the Poles and I want that for myself."
If the invasion were put off by like 5 years, maybe we'd see some actual progress towards EU-ification.
Minor nitpick, but pre-EuroMaidan the prowestern faction in Ukrainian politics had its support base in the tradCath west of the country, the Orthodox regions were pro-Russian.
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Indeed. You can actually see the rising Ukrainian GDP per capita figures drop as a consequence of each Russian invasion, so it is ironic to cite their low GDP as a reason Russian occupation would be helpful to their GDP.
Yes, and while I don't want to bring them into these arguments because it might be seen as lazy, we have the Holodomor and Chernobyl to look at as prior examples of how Russian control ended up working out for Ukraine. Starving populations and irradiated no-go zones are probably pretty bad for GDP, you have to admit!
Russian outlying provinces(which is what the conquered portions of Ukraine would be) in general are pretty bad, right? Like their GDP per capita is bid up substantially by Moscow and St. Petersburg, because it’s an empire.
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They were by the Novorussians.
I think this largely depends if you view this conflict as an unprovoked war of Russian aggression or a Russian intervention in a Ukrainian civil war on behalf of ethnic Russians experiencing persecution by Ukrainian nationalists.
Eh, that might explain intervention in Donbas but it wouldn't have justified attempting to march on Kiev well away from that civil war.
Perhaps. Alternatively Russia may have believed it was necessary to kill the head of the snake to Citrix the Donbas.
Ultimately, I think Russia was motivated by a few things (protecting the Russian people in Eastern Ukraine, land greed, slowing nato expansion, and strategic goals relating to Crimea). Some of these things could be described as Ukrainian complicity and some of them not. The whole war is somewhat more complex than the standard description but even accounting for the nuance doesn’t make Russia an angel; the nuance merely reveals that Ukraine isn’t an angel either.
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If you're hunting nazis you have to go where the nazis and their leadership are.
That would no longer be, as you claim, intervening in the civil war.
You can claim Russia started the war to hunt nazis, just don’t dissemble about it.
If they're persecuting the Novorussians in the civil war it's part of the intervention, especially so after Novorussian became part of the federation.
The attempt to take Kyiv was on the 3rd day of the war! At that point none of the eastern provinces were part of the federation.
3rd day of the Russian intervention, this was not the start.
The eastern provinces had already been fighting by the time Russia finally intervened. They were already Russian they made it official later.
So they were not actually part of the federation till later. Which is what I wrote.
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No. Ukraine is a corrupt country that has much more in common with Russia than with Western Europe or even Poland. Some, possibly even most, of the monetary aid we send is purloined by the leaders of Ukraine. Also they have suspended elections indefinitely.
That's not to say that Russia was right to invade or that they deserve to win. In my mind, Russia was wrong and remains in the wrong.
Justice would be Ukraine recapturing its lost territory and getting reparations. But that's not possible. Instead, all that happens is that the war grinds on with more and more Ukrainian men being rounded up, forced into the military, and killed for nothing. And the injustice against these men, whose lives are being thrown away for nothing, is far greater than the injustice being done to the nation of Ukraine, a theoretical concept, and not even a particularly great one at that.
In other news, a Labour politician in the UK yesterday suggested conscripting British men to go fight in Ukraine. Maybe warmongers like her should strap on some body armor and go fight instead.
What's the evidence for this?
It is eastern europe. That is evidence enough. Source - eastern european whose country has been busy misappropriating eurofunds for the better part of three decades.
Story of corruption on every level of the war effort - from people bribing their way out of the military service, p out of country, procurement or whatnot are many. The idea that the western aid will be exempt is naïve.
https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/1047201.html
but here is a random link. Ukrainians themselves think that corruption is barely below the ongoing war as a country problem. That says a lot.
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