Without going into the merits of this war, NATO - which was supposedly a defensive alliance - did indeed attack Kosovo in an offensive.
So NATO has demonstrated they can be whatever they want when the right time comes. NATO intervention in Kosovo to “liberate it” is also being used to morally justify Russian’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, since from a Russian standpoint it’s exactly the same scenario and they are “liberating” the Russian population in those Ukrainian territories.
That’s apparently where 200,000-250,000 Serbian refugees were expected to go after the war.
But my point is that NATO is a military alliance, to call it “defensive” is just propaganda as it has shown it can be offensive too. And there is nothing wrong with simply calling it for what it is, I believe countries should be able to form military alliances, but let’s not gaslight ourselves.
This is a very naive take, I think. When you are responsible for the security of a nation, you can't just remain passive to the potential threats that shows up on your doorstep. I mean, it would be irresponsible his people if Putin did that and trusted NATO/US blindly to not cross the line, one way or another. (I mean, US could always make up some cooked up justification for the attack, like it has done so many times in the past), So if US is putting missiles near Russian border, even if that is on behalf of NATO, I think Putin is bound to do something about it..
I don't understand what part of that is "Russian propoganda"..
The Russian propaganda part is that you act as if Russia is defending, while actually they are invading.
Do the neighbors of France need an alliance against a French invasion? Do the neighbors of Germany need an alliance against a German invasion? Why not?
Publicly available, historic facts do not support the argument that russia's invasion was legally justified under any reasonable interpretation of a "threat". Claiming that they do is the propaganda mentioned above. russia is, in fact, the invader, and Ukraine did not invade russia first.
Also, you should respond to the second part of their post, as it contains a viewpoint that you might find interesting, and a question asked of your own viewpoint. Understanding others' viewpoints is a good foundation for coming to agreement.
> This should be very easy to answer, but no one ever does.
I don't think this is very easy to answer. The fact that people think it should be very easy to answer this, shows how naive they are, because the reason why country x think country y is a threat could include a lot of information and context that is not available to an external observer.
All of that is russian propaganda. Falling for obvious propagnada about NATO danger to Russia is an incredibly naive take
Russia did not invade a NATO country, they invaded Ukraine when it wasn't seeking to join NATO (in 2014 before the invasion, after the invasion they wanted to join NATO but there were too many objecting countries in NATO and it was obvious to everyone that Ukraine wasn't getting in anytime soon and this was just as true in early 2022).
> US could always make up some cooked up justification for the attack, like it has done so many times in the past
Russia has a history with making up justifications to invade and they did in this case.
> So if US is putting missiles near Russian border, even if that is on behalf of NATO, I think Putin is bound to do something about it..
They were not putting missles in the border. In fact until recently nato had minimal forces and no bases next to Russia to try to mollify them. Especially not in Ukraine which again was not in NATO and was not getting any closer to NATO. Russia was not bound to invade Ukraine and it was in fact a pretty dumb move which had obvius consequences of making Russias security much worse and even many Putin's advisors had a hard time believing he would do it.
The second video repeats the same argument: the "NATO's eastward march". Putin says Russia had to start the war in Ukraine to stop NATO from expanding too close (he failed as two more countries joined NATO). But when you dig one "why?" deeper you can understand that NATO is not a self-aware entity that expands and threats, it's an alliance of countries that realize that if Russia attacks them and they are alone, they are in the same situation as Ukraine: alone and doomed to begging for help. Whereas if they stand together, Russia will think twice before attacking them. That's why Putin hates NATO so much: he can't freely conquer the Baltics - he'd have done it already in 2008 or so. So he uses anti-NATO rhetoric that people in Russia buy. Maybe they are really afraid Estonia or Bulgaria attacks Russia? Who knows what's in their heads.
So here Putin says he had no choice but to attack Ukraine because NATO (a defensive treaty) was "expanding" into Ukraine. This is false. Ukraine wanted to be in NATO, but its membership request was rejected. And from the start of the war in 2014, it was never on the table - how would a country in a state of war could even dream of joining NATO (which at the time seemed a stable alliance)?
I know some Russians believe in this explanation, it seems very simple: Russia is not setting up nukes in Cuba so from the same PoV Ukraine should not host missiles hostile to Russia. Seems valid, right? The problem here is that Putin, as he admitted in his retracted victory piece[0], wanted to "solve the Ukrainian problem for the future generations" and basically make Ukraine part of his empire just as he did with Belarus. Ukrainians don't want to be his slaves so they chose to fight.
This is russian propaganda and it is important to know what it says, to be able to recognize it when you see it elsewhere, from the mouth of an influencer, a politician, a comment on the Web etc.
These bankrupt theories have been debunked long ago. The other comments in reply to yours did that well. The first video is literally Putin speaking, the second one is a list of Kremlin talking points, just with an Indian voice.
The term “NATO expansion” for example, is propaganda. Countries that had suffered under the Russian/Soviet oppression looked for protection when the USSR collapsed and requested to join the alliance.
>Not for Crimea. Not for the Donbas. Nothing like that. This idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian empire, this is childish propaganda. Excuse me.
>If anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff. Childish stuff seems to work better than adult stuff. So no designs at all. The United States decided this man must be overthrown. It’s called a regime change operation.
Sachs is lying about Maidan. Absolute majority of Ukrainians in Western and Central Ukraine supported it, like 80-90%. Millions participated, hundreds of thousands took active part, trying to be at the protests almost every day.the protests lasted for four months, from November to February, which is fairly cold in Ukraine. I was there at the time, yet Sachs just casually drops “I’ve been told they are all paid”, without any evidence.
Surely he didn't mean all the people present there are paid. As far as I understand, when you want some initiate a political change, you pay influencers, and they actually go an convince/gaslight the masses about the need for change.
So all the people who were present there might not be paid, but a lot of prime movers and the require infrastructure might be paid by the interested party.
And the masses are so stupid to do just as they told.
I don’t know what he “meant”, that’s what he said. There was a very clear external event that triggered Maidan, there was another event that made it massive.
The payment of influencers is just as a massive contribution into protests is just a speculation
Russia/USSR been pretty hostile to nations who don't want to join their peaceful and strong brotherhood. Hey they even invaded other communist nations just cause they decide to keep some independence.
If those "unfaithful" countries join NATO this creates problems for Russia to force them to give up their freedom.
And USSR/Russia started a fuss that NATO is a threat for them.
All you’re doing is taking facts and logic that hurts your side and trying to dismiss it with the shallow label of “Russian propaganda”. It’s not actually a response to GP, and it’s not a response to the arguments within his comment and the sources either.
Somewhat surprisingly they are OK with Ukraine joining the EU [1].
> Ukraine has a sovereign right to join the European Union, but this “sovereignty” does not apply to military alliances, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
1. Kremlin says a lot of things so probably they also said Ukraine could join EU. The night before the full scale invasion they claimed they had no intention of attacking Ukraine.
2. Ukraine has the right to join whatever alliance it wants regardless of what russia means.
They very much are not. See the invasion in 2014 when Ukraine was not seeking to join NATO Ukraine tried to join NATO after the Russian invasion in 2014 but was not seeking to join it beforehand. Pro Russian propaganda frequently pretends the timeline was different then they actually was so they can flip cause and effect.
>Somewhat surprisingly they are OK with Ukraine joining the EU [1].
So this makes sense to me. Basically I think it is US that Russia sees as a threat (because may be US seen Russia as a major threat and wants to break it up).
If NATO is threatening Russia, why didn't Russia invade a NATO country? Russia is a classic bully that chooses to attack the weak, this is the only explanation.
