i reckon my reply was harsh. apologies. but it's not the first time discussing this topic and it's really tiresome to argue in circles with people who systematically ignore the most evident realities.

even if at the border, the baltic states just aren't remotely comparable to ukraine in geostrategic terms, and russia was then in a much weaker position back then. howver russia did protest the baltic states inclusion, just like they did protest every single eastward expansion. they have been repeatedly and consistently raising this issue at almost every occasion for over 20 years, warning about the security implications and made numerous proposals atempting to work out a sensible agreement. ukraine was the last straw in that string of actions, and for its strategic and political importance (nearly half of its population is russian origin) was simply a no-go. they warned about this too, ad nauseam.

you may think that nato wasn't a concern, that's fine, but what matters here is what they think and if they explicitly tell you and the international community once and again, you better listen. i'm used to folks here flat out denying this reality, or making moral cases that are oblivious of it, but you now saying that the issue with nato was a smokescreen is, with all due respect, either ignorant or disingenuous.

imo if there is any idiocy in this it's the finnish decision. albeit their troubled past with russia finland had been neutral and on good terms with russia for many years since the collapse of the ussr. some isolated minor friction but nothing serious. even when they started flirting with nato activities russia said nothing at first, then they progressively got more involved and the relation soured, and at some point russia warned that nato was a red line, and finland, very rationally, backed off. now they finally crossed that line. i don't really see how that benefited the finnish. it's pretty evident that nato is not in a position to defend such a country from russia if push comes to shove, since an article 5 grarantee doesn't really have magic powers, and it better be worth because now they have russia amassing troops and building bases right next to their border. just in case, i guess. it is after all the logical thing to do when your neighbor joins a military alliance that has been slowly encircling you for decades and doesn't let you in, albeit describing itself as super friendly.

this is not true, ukraine has always been a strategic region for russia, with deep sociopolitical links, that's just how it is. however russia had no problem with ukrainian independence whatsover, they happily let them run their corruption kingdom, enjoy gas at bargain prices and join the eu (it was actually the eu that had a problem with that because, you know, rampant corruption).

if that involves joining nato, and further toppling the government they had strategic deals with, with aid precisely from the nato orbit (you know, that military alliance that has been slowly encircling you for decades and doesn't let you in, while describing itself as super friendly), and start discriminating and even killing the russian population in ukraine? you bet. it took them long enough.

indeed, and that's what he (mearsheimer) thought. my take is that matters got much worse. tbh i followed the news daily in those days about it and the lobbying activity went on extreme overdrive. biden had just been elected, he was still able to speak, and he talked about ukraine and nato almost every day. europe was a fearmongering media fest, and boris johnson was in ukraine almost weekly, talking into zelensky's ear. they turned zelensky who went uppity with the anti russia rhetoric and policy too (remember, he was elected on a landslide championing a peace platform and reaprochement with russia, to end the civil war, and before biden he still was negotiating with russia). i don't know exactly what finally triggered russia's move. as you said, it seemed badly planned, they totally miscalculated ukrainian strength. my guess is that for biden's gang, finally free of trump, it was now or never, they pushed too hard and putin thought he had to act before it was too late. he had a lot of internal pressure too.

correct.

well, i would say that the way it ends would determine consequences. if it ends anytime soon, that is. i expect an ukranian military collapse any day now, but that still doesn't settle the hostility with/from the west. ukraine is done in any case, and what's left of it will not join nato in any case, because nato will not want to, unless they wanted to really start a global war. in ukraine i expect russia will advance what they consider enough (the dnieper, maybe odessa) and then the conflict will just freeze and ukraine will be in very, very bad shape. possibly capitulate if the regime changes. there's some commentary that ukraine could even loose a portion in the northwest to poland, a portion to the southwest to romania and another to hungary, which these countries have old claims over. does not seem likely but neither impossible. ukraine would be a rump state in the middle, used and forgotten.

about nato ... well nato is going to lose this war and this will be a huge blow. i don't think this can be avoided, imo they know it and that's the reason for all the late hysteria, specially in europe. i'm very curious about how they will spin that when it happens, or if they will just vanish. france, germany and the uk have huge economic problems, their government's popular support is at all time low, yet they're still are promising absurd amounts of money they don't have to build an impossible formidable army with an infrastructure they don't have either, to fight an imaginary enemy that doesn't want shit with them. maybe they ditch all the welfare into buying expensive stuff from the us that has shown to not be very useful and reliable in modern wars. how all that will play out i have no idea, but it doesn't look bright. nato might just dissolve, or go on a rampage, i don't even dismiss the possibility that they end up in war with each other!

i understand that concern even if you are making a caricature out of it, because there was obvious provocation, but that's just how power politics works even in the 21st century. if we wish global institutions and international law to be able to guarantee peace, cooperation and development then they have to be truly fair, neutral, credible and have actual agency, and not be political tools or screens for a few.

non sequitur much? american hegemony is a fact, a situation that is fading but still lingering, and to various degrees across the world. europe is still strongly under that influence. remember, mr vance called us "vassals", not without reason. actually european leaders are still recovering from the shock that this vassaillage might come to a premature end. rutte referring to trump as "daddy" is another comical note on that.

i don't think (nor did i say) that everything bad is america nor that everything america is bad. america has done some terriffic and some terrible things. it just happens that here we are talking about some of the terrible stuff. american "people" don't decide much at all, and the us has some outright criminal elite that is really nasty and has huge influence. just like russia, btw. the difference is that the us' happens to be way more powerful, but the balance is slowly tipping. i'm not critizising us foreign policy (eg, nato push, israel, iran, taiwan, global economic bullying, etc) because it's american, but because it is reckless and dangerous to the world (and btw, bad for most americans).

i don't see any evidence even pointing a that as a probable event.

georgia was the direct consequence of nato push and us meddling, remember the bucarest summit in 2008. you'd think it would have been a warning call re ukraine.

what about moldavia? moldavia is neutral, they do have tensions with russia due to transnitria, which wants independence. of course the situation in ukraine has raised concerns, and of course the west (europe in this case) is busy raising them even further ...

about these countries "wanting to join nato" ... it's often the case of being groomed or talked into it. e.g. in spain the population was very strongly opposed to it but it got in anyway, with a "conservative" party in power regardless of polls and considerable protests ("otan no, bases fuera!" was the slogan - no to nato, bases gtfo). the "progressive" party then heavily campaigned for a referendum or pulling out (the slogan changed to "otan, de entrada, no" which is subtle and hard to translate, but sort of gives away what was about to happen). they won the general election in a landslide with that in their program, then immediately had a change of heart after talking to the suits in eu/us. finally conceding to a referendum they campaigned furiously for staying. then what would have been a very simple and straightforward question morphed into carefully crafted long and convoluted prose that didn't even mention nato once (it referred to it as "the atlantic alliance", a term rarely used) and proposed to stay with 3 conditionals: 1. no nukes allowed on spanish soil, 2. no direct integration in the military structure, 3. no more bases and gradual dismantling of those already present. of course 2 and 3 were hard if not impossible to honor, and of course never were. for some reason, even after this 180 degree turn in a matter of weeks, the progressive party had still good support basically because it had just replaced the nefarious "conservative" government. of course, in time they turned out to be the same if not worse. anyway, "yes" won by a tiny margin. games politicians play.

the point is that if democracy has to have any meaning here, you should look at opinion polls of nato membership in all those countries before 2022. particularly in ukraine, there was a strong division (perdictably with a clear territorial divide). it's surely possible opinions in ukraine and those countries will have shifted after 2022, because of the ukraine invasion and the relentless propaganda by the west. but they could have also shifted the other way, if people realize that joining nato is just an invitation for a war.

yes, i agree completely. which also means it wasn't a "full scale invasion", and "special military operation" is actually a more accurate definition.

non sequitur again or wrong quote? was there any concern before 2022 that russia had imperial ambitions?

further, in 2025, by what definition is the current conflict in ukraine "imperial expansion"? you yourself just said they wanted a regime change. you may disagree with the reasons for that, but that's still not imperial expansion. if its ... well, not to hurt your feelings but the us has been doing this several times a year for ... decades now.

to clarify: the "lost imperial glory" and "conquest" thing is just a narrative invented by the western elites and nato after 2022, and parroted in the media nonstop, to frame the conflict in a way that shifts their part of the blame away and onto russia. because, of course, it was u-n-p-r-o-v-o-k-e-d! :o)

he doesn't say that. not at all. if that man isn't a patriot he's asuperb liar. his main gripe with american foreign policy is that it hurts america. he is so pro american that he thinks america should focus laser-like (on his own words) on containing china, which is a peer competitor, a strategic interest, instead of messing around with europe and the middle east and forever wars, which are not strategic interests at all. regarding the israel lobby and the genocide he is just revolted and disgusted about it; that's not america hate, that's just being a sensible human being, but furthemore it is something which also goes against american interests in significant ways. re russia, he facepalms at the fact that this mess with nato and ukraine has pushed russia much closer to china, which is a stupid thing to do while russian cooperation would have been vital for containing china.

ftr, i don't agree with that part. i don't really think china needs to be contained, nor that it can be at this point.

a multi polar europe doesn't even exist, europe is still under american hegemony, we don't know for how long. you are way too early to check that one as wrong. besides, mearsheimer himself says that his success rate is about 75%, he's not an oracle. he failed to predict that russia would invade ukraine, he actually said putin was way too smart for that. but he was right in predicting that the nato push would cause no end of trouble, he couldn't know how it would manifest itself. he predicted that american foreign policy would not back off, and that's right on the mark up to this day.

that's not good enough. let's see ...

... please elaborate on that. what do you think was russia's plan and how would a ground invasion of ukraine rescue its flailing economy, why do you think it was flailing in the first place, why would compromising (and severing) their main stream of income from gas trade help, why would they have waited for one full decade knowing that west ukraine was arming up with the help of nato?

if the intention was conquest, how was russia supposed to conquer and control a country of a little under 40 million people (excluding crimea and donbas) with less than 200k troops? western media always refers to what russia calls "special military operation" as a "full scale invasion" (they also need to stress it was "unprovoked" at nearly every occasion for some reason, lest people forget). how is that even possible?

fun fact, mearsheimer makes a witty argument in this case: he says there is no evidence, neither in media nor in academia nor in international institutions nor in intelligence reports, prior to 2022, that shows there was any concern in the west that russia had expansionist or imperialist ambitions. the literature is full of it from there on. how can you prepare to conquer a chunk of europe without anybody noticing? was everybody really so oblivious? can you prove him wrong?

elaborate? there is quite a lot of evidence of the contrary. putin offered on 2 occasions to join nato. russia had been a key participant in the osce (until 2014, for obvious reasons). russia has actually tried hard to accomodate the west, but obviously not to simply accept hegemony and there were clear red lines. what putin's actions do you consider harmed russian integration with europe and the west more broadly?

well, israel and the us just launched a massive surprise attack on iran for much less than that, actually all the while faking negotiations where they demanded extremely harsh concessions from iran that no other country has been subject to in the area. so there's that. seems like the most peaceful period in recent history is showing some cracks.

yes, establishing a hostile or at least unfriendly alliance on your border is a provocation that doesn't justify but may very well explain military action given the context. specially if it includes toppling a regime, installing a puppet government, persecuting citizens on ground of their cultural heritage and igniting a civil war. you might disagree of course.

i fully agree that international institutions, trade, diplomacy and the rule of law are the best way forward. what i disagree with is that its current iteration is working as intended. btw, the pax romana was much longer than the pax americana, but didn't last forever either.

no, that's a given. what i say is that they were provoked, and someone provoked them for a reason an because they could. that's reality.

you refute that any provocation exists, but can't give an alternative explanation. you appeal to "freedom of choice" and "sovereignty", that's your moral worldview which i would respect, but we happen to live in a world where these are very relative concepts. in fact, power rules ...

... and the "rules based order" isn't really such, it's a western construct that the west uses to exert dominion, it has been eroded for quite some time by their own contradictions and lies, and it's crumbling rapidly: vietnam. burkina faso. yugoslavia. afghanistan. irak. syria. lebanon. palestine. iran. recently trump even tweeted the mass murdering of a peaceful tribal assembly of yemeni civilians, hundreds of innocent people with one bomb, proudly displaying a blatant war crime on camera. many people revolted in disgust, but no single public figure in the west and no international institution even batted an eye. not to mention the ongoing genocide in gaza and the west bank. what rules based order? it is caveman shit, has been for a while. what and where are these 21st century mentality and values you speak of?

but what is your real objective explanation about this chain of events then? just ... putin is a villain? wants to recreate the russian empire or the soviet union? russians are mad? that would be a very "19th century" midnset aswell. why would russia even want that? what eveidence is there for any planning of that? your explanation is "they" are just evil. and what do you do with evil? you fight it! because you're good! that's brainwashing for you. well, the frontline is that way, if you want to contribute.

it's just a bit creepy, social media posting is public record, that's exactly why people post in the first place, to be seen. i'm free to build a profile about anyone's public activity for my personal use if i so wish. there might be some concern about the specific use of that information or the exposure of those profiles, but i'm doing nothing wrong collecting that public information. this restaurant processing it in this way is just an optimization of their service. i'd figure that these customers even like that, this is just your cocktail man knowing your tastes to better treat you. the creepy part is paying $500 for a dinner.

accessing private account data or activity would be an entirely different matter, but i doesn't seem that that's what they're doing. now, about the webcam in the refreshment room ...

my points are made and i'm confident they'll pass the test of time, unlike yours. feel free to disagree, i don't need to convince you or anyone else of anything, and as the saying goes: "never wrestle with a pig, you'll get both dirty and they enjoy it".

no, it doesn't. godot is self contained, it only requires hardware vulcan and opengl support.

maybe you are referring to the game link in tfa, which is a link to the steam version. the game is also available independently as a standalone executable for linux, windows and macos.

perhaps what it proves is that these popularity rankings are pretty meaningless:

you might want to discuss or parrot this nonsense along with the other cheerleaders in the thread/forum, they are legion and will be delighted. and since this was always about putin being an imperialist and russia being broke, losing half of its population and whatnot and on the brink of collapse, and about nato triumphantly upholding sovereignty, liberty and democracy, you'll even have something to celebrate besides regurgitating stupid expletives. soon. any time now.

now excuse me, i've wasted way too much time here trying to reason with bricks. have fun.

yet still here we are. how else would you explain the current situation? wait ... that was a rhetorical question.

btw mearsheimer was one of the first public figures to spell this all out in a comprehensive way. that lecture is 10 years old and eloquently lays out the provocation, which is exactly what you asked for. that and speaking out about the israeli lobby cost him being shot down and ostracised in the west, but he is certainly not the only one and the world is a much bigger place than you seem to imagine. and it's getting bigger. but i don't think you really wanted to know, nor to step out from your bubble. mkay, good luck with that.

it means:

- expanding nato eastward against promises and common sense
- proclaiming that georgia and ukraine would be part of nato (bucharest 2008)
- funding ngo and media to sow dissent (usaid and ned)
- funding and arming extremist groups (azov et al)
- instrumentalizing protests to topple a legitimate government
- installing a puppet government that goes on a nationalist spree and discrimination of culturally russian citizens
- arming and training the afu and extremists in the ensuing civil war
- supplying missiles to mass target civilians in the donbas in said civil war (nobel price candidate trump's famous javelins)
- amassing troops on the border
- projecting an aegis missile base on the border in range of moscow
- negotiating in blatant bad faith (minsk)

this is all just before russia's invasion. point 1 was already a red line bright enough, nato didn't even have a reason to be after the cold war, the expansion was a decades long project to contain russia. unprovoked my ass.

for some context, you can start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

they could have worked, the very same lies have worked in the past and elsewhere. however, they didn't succeed in isolating/toppling/fragmenting the country, and the war of attrition looks indeed dire for nato, and what's actually happening is that the west is isolating itself.

they know that very well but they have to go on with the lies to keep the grift going and the dumpster fire burning, and denying failure and responsibility, but the narrative is just shizophrenic at this point: one day russia is supposed to have had over a million dead for a few crumbs of territory, the next day europe needs to rearm or else russians will be shortly at the gates of paris or berlin. one day russia will get crushed under sanctions, the next day more sanctions are needed because it thrives. you simply can't make this crap up. well, they can. ukraine's own numbers for russian casualties, russian conscription rate and current reserve forces simply do not add up unless russia had unreal conscription rate, which is record high but not nearly that high. meanwhile ukraine drags men off the streets to send them to the frontlines, and hunts draft dodgers in the forest, while europe keeps crying wolf and ukraine does the dying.

russian's goal is not to conquer all of ukraine, just the "russian" part and a buffer zone, but most importantly to grind down ukraine's manpower with minimal losses, and force them to come to terms. time is on their side, they aren't in a hurry, and seeing recent developments in europe they will need a strong army going forward. "what they want" they have been stating with absolute clarity for years: they want nato and the west to stop fucking around. but no one listens and failing diplomacy (which they still to this day are open to) they will keep applying brute force until ukraine goes tits up. time will tell but i see no other way this part of the conflict could end.

but then it's still not over. that won't get the west to stop lying and meddling, though. now it's azerbaijan, tomorrow it will be pakistan, the baltic sea or whatever. this is going to be a very long run, and will possibly be the west's own demise. or the world's.

oh, so just like any other fiat currency?

yes, it's time to sell any dollars you have. the tricky question is in exchange of what ... i'm not really sure bitcoin is the best bet, but it is as bad as anything that comes to mind. some say gold and silver ... not sure of that either. diversifying would be the logical move, or maybe investing in start prepping. our overlords are about to fuck over the part of our world that has run its course, which is mainly the whole world for most slashdotters.