Oh off you go again wittering on to the void
The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread
I was replying to you not anyone else, basic comprehension, you should try it
personaldesas
Active Member
I think often the framing aroudn this issue misses an important distinction. NATO did not expand by invading countries and forcing them to join. Those countries actively sought membership because of their own security concerns and historical experience.
You can still criticize NATO for accepting them. But then the agency of Poland, the Baltics, Romania, etc. has to be part of the argument too.
Equating voluntary accession to an alliance with Russia imposing its will by force on neighboring countries, as some here do, is just not a strong argument.
You have no clue at all about American politics, do you? Yes, she is propaganda.
God damn. Learn about the world. Get out of your shell.
My country (Indonesia) is supposed to be a friend of yours (Russia) but holy shit either you're dumb or you think we here at defencetalk are dumb.
Nonsense!
An invasion isn't "partial" if it isn't intended to occupy the whole country. Napoleon invaded Russia: he didn't intend to conquer it, just force it to change its policies & alliances. He invaded Austria with no intention of conquering it. Saddam Hussein didn't intend to conquer Iran (he wasn't that stupid). Bismarck neither wished nor tried to conquer France when he invaded in 1870, & he won the victory he wanted . India successfully invaded Pakistan in 1971, achieving all its war aims & a complete victory - & only occupied about 15% of the country (though it had over half of the population). And so on . . . . . None of these is considered to have been a mere partial invasion.
Remember, I'm qualified to teach this language. I'm being very generous here, giving you free lessons.
you was replying to me off the response i gave someone else, basic intelligence, why is it hard for you to understand
Mr clue, well done, i see you. whether it's propaganda or not, it's coming from high ranking US official. you can conclude what you like.
I am not Russian, am British. because of my views you have concluded very quickly that i am Russian. how dumb are you? i am ready to prove my identity any time, just to show you how dumb you are, thinking am Russian
rsemmes
Active Member
Of course not! That's why I used partial and “invasion”. The Sino-Soviet War or border conflict, was a “war”, but not an “invasion” (just troops inside another country without invitation); but it was after 1941.
In Georgia, Russia set the trap but Georgia (choosing what words to use) “started the war”, that does not overrides everything else.
Agents provocateurs? There was nothing going on in Donbas? There was no “conflict” in Crimea? There was no “issue” with the Hungarian minority in Ukraine? What about the Russian minority? (The Catholic minority in NI?).
No, Hungary did not invade Ukraine. (It would have been interesting to see EU/NATO sanctions against Hungary and weapons supplies for Ukraine.) On the other hand, conflicts don't surge by “spontaneous generation”, who fired the first shot does not overrides everything else; it's just politics by other means.
Generous and kindly reminding us about your generosity. And yes, I used "partial" as agent provocateur, I could have used your "overrides" instead. The point was about simplistic storylines.
Actually, I think a majority of Ukrainians do speak Russian.
But many of them speak it as a second language, & of those for who it is their first language, many identify as Ukrainian, not Russian, e.g. Volodymyr Zelensky.
I think a majority speak Ukrainian at home, & a large majority describe it as their mother tongue. Unsurprisingly, the number who habitually use Russian is reported to have dropped after 2014, & dropped a lot more since 2022. Zelensky's reported to speak much better Ukrainian than he used to.
personaldesas
Active Member
Just a tip for the future: in UK English you can’t drop the subject pronoun as freely as in Slavic or other languages. So phrases like “am British” and “thinking am Russian” kind of gives you away.
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your not a serious person at all, you too, want to teach me English, ok. so because of what you highlighted you think am Russian? you didn't see the part where i said, i am ready to prove my identity, No? i will love to prove you totally wrong so i see the next thing you guys come up with, shouldn't be hard to verify, i see some users here are also from the UK.
tip for you in the future: verify before you make silly assumptions. really, it makes you look silly.
personaldesas
Active Member
Non of that is true, I merely said you’re clearly don't write like a native-born Brit. But yeah, I’m awaiting the proof you offered. Please provide that.
If I had to guess I'd say you're a spanish (or romance) speaker.
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You keep on about NATO expansion, However NATO is a volatary organisation that countries make their own decission to join, know one is forced to join and this has been explained to you many times by different posters as has the reality that it is mainly Russian actions that have caused this expanxxion not the invassion of sovereign territory, On the other side of the story russian expansion from past history has been by invassion abd subjicating of the people and you wonder why NATO is expanding. The simple reality is that Russia is an old fassion expansionist empire.
The last time I checked NATO had not taken over the governments of its members, so let us drop the stupped auguement about NATO expassion as it is due mainly to Russian actions and they caused it .
You dodge the main point yet again which in my post it was the children that have been killed,injured or traumitised in both wars so don't talk about hypocrisy until you address the issue of the thousans of Ukrainian children you ignore. The hypocrisy is all yours.
Yes this does happen due to pollitics and a share set of values just like Russia and its frends also vote together nothing new there.
As for frends well that is like your personal friends you still criticise but but it is done privately, just as you would with a perxonal friend.
You are still lumping all The countries of the western culture together which is wrong we are all individual countries with differing points of view and
labeling all of the with the faults of one is like accusing a sister of the crines of her bother. as for morals I was talking about individuals.
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- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #14,677
I think there are two separate but closely related things here. One is the question of whether Russia (i.e. the Russian Federation, not the USSR) caused NATO expansion. The other is the question of Russian concerns over NATO expansion. In my opinion Russia at best had a very limited ability to slow down or prevent NATO expansion. One argument is that Russian behavior contributed to some countries joining NATO. To be clear, the examples of Finland and Sweden are not that significant. You'll note there was no Russian concern about NATO expansion into these countries. Russia likely already saw them as part of the "collective west". Russian reaction is very different when countries like Moldova, Ukraine, or Georgia com up.
I don't know that anyone is equating the two, but if they are, they're of course just dead wrong. They're not the same at all, not even alike. Obviously there's a relationship there, but it's not even a simple cause and effect relationship. Russia and Georgia for example had a good relationship early in the Saakashvili presidency, leading to the re-unification of Georgia with Adzharia. This little piece gets left out of the discussion frequently, because it doesn't fit the "big bad Russia" narrative. It's not until Georgia started leaning westward, that they ran into tensions with Russia. And it didn't help that they went back on promises made during the reunification with Adzharia. So in '06 when they wanted the same thing but with South Ossetia, Russia was dead set against it. Had the Georgian government kept their promises to the Adzhars, they may have been able to get S. Ossetia back peacefully. Abkhazia was probably never going to happen, not without significant bloodshed. So what caused Georgian NATO aspirations? It's probably not one simple thing. NATO membership is perceived in many places as making you part of the collective west, which is a desirable thing in and of itself. NATO also allows you to have collective security, access to technology and resources, and makes it much cheaper/easier to have access to capabilities you would struggle to obtain and maintain otherwise. On the other hand coming closer to NATO almost automatically puts you in tensions with Russia, and if you already have a complicated relationship, then it's likely to only get worse. There's a little bit of the chicken and egg problem. In theory one would argue that any sovereign nation can do whatever it wants and nobody else gets to impose their will on them. But in practice that's not how it's worked over even the post-Cold War era.
I raised the possiblity in regard to a Russian troll due to you basically sticking to the Russian proppergander type of post. however whike your english is good, it is not the english of a native born english speeker. My travel has been resticted to many different countries in South East Asia pluss Australia for the obvious reason that they are a lot closer
As for wing auguements I have yet to see anything you have posted that has not been counterd by some other poster with a more logical imput.