Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[Josh]

And the longer they commit atrocities against civilian populations the more isolated they become.

That's not how wars work. Russia is not finding itself isolated from India or China - indeed, the ties between them are becoming closer. Indian politicians and commentators consistently want to talk about American (or British) atrocities instead of Russian ones.

Their economy is shrinking and will soon be the size of Mexico. On the other hand, Ukraine has no other enemies (unless you possibly count Belarus) and can throw their entire military and economy into this one fight.

Not really. Russia compared to Ukraine is like comparing the U.S. to Mexico. If the U.S. unilaterally invaded Mexico, do you think you can say that the U.S. would lose, even if Mexico threw their entire military and economy into the fight?

My only point is that it is up to Ukraine and Ukrainians to decide for themselves how important their territory, autonomy, and independence is and how much of that they want to exchange for what is likely to be just a temporary cessation in hostilities. It isn't for you or me or anyone else to decide for them.

Actually, the main people who will be deciding that are the E.U. member countries (specifically the strong ones like France and Germany), Russia, and the NATO member countries (specifically America). "The Ukrainians" (whoever those are) will have very little to do with it.

If they wanted to be in charge of their own country, they should have spent the last 8 years developing their economy better instead of being hopelessly corrupt - one of the few Slavic countries with a lower HDI and worse corruption and worse income inequality than Russia. Other countries like the Baltic states, Slovenia, Slovakia, all did this. It is an open question why Ukraine did not. The "Orange Revolution" promised this, but did not deliver. A country with a low state of development is a country that has to learn how to please its neighbours. So far, it is doing nothing but irritating its neighbours in Poland and Hungary with a giant flood of refugees (Hungary has elections soon with a voting public that is not happy with this). Relations with Moldova remain warm, but Moldova is one of the few Warsaw Pact countries with a level of development actually worse than Ukraine.

Of note is that this isn't a condemnation of Ukrainian (or Russian) people - who in my experience are sophisticated, well-developed people. Their respective countries just aren't. The modern republic of Ukraine really is a country that under-performs what its people are obviously capable of. This is the place that used to be the centre of Soviet aerospace, science, technology, R&D, and had massive amounts of capital poured into it in the Soviet era.

[Jazman]

"The Ukrainians" (whoever those are) will have very little to do with it.

Did a or some Ukrainians do something to you at one time in your life, to be so dismissive of them, as a whole group now?
Maybe I'm misreading the tenor of your comments towards Ukrainians in general...in this discussion... but generally they (your comments) seem very hostile towards that particular group of people. I would be asking the same question of someone who was speaking of the Russian people in this way, apart from their leader(s).

[Ken]

If they wanted to be in charge of their own country, they should have spent the last 8 years developing their economy better instead of being hopelessly corrupt - one of the few Slavic countries with a lower HDI and worse corruption and worse income inequality than Russia. Other countries like the Baltic states, Slovenia, Slovakia, all did this. It is an open question why Ukraine did not. The "Orange Revolution" promised this, but did not deliver. A country with a low state of development is a country that has to learn how to please its neighbours. So far, it is doing nothing but irritating its neighbours in Poland and Hungary with a giant flood of refugees (Hungary has elections soon with a voting public that is not happy with this). Relations with Moldova remain warm, but Moldova is one of the few Warsaw Pact countries with a level of development actually worse than Ukraine.

Of note is that this isn't a condemnation of Ukrainian (or Russian) people - who in my experience are sophisticated, well-developed people. Their respective countries just aren't. The modern republic of Ukraine really is a country that under-performs what its people are obviously capable of. This is the place that used to be the centre of Soviet aerospace, science, technology, R&D, and had massive amounts of capital poured into it in the Soviet era.

No, it's not really an open question.

Those former Warsaw Pact and Soviet countries that cast their economic and political futures with the west by joining the EU and/or NATO (The Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, etc.) have all seen tremendous advances in economic and political development over the past two decades.

Those countries who have remained within the Russian sphere of influence or at least outside the EU (Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, etc.) have seen stagnating corrupt economies and in most cases, lack of political freedom.

People are not stupid. They can compare and contrast say Belarus with Poland, two neighboring countries that had similar levels of economic development in 1991 when the USSR collapsed, and look at their diverging trajectories since then.

Every example from Estonia to Kazakhstan points to a single inescapable conclusion. Remaining within the Russian sphere is a recipe for political repression and economic stagnation and corruption. The people of Ukraine are no fools. They would rather follow the path of Poland or Lithuania than Belarus or Moldova. And who can blame them?

[Neto]

I disagree.

Everyone who chooses to obey a tyrant rather than disobey and take the consequences, or flee, has some partial responsibility also.

I strongly agree. I've already mentioned this before, but otherwise you end up where I was before I took a position against Christians in war efforts, the idea that when I act as a subject of the nation where I hold citizenship, I am not acting personally, and do not have any personal responsibility. If this were true, then there would be no reason for anyone to ever reject any type of military involvement, including killing.

I think it's more complicated than that. Individuals can be held accountable for their personal actions (like war crimes) even when they are done in the name or the benefit of their country. The argument "I was following orders" was basically rejected at Nuremberg after WWII.

In the context of the current war, the West is accusing Putin of being a war criminal -- it will probably be difficult under international law to connect the actions of Russia's troops and military leadership with Putin. Soldiers and leaders may be responsible for war crimes they were directly involved in, it will be difficult to connect them directly to Putin.

I was not intending to say anything from any legal standpoint, only from the individual Christian's point of view, in how he or she would or would not feel responsible for the deaths and destruction they personally brought about, through their own participation as a member of a military unit. (I may well have misunderstood the meaning intended by Jim, but this is the context in which I was responding.) That is, legal culpability would be an entirely separate subject.

[Ken]

I strongly agree. I've already mentioned this before, but otherwise you end up where I was before I took a position against Christians in war efforts, the idea that when I act as a subject of the nation where I hold citizenship, I am not acting personally, and do not have any personal responsibility. If this were true, then there would be no reason for anyone to ever reject any type of military involvement, including killing.

I think it's more complicated than that. Individuals can be held accountable for their personal actions (like war crimes) even when they are done in the name or the benefit of their country. The argument "I was following orders" was basically rejected at Nuremberg after WWII.

In the context of the current war, the West is accusing Putin of being a war criminal -- it will probably be difficult under international law to connect the actions of Russia's troops and military leadership with Putin. Soldiers and leaders may be responsible for war crimes they were directly involved in, it will be difficult to connect them directly to Putin.

I was not intending to say anything from any legal standpoint, only from the individual Christian's point of view, in how he or she would or would not feel responsible for the deaths and destruction they personally brought about, through their own participation as a member of a military unit. (I may well have misunderstood the meaning intended by Jim, but this is the context in which I was responding.) That is, legal culpability would be an entirely separate subject.

The War Crimes trials at Nuremburg and of Japanese leaders after WW2 did not find it difficult to tie German and Japanese political leaders to the crimes committed on their behalf or to implement the war aims that they established.

Of course the chance that such a thing will happen after Ukraine is vanishingly small and would essentially require the unconditional surrender of Russia and occupation of Russia by Western forces. That simply isn't ever going to happen.

[Josh]

"The Ukrainians" (whoever those are) will have very little to do with it.

Did a or some Ukrainians do something to you at one time in your life, to be so dismissive of them, as a whole group now?
Maybe I'm misreading the tenor of your comments towards Ukrainians in general...in this discussion... but generally they (your comments) seem very hostile towards that particular group of people. I would be asking the same question of someone who was speaking of the Russian people in this way, apart from their leader(s).

My own personal interactions with people from that region have been quite warm and positive. I don't have anything against specific groups of people.

I do not, however, see a need to stump for whatever the current government of Ukraine wants any more than, say, I feel I should be promoting Armenia (who also is suffering badly in a war they are losing with Azerbaijan).

[Josh]

Those former Warsaw Pact and Soviet countries that cast their economic and political futures with the west by joining the EU and/or NATO (The Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, etc.) have all seen tremendous advances in economic and political development over the past two decades.

Those countries who have remained within the Russian sphere of influence or at least outside the EU (Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, etc.) have seen stagnating corrupt economies and in most cases, lack of political freedom.

Ukraine has been outside the Russian sphere of influence since the Orange Revolution in 2014. And yet since then, they have actually gotten worse on indexes like corruption indexes. Their oligarchs have gotten richer and everyone else got poorer. They basically are a mini-Russia.

Every example from Estonia to Kazakhstan points to a single inescapable conclusion. Remaining within the Russian sphere is a recipe for political repression and economic stagnation and corruption. The people of Ukraine are no fools. They would rather follow the path of Poland or Lithuania than Belarus or Moldova. And who can blame them?

Moldova is not in a Russian sphere of influence and is in intense conflict with Russia, including hosting a frozen conflict zone. Moldova is mostly closely related to Romania in terms of things like language.

Blaming a lack of development on being too Russian seems like an odd thing to do. It is true that aligning one's self with the West such that huge amounts of capital gets pumped in can help in the short term. But that would be like arguing that in the 1960s, Cubans were really happy with being in Russia's sphere of influence because they had a lot of Russian money pumped into them relative to their much poorer neighbours like Haiti.

[Ken]

From what i’ve gathered, since Vietnam, “wars” and “conflicts” are not the same.
From everything i’ve read, outside lib media, Putin has NOT declared war.

The last time the US declared war was in 1941. By this definition, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were not wars but just "conflicts"

In fact, since 1945 I think the only actual officially declared wars anywhere in the world were the Arab-Israeli wars in the 1960s and 1970s (in which Syria, Egypt, etc. declared war on Israel) the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, and some of the wars in Africa involving Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Morocco.

[mike]

So far, it [Ukraine] is doing nothing but irritating its neighbours in Poland and Hungary with a giant flood of refugees (Hungary has elections soon with a voting public that is not happy with this).

Here's the Polish President being all irritated by the Ukrainian refugees

[Ken]

Moldova is not in a Russian sphere of influence and is in intense conflict with Russia, including hosting a frozen conflict zone. Moldova is mostly closely related to Romania in terms of things like language.

There are actual Russian troops occupying the eastern 1/3 of Moldova.

As for Cuba and the western hemisphere? Cuba is a whole topic in itself. The better comparison for Cuba is probably Costa Rica than Haiti. In any event, the three countries in the western hemisphere that are most closely aligned with Russia are Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. I don't think any of them are any great models for either democracy or economic development.