Brasilia, Aug 2 (EFE).- The war in Ukraine proves that the world needs a new system of global governance, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Wednesday. In his first press conference with foreign journalists since he took office on January 1, Lula said the United Nations had failed to assume its “responsibility” because …
Especially given the fact that France tried talking Russia out of invading before the war and they still went ahead with it. So it’s not like the security council sat around and watched it happen.
What does that even mean? What was said during that meeting? What guarantees did France offer Russia?
Why did Russia need guarantees to NOT invade a sovereign nation they had existing “guarantees” to not invade?
Maybe this
Or this
Might be some subjects in which guarantees would’ve averted the SMO.
Source
Citing Putin’s own speech like a valid source is pretty hilarious. Thanks for the giggle.
I mean, it’s the speech in which he lays out to his people why they’re going to war. He’d be hard pressed to justify the SMO to all the soldiers if they didn’t have all those well known grievances, don’t you think?
Edit: wait, aren’t things government officials say not valid sources for what the government thinks or wants now? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this one. Do you know of a valid-er source for what the Russian government and military wanted as guarantees to not have this war?
Well known grievances? I simply cannot agree with you there. Those are points for which we only have the Russian governments word, and dozens of denials from other governments across the globe.
Not to mention, the reasoning for the war has changed dramatically over and over, from “stop the Nazis!” To “oh they were totally going to join NATO and attack us!!!” To “The security of Europe!” And now “they were gonna get nukes!”
Never mind the fact that the Ukraine already gave up their nukes in exchange for Russia’s assurances they wouldn’t do exactly this. Or the fact that NATO obviously doesn’t need the Ukraine as members since Russia can’t even win a land war with a military a fraction of their size right across the border. Or any of the other facts Russia has bald faced lied about repeatedly.
Given the above factors I find it highly unlikely Putin was looking for or interested in any diplomatic out. He was looking for an excuse.
All three are on the speech from the very beginning, no change there. But here’s some English sources in order.
Nazis: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimir-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946
Join NATO: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/why-nato-has-become-flash-point-russia-ukraine
Nukes: https://ria-ru.translate.goog/20220301/ukraina-1775795745.html
You’re free to believe those grievances are not based in reality, but to claim that those grievances were not well known ever since beginning of the war to the Russian public is either dishonest or just lazy.
You people keep saying that, and yet Russia seems to be winning this war for like 16 months now. Ukraine in NATO means nukes within minutes of Moscow and Russia completely surrounded on the western borders except for Belarus, it is definitely something I would want if I were NATO.
An excuse for what, exactly? What, in your perspective, does Russia, both the government and the people, gain from taking part in this war that is so much more important to them that what was officially in the speech declaring the SMO in the first place?
Even if you believe Putin personally hates Ukrainian people or something and would risk his entire government just for that, those grievances are the basis of the rhetoric used for justifying the war internally, and guarantees from NATO about those (remember why we started this discussion?) would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of any war effort. War is just the extension of politics.
Dude, your Nazi reference article title literally says “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t”. For starters he is very vague about the nazism part. You can find Nazis in any part of the world and while that is unfortunate that is not justification for one country to invade another. Now maybe if there were Nazis in the governing apparatus, then maybe. And I can see someone saying “well, that’s Azov brigade. so Putin was right”. Except that’s not entirely true. While the original founder of the volunteer battalion was a known to have ties to nazis in both Russia an Europe he was removed from command before the battalion was formally incorporated into the national guard. But then you could follow up that while the leader was removed the members of Azov are still nazis. "Paradoxically—at least for purveyors of Kremlin propaganda, which holds that Ukrainians have been oppressing ethnic Russians—most Azov members are in fact Russian speakers and disproportionally hail from the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.. Why would Ukrainian “nazis” be Russian speakes, especially if they’re supposedly oppressing Russians? Doesn’t really make sense. So the entire premise of going to denazify Ukraine is false.
As for joining NATO. Do you know who is the biggest motivator for countries joining NATO? Russia. Poland and the Baltics joined because of the historical precedent Russia has set. Poland famously was ripped apart by the secret MRP pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR. And the Baltic states publicly stated they want neutrality, which just lead to the USSR giving them an ultimatum: join voluntarily or we will invade. There’s a reason baltic states consider their time in the USSR as a time when the country was occupied by foreign forces. Since the collapse of the USSR, despite what Putin says, Russia has chosen to not have good ties with it’s neighbors. Literally the reason Finland joined NATO and Sweden is in the process of joining is because out of nowhere Russia decided to threaten those two countries (who so far have had no intention of joining NATO). And of course Ukraine. I can’t find it right now, because it’s a very specific thing to search for, but there are polls done in Ukraine about joining NATO and around 2014 those polls went pretty quickly from not wanting to join NATO to wanting to join NATO. What happened between not wanting to join NATO and wanting to join NATO? Just the annexation of Crimea and the Russian backed war in Donbas. The one country keeping NATO relevant is Russia themselves. Prior to the war in Ukraine there was a growing sentiment if NATO is even necessary anymore, but the war in Ukraine justified the existence of NATO to many of its members.
And your nuke reference doesn’t work so I can’t really comment about it. If it’s about the statements from the Ukrainian ambassador and Zeleneskii about maybe reconsidering the budapest memorandum in regard of giving up nuclear power if security guarantees are not met. That was a maybe and if Russia was actually worried about that, then perhaps they should’ve acted in accordance to the Budapest memorandum and not annex Crimea? Once again we get back to Russia creating this situation in the place.
Those grievances are either false or indirectly created by the Russian interference. I don’t see how anyone could take those grievances seriously.
Except that’s not entirely up to NATO is it. Every single neighbor of Russia could choose not to join NATO. Ukraine didn’t want to join until Russia annex Crimea, Finland and Sweden didn’t want to join until Russia threatened them. This “net” around Russia is because of Russia and not because NATO wants this. If we talk about NATO as an extension of American imperialism then American has bigger problems than Russia, primarily China. If there’s any part where the US would want to increase its military presence it would be on the eastern coast of Asia, not eastern Europe.
To regain part of their imperial hegemony that they lost to the EU during euromaidan? Ukraine was in the backpocket of Russia until the maidan revolution, do you really think Russia wouldn’t want that power back? This was their shot before Ukraine joins NATO, because Russia can’t touch them once they’re in NATO (which is why they haven’t tried to take the Baltics back, as it’s another region I’m sure they’d want back). I think it’s obvious they’d do that, because they did go into Belarus (and I think also into Afghanistan) to quell the upcoming revolution there. Russia is the living example of “War is just the extension of politics”.