this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2022
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No.
Ok there baby Goebbels.
Okay?
Literally yes.
Factually no.
Somebody needs to learn what the word factually means.
Are you speaking of yourself?
Nah, I understand how cause and effect work.
Okay. Let's test that. Who started the war?
Russia started a war in Ukraine. The west started the economic war with Russia in response to that. Then Russia retaliated against the west. Russia was perfectly fine trading with the west while fighting a war in Ukraine. What part of this are you struggling with specifically?
Great. Finally a sane, almost friendly answer of yours. Very rare occasion.
Yes of course, why wouldn't Russia be fine? But you also have to acknowledge that Russia prepared for that economic war well before the current conflict. And even though EU might have started the economic war, Russia started the decrease of delivery of gas to pressure the EU.
But of course it is mostly the EUs fault to so heavily rely on Russia gas in the first place. In hindsight the signals of the geopolitical shift Russia took where clear even before 2014 but the EU ignored them.
The original point was that EU started the economic war which is now destroying EU. This was not the fault of Russia. Glad you've finally managed to acknowledge that.
But this is where we disagree. The EU sanctioned Russia which did exclude things like gas.
It is very much Russias fault that those prices are going up now as it stopped the delivery of gas.
But that is not to say that the EU could've known better.
It doesn't matter what EU chose to sanction. EU started an economic war with Russia, and Russia responded. If you punch me in the face and I proceed to kick you in the balls, that's not me starting the fight.
Oh it does. And also it does matter because Russia started the war. The sanctions where the response.
So Russia was the face puncher while Europe the ball kicker to stay in your analogy.
Sanctions were a poorly thought out response. Russia started a conflict in Ukraine, and Europe chose to participate in that conflict by sanctioning Russia. Once Europe became a party to the conflict, Europe can no longer complain that Russia is retaliating against Europe economically. This is a fight Europe chose and these are the consequences.
But it can, the same as Russia can complain that NATO members are supporting Ukraine.
True. But this fight was chosen in response to Russias agression. Diplomatic solutions before the war failed because of Russias maximalist claims.
It can complain all it likes, but the fact is that Europe chose to start an economic war with Russia and it is losing this war. Meanwhile, Russia is systematically destroying the Ukrainian army and NATO weaponry in Ukraine instead of complaining.
If I punch your friend in the face and you choose to stab yourself in the gut that's a response. It's just not a smart response. Meanwhile, Russia asked for very reasonable things such as Ukraine being neutral and implementing Minsk agreements which both Ukraine and NATO agreed to. If you think that's Russia being maximalist then you have no clue.
Europe responded with sanctions because of Russias war. Economic wise both sides are losing. The intertwined economy between Russia and the EU is breaking up hard.
The EU did not stab itself. You fail to see that the current economic difficulties in the EU do come from the fact that they try to be dependent of Russia energy deliveries (besides the fact that the delivery stopped mostly). Geopolitically if the EU is smart in future investments it will be more resilient and self-sufficient regarding energy resources. But this is not solved by buying gas from the US and Saudi Arabia.
The reason the economy is suffering so hard is the pace of the break-up. Generally the direction of being less reliant on gas is a good decision.
We all know why Europe responded. This isn't what we're debating. My original points were that Europe made a choice to respond, and that this choice was poorly thought out.
Russia has been building up its domestic economy since 2014, and made sure it wasn't reliant on the west for anything essential. The narrative that both sides are losing is false. Russian economy has largely stabalized at this point with inflation being down in the past couple of months and prices on essentials being stable:
Meanwhile, inflation in Europe continues to spiral out of control with essentials like food and energy becoming scarce and it's not even winter yet. The difference is that Europe was reliant on Russia for bare essentials such as fertilizer and fuel. Europe is not able to replace these things after six months of trying.
On the other hand, Russia was getting nice to have things from the west that people can live without. It's also worth noting that western companies losing business in Russia are symmetrically hurt by the loss of business while they create niches for domestic companies to fill stimulating Russian economy.
What's actually happening to EU is that it's headed for an economic collapse because it's not able to replace around 60% of the energy it was getting from Russia. This is causing European industry to shut down and input costs for everything to surge. I highly recommend watching this interview with Garland Nixon to see where things are headed this spring.
Sure, this is my whole point. Europe made a stupid decision that's destroying European economy. A smart thing to do would've been to start building out alternative infrastructure using the energy Europe was getting from Russia and then decouple in a planned way. Incidentally, this is precisely what Russia did. They continued selling gas to Europe while they established new deals with other countries like China and India, then started slowly cutting gas off ensuring that their economy wasn't negatively impacted. That's how you do a trade war in a way that benefits you.
Wouldn't that be rather continuation of the war in Donbass? Russia did invaded Ukraine and joined it, but the war was already ongoing for 8 years.
I've kind of given up on having any sort of nuance here. Most people in the west think that Russia just randomly invaded Ukraine because they're evil orcs and there's nothing you can say to change that. It's easier to point out that their strategy is ultimately self destructive and hurts them more than it does Russia.
Maybe. It's not even an nuance at this point. I just get downvoted for stating the dryest, most easily checkable fact, while in the other threads we see things like complete reality denial get pushed.
I do think that it's pretty important fact though. That the war was started by the maidan coup regime murdering people in Donbas who didn't even wanted to join Russia or be independent at first, they just wanted to not be shock therapied, treated as the second class citizens or murdered like the people in Odessa.
Oh yeah I completely agree, I made a lengthy post that provides some context a little while back. I'm just kind of tired of having to repeat that over and over when people clearly have no interest to engage with reality.
But what should this context tell us? At the very least this is in no way any justification for russia starting a war against the whole Ukraine.
At the very least it's clear that there were plenty of off ramps that could have avoided the war. Russia tried to find diplomatic solutions for eight years while both the west and their puppet regime in Ukraine refused.
Furthermore, the war is directly modelled on what NATO did in Yugoslavia where NATO recognized the independence of breakaway regions, then had them invite NATO for support on the pretext of genocide, and ran referendums for the regions to separate. Russia is just following the precedent established by the west here.
Not only Russia tried that. The USA, France Germany and most importantly Ukraine tried it as well. No one wanted that war to start (well Russia apparently eventually chose to do so anyway)
"directly? I'm pretty sure that this is not true even though those things do look familiar on the surface. This is definitely an argument Russia is using why they started the war. But one wrong doing of NATO does not in any way justify a wrongdoing of Russia.
That is a lie. The west actively encouraged Ukraine to be belligerent. Ukraine failed to implement Minsk protocols for 8 years.
Yes, directly. I'm going to guess that you have no clue regarding how NATO invaded Yugoslavia if you think these things are only similar on the surface. And this isn't just one wrong. It's been the continued policy of NATO to invade countries and encircle Russia. That's the threat that Russia responded to. NATO expansion was the root cause of this war.