from Hacker News

Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“

by jrcplus on 2/20/22, 6:14 PM with 54 comments

• by martythemaniak on 2/20/22, 8:35 PM

  "I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia."

  Indeed. Under Russia's warm brotherly embrace, Ukraine will have full sovereignty, as long as Russia approves. And seeing the marvel of human civilization that Russia is today, who would say no to such a deal? High incomes, long peaceful happy lives, a representative government... The list goes on. Clearly all anti-Russia sentiment is a product of western deviousness.

• by scyzoryk_xyz on 2/21/22, 2:21 AM

  I love how it’s basically 99% history lecture. Very little concern for what actual Ukrainians think or feel. Which makes sense, since this guy thinks that what everyone else thinks is a result of plans within plans of other countries and states and their devious anti-Russia schemes.

• by layer8 on 2/20/22, 9:03 PM

  > And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide.

  Given the current situation, that sounds like a threat.

• by huqedato on 2/21/22, 1:06 PM

  V.V. Putin: "Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole". Great, so lets kill some Ukrainians and sack their land. It makes sense, does it? Just typical Russian brotherhood...

• by ipnon on 2/20/22, 8:35 PM

  Article by ipnon "On the Historical Unity of Americans and Russians"

  "Russians, Ukrainians, and Americans are all descendants of Ancient Sahelanthropus ... We all come from the same Hominid species out of Africa"

  See that was easy? Oh wait, I don't have thousands of nuclear weapons and an army of millions.

  We are sadly seeing the return of might equals right, and history is written by the victors. But the difference this time is that the strong have the option of ending everything for everyone if they so choose. Assuming Putin is crazy like Hitler, then who knows if this is what he will decide to do.

  The military options available to great powers today gives the most leverage to the most deranged. Americans and the West have lost their appetites for war and imperialism. The costs are too great and the benefits are marginal. The depravity of the Russian ideology-state doesn't have these limitations.

  MAD means Russia wins as long the conflict is a military one. The only way out of this now turning Ukraine into Russia's Iraq/Afghanistan. An endless insurgency that grinds down resources and public opinion. It's a hybrid war of plausible deniability, disinformation, and cyber warfare. Europe is in this situation because the West is fighting fire with water guns.

  The Bear will stalk eastwards until we play the same game.

• by grzm on 2/20/22, 9:48 PM

  (2021)

• by adriancr on 2/20/22, 7:37 PM

  It's entertaining to think Putin would spend time to write such a long and biased article although it's obvious by its contents that that's not the case. (ex: a person that avoids technology like the plague mentioning using open-source documents)

  I'm curious why the need for this sort of attribution is needed. The same sort of thing used to happen in the past in Romania with our glorious leader's wife...

  As for contents, it reads like usual propaganda with a clear goal, justify Ukraine/Russia are the same people with a perhaps distorted view of history. Reading it is a little useful exercise in structure and manipulation

• by NicoJuicy on 2/20/22, 9:47 PM

  This doesn't seem a sign of strength, it's weird that it's translated to English though.

  Russia greatly missed their approach to Ukraine. Because of gray zone tactics, Russian approval rate within east-Ukraine dropped from 54% to 14% and Ukraine got ( over the years) more efficient resisting those tactics.

  This is a propaganda piece, because Ukrainians and Russians have a reasonable amount of relatives on both sides as far as I know. The risk he's taking is considerable, not only from externally but also internally.

  As a reference, Ukraine has a population of 44 million and Russia of 144 million. The Ukrain independence referendum ( with 92% in favor) was in 1991, which isn't even 1 generation ago. That's a big variable to take into account.

  Not only could fleeing Russians that they migrated become anti-Russia ( they received 10 k. Roebels =114$ to move from their home, which almost seems as a bad joke).

  They could be cut off from any sort of trade happening to them, which would decimate their economy with unforeseen consequences.

  Be aware that Russia has roughly the GDP of Spain and a huge area to maintain. They spend 6% to military and their GDP is declining + Europe ( and the world) is slowly abandoning natural resources.

  But they currently have money reserves from record prices the last years.

  Additionally, the last year there have been uprisings in Belarus and Kazakhstan, one of the few remaining partners of Russia that originated from the USSR.

  There is serious unrest within Russia too, Navalny is currently in jail after the poisoning attack failed and they were able to document every step of the Russian agents in detail.

  I think the mishandling of the vaccine ( the entire world wants Pfizer and Sputnik had a lot of production issues + bribes associated with it) didn't increase any influence, much to their dislike ( they were very quick to claim "dibs" without sufficient clinical trials ).

  Additionally, the very low vaccination rate is "proof" to me that there is great distrust in the government and that the propaganda isn't working as well as many belief.

  Putin is highly disturbed by this all and I think he wants to set an example to reduce problems. But I think he will just make it worse.

  Important note: One of the main root causes of this entire situation is that Ukraine could render Russia's entire naval fleet useless, since it's highly dependent on the Black Sea that is overlapping, almost completely, with Ukraine. Which was the main goal of the "gray zone war", occupying East-Ukraine.

  He's definitely been planning this for a long time:

  - increasing propaganda

  - increasing cyber attacks

  - military experience over different countries ( Afghanistan, Syria, ... )

  - decoupling of the west

  - closer ties to china

  - testing internet isolation ( similar to the great firewall)

  - testing war responses in countries of Europe over the years.

  - ...

  I believe they prefer to act now, now that Europe is still sufficiently dependent on Russia. But we ( Europe) are 35% of their GDP because of gas imports.

  They are also frustrated with Nordstream 2 that hasn't been completed. .

  But I think, all in all, this is a position of weakness and not of strength and he's trying to change something while he can.

  I don't know if they really want to invade Ukraine though.

  Some part of me thought that they were bluffing and wanted to weaken US influence by calling them out and in the end that they would not attack. But the military presence and shelling are severely countering that opinion.

  Just my 2 cents. I'd be glad to hear where I'm wrong or other opinions.

• by ipnon on 2/20/22, 8:39 PM

  If we want to end this we need to stop working on ads and SaaS, and start working on cyber security and disinformation networks.

• by throwaway5486nv on 2/20/22, 8:26 PM

  I was shocked to learn recently how diverse various parts of Russia is. There's hardly anything common uniting Russia including language. Russia is so huge simply because they did not had mountains to protect from marching invaders and the kings solution was to keep marching until they found mountains to define the boundaries. Along the way they made treaties with all sorts of culture and it became Russia.

• by Koshkin on 2/20/22, 8:36 PM

  Because someone already wrote a text on the historical unity of the Germans and the Austrians?

• by rixed on 2/20/22, 9:50 PM

  Now joke aside, it had been informative to read about the recent developments in the region from both Western and Russian sources. For instance this report (https://tass.com/world/1406503) about a declaration from the EU (!) from Tass was interesting and painted a more nuanced picture of what's happening there. I failed to see this report mentioned in my other regular Western news feed. US, UK or french newspapers all seem to reduce the whole situation into "Russia is willing to start a war, the only problem with recent increase of shelling in Ukraine is that it could be used as an excuse by Russia". Reading so obviously simplistic account about the situation is saddening.

  Also, it made me realize that pro-russia nationalists in Ukraine have their own distinct agenda.

  Now, disclaimer, I have no horse in this race, I'm just a random westerner, but I've been lied too often and I'm sick of it.