• HorriblePerson@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    If profit drives Putin, why Ukraine and not another neighbour who hasn’t been courting NATO and accepting western money, weapons, training, etc since at least circa 2014? The answer is because the US chose Ukraine to provoke Russia.

    Well, there’s really no reason to use hard power on any country that hasn’t been courting NATO. You can just use soft power (Belarus, Kazakhstan) in that case. Precisely when this ceases to work and a country does starts approaching Russia’s rivals, Russia appears to employ their military power (Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine).

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Good points. Soft power seems to have been starting to work in Ukraine, too, until Maidan in 2014. For me, the key thing is ‘approaching Russia’s rivals’.

      On the one hand, Russia’s not going to like that. On the other hand, if we accept that Russia exercising soft power in e.g. Belarus and Kazakhstan means hard power isn’t necessary – they’re already within its orbit/under it’s wing – then when e.g. Ukraine approaches the US and turns away from Russia, the US has already effectively taken control of Ukraine before Russia invades. Albeit through soft power.

      And that throws a different light on the civil war in which Ukrainian militias are shelling ethnic Russian Ukrainians for being ‘separatists’. Because it means it’s being supported by Russia’s arch-rival, the US, a country well known for such destabilising and provocative antics, as the recent history of West Asia attests.