[HN Gopher] Article by Vladimir Putin "On the Historical Unity o...
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Article by Vladimir Putin "On the Historical Unity of Russians and
Ukrainians"
Author : jrcplus
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-02-20 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.kremlin.ru)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.kremlin.ru)
| throwaway5486nv wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| > And what Ukraine will be - it is up to its citizens to decide.
|
| Given the current situation, that sounds like a threat.
| pydry wrote:
| It is. Putin's strategy appears to be to encourage it to either
| be neutral, a puppet of Russia or failing that to break it -
| drive to to become a failed state.
|
| It somewhat parallels the US's approach to Cuba.
|
| The US's approach to Ukraine is that much like Georgia it's a
| cheap way to stir up trouble for Russia and sap its military
| strength but actually protecting its citizens isnt considered
| worthwhile, although this seems to have escaped the notice of
| at least half the citizens and its President.
|
| Zelenskyy is kind of getting played by both powers and Ukraine
| is slowly getting torn to pieces as a result.
| darthrupert wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker
| News? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately. It's not what
| this site is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| oegrj5 wrote:
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| 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 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. Since 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.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| >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.
|
| In the Netflix series "How to Become a Tyrant" there's
| literally a scene where the narrator says something like
| "Things not going well at home for you? start a war overseas!"
| zyemuzu wrote:
| I don't know if you're right or wrong, but I do appreciate you
| taking the time to share your thoughts!
| Distilitron wrote:
| martythemaniak wrote:
| "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.
| wussboy wrote:
| I heard a joke when I was in Ukraine in 1996: A Russian and a
| Ukrainian find $100. The Russian says, "come, brother, let's
| split this like family."
|
| The Ukrainian says, "no, let's split it 50-50."
|
| I think both sides are fully aware of what Russia's "warm
| brotherly embrace" will be like.
| mint2 wrote:
| I'm assuming sarcasm but it's hard to tell because RT sources
| would say the exact same thing
| grzm wrote:
| (2021)
| ipnon wrote:
| 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.
| pydry wrote:
| >We are sadly seeing the return of might equals right
|
| Seeing its return? It never went away.
| vasac wrote:
| > Americans and the West have lost their appetites for war and
| imperialism.
|
| Let's wait for at least 10-20 years without invading other
| countries before even start talking about end of imperialism.
| Koshkin wrote:
| rixed wrote:
| rixed wrote:
| 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.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| French newspapers are a lot more nuanced (some of them at
| least) because a significant part of the French left is deeply
| opposed to NATO, distrust and dislike the USA and is
| sympathetic to the Russian views that NATO eastern extension is
| a form of aggression and should be stopped.
| lisardo wrote:
| ipnon wrote:
| If we want to end this we need to stop working on ads and SaaS,
| and start working on cyber security and disinformation networks.
| adriancr wrote:
| 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
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| I agree that it is propaganda, but ghostwriting is kinda common
| for politicians. Reagan's famous "Tear done this wall" speech
| was written by Peter Robinson. [1] Hillary Clinton's book "It
| Takes a Village" was written by an uncredited ghostwriter named
| Barbara Feinman. [2] There are many other examples.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Robinson_(speechwriter...
|
| [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_a_Village
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| If you've watched him speak for 30min regarding geopolitics,
| such writing doesn't seem too farfetched...
|
| Hate him for whatever, he's not uneducated, unintelligible etc.
| adriancr wrote:
| I don't doubt that he is capable of writing this considering
| his background and achievements. I doubt that he wrote it
| considering the time investment needed and him being busy
| with invasion preparations...
|
| I was curious as to reasons why do this, why such a long
| article, why under his name.
|
| His target is likely the average russian, he is cultivating
| his image as a unifier of people?, is that also justification
| for war?
|
| If he had written it, perhaps it would have shed some light
| in his way of thought. Without that assumption it's just
| another propaganda piece.
| mongol wrote:
| It certainly is propaganda. But it is not that different
| from any longer piece from a political leader. We should
| assume that given that it is signed by him, he has been
| influencial in what it says, even if it is mostly ghost-
| written, it reflects his views and opinions. Someone like
| Putin can dictate an article while getting a bath or
| travelling in his airplane. He does not need to type it
| into a computer.
|
| I respect it for what it is, something with his name above
| it published on a Kremlin site. Propaganda is worse when it
| is hidden or disguised or pretends to be something it is
| not.
| secondcoming wrote:
| It was written on July 12, 2021.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Open-source documents aren't about technology. It is a term of
| art in intelligence.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence
| jdu4 wrote:
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(page generated 2022-02-20 23:01 UTC)