Finland and Sweden already have a mutual defense pact so neither would join NATO without the other. I think they both probably will, maybe after Kiev falls or some larger offensive is launched. I think Russia really miscalculated here on just how much the world would care about their invasion, I guess when you spend too much time in Syria you just get the impression that people don't really care about wars all that much anymore. It doesn't really change Russia's security situation though, they never had that much influence in Finland compared to the west and it's not like NATO just needs Finland to finally invade.

I understand when people see things like this and say "Why won't someone do anything about this?! Why don't they care?", because when I see things like this I also want them to stop, and it can be easy to ignore other factors like how nuclear nations can act with impunity as long as they act first. Obviously there's nothing really more anyone can do past the sanctions that are happening, but the sentiment is understandable so I try to not to judge them so harshly.

I really want to believe this, it could be the best possible scenario for both Russia and Ukraine.

Well, I think that Russia will take a place as a secondary power aligned with China in the New World Order™, it's not like Russia is going to collapse from within or be invaded by it's neighbors, just a slow decline as their population wanes, their military ages, and oil and gas are less and less profitable. Spain and Portugal fell from great heights too without much trouble.

Not only that, but as they exchanged fake internet money for fake internet pictures, they were also able to pump a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere, because that's what we need right now.

There's no "pissing match" here, no tit-for-tat, no NATO retaliation of any kind. NATO will just continue to do what it has done since it's founding and Russia will continue to decline in power and relevance like it has since the height of the Soviet Union. Nukes will mean that Russia will always have some relevancy, but just look at Pakistan to see what the floor of relevance is for a nuclear power (and Pakistan has a larger population that's actually growing and and economy with the potential to grow as well).

The post I replied to said that NATO/The West decided to get in a "nuclear pissing match" rather than take an L. Since it's obvious to everyone that nothing nuclear will happen (and indeed there will be no direct combat between NATO and Russian forces), that would imply that the only other option is for NATO to take the L, but there's no L to take, everything's working out in their favour.

It's not even that embarrassing to say you got this one wrong. This invasion makes no sense for Russia and all signs point to it being a pyrrhic victory (in terms of geopolitics, not the actual fighting). You can just say "it just didn't make sense for Russia to invade, so I didn't think they would". But instead some "leftists" just decide to start supporting imperialism now. I'm sure that if hexbear was around in the 1800's the top posts would be about how the French invasion of Algeria is justified because of the British Raj.

I still don't see how this is an L?

Russia tells NATO not to expand, NATO tells them to fuck off, and in response the Russians invade basically the only non-NATO country still on their borders. All this does is prove to NATO that a) it needs to expand to check Russian aggression (which was only hypothetical until the invasion), and b) Russia won't invade a NATO country because they know they'll lose (or the world will end in nuclear hellfire, probably both).

There is literally, undeniably, absolutely, zero (0) (none) percent chance that NATO will deploy troops against Russian regulars in Ukraine. Anyone telling you that there is even the slightest chance in any possible scenario is lying to you or so uninformed that they probably woke up three hours ago from a 500 year long coma.

Also, NATO is not taking an L right now, this is the biggest W they've had since the fall of the Union. The fact that Russia's attacking it's neighbors finally brings back the whole reason for the alliance to exist, and the fact that the country being attacked is non-NATO while other, smaller NATO countries are ignored by Russia just help them in their pitch to the remaining NATO fence-sitters in the region.

It's interesting to me that as Russian missiles hit blood banks in Ukraine, some people choose to look past that and instead invent a fictitious and absurd NATO response to get mad at.

Crimea was basically a walk-in. Russia already has a military base there (rented), and just walked out and informed the Ukrainians that they were now in charge. About half of the Ukrainian navy defected and most troops just left, seeing that the "battle" had already been lost. Crimea also had a much higher amount of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking residents than the rest of Ukraine, due to it's high military value during the Soviet Union. In comparison this invasion has rockets and missiles falling on the capital and areas where almost nobody is ethnically Russian or wants to join Russia.

Putin: "we uhh must invade Ukraine because uhh blood and soil"

Online leftists: "omg so anti-imperialist, a $1.5T economy with 1M active duty soldiers and the largest nuclear stockpile in the world has no agency whatsoever, everything they do is orchestrated by the US but also I support them for some reason!"

1. Is true. In 2012 there were about 100k NATO troops (less than the number of Russian troops used for this invasion) operating in the whole world, and most of them were in the middle east for obvious reasons. Romney thought Russia was a big threat but Obama didn't, and Obama won. Generally the US has been shifting away from Europe and towards the Middle East and China for a while now. They felt that they beat Russia already so it's a spent force.

2. Is hard to say, obviously NATO didn't attack Russia, but Russia has a view of it's own sphere of influence, where it should call the shots. So when some countries in that sphere of influence join NATO (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia), Russia sees that as a threat. But from an outside perspective it's just a bunch of sovereign nations joining a defensive alliance, and should only be a problem if Russia was planning on attacking (turns out they were). This is all a matter of perspective, like if Mexico tried to host a Chinese military base, the US might see that as encroachment, but the Chinese would just say that Mexico has the right to choose it's own foreign policy.

3. This is only partially true. Ukraine and other nations of course can make their own decisions, but being caught between two giant powers severely limits their options. The post-soviet states were basically given the option of being in the NATO camp or the Russia camp, and some chose Russia and others chose NATO. Playing both sides is a position very few nations can navigate properly, Israel and China are the only two I can think of off the top of my head. Pre-2014 Ukraine officially didn't want to be part of NATO, but that government did not enjoy a lot of popular support and after the revolution the new government did want to join NATO. Generally speaking the western areas are more pro-western, and the eastern areas more pro-Russia, but more people live in the western areas (and the eastern areas are losing population way faster).

4. This is true but a bit misleading, in 2004 NATO added Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Notably Estonia and Latvia share both share a border with Russia.

5. It's true that North Macedonia does not matter militarily or economically to Russia, really none of the post-2004 states have anything like the might to stand up to Russia, which is why so many of them joined NATO.

This whole things seems like a terrible idea for Russia. This invasion will trigger even harsher sanctions (basically up to the limit of what's possible), which will only hurt their struggling economy more and increase their dependence on China. And whatever you think of China, they don't have Russia's best interests at heart, they have China's. Russian demographics are some of the worst in the world, so every dead Russian soldier hurts them way more than even a dead American soldier. Pacifying Ukraine will be a long and bloody affair, and it opens up a whole new front that never existed before to fight the Russians by proxy. The US has a lot of experience supplying resistance groups, and between Ukraine, Syria, and their new operations in the Sahel, Russia's forces are going to be spread really thin. Meanwhile NATO is just collecting footage of burning airfields and helicopters over Kiev to show to any nation that's hesitant about joining. After so many years of struggling to justify it's existence, trying to pivot towards the pacific, then back to Europe, then back to China, NATO finally has a clear and undeniable mission again.

I really don't see many positives in Russia's future.

His speech said that the goal was "denazification" and "demilitarization" of Ukraine. The second goal might not require a prolonged occupation and annexation, but it would require control of the top military and civilian leaders for a time. My only hope at this point is that whatever happens, it's short.

war is uhh, bad. People will die and many of those people will be innocent.

"I'm not owned! I'm not owned!" I cry as the siege of Kiev goes on for another week. Tomorrow I will meet my fate at the hands of a 152mm shell, but until then I am adamant that Putin will not invade and this is just Biden posturing to distract from covid.

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1496689463761817600

according to a shithead who would have the clearance to know, Russia could be going for the whole thing

They could, but since it doesn't involve making the UI worse for no reason or taking away features people use, I can't imagine that they will.

1. That's a long story, going back before the foundation of the Russian Empire, let alone the Soviet Union or Russian Federation. The most recent history is that in 2014 Russia invaded Ukraine with the support of (and to support) separatists in two eastern areas of Ukraine. They captured Crimea (a strategic peninsula with an important naval base) but pulled out of the eastern areas and since then the Ukrainian army has made some gains against the separatists, although they are not at all defeated (it's devolved into static trench warfare in some areas).

2. Russia moved 100,000 troops to their western border with Ukraine, and are adding more all the time. They say it's no big deal but 100,000 troops are really expensive to keep out of their home bases for any length of time, so it's unlikely that they would just do this on a whim.

3. Ukraine's government wants to join NATO, but the process has been moving slowly due to the instability in the disputed areas and the general shift in the way the Ukrainian army would have to operate.

4. Nobody knows, probably not even Putin (he's waiting to see if he can get more concessions out of the west or Ukraine). My best guess is that the Russians will try to drive Ukrianian forces completely out of the separatist areas and try to stabilize them, and also attempt to capture a land corridor that connects Crimea with the Russian mainland for ease of supplying power and water. Without significant foreign help (that would by this point probably come too late), the Ukrainian army will probably not be able to resist them.