mike_k

This is a very bold statement. Care to provide any evidence?

I was there. What about you?

It is interesting how you only have purely visual "signs" on your list ). It can't be only this for a tech crowd. There is so much more about the way software is shipped, configured & used.

Also, the hardware. (It is much harder to make it work reasonably well across so many platforms without an army of full time devs.)

It sounds like it is possible to justify the invasion, if you have a good enough story...

It is still not clear if the threat was real or imagined, I'd the "deescalation" proposition had real things or was just a very unrealistic set of terms and essentially an excuse to proceed. NATO was less ready to accept any new members half a year ago than it is now.

Coffee brewing. Both pour over and classical barista world championships are possible once you win your nationals. I know someone who came 2nd in higly competitive nationals in my country and the person has a different full time job. It is a very deep skill with a lot of science behind it, if you wish, and not fully explored yet.

Any proofs?

Being in Ukraine, I appreciate such a cencire and public view on this war from a Russian citizen.

I have two major objections, though.

1) Solzhenitsyn & Brodskiy are very anti-soviet and famous guys, but they only go thus far. The first one was still an imperialist (at least in his later years) to a large degree and the second one had example(s) of a very anti-Ukrainian position in his poetry. Not the best characters to mention in the current context. And probably they illustrate a broader problem: it is so deep in the culture (history), that can not be treated as an accident.

2) The Man on top was not born out of a vacuum. Many generations before and during his "rise" share at least some of the responsibility. I don't want to blame the nation or "all the citizens", but too many individuals encouraged that. There was a point, when it was safe to protest, now it is not... but it is still much safer than to be in Mariupol.

A surprisingly long list of hybrid war tactics shared by two figures. It looks like history have taught us almost nothing.

Originally published: 21 December 2018. Translated into English: March 2022.

Good points. But I somehow hope we underestimate the moral aspect here (and the WWII lessons) that EU leaders and people take into account. Also, hasn't Russia proved to be an unpredictable and dangerous partner? Rethoric question: how can any European country justify making business with it now? (Sadly, it is still easy to imagine...)

> [...]a no-fly zone that no one will enforce given it would mean engaging with, guess what, the air force. Oh, and starting a nuclear war at the same time.

A thought experiment:

- if Putin is not insane and wants to live and enjoy his lifestyle (but plays his role to frighten everyone)

- that means he is unlikely to use nukes

- which means it might be practical to establish a no-flight zone, etc

If you believe he is insane, however, the West has nothing else to do than to let him grab whatever he wants (Estonia, maybe?). This is a dead end for NATO.

Do you really think there is no difference for US/EU with what kind of regime to cooperate _now_? Purely economical short term gains proved to be too risky even for Germany. Moral and cultural aspects are still important enough. Regarding nuke and other hi tech: it might turn out Russia is not as good at it as many anticipated.

Real Nazis are as close to Stephan Bandera's groups in 1940s as they are to IRA, for example. Don't mess these movements, motivation and historical context. It was more about getting rid of Red Russia then about anything else.

>The current President Zelenskyy constantly talked about them...

I was impressed about the way his silly rethoric has changed in the last 2 weeks (or really last one year). He is a different person now. Go and ask him about any of that nonsense now.

Good point about public perception. But there's a deeper problem with this: people _want_ to believe it is a justified and necessary act of violence. And this is really hard to change now. Too many years many of us/them were passively silent and now it is almost too late to take an action.