I think it is a bid problematic that anybody can create an account on github and open issues there (if enabled).
No "professional", paid software would allow ordinary users to communicate directly with the programmer. Or allow outsiders to post comments on their products website.
Just moving discussions to irc would already filter a lot of spam. As a last resort you could require some kind of proof that you are a maintainer of a bigger distribution. Or something in between.
First of all, of course one country should be able to influence other countries in the EU. That's the whole point of the EU.
Secondly, the waste products of nuclear reactors are much more problematic than CO2.
Handling of this waste is often overlooked when looking at the costs or CO2 footprint.
And that does not even touch the associated risks.
> First of all, of course one country should be able to influence other countries in the EU
Blocking other countries tends to make member states hate each other, which isn't good for the EU.
> Secondly, the waste products of nuclear reactors are much more problematic than CO2
You literally just put them inside steel concrete casks [1] after they were in a pool for a few years. You can even hug those casks safely. Whereas the CO2 is in the air we breathe and in the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming.
> Just like more people are afraid of airplane accidents
This doesn't compute: avoiding being a victim of a plane accident is rather simple: don't hop on any plane and your are something along the .99999 covered.
Avoiding being threatened (and many generations after you) by a nuclear major accident or erring 'hot' nuclear waste is way (WAY!) more difficult.
Its very similar. Most people "at risk" for a accident in a nuclear power plant are the workers. There are multiple redundancies that make sure dangerous levels of radioactive isotopes are not released to the public. Thats why every western nuclear power plant has required containment buildings basically forever. Chernobyl didn't, which is why it affected the environment / nearby people.
No containment is perfect. In French nuclear plants it has to "contain" most of the stuff for at least 72 hours, but no one sees it as a sealed repository and it sure isn't.
You set the bar too high. Radiation isn't an all-or-nothing phenomenon; we are exposed to background radiation all the time, so expecting perfection is unjustified. Also a large portion of radioactivity that might escape comes from short-lived isotopes, making short term evacuation a possibility.
The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.
The LNT debate isn't settled, effects of added background radiation is difficult to assess. Moreover the dust escaping from a nuclear plant may be inhaled, ingested... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committed_dose ).
A "large portion" isn't all, and at Fukushima the nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims.
> The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.
> A "large portion" isn't all
Setting the bar too high.
> The LNT debate isn't settled
Indeed the evidence for effects at smaller and longer term doses is at best weak. We also have a good idea of how DNA repair works. But LNT seems like the least unreasonable conservative way to treat radiation, which may be replaced by something in the up-coming ICRP modernisation.
> Moreover the dust escaping
What sort of dust is this?
> nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims
The major underlying point is a comparison: renewables vs. nuclear. And on those accounts (effect of a major accident, waste...) renewables are clear winners.
>> The LNT debate isn't settled
> up-coming ICRP modernisation
Some escape during a nuclear major accident, and very few want it in the air they breath, the food they eat, the water they drink... Even most of those believing this will cause no harm may prefer clean air, food, water...
>> Fukushima nuclear accident
> In hindsight how many of these people needed to be evacuated?
Moreover even obedient Japaneses may, during a major nuclear accident, not be willing to obey to "please stay and wait!", especially from those who previously said "the nuclear plant is safe, there will be no problem.'.
In any case even magnificent armchairs' experts babbling 'they could and should stay and wait" years after the event cannot change History.
> How many people died from overheating due to a lack of electricity in the years after Fukushima?
This perspective also leads to preferring renewables as the will to shut down nuclear reactors during such accident, for the lack of an immediate full explanation, and also the imperative to do so after discovering some generic defect), all play for renewables.
The pressing (financial) necessity of building reactors in series (of units as identical as possible, in order to reduce unit costs) reduces their heterogeneity and thus the robustness of the fleet, to the point of making a "generic defect" one of the industry's fears, as the discovery of a defect can coerce int shutting down all reactors of the model concerned.
This is what happened in France at the end of 2021 with the shutdowns of N4 reactors due to as recently in France after discovering stress corrosion cracking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Crisis... ) is specific to nuclear. If all the reactors in the fleet were N4, they would all have been shut down!
During and shortly after the major nuclear accident at Fukushima, all other nuclear reactors in Japan were shut down as a precaution and remained so for years. Most of them are still down in 2025, some claim that they are restarting but, 14 years after the accident, the hard facts are clear: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-nuclear... , reflecting the lack of enthusiasm of the population.
Let's check the trend. Share of produced electricity in Japan:
Wind, solar... sources do not pose such a threat because they cannot trigger a catastrophe, so discovering a problem does not mean shutting down all units of the type in question. The heterogeneity of renewable source types (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc.), that of equipment manufacturers and models (wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, etc.), as well as the unit sizes of the latter, which are smaller than those of a nuclear reactor, and their geographical dispersion, increase the robustness of the renewable energy fleet: the probability that a large part of the fleet will break down, develop a fault, produce nothing, etc., is minimal.
No lack of electricity => nobody dies due to the lack of electricity.
> If all the reactors in the fleet were N4, they would all have been shut down!
If they were all N4 they would have been kept running and had a rolling program of repairs. So I do not agree with your desire to have a heterogeneous fleet of reactors.
> nobody dies due to the lack of electricity
we estimate that the energy-saving campaigns could have led to nearly 7,710
Indeed, however past accidents now forbid to claim that "this dust will never wander around, everything is under control".
> If they were all N4 they would have been kept running and had a rolling program of repairs.
Nope, as the defect was considered (by EDF itself, the company owning and operating it, chief of the nuclear industry in France, and AFAIK experts agreed) as too dangerous for the reactor to continue to operate.
> your desire to have a heterogeneous fleet of reactors
I don't desire any reactor. I'm only pointing out a major dilemma intrinsic to the "nuclear" approach.
> nobody dies due to the lack of electricity
I explained why a mix of renewables cannot lead to such ordeal, which was induced in Japan by the decision to produce electricity thanks to nuclear reactors and the decision to shut them off after the Fukushima accident.
Iberian blackout: nobody knows the cause for sure, experts are analyzing the event.
> one country should be able to influence other countries in the EU.
Who pays decide (Germany is the first financial contributor), that's business as usual.
> Whereas the CO2 is in the air
In the UE the question is how much renewables and how much nuclear will be built, and their (dubious) compatibility. Very few want to see more fossil fuel.
The "nuclear waste is a solved challenge" is funny, as experts explicitly state that there is no safe solution (due to risks induced by seismotectonics, intrusions, casks imperfections...).
Some claim that nuclear waste repositories are perfect (0 risk), and experts disagree.
> backfilling
Yay, such a superb gift to our children, their children, their children...!
The underlying point is about how much renewables and how much nuclear may we build in order to tackle current challenges (climate, pollution...), one of the criteria is waste and renewables win hands down.
> Some claim that nuclear waste repositories are perfect (0 risk), and experts disagree.
Disagreement is natural in science as well as engineering. And absolutes are not. Framing nuclear waste disposal, or in fact any enterprise, in terms of finding total agreement on total safety is not useful.
> one of the criteria is waste and renewables win hands down
In what terms are we to assess the waste? By volume, likely number of people killed over the lifetime of the waste, maximum number killed? Do we count the waste from manufacturing as well?
Indeed, my point was about a form of propaganda quite common in France, which states that long-term waste repositories (now work-in-progress) will be perfectly safe. They won't.
> assess the waste?
Most of renewables' waste is recyclable, and more and more is recycled, even wind turbine blades.
> likely number of people killed over the lifetime of the waste
The more types of waste and the longer the lifetime (nuclear...), the more difficult it is.
> In not-so-ancient times "experts" were also OK with ocean disposal.
The link you gave did not list the effects of ocean disposal; elevated and measurable are not the same as significant or harmful unless you are a firm believer in LNT, although at the bottom of the ocean the background radiation dose from cosmic rays will be less.
Whatever they believe or not isn't impeding others' lifes.
The underlying point is about how much renewables and how much nuclear may we build in order to tackle current challenges (climate, pollution...), one of the criteria is waste and renewables win hands down.
> ocean disposal
AFAIK no expert now states that ocean disposal is OK, this is a settled matter since at least 1972 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Convention_on_the_Preve... ), therefore a bunch of assessments of the current situation for stuff dangerous for at least hundred years doesn't seem pertinent to me.
> Whatever they believe or not isn't impeding others' lifes.
The principle is that we don't seek unanimity before proceeding with something.
> this is a settled matter since at least 1972
Disposal of small amounts of radioactive material at sea and into the air happens (e.g. reprocessing plant water releases, power station tritiated water releases).
An international convention does not settle the science behind ocean disposal. The lack of supporters perhaps reflects the difficulty in carrying out such research, and the problems of trying to change international agreements.
> we don't seek unanimity before proceeding with something.
> this is a settled matter since at least 1972
This is an opinion. My (dissenting) one is that the more someone is or could be impacted, the more we have to take his/her opinion into account.
> Disposal of small amounts of radioactive material at sea and into the air happens
It doesn't imply that it is an adequate way to dispose of it.
> An international convention does not settle the science behind ocean disposal
"The main objective of the London Convention is to prevent indiscriminate disposal at sea of wastes that could be liable for creating hazards to human health; harming living resources and marine life; damaging amenities; or interfering with other legitimate uses of the sea." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Convention_on_the_Preve... )
> The lack of supporters perhaps reflects the difficulty in carrying out such research, and the problems of trying to change international agreements.
Nuclear-waste long-term repositories projects are very expensive and difficult (to the point of many attempts failing flat) everywhere, therefore attempting to convince that ocean-dumping is OK would be useful.
This is by definition impossible. We may consider opinions of the current generation as reasonable approximations.
> Or the unemployed created by high energy prices?
It could be an argument in presence of a consensus promoting a single way to establish the total cost of a given type of energy source. There isn't, and it doesn't come as a surprise as some unpredictable event (nuclear major accident, nuclear waste wandering in some populated area...) may hugely raise the total cost.
Moreover the total production cost (LCOE) of renewables is already way (and more and more) below nuclear's, and there is no consensual way to assess the cost of firming those sources (cancelling the effects of 'intermittency' on production). Add the general movement towards decentralization...
Nowadays the low-and-ever-lowering-LCOE of renewables more and more threatens the very business model underlying the nuclear industry which finds its foundation in a high load factor.
> we are far, far away from the massive (hundred of tons) dumps from the previous era
Mass of material dumped is not the same as radioactivity or potential harm caused. It looks as if "de minimis" is the key phrase in the convention, in Annex 1.3 . However the IAEA defines "de minimis" in terms of effective dose to people (10 microSieverts/year) per [1] page 14. So point still stands, some level of radioactivity being discharged to the sea is deemed acceptable by experts. If it can be shown that radioactive materials will leach out of the containers very slowly, can this "de minimis" still be met.
> We may consider opinions of the current generation as reasonable approximations.
So we should be able to vote on it?
> Nowadays the low-and-ever-lowering-LCOE of renewables more and more threatens the very business model underlying the nuclear industry which finds its foundation in a high load factor.
Intermittent generators also suffer from cannibalisation (duck curve and all of that), hence the need for subsidies and/or guaranteed prices.
I wrote "we are far, far away from the massive (hundred of tons) dumps from the previous era" to subsume it.
Moreover the whole Linear No-Threshold and bioaccumulation of radioisotopes debate is far from settled, therefore some experts judge even low doses too dangerous.
> we should be able to vote on it?
IMHO yes. At the very least every citizen paying for it or exposed to some risk has a vote. Direct democracy and referendums let any of them take part, and experts have to convince a majority.
> need for subsidies and/or guaranteed prices
It mainly is an effect of (past and current) massive subsidies granted to other types of energy sources (nuclear, fossil fuels...), the difficult struggle of incoming quickly evolving tech (photovoltaic, wind turbines...) versus amortized plants, and the insufficient amount of energy-storage deployed equipment.
> Doses now tolerated are way below those of ancient dumps.
Do those old dumps generate high doses? Is there evidence of the high doses generated, and if so why isn't this on the wikipedia page? I'm not able to tell whether the dose from an old dump is higher than that from a fuel fabrication, reprocessing plant or nuclear power station.
> therefore some experts judge even low doses too dangerous
One wonders how they get to conferences. Also whether they think about the difference between timber framed and brick buildings, or the background radiation when deciding where to move to.
> Is there evidence of the high doses generated, and if so why isn't this on the wikipedia page?
AFAIK it now is forbidden to dump highly dangerous waste in non-negligible amounts in the ocean not because there was some accident, but because experts judged that it may trigger one. An approach is to advocate the "let's do whatever please until something breaks", another one is to think about potential consequences THEN to decide.
> dose from an old dump is higher than that from a fuel fabrication, reprocessing plant or nuclear power station.
Those contexts are way more under human-control than an ocean floor.
> One wonders how they get to conferences.
This is a weird way to describe a real, ancient (and IMHO growing, since Fukushima) controversy.
> Nobody knows. A new exploration campaign is running
Would have thought a long-term study of these sites would have already been underway, given their apparent potential hazard. Surely Greenpeace would want such a study to back up their perspective (or does the position not require such evidence). Anyhow, disposing of the waste ten+ metres under the sea floor would have been much better.
> another one is to think about potential consequences THEN to decide
> Would have thought a long-term study of these sites would have already been underway
As far as I know those studies are far from extensive and there is no permanent effort.
> given their apparent potential hazard
The good'ole "who is in charge, who pays?" is at play.
In many nations the nuclear industry just doesn't care (they dumped their waste, and good bye!) or disappeared after a phase-out.
A fair part of those who can pay those studies prefer to pursue their own endeavors (why would they have to work in order to cope with other's boo-boos?), for example the lack of resources available for oceanographers' core missions is well-known.
> Surely Greenpeace
AFAIK obtaining and maintaining a boat isn't easy for them. Doing so for some bathyscaphe (or similar equipment) and all the associated infrastructure and expertise for what nowadays is a mission (showing the bad effects of civilian nuclear) which is vanishing just as its mere subject is, while others (pollution, overfishing...) are more and more difficult, seems 'ambitious' without any very generous dedicated donation (are you interested in giving?).
> does the position not require such evidence
As already stated experts decided nearly 60 years ago to quit dumping waste in the ocean floor (London Convention), this seems sufficient to me.
> disposing of the waste ten+ metres under the sea floor would have been much better.
Maybe, maybe not. It would have been way more expensive.
> work done by Charles D. Hollister
IMHO the nuclear folks liked to be able to dump waste from a barge. Asking them to dig the seabed...
> You mistake my sense of humour;
Indeed, sorry.
> I was referring to the increased radiation dose from flying to/from conferences.
The point is: anyone decides upon hoping in any jetliner, or abstaining from doing so. A nuclear reactor can trigger a major accident which lets no such choice in a huge area, and for quite a while.
If someone lacerates the tattooed arm of someone else and says "hey, you already hurt yourself with this tattoo" I'm ready to bet that most, including any judge, will not support him.
> seems 'ambitious' without any very generous dedicated donation (are you interested in giving?).
There was plenty of anti-nuclear money floating about years ago; https://www.influencewatch.org/movement/opposition-to-nuclea... lists quite a few organisations interested in opposing nuclear power in the USA. As for the cost, surely a few weeks of boat/submersible time every few years would suffice.
> Maybe, maybe not. It would have been way more expensive.
I was coming from the radiation protection perspective; less liable to dose the denizens of the deep were they to swim next to the waste. Also in the mud is better from an immobilisation perspective.
> IMHO the nuclear folks liked to be able to dump waste from a barge. Asking them to dig the seabed...
Perhaps we are speaking cross-purposes; the digging would be for spent nuclear fuel (or the vitrified waste) where the vast majority of activity is. As for contaminated suits and the like, disposal on land is a good enough option.
> If someone lacerates the tattooed arm of someone else
It is more helpful to study what happens in industry as a whole. Industrial accidents do happen, after which investigations are performed. An intolerance of accidents isn't a viable approach, but reasonable steps must be taken to keep risk to workers low.
> plenty of anti-nuclear money floating about years ago
They had much more efficient targets than old waste dumped in the ocean, especially after Tchernobyl and Fukushima!
>> It would have been way more expensive.
> I was coming from the radiation protection perspective
It seems indeed less risky from this perspective, however my point was about the total cost for the nuclear industry: dumping from barges is a breeze, digging the ocean floor is way less easy (and therefore cheap).
Many in the nuclear industry maintain the (quite old and until now vain) hope of obtaining a model of industrial breeder reactor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor ), and therefore are opposed to any waste-disposal option which makes waste-recovery more difficult.
> Industrial accidents do happen
AFAIK in every industrialized nation each and every sector of the industry HAS buy an adequately insurance (civil liability). Nuclear power is the sole exception: it is insured mainly at the taxpayer's expense and the reimbursement limit is ridiculously low. In France a study published by the official nuclear institute (IRSN) showed that a major accident on a single reactor may cost more than 400 billions euros (French ahead: https://www.irsn.fr/savoir-comprendre/crise/cout-economique-... ) , and the limit is about 700 million €. 3 orders of magnitude... The local Cour of Audit periodically yells about this. In the USA the limit is set at 16.1 billion USD ( https://environmentamerica.org/media-center/statement-federa... ).
Reflexive cynicism about the military isn't as warranted in 2024 as it might have been a decade ago. And it wasn't really warranted a decade ago either, when Russia was blowing up Czech ammunition depots, airliners full of Dutch people, conducting assassinations in the center of Berlin, and sending "little green men" to Ukraine.
It could be an accident, sure, but suspicion of sabotage is not paranoia.
And also, like, the German government (and European governments generally) DOES need to spend more on their military. They underinvested for decades and are now stuck needing to catch up very quickly.
Russia and Russia alone is responsible for "kick-starting" this war.
And providing Ukraine with aid so that they don't get steamrolled is not morally wrong. Nor is refusing to do so so that Russia can more quickly get around to torturing and repressing the population a moral right.
It's not like a line in the sand, admitted as such by both sides, was broken, one with explicit promises that it wouldn't be.
Indeed it's not, because that's an extremely distorted and misleading narrative. For example, on multiple occasions (notably 1994 and 1997) Russia signed treaties validating NATO expansion long after this supposed "explicit promise" (which also wasn't quite what you seem to think). We also have statements from the two most important players on the Soviet side (Gorbachev and Shevardnadze) thoroughly discounting this version of events.
Whatever source you got that narrative from is simply misinformed, or worse.
Listening to people who probably proclaim themselves "anti-imperialists" give full-throated defenses of imperialism never gets old.
>prepared to fight their proxy war to the last of them
The natural corollary to this ridiculous "fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian" argument, which you guys never seem to acknowledge, is that it already assumes that Russia will murder every last Ukrainian and take their land. That's just a given, and you then try to blame the West as though they stuck their hand into a lawnmower or something.
None of this holds up to any scrutiny, though. The whole NATO expansion narrative barely exists in Russia, they don't talk about that, they talk about standard-issue Imperialist narratives like "Ukraine doesn't exist, it's not a real country, not a real language, not a real ethnicity, Ukrainians are 'little brothers' to the superior Russian spirit, everything good in Ukraine is Russian and everything Ukrainian is bad, and we Russians must liberate them from their mental delusions of being something other than Russian and restore Russia to our natural greatness & place in the world"
Please explain why Russia has the right to dictate foreign policy postures to their independent former colonies, or disregard treaties signed with them.
I get where you’re coming from; however looking at their post history I think vatnik/tankie rather than straight troll factory or FSB.
In any case, disputin Kremlin propaganda in an otherwise well-regarded forum doesn’t feel wrong. One certainly wouldn’t bother on Twitter, for example.
Not even Fox News would stoop to this level of harebrained whataboutism.
> goat ...lovers in Afghanistan
or outright, unfettered racism
> something that they have repeatededly said they consider a casus belli
or fawning gullibility.
Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO and until 2014 was dead-set against it. Same for Finland and Sweden until 2022. Whatever happened in those years to trigger such a change in public sentiment, I wonder.
> It must be because they thought, "hey, what better than to get in a costly war", have hundreds of thousands of their own die
“Meat waves” are a decades old Soviet military doctrine that has not changed, and Putin is an ex-KGB thug. Regard for human life isn’t in that picture.
>Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO and until 2014 was dead-set against it. Same for Finland and Sweden until 2022. Whatever happened in those years to trigger such a change in public sentiment, I wonder.
The 2014 orange revolution was carried out, for starters, to put a change to that. And even when later the current leader was elected promised to normalize relationships, he was "convinced" promptly to push for the opposite direction. As for Finland and Sweden, when told to jump, they ask "how high".
Cries of "Whataboutism!" is basically "our shit doesn't stink, let's focus on the others' farts, and treat them as some unique case of foul smell producers!".
Oh I see, tens of millions of people in pluralist open democracies got a secret memo from a paternalistic deep state to change their minds. It definitely wasn’t the repeated invasions, murder, looting, sabotage, rape, kidnapping, destruction, annexation that every one of Russia’s neighbours are utterly sick of.
You’re right about one thing, though. There’s definitely a stench here.
> Yeah, it's not like a line in the sand, admitted as such by both sides, was broken, one with explicit promises that it wouldn't be.
Ah, your oddly-vague wording must of course be referring to how Russia explicitly promised to respect Ukraine's borders [0], a line they are violently crossing as we speak. First with an undeclared guerrilla-war and annexation, and more-recently with a massive "surprise" invasion--after spending several weeks of lying about their buildup and pretending that other countries were just trying to make them look bad.
If you are sarcastically suggesting something else... Well, go ahead, share the evidence for whatever-it-is, the kind of documentary evidence which countries ensure is always abundant for any remotely important international promise. (That is in contrast to self-serving lies from the Kremlin, which rely heavily on refusing to explain.)
>Ah, your oddly-vague wording must of course be referring to how Russia explicitly promised to respect Ukraine's borders
After it was itself promised NATO wont expand eastwards and Ukraine will not be used to get their bases next to its borders. Not really strange how they broken this agreement after 30 years of broken promises, sanctions, open threats, an orange coup in their neighbor, among other things.
But sure, nothing more anti-imperialist by a coalition formed by the foremost imperialist power with its client states, expanding for "democracy"...
Oh look, exactly what I predicted in advance: A self-serving lie from the Kremlin, which relies heavily on your refusal to provide any form of evidence. In particular, the kind of written details which any nation (including the USSR) would have insisted upon getting in triplicate, for the kind of important thing you claim existed.
Also, why haven't you paid me the $50,000 you promised, you disgraceful deadbeat? You say you don't remember it? It doesn't matter if I can't provide any kind of document or recording that would be standard for that kind of thing, it must have happened--or else why would I keep bringing it up?
Neither cable goes to Ukraine. Is Finland fighting someone’s proxy war, too? How about Germany? Sweden? Lithuania?
How about Russia? Whose proxy are they?
Anyone parroting that phrase is simply repeating Kremlin-sourced propaganda, intended to wrench at the weak minds of “useful idiots” and supply a pretext for what they truly wish: lily-livered appeasement that rewards aggression with recognition.
Life under Russian occupation is one of rape, torture, kidnapping, looting, execution. Would you like to be raped and tortured? How about your family, in front of you, before they are executed? No? No.
That is why Ukraine fights.
“Proxy war”, my ass. Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression is existential.
Quite the opposite. Ukraine has been prevented from joining NATO by the west, especially Germany and France, for fear of angering Russia. This course of action has led to war. The proper course of action in hindsight would have been to have Ukraine join NATO asap back then.
Ukraine wasn't a candidate for NATO membership in 2014 or 2022, and this was agreed to in all major treaties/agreements with Russia. It's still not a candidate, and can't be while it's actively engaged in war.
NATO membership has never had anything to do with it. Note how Finland has joined NATO since 2022, and faces no repercussions from Russia, despite a third of their land-based nuclear missiles within 400 km of the Finnish border.
Although Russia has obstinately described NATO expansion as a threat, Putin was actually more concerned about the loss of Russia’s perceived sphere of influence in former Soviet republics which were aligning themselves with the West economically and politically
So it wasn’t about NATO, it was about maintained a decaying sphere of influence.
Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat who later resigned in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, recalled that the draft treaties had shocked many Russian diplomats and that he immediately viewed the demands as non-negotiable.
Even the Russian diplomats knew it was posturing while Russia added to the 100,000 troops already staging on the border with Ukraine. Demands made at the point of 100,000 guns pointed at you are not good faith negotiating positions.
What right does Russia have to formalized neutrality, to control Ukraine’s foreign policy? Do you think that, since “Germany is just a vassal state” that Russia deserves one too?
Yes, Ukraine has been a candidate for NATO membership. In 2008, during the Bucharest Summit, NATO members agreed that Ukraine would eventually become a member of the alliance. However, no formal invitation was extended at that time.
COMMONS LIBRARY
In 2010, under President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine adopted a non-aligned status, halting its pursuit of NATO membership. This policy shifted after the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, leading Ukraine to renew its aspirations for NATO integration. In 2019, Ukraine amended its constitution to enshrine the goal of joining NATO.
NATO
In September 2022, following Russia's annexation of parts of southeastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine had applied for NATO membership under an accelerated procedure.
WIKIPEDIA
As of November 2024, Ukraine remains a NATO partner country and has not yet achieved full membership.
Between 2010 and later 2022 (i.e., not in 2014 or in February 2022) Ukraine was officially not pursuing membership, and France, Germany and the US were all unofficially making it clear that NATO membership was not being pursued and would not be offered.
Ukraine applied for NATO membership after Russia's invasion. It cannot therefore be a cause of Russia's invasion. At the time Russia sponsored and supported internal revolt in Crimea and Donbass, it was 2014 and Ukraine was officially and unofficially not in or applying to NATO--so how can that be the cause of Russian intervention then?
Thank you, though, for using ChatGPT to support my contention that NATO membership had nothing to do with Russia's invasion.
Also, to clarify one point: No one is a candidate for NATO who is currently engaged in hostilities. While Ukraine was in a state of war against Russian supported forces in Donbass and Crimea, it was ineligible to even apply. It may have put the goal of joining NATO in its constitution, but it was a non-starter until that conflict was resolved.
BTW, Russia has shared borders with multiple NATO countries, starting with Norway in 1949 when NATO was founded, and the Baltics since 2004. A neighbouring country's membership in an alliance is not a casus belli.
Compare: "The serial-killer is responsible but not alone, this second stabbing could have been prevented by not trying to protect yourself from being stabbed again by the same serial-killer!"
That may be true in the most narrow and mechanical sense, but the way it presents blame is very wrong.
That’s bullshit. I’m sorry, but I’m tired of apologists falling to Russian state lies. Falling over to Russian lies is not independent thinking.
The first rule of kremnology is that Russia always lies without a shame, as lies are usefull and they incur zero cost on the liar.
Russia invaded because they felt Ukraine was showing a bad example of slavic people becoming a democracy.
Also Russia has always had an affinity towards Ukrainian genocide. See Holodomor.
Also there is the narrative of lost colonial honor, Crimea, Catherine the great, and other idiotic pseudo-historical ramblings of a demented autocratic propagnada.
> The first rule of kremnology is that Russia always lies without a shame, as lies are usefull and they incur zero cost on the liar.
you’re describing international relations, none of this is specific to russia. people are indoctrinated from birth into nationalist propaganda. when these mouthpieces speak they aren’t lying, but it’s not the truth.
We may find it ridiculous to be afraid of NATO or the USA
Russia isn't "afraid" of either -- it just considers them to be annoyances.
Its regime pretends be "afraid" of both, for the benefit of its internal and external propaganda, and of course to entice its people to sign up for the meat grinder. But that's just its delusion, which we are under no obligation to honor or validate.
It's not convincing. It's a man wrapped up in defending a worldview he's held for 5 decades against real world experiences that directly contradict it.
Putin's actions do not line up with this portrait of him as a hyper-rational long-term strategist acting on the interests of the Russian state. They line up very well with what you would expect from an aging, deeply conspiratorial cold warrior with widely publicized nationalist beliefs [0], a desire to have a legacy that compares against the likes of Peter the Great [1], and the type of delusional thinking that is the near-inevitable result of not having anyone that is willing (due to brownnosing) or able (due to corruption) to tell you hard truths [2].
Even when someone like Tucker Carlson sits down with Putin and practically tees him up to blame the war on US, he goes on ridiculous historical tangents to try to justify why Ukraine isn't real, as opposed to saying anything related to NATO. And that's not a fluke. Russian internal narratives are vastly more focused on nationalism than on anything resembling "NATO made us do this".
You also just have to look at the assassinations carried out on NATO soil - including using chemical and radiological weapons - blowing up Czech ammunition depots, etc. Years and years of unilateral kinetic escalation directly against the west. And then no response whatsoever when Finland and Sweden joined NATO.
Captured, no. Never estimate the human potential for naivete self-deception.
What we do know is that they've been in close contact, and that he is sincerely grateful to them:
In John Mearsheimer's 2023 book "How States Think", the foreword acknowledges him receiving a small financial support from Valdai in conjunction with Best Book award for his 2019 book "The Great Delusion".
Not joining NATO is just a way of deferring the genocide. A regional power has no chance to stand against a global superpower on its own. If not NATO, then a different coalition.
I understand what you mean but Russia is not a global superpower. They are not the USSR. Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess, the US and Europe didn't show any real backbone during the decade following the initial 2014 invasion, or during the Syrian crisis before that, or the 2008 invasion of Georgia before that.
One strand of BS I've seen is "Ukraine now is a different country than the one we promised never to invade."
If that's really how it works, Russia should be ejected from the United Nations and apologize for fraudulently casting votes in the UN Security Council, because it's a different country than the USSR.
Fair, but even if they are not a global superpower, they are a tier above most of their bordering countries. 2014 was a direct result of Germany being dependent on Russian gas.
I wouldn’t argue that EU and the US did not screw up in 20{08,14} though. We did. Massively. We did underestimate Putins long game - had we known how far he wants to go, and I’d argue most post soviet countries knew, this would’ve been nipped in the bud.
Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess,
Actually it was Putin's acting and speaking as if he could partially restore the glory of the former Soviet empire (whose collapse he called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century") that got Russia into its current mess in Ukraine.
He does, in any case, consider the current Russian Federation and the Soviet Union to be continuations of "historic Russia". So it's not Western rhetoric. And it isn't the West that is making him invade Ukraine and menace other countries.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Of course Putin is an imperialist. But for two decades his grievances were treated as though they had legitimacy, or as though Russia should be given the same level deference and appeasement that the USSR was. Even holding Putin's opinions constant, the US and Europe should have pushed back harder against the aggression rather than pretending it wasn't happening.
You could always just bootstrap a nuclear program in Ukraine instead.
They gave up their nukes in exchange for protection from Russia and the US. Both countries have failed to keep up their end of the bargain, so it's sensible for Ukraine to get back what they gave up.
Great idea. Uncontrollable wars? Rising extremism all over the world? New generation of politicians who never experienced real diplomacy? Moralism, division, hatred... of course... the only things to save us all: the nukes. Let's just get it over with!
A somewhat more-amusing proposal I've seen: Ukraine declares "war" against a NATO nation (e.g. Poland) and then immediately surrenders. Then it starts negotiations to secede while keeping NATO membership without a gap.
The folks parroting that phrase live inside an echo chamber. They’re so entrenched they never think to consider that their words might have an interpretation unfavourable to the Kremlin.
Imagine trusting the labels given out by the same country which sent their troops and tanks across the border in 2014, and then spent years smirking and lying their asses off about not being involved. Plus shooting down a civilian jet killing ~300 people.
"Oh, sure, they engage in extra-sketchy forms of state-sponsored violence and chronically lie about it... but that just means they know the material! They'd never lie to me, because we have a special spiritual connection."
Yeah, imagine trusting labels given by the same country that sent their troops and tanks into their neighbor in 2014, and then spent years smirking and lying their asses off about not being involved.
Humans haven't figured out how to economically build something watertight and structurally sound for 30000 years... most structures will rarely last over 65 years without constant maintenance.
Anything around water, acid rain, or anaerobic bacteria will fall apart in time.
All mines eventually fill with water, and collapse in time.
Putting the PR BS in a hole in the ground does not make it safer. lol =3
A blind focus on the concentration of wealth will only improve tech if it helps profit, will only improve lifes if it helps profit, will only protect the environment if it helps profit, will only influence politics to increase profits. It will try to create poverty because that eases exploitation. As you already hinted, the motivation has to change.
I think shooting yourself in the foot is something you would do to avoid drafting. It makes me sad that this may become relevant again in Europe. It certainly is in Ukraine and Russia. : (
