• rbesfe
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    2 months ago

    “NATO encroachment” is a direct result of Russian aggression. If Russia had stayed out of Ukraine in 2014 then Ukraine would not have asked for NATO training assistance. If they had stayed out in 2022, Finland and Sweden would not be members.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      2 months ago

      What are you even talking about. This all started back in the 90s, and has been going on since. In fact, plenty of western experts have been warning about NATO expansion for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started. Here’s what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:

      https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/

      https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/

      50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:

      George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.

      Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"

      Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.

      Anybody who pretends that this all started in 2014 is deeply intellectually dishonest.

      • rbesfe
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        2 months ago

        You can’t refute the argument so you just start yapping about some random opinions and move the goalposts to another continent. And then you talk about “intellectual dishonesty” lmao

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          2 months ago

          I’ve literally refuted your argument by demonstrating that NATO expansion has been happening since the fall of USSR and that plenty of prominent people in the west have warned that it would culminate in a war. Nobody is moving any goal posts on you here. You’re the one who can’t refute basic facts of the situation, and having no integrity, you try to deflect from that. It’s both pathetic and transparent. Good job outing yourself as a troll. Bye.

          • rbesfe
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            2 months ago

            You clearly lack reading comprehension skills, because my argument had nothing to do with the timeline of NATO expansion

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          2 months ago

          The US doing a color revolution in Ukraine in 2014 was what started the civil war there last I checked. So, pretty clearly it was the west that violated the sovereignty of Ukraine by violently overthrowing a democratically elected government and replacing it with literal fascists.

          You are the one being intellectually dishonest in this thread.