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0 pointsthe_mar4y ago0 comments

Ukrainian-American here. Depends on how you look at it. Comparing Donetsk to Crimea for instance, Crimea is in much better shape: no active war for the past 8 years. I second the opinion that this isn't the ending that people wanted, but hopefully it is the ending nonetheless.

For the record, I do not condone the annexation of Crimea, but I also do not support giving it back to Ukraine, as it just creates unnecessary tension at this point. I understand, how globally we should not just be ok with countries taking parts of other countries, but at the same time the reverse transaction will bring more misery to people of crimea.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

mcguire4y ago· 3 in thread

Makes for interesting strategies for a country wishing to expand.

If you go in fast and settle the issue quickly, it's a fait accompli and anyone seeking to "reverse the transaction" is just bringing misery.

If you can't settle the issue quickly, support a local insurgency until the international community stops paying attention and then go in. Everybody will be grateful.

It's kind of how the Soviet Union and the west divided up Europe after WWII.

the_marOP4y ago

"It's kind of how the Soviet Union and the west divided up Europe after WWII." - first question: "define Europe", 2nd question: "who exactly is west?", 3rd question: "did you just compare WWII to what exactly?"

mcguire4y ago

Europe. The funny-shaped land between the Urals and the Atlantic.

Here's a map of the Allied offensives in the last two years of the war.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Second_w...

Note how the western allies (The US and UK, mostly, plus France, Belgium, Netherlands, and so forth) controlled Italy, France, the Low Countries, and the western half of Germany. The USSR controlled Finland through the Balkans and eastern Germany.

The general agreements of how everything would settle down were set by the Potsdam conference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Agreement), generally along the lines of countries' pre-war borders (although the USSR presented a fait accompli annexing part of East Prussia and attaching parts of east Germany to Poland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oder-neisse.gif) because they had troops there). This result hardened into what eventually became NATO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#/media/File:History_of_NA..., the 1949 version) and the Warsaw Pact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact#/media/File:Iron_C...). And that's how Europe ended up divided into East and West.

(Modulo the invasion of Hungary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary#Communism_(1945%E2%80%...) in 1956 and Czechoslovakia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia#Communist_Czech...) in 1968[1] when those countries flirted with being insufficiently Red.)

Apocryphon4y ago

History never ended with MAD, it just continues on in sneakier ways.

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