I replied there.

You won’t hear this often in mainstream media but NATO expansionism

Dont sovereign countries have the right to join alliances? Would you support the US invading Mexico if Mexico joins a chinese led alliance? Would you support a cuban invasion during the Cold War for similar reasons?

the involvement of neo-nazi far right paramilitary groups in the Maidan revolution in Ukraine were legitimate grievances for Russia.

Putin is also supported by neo-nazis. The premiere russian military organization in Ukraine was named Wagner. What is your argument here? Shitty people follow shitty ideologies. You fight with the people you have, not with the people you want to have. This is problematic but it isnt as if Ukraine was left with many alternatives.

Ukraine is not that different to Russia in the end. Both have insane corruption issues and both have neonazis. Neither is an excuse to invade anyone or to not help the victims of an invasion.

Russia’s resources are vast and they are supported by China. Ukraine is backed by the deep pockets of NATO.

Russia has the gdp of Italy. Russia is big in terms of geographical area but not really in terms of economy. If you think Russia has vast resources, wait till you find out about the resources the West has. It’s all about political will.

And China doesnt really support Russia, at least not in terms of military help, at least not for the moment. China supports Russia as much as Turkey supports it, ie it facilitates trade and takes advantage of Russia’s lack of alternatives when it comes to trading.

Over half a million troops on both sides have been killed

Casualties are not dead. It is dead+injured.

A diplomatic solution three years ago could have possibly prevented all that.

What diplomatic solution would have prevented Russia from invading? Should have the West pre-emptively sanctioned and cut off Russia from the world economy in order to prevent the invasion? Should the West have said “ok, we wont let Ukraine join NATO and EU”? Should countries not have the right to choose what they do?

Even during the early stages of invasion, Macron legitimately thought he could stop it, he still wanted to keep the bridge with Russia alive. Go back and read some articles. Now Macron is one of the most anti-Russia politicians in the world? Why? Because he eventually realized that there was no alternative and that Putin was bullshitting him the whole time.

In Russia’s mind there are 2 types of countries, sovereign countries where rules do not apply to (the US, China, Russia) and minor countries that are just following what their “master” country tells them. It is inconceivable to the russian mind that 2 countries could freely associate with each other. Hence the whole “NATO expansion” narrative. As if NATO tanks marched in and forced those countries to join it.

The exact opposite happened actually. Eastern Europe was so afraid even after the USSR collapse, that some of them blackmailed NATO to let them join. Poland literally threatened to get their own nukes if they werent allowed to join NATO.

Ask yourself, why would all eastern european countries want to join NATO? Your answer is the Ukraine invasion. They wanted to join because they didnt want to be like Ukraine is now.

So invade your country, grab a few parts, then we have a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution where i keep the land that i already got. And then i repeat it. Is this a “pro-peace” stand? Or is it a “pro-conquering” stance, that enables this behaviour?

Would he have the same opinion about nazi Germany invading and conquering other countries? Maybe a peace for our time kind of deal?

Greeks living in current western Turkey were called Ionians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionians

They were mostly athenean settlers, which is why when Persia conquered them, they asked Athens for help. Athens helped them but the ionian revolt failed and Persia was super pissed. The persian emperor had his servant reminding him daily to “remember the athenians”.

This is the main reason behind the persian invasion of mainland Greece. The persians burnt Athens to the ground, which eventually led to Alexander the OK burning Persepolis(Persian Empire’s Capital) to the ground(a couple centuries later).

Since turks came from the East, Ionians were kinda the first greeks they met, so they decided that all greeks are Ionians(Yunans). Or other non greeks in the East were already calling greeks “yunans” and turks just adopted that terminology too. Especially since that term had been mostly depreciated by the time the turks arrived to the neighbourhood.

Most of Sicily was a greek and Syracuse was a greek colony. In fact Archimedes helped defend it against the romans. Most of southern Italy was greek, before Rome became big(and conquered other italians, greeks and carthaginians).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Graecia

And even after the romans conquered “everything”, greek culture was still dominant since the romans were greekaboos(and greek culture was everywhere because of Alexander the OK).

An ai can help a lot of non tech savvy people. Imagine every time they want to do something, they could just ask the ai on how to do it, instead of asking you or having to go through a billion SEO garbage google results.

They have US military bases there

There are no US military bases in Cyprus. There are british ones(since Cyprus used to be part of the British Empire).

And there is 0% chance that Cyprus would let israeli military launch attacks from Cyprus.

Nor is there much strategic reason to do so, unless Hezbollah has some s-300/400 and Israel needs to go around them and attack from a different direction. But they dont. And even if they had, Cyprus has basically no reason to allow Israel to do that and there is 0 precedent for that either.

I think it is just Hezbollah being an attention whore.

I dont understand why Americans are horny for mandatory voting. Voting is mandatory in Greece, it makes no difference. It is theoretically illegal to not vote but are you going to imprison people for not voting? So it isnt enforced, at all.

No one is voting because it is mandatory. Greece has 60% participation.