alt Hacker NewsI’m Ukrainian. I upvoted your comment because I want to show more people how this kind of thinking is mistaken. This kind of logic is very common in those who don’t support Ukraine: they think NATO is “using” Ukraine to fight Russia. They somehow forget that Ukrainians are willingly fighting to defend their own country — NATO can’t “use” a people who are unwilling to fight on their own. (Sure some of my friends have been unwillingly conscripted but that is normal human weakness, that is not evidence that Ukrainians don’t want to defend Ukraine).
If I helped a friend fight off their enemy am I “using” the friend? I saw with my own eyes the thousands of Ukrainians who lined up to fight (and continue to do so) to defend their home country. Sure NATO is supporting us because that’s what allies do, and of course we wish for their increased support. However NATO is not “using” us against our will — they have no ability to compel us to do that.
Sure NATO is already waging war against Russia, but Russia started it.
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Russia adhered to the Minsk agreements as long as it could, it did not want to start this war. Both Merkel and Hollande, as far as I remember, admitted that the Minsk agreements were not made in good faith, and their purpose was only to give time to Ukraine to rearm. Russia started the war after it became clear that NATO was going to enter Ukraine, and after it was abundantly clear for years that the real purpose of ukranian nationalists was collaborating with the west to destroy Russia and its identity (though you will probably negate this, you could not negate that there was a tacit and creeping legitimization in Ukraine of murders and violent actions against people identifying themselves as Russians).
..and Crimea and Donbass do not want to be "defended by you". They actually want you to be as far as possible from them. Though of course if you go in there, and do what you did when you returned to Izyum and Kupyansk, people will be silent.
I hope you understand that (but to people such as yourself, this rarely matters, in my experience).
We (or at least not the insane part of) in NATO are using you, in the sense that it's easier for us to throw money at you fighting Russia than not, you losing, then us having to lose people.
I don't know how I feel about that, on one hand, we are helping you defend, on the other we are just going "well, at least it's not our civilians and soldiers dying".
But, either way, thank you!