<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>kstenerud</author><text>The &amp;quot;why&amp;quot; is a complicated question that goes to the core character of the nations involved.&lt;p&gt;Russia by nature feels insecure about her borders, and always has. There&amp;#x27;s a long history of invasion that has left a trauma to this day. The one thing that Russia fears more than anything else is encirclement.&lt;p&gt;To this end they have over the centuries embarked on numerous territorial expansions and treaties to create buffer zones between themselves and potential enemies, the most recent of which was the USSR (which proved too costly to maintain).&lt;p&gt;When the Russians couldn&amp;#x27;t keep their &amp;quot;union&amp;quot; going, they entered into negotiations with Western powers about what would happen with these now-free states. This is where things get a little murky, because the Russians insist that they&amp;#x27;d received assurances that NATO would not expand into former Soviet states, whereas the West emphatically maintains that no such assurances were given. The higher ups in the Kremlin firmly believe that the West broke its word, and is thus untrustworthy.&lt;p&gt;As NATO expanded further and further Eastward, Russia&amp;#x27;s insecurities intensified, and the Ukraine was considered to be the last bastion of resistance to encirclement. This is why Russia has spent the past decade meddling in Ukrainian affairs, and why they&amp;#x27;ve stepped up meddling in American politics (Trump is an isolationist and nationalist, which is why Russia favored him).&lt;p&gt;As to what triggered this latest move, that&amp;#x27;s anyone&amp;#x27;s guess. Maybe they got some intel that the Ukraine really was going to gain full NATO membership. Maybe not, and they just got a little too worried about it... We&amp;#x27;ll probably never know. But either way, this current invasion is a drastic effort to keep the Ukraine out of any military alliances with the West.</text><parent_chain><item><author>exikyut</author><text>From the perspective of someone completely naive to the situation: what&amp;#x27;s going on, and WHY is this happening?&lt;p&gt;I partially ask &amp;quot;why?!&amp;quot; plaintively, because this is senseless. But I do also want to understand the... rationalization (&amp;quot;logic&amp;quot; is the &lt;i&gt;wrong&lt;/i&gt; word) behind this action so I can be better informed, and I guess form some predictions about what might happen next, and maybe even get an idea about when this might end (?) :(&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I already don&amp;#x27;t agree with what&amp;#x27;s going on, this is not how to solve disputes and disagreements (especially when the attacker has nuclear capability). I&amp;#x27;m just looking for facts and positions on the countries involved here - something something editorialization and signal-to-noise ratio.&lt;p&gt;The one mildly good thing I can think of right now is that the general commoditization of technology (TV, radio, phone, internet) hopefully means lot of people are aware of what&amp;#x27;s going on and, also hopefully, able to take decisive action and even collaborate and work together. Hopefully Ukraine prioritizes reinforcing the cell network :&amp;#x2F;. And if this is all-out war then hopefully extraordinary maneuvers are  acceptable and supported to help innocent people stay far away from the line of fire. This doesn&amp;#x27;t feel like when the US occupied Afghanistan :(</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Dmitri Alperovitc: “Putin speech is over. Chilling. War has begun”</title><url>https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1496680828285460490</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; I partially ask &amp;quot;why?!&amp;quot; plaintively, because this is senseless&lt;p&gt;Neither imperialist conquest nor the manufacturing of external crisis and conflict as an attempt to rally domestic support behind a leader are &lt;i&gt;senseless&lt;/i&gt;; they both have internal logic and a whole lot of historic precedent of usefulness to the faction pursuing them.</text><parent_chain><item><author>exikyut</author><text>From the perspective of someone completely naive to the situation: what&amp;#x27;s going on, and WHY is this happening?&lt;p&gt;I partially ask &amp;quot;why?!&amp;quot; plaintively, because this is senseless. But I do also want to understand the... rationalization (&amp;quot;logic&amp;quot; is the &lt;i&gt;wrong&lt;/i&gt; word) behind this action so I can be better informed, and I guess form some predictions about what might happen next, and maybe even get an idea about when this might end (?) :(&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I already don&amp;#x27;t agree with what&amp;#x27;s going on, this is not how to solve disputes and disagreements (especially when the attacker has nuclear capability). I&amp;#x27;m just looking for facts and positions on the countries involved here - something something editorialization and signal-to-noise ratio.&lt;p&gt;The one mildly good thing I can think of right now is that the general commoditization of technology (TV, radio, phone, internet) hopefully means lot of people are aware of what&amp;#x27;s going on and, also hopefully, able to take decisive action and even collaborate and work together. Hopefully Ukraine prioritizes reinforcing the cell network :&amp;#x2F;. And if this is all-out war then hopefully extraordinary maneuvers are  acceptable and supported to help innocent people stay far away from the line of fire. This doesn&amp;#x27;t feel like when the US occupied Afghanistan :(</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Dmitri Alperovitc: “Putin speech is over. Chilling. War has begun”</title><url>https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1496680828285460490</url></story>