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Why Russia Attacked Ukraine – Starcraft Game Example Explains Putin’s Logic

by OtakuApologist
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Written by Otaku Apologist

While reading the news and social media, I noticed that to this day, strikingly few seem to understand the Russian reasoning for attacking Ukraine. But the Russia-Ukraine war is not complicated, if you’ve played any war strategy games. Below is a picture of several Terran bunkers in Starcraft, a war strategy game by Blizzard Entertainment. The bunker is a defensive structure that can host four Terran infantry.

To kill the infantry inside, the enemy has to destroy the bunker first. It has a rather large health pool. While inside the bunker, the infantry do not receive damage.

Just like NATO’s anti-missile systems, which can block a nuclear first-strike, the bunker can be built to defend your own territory, or built near an adversary’s territory. The bunker can easily be fortified by additional structures that block enemies from reaching your men, allowing safe troop build-up behind them. You can prepare your attack in peace.

Any defensive systems can be used offensively too. A fortified position can be costly to break, unfeasible even.

Building defensive systems near an adversary’s base leads to the prospect of asymmetrical damage, which is a requirement for a decisive military victory.

The bunker is effectively the same as anti-missile systems that can intercept warheads. Because Ukraine wanted to join NATO and have nukes on their soil, which president Zelenskyy is on record suggesting since February 2022, Russia intervened before they could apply for membership. Because after Ukraine is shielded by NATO’s article 5, Ukraine can accept all the NATO troops and nukes they want on their soil and point them to Moscow.

Russia wouldn’t be able to do shit about NATO nukes within striking distance of their capitol, not without triggering article 5, so they had to go before that. The issue is the prospect of asymmetrical damage.

I will illustrate this concept with a chess analogy. If you’ve ever played amateur chess, the game usually has two anxious players positioning pieces on the board for a long time before the first kill. Each piece’s position is fortified by another piece, each ready to eat the aggressor in revenge. Nobody will attack until there’s an advantage to be had.

Once either player leaves themselves open to asymmetrical damage, the other attacks.

This triggers the tit-for-tat of doom. Pieces start eating each other until one side cannot retaliate anymore, leaving one side with just one more piece, giving them an advantage going into the late game. All you need is one additional tower or bishop or even a pawn, then it’s your game to lose. All you need to win in chess is a slight advantage.

You ask, why would Ukraine ever attack Russia? Better question is, which of Russia’s neighbor’s haven’t attacked her? Even my home country, Finland, attacked Russia in the second world war. Finland was allied with the Nazi regime. We had an epic pincer attack planned with Hitler’s generals. Today’s friends can be tomorrow’s enemies – Russia knows this.

Russia was also attacked by Napoleon of France in the 18th century. In fact, they’ve been attacked by the Turks, the Germans, the Finns, the Italians, even the fucking mongols. Russia has been in wars every few decades since the 9th century. That is over one thousand years of war!

Putin has said “war is mathematics”. And this math was almost broken, when Zelenskyy started wooing the west, in particular the NATO alliance, for security guarantees. Because any defensive systems, be they contracts or men or missile systems, can be used offensively when friends turn into enemies.

This jackass actually said this shit publicly. Few days from these comments, Russia rolled out.

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14 comments

Bart G. September 30, 2022 - 00:31

I know it is the point of the piece but you didn’t mention the actual real world mechanics of ‘defensive’ NATO equipment effectively being offensive toward Russia. The Anti-Balistic missile systems in Poland (which borders Russia in Kaliningrad), make nuclear first strike easier by potentially negating nuclear counter strikes. The closer these systems are to Russia the more effective they are at stopping Russia from responding to a nuclear first strike. These anti-balistic missiles are also a dual-use tech and can actually have nuclear warheads placed on them.

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OtakuApologist September 30, 2022 - 09:12

I actually did mention the anti-missile systems, but so briefly that it was easy to miss. I edited the article a little more, so it’s clearer on this point. Thanks for the feedback.

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valdimir P September 30, 2022 - 16:01

Any insinuation that Russia did this to defend themselves is absurd. NATO is a defensive alliance. Which NATO country is threatening to invade Russia? Which NATO country seems even remotely interested in invading Russia? Europe was sucking on the teat of cheap Russian energy. the US is on the other side of the world.

people who roll out the asymmetrical defence argument have no idea what it takes to stop a hypersonic nuclear MIRV. Realistically if Russia made a full-out nuclear attack, current technology isn’t anywhere near ready to stop those missiles – that’s the consensus amongst military personnel and scientists. Both the US and Russia know this.

On the other hand, Putin is pretty transparent about wanting to restore the soviet union, and he’s engaged in this annexation activity before Ukraine joining NATO was a major threat (Crimea). They also showed the same behaviour in Georgia in 2008.

Instead of making MASSIVE leaps in logic to paint Russia as a scared victim and NATO as the aggressor, the more obvious and reasonable argument is that Putin wants to reconquer old Soviet territories, and gets a massive popularity boost when he does so (i.e. Crimea). Russia is the aggressor in this war. Ukraine is a victim and NATO is a guardian.

Good thing this war is going horribly for Russia. Justice prevails.

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Throwaway Account October 2, 2022 - 12:15

You make a lot of solid point but I’d disagree with restoring the Soviet Union. Putin wants to be Tsar, not General Secretary. He wants a return of the Russian Empire.

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Bart G. October 5, 2022 - 22:33

Dude, NATO is not a ‘defensive alliance’ if by that you mean exclusively defensive. There are 2 wars NATO actually fought in 1) Yugoslavia and 2) Afghanistan. Yugo is easy, no NATO country was attacked, not defensive.

With the Afghan war, the US WAS attacked on 9/11 by a bunch of Saudis & a Egyptians hiding out in Afghanistan. While there was no direct Afghan Gov’t involvement in 9/11, when the US demanded Afghanistan hand over bin Laden, after some negotiations, they didn’t. NATO then invaded Afghan. The US with NATO support stayed there 20 years, including 10 years after bin Laden was killed… in Pakistan. The US never threatened to invade Pakistan for not handing over bin Laden IIRC. NATO members also effectively fought on al-Qaeda’s side at various points in the Yemen and Syria conflicts.

Hopefully you can see why some people don’t think the Afghan war was the most defensive war ever. Maybe you can also see why NATO might seem a little scary to the guys they don’t like.

Maybe read article 5 again. It is by no means a clear cut obligation to go to war in case of an attack on another NATO member.

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OtakuApologist October 1, 2022 - 01:26

The exact same propaganda playbook was used to justify the US attacks to Libya, Iraq and Syria, which posed no threat to the US, except they were independent states pursuing their own paths. Libya was going to launch a new commodity-backed African currency that would rival the fiat currency system favored in the west. Syria is an ally of Russia. Iraq was an enemy of Israel. And those are only the most recent examples of violent regime changes, or attempts at them. Notice how these destroyed countries are also rich in natural resources. Ensuring that governments that aren’t on board with the US aren’t forming a competing bloc and supplying each other with the resources to compete militarity and economically, is part of the US military doctrine, also called the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

Your argument is absolutely moot, because you display an ignorance of historical precedents. These psychopaths who run the US military industrial complex have used almost the exact same tactics every time, to destroy rivaling nation states. Stop falling for the scam.

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valdimir P October 1, 2022 - 02:21

This is peak whataboutism. We’re not discussing US interventions – I’m sure some of them were bad, but does that justify Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine? Do two wrongs make a right? You didn’t address a single point in my comment, and pivoted to “what about the US?”.

The historical context is in my last two paragraphs – Putin’s publicly stated goals and past actions. Read it again.

“military industrial complex” – this is the conspiracy theorist’s bogeyman that they can ignorantly blame everything on. If you haven’t noticed from 2022, the US economy HATES war. military companies (i.e. Raytheon, General Dynamics) make up less that 5% of the S&P 500. Why do you think they have an outsized influence on the government? Defence isn’t even in the top 10 industries in terms on money spent on lobbying.

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OtakuApologist October 6, 2022 - 05:45

The military hardware industry is getting a jolt from this war. Do not underestimate how corrupt the business models of some assholes are. The war on drugs is another example of that… many immoral people benefit financially from the legal structure. Cartels have increased profits, lawyers and judges get lots of work, etc. I’m not saying we should legalize drugs, but I’m sure solutions can be made that reduce the size of the cartels. Legalize weed at least, reduce the crime lords’ portfolios.

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valdimir P October 4, 2022 - 01:05

For someone so obsessed with freeze peach, why are the comments on this site moderated? Why do I need to enter my name and email?

It’s not like you have a troll or spam problem, barely anyone comments as is.

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Reynold Ryan October 4, 2022 - 01:44

There are plenty of blogposts here I disagree with, and a few which I find incredibly refreshing like the calling out of cuckold culture. But regardless, it’s likely that without any form of active moderation, human or bot, this site would be plagued with autogenerated tech support scam links or edgelords asking if we’ve heard the good news about cock vore.

Regarding the global situation, it’s one thing to point out the US’s involvements and getting their finger in every damn pie, and I personally think that the recent visits to Taiwan were an exceedingly dumb miscalculation and needless show of defiance, but propping this up as an example for why poor cornered Russia had to act the way they did is incredibly silly. It’s playground whining of “But he started it!” except with even more unneeded collateral and civilian damage. We shouldn’t fall for the US military industrial complex scam – why should the rest of the world fall for the Russian scam even if we detest the US that much?

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OtakuApologist October 6, 2022 - 05:37

The site is not asking your real name, there’s no verification process. Just enter an alias. You can also sign up with a bullshit email, if you’re so paranoid as to want to hide an email address you actually use.

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VladimirP October 4, 2022 - 01:55

“it’s likely that without any form of active moderation, human or bot, this site would be plagued with autogenerated tech support scam links or edgelords asking if we’ve heard the good news about cock vore.”

Massive x to doubt. If this site was getting that much attention, we see at least a few comments every post. Check the last 5 pages and tell me how many comments you see.

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BacktoNormalpls October 14, 2022 - 23:15

Dude, all I can say is ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THIS WEBSITE’. This used to be a fun website for deviants to enjoy Hentai Reviews, and now I’m seeing this toxic garbage. I just want the silly and cool deviant games like before and not misinformed, politically-charged, utter nonsense.

Return and stick to reviews, as remember, this is what this website is. This is not Twitter, it’s a website meant for filthy games of cartoon men and women.

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OtakuApologist October 16, 2022 - 12:46

I decide what the website is about.

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