We can’t look at the past with the understanding we have now and think they knew this would happen though. They made it clear they expected an easy victory.

They told their soldiers about the easy victory.

Do you think they didn't know about the Ukraine fortifications built since 2014? Have you seen their faces when they announced the 'operation'? They had to take Grozny. Why should Kyiv fall in 3 days?

You don't send your best troops into a position they can't get out of if you don't expect results. Sure, after the collapse of the government there's still going to be some fighting, but they thought they could take out the government in one swift blow.

Have you looked at the book? This conflict is in the making for a long time. Putin tried to win over Germany with cheap gas to become part of the West and avoid the conflict but Merkel betrayed him and just took the gas without changing the original goals.

Yes, it's been coming for a long time. Obviously. If it wasn't Ukraine it'd be something else. Russia was always going to push something to the point where other nations wouldn't let them anymore. It's not like Ukraine is the first sovereign nation they've invaded. It also wouldn't have been the last. Germany has not "taken" their gas though. They are still purchasing it, which is dumb because it increases they amount the need to spend in Ukraine, but it is what it is. If only they hadn't shut down those nuclear reactors a few years ago...

I never said the US doesn't benefit from the war, though they wouldn't if Russia's invasion went to plan. Russia thought they could walk in and take over. They clearly thought they could take it all and would gain a lot from owning it; a port in the black sea and the breadbasket of Europe.

Cui bono? That's more complicated than just "who's benefitting now."

Also, again, Putin wanted to cement a legacy. He benefits most if they were successful.

However, now basically everyone except Russia gains from it. China, North Korea, and Iran get to have Russia owe them a lot (We'll see how that debt is repaid, though I know there's some particular land China at least wants, but also they love their soft power). Europe gets a significantly weaker Russia threatening them. The US gets to further extend its power. A whole lot of nations get to test weapons (and secretly gain experience) with a new type of warfare.

We can't look at the past with the understanding we have now and think they knew this would happen though. They made it clear they expected an easy victory.

In that light, aren't Nato's actions forcing Russia's hands?

Forcing? No. They're choosing what they're doing. There's plenty of other options for them. In what way were they forced to invade Crimea, and then the rest of Ukraine?

If you're going to make the "buffer zone" argument, see how that's decreased since the invasion, not increased, so if that was the goal, is was incredibly stupid. Who would suspect invading a sovereign nation would make other nations less likely to join an alliance against you?

Probably the best option for Russia (not Putin though) would be closer economic ties to Europe. They are their largest trade partner after all. However, Putin wanted to leave a legacy of "restoring the former boarders of the USSR" so he's destroying the nation he's supposed to protect to have his legacy that he won't get anyway.

That's not even remotely close to what I said. Try again, and don't straw man. I engaged with you, and you repeat easily disprovable nonsense straight from Russian media without any reason to believe it. No proof or logic for why it makes sense.

Alright, you're just being a Russian mouthpiece.

Oh, Russia was promised NATO wouldn't expand? Not so much.

The entire rest of your comment is similar Russian drivel. I'm not going to spend any more time with this because your opinion is not founded in logic. "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into." You have a chip on your shoulder and it's hindering your understanding.

As I think it was a professor of mine said, international politics is about power, not good. States are always doing things to make themselves more powerful. None of them are good. Some of them are just temporarily doing more evil to gain power than others. Once you look at the world with this point of view, it makes much more sense (though some leaders are just stupid, crazy, or self-obsessed).

First of all, the country currently forcing my country to cut expenditure in healthcare and to put it into military is the US, not Russia.

Wrong. There's no requirement for spending as a part of NATO. There's also no requirement for the US to do anything. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is almost certainly the reason your country, whichever it is, is increasing military spending.

Second of all, Russia doesn't have geopolitical reasons, nor the military/economic strength, to invade EU countries.

They have reasons. Some EU nations are former Soviet states. Just the "restore the former borders of the Soviet union" reason is reason enough, ignoring the resources or anything else. Do they have the strength? Why is that included here. Does it matter? It doesn't have to be smart to happen.

And even if it did, the EU has nukes so you don't need further military expenditure as deterrent.

I don't know what you people who keep bringing up nukes think they're for. You can't use them. Using them will only ensure you lose, because everyone turns against you. They are only useful to deter other nuclear strikes, and also to deter nations from creating a last stand situation where you have already lost so there's nothing to lose in using nukes. You can't win a war with nukes.

Third, even if you forget all I've said above, the EU can still have a military alliance without the US, and it would be a much better thing.

Forget or dispute? You're implying your logic is faultless. Anyway, sure. They can. They don't though. I advocate that they do. I'd love to see the EU with its own defensive force. I don't want them to be reliant on the US, like they currently are. However, that necessarily requires most EU nations to increase their military spending, which you're apparently against. You want magic, not reality. You want all the benefits of military power without any of the costs. Sorry. That can't happen.

You're confusing NATO with the UN.

The end of NATO doesn't mean any of that. We have bases in non-NATO countries too, so obviously that is nit because if NATO. It does mean Russia has almost free reign to invade more countries. If Russia can cause issues without being part of an alliance like NATO, why do you think the US can't when it's not part of NATO?

I think the Titanic could use a few more wealthy visitors.

It should be something easy to see. Part of the advantage of cutting off someone's hand isn't just the punishment, it's a marker that a person is a thief that they can't get rid of. Ideally it'd be something obvious and easy to see, that's also uncommon enough naturally that you know what happened.

Lol. You're following me around now to insult me? And you called me a neckbeard...

Well, it used to be that they were too. Have you heard of all the cities in Europe that were effectively destroyed during WWII?

It comes and goes, usually whenever it's useful. It sucks, but war is horrible. If civilians don't want to be targets they should pressure their governments to not be in them. Yes, sometimes it's worth fighting, but sometimes it isn't.

I think you're being sarcastic here, but there is a trend in that direction, with paralympics and such. It all comes down to this. How is the protected class of athletes defined? If a space for female athletes is going to exist at all, there needs to be some definition, which inevitably is going to feel arbitrary to some. The one they've gone with excludes males and most intersex individuals - allowing a little wiggle room here for folks with XY who have no male testosterone production which medically speaking makes it into a "woman at birth with low androgens" competition since those people will usually have a female phenotype at birth.

I'm not being sarcastic. High level competition is defined by outliers. There's many cis women competing in top level sports who naturally have high testosterone, and they're often blocked by these rules despite them supposedly being to "protect the integrity of women in sports." They should be allowed to compete in women's sports, if we're calling it women's sports. If we want to divide it by testosterone level then fine, but be honest about that and allow men with naturally low testosterone too. Women's sports should include all women.

In the case of Imane - it may speculatively (after now reading a little about the circumstances and the "leaked" results) be a case of XY intersex with some kind of androgen dysfunction, either through reduced production via enzyme deficiency or partial insensitivity to testo.

There are many things it could be. We could speculate all day. This rule is not targeting those strictly though. It's targeting testosterone level, which varies by person and there are cis women with higher levels than some men. Biology is complex. Top level sports will inharently choose those best at the sport. It's going to choose outliers, not representative of the average person. Women's sports still don't allow most women to compete reasonably. It never has, and probably never should. If it self-selects for people with higher testosterone then fine. They shouldn't be banned for it, especially since they also can't compete with men usually.

You can though - at least to the extent that we in empirical science usually refer to "proving" or "disproving" (or rather, indicate or contraindicate a hypothesis). In this case it'd be studies/metastudies on injuries in different kinds of matchups (which can either show a statistically significant difference or not) or in performance of different athletes.

Yes, and I'm sure (especially for boxing) there are more injuries. I'm not trying to argue against that. I'm saying, it isn't worth the witch hunt. Iif you care about injuries caused by trans athletes, are there actually a large enough number to warrant this. Presumably we shouldn't be preventing cis-women from competing, even if they cause more injuries, right? It's boxing. Injuries are going to happen. If there are cis-women who just hit really hard for some reason, that's part of the sport.

The case you linked here is regarding football, not boxing, which simply makes it a question of performance rather than also safety (as it is with boxing or other combat sports).

Exactly. Even when injuries aren't the issue they're pushing these rules, so I don't trust that this is particularly strongly inspired by injuries. It's about people complaining trans athletes (or rather people they, usually baselessly, suspect are trans) are ruining the sport for "real" women.

Performance wise, the most "fair" might be to sort athletes into leagues based on testosterone levels. It's already known that higher testosterone levels tend to correlate with higher performance, so rather than imposing an arbitrary limit where only the athletes in the "sweet spot" just below the limit get to excel, grade them into brackets based on that.

This has been my argument for ages, or at least it's the logical extension of the argument that we should be protecting women in sports by banning certain women who we don't want competing. The fact of the matter is high level sports selectively choose certain attributes. I'm sure as hell not a top athlete and could never be. I'm not asking for rules to be made that allow me to compete against top athletes, but if we need to protect women's "fair" competition strongly for some reason, shouldn't we also have leagues for all types of people? Doesn't longer arms lead to more injuries in boxing? Is it "fair" that sports aren't designed specifically for me to be able to win?

I don't know what the answer is, but breaking sports into a "premier" league (no barriers; anyone can compete so only the best of the best rise) and then having a ton of leagues with different sets of rules to exclude people seems like the logical conclusion to this. I can't honestly say I think that's the best solution, because it'd make it ridiculously hard to watch, find teams, and track. I do think it's the only way the argument for testosterone testing works though. It doesn't work if you're excluding cis women from women's sports, otherwise it isn't actually protecting the integrity of women's sports. Top level competition is a game of outliers.

You can't disprove it. It's a value call. Is it worth restricting players who should (in my opinion at least) be allowed to play for this? Are the trans (or higher testosterone cis) players actually that big of an issue, or is it a culture issue?

Here's a case where cis-female Zambian soccer player was barred from playing. Did that do more good than harm? I doubt it. This is far from the only case where cis women are prevented from competing because of made up rules that make them ineligible. I'm sure it'll happen in this scenario too.

Headline news, physiology and most importantly "data and medical evidence from an extensive range of sources and consulted widely with other sports and experts across the world" - as they claim. I don't have time to personally look into that (sucks to have a life amirite) but am inclined to trust that they care for the athletes and have done due diligence.

Here's the issue we have: you trust them because they put out a press release with this claim. I don't, because it's a press release. You want others to prove them wrong instead of needing them to prove they're right.

I'm sure there's some truth to the statement, but did they actively look at the points made by the opposition and weigh it all? There's no claim for this here even, and even if there were I wouldn't trust it implicitly. To be scientific you need to actively try to disprove your assumptions. If they still hold then cool, but you have to be critical.

At the end of the day, this is a business. They're trying to make money. This is something that I'll never just give my trust to. If they prove their claims then fine, but I'm going to assume all decisions are business decisions first, not the best decision for all athletes necessarily.

There are several cases in sports already where people who are born women and have a female phenotype and genotype, but have naturally higher levels of testosterone, who have been banned from competition.

The message they use is the they're "protecting women" but it isn't actually the goal. Often there aren't any cases of transgender athletes outperforming their cis opponents, yet they still try to create these rules. It's frequently actively harmful to many cisgendered women.

The problem with all of this is the "basic biology" crowd never learn that biology is really fucking complex. What they learn in grade school is not the totality of biology, yet they assume they must be experts and force their very limited and wrong views on other people. It's bad and harmful and siding with them makes them feel all the more justified in their crusade of bullshit and misinformation.

cancer isnt some lightning bolt that hits you the moment you get a hint of something bad near you.

You're correct, it isn't a lightning bolt. This goes against your statement, not with it. It's an accumulation of increased risk, and eventually it just happens (or doesn't). The more things that increase your risk the higher the odds. You don't just get cancer because someone smoked near you. You have an increased risk of cancer based on how much you've been around your entire life, and everything else that contributes. Reducing risk means reducing as many contributors as possible.

You must have a hard time being anywhere close to a car if you think you are getting cancer because of a 2 second wiff from some guys cig on a beach.

One thing is bad, so we can't do anything about another thing? "People are being killed by cars, but we can't work to reduce that because people are dying from heart disease!" How silly.