Thread

September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy

522 points · 391 comments · marjancek

jakozaur · 1790761035 · focus · HN ↗
I'm Polish, but this is such a pessimistic, overdramatic take. The visualisations are impressive, but you're living in Poland's golden age. See this Hacker News story with 1,000+ upvotes: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062117">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062117
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy, but it has proved that Russia is weak. The price shock will speed up the transition to renewables, and Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz. So many of the other issues are solvable.
It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
1. tejohnso · 1790770682 · focus · HN ↗
  > it has proved that Russia is weak.
  How? Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO on a front that it is continually pushing further west, with about 20% of Ukraine now lost. If anything NATO and the promise of US security is what has been shown to be weak. And I don't think the idea of US/Western superiority is ever going to come back to what it was given what has happened in the Ukraine and Iran theaters in recent past.
  1. sobellian · 1790772161 · focus · HN ↗
    I am curious how Russian people feel about this propaganda line that they're fighting NATO. It's obviously nonsense, along the lines of "war is peace." Russia borders NATO and there is no front there. Russia invaded a non-NATO country and immediately bogged down against an army that does not fight according to NATO doctrine. I have to believe this is something the average Russian realizes.
    specproc · 1790773556 · focus · HN ↗
    Not Russian, but spent a lot of time out east.
    Russia is reflexively anti-NATO as NATO is reflexively anti-Russia.
    NATO is an alliance that was created in opposition to the Soviet Union. NATO has absorbed parts of the former Soviet Union.
    Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rightly or wrongly, Putin owes a lot of his original popularity to dealing with the aftermath.
    Russia, rightly or wrongly, sees colour revolutions as intelligence operations, and territorial conquest.
    Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.
    NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it.
    These are all pretty normal perspectives for most Russians. They're arguably pretty based, and not necessarily a product of internal propaganda campaigns.
    The thing that westerners don't get about Russia, and the reason we're stuck in this Godforsaken conflict, is that we personalise things around Putin. We think that if Putin dies, everything will magically improve.
    The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him.
    someonebaggy · 1790775082 · focus · HN ↗
    > Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.
    This is such obvious bullshit. Russia already has NATO on its borders, and is attempting to expand it's borders so they will contact even more of NATO.
    c-smile · 1790783960 · focus · HN ↗
    > will contact even more of NATO
    Geography and Istanbul would be agreement to make Ukraine neutral tells exactly the opposite.
    But "let's just fight" (c) Boris Johnson (GB PM at that time). Yeah, why not?
    tim333 · 1790848499 · focus · HN ↗
    Huh? Geography shows NATO borders Russia in Latvia and Estonia, now also Finland. Ukraine was neutral till 2014 when Russia invaded it. Russia is so full of shit. It's like 1984 war is peace type stuff.

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