Comments by "Mitch Young" (@mitchyoung93) on "Jeffrey Sachs and why he is WRONG" video.

Russia didn't invade Hungary or Czechoslovakia. That was the Soviet Union, or more properly the Warsaw pact, and no doubt there were troops from the Ukrainian SSR among the invaders. Russia's 'invasion' of Georgia was in response to the Georgian central government attacking an area that had been autonomous in the Soviet Union and which won its autonomy back in the early 90s, when Russia was very weak. However Russia did have peacekeepers there and the peace managed to hold for more than 20 years...not a mean feat in the Caucasus. Russia did enter Georgian territory proper but after a ceasefire was signed it withdrew. Not only did the RF not gain any territory, but South Ossetia and Abkhazia didn't gain any territory either. Total status quo ante except that Russia finally recognized two areas it had withheld recognition from for two plus decades. As for the Baltic states, they were so worried about 'Russian aggression' that they were still tied to the Russian electricity grid until this month, 2025. I'd say that other than their 'nation' building myths and stories (largely mythical or exaggerated as all such stories, see Eric Hobsbawm or Benedict Anderson) , a lot of their joining NATO had to do with W. and Rumsfeld and the 'coalition of the willing' , namely Eastern European countries that sold themselves to give cover to our illegal and brutal invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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@sbrown314 I took part in the NATO effort from a rear echelon position. There was no attempt to commit genocide. There was a campaign against the criminal and terrorist KLA. We ended up acting as their tactical and strategic air wing. An agreement certainly could have been reached far short of bombing civilians in Belgrade (including the Chinese embassy) and elsewhere, but the US/NATO sought to impose maximalist concessions on Yugoslavia (as it still was). These include full access for NATO military to all of rump Yugoslavia's territory, quite obviously unacceptable. The Russians have a far better case that the Ukrainian governments 'counter terrorist operation' against Donetsk and Lugansk was genocidal (though that too is quite a stretch).
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@lszujo No, it was 1999. A lot of people confuse the Bosnian civil war with the Kosovo bombing. I won't even mention that Islamicism of Izetbegovic....oops guess I just did.
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@PullingDefeatFromTheJawsofVict Sachs is an economist that specializes in international economics and was directly involved in the post Warsaw pact, post Soviet space. How is he outside his competence?
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@paleopteryx The Soviet Army, then its successor Russian army, was already in Moldova. The Moldovan government passed a Moldovan language only act which promoted the mostly Russian speaking Transnistria...this was even before the Soviet Union broke up. And instantly there were tensions and Transistria tried to break away as a republic within the USSR, and then as an independent state. This was entirely organic. The Russian Army, under Alexander Lebed, only intervened when it looked like Moldova would attack Transnistria. Fun fact, Transdnistria is the only place other than the Ukraine where Ukrainian is an official.
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