Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
Again, try saying anything bad about Putin or Russia in Russia. At least I can speak freely and scream from the rooftops about the shitty parts of the US. Go ahead.
no, he didn't leak shit, he published leaked information what the hell.
and you can only do that right now because the ruling class isn't concerned about possible socialist revolution, I advise you to read up on the 1st and 2nd Red Scares!
(also, who fucking cares if you can complain about something if you can't actually change the situation???)
So when a cop kills an innocent person I’m just not supposed to be upset?
Again, I can spread the word and my viewpoint and not be arrested/killed, at least legally. It’s not like Biden or Trump could have had me killed for saying it.
The Uhuru House publically opposed the war effort in Ukraine and got raided, then had a bunch of their members locked up for allegedly being in cahoots with Russians. By default, your bullshit's refuted.
Whoa slow down, where did this cop come from? I swear you people are so morally bankrupt, you have to try and mindtrick someone into agreeing w/ a completely unrelated question. It's so jarring and deceitful to read
So when a cop kills an innocent person I’m just not supposed to be upset?
Again, I can spread the word and my viewpoint and not be arrested/killed, at least legally. It’s not like Biden or Trump could have had me killed for saying it.
in awe at this one. Once again, if they think you're a threat to state power do you think they give a single flying fuck about what's legal/illegal? do you think what's being done to Assange is actually legal? he didn't leak anything, he just published information given to him. Once again, if the there was a serious socialist threat to this country I promise you would be arrested/killed no matter what if it became known you were a vocal dissident, legality be damned
Damn thats crazy, the shit that might hurt the state is illegal(and therefore presumably justifiable to punish) while you get to do all the intellectual jerkoffs you want with no effect on anything?
Again, purposely digging up confidential information and then exposing it is illegal.
Going up to Snowden and saying "Erm, sir, you might have told us that the American government is spying on us every moment of our lives, but, erm, actshually, doing that was illegal, so unfortunately, sir, you are not epic and you don't deserve freedom of speech protections"
what an absolute fucking dweeb, holy shit
I will go tell Putin to make it "confidential information" that he's a bad person, then maybe you'll shut the fuck up for a single moment of your life because a bootlicker like you will be forced to obey it if you ever go there
However, it is against the law. It’s not the same thing as free speech.
Yeah, because free speech isn't a real thing. That's the point. I very much doubt that there's even one semi-functional country on the planet that does not restrict speech to at least some degree.
At least I can speak freely and scream from the rooftops about the shitty parts of the US
Someone's never heard of the Free Speech fights.
You can and will be jailed just for saying shit, if people start to listen to you and you're saying the wrong shit. Your "freedom of speech" is as worthless as used toilet paper the moment a judge decides to issue an injunction against you i.e. the strikes in Harlan County in the 70s had judges jailing people for using the word "scab."
Also fun fact I learned today, remember the Kent State Massacre? People were ordered to apologize for being shot just to get compensation, which only covered legal defenses. Land of the fucking free, lmao
Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
When your life is made illegal, what're you gonna do, liberal? Roll over for the bourgeois state like a good boy?
people get arrested during strikes and protests all the time in America. of course, you would justify it as "actually they were breaking Clause 8 of Section 9A so it was against the law and they shouldn't have done it!" without questioning if that law might possibly have been drawn up specifically to punish those people because the government couldn't do it legally before. no, all laws in America come straight out of the Founding Father's dick as a glorious bukkake for us all to share freely, while in tyrannical states like Russia and China, all laws are to be questioned and/or drawn up by the supreme ruler himself because he was really extra totalitarian that day
This comment was made after you were given a list of examples of such laws that included saying the word "scab" so there's really no excuse for your obstinance on this point specifically
Just kidding, you’re too much of a bootlicker to ever go out and actually protest for the rights and life of others. Just having the hypothetical “right” is freedom enough.
that's impossible, the entire Russian army has been destroyed a hundred times now by Ukraine, over 15 million Russian troops have been killed last time I checked, there are no snipers left
the Zaporozhye front is just the Ukrainians doing a giant war re-enactment of what would have happened if there were any Russians left alive, but due to the 1:984219 casualty ratio, there aren't any Russians left
I need you to understand that I am not being hyperbolic when I say that you and people who share your views are what is wrong with humanity in the present day. As long as people like you continue to be either willing or gullible enough to keep believing the lies of a geopolitical block as untrustworthy as the United States and its allies solely because you are incapable of looking past your country’s propaganda and seeing your own leaders as anything other than the righteous beacons of humanity that they try to make themselves appear to be, humanity will almost certainly be doomed to enter pointless conflicts and cause mass destruction until we drive our own species off of a cliff.
You cant even meaningfully add to a joke bc youre so childishly resentful. You take this arguing so much more seriously than us while we just casually have the information youre missing, and it looks hilarious.
Assange didn’t do anything illegal but even if he did you might as well be saying “criticizing Putin may the right thing do, but it’s illegal so you shouldn’t do it.”
There's lots of above ground opposition to Putin in Russia. Stop being a clown. There's plenty of real things to criticize. We don't need to make things up.
Whataboutism is just a rhetorical device trolls try to use to create a double standard for themselves and everyone else when faced with the fact that their side does all the same things they accuse others of. Meanwhile, imagine being such an utter ignoramus to be unaware of all the political violence that US does.
No, it’s because two wrongs don’t make a right. You can point out shit the US has done all day and I’ll probably agree with you. But it doesn’t make what Russia did okay.
Yeah whataboutism is fucking removed. It’s no excuse or justification. It’s shit.
No, it’s because two wrongs don’t make a right. You can point out shit the US has done all day and I’ll probably agree with you. But it doesn’t make what Russia did okay.
Yeah whataboutism is fucking removed. It’s no excuse or justification. It’s shit.
the problem isn't necessarily pointing out the problems with any particular country, that can be done as a legitimate discussion, what gets really fucking annoying is when people only talk about the problems with a certain country and then when questioned, are like "Oh, no! We also hate it when America does this thing! We're just talking about X country right now!" when that's clearly false. like, you say "Fuck China for having mass surveillance" on reddit and you get 100k upvotes, 20 platinum awards and some dude's firstborn son, whereas if you say "Fuck America for having mass surveillance" you'll get "Hm, well, you see, this is a complicated topic, because on the one hand..." or even just "Yeah, but it's nothing compared to China though!"
the problem is also when what you're talking about is necessarily a comparison because no action exists in a vacuum free of context. if I say "The US is an awful, imperialist country that has invaded all these nations, and NATO has also invaded and destroyed nations, and we should not support them even if Russia is doing a bad thing because Russia's death toll is so much lower than the West's" then all I would get on most lib platforms is "That history doesn't matter! What matters is the here and now, when Russia is doing a bad thing and NATO currently, at this precise moment in time, is not! Bad things are bad things! You can't wave them away through context!"
but the question isn't "Is Russia doing a bad thing", I don't think anybody would deny except the most fervent Russian nationalist that Russia has done at least some bad things in Ukraine, the question is "Who should we support in this war" and so the fact that NATO and the US has killed tens of millions of people within the lifetime of the current president and doomed hundreds of millions more to backbreaking labor in mines and plantations and sweatshops, and Russia, well, hasn't, is a perfectly pertinent point to make when asking who to support. This is also why liberals are so utterly gobsmacked when third-world countries don't come out against Russia, because they have been on the receiving end of this campaign of carnage that the US has wrought around the world and so, logically, think Russia is the lesser of two evils. can't they see that Russia is evil! can't they see that Putler is the devil doing a genocide!? they must be brainwashed by Russian disinformation propaganda! we must up our efforts to spread Correct Information!
When your own country does the same and worse you have no moral high ground to criticize others, nor does it accomplish anything. As the saying goes, people living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Americans should focus on fixing their own country instead of playing world police.
Fun fact, the origin of "whataboutism" was its use as the phrase "whataboutery" during the Troubles in Ireland as the Irish accused the British of atrocities only to be dismissed as "whataboutery"
Weird how it's always used as a thought terminating cliche to prevent criticism of the dominant empire, huh!
I’m not the one dismissing what any country has done. I’m saying they should both be held accountable.
The fact that the comment I was originally replying to was using that justification goes along with what you just said… which is pointing out what someone else did is no justification for any action. They both should be taken for what they are and judged accordingly.
I'm gonna try to follow your logic in good faith. If both Russia and the US should be held accountable for their crimes, then who should actually hold them accountable?
NATO is the international arm of the US military and it has committed war crimes over its entire decades of existence, some of the most recent ones in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. If the US is to be held equally accountable for their actions as the RF should be, then all NATO operations should be held under the same scrutiny.
So by this logic how can you support a NATO in it's actions in Ukraine. Before Russia invaded, NATO was supported the bombing of the Donbass and the destruction of that region. If the US and NATO has a history of destabilizing regions through warfare for the benefit of the US, how can any of their actions be justified?
by the International Court of Good Guys, which will order Russia to totally rebuild Ukraine and give back Crimea and all the rest, and order the United States and NATO to give a heartfelt apology to the people of the countries they've invaded and whose governments they've overthrown (they won't do this)
If you say that to point the hypocrisy in someone's statement is a fallacy then everyone can just blame each other for basically anything and nothing constructive comes out.
Oh you drink water? Hitler did too. What do you mean everyone drinks water? That's whataboutism
I engage with some Russian language media, and people actually do express criticisms and critiques of Putin and the war without being arrested or killed.
Human garbage such as yourself is precisely the reason this war is still ongoing and hundreds of thousands of people are dead. If you want Russians to die so bad then go sign up for the foreign legion and fight yourself instead of shitposting here you deplorable piece shit.
Every single person who supports continuation of this war is responsible for the people dying in this war. Meanwhile, pointing your energy at Putin while living in the west is idiotic because you have zero influence on Putin. What you have influence on is your own deplorable regime that's fueling the continuation of this war.
The war continues because Russia remains in Ukraine. All Russia has to do is withdraw from Ukraine and needless death of both sides ends.
Russia isn't going to leave, and nothing the west has done got Ukraine closer to winning the war. What the west has achieved was to drag this war out and ensure that countless people died in the process. If anything, the west ensured that Ukraine is in a far worse position now than it was in March last year when US and UK sabotaged negotiations.
If still you think that Ukraine can win this war then you need to start engaging with reality. Your whole rant is premised on a nonsensical assumption that Ukraine can win. Meanwhile, comparing this to WW2 shows stunning amounts of historical illiteracy and utter lack of understanding in regards to causes of this war.
Finally, nowhere have I supported Russia in anything here. What I've explained to you is the objective reality of the situation. The fact that you see this in black and white terms of either supporting the west using Ukraine as a proxy in a war with Russia or supporting Russian invasion shows that you have infantile understanding of the world. Your childish insults are a further indication of your stunted mental development.
Your reactions to other people and your blaming of western nations very clearly puts you in the position of supporting Russia.
No, that puts me in a position of having actual understanding of the situation and reality of the war instead of regurgitating western propaganda the way you're doing.
Instead you keep trying to twist it on everyone else for having the absolute-fucking-audacity of defending themselves. I mean, how dare they fight for their nations survival and independence!
This is probably one of the very few conflicts in recent times where this war is black and white. There’s a very clear aggressor. This entire war is utterly pointless. It’s not difficult to see how Russia is the aggressor here.
It's not, and only an ignoramus or a propagandist would claim that. Your whole narrative based on the fallacy of homogenizing Ukraine. Let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
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here's how the election in 2004 went:
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this is the 2010 election:
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As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
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Ukraine is clearly not some homogeneous blob, but a large country with complex cultural and ethnic situations.
Furthermore, the idea that NATO threatens Russia doesn't come from Russia. Plenty of western experts have been saying this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started. Here's what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:
50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:
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George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.
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Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
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Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.
And of course, RAND published a whole study titled extending Russia where it proposes to use Ukraine as a western proxy the way is being done now. You're either a shill or a useful idiot for the empire, either way not a good look.
After the western sponsored coup in 2014 the eastern regions of Ukraine wanted to separate and Ukraine has been in a civil war since then. What Russia did is actually directly modelled on what NATO did in Yugoslavia where they recognized the independence of the breakaway regions and then had them invite NATO for help. That's literally the precedent that you NATO chuds set.
You still haven’t replied to my point about whether Russia or other nations should have surrendered when they were attacked by axis powers.
The point where you're trying to compare people of eastern Ukraine fighting for independence from the coup regime that was shelling them with cluster munitions to nazis? If you don't understand why that's an idiotic comparison, then what else is there to say to you.
Of course that’s bad.
Oh, it's bad, but the people the coup regime was shelling apparently don't get a right of self determination according to you.
The NATO crap isn’t even worth discussing and is just a flimsy excuse from Russia to try and justify the “special military operation”.
Actual geopolitical experts disagree, but I guess you think you know better because you've demonstrated such deep understanding of the subject in this thread. Fun fact is that Russia wanted to join NATO in the 90s and NATO told Russia to fuck off after which point NATO went on to invade a bunch of countries such as Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria and continued to surround Russia militarily.
You're an ignoramus and you should be deeply ashamed of yourself.
It's pure speculation that shelling that went on for 8 years would continue? That shelling that went on in spite of two attempts at peace treaties wouldn't be stopped by an even-less-conditional treaty?
Ukraine has a responsibility to make sure US and foreign support isn’t wasted and they’re doing just that.
idk dude, maybe you should stop sending wave after wave after wave of leopards and bradleys into minefields if you want to not waste Western resources
I hope Ukraine kill all these invading Russian motherfuckers and that Putin dies too.
the saddest thing is that at the end of this war, there will be hundreds of thousands if not millions of dead Ukrainians, all who died because of Western hatred. but you won't actually care, will you? the lives of the average Ukrainian mean nothing to you. you could send a hundred Ukrainians to die horrifically in the no man's land and if a Russian stubs his toe because of it, you would call it a worthy sacrifice, because causing the Russians inconvenience and suffering is worth much more than saving the lives of innocent people who have been conscripted at gunpoint.
if it wasn't a worthy sacrifice, and you thought this wholesale slaughter should stop, you would support ending the war, like the left does.
Yes, all because of western hatred, fuck all to do with the people who invaded in the first place. They're all imperalist fucks but takes like this on the situation are just completely braindead.
Holy shit, NATOpedia made an article saying "Hey, there might be actual historical context to this situation and Putin didn't wake up on February 24th and decide to murder a bunch of people because he's a very evil bad bad man and King Zelensky shall slay the dragon and then we all live happily ever after." is actually Russian disinformation? Oh my fucking god. These people are unbearable.
It's so fucking funny. I shared it semi-ironically (the Russian bots are inside your walls) but I also want it to serve as an example of liberal anti-communist biases that permeate Wikifedia and hopefully an exercise for our more liberal acquaintances to practice their critical reading skills.
Hey, that time the Ukrainian state killed people? It wasn't TECHNICALLY an attempted genocide, according to our sixth-time revised definition of the term (rev. 2022). We know they TECHNICALLY outlawed the spoken and written language of a major plurality of their people and TECHNICALLY killed 14,000+ of them, but like, it wasn't a genocide. Russia is doing the genocide. Because Putler is ebil.
It's amazing how thin the veneer of understanding is on empire defenders. They cannot even keep their criticisms of international and national policy differentiated, when it comes to attacking anti-imperialists it's always both. No examination of political economy or national histories, just democratic good guys and auforitarian bad guys.
That's hilarious. What should happen after signing an agreement is that the violence should stop! Gtfo with this things were getting better but we won't provide any evidence to back this claim up bullshit.
Reminds me of how ingrained the presupposed eternal nature of this imperialist hell is into things like statistical analyses of police violence.
For instance, I once had a guy in college (who is now a professional Republican lobbyist) tell me that there was indeed a racial problem behind police violence in the U.S.! The racial disparity between how many white folk and how many black folk were getting killed, he agreed, was appalling. He said, however, that over time that disparity was shrinking, and officer-involved fatalities were reaching "equitable levels between whites and blacks!", so we're actually on the fast track to progress, not regress.
The disparity was shrinking. Not the actual amount of murders.
The wanton and brutal murders committed by police are not the primary issue, they say, the opaquely racial disparity between who is being murdered is.
A game of images. A perfectly logical conclusion to this train of thought is that police should simply murder more white people to prove that racism is over, to make state-sanctioned violence more equitable. Murder, but be inclusive about it!
This is the presentation of the issue by those who acknowledge that there even exists a racial problem. There are plenty who outright deny its existence and still more who celebrate it. Politicians who claim to oppose police violence (especially the phenotypically-motivated kind) will nevertheless be found supporting legislation that further militarizes the police. This is how Amerika does politics... never harm reduction, only harm redistribution - at best.
I recall talking with my friends about Ukraine being a Nazi state in 2020. It was just a fucked up thing all of us knew. I suppose I ought to wash my brain of that vivid memory, lest I become a kremlin apologist ex post facto.
The imperialism of marching your border closer and closer to NATO's troops from 1990 to 2022 is truly the worst kind. Russia must be punished for putting Moscow that close to Ukraine.
couldn't possibly have anything to do with the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass who were getting slaughtered for years before 2022. those people don't matter, only pro-Ukraine people matter. couldn't possibly have anything to do with security interests. only NATO's security interests matter, not Russia (or China's). couldn't possibly have anything to do with having armed NATO-trained troops in a country that recently experienced a US-backed coup. of course, if Russia puts Wagner forces in African countries (so not even inside NATO's "sphere of influence") that recently experienced a coup, that's an entirely different thing because uhh Russia is bad and NATO is good. that's Russian imperialism. us putting our troops in coup'd countries is freedom and bringing democracy. and also that wasn't a coup, it was actually the citizens doing it all by themselves.
Ukraine shoulda kept those nukes, those are much better at protecting neutrality when you share a border with Russia. Educate yourself about the Budapest memorandum and maybe you'll realize your hypocrisy. Why the sam hell do you think would Russia care about breaking internal law?
If the West didn't organize a coup in Ukraine, put Nazis into power, then prod them into slaughtering their countrymen, then the Russians wouldn't have invaded. The Russians didn't just wake up one day and decide to invade Ukraine.
I'd love to see how you people will react when Mexico joins BRICS and the US invades it.
I'd love to see how you people will react when Mexico joins BRICS and the US invades it.
I cannot fucking wait for China and Russia to do freedom of navigation exercises between Cuba and Florida like how the US does with Taiwan and China and for Americans to just fucking LOSE it. Holy shit, it'll be so funny. "No, this isn't the same because China is evil and we're the good guys!"
Mexico aint joining brics unfortunely. Tho it doesnt stop the US from manufacturing consent to invade on a daily basis with their fentanyl+cartel talking points.
The West's support of Ukraine is getting them all killed anyway. Might as well lay down your arms and have some working-age males to rebuild the country with after surrendering.
They could have made peace near the beginning of the war and they rejected it. Russia offered to hand back Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts and withdraw in exchange for Ukraine giving up aspirations of NATO and not trying to acquire nuclear missiles, but Ukraine refused. Hardly the rhetoric of a bloodthirsty warlord.
If the west didn't use Ukraine as a proxy there wouldn't have been a war in the first place. It's sad human garbage such as yourself that mad it possible. Now you sit here and bloviate while people die. Fuck you!
If the west wouldn't 'support' Ukraine then they'd still have their democratically elected government and wouldn't be in conflict with Russia in the first place
from how you assign the will of "Ukraine" to the fascist militias that carried out the coup. Not the actual voting population of the country. Those people aren't "Ukraine". Because "Ukraine" rejected what Ukraine voted for. FuNnY thAt.
Did all the Japanese get killed after they surrendered? Did all Germans? If they had surrendered earlier less of them would have died. The same goes for Nazi Ukraine. Their defeat is inevitable, and prolonging the inevitable only adds to the suffering...and to the list of war crimes that they will be charged with by Russia's tribunals afterwards. The West's "support" is literally destroying Ukraine and they have all admitted that they have no problem with this, in fact they profit from it.
The West is happy to "fight to the last Ukrainian" to hurt Russia, the Banderite Nazis are happy to die (and force their less fanatical compatriots to do so as well) for the West so long as it enables their genocidal urges, meanwhile the only ones who actually care about the Ukrainian people and have gone out of their way to try and save them from the Western imperialists and from themselves are the Russians.
It's actually really sad that there isn't a single country on the planet that cares about Ukraine except Russia (and maybe Belarus). To the West they're just a tool, useful idiot cannon fodder, to the rest of the world they're a tragic cautionary tale about what happens when you let the lunatics take over the asylum, which is what happened on the Maidan in 2014. If you really cared about Ukraine you too would want the flow of weapons and money to them to stop, because the longer this goes on the worse it will be for them.
you're so wrong it's hard to know where to even begin. You buy into the premise that the US arming reactionaries and building them up as a force to destabilize and entire region is somehow "protecting" people.
you're so wrong it's hard to know where to even begin
Yeah man looks like you have all that insight from your secret sources that anyone else does not.
Why is the entirety of Europe so dumb and supports Ukraine not getting fucked for literally no valid reason?
Look, there's basically two theories for why no one outside this removed bubble agrees with these shit takes - especially in the region where this is happening.
A) you and the twenty other dudes are just smarter than anyone else that cannot see through what you have apparently uncovered by sitting on your desk and browsing the web
B) the absolute majority of politicians, the military, and the actual people living in the continent have gotten it right
If you think A) is the case then I don't know what else to tell you
Why is the entirety of Europe so dumb and supports Ukraine not getting fucked for literally no valid reason?
Loaded question that presupposes that Europe is actually "supporting" Ukraine and not simply dangling membership in the world's largest protection racket in front of them like a carrot on a stick, in order to get them to fight a pointless and avoidable war to destabilize Russia, while also further privatizing and looting the Ukrainian economy.
So, again, your argument is that you have unique insight that no one else has. Do you even realize that at this point?
Even if what you said was true and by chance you got it right, there's so much in it that makes literally no sense.
simply dangling membership in the world's largest protection racket in front of them like a carrot on a stick
Literally no one was having serious talks about this before the invasion. If that was the end goal all along that could have been so much easier BEFORE the war.
n order to get them to fight a pointless and avoidable war to destabilize Russia
Russia was not stable in any way, share, or form before the war. They weren't even a real democracy.
And, again, even if that were true: Russia started the war. And they can end it at any point in time.
The west doesn't have to destabilize Russia because they are absolutely irrelevant from both a economics and military perspective.
Which is presumably why they started the war.
while also further privatizing and looting the Ukrainian economy
They are being gifted weapons and money. Idk how you could even think this was a net gain.
don't know why you're fixated on this point. Russia isn't a democracy. And? Nobody here is arguing that Russia is a good country or a democracy.
Of course you imagine that the capitalist class dictatorships in the NATO countries are real democracies because they practice multi-party elections between competing capitalist factions, while failing to ever represent working class or marginalized interests except in the most nominal and symbolic ways.
They are being gifted weapons and money. Idk how you could even think this was a net gain.
Ukraine is not being gifted anything. they're expected to pay for all of this "aid," with interest. Down the line this will be used as an excuse to privatize and loot their economy. Oh wait. It already is.
There was a referendum in the Donbass and people voted to join Russia. Much like happened with Alsace and Lorraine. I'm sorry but we salute the red 🇰🇵 white 🇨🇺 and blue 🇱🇦 here if you don't like democracy you can fuck off back to lemmy.
I'll give you ample time to answer that for yourself as you remain unbanned on lemmygrad so you can still get notifications when people reply to your comments which we are also not deleting
You're the one who butted into our instance with your takes 🤷
The key issue for me is the right of a people to self determination.
The people who live in the eastern parts of Ukraine are overwhelming Russian speaking and identify as ethnically Russian. They voted three times in various ways for some form of preserving their cultural rights, only to have their expression of Democratic will met with violent militias, shelling, and other violence, and then finally voted once again to secede from Ukraine, largely motivated by the extreme hostility from right wing Ukrainian nationalists who were banning the use of Russian, imposing assimilationist education policies, banning political parties that represented the people there, and even banning the free exercise of religion if that religious practice looked to the Russian Orthodox Church for leadership.
The principle of the self determination of a people to choose their own government demands respect and Ukraine has no right to impose their will on a population that doesn’t want it.
You should look at what the people who actually live there, in the east not just those in Kyiv, have been saying for a decade. They don’t want to be part of Ukraine anymore and it’s because of the extreme violence Ukraine has inflicted upon them since 2014.
Which referendums are you referring to and does any country besides Russia or North Korea accept the results? Just an FYI elections in Russia itself are not free from corruption in any sense of the word. But I'm sure you take putin's word when he says their fair Lol 2014 is when Russian backed separatists began working in Ukraine, Russia has always been the aggressor and could've stopped the violence whenever they choose.
Which referendums are you referring to and does any country besides Russia or North Korea accept the results?
literally the consent "isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?" meme but with America
but this is also a very funny way of imagining how self-determination and independence movements work a lot of the time. Imagine a world where a newfound country breaks free from an existing one and then that newfound country sees that 90% of the UN, including the country they just broke free from, doesn't recognize them for doing that and they're just like "Well, shucks. I guess we're going back and re-joining the country again, because these people aren't ready to accept us yet!"
That's all on you for misunderstanding how being a country works. It doesn't matter that you hold elections but that you hold the monopoly of violence over the population. That's what gets you recognition. Color me shocked that you don't even know how the most rudimentary geopolitics works ..
What are you saying? The Ukrainian state held a monopoly of violence over the people of the Donbass and used it regularly since the coup in 2014. These people in turn declared independence in order to free themselves from this violence, but the Ukrainian state wouldn't have it. The only way to counter violent suppression is with violence. These people know this and it's why they invited Russian military intervention to their cause.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing international conflict between Russia, alongside Russian-backed separatists, and Ukraine, which began in February 2014.
Are you saying they ::gasp:: used violence during a WAR? ThEy UsEd vIolEnCe DuRIng A wAr?!?
This is just copium. Whatever you believe, the result was a fascist Ukranian state that supports literal Nazis shelling civilians. What were they supposed to do, vote harder? Oh right, their voting rights were suppressed and their political parties banned from running in elections. At a certain point, when faced with violent suppression, violence become your only option.
Are you saying they ::gasp:: used violence during a WAR? ThEy UsEd vIolEnCe DuRIng A wAr?!?
You're the one who brought up violence. I'm simply trying to present the world to you as it is instead of through the filter of liberal propoganda that you so happily slurp up daily. That boot is so deep down your throat, maybe you should start an only fans.
You'd have to look at the situation from before the war started, like all the way back to the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the 2004 Ukranian color revolution. NATO instigated the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which made relations between Ukraine and Russia much more tense. That's when Ukraine began more earnestly shelling the Donbas region as well, which is a region of people who've always been more sympathetic towards Russia. The residents there even speak Russian. The situation became more tense to the point Ukraine was floating NATO membership, which would have resulted in Russia being more surrounded than they ever have.
Russian troops could leave, and that would result in the same situation as before and would inevitably erupt into conflict again. NATO encirclement, ethnically Russian people getting shelled, Nazi Ukrainian troops in the region, Ukraine denying self-determination for people within its own borders. It would still be a geopolitical mess with potential for another war.
Russia has in fact called for ceasefires and peace talks multiple times already. Early on in the war Ukraine seemed willing to have talks, but NATO pressured them out of it. The situation now is that despite Russia calling for ceasefires, the position of the US and other NATO allies is that no ceasefire will be accepted unless Russia completely leaves the region. That's pigheaded and wrong. Any stop to the fighting should be accepted. That means NATO is calling for an extension to the war, not Russia.
The best possible way for this conflict to end is Ukraine cuts its losses, Russia annexes Donbas and Luhansk, and the fighting stops. Normal, average working class people are harmed as long as this conflict keeps going and as leftists we should be in favor of war ending, not persisting. Ukraine losing territory and the fight ending is a massively better situation than the fight becoming another decades long quagmire like Afghanistan or Syria.
Classic, Russia acts like a petulant child not accepting the fact that it can't live up to the glory days when it has complete dominance over it's neighbors so it manufacturers a reason why it must invade a country and blame NATO because the Ukrainian get support from territorial aggression. Allowing them to keep their holdings is the same as appeasement a bad idea in front of a conscript army. Please explain why Russia dashed for kyiv of they "just wanted to annex a bit of the east" lol u dummy. Listening to you is like being at the end of the human centipede Putin's at the front and I'm at the back.
Allowing them to keep their holdings is the same as appeasement a bad idea in front of a conscript army
Yeah it is appeasement. Is open warfare better than appeasement? Should they fight until the last Ukrainian? No, that's awful. War between capitalist states is not the realm of the working class or poor people. The victims of this war are people caught in the crossfire, Ukrainian, Russian, or otherwise, and ending the war even through territorial concession would be better than what's happening now.
I think Russia made a dash to Kyiv to flank the Ukranian army from mobilizing in the east so that Russian bases and supply routes could be established, but I have not followed troop movements much since last year. Russia made the correct assumption that Ukraine would focus most of its attention on defending the capital if it were threatened. I think that strategy worked because Russia captured not just Donbas and Lunansk, but Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as well. You've made the mistake of thinking I'm defending Russia because I explained how I see the context. Russia shouldn't have invaded, NATO shouldn't exist, the 2014 Ukranian coup shouldn't have happened, people in Donbas and Luhansk should be allowed to exercise self-determination. None of the conflict should have happened and the primary cause of the situation is, like always, neoliberal imperialism. Maybe there were non-violent ways out of this conflict, but they're all imaginary now. We live in reality.
I don't know what people want from me here. Sorry, I don't see this conflict as pure territorial expansion ordered by Putin on this basis of his moral failures or greed or whatever. Because that's not what it is, and me saying that somehow means I've got Putin whispering in my ear like a witch in Salem hearing the voice of Satan. This conflict is one resolution in a long line of unresolved conflicts going all the way back to 1991, it's more than Putin, more than even just Ukraine and Russia.
For reference, is this hegemony in the broad sense where Germany has hegemony over Munich? Or the narrower sense in which we would say the US has hegemony over Puerto Rico or France had hegemony over Burkina Faso? You've demonstrated a propensity to play fast and loose with your terms, so quippy answers aren't that helpful.
Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hegemony
Regional hegemony is a thing too it doesn't have to be global wiki says that in the first 2 sentence of the article. Putin himself said in 2022, "The era of the unipolar world order is nearing its end" hmm I wonder if that means he intends to make his own...
You're a deplorable waste of bones and organs. When this war is over and there's a well armed Nazi militia committing pogroms and wreacking havock across Europe, I hope that you'll reconsider your position.
I don't, but that won't stop you from believing whatever fantasies you find convenient. Explains a lot about how you maintain your delusional worldview.
A group that already has a presence in the UN? I was talking about how recognition works for countries. But low and behold that nuance escapes you. It's not my fault that u & 72 don't understand how international recognition and civil wars work.
It doesn’t matter that you hold elections but that you hold the monopoly of violence over the population. That’s what gets you recognition.
You're contradicting yourself you're contradictinnnggggg yourself hahaha it's okay to admit you exhausted your line of arguing and can't defend anything more. Come to the tankie side, it's not so bad. We're right all the time.
It's not my fault you don't know how occupation works. I'm specifically talking about a separatists Donbas that is able to fend off both Ukraine and Russia assaults could obtain recognition by the international community through securing it's borders. Of course you intentionally misunderstood what I'm saying at all times and declare victory by being a dumbass
Never met a true US civil war Confederate supporter, the south had their own government & constitution and voted to leave the union. I guess according to your logic the northern federal government was in the wrong in order to preserve the union cuz the south had elections & elections.
Hey by your criteria all you gotta do is have a vote and boom bang beyowza u gotta new country. I suppose since you're a tankie you have to pretend things like national sovereignty just doesn't exist so u can get away with invading your neighbor.
If Texas today had a vote to secede then they’d have absolutely every right to secede since the current electoral laws allow for the will of the people to be expressed.
The fact you didn’t stop to think about the slaves is because you’re a fucking cracker.
Which electoral law in Texas allows for this? Do you know what the supremacy clause is? Do you have a fucking Clue what you're talking about? Clearly you don't.
You are changing the question, since Russia's violence does make Donbas part of Russia [to follow your logic] anway, but 72 was talking about democratic legitimacy and you damn well know it.
Democratic legitimacy? By internationallly recognizing any group that holds elections & breaks off a country? My good man, that's a terrible idea. Having a monopoly over violence is just a prerequisite but of course you knew that already since Donbas is occupied until legally resolved via treaty.
Better than murdering them with polonium or putting them away in prison??? What a case of whatttaboutism. Did I ever make the claim that Ukraine was a bastion of democracy? No! your fevered brain is just rattling off talking points that you heard parroted in other threads. All you talking heads do is deflect. I say that Cuz I noticed you never made any attempt to claim that the referendums were legit. Which they weren't.
Why does “they voted for it repeatedly for a decade” not compute for you?
Are you of the opinion that the people in the east want to be part of Ukraine? Because they don’t, not after a decade of being brutalized by far right militias and seeing their cities shelled by the Ukrainian military and being denied the right to speak their language or practice their religion.
When you talk about “Russian backed separatists” you realize those separatists live there don’t you? You know what the word separatist means right?
Ukraine is using military force to deny them their right to self determination and the only reason you want to call the referendum illegitimate is because the people who live there chose the wrong answer.
You don’t value their views at all. They don’t matter to you. Which makes your position immoral and bloodthirsty.
The one where they voted to secede and the multiple elections over the past decade where they voted for political parties that were then banned by the Ukrainian government which is now also refusing to hold constitutionally mandated elections for fear of how they’d vote again.
You didn’t answer my question:
Are you of the opinion that the people in the east want to be part of Ukraine?
I'd say the issue is split between those who want to join and those who want to stay. Your problem is with international law which respects the territorial sovereignty of nations and does not recognize a right of sucession by a group unless their right of internal self determination is compromised. In this case the Ukrainian constitution requires a referendum of all Ukrainian people. Keeping that one mind Here's a question for you:
Are you of the opinion that the people of chechnia wanted to be a part of Russia? Those guys full on declared independence & had elections in 1991 LMFAO
unless their right of internal self determination is compromised
Oh wait what’s that?
Lmao that’s what happened after the Ukrainian nationalists starting arming Nazi militias and banned their political parties you clown.
Banning their political parties and denying them the right to use their own language or practice their own religion or have their own political representation is called denying them their right to internal self determination.
Yeah banning pro Russian parties after Russia invaded them? Kinda a no brainer. + Russia was arming separatists first you chung mungus. I noticed you didn't answer my question
Are you of the opinion that the people of chechnia wanted to be a part of Russia? Those guys full on declared independence & the independence leader got 90% of the vote
I'm a realist because even though it's not morally right I understand that on the international stage might makes right. I don't agree with it but authoritarian countries with strong armies can coerce weaker countries & entities into capitulating (check out findlandization). If you were knowledgeable you'd know that no other countries recognized chechen independence either, perhaps because the ruskies declared the elections illegal the day before they happened... Reminds of another recent situation huh?
It's okay to feel conflicted those contradictions can allow you to analyze why you held certain beliefs to begin with and is the beginning to a more complex understanding of events.
Im glad you acknowledge that Ukraine and the west does not have a moral leg to stand on but I hope you eventually take the next step and recognize that means the hundreds of thousands of dead and permanently injured Ukrainians and Russians makes this a moral travesty and a crime against humanity.
Recognizing the moral right lies with the separatists but choosing to support the use of military force against them because “fuck Russia” makes you the bad guy.
Lol @ Russia apologists trying to defend Russias invasion and genocide of the Ukrainian people + spouting easily debunkable talking points. Can't wait until I get you hear to spill the same watered down trash when the ruskies invade Poland for the 8th time this century.
Since you like relying on evidence and moral bases so much, what is your evidence Russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine? Reminder: a genocide has to be explicit. Killing soldiers of a country you're at war with does not meet the standard to be killed genocide.
Mass graves do not fit in the criteria set by the UN for genocide.
Secondly Bucha was an Azov crime. The mayor just a few days before Ukraine rolled into the city did not mention anything about a killing of civilians. There were recordings made just a few days before they suddenly "found" all the civilians where the streets were completely empty with no bodies.
For Izium there's videos of Russian troops burying people properly and even Ukrainian POWs witnessing the burials. They were likely set up in a mass grave by Ukraine to farm atrocity propaganda.
Oh so now it doen't meet your criteria dude. Typical tankie I bet u don't consider the holodomor a genocide either. You talk about morals and then say killing civilians ain't a crime. Such a lack of self awareness... How do you even breathe.
Typical tankie I bet u don't consider the holodomor a genocide either.
The mainstream position among liberal historians (and not pop historians or politicians) is indeed that the famine was not a genocide. Some reading on that topic: https://www.villagevoice.com/in-search-of-a-soviet-holocaust/
The holodomor is a lie created by nazis to downplay the actual genocide of the Holocaust, by spewing this bullshit your engaging in a form of Holocaust denial
China liberating Tibet from a theocracy built on a foundation of slavery and run by pedophiles wasn't a genocide either
All of your boy who cried Adolf garbage is just making it easier for actual fascists and nazis to maintain or regain power and you'll somehow alway find an excuse to support them
I don't know how fascists like you function, don't care either
"By general consensus, Stalin was partially responsible." That author would've been executed or gulaged in the ussr since it was a crime to mention the holodomor & blame the authorities. I bet to you that sounds exactly like how a responsible government would respond to criticism.
I ain't fash but you can believe whatever delusions you want. Russia is committing war crimes and committed genocide in the past. And instead you bend over backwards to suck putin's fat dick and engage in revisionist history so you can believe in an ideal of something that never existed. What a shocker... You calling someone who disagrees with you to be a Nazi, I expected you to at least call me a liberal first lol.
Lol, u pretending to be so moral that you hide behind the strictest definitions of the word genocide. If committing hundreds to 30,000 war crimes isn't bad enough for you to take seriously then yeah I'm guilty of a bit of hyperbole, at least I'm not a genocide denier like you clearly are. The UN takes its sweet time to name atrocities with "genocide" but changing that definition doesn't make the innocent in those mass graves killed by Russian troops any more alive.
I'm using the UN definition of genocide which most states have agreed to. Earlier you said that most states did not recognize the referenda held in the Donbass so they didn't count. You're projecting so much we could watch a movie with the whole 'grad on your forehead bro, have some academic rigour if you're gonna try arguing.
The only thing you contested is that it's not considered a genocide & after which I said I was guilty of hyperbole. But I noticed how you didn't dispute the fact that mass graves show up everywhere the Russian army occupied.
How you can support such barbarity while it's ongoing is past my capabilities to understand, you should teach classes about how to live in denial.
Yeah every atrocity just so happens to be a trick or a plot against the Soviets. Russians have been downplaying every atrocity since they axed the romanovs. I put people like you right next to Holocaust deniers because there's not a piece of evidence that you won't say is faked because you want so desprately to to believe in something that never existed. You'll believe every shred of anti West propaganda .Pathetic. Someday you might realize that every world power commits mass murder now & again but it's not going to be today.
if you actually knew anything about Holocaust denialism you wouldn't even make this comparison because you'd have realized how stupid and uninformed you'd sound. Alas, you are just one more white liberal who thinks their 3 years of high school prepared them to know everything there is to know about the world.
It's about this time that you finally get sweet release and earn your ban, because what you're doing is actual Holocaust denial, trying to downplay it by comparing it to an event that was nothing like it in scope, size, and amount of deaths.
Remember the Molotov ribbentrop pact? Or that time after WWI? You've got a super selective memory. I give you points for almost directly quoting your god emperor putin on that one.
You know France and England signed some pacts with the Nazis is the lead up to the Soviets making a deal with the devil, right? And the Soviets knew the nazis were always going to invade them, because they literally just knew about what the Nazis were publicly stating they'd like to do.
I'm assuming you're talking about the Munich pact? Yeah it might've been a mistake but the allies needed time to build up. I suspect that the soviets would've invaded Germany if they hadn't been attacked first.
I'm assuming you're talking about the Munich pact? Yeah it might've been a mistake but the allies needed time to build up.
In order to attack Germany, right?
I suspect that the soviets would've invaded Germany if they hadn't been attacked first.
This is good.
It seems like all the major allied powers wanted to build up to attack Germany. The only difference was the Soviets saw fascism as an existential threat and the other major allied powers saw them as potential competition.
No, they didn't, unlike the Soviets who were dramatically less developed on account of starting from a war-torn semi-feudal backwater.
I suspect that the soviets would've invaded Germany if they hadn't been attacked first.
What's your point in even mentioning this? To demonstrate that you know that they weren't allies? Invading Nazi Germany is a good thing to do! Especially in the case of a Slavic country that would be subjected to genocide (as the USSR, like Poland, historically was) if they just waited for the Nazis to invade!
Yup, no one's gonna argue that the Soviets can't make a lot of tanks. What's my point in saying that? Just shooting the shit, lol anything I say will be taken out of context and used as justification that I'm a Nazi. So good on you for being another rube.
You mean the areas populated by Belorussians and Ukrainians that was conquered by Poland from Russia in the war of 1922 when Poland took advantage of the civil war to seize a big chunk of Belorussian and ukraine and taken back by Russia when the polish state collapsed following the Nazi invasion of Poland?
None of the Russian parts of the MR pact were populated by mostly polish people, with the exception of Lviv which is still part of Ukraine today.
It’s a selective reading of history to call Belorussians and Ukrainians the rightful property of Poland especially in light of the brutal Polonization campaign they suffered, being reduced to serfdom by Polish invaders.
As it happens I’d actually support restoring that part to Poland, Lviv, and also the Hungarian bit of Ukraine to Hungary since both of those ethnic minorities, along with the ethnic Greek minority, have all been suffering a lot under the rule of the Ukrainian nationalists and have also faced restrictions on their internal self determination such as language rights being suppressed or in the case of the Greek minority also religious persecution.
Ahh considering Poland didn't exist until after WW1 & both sides disregarded the curzon line it's hard to say where Polands eastern border should've been but I do agree that they def pushed too far east. I don't understand your reference to serfdom. I thought that was abolished in the 18th century.
You’re really going to argue the polinization campaign in Belorussia and Ukraine in the 1920s and 30s was a good thing? A moral gray area?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Hopefully you’re a teenager who doesn’t know what you’re talking about because if you do then you need to eat a brick if you’re really going to take that line, and there are plenty of people alive in both belorussia and Ukraine today who would feed it to you if they heard you saying that including the Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi gangs you are here supporting.
One of the more brutal events of the 20th century that is only overlooked due to the fact that Poland soon suffered worse evils than those Poland inflicted on the Ukrainians and Belorussians at the hands of the Nazis - until the Soviets kicked the Nazis out.
Edit: actually given your world view includes supporting the campaign of Ukrainization and the violent assimilationist policies directed at the ethnic minorities in Ukraine, you have form here. It seems you’re actually very comfortable with violence being used against ethnic minorities given how you’re here supporting multiple instances of it.
But honestly, and I am truly being straight with you here, I think the more likely truth is you’re a bit of a dumbass who doesn’t know your history and you don’t actually realize what you’re supporting here but your ego won’t let you let go.
It’s not well covered in English language history which basically just skips over the fact poland was a viciously fascist state in the 1930s but it does get covered by Timothy Snyder, although he has a pretty firmly anti-Russian slant through his work.
You can see a lot of the works that cover it are in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian
60-70 hangings a day to fight “guerrillas”, floggings and torture to control the population, the Belorussians not having access to the education system, and the use of concentration camps to hold political activists, and trade unionists. Language rights were suppressed and the local population were forcibly “Polonized” / assimilated while also being held in an oppressed state as a cheap labor force for Polish settlers who were given the land as an agricultural fiefdom no different in any sense from the lebensraum concept - especially during the Polish fascist period of the mid to late 1930s.
Today the western part of Belorussia is still less industrialized than the east and the divide clearly falls along the line of polish occupation and colonial-settlement.
Ironically it was the atrocious treatment of the Belorussian minority that Hitler pointed at when claiming the German minority in Poland needed to be “rescued” - although the German minority were actually not treated badly.
You Redditors just love using this term, but invasion and genocide are not actually synonymous. You can call Putin apathetic to civilian casualties, but that's not the same as genocide. Of course Ukrainian jingoists love this kind of language because accusing Russia of genocide has been in the playbook for quite a while now
Hey look here's the news source (village voice) you posted talking about what they're doing in Ukraine right now. Lol nice one
https://www.villagevoice.com/russias-crimes-in-ukraine-against-humanity-and-nature/
"By general consensus, Stalin was partially responsible." That author would've been executed or gulaged in the ussr since it was a crime to mention the holodomor & blame the authorities. I bet to you that sounds exactly like how a responsible government would respond to criticism.
Layers of deflection to avoid just reading a fucking article. No, mentioning the famine was not a crime and you are literally just making that up because you think it fits the vibe of things.
Why are you so unwilling to contend with the actual content of the article?
Even if Russians killed every Ukrainian there'd still be dummies like u in this thread claiming no genocide happened & that it was their fault for resisting.
Since you want to quote laws you should be aware that since parts of the Donbass are occupied by Russia (namely Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts), Ukrainian law does not apply there. The territories, until the referendum was held, fell under UN Occupation Law because it was "actually placed under the authority of the adverse foreign armed forces"(source: https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/occupation).
The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised. A State's territory may therefore be partially occupied, in which case the laws and obligations of occupation apply only in the territory that is actually occupied. When a State consents to the presence of foreign troops there is no occupation.
Ukrainian law does not apply to territories under Russian authority.
Lol is that the Kremlin crackpot loop hole?
Step 1 invade a country
Step 2 have a totally legit election
Step 3 annex after a totally not sham referendum
Step 4 borders? What borders? Partial occupation is fine
Step 5 blame Western powers
Rosemary DiCarlo said it best, "Unilateral actions aimed to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the attempted acquisition by force by one State of another State's territory while claiming to represent the will of the people, cannot be regarded as legal under international law"
Doesn't matter what you think, I'm using the UN definition which you should lap up like the good liberal dog you are. It's not even what I think, it's literally what UN countries have agreed to.
No you're not, u found 2 paragraphs that kinda say what you want and went from there. Do I need to repeat the steps to the crackpot Kremlin loop hole until you see how silly they sound?
Rosemary Anne DiCarlo (born 1947) is an American diplomat who has served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs since May 2018. She previously served as acting United States Ambassador to the United Nations[1] following the resignation of Susan Rice to become the National Security Advisor.
I wonder if the ambassador to the United nations or a tankie on an Internet forum is more educated about UN occupations....
Your problem is with international law which respects the territorial sovereignty of nations and does not recognize a right of sucession by a group unless their right of internal self determination is compromised. In this case the Ukrainian constitution requires a referendum of all Ukrainian people
So when rightists oppose secession because, while they hate the ethnic Russians who want to leave, they don't want those ethnic Russians taking the land, etc. with them, we should be moved by this motivation and not consider the right of self-determination compromised?
No! your fevered brain is just rattling off talking points that you heard parroted in other threads.
LMAO you have zero self awareness and its kind of adorable. You aren't in your liberal echo chamber here and no amount of tantrum throwing is going to make anyone take you seriously.
What is your proof the referenda were not legit? You're the one who's going against the grain here, it's you who needs to prove your stance. I won't accept it without evidence.
They probably don't, but unlike the bourgeois government of Ukraine, the bourgeois government of Russia wasn't waging a several years long campaign of ethnic violence to redirect working class anger. If Russia is going to prevent a genocide, that's obviously better.
I have a question for you. Why are liberals so much more interested in protecting the rich than the ethnic minorities they use as scapegoats? You guys do the same thing when you whine about communists in Ukraine fighting antisemitic Ukrainian landlords. How much were my ancestors supposed to endure in order to protect the privilege of the parasites?
Keep hoping. Better yet, go there and fight yourself if you think it's so important. But you won't. You'll just move your outrage to the next target that US propaganda will point you to.
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Ok dronie. I will celebrate when the West crumbles.
dronie is a good one.
what're your thoughts on the US bombing of panama city?
Having thoughts is probably too much to expect from a NAFO bot.
Whataboutism is your best defense, and a poor attempt at that?
Equating the two is hilarious. Even so I’m not excusing all the bullshit the US has done.
At least I can say the US has done some terrible shit without getting arrested or killed. Try saying anything bad about Russia or Putin in Russia.
Huh??? what the hell do you think Assange did?
Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
Again, try saying anything bad about Putin or Russia in Russia. At least I can speak freely and scream from the rooftops about the shitty parts of the US. Go ahead.
no, he didn't leak shit, he published leaked information what the hell.
and you can only do that right now because the ruling class isn't concerned about possible socialist revolution, I advise you to read up on the 1st and 2nd Red Scares!
(also, who fucking cares if you can complain about something if you can't actually change the situation???)
Liberals don't know the difference between negative and positive rights.
So when a cop kills an innocent person I’m just not supposed to be upset?
Again, I can spread the word and my viewpoint and not be arrested/killed, at least legally. It’s not like Biden or Trump could have had me killed for saying it.
The Uhuru House publically opposed the war effort in Ukraine and got raided, then had a bunch of their members locked up for allegedly being in cahoots with Russians. By default, your bullshit's refuted.
Whoa slow down, where did this cop come from? I swear you people are so morally bankrupt, you have to try and mindtrick someone into agreeing w/ a completely unrelated question. It's so jarring and deceitful to read
So when a cop kills an innocent person I’m just not supposed to be upset?
Again, I can spread the word and my viewpoint and not be arrested/killed, at least legally. It’s not like Biden or Trump could have had me killed for saying it.
in awe at this one. Once again, if they think you're a threat to state power do you think they give a single flying fuck about what's legal/illegal? do you think what's being done to Assange is actually legal? he didn't leak anything, he just published information given to him. Once again, if the there was a serious socialist threat to this country I promise you would be arrested/killed no matter what if it became known you were a vocal dissident, legality be damned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
Damn thats crazy, the shit that might hurt the state is illegal(and therefore presumably justifiable to punish) while you get to do all the intellectual jerkoffs you want with no effect on anything?
Real lucky you get to live in freedomland.
So saying you disagree with something your government did is hurting the state? Lol
Do you see how these two statements cannot be true at the same time?
Again, purposely digging up confidential information and then exposing it is illegal.
Talking realistically and honestly about something is freedom of speech.
If you are that dense that you think those are the same things, then I might as well talk to a brick wall.
Going up to Snowden and saying "Erm, sir, you might have told us that the American government is spying on us every moment of our lives, but, erm, actshually, doing that was illegal, so unfortunately, sir, you are not epic and you don't deserve freedom of speech protections"
what an absolute fucking dweeb, holy shit
I will go tell Putin to make it "confidential information" that he's a bad person, then maybe you'll shut the fuck up for a single moment of your life because a bootlicker like you will be forced to obey it if you ever go there
Again, I don’t disagree and I find it commendable what both did exposing things.
However, it is against the law. It’s not the same thing as free speech.
not very "free" if there are restrictions, is it
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Yeah, because free speech isn't a real thing. That's the point. I very much doubt that there's even one semi-functional country on the planet that does not restrict speech to at least some degree.
God you're a fucking loser
so I gather from these two statements that the first is incorrect
It's like the two statues riddle but you lose no matter what and they wear CIA and NSA jackets.
Someone's never heard of the Free Speech fights.
You can and will be jailed just for saying shit, if people start to listen to you and you're saying the wrong shit. Your "freedom of speech" is as worthless as used toilet paper the moment a judge decides to issue an injunction against you i.e. the strikes in Harlan County in the 70s had judges jailing people for using the word "scab."
Also fun fact I learned today, remember the Kent State Massacre? People were ordered to apologize for being shot just to get compensation, which only covered legal defenses. Land of the fucking free, lmao
When your life is made illegal, what're you gonna do, liberal? Roll over for the bourgeois state like a good boy?
No, not at all.
Freedom of speech protects you from being prosecuted for saying something.
It doesn’t protect you from any other consequences of what you say.
I did not say that you can say anything with no consequences whatsoever
You're just being obtuse and refusing to understand reality, so as not to lose an argument or learn something.
They were talking about prosecution
Rooftops are generally a good place to speek freely, even in an oppressive country.
Try speaking about US atrocities at work. If you lose your job, you're not free.
I used to work for the US government and we all talked shit about it at work. So your making shit up
Working at the dmv and talking about how incompetent bureaucracy are isn't the kind of talking we're talking about
Go work for a railroad and try to organize a general strike and tell me how safe you feel
I don’t feel like I’d be arrested or put to death if that’s what your asking?
I don’t feel like I’d be arrested or put to death if that’s what your asking?
people get arrested during strikes and protests all the time in America. of course, you would justify it as "actually they were breaking Clause 8 of Section 9A so it was against the law and they shouldn't have done it!" without questioning if that law might possibly have been drawn up specifically to punish those people because the government couldn't do it legally before. no, all laws in America come straight out of the Founding Father's dick as a glorious bukkake for us all to share freely, while in tyrannical states like Russia and China, all laws are to be questioned and/or drawn up by the supreme ruler himself because he was really extra totalitarian that day
never try idealism kids, it turns you into this
No, people get arrested for breaking other laws while they strike, big difference
This comment was made after you were given a list of examples of such laws that included saying the word "scab" so there's really no excuse for your obstinance on this point specifically
I don’t feel like I’d be arrested or put to death if that’s what your asking?
No, they’ll just let some freikorps freak run you over with impunity.
Just kidding, you’re too much of a bootlicker to ever go out and actually protest for the rights and life of others. Just having the hypothetical “right” is freedom enough.
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Unless that law is a bad country's law.
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silly communist, don't you know that AMERICAN law applies everywhere in the world? Heh, you really lack a geopolitical education and it shows 😎
(I am being facetious pls don't block me)
If you do this in the US you are getting a visit from the police
dang putin must have snipers everywhere to enforce that
that's impossible, the entire Russian army has been destroyed a hundred times now by Ukraine, over 15 million Russian troops have been killed last time I checked, there are no snipers left
the Zaporozhye front is just the Ukrainians doing a giant war re-enactment of what would have happened if there were any Russians left alive, but due to the 1:984219 casualty ratio, there aren't any Russians left
you mean there are not snipers in every square meter of siberia watching out for siberian separatists?
He probably would if he could.
Damn the butthurt Russians are out in force today.
Imagine being so chauvinistic that you’re outright unable to conceive of the idea that someone might hold an opinion for any reason other than blind patriotism. You’ve become brainwashed to a point where you can’t imagine that the governments of the United States and its allies, which have been caught spreading or taking advantage of lie after lie after lie after lie after lie in order to achieve geopolitical victories over nations they considered to be a political or economic threat, might be lying in their characterization of the government of Russia, which has repeatedly stood in the way of American and Western European attempts to both expand into Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe politically, as well as exploit Ukraine economically.
I need you to understand that I am not being hyperbolic when I say that you and people who share your views are what is wrong with humanity in the present day. As long as people like you continue to be either willing or gullible enough to keep believing the lies of a geopolitical block as untrustworthy as the United States and its allies solely because you are incapable of looking past your country’s propaganda and seeing your own leaders as anything other than the righteous beacons of humanity that they try to make themselves appear to be, humanity will almost certainly be doomed to enter pointless conflicts and cause mass destruction until we drive our own species off of a cliff.
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Why do you call the people disagreeing with you Russians?
You cant even meaningfully add to a joke bc youre so childishly resentful. You take this arguing so much more seriously than us while we just casually have the information youre missing, and it looks hilarious.
Assange didn’t do anything illegal but even if he did you might as well be saying “criticizing Putin may the right thing do, but it’s illegal so you shouldn’t do it.”
You when the US commits war crimes: :)
You when their war crimes are reported on: >:(
He didn't leak any info, he published already leaked info. There is an important legal distinction.
There's lots of above ground opposition to Putin in Russia. Stop being a clown. There's plenty of real things to criticize. We don't need to make things up.
Aside from that not being what he did, what does it matter morally that it's illegal? It was illegal to smuggle Jews out of Germany, too.
Whataboutism is just a rhetorical device trolls try to use to create a double standard for themselves and everyone else when faced with the fact that their side does all the same things they accuse others of. Meanwhile, imagine being such an utter ignoramus to be unaware of all the political violence that US does.
No, it’s because two wrongs don’t make a right. You can point out shit the US has done all day and I’ll probably agree with you. But it doesn’t make what Russia did okay.
Yeah whataboutism is fucking removed. It’s no excuse or justification. It’s shit.
Cool ableist slurs go fuck yourself
No, it’s because two wrongs don’t make a right. You can point out shit the US has done all day and I’ll probably agree with you. But it doesn’t make what Russia did okay.
Yeah whataboutism is fucking removed. It’s no excuse or justification. It’s shit.
the problem isn't necessarily pointing out the problems with any particular country, that can be done as a legitimate discussion, what gets really fucking annoying is when people only talk about the problems with a certain country and then when questioned, are like "Oh, no! We also hate it when America does this thing! We're just talking about X country right now!" when that's clearly false. like, you say "Fuck China for having mass surveillance" on reddit and you get 100k upvotes, 20 platinum awards and some dude's firstborn son, whereas if you say "Fuck America for having mass surveillance" you'll get "Hm, well, you see, this is a complicated topic, because on the one hand..." or even just "Yeah, but it's nothing compared to China though!"
the problem is also when what you're talking about is necessarily a comparison because no action exists in a vacuum free of context. if I say "The US is an awful, imperialist country that has invaded all these nations, and NATO has also invaded and destroyed nations, and we should not support them even if Russia is doing a bad thing because Russia's death toll is so much lower than the West's" then all I would get on most lib platforms is "That history doesn't matter! What matters is the here and now, when Russia is doing a bad thing and NATO currently, at this precise moment in time, is not! Bad things are bad things! You can't wave them away through context!"
but the question isn't "Is Russia doing a bad thing", I don't think anybody would deny except the most fervent Russian nationalist that Russia has done at least some bad things in Ukraine, the question is "Who should we support in this war" and so the fact that NATO and the US has killed tens of millions of people within the lifetime of the current president and doomed hundreds of millions more to backbreaking labor in mines and plantations and sweatshops, and Russia, well, hasn't, is a perfectly pertinent point to make when asking who to support. This is also why liberals are so utterly gobsmacked when third-world countries don't come out against Russia, because they have been on the receiving end of this campaign of carnage that the US has wrought around the world and so, logically, think Russia is the lesser of two evils. can't they see that Russia is evil! can't they see that Putler is the devil doing a genocide!? they must be brainwashed by Russian disinformation propaganda! we must up our efforts to spread Correct Information!
Sevy destroys Liberal with facts and logic
When your own country does the same and worse you have no moral high ground to criticize others, nor does it accomplish anything. As the saying goes, people living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Americans should focus on fixing their own country instead of playing world police.
Fun fact, the origin of "whataboutism" was its use as the phrase "whataboutery" during the Troubles in Ireland as the Irish accused the British of atrocities only to be dismissed as "whataboutery"
Weird how it's always used as a thought terminating cliche to prevent criticism of the dominant empire, huh!
Good thing it only works on idiots like you
Again, since you’re reading comprehension sucks…
I’m not the one dismissing what any country has done. I’m saying they should both be held accountable.
The fact that the comment I was originally replying to was using that justification goes along with what you just said… which is pointing out what someone else did is no justification for any action. They both should be taken for what they are and judged accordingly.
I'm gonna try to follow your logic in good faith. If both Russia and the US should be held accountable for their crimes, then who should actually hold them accountable?
NATO is the international arm of the US military and it has committed war crimes over its entire decades of existence, some of the most recent ones in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. If the US is to be held equally accountable for their actions as the RF should be, then all NATO operations should be held under the same scrutiny.
So by this logic how can you support a NATO in it's actions in Ukraine. Before Russia invaded, NATO was supported the bombing of the Donbass and the destruction of that region. If the US and NATO has a history of destabilizing regions through warfare for the benefit of the US, how can any of their actions be justified?
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by the International Court of Good Guys, which will order Russia to totally rebuild Ukraine and give back Crimea and all the rest, and order the United States and NATO to give a heartfelt apology to the people of the countries they've invaded and whose governments they've overthrown (they won't do this)
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If you say that to point the hypocrisy in someone's statement is a fallacy then everyone can just blame each other for basically anything and nothing constructive comes out.
Oh you drink water? Hitler did too. What do you mean everyone drinks water? That's whataboutism
You shouldn't ask what about this? You should ask what about this ban ayyylmao
I engage with some Russian language media, and people actually do express criticisms and critiques of Putin and the war without being arrested or killed.
Human garbage such as yourself is precisely the reason this war is still ongoing and hundreds of thousands of people are dead. If you want Russians to die so bad then go sign up for the foreign legion and fight yourself instead of shitposting here you deplorable piece shit.
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Every single person who supports continuation of this war is responsible for the people dying in this war. Meanwhile, pointing your energy at Putin while living in the west is idiotic because you have zero influence on Putin. What you have influence on is your own deplorable regime that's fueling the continuation of this war.
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Russia isn't going to leave, and nothing the west has done got Ukraine closer to winning the war. What the west has achieved was to drag this war out and ensure that countless people died in the process. If anything, the west ensured that Ukraine is in a far worse position now than it was in March last year when US and UK sabotaged negotiations.
If still you think that Ukraine can win this war then you need to start engaging with reality. Your whole rant is premised on a nonsensical assumption that Ukraine can win. Meanwhile, comparing this to WW2 shows stunning amounts of historical illiteracy and utter lack of understanding in regards to causes of this war.
Finally, nowhere have I supported Russia in anything here. What I've explained to you is the objective reality of the situation. The fact that you see this in black and white terms of either supporting the west using Ukraine as a proxy in a war with Russia or supporting Russian invasion shows that you have infantile understanding of the world. Your childish insults are a further indication of your stunted mental development.
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No, that puts me in a position of having actual understanding of the situation and reality of the war instead of regurgitating western propaganda the way you're doing.
Where were you when these people were trying to defend themselves as reported by CNN, and where were you when this was happening?
It's not, and only an ignoramus or a propagandist would claim that. Your whole narrative based on the fallacy of homogenizing Ukraine. Let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
here's how the election in 2004 went:
this is the 2010 election:
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
Ukraine is clearly not some homogeneous blob, but a large country with complex cultural and ethnic situations.
Furthermore, the idea that NATO threatens Russia doesn't come from Russia. Plenty of western experts have been saying this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started. Here's what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:
https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/
https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/
50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:
George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.
And of course, RAND published a whole study titled extending Russia where it proposes to use Ukraine as a western proxy the way is being done now. You're either a shill or a useful idiot for the empire, either way not a good look.
Damn saved for further reading
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After the western sponsored coup in 2014 the eastern regions of Ukraine wanted to separate and Ukraine has been in a civil war since then. What Russia did is actually directly modelled on what NATO did in Yugoslavia where they recognized the independence of the breakaway regions and then had them invite NATO for help. That's literally the precedent that you NATO chuds set.
The point where you're trying to compare people of eastern Ukraine fighting for independence from the coup regime that was shelling them with cluster munitions to nazis? If you don't understand why that's an idiotic comparison, then what else is there to say to you.
Oh, it's bad, but the people the coup regime was shelling apparently don't get a right of self determination according to you.
Actual geopolitical experts disagree, but I guess you think you know better because you've demonstrated such deep understanding of the subject in this thread. Fun fact is that Russia wanted to join NATO in the 90s and NATO told Russia to fuck off after which point NATO went on to invade a bunch of countries such as Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria and continued to surround Russia militarily.
You're an ignoramus and you should be deeply ashamed of yourself.
People in Donbas will certainly keep being killed if Russia withdraws
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It's pure speculation that shelling that went on for 8 years would continue? That shelling that went on in spite of two attempts at peace treaties wouldn't be stopped by an even-less-conditional treaty?
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No, I mean the civilians in Donbas and the separatist soldiers
Being popular and having friends is only suspicious to friendless losers
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You're the one who's brigading, I don't remember inviting you on our instance. Banned for brigading and possibly being a funded shill.
Read this to know why this is not a realistic line of argument.
Who provided Ukraine with cluster ammo and depleted uranium ammo that will infect their own soil and people for decades to come
idk dude, maybe you should stop sending wave after wave after wave of leopards and bradleys into minefields if you want to not waste Western resources
the saddest thing is that at the end of this war, there will be hundreds of thousands if not millions of dead Ukrainians, all who died because of Western hatred. but you won't actually care, will you? the lives of the average Ukrainian mean nothing to you. you could send a hundred Ukrainians to die horrifically in the no man's land and if a Russian stubs his toe because of it, you would call it a worthy sacrifice, because causing the Russians inconvenience and suffering is worth much more than saving the lives of innocent people who have been conscripted at gunpoint.
if it wasn't a worthy sacrifice, and you thought this wholesale slaughter should stop, you would support ending the war, like the left does.
Yes, all because of western hatred, fuck all to do with the people who invaded in the first place. They're all imperalist fucks but takes like this on the situation are just completely braindead.
Where have you been for 8 years? 2014-2022
What do you know of the modern "civil conflict" in Ukraine? Do you know what happened in 2014? Are you aware of who began massacring who that year?
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_have_you_been_for_eight_years%3F#:~:text=%22Where%20have%20you%20been%20for,pointing%20out%20to%20what%20Ukraine)
Holy shit, NATOpedia made an article saying "Hey, there might be actual historical context to this situation and Putin didn't wake up on February 24th and decide to murder a bunch of people because he's a very evil bad bad man and King Zelensky shall slay the dragon and then we all live happily ever after." is actually Russian disinformation? Oh my fucking god. These people are unbearable.
It's so fucking funny. I shared it semi-ironically (the Russian bots are inside your walls) but I also want it to serve as an example of liberal anti-communist biases that permeate Wikifedia and hopefully an exercise for our more liberal acquaintances to practice their critical reading skills.
Hey, that time the Ukrainian state killed people? It wasn't TECHNICALLY an attempted genocide, according to our sixth-time revised definition of the term (rev. 2022). We know they TECHNICALLY outlawed the spoken and written language of a major plurality of their people and TECHNICALLY killed 14,000+ of them, but like, it wasn't a genocide. Russia is doing the genocide. Because Putler is ebil.
It's amazing how thin the veneer of understanding is on empire defenders. They cannot even keep their criticisms of international and national policy differentiated, when it comes to attacking anti-imperialists it's always both. No examination of political economy or national histories, just democratic good guys and auforitarian bad guys.
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That's hilarious. What should happen after signing an agreement is that the violence should stop! Gtfo with this things were getting better but we won't provide any evidence to back this claim up bullshit.
Reminds me of how ingrained the presupposed eternal nature of this imperialist hell is into things like statistical analyses of police violence.
For instance, I once had a guy in college (who is now a professional Republican lobbyist) tell me that there was indeed a racial problem behind police violence in the U.S.! The racial disparity between how many white folk and how many black folk were getting killed, he agreed, was appalling. He said, however, that over time that disparity was shrinking, and officer-involved fatalities were reaching "equitable levels between whites and blacks!", so we're actually on the fast track to progress, not regress.
The disparity was shrinking. Not the actual amount of murders.
The wanton and brutal murders committed by police are not the primary issue, they say, the opaquely racial disparity between who is being murdered is.
A game of images. A perfectly logical conclusion to this train of thought is that police should simply murder more white people to prove that racism is over, to make state-sanctioned violence more equitable. Murder, but be inclusive about it!
This is the presentation of the issue by those who acknowledge that there even exists a racial problem. There are plenty who outright deny its existence and still more who celebrate it. Politicians who claim to oppose police violence (especially the phenotypically-motivated kind) will nevertheless be found supporting legislation that further militarizes the police. This is how Amerika does politics... never harm reduction, only harm redistribution - at best.
Wow. I've been asking people that question since February 2022 and I have yet to receive a single Ruble from Mr. Putin.
I recall talking with my friends about Ukraine being a Nazi state in 2020. It was just a fucked up thing all of us knew. I suppose I ought to wash my brain of that vivid memory, lest I become a kremlin apologist ex post facto.
The imperialism of marching your border closer and closer to NATO's troops from 1990 to 2022 is truly the worst kind. Russia must be punished for putting Moscow that close to Ukraine.
couldn't possibly have anything to do with the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass who were getting slaughtered for years before 2022. those people don't matter, only pro-Ukraine people matter. couldn't possibly have anything to do with security interests. only NATO's security interests matter, not Russia (or China's). couldn't possibly have anything to do with having armed NATO-trained troops in a country that recently experienced a US-backed coup. of course, if Russia puts Wagner forces in African countries (so not even inside NATO's "sphere of influence") that recently experienced a coup, that's an entirely different thing because uhh Russia is bad and NATO is good. that's Russian imperialism. us putting our troops in coup'd countries is freedom and bringing democracy. and also that wasn't a coup, it was actually the citizens doing it all by themselves.
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Of course not! It's not Ukraine's fault that the Russian Federation invaded and demanded they give up land.
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That question was a test of your basic empathy and humanity
Let's see those results
Meanwhile "tankies":
(Mao)
Blood and soil lookin ass warhawks.
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Imagine thinking they'd stop at 100 sq km lol
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Ukraine shoulda kept those nukes, those are much better at protecting neutrality when you share a border with Russia. Educate yourself about the Budapest memorandum and maybe you'll realize your hypocrisy. Why the sam hell do you think would Russia care about breaking internal law?
RuLeS baSEd oRDeR!
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Okay so you think Russia broke the memorandum right?
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What a shock: you aren't willing to answer that question. I wonder why
That has to be one of the dumbest takes I've ever read on the internet.
If the West wouldn't support Ukraine then the Russians would kill them without resistance, that's about it.
If the West didn't organize a coup in Ukraine, put Nazis into power, then prod them into slaughtering their countrymen, then the Russians wouldn't have invaded. The Russians didn't just wake up one day and decide to invade Ukraine.
I'd love to see how you people will react when Mexico joins BRICS and the US invades it.
I cannot fucking wait for China and Russia to do freedom of navigation exercises between Cuba and Florida like how the US does with Taiwan and China and for Americans to just fucking LOSE it. Holy shit, it'll be so funny. "No, this isn't the same because China is evil and we're the good guys!"
They did it near Alaska and Yankees lost it
Mexico aint joining brics unfortunely. Tho it doesnt stop the US from manufacturing consent to invade on a daily basis with their fentanyl+cartel talking points.
The West's support of Ukraine is getting them all killed anyway. Might as well lay down your arms and have some working-age males to rebuild the country with after surrendering.
They could have made peace near the beginning of the war and they rejected it. Russia offered to hand back Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts and withdraw in exchange for Ukraine giving up aspirations of NATO and not trying to acquire nuclear missiles, but Ukraine refused. Hardly the rhetoric of a bloodthirsty warlord.
If the west didn't use Ukraine as a proxy there wouldn't have been a war in the first place. It's sad human garbage such as yourself that mad it possible. Now you sit here and bloviate while people die. Fuck you!
If the west wouldn't 'support' Ukraine then they'd still have their democratically elected government and wouldn't be in conflict with Russia in the first place
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If nearly a decade ago Ukraine were allowed to keep it's democratically elected government, they would be under Putin's control?
Why do you feel comfortable jumping in to argue when you don't seem to know what's being talked about in the first place?
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Holy shit what a nauseating
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oh honey you don't have to pretend to be any dumber
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Wait for it
Its such a sad tell that you servile losers simply can't concieve of not "worshipping" something
also yes I am 10/10
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In what way and to what degree am I defending Russia and against what?
Be specific if you're going to criticize me so I don't spend too much time going back and forth cutting through generalities.
Did all the Japanese get killed after they surrendered? Did all Germans? If they had surrendered earlier less of them would have died. The same goes for Nazi Ukraine. Their defeat is inevitable, and prolonging the inevitable only adds to the suffering...and to the list of war crimes that they will be charged with by Russia's tribunals afterwards. The West's "support" is literally destroying Ukraine and they have all admitted that they have no problem with this, in fact they profit from it.
The West is happy to "fight to the last Ukrainian" to hurt Russia, the Banderite Nazis are happy to die (and force their less fanatical compatriots to do so as well) for the West so long as it enables their genocidal urges, meanwhile the only ones who actually care about the Ukrainian people and have gone out of their way to try and save them from the Western imperialists and from themselves are the Russians.
It's actually really sad that there isn't a single country on the planet that cares about Ukraine except Russia (and maybe Belarus). To the West they're just a tool, useful idiot cannon fodder, to the rest of the world they're a tragic cautionary tale about what happens when you let the lunatics take over the asylum, which is what happened on the Maidan in 2014. If you really cared about Ukraine you too would want the flow of weapons and money to them to stop, because the longer this goes on the worse it will be for them.
Not to mention the arming of a now destabilize country in Europe, could have totally unforeseeable consequences. But that's not Americans problem.
Kill who? Without the west supplying and supporting Ukraine wouldn't even have a functioning military to kill.
you're so wrong it's hard to know where to even begin. You buy into the premise that the US arming reactionaries and building them up as a force to destabilize and entire region is somehow "protecting" people.
Yeah man looks like you have all that insight from your secret sources that anyone else does not.
Why is the entirety of Europe so dumb and supports Ukraine not getting fucked for literally no valid reason?
Look, there's basically two theories for why no one outside this removed bubble agrees with these shit takes - especially in the region where this is happening.
A) you and the twenty other dudes are just smarter than anyone else that cannot see through what you have apparently uncovered by sitting on your desk and browsing the web B) the absolute majority of politicians, the military, and the actual people living in the continent have gotten it right
If you think A) is the case then I don't know what else to tell you
Loaded question that presupposes that Europe is actually "supporting" Ukraine and not simply dangling membership in the world's largest protection racket in front of them like a carrot on a stick, in order to get them to fight a pointless and avoidable war to destabilize Russia, while also further privatizing and looting the Ukrainian economy.
So, again, your argument is that you have unique insight that no one else has. Do you even realize that at this point?
Even if what you said was true and by chance you got it right, there's so much in it that makes literally no sense.
Literally no one was having serious talks about this before the invasion. If that was the end goal all along that could have been so much easier BEFORE the war.
Russia was not stable in any way, share, or form before the war. They weren't even a real democracy.
And, again, even if that were true: Russia started the war. And they can end it at any point in time.
The west doesn't have to destabilize Russia because they are absolutely irrelevant from both a economics and military perspective.
Which is presumably why they started the war.
They are being gifted weapons and money. Idk how you could even think this was a net gain.
yeah, we know.
don't know why you're fixated on this point. Russia isn't a democracy. And? Nobody here is arguing that Russia is a good country or a democracy.
Of course you imagine that the capitalist class dictatorships in the NATO countries are real democracies because they practice multi-party elections between competing capitalist factions, while failing to ever represent working class or marginalized interests except in the most nominal and symbolic ways.
Ukraine is not being gifted anything. they're expected to pay for all of this "aid," with interest. Down the line this will be used as an excuse to privatize and loot their economy. Oh wait. It already is.
Yes, we know you libs dream of Russian genocide, but you can keep dreaming.
Why do you think Russia deserves the land it invaded?
There was a referendum in the Donbass and people voted to join Russia. Much like happened with Alsace and Lorraine. I'm sorry but we salute the red 🇰🇵 white 🇨🇺 and blue 🇱🇦 here if you don't like democracy you can fuck off back to lemmy.
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I'll give you ample time to answer that for yourself as you remain unbanned on lemmygrad so you can still get notifications when people reply to your comments which we are also not deleting
You're the one who butted into our instance with your takes 🤷
Eh you're not as bad as the other guys/gals/comrades.
Talk about that democracy, blue boy. It's your favorite thing right?
The key issue for me is the right of a people to self determination.
The people who live in the eastern parts of Ukraine are overwhelming Russian speaking and identify as ethnically Russian. They voted three times in various ways for some form of preserving their cultural rights, only to have their expression of Democratic will met with violent militias, shelling, and other violence, and then finally voted once again to secede from Ukraine, largely motivated by the extreme hostility from right wing Ukrainian nationalists who were banning the use of Russian, imposing assimilationist education policies, banning political parties that represented the people there, and even banning the free exercise of religion if that religious practice looked to the Russian Orthodox Church for leadership.
The principle of the self determination of a people to choose their own government demands respect and Ukraine has no right to impose their will on a population that doesn’t want it.
You should look at what the people who actually live there, in the east not just those in Kyiv, have been saying for a decade. They don’t want to be part of Ukraine anymore and it’s because of the extreme violence Ukraine has inflicted upon them since 2014.
Which referendums are you referring to and does any country besides Russia or North Korea accept the results? Just an FYI elections in Russia itself are not free from corruption in any sense of the word. But I'm sure you take putin's word when he says their fair Lol 2014 is when Russian backed separatists began working in Ukraine, Russia has always been the aggressor and could've stopped the violence whenever they choose.
literally the consent "isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?" meme but with America
but this is also a very funny way of imagining how self-determination and independence movements work a lot of the time. Imagine a world where a newfound country breaks free from an existing one and then that newfound country sees that 90% of the UN, including the country they just broke free from, doesn't recognize them for doing that and they're just like "Well, shucks. I guess we're going back and re-joining the country again, because these people aren't ready to accept us yet!"
That's all on you for misunderstanding how being a country works. It doesn't matter that you hold elections but that you hold the monopoly of violence over the population. That's what gets you recognition. Color me shocked that you don't even know how the most rudimentary geopolitics works ..
What are you saying? The Ukrainian state held a monopoly of violence over the people of the Donbass and used it regularly since the coup in 2014. These people in turn declared independence in order to free themselves from this violence, but the Ukrainian state wouldn't have it. The only way to counter violent suppression is with violence. These people know this and it's why they invited Russian military intervention to their cause.
It wasn't a coup it was a revolution.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing international conflict between Russia, alongside Russian-backed separatists, and Ukraine, which began in February 2014.
Are you saying they ::gasp:: used violence during a WAR? ThEy UsEd vIolEnCe DuRIng A wAr?!?
This is just copium. Whatever you believe, the result was a fascist Ukranian state that supports literal Nazis shelling civilians. What were they supposed to do, vote harder? Oh right, their voting rights were suppressed and their political parties banned from running in elections. At a certain point, when faced with violent suppression, violence become your only option.
You're the one who brought up violence. I'm simply trying to present the world to you as it is instead of through the filter of liberal propoganda that you so happily slurp up daily. That boot is so deep down your throat, maybe you should start an only fans.
It's copium but it's also provably wrong; the US came out and admitted they got Porochenko elected.
but we don't keep up with geopolitics apparently, while this dude is stuck in the 70s lol 🤓
Oh 💯. I was just pointing out that the human rights abuses committed by the fascist Ukranian state are unjustifiable regardless.
You're the ones that think Russia is still a bastion of Marxism. Get a clue, the Soviet Union is gone and it's not coming back anytime soon.
Nobody here thinks that Russia is "still a bastion of Marxism". Like literally nobody. You're a real laugh.
Color me shocked. Communists support non marxist militaristic imperialism over Western economic imperialism & Capitalism wins either way.
I support an end to war and NATO instigated this war and keeps it going.
How do you figure? Despite what you say it was Russian troops crossing the border they could leave at any time.
You'd have to look at the situation from before the war started, like all the way back to the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the 2004 Ukranian color revolution. NATO instigated the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which made relations between Ukraine and Russia much more tense. That's when Ukraine began more earnestly shelling the Donbas region as well, which is a region of people who've always been more sympathetic towards Russia. The residents there even speak Russian. The situation became more tense to the point Ukraine was floating NATO membership, which would have resulted in Russia being more surrounded than they ever have.
Russian troops could leave, and that would result in the same situation as before and would inevitably erupt into conflict again. NATO encirclement, ethnically Russian people getting shelled, Nazi Ukrainian troops in the region, Ukraine denying self-determination for people within its own borders. It would still be a geopolitical mess with potential for another war.
Russia has in fact called for ceasefires and peace talks multiple times already. Early on in the war Ukraine seemed willing to have talks, but NATO pressured them out of it. The situation now is that despite Russia calling for ceasefires, the position of the US and other NATO allies is that no ceasefire will be accepted unless Russia completely leaves the region. That's pigheaded and wrong. Any stop to the fighting should be accepted. That means NATO is calling for an extension to the war, not Russia.
The best possible way for this conflict to end is Ukraine cuts its losses, Russia annexes Donbas and Luhansk, and the fighting stops. Normal, average working class people are harmed as long as this conflict keeps going and as leftists we should be in favor of war ending, not persisting. Ukraine losing territory and the fight ending is a massively better situation than the fight becoming another decades long quagmire like Afghanistan or Syria.
Classic, Russia acts like a petulant child not accepting the fact that it can't live up to the glory days when it has complete dominance over it's neighbors so it manufacturers a reason why it must invade a country and blame NATO because the Ukrainian get support from territorial aggression. Allowing them to keep their holdings is the same as appeasement a bad idea in front of a conscript army. Please explain why Russia dashed for kyiv of they "just wanted to annex a bit of the east" lol u dummy. Listening to you is like being at the end of the human centipede Putin's at the front and I'm at the back.
Yeah it is appeasement. Is open warfare better than appeasement? Should they fight until the last Ukrainian? No, that's awful. War between capitalist states is not the realm of the working class or poor people. The victims of this war are people caught in the crossfire, Ukrainian, Russian, or otherwise, and ending the war even through territorial concession would be better than what's happening now.
I think Russia made a dash to Kyiv to flank the Ukranian army from mobilizing in the east so that Russian bases and supply routes could be established, but I have not followed troop movements much since last year. Russia made the correct assumption that Ukraine would focus most of its attention on defending the capital if it were threatened. I think that strategy worked because Russia captured not just Donbas and Lunansk, but Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as well. You've made the mistake of thinking I'm defending Russia because I explained how I see the context. Russia shouldn't have invaded, NATO shouldn't exist, the 2014 Ukranian coup shouldn't have happened, people in Donbas and Luhansk should be allowed to exercise self-determination. None of the conflict should have happened and the primary cause of the situation is, like always, neoliberal imperialism. Maybe there were non-violent ways out of this conflict, but they're all imaginary now. We live in reality.
I don't know what people want from me here. Sorry, I don't see this conflict as pure territorial expansion ordered by Putin on this basis of his moral failures or greed or whatever. Because that's not what it is, and me saying that somehow means I've got Putin whispering in my ear like a witch in Salem hearing the voice of Satan. This conflict is one resolution in a long line of unresolved conflicts going all the way back to 1991, it's more than Putin, more than even just Ukraine and Russia.
What constitutes imperialism in Russia?
Invading & Maintaining a hegemony over their neighbors.
For reference, is this hegemony in the broad sense where Germany has hegemony over Munich? Or the narrower sense in which we would say the US has hegemony over Puerto Rico or France had hegemony over Burkina Faso? You've demonstrated a propensity to play fast and loose with your terms, so quippy answers aren't that helpful.
Is that also your definition of imperialism? What do you mean by hegemony? There's only one hegemony in the world and it's the US.
Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hegemony Regional hegemony is a thing too it doesn't have to be global wiki says that in the first 2 sentence of the article. Putin himself said in 2022, "The era of the unipolar world order is nearing its end" hmm I wonder if that means he intends to make his own...
oh my god you actually linked to wikipedia you're so precious I could squeeze you
Lol you'd say a dictionary is Western propaganda. Sorry you learned English from tankie shit posts.
Can I adopt you please? I promise to feed you and brush you and take you on walks and
Only as long as I get to take a dump in your shoe.
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You're a deplorable waste of bones and organs. When this war is over and there's a well armed Nazi militia committing pogroms and wreacking havock across Europe, I hope that you'll reconsider your position.
Cool
Yeah we all know you think nazis are cool, that's why you suck so much
I don't, but that won't stop you from believing whatever fantasies you find convenient. Explains a lot about how you maintain your delusional worldview.
Who has the monopoly of violence in Luhansk and Donetsk currently...?
A group that already has a presence in the UN? I was talking about how recognition works for countries. But low and behold that nuance escapes you. It's not my fault that u & 72 don't understand how international recognition and civil wars work.
You're contradicting yourself you're contradictinnnggggg yourself hahaha it's okay to admit you exhausted your line of arguing and can't defend anything more. Come to the tankie side, it's not so bad. We're right all the time.
It's not my fault you don't know how occupation works. I'm specifically talking about a separatists Donbas that is able to fend off both Ukraine and Russia assaults could obtain recognition by the international community through securing it's borders. Of course you intentionally misunderstood what I'm saying at all times and declare victory by being a dumbass
But Donbass doesn't want to fight off Russia, they voted to join them, remember?
Your trolling is weak, please do better. You're entertaining but you need to step up your game.
Never met a true US civil war Confederate supporter, the south had their own government & constitution and voted to leave the union. I guess according to your logic the northern federal government was in the wrong in order to preserve the union cuz the south had elections & elections.
Much better, but you've activated my trap card
Whataboutism
Hey by your criteria all you gotta do is have a vote and boom bang beyowza u gotta new country. I suppose since you're a tankie you have to pretend things like national sovereignty just doesn't exist so u can get away with invading your neighbor.
DID THE SLAVES VOTE IN THOSE ELECTIONS?
If Texas today had a vote to secede then they’d have absolutely every right to secede since the current electoral laws allow for the will of the people to be expressed.
The fact you didn’t stop to think about the slaves is because you’re a fucking cracker.
What does it matter if they did or not?
Which electoral law in Texas allows for this? Do you know what the supremacy clause is? Do you have a fucking Clue what you're talking about? Clearly you don't.
You are changing the question, since Russia's violence does make Donbas part of Russia [to follow your logic] anway, but 72 was talking about democratic legitimacy and you damn well know it.
Democratic legitimacy? By internationallly recognizing any group that holds elections & breaks off a country? My good man, that's a terrible idea. Having a monopoly over violence is just a prerequisite but of course you knew that already since Donbas is occupied until legally resolved via treaty.
You think democracy is a terrible idea?
Of course they do. Libs hate democracy
Do you think every group that breaks off should be internationallly recognized dumbass? I like democracy but even the Greeks knew it has problems.
“That referendum and those elections don’t count because the USA said no” truly the voice of democracy and freedom.
I guess it was Putin that forced Zelenskyy to ban the political opposition? Because the damn Putin bots kept voting wrong.
Better than murdering them with polonium or putting them away in prison??? What a case of whatttaboutism. Did I ever make the claim that Ukraine was a bastion of democracy? No! your fevered brain is just rattling off talking points that you heard parroted in other threads. All you talking heads do is deflect. I say that Cuz I noticed you never made any attempt to claim that the referendums were legit. Which they weren't.
Why does “they voted for it repeatedly for a decade” not compute for you?
Are you of the opinion that the people in the east want to be part of Ukraine? Because they don’t, not after a decade of being brutalized by far right militias and seeing their cities shelled by the Ukrainian military and being denied the right to speak their language or practice their religion.
When you talk about “Russian backed separatists” you realize those separatists live there don’t you? You know what the word separatist means right?
Ukraine is using military force to deny them their right to self determination and the only reason you want to call the referendum illegitimate is because the people who live there chose the wrong answer.
You don’t value their views at all. They don’t matter to you. Which makes your position immoral and bloodthirsty.
Imma put this simply since you've started repeating yourself ad nauseam. Which 3 specific referendums are you referring to?
The one where they voted to secede and the multiple elections over the past decade where they voted for political parties that were then banned by the Ukrainian government which is now also refusing to hold constitutionally mandated elections for fear of how they’d vote again.
You didn’t answer my question:
Are you of the opinion that the people in the east want to be part of Ukraine?
I'd say the issue is split between those who want to join and those who want to stay. Your problem is with international law which respects the territorial sovereignty of nations and does not recognize a right of sucession by a group unless their right of internal self determination is compromised. In this case the Ukrainian constitution requires a referendum of all Ukrainian people. Keeping that one mind Here's a question for you:
Are you of the opinion that the people of chechnia wanted to be a part of Russia? Those guys full on declared independence & had elections in 1991 LMFAO
Oh wait what’s that?
Lmao that’s what happened after the Ukrainian nationalists starting arming Nazi militias and banned their political parties you clown.
Banning their political parties and denying them the right to use their own language or practice their own religion or have their own political representation is called denying them their right to internal self determination.
Yeah banning pro Russian parties after Russia invaded them? Kinda a no brainer. + Russia was arming separatists first you chung mungus. I noticed you didn't answer my question
Are you of the opinion that the people of chechnia wanted to be a part of Russia? Those guys full on declared independence & the independence leader got 90% of the vote
You: let’s talk about something else because I’m feeling really fucking stupid right now
I guess you’re saying you fully support Putin’s crackdown on Grozny then right?
Get your deflecting moronic ass out of here and have a think about what you are actually supporting right now and today in Ukraine.
Because you’re not supporting democracy and freedom. Not at all.
I'm a realist because even though it's not morally right I understand that on the international stage might makes right. I don't agree with it but authoritarian countries with strong armies can coerce weaker countries & entities into capitulating (check out findlandization). If you were knowledgeable you'd know that no other countries recognized chechen independence either, perhaps because the ruskies declared the elections illegal the day before they happened... Reminds of another recent situation huh? It's okay to feel conflicted those contradictions can allow you to analyze why you held certain beliefs to begin with and is the beginning to a more complex understanding of events.
Im glad you acknowledge that Ukraine and the west does not have a moral leg to stand on but I hope you eventually take the next step and recognize that means the hundreds of thousands of dead and permanently injured Ukrainians and Russians makes this a moral travesty and a crime against humanity.
Recognizing the moral right lies with the separatists but choosing to support the use of military force against them because “fuck Russia” makes you the bad guy.
Lol @ Russia apologists trying to defend Russias invasion and genocide of the Ukrainian people + spouting easily debunkable talking points. Can't wait until I get you hear to spill the same watered down trash when the ruskies invade Poland for the 8th time this century.
I wish they'd invade your house. Not your country, just your house specifically.
Cool
Since you like relying on evidence and moral bases so much, what is your evidence Russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine? Reminder: a genocide has to be explicit. Killing soldiers of a country you're at war with does not meet the standard to be killed genocide.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-0aced874ccf203a5219ad37c2ed3f636
You want more? I can probably find a few more atrocities. Ope found another one
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/16/ukraine-mass-grave-with-440-bodies-discovered-in-recaptured-izium-says-police-chief
Seriously... It's not hard to find this stuff, your ignorance is willing.
Mass graves do not fit in the criteria set by the UN for genocide.
Secondly Bucha was an Azov crime. The mayor just a few days before Ukraine rolled into the city did not mention anything about a killing of civilians. There were recordings made just a few days before they suddenly "found" all the civilians where the streets were completely empty with no bodies.
For Izium there's videos of Russian troops burying people properly and even Ukrainian POWs witnessing the burials. They were likely set up in a mass grave by Ukraine to farm atrocity propaganda.
Oh so now it doen't meet your criteria dude. Typical tankie I bet u don't consider the holodomor a genocide either. You talk about morals and then say killing civilians ain't a crime. Such a lack of self awareness... How do you even breathe.
The mainstream position among liberal historians (and not pop historians or politicians) is indeed that the famine was not a genocide. Some reading on that topic: https://www.villagevoice.com/in-search-of-a-soviet-holocaust/
The holodomor is a lie created by nazis to downplay the actual genocide of the Holocaust, by spewing this bullshit your engaging in a form of Holocaust denial
China liberating Tibet from a theocracy built on a foundation of slavery and run by pedophiles wasn't a genocide either
All of your boy who cried Adolf garbage is just making it easier for actual fascists and nazis to maintain or regain power and you'll somehow alway find an excuse to support them
I don't know how fascists like you function, don't care either
"By general consensus, Stalin was partially responsible." That author would've been executed or gulaged in the ussr since it was a crime to mention the holodomor & blame the authorities. I bet to you that sounds exactly like how a responsible government would respond to criticism.
I ain't fash but you can believe whatever delusions you want. Russia is committing war crimes and committed genocide in the past. And instead you bend over backwards to suck putin's fat dick and engage in revisionist history so you can believe in an ideal of something that never existed. What a shocker... You calling someone who disagrees with you to be a Nazi, I expected you to at least call me a liberal first lol.
Where in the UN definition for genocide do mass graves count as genocide?
Lol, u pretending to be so moral that you hide behind the strictest definitions of the word genocide. If committing hundreds to 30,000 war crimes isn't bad enough for you to take seriously then yeah I'm guilty of a bit of hyperbole, at least I'm not a genocide denier like you clearly are. The UN takes its sweet time to name atrocities with "genocide" but changing that definition doesn't make the innocent in those mass graves killed by Russian troops any more alive.
I'm using the UN definition of genocide which most states have agreed to. Earlier you said that most states did not recognize the referenda held in the Donbass so they didn't count. You're projecting so much we could watch a movie with the whole 'grad on your forehead bro, have some academic rigour if you're gonna try arguing.
The only thing you contested is that it's not considered a genocide & after which I said I was guilty of hyperbole. But I noticed how you didn't dispute the fact that mass graves show up everywhere the Russian army occupied. How you can support such barbarity while it's ongoing is past my capabilities to understand, you should teach classes about how to live in denial.
I disputed them in my earlier comment.
Honestly it's for comments like this that we don't ban you, you're very entertaining in a certain way.
Yeah every atrocity just so happens to be a trick or a plot against the Soviets. Russians have been downplaying every atrocity since they axed the romanovs. I put people like you right next to Holocaust deniers because there's not a piece of evidence that you won't say is faked because you want so desprately to to believe in something that never existed. You'll believe every shred of anti West propaganda .Pathetic. Someday you might realize that every world power commits mass murder now & again but it's not going to be today.
if you actually knew anything about Holocaust denialism you wouldn't even make this comparison because you'd have realized how stupid and uninformed you'd sound. Alas, you are just one more white liberal who thinks their 3 years of high school prepared them to know everything there is to know about the world.
It's about this time that you finally get sweet release and earn your ban, because what you're doing is actual Holocaust denial, trying to downplay it by comparing it to an event that was nothing like it in scope, size, and amount of deaths.
Of course we don't consider the holomodor a genocide because its nazi propaganda
You mean when the USSR pushed the Nazis out of Poland and liberated Auswitch is that the event you’re talking about?
Remember the Molotov ribbentrop pact? Or that time after WWI? You've got a super selective memory. I give you points for almost directly quoting your god emperor putin on that one.
Liberals will never forgive the USSR for not letting the Nazis just have Poland.
You know France and England signed some pacts with the Nazis is the lead up to the Soviets making a deal with the devil, right? And the Soviets knew the nazis were always going to invade them, because they literally just knew about what the Nazis were publicly stating they'd like to do.
I'm assuming you're talking about the Munich pact? Yeah it might've been a mistake but the allies needed time to build up. I suspect that the soviets would've invaded Germany if they hadn't been attacked first.
In order to attack Germany, right?
This is good.
It seems like all the major allied powers wanted to build up to attack Germany. The only difference was the Soviets saw fascism as an existential threat and the other major allied powers saw them as potential competition.
No, they didn't, unlike the Soviets who were dramatically less developed on account of starting from a war-torn semi-feudal backwater.
What's your point in even mentioning this? To demonstrate that you know that they weren't allies? Invading Nazi Germany is a good thing to do! Especially in the case of a Slavic country that would be subjected to genocide (as the USSR, like Poland, historically was) if they just waited for the Nazis to invade!
Yup, no one's gonna argue that the Soviets can't make a lot of tanks. What's my point in saying that? Just shooting the shit, lol anything I say will be taken out of context and used as justification that I'm a Nazi. So good on you for being another rube.
I'm a rube for being confused by an aside?
Ur a rube for calling me a Nazi, at least call me a neoliberal or Western spy first. But no u gotta jump right to Nazi first.
I never called you a Nazi
Ahhh ur right my b. It was the other guy.
You mean the areas populated by Belorussians and Ukrainians that was conquered by Poland from Russia in the war of 1922 when Poland took advantage of the civil war to seize a big chunk of Belorussian and ukraine and taken back by Russia when the polish state collapsed following the Nazi invasion of Poland?
None of the Russian parts of the MR pact were populated by mostly polish people, with the exception of Lviv which is still part of Ukraine today.
It’s a selective reading of history to call Belorussians and Ukrainians the rightful property of Poland especially in light of the brutal Polonization campaign they suffered, being reduced to serfdom by Polish invaders.
As it happens I’d actually support restoring that part to Poland, Lviv, and also the Hungarian bit of Ukraine to Hungary since both of those ethnic minorities, along with the ethnic Greek minority, have all been suffering a lot under the rule of the Ukrainian nationalists and have also faced restrictions on their internal self determination such as language rights being suppressed or in the case of the Greek minority also religious persecution.
Ahh considering Poland didn't exist until after WW1 & both sides disregarded the curzon line it's hard to say where Polands eastern border should've been but I do agree that they def pushed too far east. I don't understand your reference to serfdom. I thought that was abolished in the 18th century.
You’re really going to argue the polinization campaign in Belorussia and Ukraine in the 1920s and 30s was a good thing? A moral gray area?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Hopefully you’re a teenager who doesn’t know what you’re talking about because if you do then you need to eat a brick if you’re really going to take that line, and there are plenty of people alive in both belorussia and Ukraine today who would feed it to you if they heard you saying that including the Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi gangs you are here supporting.
One of the more brutal events of the 20th century that is only overlooked due to the fact that Poland soon suffered worse evils than those Poland inflicted on the Ukrainians and Belorussians at the hands of the Nazis - until the Soviets kicked the Nazis out.
Edit: actually given your world view includes supporting the campaign of Ukrainization and the violent assimilationist policies directed at the ethnic minorities in Ukraine, you have form here. It seems you’re actually very comfortable with violence being used against ethnic minorities given how you’re here supporting multiple instances of it.
But honestly, and I am truly being straight with you here, I think the more likely truth is you’re a bit of a dumbass who doesn’t know your history and you don’t actually realize what you’re supporting here but your ego won’t let you let go.
Where could one read more about this?
It’s not well covered in English language history which basically just skips over the fact poland was a viciously fascist state in the 1930s but it does get covered by Timothy Snyder, although he has a pretty firmly anti-Russian slant through his work.
You can see a lot of the works that cover it are in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_minority_in_Poland
60-70 hangings a day to fight “guerrillas”, floggings and torture to control the population, the Belorussians not having access to the education system, and the use of concentration camps to hold political activists, and trade unionists. Language rights were suppressed and the local population were forcibly “Polonized” / assimilated while also being held in an oppressed state as a cheap labor force for Polish settlers who were given the land as an agricultural fiefdom no different in any sense from the lebensraum concept - especially during the Polish fascist period of the mid to late 1930s.
Today the western part of Belorussia is still less industrialized than the east and the divide clearly falls along the line of polish occupation and colonial-settlement.
Ironically it was the atrocious treatment of the Belorussian minority that Hitler pointed at when claiming the German minority in Poland needed to be “rescued” - although the German minority were actually not treated badly.
When did I say I supported that? Curzon line it's fine with me. You're the dumbass who fits words into other people's mouths lol
You Redditors just love using this term, but invasion and genocide are not actually synonymous. You can call Putin apathetic to civilian casualties, but that's not the same as genocide. Of course Ukrainian jingoists love this kind of language because accusing Russia of genocide has been in the playbook for quite a while now
Hey look here's the news source (village voice) you posted talking about what they're doing in Ukraine right now. Lol nice one https://www.villagevoice.com/russias-crimes-in-ukraine-against-humanity-and-nature/
"By general consensus, Stalin was partially responsible." That author would've been executed or gulaged in the ussr since it was a crime to mention the holodomor & blame the authorities. I bet to you that sounds exactly like how a responsible government would respond to criticism.
Layers of deflection to avoid just reading a fucking article. No, mentioning the famine was not a crime and you are literally just making that up because you think it fits the vibe of things.
Why are you so unwilling to contend with the actual content of the article?
I'll believe yours if you believe mine lol
I'm not asking you to believe things because belief is involuntary, just that you read the article.
And an extra
for saying "ruskies"
Even if Russians killed every Ukrainian there'd still be dummies like u in this thread claiming no genocide happened & that it was their fault for resisting.
The only ones who want to fight to the last Ukrainian are bootlicking libs duped by propaganda like you
Don't give those Russians ideas, they'd love to do it & the chuds here would still blame the West.
I don't recognize the result of this referendum 🤓
I hope you meant that ironically lol Neither did the Russian government, they declared it illegal the day before the vote.
Since you want to quote laws you should be aware that since parts of the Donbass are occupied by Russia (namely Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts), Ukrainian law does not apply there. The territories, until the referendum was held, fell under UN Occupation Law because it was "actually placed under the authority of the adverse foreign armed forces"(source: https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/occupation).
Ukrainian law does not apply to territories under Russian authority.
Lol is that the Kremlin crackpot loop hole? Step 1 invade a country Step 2 have a totally legit election Step 3 annex after a totally not sham referendum Step 4 borders? What borders? Partial occupation is fine Step 5 blame Western powers
Rosemary DiCarlo said it best, "Unilateral actions aimed to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the attempted acquisition by force by one State of another State's territory while claiming to represent the will of the people, cannot be regarded as legal under international law"
Doesn't matter what you think, I'm using the UN definition which you should lap up like the good liberal dog you are. It's not even what I think, it's literally what UN countries have agreed to.
No you're not, u found 2 paragraphs that kinda say what you want and went from there. Do I need to repeat the steps to the crackpot Kremlin loop hole until you see how silly they sound?
Rosemary Anne DiCarlo (born 1947) is an American diplomat who has served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs since May 2018. She previously served as acting United States Ambassador to the United Nations[1] following the resignation of Susan Rice to become the National Security Advisor.
I wonder if the ambassador to the United nations or a tankie on an Internet forum is more educated about UN occupations....
Surely a US politician wouldn't lie to us!
Lmao You think a UN ambassador doesn't know how the UN works?
Did you respond to the wrong comment?
So when rightists oppose secession because, while they hate the ethnic Russians who want to leave, they don't want those ethnic Russians taking the land, etc. with them, we should be moved by this motivation and not consider the right of self-determination compromised?
LMAO you have zero self awareness and its kind of adorable. You aren't in your liberal echo chamber here and no amount of tantrum throwing is going to make anyone take you seriously.
What is your proof the referenda were not legit? You're the one who's going against the grain here, it's you who needs to prove your stance. I won't accept it without evidence.
Anything is better than to live under nazi rule.
They probably don't, but unlike the bourgeois government of Ukraine, the bourgeois government of Russia wasn't waging a several years long campaign of ethnic violence to redirect working class anger. If Russia is going to prevent a genocide, that's obviously better.
I have a question for you. Why are liberals so much more interested in protecting the rich than the ethnic minorities they use as scapegoats? You guys do the same thing when you whine about communists in Ukraine fighting antisemitic Ukrainian landlords. How much were my ancestors supposed to endure in order to protect the privilege of the parasites?
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Keep hoping. Better yet, go there and fight yourself if you think it's so important. But you won't. You'll just move your outrage to the next target that US propaganda will point you to.
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we need a banhammer emoji, specifically for these instances
Thank you, comrade
Correct, they are doing just that: wasting the support they've been given.
You lost, get over it