I don't doubt this as it's happened to others, but Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a literal CIA mouthpeice and tends to make stuff up.
If you need a Russian source:
https://newizv.ru/news/2023-08-30/sud-v-peterburge-prigovoril-aktivistku-olgu-smirnovu-k-shesti-godam-za-feyki-ob-armii-418023
The problem with the RFA source is the CIA funding, not that it's in English. It's pretty disingenuous to try to imply Newizu is pro-Putin or anti-imperialist, or anti-west or anything else that would qualify as a separate bias or agenda.
I don't think they're implying anything like that? A Russian source talking about a bad thing Russia did is generally more reliable than a CIA source saying the same thing, since there's less incentive to make stuff up.
I read the previous comment. I tried to find a source they would prefer.
I searched for her name and despite the RFE article being a week old, no other more credible outlets have picked up on it. Maybe other outlets are using a different romanization of her name but this is certainly a red flag.
It literally isn't. RFE is definitely a US propaganda platform, but it objectively has nothing to do with the CIA these days. But you should probably check under your bed one more time just to make sure.
RFE also "objectively" had nothing to do with the CIA for nearly 20 years after it was created, at which point it turned out the CIA had been funding it all along. But now we know they've stopped because they said they did, and anyone suggesting that they're not editorially independent is a paranoid loon, just as they would've been in the 50's and 60's.
Some of us don't believe that the people whose job it is to lie stopped lying because they said they did. Suggesting that the CIA is still doing things that they did regularly and successfully kept hidden in the past is not a conspiracy theory.
RFE is definitely a US propaganda platform, but™️
That's all you need to know. Scrap the whole source.
IDK it might be beneficial to know if it's ANOTHER one of the 15 intelligence agencies the US operates...
Why? What possible reason could you have to belive they just turned over a new leaf?
"The CIA said that they don't have anything to do with Radio Free anymore so it must be true."
The CIA routinely funds groups covertly. As is the case with RFE, we are often able to confirm this covert funding decades later.
A main purpose of the CIA is to obscure what groups the U.S. supports. Did they just stop doing their job one day?
Russian pacifists want Russia to stop invading Ukraine.
Western "pacifists" want to send NATO tanks to Ukraine.
They are not the same.
Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.
But an important consideration should be whether one's actions actually contribute to Russia withdrawing sooner, or if they instead help justify further, equally self-interested NATO involvement in the war.
Unless you are Russian, it's most likely the latter.
There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn't matter which one of them technically started it.
There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn’t matter which one of them technically started it.
I'm sorry, but when it involves one imperialist bloc invading a smaller country, then it does matter.
Do you have the same position regarding the Vietnam war, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Or do you only support whichever side is not aligned with the US?
The Vietnam War? You mean the one where a rebel faction backed by Russia rose up against a smaller, recently established pro-Western government, and the US came to the defense of that government, because if they lost the enemy would surely keep expanding more and more across the entire region, and all the peace advocates were dismissed as supporting appeasement? That Vietnam war?
Yes, we take a similar position on that as we do to this, do you?
Vietnam was opposing a puppet government imposed by the US.
The Ukrainians opposed a Russian puppet government in 2013.
Do you support both Vietnam and Ukraine?
I support both the Vietnamese fighting against the South Vietnam puppet government and the Ukranians in the DPR fighting against the current Ukrainian puppet government, yes (though my support for the latter is more critical since they're not communists)
You did not answer my question.
Did you support the Ukrainians rebelling against their government back in 2013. Or do you only support a side if that side happens to oppose the US?
I literally said that
Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.
Are you aware that it's possible to want neither NATO tanks nor Russian tanks in Ukraine?
You can even make sure you are consistent with both things in action 100% of the time - it's a neat little trick called "opposing the position of your own government".
Are you aware that it’s possible to want neither NATO tanks nor Russian tanks in Ukraine?
I am.
But do you believe Ukraine is able to maintain their territory protected from Russia without NATO's weapon supply?
He most likely doesn't believe Ukraine is able to maintain their territory protected from Russia with NATO's weapon supply, and for good reason, given how clearly this is demonstrated by the utter failure of the vaunted counter-offensive. The only thing your position is really advocating is the useless deaths of vast numbers of Ukrainians (and Russians, for that matter).
The only thing your position is really advocating is the useless deaths of vast numbers of Ukrainians (and Russians, for that matter). [emphasis mine]
They never admit it, but the fact that Russian deaths will continue is one of if not the main reason these NATO dronies are fine with sacrificing the lives of all those Ukrainians they pretend to care about. Spoiler warning: they don't actually care about Ukrainians. But they'll still couch it in terms as if they're "supporting Ukraine." Such "Ukraine supporters" are either completely, pathetically fooled by obvious NATO propaganda or they are just bloodthirsty bigots (or both, which is most often the case).
The mere fact that they are in the act of a counter offensive after Russia tried to blitz then shows that it's not even close to what you're describing.
Ukraine is holding their current territory pretty easily and gaining the upper hand very clearly.
No, just as it would be unable to resist NATO in being turned into a far-right paramilitary-led banana republic if Russia were to suddenly withdraw without any decrease in NATO involvement.
But the beauty of the neat little trick above is that if the working classes of both sides correctly oppose their respective ruling classes' interests, we can end up with a scenario where both sides lose - objectively the best outcome for the Ukrainian people, as well as everyone else.
The Russian anti-war activists are clearly holding up their end of the bargain. Why are you not holding up yours?
Exactly this.
Revolutionary defeatism is the name of the word. Those who should be concerned with Russian imperialism must be russian working class people.
We in the west have to fight against our own imperalists. It's very simple and in the end very logical.
The Russian anti-war activists are clearly holding up their end of the bargain. Why are you not holding up yours?
Ah! To be young and naive enough to believe that the anti-war activists in Russia have any leverage. They will all end up in Siberia or jumping out of a window.
Any regime change in Russia will come from the oligarchs, and the Russian working class will still be in a bad position (if not worse).
The second you call Russia's actions imperialist you just broadcast that you're someone who just uses words for their impact and not their meaning and you should be completely disregarded in any conversation on the topic
TIL invading other countries and annexing their territories does not qualify as imperialism.
It can involve that. But you're using imperialism to "accuse them of what you're doing before they can" by flattening all history and context away.
Russia is defending itself from encirclement. Acting like you're against imperialism rings hollow when you only apply it to an act of resistance to your empire expanding.
Encirclement by what? Countries that don't like to suck off Russia anymore?
Maybe Russia should act less like an authoritarian mafia state and then its neighbours wouln't turn away from it. Food for thought
No, we want Ukraine to stop trying to ethnically cleanse the Donbas and give the people there self determination. And we want the Ukrainian government to stop forcibly conscripting people to go die needlessly on the front in a clearly losing war. We want NATO to stop enabling all of that (it literally wouldn't be happening if they weren't demanding that it continue). That's what it is to be a peace activist. And I'm fairly sure I can speak for all of us, we are not pacifists, lol. But we are advocates for peace and the end to the horrible and needless loss of life.
Nice try to completely twist reality, and completely misrepresent us, as you war mongering dronies always do.
Edit: We actually give a shit about all the Ukrainian people being thrown into a fucking meat grinder. We care about their lives. The people who just say "more weapons to Ukraine!" do not give a shit about the lives of the people there. They're happy to just let the war keep dragging on until the last capable Ukrainian is dead. An example of how WE feel about the tragedy of the situation: https://hexbear.net/post/503747 (hexbear link to a lemmygrad news post)
They've been raping and killing civilians since the start
You know this is not genocide, right?
You are describing war crimes. War crimes are horrible. Two rapes are two rapes too many. Every side in every war does them, which is a major reason war is so horrific. Genocide is much more than a series of war crimes, though. To believe otherwise is to declare all sides in all wars genocidal, rendering the word meaningless.
They're kidnapping Ukrainian children and trying to "re-educate" them
Let's start with a source for this one. I've seen nothing akin to the indigenous boarding schools ran by the U.S. and Canada in actual campaigns to destroy a people's collective identity. What I have seen are reports of children whose parents are not available/alive to take care of them (a fact of any war) and Russia putting them in school and/or up for adoption (something any state would do).
You realize more fighting and more weapons doesn't magicly win territory? It's war, to continue fighting means killing more people and destroying more lives. The fighting needs to stop as soon as possible, one way or another or the whole country will end up like Bakmuht.
So your answer is to keep the meatgrinder running for as long as possible? Sure, countless Ukrainians and Russians are dying, but at least the lines on the map don't change.
No the real answer is these people somehow think their constant egging on escalation instead of some sort of diplomatic resolution, won't eventually lead inevitably to the war escaping its proxy status and evolve into a REAL inter-imperialist direct confrontation with all of what it implies (it implies nukes)
The joke is that what you want has been done already when Russia invaded the Krim.
How dumb do you have to be to think that Russia would not do the same shit again soon if Ukraine decides to do nothing?
So your answer is to let an aggressor nation just happily steamroll through any country it pleases?
You were happy enough to let Ukraine commit genocide until an 'aggressor' stopped it
Every effort needs to make sure Russia leaves Ukraine ASAP
So enlist. They're out of warm bodies to throw at minefields and artillery kill zones. Instead of being so bloodthirsty with other people's lives, put yours at risk.
Why do you deserve to live if you want other people to die for your cause? Go die for your own cause. Go die with the rest of your nazi comrades.
Gaddafi's troops are committing rape to children en masse, they have issued viagra to mass rape people since the start. this is where your anger and energy need to be. Imagine being outraged at the nation defending itself from mass rape, and those countries that are sending the tools that they're being asked for to help defend themselves.
Here is the UN mandate to intervene in Lybia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1973 a resolution drafted by Tunisia and supported by the African Union, the Arab League and allowed by all of the UNSC.
Where is russia's UN mandate to annex Crimea and to later bomb Kiev? Did they even try?
The Lybian war was started on lies and shattered the country so I don't care if it was "legal". Diplomatic routes in Ukraine were tried (e.g. the Minsk Agreements) but broken by Kiev. The Crimean people overwhelmingly supported the annexation.
That's all lies again too, man, but this time russia is arresting or killing anyone who dares to tell the truth.
honestly i appreciate you attempting to engage this - truthfully, i find the entire premise of appealing to morality in a war fruitless, and my intentions in making the statement above was to imitate that this is a effect that has been repeated for many generations (whether or not it is true).
ultimately people do things to advance their own goals & stamp out contradictions, not on the basis of morality.
this attempt to say this is moral and that isn't could go on until the next generation of soldiers is born - and it would be pointless because the narrative accepted will often be the media machine with the biggest wallet until some massive contradiction.
ultimately what are your goals here, what are the perspective of the shoes of the russians and the ukrainians, what is the context etc.
perhaps it's as simply resolved as the issue of the jupiter missles, or perhaps peace was never going to be a option(from your stance of the "russian imperialists" or my stance that the American west desire to remain a world power).
truthfully i am of the opinion the americans seeks to remain a world power [hence the 800 military bases around the world vs the russians 21], and will take advantage of any conflict to pose as the morally high ground in a "just war", or proxy war in this case.
i don't think peace was ever an option, russia most likely sees ukraine as a staging ground for nato as it did in operation Barbarossa, or napoleon, or seeks minerals, or believes the new government is too nationalist for their own taste (why does it have to be one point?)
all that matters is that is a war to extinguish contradictions that pose existential threats, another form of competition for capital.
I did not appeal to morality, I stated the fact that the decision to helping the rebels in Lybia took into account every regional player given what we knew at the time. And even in that case it was counterproductive in hindsight.
Following international law is not about morality, it's about being able to vaguely know what you can count on and possible consequences when you perform a military calculation or a geopolitical move.
If everyone just takes what they can get away with regardless of others' interests, the future will just be a series of Iraq and Ukraine wars all over the world, particularly in Africa, Europe and Asia.
Libya today is a haven for islamic terrorism and slaver markets. Regardless of the "legality" of the NATO (mostly french and US led) intervention, it threw the entire region in outright chaos, and was enormously damaging to the working class of Lybia, but also of the entire fucking Sahel.
Yea, in hindsight it would have been better to just let him crack down on the population to keep stability in the region, but with the information we had at the time, most African and Arab neighbours agreed that helping the rebels with a no-fly zond would be better than not to, since the civil war was going to start anyway. You don't care about legality, but that is not the point. The point is that this was not unilateral, like Iraq, and even then military interventions can go terribly wrong.
So be fucking outraged then that Russia started and is continuing this war
its so weird that the day the tanks rolled over the border of Ukraine history magically just began, there was no material reality prior to this event, or any geopolitical events of consequence we could connect to this outcome, certainly none that had to do with openly threatening to expand a hostile military alliance with supersonic and nuclear missiles 5 minutes from the capital city of Moscow
i wonder if the US has ever done the exact same thing in the name of national security and what the NATO heads said about it then
every pro NATO take is certified baby brain shit that demonstrates nothing but a lack of understanding of material reality, history, geopolitics, on top of an absolute disregard for human life, gross hypocrisy and a level of false outrage that is always directly proportional to how loudly they're calling to escalate bloodshed
Russia is committing genocide. "So do the humanitarian thing and send depleted uranium shells to this warzone. Slava Ukraini!!!!!!"
log off dude
No. You're not doing it right. You're supposed to learn what the fuck you're talking about first. And you didn't so now you're having a childish tantrum at people talking back to you.
You think they told you to log off for their benefit and not your own? That's twice you've said something stupid because you didn't know what was going on around you.
RUSSIA CAN DO NO WRONG!
Projection. Noone from Hexbear has ever said this or will ever say this.
Adding "jailing pacifists for speaking out" to the things dronies openly support, along with forcing others to fight when they're not willing to, poisoning civilians with generations of birth defects, and giving cluster bombs to Nazis.
The moral high ground, ladies and gents
Logical fallacies. Try having logical thoughts and people won't throw these at you :)
This news story is over a year ago, and the US locks up people all the time for political reasons
yeah both are bad
although the source on this article is dubious so this case is probably made up
It seems legit that she was arrested based on the Russian articles about that have been posted in this thread, but I don't speak Russian so idk what it says she actually got arrested for.
Either way, unless RFE is completely distorting the reason why she got arrested and it's actually a terrible crime she committed, it seems that its another case of far right post-soviet neoliberalism doing police crack downs
I don't know if they'd go through the effort of staging the photo
https://vkrizis.ru/obschestvo/olga-smirnova-prigovorena-k-shesti-godam-za-sem-postov/ https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6186252
I don't read russian but I think this is legit? I just copied and pasted her Cyrillic name in Duck Duck Go, so these might still be western propaganda targeted towards Russians like I said I don't speak or read Russian or know major outlets in Russia.
Can you provide proof that people in today's US have been given jail time for posting online government criticism?
Here's a guy who got locked up for saying that if they try a local Jan 6th in Florida people need to be armed to resist. Dude got sentenced to 4 years of prison for posting about defending the country from Jan 6thers.
https://theintercept.com/2021/10/16/daniel-baker-anarchist-capitol-riot/#:~:text=On%20Tuesday%2C%20a%20Florida%20judge,of%20the%20January%206%20riots.
Not really, the one is a whistleblower leaking highly confidential information and the other is a simple person speaking out against their government's actions.
I'm not by any means saying that Manning didn't do the right thing and deserves jail, just that it isn't the same case.
https://fortune.com/2023/04/18/russia-propaganda-elections-4-americans-charged-black-empowerment/
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-citizens-and-russian-intelligence-officers-charged-conspiring-use-us-citizens-illegal
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/04/20/black-liberation-organizers-indicted-for-opposing-war/
All the same story, different sources (or bias). not including the NAFO dog community sabatoging that eco socialist (Dimitri Lascaris) trying to make peace talks in canada
edited for more clairty & details and spell check.
one is a whistleblower leaking highly confidential information and the other is a simple person speaking out against their government's actions
This level of detail is not included in the linked article. The article says "she placed materials about Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine on the Internet that contradicted official Defense Ministry statements." From the article, we have no idea what those materials were. Maybe they included classified information, maybe they included actually false information, maybe they included incitements to violence, we don't know.
Note also that the article is from Radio Free Europe, a U.S. propaganda outlet:
Radio Free Europe was created and grew in its early years through the efforts of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), an anti-communist CIA front organization that was formed by Allen Dulles in New York City in 1949. RFE/RL received funds covertly from the CIA until 1972. During RFE's earliest years of existence, the CIA and U.S. Department of State issued broad policy directives, and a system evolved where broadcast policy was determined through negotiation between them and RFE staff.
https://vkrizis.ru/obschestvo/olga-smirnova-prigovorena-k-shesti-godam-za-sem-postov/
If you search her name in Cyrillic you can find Russian sources (.ru domains are managed by Russia, no?)
leaking highly confidential information
It's okay to have no free speech rights as long as the government tells you in advance you don't have them
I tried to look through a lot of cases. It seemed like most every case was leaking information, threats of actual violence, stolen valor, or other generally agreed upon crimes. There's truth to the notion that a government is more likely to look for crimes if you're a specific person, but I don't know of anyone in the modern US who goes to jail for lying about things the army has done. I use the word "lying" because Russia courts make the claim that that's what happened here.
Also, there are more recent cases of Russia imprisoning someone for essentially this same crime.
The US prosecuted activists for "sowing discord" this year. That's basically the same thing as going after someone for lying.
Assange wasn't leaking information, he was reporting on information that had already been leaked.
The prosecution provided evidence that WikiLeaks helped Manning crack a password which would involve them in the leak itself. So saying he was just reporting on it is debatable.
Like Russia, the US prosecutes you for exposing the truth of what the US army does abroad. arguing that classified information keeps US citizens safe in their "work" abroad – not unique to the US but the US is the dominant world power still so it gets a lot of criticism from the left. It's hard to get the right perspective when you live in an imperial core that has done a lot to insulate its civilian populace from the impacts of conflict, and governments don't like it when whistleblowers make it easier.
