• wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The best way to defend your home is to stop the bombs from falling on it. Unless you're not talking about people's homes, families, and friends, but rather talking about some arbitrary line in the sand that people should be sent to die for.

      • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
        ·
        1 year ago

        Then why oh why aren’t you applying your reasoning to Russia? They started the whole conflict out of a desire to expand their arbitrary lines in the sand to include ukrainian territory.

        If it’s all just pointless bloodshed over lines on a map, why isn’t Russia staying home? All they have to do to stop the deaths is go back.

        • TheCaconym [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          They started the whole conflict out of a desire to expand their arbitrary lines in the sand to include ukrainian territory.

          Why do you think Russia invaded, exactly ? they started the whole conflict after decades of making NATO encroachment along their borders a clear red line and being very clear what would happen if it was crossed

          The US still kept meddling in Ukraine (and other post-soviet states), with Russia making every effort short of war to try and stop that - like offering loans just as large as the IMF loans for example, except without asking for the batshit insane austerity measures the latter did

          Then the CIA backed a far-right coup there in 2014, and much of the following years were spent with NATO financing and training nazi soldiers there in preparation of trying to take back Crimea, while breaking the Minsk agreements in the meantime (I'll pass on the various atrocities and huge reframing of nazi criminals as national heroes in Ukraine there at the same period, since it's barely related, but it is worth a mention too)

          Now both Ukrainian and Russian people are dying. A peace deal would stop that.

            • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Lolyou think this is "indiscriminate"? Fuck, you should've zeen Fallujah or Vietnam or Korea. Ukraine has so much infrastructure and housing left in perfectly usable conditions. One of my major issues at the beginning was that I expected Russia to be much more violent and have been very surprised at how little of the violence has been on non-combatants

              • cpjoa@discuss.tchncs.de
                ·
                1 year ago

                From what you wrote, do you have a major issue with, in your view, how little violence Russia has inflicted on civilians? Glad that you're disappointed.

                My point stands. All that blabber does not justify the acts of Russia.

                • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Lol fuck you No I'm pleasantly surprised at how little violence against civilians has happened in Ukraine. They never for a moment did the all out war that the US has waged on so many countries. None of that justifies the acts of Russia, but it does mean that your view is so terribly skewed by your western propaganda that I can't imagine you being right about anything else lol

                  But also, you can look into my comment history if you want, for some good explanations on my position on Putin and Russia in this war. I have principles and material analyses. You have vibes

                  https://hexbear.net/comment/3746587 An example of a very simple version of why I critically support russia

                • PandaBearGreen [they/them]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  No one is justifying the acts of Russia. They should not have invaded! But to act like there is no pretext to conflict and Ukraine is completely innocent is disingenuous. Peace is the better option.

                  • cpjoa@discuss.tchncs.de
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    I agree with you that peace is a better option, although I'm pessimistic about the outcome of such talks at this point.

          • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
            ·
            1 year ago

            Russia can cry about their red line all they want, but it wasn't in the treaty. The Revolutions of 1989 made it clear Eastern Europeans weren't interested in Russian control, the Balkans were unstable, and the Chechen & Georgian wars stoked fear in the former Soviet states. All NATO had to do was open their doors, and again, nothing in the treaty forbade it.

            • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              nothing in the treaty forbade it.

              "I'm not legally prohibited from doing this" is rarely a good argument

                  • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Well, no. No I'm not. I was just lazily pointing out that "Russia threw a series of temper tantrums so we should appease them" isn't a good argument either. My argument at least has the weight of a legally binding treaty behind it. As far as Ukraine goes, both powers were meddling there; Russia lost the game. That doesn't give them the right to invade, that was a choice that Putin made. He could have just as easily accepted that he's a loser, and tens of thousands OF HIS OWN PEOPLE would still be alive, not to mention Ukrainians.

            • PandaBearGreen [they/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              1989 Revolutions? Wholesale dismemberment of the USSR more like. And treaty didn't say it. The Russians sure as fuck did.

        • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          All they have to do to stop the deaths is go back

          Not that Russia isn't taking casualties, but why do Ukraine supporters act like they're not the ones feeding their people into the meat grinder? Russia is dug in. You're sending children and old men into a turkey shoot.

        • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          They started the whole conflict out of a desire to expand their arbitrary lines in the sand to include ukrainian territory.

          Yeah, that's definitely what's going on here picard

        • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          We're talking about the fastest ways to stop bloodshed, not Russia. Do you think that ending the war is bad?

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          They are, but while wicked problems (what Bostonians call "math") are very difficult to resolve to the satisfaction of everyone, some approaches are far worse than others.

          Ukraine's approach -- failing to control the neo-Nazi paramilitaries in their midst, then allowing those paramilitaries to violate the Minsk agreements while running away from your largest neighbor and in to the arms of the U.S. empire, then skipping offramps in the lead up to the war and in its first months -- was a particularly bad one.

              • thilo@lemmy.ml
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                failing to control the neo-Nazi paramilitaries in their midst, then allowing those paramilitaries to violate the Minsk agreements

                This. The later parts I have read about.

                • notceps [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  OSCE had a mission through the entire period 2014-2022 as observers and released daily reports of the region together with ceasefire violations so we can find it for pretty much any day online like this one from 2022-02-03, and you can look up others here.

                  I can't find it anymore but there was a video floating around of Zelensky inspecting the troops and telling them to stop attacking the DNR and the soldiers telling him straight up no. Although I can't find that video you can look at the election results from 2019, Zelensky ran on a platform of brokering a peace calming tensions with ethnic russians and general prosperity which is why Poroshenko accused Zelenski of selling out to Russia. A ton of people in eastern ukraine wanted things to calm down and that's why he got the most votes there, but the military and the neo-nazi paramilitaries kept on doing their thing and here we are.

                  • thilo@lemmy.ml
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    For me this sounds not too (in relative terms) bad, on Zelensky's part. I live in the EU and many (possibly all) of our member states are rather bad at handling Neo-nazis (This is actually one of our most pressing issues, but broadly ignored by the public).

                • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Ahh. Here's a good start:

                  The country’s ultranationalist groups came to the fore in 2014, when they kickstarted massive street protests that led to the ousting of the Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych...

                  Torch-bearing ultra-right activists regularly march to the beat of drums across the Ukrainian capital’s downtown, chanting, “Death to traitors of Ukraine!” During one scuffle at the memorial to a Red Army general killed in the second world war, an elderly woman approached a group of radical nationalists shouting, “Hang the Russians!” and defied them, saying: “I’m Russian, hang me!”...

                  In a series of violent actions that underline their strength, rightwing radicals in recent years have assaulted gatherings by LGBT and women’s rights activists, attacked Roma encampments around the country, derailed a lecture on the history of the Holocaust and brawled with pro-Russia veterans...

                  Yermolayev said in the past the government turned a blind eye to the rise of nationalist groups, using them as a scare tactic, but now the ultra-right has turned on the authorities. “The well-organised and aggressive nationalism in Ukraine is a child of the government. It has lost control over radical nationalists. [Petro] Poroshenko has lost that game.”...

                  International human rights groups have strongly criticised the Ukrainian government for failing to track down and punish those responsible for the acts of violence and intimidation. The government has promised to rein in the ultranationalists, but has taken no action...

                  That's a pretty good overview of the character of Ukraine's neo-Nazis, as well as some on the scale of the problem. It mentions they sent "volunteer battalions" to the separatist regions, but does not have tons of detail on what they were doing there. This one has more detail on that:

                  "I have nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia," said Dmitry, as we sped through the dark Mariupol night in a pickup truck, a machine gunner positioned in the back. "But Putin's not even a Russian. Putin's a Jew."

                  Dmitry – which he said is not his real name – is a native of east Ukraine and a member of the Azov battalion, a volunteer grouping that has been doing much of the frontline fighting in Ukraine's war with pro-Russia separatists. The Azov, one of many volunteer brigades to fight alongside the Ukrainian army in the east of the country, has developed a reputation for fearlessness in battle...

                  In this next section, note how the neo-Nazis are declaring they'll do whatever they want, and see themselves as held back by the actual military:

                  For the commanders and the generals in Kiev, who many in Azov and other volunteer battalions see as responsible for the awful losses the Ukrainian army has suffered in recent weeks, especially in the ill-fated retreat from Ilovaysk, there was only contempt. "Generals like those in charge of Ilovaysk should be imprisoned for treason," said Skillt. "Heads are going to roll for sure, I think there will be a battle for power."

                  The Ukrainian armed forces are "an army of lions led by a sheep", said Dmitry, and there is only so long that dynamic can continue. With so many armed, battle-hardened and angry young men coming back from the front, there is a danger that the rolling of heads could be more than a metaphor.

                  And of course:

                  This week, Amnesty International called on the Ukrainian government to investigate rights abuses and possible executions by the Aidar, another battalion.

                  "The failure to stop abuses and possible war crimes by volunteer battalions risks significantly aggravating tensions in the east of the country and undermining the proclaimed intentions of the new Ukrainian authorities to strengthen and uphold the rule of law more broadly," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International secretary general, in Kiev.

                  • thilo@lemmy.ml
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Sorry I only looked at the pictures and did not read the text jet. I will read it on some commute tomorrow. But the pictures are frightening as the recent global rise of fascism is. I'm worried of the times to come.