Ukraine

[Charna]

3 hours ago, Katya89 said:

It is very strange that western leaders didn't recognize it before  the year 2014. 

I'd say the western politicians recognized it and didn't care, more likely. And they would continue not caring if not for the very strong public reaction. They folded under pressure, because even if they like getting that oligarch money, at the same time they cannot afford to alienate voters too much.

[RoseGoesToYale]

I don't understand how the major world powers aren't going after Putin for genocide. They bombed a maternity/children's hospital. They bombed a theater. They're targeting Ukrainian civilians. How is this not genocide??

[ElloryJaye]

1 minute ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

I don't understand how the major world powers aren't going after Putin for genocide. They bombed a maternity/children's hospital. They bombed a theater. They're targeting Ukrainian civilians. How is this not genocide??

Genocide is systematically attempting to wipe out all people of a particular background (in this case, that would be all Ukrainians).  Putin doesn't seem to be attempting to do that.  He is committing war crimes—quite a lot of them—but that doesn't amount to genocide.  And to be honest, if it weren't for those leftover Soviet nukes, there would be a lot more pressure coming down on Russia as a result.

[Unleash the Echidnas]

Putin's stated aim is "denazification" of Ukraine where a "nazi" is anyone who doesn't believe Ukraine is part of Russia and is therefore inclined to power structures other than those preferred by the Kremlin. This requires removal of upwards of 90% of Ukrainians and destruction of the concept of Ukrainian culture. That's declared intent for genocide by any reasonable standard. Many of Russia's acts over the last eight some years are also war crimes. Implying not enough war crimes have (yet) been committed to qualify as (attempted) genocide I think is missing the point.

 

(Separately, it's also relevant to consider Russia's efforts towards nuclear weapons modernization, e.g. Woolf 2022, and the Lisbon protocol. EU-NATO's fear of escalation and energy purchases enabling Putin's ongoing escalation are different discussions about policy failures.)

[Zagadka]

Putin is pretty good at exploiting our hypocrisy to pursue his own hypocritical agenda. The danger of an intelligent (but not wise) person with no conscious or ideology.

 

Ukraine has a legitimate issue with neo-Nazis in its ranks. It is not controlled by neo-Nazis, but they are openly allowed. The West in general has a long history of unilateral wars for "defense" and "democracy," while separatist regions in Ukraine have voted for independence. The West has a hypocritical stance for civilian bombings. America (and the right wing media there) in particular introduces phrases like "fake news" and "cancel culture," both of which Russian state media has invoked.

 

By using the same arguments we used for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen, etc etc, Putin is handed the language and propaganda he needs. With NATO expanding into Warsaw Pact states, while it is not an actual "invasion" of Russian space, it gives Putin the scenarios to invoke to the Russian people.

 

With the West's total economic warfare on Russia - and Russian civilians - we reinforce Putin's narrative of Western states crushing Russia, and the necessity to stand up to them.

 

We simply can't proclaim the moral high ground, and that is an issue for us that Putin is happy to exploit.

[Charna]

1 hour ago, Zagadka... but Ukrainian said:

With the West's total economic warfare on Russia - and Russian civilians - we reinforce Putin's narrative of Western states crushing Russia, and the necessity to stand up to them.

 

We simply can't proclaim the moral high ground, and that is an issue for us that Putin is happy to exploit.

What the West is good at is ignoring the perspective of Eastern European and Baltic countries, as your post showcases. Even though we have experience in Russian occupation and we are likely the next targets. 

 

Nothing that Putin does is new to anyone here. He uses the same methods as his predecessors. There are now reports of people from Mariupol being forcibly moved to camps, wouldn't surprise me if he brings back gulags next.

 

[Zagadka]

36 minutes ago, Charna said:

What the West is good at is ignoring the perspective of Eastern European and Baltic countries, as your post showcases. Even though we have experience in Russian occupation and we are likely the next targets. 

I don't know what perspectives of Eastern Europeans I ignored, since I was solely addressing the West.

 

The problem with following the perspective or Eastern Europeans unquestioningly is the right wing views in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and other countries.

 

 

36 minutes ago, Charna said:

Nothing that Putin does is new to anyone here. He uses the same methods as his predecessors. There are now reports of people from Mariupol being forcibly moved to camps, wouldn't surprise me if he brings back gulags next.

And it is reprehensible.

 

So are the conditions we impose with even greater humanitarian crises in Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Palestine, etc. As long as Putin can claim moral equality with us, our arguments that he is a humanitarian monster (he is) are flat.

[Charna]

48 minutes ago, Zagadka... but Ukrainian said:

I don't know what perspectives of Eastern Europeans I ignored, since I was solely addressing the West.

 

The problem with following the perspective or Eastern Europeans unquestioningly is the right wing views in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and other countries.

Well, if you talk solely the West, then your point of view becomes that of the oppressor only, whether that oppressor is US or Russia military. If you ignore the Eastern European perspective because of the right wing views (and Baltic countries, which you seem to have forgotten...) then you also ignore the perspective of those of us who are targeted by this right wing. 

 

[Lysandre, the Star-Crossed]

21 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

I don't understand how the major world powers aren't going after Putin for genocide. They bombed a maternity/children's hospital. They bombed a theater. They're targeting Ukrainian civilians. How is this not genocide??

Quite a few of the world powers aren't much better, and it's easier to sweep corpses of non-combatants and children under the rug and ignore them when it's not one's own people. Right, wrong, or in-between very few people I've listened to actually seem to give a shit about Ukraine, only about the threat that Russia poses to their own country of this is allowed to go unchecked and Russia doesn't stop.

 

I'm in favor of sending aid to the Ukraine at this point, but only for that reason. Better we support neutral countries resisting than drag ourselves into a costly and unpopular war once again. We do not have the strength of will to do what would need to be done to win, so I think it best we don't fight to begin with. Nothing less than total domination if not the outright annihilation of our enemies will suffice, but the American public doesn't seem to stomach wars being fought that way. A wonded animal can still lash out in its death throes, and we seem to lack the resolve to put them down. Time will tell, but I expect we will have to fight in the end. We'd best end it this time.

[ukrguy]

Thank you everyone! I am still doing okay, thank you my friends.

 

If someone wants to help, my PayPal account is vanya.mlb@gmail.com

 

Really appreciated 💙💛

[Siimo van der fietspad]

21 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

I don't understand how the major world powers aren't going after Putin for genocide. They bombed a maternity/children's hospital. They bombed a theater. They're targeting Ukrainian civilians. How is this not genocide??

Well, we sort of are, by the various pronouncements about a 'Nuremburg trial' for him and his regime. But easier said than done, because unless the war ends with Moscow being occupied or a third Russian revolution there is little chance of getting him into custody.

[Siimo van der fietspad]

27 minutes ago, ukrguy said:

Thank you everyone! I am still doing okay, thank you my friends.

 

If someone wants to help, my PayPal account is vanya.mlb@gmail.com

 

Really appreciated 💙💛

It won't put food on your table, but I hope you know that pretty much every orchestra here in the UK both amateur and professional plays the Ukraine anthem at the start of their concerts. Mine has a concert next weekend in aid of the DEC appeal.

[Zagadka]

6 hours ago, Charna said:

Well, if you talk solely the West, then your point of view becomes that of the oppressor only, whether that oppressor is US or Russia military. If you ignore the Eastern European perspective because of the right wing views (and Baltic countries, which you seem to have forgotten...) then you also ignore the perspective of those of us who are targeted by this right wing.

I was talking solely of the West in that post in context of Putin exploiting our actions. I was not dismissing Eastern Europe entirely.

 

I was not saying to ignore Eastern European perspectives, I was saying to not accept them *unquestioningly.*

[Janus the Fox]

2 hours ago, Siimo van der fietspad said:

Well, we sort of are, by the various pronouncements about a 'Nuremburg trial' for him and his regime. But easier said than done, because unless the war ends with Moscow being occupied or a third Russian revolution there is little chance of getting him into custody.

What needed to be done to get most to the Nuremberg trials was that the German country, therefore the Nazi leaders was a complete and utter invasion of Germany on both west and east fronts.  I’ll assume the west and east had very different ideas of how the trials and therefore justice could be daughters, can assume too that these trials was moderate between western justice and eastern justice ideals.

 

In ways, to get Russia to justice will or may need an arrest order by some court, but to arrest an entire government may require a total war effort to invade Russia to arrest everybody involved.  But a peoples revolution, if more massive than it’s total military strength I don’t think wouldn’t let those involved in war alive to seek justice.  Anyhow, as with world war 2, the vast majority of personnel took to suicide or fled to South America to disappear into.  There was a form of ‘nazi hunting’ for decades later.

 

I’ve only seen a few documentaries, so the trials ‘actually’ went is not totally clear without personal extensive study, most of which is physically sickening in its nature.

[Gaz80]

Ukraine have had enough now. They need other countries to help now. It doesn't matter it's NATO countries or not. People are people and they desperately need help.

[bare_trees]

43 minutes ago, Gaz80 said:

People are people and they desperately need help.

You're right, but the same could've been said for the Rwandans in the 90s, and that didn't really work out.

[Sally]

2 hours ago, Gaz80 said:

Ukraine have had enough now. They need other countries to help now. It doesn't matter it's NATO countries or not. People are people and they desperately need help.

Other countries are helping with everything but sending troops to directly fight against the Russians.  It does matter re NATO, because if a NATO country sends troops to fight the Russians, it will become WW III and that could open it up to a nuclear war.  We cannot have that happen.  

[bertiewooster]

Without help from other countries, IE, direct help like doing a no fly zone or sending just a flood of troops, I can't see Ukraine surviving through this.  Millions have left, millions more are trying to leave or are trapped, and Putin is just letting loose on civilians purposefully while the world wrings its hands and goes "golly, I think we should ban Russian literature and dump out vodka.  We're helping!"  Like Putin 100% isn't going to stop until he has Ukraine because he knows no one will stop him, so he just needs to salt the earth until there's nothing left.  There's no going back now, and if he knows that no one is going to step in and stop him aside from sanctions--which he can use to play against us and say "look how the world is treating you for being patriotic and for wanting to get rid of Nazis!"--what's to stop him from continuing on to other smaller countries or territories?  Honestly?  When he knows no one will do a no fly zone and he keeps warning of his finger hovering over the button?

[Ksenia]

3 hours ago, Sally said:

Other countries are helping with everything but sending troops to directly fight against the Russians.  It does matter re NATO, because if a NATO country sends troops to fight the Russians, it will become WW III and that could open it up to a nuclear war.  We cannot have that happen.  

The problem is that Westerners think that Russians are insane and they are ready to use nuclear missiles, so western politicians behave with Putin as with crazy man. Of course, assaulting  the Urkaine (it is geographical centre of the Europe) was insanity for Russia from the strategic point of view, nevertheless it doesn't mean that such insane actions shouldn't be repelled.  If we care about international order and laws then  crazy dictators should be punished. Before the year 2022, Putin's dictatorship was an internal problem for Russians, nowadays it is international problem. Putin has commited two serious state crimes even according to the Russian criminal code: 1) he usurped power in Russia, 2) he uses this power in order to plan and conduct aggressive wars. 

 

I am sure that if Putin  orders to launch nuclear missiles then he will be arrested for the state crimes and treason. I think that CIA and other intelligence agencies calculate different probalities of coruse of events. 

[Ortac]

3 hours ago, Sally said:

Other countries are helping with everything but sending troops to directly fight against the Russians.  It does matter re NATO, because if a NATO country sends troops to fight the Russians, it will become WW III and that could open it up to a nuclear war.  We cannot have that happen.  

 

We keep constantly hearing that, and whilst I don't want to be dismissive of it, becasue I do understand just how serious the situation is, my opinion that I expressed earlier hasn’t changed; I still think that foreign nations should be providing some kind of military intervention in Ukraine.

 

Putin has already stated that he considers the intense sanctions imposed on his country to be an act or war, and foreign nations are already sending significant amounts of military weapons and equipment to soldiers in Ukraine, so as far as Putin is concerned, the west and NATO are involved in this war already.

 

So how much worse does it have to get before western nations will take some kind of serious action against the invading forces? There are acts of pure evil being committed for goodness sake. Whatever happened to “never again”? I don’t want there to be a horrible situation where in years to come, people look back with regret and think “why didn’t we do something?”

 

If eventually, weeks or months further down the line, some kind of red line is crossed by Russia and western nations or NATO do conclude they have to go down that route, many more people will have been murdered in between now and then. That is why I think that military intervention needs to start now.

 

So far, the west seems to be sending the message to Putin that they are weak and feeble and too scared to challenge him. Nuclear weapons or no nuclear weapons, I think they have to call Putin’s bluff and challenge his invading forces. That is the only way that Ukraine has a chance of surviving.

 

Trying to reason with Putin is obviously impossible. As horrible and as crass as this sounds, I think that NATO leaders need to communicate to Putin “Hey Mr Putin, WE have nuclear weapons too, and we know how to use them!” That is the only thing that Putin will understand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Charna]

21 hours ago, Zagadka... but Ukrainian said:

I was talking solely of the West in that post in context of Putin exploiting our actions. I was not dismissing Eastern Europe entirely.

 

I was not saying to ignore Eastern European perspectives, I was saying to not accept them *unquestioningly.*

I was not talking about accepting "unquestionably" either, that was your take. I was talking about excluding the Baltic and Eastern European perspective. Which is what Putin has been exploiting for a long time and that is how the Western businesses and politics got so deeply entangled with oligarchs. 

 

[Zagadka]

It is pretty grim - it seems like Russia is unwilling to commit to and concessions, the United States and Britain (at least, I am unsure about the exact positions of others) are ruling out any concessions or normalizing relations in any way, and China has just recently started being more critical of NATO as instigating the war (China has a looming wheat crisis, and may be depending on imports from Russia, which has very few markets left). Ukraine itself is unwilling to accept the outlandish demands for peace from Russia. Zelenskyy has indicated that he will fight to the end without compromise, while the US has not given any indication of backing Ukrainian compromises to Russia on its own terms; Blinken stated that peace be "irreversible" or sanctions will not be lifted.

 

It is just not clear how a path for peace will happen. Everyone involved seems committed to fighting until outright victory for themselves (not entirely unreasonable for Ukraine, but highly improbable).

 

The conflict is at a stalemate - in military and historical terms, that is not a good thing. That tends to precede an escalation and further commitment by the invader to crush the resistance. Russia is stalled, and its military has vastly underperformed, but it has so far committed a fairly small conventional ground force. They just recently used hypersonic missiles, and may mobilize the far larger part of their military. Russia is historically pretty willing to bog themselves down in years long wars that crush the enemy (and themselves).

[Zagadka]

7 hours ago, Charna said:

I was not talking about accepting "unquestionably" either, that was your take. I was talking about excluding the Baltic and Eastern European perspective. Which is what Putin has been exploiting for a long time and that is how the Western businesses and politics got so deeply entangled with oligarchs.

I'm really not sure I am understanding clearly here, my apologies.

 

Those are certainly things he can exploit - the entire problem is that these are grains (or boulders) or truth that he can utilize for the advancement of his own (even worse) agenda. Pretty standard politics, but all of our actions have consequences.

[ukrguy]

@bare_trees THANK YOU so much for donating my paypal!

 

P.S. I am doing pretty good!  Thank you all my friends

[J. van Deijck]

10 minutes ago, ukrguy said:

@bare_trees THANK YOU so much for donating my paypal!

 

P.S. I am doing pretty good!  Thank you all my friends

Belgium stands with you.

[Ksenia]

4 hours ago, Zagadka... but Ukrainian said:

I'm really not sure I am understanding clearly here, my apologies.

 

Those are certainly things he can exploit - the entire problem is that these are grains (or boulders) or truth that he can utilize for the advancement of his own (even worse) agenda. Pretty standard politics, but all of our actions have consequences.

Putin's theoretics is "whataboutism". When he is challenged about his malicious actions he asks what about Iraq, Yugoslavia? Ok, A lot of people  agree that intervention to Iraq was doubtful and immoral, but immoral actions of others don't give you a right to commit another immoral action, but he thinks if the US president can commit atrocities then he also can commit atrocities. It is problematic thinking, it is thinking pattern of a thug, not a civil responsible man. 

[Charna]

8 hours ago, Zagadka... but Ukrainian said:

I'm really not sure I am understanding clearly here, my apologies.

 

Those are certainly things he can exploit - the entire problem is that these are grains (or boulders) or truth that he can utilize for the advancement of his own (even worse) agenda. Pretty standard politics, but all of our actions have consequences.

It is not only actions, words matter too. When you talk about the economic war between the West and Russia, you are repeating Putin's narrative. Which to be fair I am sure is shared by many Western leaders. It is not only Western European countries that are participating in the sanctions against Russia. But in Putin's view Eastern European and Baltic countries are only either vassal states or should be part of imperial Soviet Russia, and so can be easily dismissed. 

 

This is also why Putin has (not so secretly) been supporting the extreme right wing in Poland, for example. Because he knew our right wing parties were all for exiting Poland from the EU. Fortunately they didn't manage so far and I don't think they will manage now.

[Charna]

Seems like Medvedev has decided to write about Poland now on his social media. Apparently our government is American puppets and ordinary Polish people will soon understand that it's in our own interest to be friends with Russia. 

 

I do not speak Russian, so I cannot confirm how accurate this summary is, but you can read it in English here:

https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2022-03-21/dmitri-medvedev-attacks-poland

 

[Ksenia]

6 minutes ago, Charna said:

Seems like Medvedev has decided to write about Poland now on his social media. Apparently our government is American puppets and ordinary Polish people will soon understand that it's in our own interest to be friends with Russia. 

 

I do not speak Russian, so I cannot confirm how accurate this summary is, but you can read it in English here:

https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2022-03-21/dmitri-medvedev-attacks-poland

 

I don't think that anyone in Russia respects Medvedev. There are only two politicians in Russia: 1) Putin, 2)Navalniy. Person needs to have political will in order to be politician, and Medvedev doesn't have it, he is Putin's slave. So noone should care what Medvedev writes. 

[Charna]

3 minutes ago, Katya89 said:

I don't think that anyone in Russia respects Medvedev. There are only two politicians in Russia: 1) Putin, 2)Navalniy. Person needs to have political will in order to be politician, and Medvedev doesn't have it, he is Putin's slave. So noone should care what Medvedev writes. 

Yeah, we have a similar situation here. Officially we have a PM and a president, yet everyone knows "the duck" (as Kaczynski is called) has the decision- making power. :/