With zelensky sending his support to Israel, who is also facing terror at their door step, this is an interesting take…
What do you expect when Iran is making the drones that are raining down on his country?
When your enemy labels you a Nazi to rationalize invasion, it helps refute the claim.
I am glad to announce you guys that number of tankies here is below 4% according to up/downvotes
It’s low enough to know them by their usernames and shame them every time they post something
As long as they’re genuine and civil about their opinions, I encourage a space for that discussion. If it’s disingenuous trolling or crude propaganda then it becomes a problem.
The general public framing of the war and Russian “denazification” messaging has basically broke criticism of the situation in the mainstream. It’s even to the point where you can support Ukrainian people and clearly identify Russia as the aggressor, but if you rationalize how this war didn’t come out of nowhere people’s alarm bells go up, and immediately you are scrutinized whether you’re a Russian troll or not. (There is no measure of sincerity online.)
The shocking thing for me is how quickly people revel in violence the second there’s a moral justification for it. Like you see closeups of injured Russians getting grenades dropped on them and see their bodies exploding, and it’s almost treated as a moral duty to view this as entertainment, consuming it on the same social media feeds you would memes and friend’s family photos.
I am, sadly, guilty of the last part, but to my defence I followed the beginning of this war almost religiously and the brutality the russian soldiers was beyond horrific.
They had absolutely zero regard for human life in any form or way.I’ve also heard countless recordings of phone calls between soldiers and families back in Russia and while not all are equally bad, many were sould wrenching to listen to.
I can’t excuse cheering for the loss of life, even when brainwashed, but I did and felt comfort knowing that there was one invader leas to wreck havock upon the Ukranian population.
I would reckon many were in the same boat as myself.
The issue is outside of any “true” morality, if you were in Russia chances are you’d be doing the exact same for the other side, since moral justifications for violence can be constructed and consented to on behalf of the public through many methods. Retribution violence is propagandized heavily in the US, in media and civic life. Some people gleefully imagine themselves inflicting violence with their firearm of choice if only provided with the right circumstance. So all this becomes a matter of dividing people by who is morally granted to inflict the violence they’ve been conditioned to view as justified, perpetuating the cycle. Viewing history as a river of blood and ignoring the banks of the river where people live their lives.
I followed this war for first 2 months only, i am neither on Russian or Ukrainian side.
I am in country which doesn’t belong to American or Russian side. Except “the world” (NATO+2 other boot kissers) every other nation citizen knows that this war started due to bullying faced by a nation constantly being surrounded by weapons of “the world” nations. It didn’t come out of no where, ukarine became the victim. Other than “the world” countries nobody believes Ukraine stance to continue is any form of stand against evil, everybody knows what Americans and NATO did to middle eastern people, they carpet bombed entire villages couple days after 9/11 and everybody enjoyed that horror show while drinking beers in pubs and eating crisps, and we were supposed to believe all those murdered by carpet bombing were terrorists; all non-“the world” countries know what is happening. Before internet bullies jump on me, I am also not from middle east.
Initially it was clear in first 2 weeks that Russian soldiers were very well behaved and didn’t touch any civilian, Russian troops were bullied and harassed by local civilians, stones were thrown at them on video and no retaliation was caught on any camera whatsoever. One can argue whether those Russian soldiers should be there or not, but they were there already, can’t change it. Memes were being made that Russian soldiers are weak girls who can’t do anything, their non-aggressive stance was seen as weakness
Later came American and NATO donated ordinance, which turned invasion into bloody unnecessary war.
Now as a third party national with no interest in who wins the “trophy”, I find it shameful that Internet warriors are saying things like Ukraine is winning or Russia is winning. Internet is full of bull… Ukraine which was once very beautiful country with wonderful free of cost education for all/foreigners is an absolute ruin, they are winning nothing, no matters what the outcome is.
No matters how much I respect bravery of Ukrainians, It clearly is a war being fought for American ego, and victim is every Ukraine resident, no matters how much nationalist pride they try to show online or offline for anyone’s “bravery”, Ukraine has advanced backwards towards history; whatever the result Ukraine has lost big time, the longer war goes, the more they lose.
Please stop this non-sense war, nobody is giving you weapons because they believe you are fighting for freedom, if you believed in freedom, you would join NAM movement like the non-“the world” countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol_theatre_airstrike
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15761.doc.htm
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said Russia made indiscriminate attacks and strikes on civilian assets like houses, hospitals, schools and kindergartens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war_(2022–present)
What gives any arbitrary country a mandate to exist though? We recognize that plenty of other social institutions are transient. Nobody demanded a massive international intervention to continue the existence of the Whig Party or the Studebaker Corporation. Why are countries unique and special? Also, this seems like a very modern thing: nobody is demanding we bring back Tanganyika or unwind German unification.
I get the desire to preserve the Ukranian culture and community. But you don’t need a sovereign nation for that: compare the re-establishment of the Welsh language and culture, for example.
Would the population have been better off-- at least in the “not exploded” sense-- by backing down with a quick surrender in exchange for some “we’ll formally tolerate your cultural differences” legal concessions? I’m sure at this point, it’s impractical to negotiate to that, because there’s too much bloodshed and burnt bridges on both sides, but it seemed like it was never even on the table: the Western world decided an independent Ukraine had to exist even if everyone involved knew it was going to be a very painful and expensive endeavour to keep it.
One of the key differences to other instances is that Ukrainian culture was not really tolerated in the USSR, and definitely not in the imperialistic cute of Russia today. Rather, Russia learned from the demise of the USSR that it’s better to remove cultural and societal differences within its nation. And it’s going the same route as other empires have in the past and are doing today. Enforcing the use of its language, forcibly educating the youth in Russian culture and schools, often by literally abducting them from their Ukrainian homes and relocating them to Russia into Russian families. Kidnapping a people’s children is literally one of the five acts that make a genocide, according to the UN genocide convention from 1948.
There are many examples to show that putting peace above all else is dangerous. Using your example, the Welsh were violently suppressed and exploited for centuries by the English, following a similar scheme. The Welsh language was forbidden to teach, Welsh traditions were replaced by English, and power of autonomy was transferred to the English. Nowadays less than 20% of the Welsh can speak their language, and that is after the “resurgence” and it being allowed to be taught again.
Other examples are Native Americans, the Armenian genocide, Czech Sudetenland, Poland, oh, and remember what China is doing in Xinjiang? All of them posed no or little violent resistance in exchange for promises of peace and cultural autonomy. It rarely takes more than a few months before contracts with powerless people are broken.
Nations are just figments of imagination, but are an expression of communal will of a number of people. Modern ( as in last two centuries) concepts of human rights revolve around the freedom of people to choose how to live their lives. We usually consider it admirable if people are allowed to freely live their chosen cultures and tradition. We also consider it proper that people are allowed to choose what kind of society they want to live in/migrate to. We also grant asylum to those forcibly prevented from living their way of life and being persecuted in their home nation.
Nations are a construct allowing specific sets of societal rules to be applied to a large populace. An internationally recognized nation is also considered integrally protected, even if one nation might not agree with the internal societal rules of another country. These global base rules are very bare bones, but they are one of the big reasons we all get to live in the era dubbed “long peace”. Yes, there’s still wars and ugly conflicts, but at least there has been no major total war involving superpowers. Even the Ukraine war is luckily still limited in scope. Were Russia to unleash their full military might, it quickly would devolve into a humanitarian disaster not seen since the world war.
Why does the arbitrary nature of countries favor the invader though? What about the argument that Russia is an arbitrary country that doesn’t need to violently expand into neighbouring countries?
OH HAMBURGERS!!! No Ukraine!!! What will we ever do without someone to send aid to??
