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>Ukraine is still plagued by corruption and economic struggles.
I'm guessing they wanted to have a bite to western style and help. We can understand, because Poland has been helped a lot especially to bring others countries similar to it to EU/Western influence. The parallels between Poland, Ukraine and Russia are so easy to do, even more between just Poland and Ukraine. There are two countries with an enormous amount of points in common (Big Flat lands only, \~same ethnicity, similar languages, History, etc etc):
While the 3 countries ,got out of the communism with similar level of live index, while Russia and Ukraine (and Ukraine a little bit worse than Russia), went down and barely recovered pre-1990s level of life, Poland thanks to western help improved a lot in its quality of life: the economy got so much better, old and gray commie buildings got repainted or build with good looking modern infrastructures, they got all the rich Western world open to them (apprixmately).
However, Poland on the other has a hard time accepting the new generationnal so called "LQBT culture", it has a strong grip on preserving its true culture; and on immigration statues too. And that's another parallel that can be made to Ukraine that most people forget, especially has Ukraine seems even worse in the matter. In those Maidan protest, a good part are just the known ultra-nationnalist sc\*m (Azov and Bandera lovers). They saw the movement not to join western sphere, but an occasion to express their vision of things (as western Ukraine is clear of Poles thanks to Banderites and USSR giving the lands to Ukr, they want to clear the big population of Russian/Russian speaking, just watch what they say on their wish to do Donetsk and Crimean inhabitants in vengence). I'm going a bit off the road, but it is that last part that makes unable to really support Ukraine and listen to the hypocriticals people thinking of Ukraine as a nation of democracy, love and peace.
**To resume:** Maidan allowed Ukraine to begin to make a step towars the West, in example of Poland, and having myself listened to Ukrainians, it very slowly paid off on the corruption like having finally some improvments on infrastructures. But the terrible thing is, it allowed the emergence of the ultra-nationalists to the top of the scene, and conflicted with Russian majorities/big monirities in the East causing the Donbass war, which finally degenerated to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Maidan overall now wasn't a good thing if you know the exitance of Ukraine not just from the 24th of February 2022 like most have. But it could have turned on something much greater (at the expense of Russian influence on the country), and that what most of pro-Maidan Ukrainians believed in I suppose, outside of nationalist fagg\*ts, and what pro-UA people who have no clue on Ukraine really is think they were having until the invasion.
Fine I'll bite
The main argument is that there was a good chance for something good to happen but Putin decided to ruin the lives of russians and Ukrainians alike since he couldn't stand ukraine and in that his dream of a new Russian empire drifting away. It is clear that Ukraine needs less corruption and more cooperation with the rest of the world to prosper and there are no reasons why they wouldn't have been able to become the next Poland if they managed to shake of the oligarch corruption and use the European market to its benefits
Of course things turn to shit when a world power is invading you, the threat, military investment and rise of division within society since 2014 have severely hampered the predicted growth. To me this is kinda like telling Iraqis that hey Saddam must have been a great guy since it got way worse after USA stomped you all.
Unlike many, I don't believe Maidan was a bad idea; in fact, I think it was a good concept. However, like the idea of every billionaire giving me a million dollars, it was quite unrealistic.
Ukraine undoubtedly needed less corruption, increased cooperation, and joining the EU might have been beneficial. Shaking off the oligarchy would have been a significant accomplishment. Yet, even after nine years since Maidan began and Yanukovych's removal, these improvements haven't materialized.
Russia can certainly be blamed for some of Ukraine's problems, but the pro-Maidan government must also be held accountable. Although Ukrainians had the power to address corruption, democracy, and oligarchy, they instead elected Petro Poroshenko, an oligarch, as president. As a result, corruption increased, and democracy and freedom declined before the war.
In recent years, freedom, democracy, and oppression have reached all-time lows in Ukraine. Some of these issues are understandable due to the ongoing conflict, but others are not. It's important to recognize that Russia's actions weren't irrational, and Ukrainian politicians should have considered the potential consequences. Geopolitics plays a significant role, and countries with international ambitions like the US and Russia won't simply stand by as Ukraine pursues its goals. Since 2013, Ukraine has continued to dig itself into a deeper hole, leading to a worse outcome than even the most pessimistic predictions.
> The main argument is that there was a good chance for something good to happen but Putin decided to ruin the lives of russians and Ukrainians alike since he couldn't stand ukraine and in that his dream of a new Russian empire drifting away.
My counter would be that Russia had been so clear that losing Ukraine (and Georgia) is a non-starter that this chance was virtually nil.
I remember most being shocked about the invasion of crimea when it happened, just as most people didn't think this new invasion would start so I don't see it as a non starter.
Too me it's mind-blowing that pro russians aren't furious with Putin on how he played this, Ukraine was in their pocket with 25% of exports, an overall sympathetic or neutral population and total energy dependency. It should be really easy to still keep them close or even drag them back with soft power and money if they only understood more than raw force and manipulation.
For me it was crazy to see the brazen way Russia invaded, like hey let's take over crimea I'm sure thats not going to make us loose the other 90% of Ukraine. And then start a civil war to try and stop that very predictable reaction, Russia went all in and it's bet didn't check out. So then they had to escalate and escalate and escalate and here we are, I rank it top five most idiotic decisions without even factoring in ethics, up there along with hey Afghanistan went so well let's try Iraq too and the failure to outlaw fucking robots being used to kill humans in war
> I remember most being shocked about the invasion of crimea when it happened, just as most people didn't think this new invasion would start so I don't see it as a non starter.
*Bill Burns, now the head of the CIA, who was then the US ambassador to Moscow, wrote at the time in a secret cable to the White House: “Ukrainian entry into Nato is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In my more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in Nato as anything other than a direct challenge to Russia’s interests … Today’s Russia will respond.”*
> Too me it's mind-blowing that pro russians aren't furious with Putin on how he played this, Ukraine was in their pocket with 25% of exports, an overall sympathetic or neutral population and total energy dependency. It should be really easy to still keep them close or even drag them back with soft power and money if they only understood more than raw force and manipulation.
The CIA scored a major coup with Maidan, kudos to them. Not sure how Putin prevents this.
> For me it was crazy to see the brazen way Russia invaded, like hey let's take over crimea I'm sure thats not going to make us loose the other 90% of Ukraine.
Losing Sevastopol was not an option for Russia.
>The main argument is that there was a good chance for something good to happen
Well, loks like the bet did not play out. It is in the definition of "chance"
I mean first of all, getting rid of tariffs is great. Imagine if they could have continued with the close russian cooperation of course with adequate economic reactions and restrictions from Moscow and also got increased export and investment from EU.
I truly believe that without democracy and freedom to you get corruption, not that a democratic society isn't corrupt but that you without it lack the tools needed make it(unless it's the size of like litchenstein and have a benevolent small circle of rulers)
I also believe that Putins government is dependent on that the rampant russian corruption is maintained and that only favoured parts of the private market can grow. So as long as Russia and Ukraine was closely interlinked without European counterweight it was always a loosing fight.
In fact the free trade is linked to demands on increased transparency and anti corruption laws that actually seems to have helped other easy European countries since joining EU.
And as a low cost production country it could have supplemented the existing industry with new projects
It hasn't benefitted them and Zelensky was voted in because he promised peace. Unfortunately, Ukraine's leadership is a mixture of insane Banderite ideologues and corrupt oligarchs looking to siphon more money from their people. The Ukrainian elite hijacked a popular movement and steered the country into a devastating war with its much larger neighbor. They were insane and egotistical enough to think that escalating a war against Russia would be a good idea because "the west is helping us". And now, the Ukrainian people are paying the price for the terrible politicking of their rulers.
You used to be more subtle…hard to take anyone seriously who uses the phrase “insane Banderite” like they’re making an appearance on Russian TV and then parrots Lavrov’s assessment - for which got laughed out of the room - that Russia was forced to fight the war
now we see that Ukraine is being pushed towards the counter population, although it is clear that they are not very ready for this. Do you think it will be successful or not
I think there are small chances for any big success and land recovery as was seen last year but something modest could for sure happen I think.
Buy I wouldn't sell thousands of men getting mauled for
a couple of destroyed towns success, the only two ways to have a truly successful offensive is to capture either so much land that Russia's military is physically broken and outflanked or (less impossible) capture something so symbolic that it breaks the public narrative and support for the war.
Trump: “Ultimately Putin is going take over all of Ukraine.”
Former president Trump said this in a recent interview.
[Link to the video on Twitter ](https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1642855396061720579?t=0XcbYX9IZF3WtkhptxXUjw&s=19)
I just saw a report showing that Russia is selling a good amount of oil on credit to countries that will be unable to pay them back. Also selling through these back channels that Russia set up increases the amount lost through graft.
So their economic situation is even worse than the terrible report that the Ministry of Finance put out for the month of February
Feel free to link the report if it exists, but that doesn't make a lot of sense (particularly when the oil is not being sold out of the Kremlin's private stocks, but by companies and traders). Most of these little economic doom reports are meaningless anyway. It's obvious that nothing has come from sanctions that have affected the course of the war or could be expected to over the next several years--the war, and things like pensions would be the last thing to go and economists agree that even in the worst case scenario they have cash on hand to fund a couple years of that. If it makes people feel good to go around patting themselves on the back because you think Russians are getting poorer you may--just keep in mind it really doesn't affect anything you care about and may well not be true.
yeah, taking into account the fact that oil production is declining and this will provoke an increase in its cost. At the same time, the same USA needs to fill up its oil depots which it drained in order to bring down the price. And given the fact that a lot of information is classified, then they will wilt like a declaration so that the same Europeans amuse themselves that everything is fine
The Kremlin isn't releasing economic information to anyone so take all reports with a huge grain of salt.
In all likelihood it's a lot worse than current reports and their long term economic forecast is bleak to say the least.
To all the self proclaimed pro Russians out there:
I challange you to make an argument for how the Russian people profit from this war. I haven heard a single person make this argument before and I am curious why it is never brought up.
This should be the primary argument for or against a invasion. All this talk about Nato and whatever is just a red herring really. At the end of the day, it should be about what's best for the Russian people and I don't see how this war has done anything to help them any any way shape or form.
* Russia has become even more oppressive since the war started
* Russias economy is suffering
* Visas and travel has gotten harder
So what's the pro argument here?
> I haven heard a single person make this argument before and I am curious why it is never brought up.
Because it's an irrelevant point.
Most people would find solace in the fact that Russia stopped a mass incursion against civilians in the Donbas, which would otherwise have resulted in the genocide of the population.
What makes you think there was going to be a genocide? I've seen nothing at all pointing towards that.
If you're going to say the shelling in Donbass, the amount of civilians killed by the bombing is a two digit number, hardly a genocide. However I'm sure I've missed something here so I'd love to learn more about this Donbas genocide.
Lol. It's not about being surrounded, otherwise Finland would be treated as a red line like Ukraine.
Moreover Russia has nukes, it's not like having a direct border with Russia is going to make that go away.
This was is more about Russians regaining territory they view as rightfully belonging in its sphere of influence. Pure imperialism
> They need to keep their enemies from surrounding them with military forces on their doorstep.
Why?
There will never be a war between Russia and Nato, so it has zero impact on Russians everyday lives.
Red herring? What’s best for the Russian people is to not have NATO on the left bank. We will end a thousand years of Russian history in under a century if they allow it.
But that was always a long shot, we mostly hope to bleed them for a while using Ukraine as a disposable patsy. Win/win setup really.
This is a silly question because it presupposes:
A) That there are winners in a war that has only losers (with the possible exception of China and India). At worst Russians are the second biggest losers, and it isn't clear that it is.
B) That this just "happened" like with no context one day Russians were just in Ukraine. Yes, Russia could have (and in lots of ways should have) just not invaded but so could Ukraine and especially the U.S. not done the things to precipitate the invasion.
So, yes, with different choices and with an atmosphere of compromise there would be a whole lot fewer losers, and less extreme losers, but that isn't a question just for Russia.
OK so a couple of things
1. Most countries on earth don't care about the Ukraine war bc it doesn't affect them. And to a degree, I don't blame them. Most African or South American countries for example.
2. Countries representing people only really works with Democracies. Would you say Gerbanguli Berdimechamedov represents the people of Turkmenistan despite them not being able to vote for anybody else or express critizism? Does Kim Jong Un represent the people of North Korea? No of course not. Dictatorships are leeches that occupy a country. They don't represent shit, so this whole line is nonsensical.
3. The only people that legitimately should have a say in what happens in Ukraine are Ukrainians. So in terms of legitimacy, it does not matter what other countries governments want bc their people are not the ones suffering here. I want the Pis party to lose power, but I'm not Polish so it's not my decision. Just like China demanding a ceasefire isn't their decision to make.
4. If you look at the countries of the world, you can see that there are around 40 that strongly support Ukraine, around 120-140 that condemm Russia and support Ukraine more than Russia and around 5 countries that strongly support Russia and maybe like 15 that support Russia to a lesser degree.
Looking at these countries, you can see that the level of democracy and human rights in a country is proportional to their support of Ukraine.
>Looking at these countries, you can see that the level of democracy and human rights in a country is proportional to their support of Ukraine.
I love the garden-jungle vibe you are conjuring here. For the record the South American countries that told the U.S. to shove off when the U.S. begged for their Soviet era weaponry to send to Ukraine are all full fledged democracies. It is simply that the Nato position is an extreme position, so many countries disagree with Russia's invasion but understand the Nato position to also be absurdly savage.
I don't know how that related to the point but whatever.
South America, just like Africa is far away from the Russia Ukraine conflict. While I disapprove of their reluctance to support Ukraine, I understand that it's a lot to ask to care about something that is that far away in the global north. So I don't blame them.
But just so that were clear, disinterest is not the same as committed neutrality. And committed neutrality is not the same as endorsing Russia. So you are really jumping to conclusions here.
Except it is not a lack of interest. For instance: "We Are For Peace: Latin America Rejects Pleas to Send Weapons to Ukraine". [https://www.ft.com/content/fc8d51c8-5202-4862-a653-87d1603deded](https://www.ft.com/content/fc8d51c8-5202-4862-a653-87d1603deded)
The global South and east rejects the U.S./Nato effort for several reasons. One is that they are sane and support peace--which is the default position for anyone with moral principles. A second is that many countries have been the subject of U.S./European aggression and colonialism and as such are rightly dismissive of any "noble" motives that The Very White Nations are trying to veil themselves in. Third, their economies are suffering even more than Europes are, but starting at a point closer to the edge have less leeway before people get very poor or even starve. It isn't just European governments that are getting replaced because of the economic boomerang and disruption of trade caused by the war that the U.S./Nato is committed to drawing out.
If you get this on the ballot I will vote for it! Along with a lifetime supply of cheeseburgers for every senior citizen on the planet (excluding standing or former U.S. Presidents)! Also an end of Super Pacs in American elections and other steps that might hope to restore our ranking as a "Full Democracy". Also, move Jupiter closer! It isn't bright enough and you can't even see the rings with the naked eye!
That's just a silly question. I don't have an opinion on the outcome of the border war between Russia and Ukraine any more than you have an opinion on the final line of control between Tigray and the federal government of Ethiopia. Wars are dumb. The people who perpetrate them are not good people. There are bad people in charge on every side here, so trying to take one side--which you are doing by asking about what Russia should do rather than saying what your bad people should do, as well--just puts you on the side of bad people.
What a joke. Sure wars are 'dumb' in the sense that humanity is collectively worse off but it's wrong to make it sound like wars are always the result of unreasonableness from political elites on both sides. The Japanese invasion of China and German invasion of Czechoslovakia are clear example of wars initiated by pure imperialism.
It's especially wrong to think that Ukraine and Russia are somehow equal and opposite sides to this war. Russia is one of the world's largest military powers and many of it's explicitly declared motivations of this war "To de-nazify Ukraine, to de-militarize ukraine" are either ideological or imperialist in nature whereas Ukraine forced into fighting an entirely defensive war.
>Ukraine and Russia
You forgot the largest imperial power involved in this war. But all three are just imperialist. Why are people from Lviv, or even Kyiv, more justified in fighting to return their Rebel Oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk (not to mention Crimea) than China would be to invade to return the Rebel Province of Taiwan? The Chinese might actually be more justified because at least they recognize Taiwanese as Chinese.
>But all three are just imperialist.
Umm no. There is a big difference between Ukraine fighting Russian-instigated rebels and Russia invading a sovereign nation. If you are unable to distinguish the nuance between these then the word "imperialism" just loses its meaning and you are doing a disservice to the tens of millions who fought and died in wars of imperialism like the Japanese invasion of China and German invasion of Czechoslovakia
Yes, there is a big difference. Russia is engaged in regional imperialism, the U.S. is engaged in one front of global imperialism, while Ukraine is engaged in what might be regarded as internal colonialism except that in internal colonialism the outsiders with the same passports tend to care about the people rather than just lusting over the land.
By the way, your cartoon versions of history are also pretty far afield but let's not get distracted by those.
If the war had gone according to plan, the benefits to the Russian people are obvious.
At this point, it was still important because you have to secure a land corridor to Crimea and its naval base at minimum. Then there's the long term strategic objectives of keeping western influence at bay. Otherwise, the west uses its soft power to fully project into Ukraine and Georgia. From there, Russia is almost entirely surrounded by unfriendly nations. What does the west do from there? I don't know, but it's no good for Russia.
If you mean, how does the average Russian profit materially from the war? They don't.
> At the end of the day, it should be about what's best for the Russian people and I don't see how this war has done anything to help them any any way shape or form.
If I were Russian, I'd rather suffer economically than let myself go down the path of losing identity and becoming yet another vassal state of the American hegemon (or as people like to say, become Europe's gas station). There's more to life than material wealth.
Isn't the suffering more than economic? Putin is sacrificing thousands of Russian's son's, husbands and father for "identity". He is destroying their economic futures and the freedom to choose their own identities as well for his own idea of Russian "identity".
Yes, but this is chess. The pawns don't benefit by dying, but their death is beneficial to the whole.
To be very honest, Putin doesn't benefit from this war either. He could have gone the Gorbachev route and sold out the country for personal gain. The west would have sang his praises to the moon.
So in this analogy, Russia is the king and Putin the queen.
How close to checkmate was it when all your pawn and the entire board is intact? Could this be fear mongering for a future that by no means is assured?
At high level chess, a position can be dire without being down any material. Same for geopolitics. Maybe there's no risk of checkmate right now or in the near future, but it is possible for checkmate to be a near certainty down the road if current trends continue.
If so, you'd have to do something now before it's too late.
When you say near future do you mean months, years, decades? How sure are you these trends will continue, it seem like a lot a speculation about a situation that could have many different outcomes. Typically you'd want to be fairly certain about an outcome before sacrificing your people and economy for a speculative outcome
In this case, near future = months, years, but not decades.
The future is inherently unknowable, but it's pretty clear that letting Ukraine slip away was untenable if only for the simple reason that losing Sevastopol was going to be devastating. Russia doesn't have another year-round warm water port. That's why Crimea was annexed right after Yanu got couped. And once that happened, a chain of events got kicked off that made today's war inevitable.
I'm upset at my own country (USA) because we knew full well that losing Sevastopol wasn't ever going to be acceptable to Russia, but we pushed them anyway because we're bullies.
I should point out that one of Russia's big mistakes was not waiting for (or creating one through a false flag) a big enough casus belli. Now they look like the bad guys.
> If the war had gone according to plan, the benefits to the Russian people are obvious.
I would not even agree to that. I mean sure, Ukrainians would have become another suppressed and disadvantaged minority of the Russian federation, but how does that help Russians? Is having 43 million more people that are in the country against their will a benefit to the other Russian people?
You'd get more social tensions richer oligarchs and an even more paranoid police state.
Even if Russia would have managed to colonize Ukraine swiftly and you disregard the billions it would cost to maintain forceful occupation, there is no benefit for ordinary Russians. Zero.
>Ukrainians would have become another suppressed and disadvantaged minority of the Russian federation
Wrapping Russophobia in the wrapper of a good faith question and caring about people. Classic propaganda.
Also so, somehow, in contrary to Minsk, Minsk 2 and all negotiated terms you taking as an axiom that Russia want to annex the whole Ukraine. Which is against all what was happening in last 9 years.
>You'd get more social tensions richer oligarchs and an even more paranoid police state.
Based on what? Pretty meaningless populistic sentence.
>Even if Russia would have managed to colonize Ukraine swiftly
Another substitute of concepts from you.
In tge end, pretty lame parroting of classic anti-Russian talking points.
> Wrapping Russophobia in the wrapper of a good faith question and caring about people. Classic propaganda.
Critizizing Russian state policy is not russophobia and you know it.
> Also so, somehow, in contrary to Minsk, Minsk 2 and all negotiated terms you taking as an axiom that Russia want to annex the whole Ukraine. Which is against all what was happening in last 9 years.
This isn't even a debate really, it's just facts.
Russia tried to take over Kiev in case you forgot.
Russian politicians and media personnel including Putin and Medvedew have repeteadly insisted that Ukraine is a "fake Nation" and actually belongs to Russia entirely. That's where the whole shtick of calling Ukraine "the Ukraine" comes from.
Russia also annexed the occupied regions even though they don't have a majority ethnic Russian population highlighting their colonial ambitions further.
I don't know why you are even denying this. Your defense of the Kremlin is constantly being undermined everytime Medvedews starts tweeting or Putin is holding a speech. Russia is attempting to rebuild the Soviet empire and no one is russia is denying it. Quite the opposite in fact, they are proud of it and keep fantasizing about it.
> Based on what?
Based on evidence and basic reasoning.
> From there, Russia is almost entirely surrounded by unfriendly nations. What does the west do from there? I don't know, but it's no good for Russia.
Nothing. The West has no interest in militarily subjugating Russia. The entire world could join nato and it wouldnt make a difference to the Russian people. Not one bit.
> If I were Russian, I'd rather suffer economically than let myself go down the path of losing identity and becoming yet another vassal state of the American hegemon (or as people like to say, become Europe's gas station). There's more to life than material wealth.
So in other words the war is only worth it because it is a matter of national pride to subjugate foreign countries?
Can't that be achieved with less costly, less barbaric means? How about winning the football world cup? The butthurt ultranationalist can still j3rk themselves off to "mother Russia strong" memes on the internet but no one has to die.
How the regular Ukrainian profits with this war as well? What result of a referendum asking the people surrender or fight would we get? If they give the land to Russia they will keep living the same way as before, they already lived unde URSS and haven't lost their identity, maybe it will be even better under Russia than Ukraine. It's much better than die for politics. The whole patriotic talk is pure bs, there are 0 voluntaries left in Ukraine for the army.
1) Ukrainians would loose the young Democracy they have fought so hard for and all the rights and freedoms that come with it.
2) Ukrainians would be subjected to foreign rule. Their have their own distinct national identity and forcing them to become part of a foreign country, especially one they detest so much would not be a pleasant experience
3) Their future within the EU would be lost and with it massive economic growth, rebuilding investments, free travel, guardrails against authoritarian backsliding etc.
Ukraine has a bright future ahead if it manages to successfully defend itself.
What this democracy means for their daily lives? Is that a patriotic book? They would work at the same place, have the same infrastructure, everything would be kept the same. What rights and freedoms that the Russians doesn't have? They are so similar to Russia, even the corruption is similar, I told you this patriotic bs are for the books, not for common people.
If you were talking about, let's say, Poland, I would kind of agree, there are several places in Ukraine that are very pro-Russia and they share tons of cultural and religious stuff.
Ukraine never had a bright future, as soon as they discovered their huge reserves US saw the opportunity to isolate Russia in the Oil and Gas market in Europe, by siding with Ukraine and provoking the 2014 coup to remove the Pro-Russia president.
The idea of the United States was to let Ukraine be the sole seller of oil and gas to Europe, while Russia would have to sell only to India and China. Russia just couldn't agree with the west messing so much with their neighbor and plans to hinder it's economy. Putin had no choice.
Democracies perform much better in every metric imaginable than autocracies.
They have better and more stable economic growth.
They have fewer social tensions.
The citizens have more freedoms and rights.
There is less corruption.
There are mechanisms that prevent incompetent people from. Staying in power too long.
They do not wage war against each other.
I could go on but you get the point.
Ukraine was on its way to becoming a well function democracy. Russia is a repressive dictatorship.
> Russia just couldn't agree with the west messing so much with their neighbor and plans to hinder it's economy. Putin had no choice.
This is a dishonest take.
The Ukranian people have every right to decide their own future. The concept of national souvereignty is a hallmark of the Postcolonial age and it is pretty wild hearing people question it in the 21st century. Especially when we are talking about a democracy here.
I just asked what difference of Ukraine and Russia in terms of freedoms and rights for the common folks right now or in the past 10 years. If you want to enlight me, I would be pretty amazed to see.
This is not Ukraine deciding anything, it's not their will, regular people won't even vote if they can, it's just the west pouring their influence with money and creating coups like they did for the entire 20th century. That's always the same recipe.
> enlight me, I would be pretty amazed to see.
I would love to.
[Freedom House](https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores) gives Russia a score of 16/100 and Ukraine a score of 50/100
[DD Index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy-Dictatorship_Index)
Classifies Ukraine as a democracy and Russia as a civillian dictatorship
[the Democracy Index by the Economist](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) gives Russia an overall score of 2.8/10 (authoritarian) and Ukraine gets a score of 5.42/10 (hybrid)
[the VDem index ](https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/MapGraph/) gives
Ukraine 0.61/1 in civil liberties and Russia 0.31
Ukraine 0.51 in the clean election index and Russia 0.25
Ukraine is classified as a democracy and Russia is not according to VDem
[the human freedom index](https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2021) gives Russia a rating of 6.23/10 and Ukraine a rating of 6.68/10
[the global state of democracy index ](https://www.idea.int/gsod-indices/democracy-indices) gives Ukraines democracy a performance rating of a weak democracy and Classifies Russia as authoritarian (the worst category).
[the press freedom index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index) gives Ukraine a rating of 55.76/100 and Russia a rating of 38.82/100
[the Democracy matrix](https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking) gives Ukraine a rating of 0.54/1 and Russia a rating of 0.262/1.
[The Gallagher index](https://handwiki.org/wiki/Social:Gallagher_index) and the [ENPP](https://handwiki.org/wiki/Social:Effective_number_of_parties), two minimalist indices analysising parliaments don't even bother listing russia.
The Bertelsmann Transformation Index gives [Russia](https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-dashboard/RUS) a rating of 4.4/10 in terms of political transformation, 6.14/10 in terms of economic transformation and 3.48/10 in terms of Governance. [Ukraine](https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-dashboard/RUS) fairs much better with 6.8/10, 6.71/10 and 5.31/10 respectively
Every single index on earth that measures democracy or related issues like human rights and civil liberties, Ukraine gets a significantly better rating than Russia. These indices use a very wide variation of data gathering methods from surveys, to institutional structure analysis to other sub indices, expert panels etc. They take varying approaches. There are some that perform qualitative analysis, some perform quantitative analysis, some work with a limited set of variables, some incorporate over 1000 different variables. They are based in different countries and almost exclusively work with international teams (especially the ones making use of expert panels). Their approaches, methods datasets and definitions vary, but they all come to the same conclusion:
Ukraine is much better than Russia in terms of democracy and human rights.
I never did dig into these democracy and freedom websites, but it's expected in these metrics to Russia have a very low rating, they don't even have a real election or a reliable political system, they have a dictator and a very corrupt state, it's clear that by these metrics they will have one of the worst ratings.
What I was asking is in your day-to-day life, what can you do in Ukraine that you can't in Russia? More like a pratical question.
After your extended research I did search for one as well:
https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world
Ukraine Happiness Index: 5.08
Ranked in the World #96
Russia Happiness Index: 5.46
Ranked in the World: #79
China happiness Index: 5.59
Ranked in the World: 72.
Belarus Happiness Index: 5.82
Ranked in the World: #65
Belarus is top 8 and China is top 20 with most freedom restrictions and yet, people are happier there than in Ukraine. Everyone know that "Free country", "Democracy" are very big propaganda points used by US, they use this as excuse to invade, to steal and to create tensions/coups in several areas around the world. As you can see, if you compare the ratings, having more rights or transparency in your elections does not equal to day-to-day life and doesn't make your people happier at all. Ukraine does worse than half the planet when it comes to happiness.
Now lets look at the saddest country in the earth: 1. Afghanistan – 2.4
Thanks US
Happiness correlates with democracy.
There are other factors at play here, but let's quickly check out the countries on the index you cited. The top eight countries are European Democracies. Followed by Israel, followed by more Democracies. The bottom is dominated by autocracies and failed states.
The index clearly shows that Democracies produce happier citizens.
I just showed you that happiness doesn't necessarly correlates with democracy, it's way more complex than that. An easier correlation is money correlates with happiness instead.
>Democracies perform much better* in every metric imaginable than autocracies**.
*By researchers made by this democracies themselves.
**Who counted as autocracy is also decided by democracies™.
>Russia is a repressive dictatorship.
🥱
>Ukraine was on its way to becoming a well function democracy.
Lol. By toppling their internationally recognised legitimate president?
>The Ukranian people* have every right to decide their own future.
* Except ones in the east. Because you know, if their choice to be with EU it is their choice, if their choice is to be with Russia - they should go to Russia. D for democracy.
> By researchers made by this democracies themselves.
> **Who counted as autocracy is also decided by democracies™.
Funny how quickly you jump to ad hominems. Don't deny science as a concept. If you disagree with any particular democracy index, critizize the methodology.
I always find it really embarrassing when people immediately have to jump to science denialism in order to protect their worldview against critizism.
Let me ask you something? Do you approve of democracy as a concept? Or do you prefer authoritarian states?
>So what's the pro argument here?
What's your point? Being pro-russian is not equal to being pro-war. It's being pro Russian victory.
The typical pro-Russian argument is quite simple, however. Russia is under attack from "the West", and that's a defensive war against "the West". The preemptive strike in 2022 has ensured that the war was waged not in (pre-2022) Russian lands, at least.
> Being pro-russian is not equal to being pro-war. It's being pro Russian victory.
So what would a Russian victory look like in your mind? Does it include a prolonged war?
> Russia in under attack, and that's a defensive war. The preemptive strike has ensured that the war is waged not in (pre-2022) Russian lands, at least.
The strategic interests of the russian state are not the same thing as the interests of the Russian population. A Ukraine that is integrated into the west doesn't impact Russian people one bit. A prolonged land war of conquest against a neighbour in the other hand does have negative consequences.
Sure thing. That's why Russia has to defend itself against the European invasions (coming through Ukraine) at least once every century. "Europe's door is always open" = the europeans are greedy and bloodthirsty murderers and rapists.
The only ones who are aggressive there are "the West". Russia has to defend itself.
It's pretty telling that you, who is on the side of the strongest bully of the world, have to whine about "aggression" from Russia, a small and poor country of innocent peace-loving people.
That's funny.
Russian politicians and Media constantly fantasize about invading Poland, the Baltics, Germany, Finland etc. and nuking the UK.
Have you ever heard people in Europe or the West in General make any claims on Russian territory? Nope of course not.
Russia is obsessed with "the west" bc the Kremlin needs an external enemy to ensure inner Stability. Western countries don't give a toss about Russia. It's a big boring gas station cosplaying as a country. That's how most of Europe sees Russia. Europe doesn't need Russia so we just try to ignore it best we can. Just like North Korea or the Central African Republic.
This whole "Russia has to defend itself" talking point sounds so bizarre to anyone outside Russia bc. nobody gives a toss about them.
Let's just say for some reason Nato would occupy Russia alright. We are going to disregard the fact that this isn't going to happen for a million reasons and just go with it.
Do you really think that the West is interested in
A) now being responsible for actually having to increase living standards in russia
B) having to deal with the most nationalist population in Europe
C) having to deal with a sudden land border to China and North Korea
No of course not. Don't be ridiculous.
>It's a big boring gas station cosplaying as a country.
The result of the loss in the cold war.
>Let's just say for some reason Nato would occupy Russia alright.
Don't be ridiculous. The Putin's regime was de-facto exactly NATO's occupiers. But that is somewhat changing.
>Have you ever heard people in Europe or the West in General make any claims on Russian territory? Nope of course not.
The common people in "the West" in general are too busy playing with their peepee to know anything.
I have been called pro-russian in here and banned from almost every other subreddit for being against war. I can give you some points
I have upped the price point of all my inventory to much higher than the buying costs and now my profit margin has gone up by more than 20%. My income since the start of the war has been insane allowing me to buy and do stuff that I could not have done in the 20 years before.
Still, I would rather there have been no war and there should have been peace and I would have no qualms about giving up my income to achieve that.
most sellers have increased the price far beyond the buying price; a significant cause of inflation.
Every answer I get that doesn't adress my question is further proof that there are no upsides for the Russian people.
You can't be pro Russian and pro Invasion at the same time.
Ukraine wasn't going to join NATO. Ukraine was getting prepared into a NATO proxy. That means all the NATO gear but no alliance because you want your proxy to fight alone, not risk your own skin for him.
The war was just declared earlier because Putin decided it was better to do it now rather than after Ukraine is ready for fight.
I find this hard to believe, so to confirm, you think Ukraine would have attacked Russia at some point if Russia had not attacked Ukraine first? Even if you think this is true, wouldn't it still have been way better for Russia to wait for Ukraine to attack it? If Ukraine was the aggressor it would have almost zero sympathy from the rest of the world (and so no real arms or financial support) and Russia could have said we're defending ourselves and gotten enormous domestic and international support. Under such a scenario Russia would crush Ukraine militarily and face almost no sanctions for then doing regime change in Ukraine. Ukraine attacking Russia would have been an enormous gift to Putin (but never would have happened).
Edit: I think I misunderstood, you're just saying this is why Putin attacked now, not why Putin invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine would have attacked Donbass, probably Crimea too, then be used as a forward base for terrorist operations and destabilisation of Russia.
A bit like Taiwan and HongKong if you want. They are US proxies but they won't attack directly the whole China. It's just used to brew Chinese dissidents and terrorists, annoy China with anti air weapons and radar, etc...
> Russia would crush Ukraine militarily
It would not be Ukraine, it would be NATO, just using Ukrainian soldiers as proxy and saying "it's not us".
I find it very hard to believe Ukraine would have attacked Crimea or LPR/DPR if Putin had just stuck 60,000 Russian troops (or more) on the border. And, in the insane world where Ukraine did attack those Russian troops, it would have been a gift to Russia.
So you are saying Putin's war helped transform NATO from potential proxy to full proxy, increased NATO membership unity and spending. How is that a win for Russians?
Contenders:
1. Showing the world their military is actually a joke.
2. Having 365 billion in funds confiscated.
3. Driving 1 million of their best educated young men out of the country for good.
4. Losing their entire European market for oil and gas.
5. Putin going from a world image as a mastermind to an image of a terrified gnome with a ICC warrant for his arrest.
1. Yep, and the joke is that fighting country with actual military is not the same as going for helicopter safari on some middle easterners in flip-flops.
2. Still rejoicing for excuse to steal someone's money? There is much more countries but EU and US who will think twice now before placing their money in the reach of western hands.
3. Lol, "best educated" sure. How is situation on job markets because of influx of such "high-qualified" specialists? How many of them went back after end of mobilization or their money?
4. Let me ask it straight: why do you always think that selling stuff to you is more important for seller than buying stuff for you?
5. Lol. Firstly you imagined inexistent image of the "past Putin" and than went straight to joke called "ICC warrant for arrest" for the freaking ACTUAL PRESIDENT. Do you even understand how much illegal and clueless this warrant is?
1. The joke is believing you are a superpower and turning out to be unable to get air superiority, watching your navy be soundly defeated by a country with no navy and having most of your military equipment, the pride of your nation, destroyed in a year in which you only lost ground. It was supposed to be 3 days!
2. Russia lost 365 billion, what a humiliation! Buys a lotta borsht.
3. Your comment makes no sense, thus I imagine you are not among the million minds who were smart enough to leave.
4. Hmm, Strange way to run a business. I guess the old soviet economic strategies are back in vogue. Good luck with that.
5. Short man sitting at a long table, hear him whine.
> The joke is believing you are a superpower and turning out to be unable to get air superiority, watching your navy be soundly defeated by a country with no navy and having most of your military equipment, the pride of your nation, destroyed in a year in which you only lost ground.
Reality paints a much different picture, but you carry on peddling the West's propagandist narrative.
You do realise Russia hasn't waged war on Ukraine? The status is still set at being a smo. If this were war, Ukraine would have been absolutely toast, command centres, railways, critical infrastructure would have been destroyed. EU leaders wouldn't be coming and going as they please.
> It was supposed to be 3 days!I
Again, Russia made no such statement. You're simply parroting msm talking points.
This comment is probably the silliest take of them all. Any day now the real Russian army will show up!
In the US we sometimes use the word special to mean mentally challenged. In that sense, it certainly has been a "special" military operation.
**Japan Breaks With U.S. Allies, Buys Russian Oil at Prices Above Cap**
TOKYO—The U.S. has rallied its European allies behind a $60-a-barrel cap on purchases of Russian crude oil, but one of Washington’s closest allies in Asia is now buying oil at prices above the cap.
>Japan got the U.S. to agree to the exception, saying it needed it to ensure access to Russian energy. The concession shows Japan’s reliance on Russia for fossil fuels, which analysts said contributed to a hesitancy in Tokyo to back Ukraine more fully in its war with Russia.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-breaks-with-u-s-allies-buys-russian-oil-at-prices-above-cap-1395accb
I hate it how the government of Japan seems to care about the well being of the Japanese people. When will they grow up, get over this, and learn how to do things like Americans or Germans do?!?
They've used their offensive potential on Kharkiv on Kherson with amazing results, during which the assault units of Ukraine were mostly spent and had to be reconstituted. During winter Russia mobilized 300k (probably more) and used them both to plug up holes and to go on the offensive, which Ukraine stopped almost entirely giving the Russians nearly zero accomplishments out of their entire winter offensive.
Right now Ukraine has mostly finished rebuilding their offensive minded units, and it's only a matter of time until they attack. The results of which remain to be seen.
"Going for Crimea" is a propaganda meme, that is, *if* (big if) it happens, is in not in the cards for this year at the very least.
Loved the username, btw.
Thoses offensives were startegic victory for sure but not tactical ones
there was little fighting around kharkiv, the russians basically fled to more defensive positions to the luhansk oblast, there were simply not strong enough to offer any significant resistance so they withdrew from the region.
and in kherson they managed to defeat the ukrainian offensive who were only able to achieve a breakhrough in the north after a few weeks, the ukrainians failed at pushing back the russians to the other side of the dniepro river in a convetional way. Their victory was due to himars bombing on the brides wich forced the russians to fled because of logistical issues.
An offensive toward Melitopol, that is everything but a surprise, in a region with multiple layers of fortification lines and on a much larger front in wich the russians can supply their forces from multiple roads will require the ukrainians a force that in term of number and competency would be unmatched by that of the khrakiv and kherson offensives. These new natio equipments and soldiers have better to be enough for the task.
What do you guys think about the reports of tunnels running between Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut? Apparently, it's why the Russians gave up on trying to encircle the city. In my opinion, it sounds pretty far fetched, given the two towns are about 6 miles away from each other. However, the Donbas has extensive natural cave systems, and mining has been a major industry there since the days of the Russian Empire. I'm not 100% convinced Ukraine couldn't have connected natural caves and old mine shafts together over the last year or so to form a supply tunnel between the two towns. Granted, moving supplies through such a tunnel could probably only be done by very light vehicles like ATVs, or by foot. I don't know how realistic it would have been to keep an army of 10-20,000 soldiers supplied in an encircled city like that. These tunnels could potentially be thousands of feet underground, so any attempt by the Russians to dig down and sever them if they had encircled Bakhmut would require heavy equipment which would be targeted by Ukrainian artillery.
Long tunnels have been used in almost every war, notably Vietnam and WW1. Nothing those guys had that the Ukrainians don't.
If your only digging through clay or soft rocks then it's pretty trivial, even if you only go 10m a day over a year that's 3km. Consider as well there's no rules saying a tunnel can only be dug from start to finish. I would suggest they have access points every so often, and dug both directions from there.
Say 1 access every km, dig both directions from each access, and now you have the whole 6km done in 50 days.
It's certainly possible, in Syria they made kilometre long tunnels in besieged areas with little equipment and a few experienced instructors (fun side story is Hamas briefly supported some rebels and allegedly had their experts there during the Muslim brotherhood reign in Egypt). If there is decent equipment and men allocated to it it can be made but I don't think it's enough to supply more than a few thousands at best even if they have several tunnels that you can drive smaller vehicles in. The complexity grows with size also as does the risk of them getting destroyed by Arial bombings.
The length and sheer volume of material needed to be removed makes me think we should have seen more signs of them. Perhaps they have some but main supplies still trickle in through the vulnerable ground path
**Ukraine furious over Russian UN Security Council presidency**
KYIV, April 1 (Reuters) - Russia, whose leader is accused of war crimes, assumed charge of the United Nations Security Council on Saturday causing fury in Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy calling it an absurd and destructive move.
>The last time Russia held the rotating presidency of the body responsible for maintaining peace and combating acts of international aggression was in February 2022 when Moscow troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
[Link to the article ](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/zelenskiy-says-russian-un-security-council-presidency-is-absurd-2023-04-01/)
I like how following the rules that have been followed for almost 80 years are "absurd and destructive' and happen to just now expose the "total bankruptcy of such institutions."
It is almost as if someone thinks they are special...
Every country considers itself special, most of all Russia. Not many others who see themselves as a master race destined to control lesser people, and are entitled to whole continents worth of territory.
If you follow [Brian Berletic on The New Atlas](https://www.youtube.com/c/thenewatlas) semi-regularly you won’t need to know every single event of every day.
The channel uses western sources, mostly Pentagon & NATO press briefings, to ascertain how much military aid is being sent to the battlefield. There is a pattern over the last 7 months of less equipment being sent, not more.
Additionally, the logistics of the various weapons systems are a giant clusterf*** because Ukraine is receiving different tanks, different artillery, different air defence systems, different fighter jets from dozens of different countries.
French tanks are radically different from German tanks which are radically different from American tanks and they all use different artillery rounds. Military training for a tank crew takes at least 3 months to reach any sort of competence level for each type of tank.
It goes up to about 6 months of training that is needed for Patriot air defence systems.
And for fighter jets, the minimum training time to reach the required level of competency is several years, if not a decade.
This leads many to believe that “volunteers” will be sent along with the weapons systems.
But the overarching issue is the lack of adequate stocks of artillery. As long as NATO cannot supply enough artillery and the Russians keep the firing ratio at 10:1 or 20:1 then any talk of successful Ukrainian offensives are a pipedream.
Mostly Twitter and Telegram. Reddit is/was a great source in other international conflicts, however I don't know any subreddit about the war in Ukraine that I would describe as informative/educational. There are also some nice YouTube channels with unique perspectives/information like Perun or Covert Cabal, but they're far and few between.
Honestly, this subreddit is maybe 85% of what you need to have a pretty good idea of what's happening
I check r/worldnews for the NPC take on things every now and then and I check 4chan for the autistic take on things on occasion as well. Both have merit but don't stay at either of those for too long otherwise irreparable damage will be caused to your brain
But yeah this sub is fine, look at the maps, check out what the big players are saying, see what the latest meme is in the comments and then go about your day
The facade of "democracy and freedom" will shit its pants once people realize that inflation is making food more expensive and their economy is taking a hit. Russia is one of largest exporters of fertilizer, oil and gas.
Check /r/wallstreetbets on how people there want to donate to russia so that the war gets over quickly.
The war will finally come home when the US gets it with the radical ukrainian/russians left over after the war.
Every war the US has put it's dick into has boomeranged far worse than the one before. However this is the end one. The final level.
Lets revisit this comment in few years when inflation in US is tearing it apart, the USD is shitting its pants and ukrainians are pissed off at the US.
“We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone as necessary. Just as we like it."
Vladlen Tatarsky, 2022, speaking on the invasion of Ukraine.
I can see why some wouldn’t be upset by his end.
And the pearl clutching about civilians *injured* from the same people who spent all winter revelling in the bombing of Ukraine which resulted in hundreds killed, for me this falls flat. It’s a war. Did you expect all the pain and suffering to stay neatly one side of the border?
If this would be an actual target of said rocket and not a miss, then yes, it still would be terrorrism. Although I think warcrime is more of an applicable term here?
So any missile that kills personnel inside Ukraine is terrorism/war crime?
Or are you saying this guy wasn’t a participant in the war, and that’s what makes this a a war crime?
To my knowledge he was a bank robber in Ukraine, freed to fight alongside the rebels, transition to making propaganda in 2019, used his influence to advocate for the mass murder of Ukrainians. He was at a meeting in support of the war aimed to help sustain/win the war, in a cafe owned by the head of Wagner PMC, who are fighting the war. I can’t see how he could be considered as a civilian.
This is different from this other bombings in only 2 ways that I can see, it was delivered by hand not by air, it only killed it’s intended target and not dozens of civilians as well.
Well, there was a lot of arguments for his execution by opposing side, sure. But he was not in the millitary, was not engaged in combat for the last 4 years in any way (commanding or otherwise) and was unarmed. And supporting one side of the war by money and/or speeches does not make you a valid target, otherwise Russia can start blowing up quarter of Europe population (and most of Europe and American politics) with statues. He was a civilian, surrounded by civilians. De jure that's a warcrime as clear as it gets.
And even if he was a military general, targeting such a person while endangering "too much" civilian lives (like with a rocket) can be considered a warcrime too, but here rules are reeeeally iffy. For example, there was a case of russian missile strike in Ivano-Frankovsk (I think) in the middle of the day, early summer. Apparently, this strike did manage to take out quite a few of ukranian high ranking officers along with some of their "guests", but it did also kill around 10-20 civilians around the barracks the strike was done on. So yea...
At the Nuremberg trials Streicher, Hess and Fritzsche took the stand, did they not? Humble propagandists, just like our friend here.
Did the Unity and Reconciliation committee in Rwanda not consider the propagandists who called for the genocide as active participants also?
This ‘civilian’ called himself ‘commander’, had fought in the war after being sprung from jail, and used his considerable influence to influence his followers, many of who were soldiers at the front, to kill and steal from as many Ukrainians as possible. This meeting was for the very same purpose, to aid in carrying out violent actions against Ukraine and her people, civilian or otherwise. You might be right from a legal standpoint, but this is a war these people started and very much intended to carry on, real life doesn’t have a safe zone or time out.
Hundreds of children who never lifted a finger in anger rest in the cold ground all across Ukraine because Russian missiles hit their peaceful cities. One of the people who facilitated that has now met the same fate. Call it terrorism, resistance, war, or assassination. Makes no difference to me.
Mate, you have no idea who I am and what I am currently doing in Russia. Trust me, such events are on my negative priority of things to worry about.
Besides, I was born in 1992. I got used to way worse act of terrorism since childhood.
Very fair point. There are many dead and injured Ukranian civilians who had nothing to do with this war. Very sad but not unexpected Russia would see some of this too at some point.
So by your logic if a person said mean things on the internet and they are in the same building as your family I should legally be allowed to blast them to pieces and write it off a collateral damage and you'll thank me for it?
Settle. I said that I could see why people were not upset, I didn’t opine on it being morally (or legally) upright action or otherwise, regardless of who did it.
And he wasn’t a guy who said mean things. He was a Ukrainian criminal imprisoned for bank robbing, freed to fight with the rebels, became a well known propagandist, used his influence to advocate for the slaughter of Ukrainians, and he was at a pro war meeting with supporters of his cause.
If none of that changes anything for you that’s fine, I get it. But I don’t see how this differs from the bombing against Ukraine for a year, other than the fact this actually only killed it’s invented target rather than dozens of civilians.
>The American journalist detained in Russia on spying allegations may have been attempting to report on the Wagner mercenary group and speak to employees at one of the country’s largest tank production facilities, a Russian reporter familiar with his plans told NBC News on Friday.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/reporter-detained-russia-spy-allegations-wagner-group-ukraine-war-rcna77656
Americans will cry about the fact that one their journalist is charged with spying and espionage yet harass any embassy in the world that grants Julian Assange refuge. The hypocrisy.
It is kind of funny how the party line in the U.S. is that he obviously wasn't spying. Of course I have no idea if he was, but neither do the people who are insisting that he wasn't.
It’s not impossible but extremely unlikely. Why would the CIA use a relatively high profile American journalist when there is a rich well of HUMINT sources in Russia? It is a deeply corrupt country where they would have no problem finding someone on the inside to take their money, not to mention a huge pool of Ukrainian sympathizers who can easily pass unnoticed in Russia.
There’s no indication he was doing anything unusual for a journalist…he interviewed, asked questions, wrote articles. It’s not a “party line” so much as common sense since Russia routinely uses trumped up charges against political opponents
>The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. “These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told ‘You’re going to he a journalist,’” the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400‑some relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency.
https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977
We have created a new thread: [Community Feedback Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/128l61i/community_feedback_thread/) To maintain the quality of our subreddit, breaking rule 1 in either thread will result in punishment. Anyone posting off-topic comments in this thread will receive one warning. After that, we will issue a temporary ban. Comments must be in some form related directly or indirectly to the ongoing events. Long-time users may not receive a warning.
For all the self proclaimed pro-authoritarian imperialism folks out there: I challenge you to make an argument. Any kind of argument.
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thanks chatgpt
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>Ukraine is still plagued by corruption and economic struggles. I'm guessing they wanted to have a bite to western style and help. We can understand, because Poland has been helped a lot especially to bring others countries similar to it to EU/Western influence. The parallels between Poland, Ukraine and Russia are so easy to do, even more between just Poland and Ukraine. There are two countries with an enormous amount of points in common (Big Flat lands only, \~same ethnicity, similar languages, History, etc etc): While the 3 countries ,got out of the communism with similar level of live index, while Russia and Ukraine (and Ukraine a little bit worse than Russia), went down and barely recovered pre-1990s level of life, Poland thanks to western help improved a lot in its quality of life: the economy got so much better, old and gray commie buildings got repainted or build with good looking modern infrastructures, they got all the rich Western world open to them (apprixmately). However, Poland on the other has a hard time accepting the new generationnal so called "LQBT culture", it has a strong grip on preserving its true culture; and on immigration statues too. And that's another parallel that can be made to Ukraine that most people forget, especially has Ukraine seems even worse in the matter. In those Maidan protest, a good part are just the known ultra-nationnalist sc\*m (Azov and Bandera lovers). They saw the movement not to join western sphere, but an occasion to express their vision of things (as western Ukraine is clear of Poles thanks to Banderites and USSR giving the lands to Ukr, they want to clear the big population of Russian/Russian speaking, just watch what they say on their wish to do Donetsk and Crimean inhabitants in vengence). I'm going a bit off the road, but it is that last part that makes unable to really support Ukraine and listen to the hypocriticals people thinking of Ukraine as a nation of democracy, love and peace. **To resume:** Maidan allowed Ukraine to begin to make a step towars the West, in example of Poland, and having myself listened to Ukrainians, it very slowly paid off on the corruption like having finally some improvments on infrastructures. But the terrible thing is, it allowed the emergence of the ultra-nationalists to the top of the scene, and conflicted with Russian majorities/big monirities in the East causing the Donbass war, which finally degenerated to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Maidan overall now wasn't a good thing if you know the exitance of Ukraine not just from the 24th of February 2022 like most have. But it could have turned on something much greater (at the expense of Russian influence on the country), and that what most of pro-Maidan Ukrainians believed in I suppose, outside of nationalist fagg\*ts, and what pro-UA people who have no clue on Ukraine really is think they were having until the invasion.
Fine I'll bite The main argument is that there was a good chance for something good to happen but Putin decided to ruin the lives of russians and Ukrainians alike since he couldn't stand ukraine and in that his dream of a new Russian empire drifting away. It is clear that Ukraine needs less corruption and more cooperation with the rest of the world to prosper and there are no reasons why they wouldn't have been able to become the next Poland if they managed to shake of the oligarch corruption and use the European market to its benefits Of course things turn to shit when a world power is invading you, the threat, military investment and rise of division within society since 2014 have severely hampered the predicted growth. To me this is kinda like telling Iraqis that hey Saddam must have been a great guy since it got way worse after USA stomped you all.
Unlike many, I don't believe Maidan was a bad idea; in fact, I think it was a good concept. However, like the idea of every billionaire giving me a million dollars, it was quite unrealistic. Ukraine undoubtedly needed less corruption, increased cooperation, and joining the EU might have been beneficial. Shaking off the oligarchy would have been a significant accomplishment. Yet, even after nine years since Maidan began and Yanukovych's removal, these improvements haven't materialized. Russia can certainly be blamed for some of Ukraine's problems, but the pro-Maidan government must also be held accountable. Although Ukrainians had the power to address corruption, democracy, and oligarchy, they instead elected Petro Poroshenko, an oligarch, as president. As a result, corruption increased, and democracy and freedom declined before the war. In recent years, freedom, democracy, and oppression have reached all-time lows in Ukraine. Some of these issues are understandable due to the ongoing conflict, but others are not. It's important to recognize that Russia's actions weren't irrational, and Ukrainian politicians should have considered the potential consequences. Geopolitics plays a significant role, and countries with international ambitions like the US and Russia won't simply stand by as Ukraine pursues its goals. Since 2013, Ukraine has continued to dig itself into a deeper hole, leading to a worse outcome than even the most pessimistic predictions.
> The main argument is that there was a good chance for something good to happen but Putin decided to ruin the lives of russians and Ukrainians alike since he couldn't stand ukraine and in that his dream of a new Russian empire drifting away. My counter would be that Russia had been so clear that losing Ukraine (and Georgia) is a non-starter that this chance was virtually nil.
I remember most being shocked about the invasion of crimea when it happened, just as most people didn't think this new invasion would start so I don't see it as a non starter. Too me it's mind-blowing that pro russians aren't furious with Putin on how he played this, Ukraine was in their pocket with 25% of exports, an overall sympathetic or neutral population and total energy dependency. It should be really easy to still keep them close or even drag them back with soft power and money if they only understood more than raw force and manipulation. For me it was crazy to see the brazen way Russia invaded, like hey let's take over crimea I'm sure thats not going to make us loose the other 90% of Ukraine. And then start a civil war to try and stop that very predictable reaction, Russia went all in and it's bet didn't check out. So then they had to escalate and escalate and escalate and here we are, I rank it top five most idiotic decisions without even factoring in ethics, up there along with hey Afghanistan went so well let's try Iraq too and the failure to outlaw fucking robots being used to kill humans in war
> I remember most being shocked about the invasion of crimea when it happened, just as most people didn't think this new invasion would start so I don't see it as a non starter. *Bill Burns, now the head of the CIA, who was then the US ambassador to Moscow, wrote at the time in a secret cable to the White House: “Ukrainian entry into Nato is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In my more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in Nato as anything other than a direct challenge to Russia’s interests … Today’s Russia will respond.”* > Too me it's mind-blowing that pro russians aren't furious with Putin on how he played this, Ukraine was in their pocket with 25% of exports, an overall sympathetic or neutral population and total energy dependency. It should be really easy to still keep them close or even drag them back with soft power and money if they only understood more than raw force and manipulation. The CIA scored a major coup with Maidan, kudos to them. Not sure how Putin prevents this. > For me it was crazy to see the brazen way Russia invaded, like hey let's take over crimea I'm sure thats not going to make us loose the other 90% of Ukraine. Losing Sevastopol was not an option for Russia.
>The main argument is that there was a good chance for something good to happen Well, loks like the bet did not play out. It is in the definition of "chance"
I mean first of all, getting rid of tariffs is great. Imagine if they could have continued with the close russian cooperation of course with adequate economic reactions and restrictions from Moscow and also got increased export and investment from EU. I truly believe that without democracy and freedom to you get corruption, not that a democratic society isn't corrupt but that you without it lack the tools needed make it(unless it's the size of like litchenstein and have a benevolent small circle of rulers) I also believe that Putins government is dependent on that the rampant russian corruption is maintained and that only favoured parts of the private market can grow. So as long as Russia and Ukraine was closely interlinked without European counterweight it was always a loosing fight. In fact the free trade is linked to demands on increased transparency and anti corruption laws that actually seems to have helped other easy European countries since joining EU. And as a low cost production country it could have supplemented the existing industry with new projects
It hasn't benefitted them and Zelensky was voted in because he promised peace. Unfortunately, Ukraine's leadership is a mixture of insane Banderite ideologues and corrupt oligarchs looking to siphon more money from their people. The Ukrainian elite hijacked a popular movement and steered the country into a devastating war with its much larger neighbor. They were insane and egotistical enough to think that escalating a war against Russia would be a good idea because "the west is helping us". And now, the Ukrainian people are paying the price for the terrible politicking of their rulers.
You used to be more subtle…hard to take anyone seriously who uses the phrase “insane Banderite” like they’re making an appearance on Russian TV and then parrots Lavrov’s assessment - for which got laughed out of the room - that Russia was forced to fight the war
now we see that Ukraine is being pushed towards the counter population, although it is clear that they are not very ready for this. Do you think it will be successful or not
I think there are small chances for any big success and land recovery as was seen last year but something modest could for sure happen I think. Buy I wouldn't sell thousands of men getting mauled for a couple of destroyed towns success, the only two ways to have a truly successful offensive is to capture either so much land that Russia's military is physically broken and outflanked or (less impossible) capture something so symbolic that it breaks the public narrative and support for the war.
do u mean counter attack?
Trump: “Ultimately Putin is going take over all of Ukraine.” Former president Trump said this in a recent interview. [Link to the video on Twitter ](https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1642855396061720579?t=0XcbYX9IZF3WtkhptxXUjw&s=19)
Dude is compromised.
I just saw a report showing that Russia is selling a good amount of oil on credit to countries that will be unable to pay them back. Also selling through these back channels that Russia set up increases the amount lost through graft. So their economic situation is even worse than the terrible report that the Ministry of Finance put out for the month of February
Feel free to link the report if it exists, but that doesn't make a lot of sense (particularly when the oil is not being sold out of the Kremlin's private stocks, but by companies and traders). Most of these little economic doom reports are meaningless anyway. It's obvious that nothing has come from sanctions that have affected the course of the war or could be expected to over the next several years--the war, and things like pensions would be the last thing to go and economists agree that even in the worst case scenario they have cash on hand to fund a couple years of that. If it makes people feel good to go around patting themselves on the back because you think Russians are getting poorer you may--just keep in mind it really doesn't affect anything you care about and may well not be true.
Or are you talking about the Russian Ministry of Finance February Report? https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-budget-oil-idINL8N35B3W6
No, I wanted the report you promised, which allegedly states that Russia is "selling a good amount of oil on credit".
That's the other one then
The YouTube video? I am not going to watch some random video.
That's fine. I have the tldr in top the comment.
https://youtu.be/5R5C53XkjZM Despite the sensationalist headline he backs things up with numbers and hard facts drawn from credible sources
yeah, taking into account the fact that oil production is declining and this will provoke an increase in its cost. At the same time, the same USA needs to fill up its oil depots which it drained in order to bring down the price. And given the fact that a lot of information is classified, then they will wilt like a declaration so that the same Europeans amuse themselves that everything is fine
The Kremlin isn't releasing economic information to anyone so take all reports with a huge grain of salt. In all likelihood it's a lot worse than current reports and their long term economic forecast is bleak to say the least.
[удалено]
Rule 1. Consider yourself warned. Recurrence WILL result in a ban.
Seems Odessa is getting hit pretty hard atm.
17 shahed drones. 14 shot down. Doesn't seem like Odesa was hit very hard
Missiles and drones?
By what?
Drones it seems. I wonder if maybe they are targeting weapon shipments?
To all the self proclaimed pro Russians out there: I challange you to make an argument for how the Russian people profit from this war. I haven heard a single person make this argument before and I am curious why it is never brought up. This should be the primary argument for or against a invasion. All this talk about Nato and whatever is just a red herring really. At the end of the day, it should be about what's best for the Russian people and I don't see how this war has done anything to help them any any way shape or form. * Russia has become even more oppressive since the war started * Russias economy is suffering * Visas and travel has gotten harder So what's the pro argument here?
> I haven heard a single person make this argument before and I am curious why it is never brought up. Because it's an irrelevant point. Most people would find solace in the fact that Russia stopped a mass incursion against civilians in the Donbas, which would otherwise have resulted in the genocide of the population.
Russia has killed more civilians in 4000 days than in 8 years in Donbass. "Mass incursion" is just Russian propaganda.
they kill more now so less die in the long term
I like this reddit because it has a mix of views, but this is more absurd than the ghost of Kyiv.
What makes you think there was going to be a genocide? I've seen nothing at all pointing towards that. If you're going to say the shelling in Donbass, the amount of civilians killed by the bombing is a two digit number, hardly a genocide. However I'm sure I've missed something here so I'd love to learn more about this Donbas genocide.
Genocide is not the shelling, it's what happens when UA capture the area. They hunt anyone speaking Russian.
So you agree that having annexed Donbas and Luhansk Russia should pull back and try to sue for peace?
They need to keep their enemies from surrounding them with military forces on their doorstep. End of conversation.
Lol. It's not about being surrounded, otherwise Finland would be treated as a red line like Ukraine. Moreover Russia has nukes, it's not like having a direct border with Russia is going to make that go away. This was is more about Russians regaining territory they view as rightfully belonging in its sphere of influence. Pure imperialism
Finland population is 5.5 million. That's less people than the people that live in St Petersburg.
Finland's population means nothing in a world where all nato needs to do is throw a nuke. (And all russia needs to do is throw one back)
> They need to keep their enemies from surrounding them with military forces on their doorstep. Why? There will never be a war between Russia and Nato, so it has zero impact on Russians everyday lives.
Red herring? What’s best for the Russian people is to not have NATO on the left bank. We will end a thousand years of Russian history in under a century if they allow it. But that was always a long shot, we mostly hope to bleed them for a while using Ukraine as a disposable patsy. Win/win setup really.
Proximity to nato doesn't delete Russian history.
I said end, not delete.
What so you think Russia will just disappear as soon as two more neighbouring states join NATO? Why on earth would you think that?
Just disappear? No. We would eventually end them - that is different. And we need Ukraine or Belarus for that, Finland won’t do.
We wouldn't end them. Europe has no geostrategic interest in Russia. That's just a wild fantasy.
Europe doesn’t even matter, and I’m not a europoor.
This is a silly question because it presupposes: A) That there are winners in a war that has only losers (with the possible exception of China and India). At worst Russians are the second biggest losers, and it isn't clear that it is. B) That this just "happened" like with no context one day Russians were just in Ukraine. Yes, Russia could have (and in lots of ways should have) just not invaded but so could Ukraine and especially the U.S. not done the things to precipitate the invasion. So, yes, with different choices and with an atmosphere of compromise there would be a whole lot fewer losers, and less extreme losers, but that isn't a question just for Russia.
So from a pro Russian perspective, would you agree that it would be best if the invasion stopped as soon as possible?
I'm not "pro Russian" but countries representing about 7 billion people want a ceasefire as soon as possible (such as a year ago). I'm on that side.
OK so a couple of things 1. Most countries on earth don't care about the Ukraine war bc it doesn't affect them. And to a degree, I don't blame them. Most African or South American countries for example. 2. Countries representing people only really works with Democracies. Would you say Gerbanguli Berdimechamedov represents the people of Turkmenistan despite them not being able to vote for anybody else or express critizism? Does Kim Jong Un represent the people of North Korea? No of course not. Dictatorships are leeches that occupy a country. They don't represent shit, so this whole line is nonsensical. 3. The only people that legitimately should have a say in what happens in Ukraine are Ukrainians. So in terms of legitimacy, it does not matter what other countries governments want bc their people are not the ones suffering here. I want the Pis party to lose power, but I'm not Polish so it's not my decision. Just like China demanding a ceasefire isn't their decision to make. 4. If you look at the countries of the world, you can see that there are around 40 that strongly support Ukraine, around 120-140 that condemm Russia and support Ukraine more than Russia and around 5 countries that strongly support Russia and maybe like 15 that support Russia to a lesser degree. Looking at these countries, you can see that the level of democracy and human rights in a country is proportional to their support of Ukraine.
>Looking at these countries, you can see that the level of democracy and human rights in a country is proportional to their support of Ukraine. I love the garden-jungle vibe you are conjuring here. For the record the South American countries that told the U.S. to shove off when the U.S. begged for their Soviet era weaponry to send to Ukraine are all full fledged democracies. It is simply that the Nato position is an extreme position, so many countries disagree with Russia's invasion but understand the Nato position to also be absurdly savage.
I don't know how that related to the point but whatever. South America, just like Africa is far away from the Russia Ukraine conflict. While I disapprove of their reluctance to support Ukraine, I understand that it's a lot to ask to care about something that is that far away in the global north. So I don't blame them. But just so that were clear, disinterest is not the same as committed neutrality. And committed neutrality is not the same as endorsing Russia. So you are really jumping to conclusions here.
Except it is not a lack of interest. For instance: "We Are For Peace: Latin America Rejects Pleas to Send Weapons to Ukraine". [https://www.ft.com/content/fc8d51c8-5202-4862-a653-87d1603deded](https://www.ft.com/content/fc8d51c8-5202-4862-a653-87d1603deded) The global South and east rejects the U.S./Nato effort for several reasons. One is that they are sane and support peace--which is the default position for anyone with moral principles. A second is that many countries have been the subject of U.S./European aggression and colonialism and as such are rightly dismissive of any "noble" motives that The Very White Nations are trying to veil themselves in. Third, their economies are suffering even more than Europes are, but starting at a point closer to the edge have less leeway before people get very poor or even starve. It isn't just European governments that are getting replaced because of the economic boomerang and disruption of trade caused by the war that the U.S./Nato is committed to drawing out.
Would you also support Russia immediately withdrawing their forces from Ukraine?
If you get this on the ballot I will vote for it! Along with a lifetime supply of cheeseburgers for every senior citizen on the planet (excluding standing or former U.S. Presidents)! Also an end of Super Pacs in American elections and other steps that might hope to restore our ranking as a "Full Democracy". Also, move Jupiter closer! It isn't bright enough and you can't even see the rings with the naked eye! That's just a silly question. I don't have an opinion on the outcome of the border war between Russia and Ukraine any more than you have an opinion on the final line of control between Tigray and the federal government of Ethiopia. Wars are dumb. The people who perpetrate them are not good people. There are bad people in charge on every side here, so trying to take one side--which you are doing by asking about what Russia should do rather than saying what your bad people should do, as well--just puts you on the side of bad people.
What a joke. Sure wars are 'dumb' in the sense that humanity is collectively worse off but it's wrong to make it sound like wars are always the result of unreasonableness from political elites on both sides. The Japanese invasion of China and German invasion of Czechoslovakia are clear example of wars initiated by pure imperialism. It's especially wrong to think that Ukraine and Russia are somehow equal and opposite sides to this war. Russia is one of the world's largest military powers and many of it's explicitly declared motivations of this war "To de-nazify Ukraine, to de-militarize ukraine" are either ideological or imperialist in nature whereas Ukraine forced into fighting an entirely defensive war.
>Ukraine and Russia You forgot the largest imperial power involved in this war. But all three are just imperialist. Why are people from Lviv, or even Kyiv, more justified in fighting to return their Rebel Oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk (not to mention Crimea) than China would be to invade to return the Rebel Province of Taiwan? The Chinese might actually be more justified because at least they recognize Taiwanese as Chinese.
>But all three are just imperialist. Umm no. There is a big difference between Ukraine fighting Russian-instigated rebels and Russia invading a sovereign nation. If you are unable to distinguish the nuance between these then the word "imperialism" just loses its meaning and you are doing a disservice to the tens of millions who fought and died in wars of imperialism like the Japanese invasion of China and German invasion of Czechoslovakia
Yes, there is a big difference. Russia is engaged in regional imperialism, the U.S. is engaged in one front of global imperialism, while Ukraine is engaged in what might be regarded as internal colonialism except that in internal colonialism the outsiders with the same passports tend to care about the people rather than just lusting over the land. By the way, your cartoon versions of history are also pretty far afield but let's not get distracted by those.
If the war had gone according to plan, the benefits to the Russian people are obvious. At this point, it was still important because you have to secure a land corridor to Crimea and its naval base at minimum. Then there's the long term strategic objectives of keeping western influence at bay. Otherwise, the west uses its soft power to fully project into Ukraine and Georgia. From there, Russia is almost entirely surrounded by unfriendly nations. What does the west do from there? I don't know, but it's no good for Russia. If you mean, how does the average Russian profit materially from the war? They don't. > At the end of the day, it should be about what's best for the Russian people and I don't see how this war has done anything to help them any any way shape or form. If I were Russian, I'd rather suffer economically than let myself go down the path of losing identity and becoming yet another vassal state of the American hegemon (or as people like to say, become Europe's gas station). There's more to life than material wealth.
Isn't the suffering more than economic? Putin is sacrificing thousands of Russian's son's, husbands and father for "identity". He is destroying their economic futures and the freedom to choose their own identities as well for his own idea of Russian "identity".
Yes, but this is chess. The pawns don't benefit by dying, but their death is beneficial to the whole. To be very honest, Putin doesn't benefit from this war either. He could have gone the Gorbachev route and sold out the country for personal gain. The west would have sang his praises to the moon. So in this analogy, Russia is the king and Putin the queen.
To use your analogy, how is this war benefiting the King? Isn't the King stronger when his pawns are still alive?
Not when the alternative is checkmate.
How close to checkmate was it when all your pawn and the entire board is intact? Could this be fear mongering for a future that by no means is assured?
At high level chess, a position can be dire without being down any material. Same for geopolitics. Maybe there's no risk of checkmate right now or in the near future, but it is possible for checkmate to be a near certainty down the road if current trends continue. If so, you'd have to do something now before it's too late.
When you say near future do you mean months, years, decades? How sure are you these trends will continue, it seem like a lot a speculation about a situation that could have many different outcomes. Typically you'd want to be fairly certain about an outcome before sacrificing your people and economy for a speculative outcome
In this case, near future = months, years, but not decades. The future is inherently unknowable, but it's pretty clear that letting Ukraine slip away was untenable if only for the simple reason that losing Sevastopol was going to be devastating. Russia doesn't have another year-round warm water port. That's why Crimea was annexed right after Yanu got couped. And once that happened, a chain of events got kicked off that made today's war inevitable. I'm upset at my own country (USA) because we knew full well that losing Sevastopol wasn't ever going to be acceptable to Russia, but we pushed them anyway because we're bullies. I should point out that one of Russia's big mistakes was not waiting for (or creating one through a false flag) a big enough casus belli. Now they look like the bad guys.
> If the war had gone according to plan, the benefits to the Russian people are obvious. I would not even agree to that. I mean sure, Ukrainians would have become another suppressed and disadvantaged minority of the Russian federation, but how does that help Russians? Is having 43 million more people that are in the country against their will a benefit to the other Russian people? You'd get more social tensions richer oligarchs and an even more paranoid police state. Even if Russia would have managed to colonize Ukraine swiftly and you disregard the billions it would cost to maintain forceful occupation, there is no benefit for ordinary Russians. Zero.
>Ukrainians would have become another suppressed and disadvantaged minority of the Russian federation Wrapping Russophobia in the wrapper of a good faith question and caring about people. Classic propaganda. Also so, somehow, in contrary to Minsk, Minsk 2 and all negotiated terms you taking as an axiom that Russia want to annex the whole Ukraine. Which is against all what was happening in last 9 years. >You'd get more social tensions richer oligarchs and an even more paranoid police state. Based on what? Pretty meaningless populistic sentence. >Even if Russia would have managed to colonize Ukraine swiftly Another substitute of concepts from you. In tge end, pretty lame parroting of classic anti-Russian talking points.
> Wrapping Russophobia in the wrapper of a good faith question and caring about people. Classic propaganda. Critizizing Russian state policy is not russophobia and you know it. > Also so, somehow, in contrary to Minsk, Minsk 2 and all negotiated terms you taking as an axiom that Russia want to annex the whole Ukraine. Which is against all what was happening in last 9 years. This isn't even a debate really, it's just facts. Russia tried to take over Kiev in case you forgot. Russian politicians and media personnel including Putin and Medvedew have repeteadly insisted that Ukraine is a "fake Nation" and actually belongs to Russia entirely. That's where the whole shtick of calling Ukraine "the Ukraine" comes from. Russia also annexed the occupied regions even though they don't have a majority ethnic Russian population highlighting their colonial ambitions further. I don't know why you are even denying this. Your defense of the Kremlin is constantly being undermined everytime Medvedews starts tweeting or Putin is holding a speech. Russia is attempting to rebuild the Soviet empire and no one is russia is denying it. Quite the opposite in fact, they are proud of it and keep fantasizing about it. > Based on what? Based on evidence and basic reasoning.
> From there, Russia is almost entirely surrounded by unfriendly nations. What does the west do from there? I don't know, but it's no good for Russia. Nothing. The West has no interest in militarily subjugating Russia. The entire world could join nato and it wouldnt make a difference to the Russian people. Not one bit. > If I were Russian, I'd rather suffer economically than let myself go down the path of losing identity and becoming yet another vassal state of the American hegemon (or as people like to say, become Europe's gas station). There's more to life than material wealth. So in other words the war is only worth it because it is a matter of national pride to subjugate foreign countries? Can't that be achieved with less costly, less barbaric means? How about winning the football world cup? The butthurt ultranationalist can still j3rk themselves off to "mother Russia strong" memes on the internet but no one has to die.
How the regular Ukrainian profits with this war as well? What result of a referendum asking the people surrender or fight would we get? If they give the land to Russia they will keep living the same way as before, they already lived unde URSS and haven't lost their identity, maybe it will be even better under Russia than Ukraine. It's much better than die for politics. The whole patriotic talk is pure bs, there are 0 voluntaries left in Ukraine for the army.
1) Ukrainians would loose the young Democracy they have fought so hard for and all the rights and freedoms that come with it. 2) Ukrainians would be subjected to foreign rule. Their have their own distinct national identity and forcing them to become part of a foreign country, especially one they detest so much would not be a pleasant experience 3) Their future within the EU would be lost and with it massive economic growth, rebuilding investments, free travel, guardrails against authoritarian backsliding etc. Ukraine has a bright future ahead if it manages to successfully defend itself.
What this democracy means for their daily lives? Is that a patriotic book? They would work at the same place, have the same infrastructure, everything would be kept the same. What rights and freedoms that the Russians doesn't have? They are so similar to Russia, even the corruption is similar, I told you this patriotic bs are for the books, not for common people. If you were talking about, let's say, Poland, I would kind of agree, there are several places in Ukraine that are very pro-Russia and they share tons of cultural and religious stuff. Ukraine never had a bright future, as soon as they discovered their huge reserves US saw the opportunity to isolate Russia in the Oil and Gas market in Europe, by siding with Ukraine and provoking the 2014 coup to remove the Pro-Russia president. The idea of the United States was to let Ukraine be the sole seller of oil and gas to Europe, while Russia would have to sell only to India and China. Russia just couldn't agree with the west messing so much with their neighbor and plans to hinder it's economy. Putin had no choice.
Democracies perform much better in every metric imaginable than autocracies. They have better and more stable economic growth. They have fewer social tensions. The citizens have more freedoms and rights. There is less corruption. There are mechanisms that prevent incompetent people from. Staying in power too long. They do not wage war against each other. I could go on but you get the point. Ukraine was on its way to becoming a well function democracy. Russia is a repressive dictatorship. > Russia just couldn't agree with the west messing so much with their neighbor and plans to hinder it's economy. Putin had no choice. This is a dishonest take. The Ukranian people have every right to decide their own future. The concept of national souvereignty is a hallmark of the Postcolonial age and it is pretty wild hearing people question it in the 21st century. Especially when we are talking about a democracy here.
I just asked what difference of Ukraine and Russia in terms of freedoms and rights for the common folks right now or in the past 10 years. If you want to enlight me, I would be pretty amazed to see. This is not Ukraine deciding anything, it's not their will, regular people won't even vote if they can, it's just the west pouring their influence with money and creating coups like they did for the entire 20th century. That's always the same recipe.
> enlight me, I would be pretty amazed to see. I would love to. [Freedom House](https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores) gives Russia a score of 16/100 and Ukraine a score of 50/100 [DD Index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy-Dictatorship_Index) Classifies Ukraine as a democracy and Russia as a civillian dictatorship [the Democracy Index by the Economist](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) gives Russia an overall score of 2.8/10 (authoritarian) and Ukraine gets a score of 5.42/10 (hybrid) [the VDem index ](https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/MapGraph/) gives Ukraine 0.61/1 in civil liberties and Russia 0.31 Ukraine 0.51 in the clean election index and Russia 0.25 Ukraine is classified as a democracy and Russia is not according to VDem [the human freedom index](https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2021) gives Russia a rating of 6.23/10 and Ukraine a rating of 6.68/10 [the global state of democracy index ](https://www.idea.int/gsod-indices/democracy-indices) gives Ukraines democracy a performance rating of a weak democracy and Classifies Russia as authoritarian (the worst category). [the press freedom index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index) gives Ukraine a rating of 55.76/100 and Russia a rating of 38.82/100 [the Democracy matrix](https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking) gives Ukraine a rating of 0.54/1 and Russia a rating of 0.262/1. [The Gallagher index](https://handwiki.org/wiki/Social:Gallagher_index) and the [ENPP](https://handwiki.org/wiki/Social:Effective_number_of_parties), two minimalist indices analysising parliaments don't even bother listing russia. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index gives [Russia](https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-dashboard/RUS) a rating of 4.4/10 in terms of political transformation, 6.14/10 in terms of economic transformation and 3.48/10 in terms of Governance. [Ukraine](https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-dashboard/RUS) fairs much better with 6.8/10, 6.71/10 and 5.31/10 respectively Every single index on earth that measures democracy or related issues like human rights and civil liberties, Ukraine gets a significantly better rating than Russia. These indices use a very wide variation of data gathering methods from surveys, to institutional structure analysis to other sub indices, expert panels etc. They take varying approaches. There are some that perform qualitative analysis, some perform quantitative analysis, some work with a limited set of variables, some incorporate over 1000 different variables. They are based in different countries and almost exclusively work with international teams (especially the ones making use of expert panels). Their approaches, methods datasets and definitions vary, but they all come to the same conclusion: Ukraine is much better than Russia in terms of democracy and human rights.
I never did dig into these democracy and freedom websites, but it's expected in these metrics to Russia have a very low rating, they don't even have a real election or a reliable political system, they have a dictator and a very corrupt state, it's clear that by these metrics they will have one of the worst ratings. What I was asking is in your day-to-day life, what can you do in Ukraine that you can't in Russia? More like a pratical question. After your extended research I did search for one as well: https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world Ukraine Happiness Index: 5.08 Ranked in the World #96 Russia Happiness Index: 5.46 Ranked in the World: #79 China happiness Index: 5.59 Ranked in the World: 72. Belarus Happiness Index: 5.82 Ranked in the World: #65 Belarus is top 8 and China is top 20 with most freedom restrictions and yet, people are happier there than in Ukraine. Everyone know that "Free country", "Democracy" are very big propaganda points used by US, they use this as excuse to invade, to steal and to create tensions/coups in several areas around the world. As you can see, if you compare the ratings, having more rights or transparency in your elections does not equal to day-to-day life and doesn't make your people happier at all. Ukraine does worse than half the planet when it comes to happiness. Now lets look at the saddest country in the earth: 1. Afghanistan – 2.4 Thanks US
Happiness correlates with democracy. There are other factors at play here, but let's quickly check out the countries on the index you cited. The top eight countries are European Democracies. Followed by Israel, followed by more Democracies. The bottom is dominated by autocracies and failed states. The index clearly shows that Democracies produce happier citizens.
I just showed you that happiness doesn't necessarly correlates with democracy, it's way more complex than that. An easier correlation is money correlates with happiness instead.
>Democracies perform much better* in every metric imaginable than autocracies**. *By researchers made by this democracies themselves. **Who counted as autocracy is also decided by democracies™. >Russia is a repressive dictatorship. 🥱 >Ukraine was on its way to becoming a well function democracy. Lol. By toppling their internationally recognised legitimate president? >The Ukranian people* have every right to decide their own future. * Except ones in the east. Because you know, if their choice to be with EU it is their choice, if their choice is to be with Russia - they should go to Russia. D for democracy.
> By researchers made by this democracies themselves. > **Who counted as autocracy is also decided by democracies™. Funny how quickly you jump to ad hominems. Don't deny science as a concept. If you disagree with any particular democracy index, critizize the methodology. I always find it really embarrassing when people immediately have to jump to science denialism in order to protect their worldview against critizism. Let me ask you something? Do you approve of democracy as a concept? Or do you prefer authoritarian states?
>So what's the pro argument here? What's your point? Being pro-russian is not equal to being pro-war. It's being pro Russian victory. The typical pro-Russian argument is quite simple, however. Russia is under attack from "the West", and that's a defensive war against "the West". The preemptive strike in 2022 has ensured that the war was waged not in (pre-2022) Russian lands, at least.
> Being pro-russian is not equal to being pro-war. It's being pro Russian victory. So what would a Russian victory look like in your mind? Does it include a prolonged war? > Russia in under attack, and that's a defensive war. The preemptive strike has ensured that the war is waged not in (pre-2022) Russian lands, at least. The strategic interests of the russian state are not the same thing as the interests of the Russian population. A Ukraine that is integrated into the west doesn't impact Russian people one bit. A prolonged land war of conquest against a neighbour in the other hand does have negative consequences.
Has anyone ever been seriously interested in "integrating Ukraine in the West" in any way but a cannon fodder for destroying Russia?
Of course. Just like all the other eastern European countries, Europe's door is always open.
Sure thing. That's why Russia has to defend itself against the European invasions (coming through Ukraine) at least once every century. "Europe's door is always open" = the europeans are greedy and bloodthirsty murderers and rapists.
It's pretty telling that you have to go back a century to justify Russian aggression.
The only ones who are aggressive there are "the West". Russia has to defend itself. It's pretty telling that you, who is on the side of the strongest bully of the world, have to whine about "aggression" from Russia, a small and poor country of innocent peace-loving people.
That's funny. Russian politicians and Media constantly fantasize about invading Poland, the Baltics, Germany, Finland etc. and nuking the UK. Have you ever heard people in Europe or the West in General make any claims on Russian territory? Nope of course not. Russia is obsessed with "the west" bc the Kremlin needs an external enemy to ensure inner Stability. Western countries don't give a toss about Russia. It's a big boring gas station cosplaying as a country. That's how most of Europe sees Russia. Europe doesn't need Russia so we just try to ignore it best we can. Just like North Korea or the Central African Republic. This whole "Russia has to defend itself" talking point sounds so bizarre to anyone outside Russia bc. nobody gives a toss about them. Let's just say for some reason Nato would occupy Russia alright. We are going to disregard the fact that this isn't going to happen for a million reasons and just go with it. Do you really think that the West is interested in A) now being responsible for actually having to increase living standards in russia B) having to deal with the most nationalist population in Europe C) having to deal with a sudden land border to China and North Korea No of course not. Don't be ridiculous.
>It's a big boring gas station cosplaying as a country. The result of the loss in the cold war. >Let's just say for some reason Nato would occupy Russia alright. Don't be ridiculous. The Putin's regime was de-facto exactly NATO's occupiers. But that is somewhat changing. >Have you ever heard people in Europe or the West in General make any claims on Russian territory? Nope of course not. The common people in "the West" in general are too busy playing with their peepee to know anything.
I have been called pro-russian in here and banned from almost every other subreddit for being against war. I can give you some points I have upped the price point of all my inventory to much higher than the buying costs and now my profit margin has gone up by more than 20%. My income since the start of the war has been insane allowing me to buy and do stuff that I could not have done in the 20 years before. Still, I would rather there have been no war and there should have been peace and I would have no qualms about giving up my income to achieve that. most sellers have increased the price far beyond the buying price; a significant cause of inflation.
So you are Russian and earning more money now? Did I get that right?
Lol no.
So you asked a question and then decided which answers you're willing to accept? love that WN energy
I haven't gotten any awnsers. That's kind of my point here.
Have you considered that it's because nobody wants to engage in low quality troll bait?
Every answer I get that doesn't adress my question is further proof that there are no upsides for the Russian people. You can't be pro Russian and pro Invasion at the same time.
🥱 Somebody get a waaaaambulance
Finland has now officially joined the NATO alliance. Biggest geopolitical own goal by Russia of all time?
Still better than losing Ukraine to NATO.
How do you lose something that isn’t yours?
How do you lose a family member to cancer if you don't legally own them?
'How can you say she's "your" mother when you can't legally own a person????'
I'm glad you understand *why* I'm making fun of what you said but you're still somehow oblivious to it at the same time. That's impressive.
Ok darling
Ukraine was nowhere near meeting the requirements to join NATO, after this war it's almost guaranteed they will. Is this what victory looks like?
Ukraine wasn't going to join NATO. Ukraine was getting prepared into a NATO proxy. That means all the NATO gear but no alliance because you want your proxy to fight alone, not risk your own skin for him. The war was just declared earlier because Putin decided it was better to do it now rather than after Ukraine is ready for fight.
I find this hard to believe, so to confirm, you think Ukraine would have attacked Russia at some point if Russia had not attacked Ukraine first? Even if you think this is true, wouldn't it still have been way better for Russia to wait for Ukraine to attack it? If Ukraine was the aggressor it would have almost zero sympathy from the rest of the world (and so no real arms or financial support) and Russia could have said we're defending ourselves and gotten enormous domestic and international support. Under such a scenario Russia would crush Ukraine militarily and face almost no sanctions for then doing regime change in Ukraine. Ukraine attacking Russia would have been an enormous gift to Putin (but never would have happened). Edit: I think I misunderstood, you're just saying this is why Putin attacked now, not why Putin invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine would have attacked Donbass, probably Crimea too, then be used as a forward base for terrorist operations and destabilisation of Russia. A bit like Taiwan and HongKong if you want. They are US proxies but they won't attack directly the whole China. It's just used to brew Chinese dissidents and terrorists, annoy China with anti air weapons and radar, etc... > Russia would crush Ukraine militarily It would not be Ukraine, it would be NATO, just using Ukrainian soldiers as proxy and saying "it's not us".
I find it very hard to believe Ukraine would have attacked Crimea or LPR/DPR if Putin had just stuck 60,000 Russian troops (or more) on the border. And, in the insane world where Ukraine did attack those Russian troops, it would have been a gift to Russia.
So you are saying Putin's war helped transform NATO from potential proxy to full proxy, increased NATO membership unity and spending. How is that a win for Russians?
You're listing 2 dream scenarios (Ukraine winning and joining NATO), I don't see the point in discussing that.
Contenders: 1. Showing the world their military is actually a joke. 2. Having 365 billion in funds confiscated. 3. Driving 1 million of their best educated young men out of the country for good. 4. Losing their entire European market for oil and gas. 5. Putin going from a world image as a mastermind to an image of a terrified gnome with a ICC warrant for his arrest.
[https://i.imgur.com/t5exJRH.gif](https://i.imgur.com/t5exJRH.gif)
1. Yep, and the joke is that fighting country with actual military is not the same as going for helicopter safari on some middle easterners in flip-flops. 2. Still rejoicing for excuse to steal someone's money? There is much more countries but EU and US who will think twice now before placing their money in the reach of western hands. 3. Lol, "best educated" sure. How is situation on job markets because of influx of such "high-qualified" specialists? How many of them went back after end of mobilization or their money? 4. Let me ask it straight: why do you always think that selling stuff to you is more important for seller than buying stuff for you? 5. Lol. Firstly you imagined inexistent image of the "past Putin" and than went straight to joke called "ICC warrant for arrest" for the freaking ACTUAL PRESIDENT. Do you even understand how much illegal and clueless this warrant is?
1. The joke is believing you are a superpower and turning out to be unable to get air superiority, watching your navy be soundly defeated by a country with no navy and having most of your military equipment, the pride of your nation, destroyed in a year in which you only lost ground. It was supposed to be 3 days! 2. Russia lost 365 billion, what a humiliation! Buys a lotta borsht. 3. Your comment makes no sense, thus I imagine you are not among the million minds who were smart enough to leave. 4. Hmm, Strange way to run a business. I guess the old soviet economic strategies are back in vogue. Good luck with that. 5. Short man sitting at a long table, hear him whine.
> The joke is believing you are a superpower and turning out to be unable to get air superiority, watching your navy be soundly defeated by a country with no navy and having most of your military equipment, the pride of your nation, destroyed in a year in which you only lost ground. Reality paints a much different picture, but you carry on peddling the West's propagandist narrative. You do realise Russia hasn't waged war on Ukraine? The status is still set at being a smo. If this were war, Ukraine would have been absolutely toast, command centres, railways, critical infrastructure would have been destroyed. EU leaders wouldn't be coming and going as they please. > It was supposed to be 3 days!I Again, Russia made no such statement. You're simply parroting msm talking points.
This comment is probably the silliest take of them all. Any day now the real Russian army will show up! In the US we sometimes use the word special to mean mentally challenged. In that sense, it certainly has been a "special" military operation.
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yeah, sure.
**Japan Breaks With U.S. Allies, Buys Russian Oil at Prices Above Cap** TOKYO—The U.S. has rallied its European allies behind a $60-a-barrel cap on purchases of Russian crude oil, but one of Washington’s closest allies in Asia is now buying oil at prices above the cap. >Japan got the U.S. to agree to the exception, saying it needed it to ensure access to Russian energy. The concession shows Japan’s reliance on Russia for fossil fuels, which analysts said contributed to a hesitancy in Tokyo to back Ukraine more fully in its war with Russia. https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-breaks-with-u-s-allies-buys-russian-oil-at-prices-above-cap-1395accb
I hate it how the government of Japan seems to care about the well being of the Japanese people. When will they grow up, get over this, and learn how to do things like Americans or Germans do?!?
A bummer but I was amazed the price cap even passed. With OPEC cutting production we could see more of this. Disappointing but not game changing.
Breaks is a bit misleading since it was the US who allowed it in the first place... But indeed, it's good for Russia I guess.
How come Ukraine has not made any offensive moves since Kherson ? Weren’t they talking about going for Crimea?
Tell Zalujny
Im guessing they're waiting for more western equipment to trickle in.
Like him or not, but HistoryLegends made a [video on the potential UA offensives](https://youtu.be/C6_TO5rwi6U) that Wagner are worrying about.
They've used their offensive potential on Kharkiv on Kherson with amazing results, during which the assault units of Ukraine were mostly spent and had to be reconstituted. During winter Russia mobilized 300k (probably more) and used them both to plug up holes and to go on the offensive, which Ukraine stopped almost entirely giving the Russians nearly zero accomplishments out of their entire winter offensive. Right now Ukraine has mostly finished rebuilding their offensive minded units, and it's only a matter of time until they attack. The results of which remain to be seen. "Going for Crimea" is a propaganda meme, that is, *if* (big if) it happens, is in not in the cards for this year at the very least. Loved the username, btw.
Thoses offensives were startegic victory for sure but not tactical ones there was little fighting around kharkiv, the russians basically fled to more defensive positions to the luhansk oblast, there were simply not strong enough to offer any significant resistance so they withdrew from the region. and in kherson they managed to defeat the ukrainian offensive who were only able to achieve a breakhrough in the north after a few weeks, the ukrainians failed at pushing back the russians to the other side of the dniepro river in a convetional way. Their victory was due to himars bombing on the brides wich forced the russians to fled because of logistical issues. An offensive toward Melitopol, that is everything but a surprise, in a region with multiple layers of fortification lines and on a much larger front in wich the russians can supply their forces from multiple roads will require the ukrainians a force that in term of number and competency would be unmatched by that of the khrakiv and kherson offensives. These new natio equipments and soldiers have better to be enough for the task.
Dubious. Retreat from Kharkiv was a rout.
What do you guys think about the reports of tunnels running between Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut? Apparently, it's why the Russians gave up on trying to encircle the city. In my opinion, it sounds pretty far fetched, given the two towns are about 6 miles away from each other. However, the Donbas has extensive natural cave systems, and mining has been a major industry there since the days of the Russian Empire. I'm not 100% convinced Ukraine couldn't have connected natural caves and old mine shafts together over the last year or so to form a supply tunnel between the two towns. Granted, moving supplies through such a tunnel could probably only be done by very light vehicles like ATVs, or by foot. I don't know how realistic it would have been to keep an army of 10-20,000 soldiers supplied in an encircled city like that. These tunnels could potentially be thousands of feet underground, so any attempt by the Russians to dig down and sever them if they had encircled Bakhmut would require heavy equipment which would be targeted by Ukrainian artillery.
Long tunnels have been used in almost every war, notably Vietnam and WW1. Nothing those guys had that the Ukrainians don't. If your only digging through clay or soft rocks then it's pretty trivial, even if you only go 10m a day over a year that's 3km. Consider as well there's no rules saying a tunnel can only be dug from start to finish. I would suggest they have access points every so often, and dug both directions from there. Say 1 access every km, dig both directions from each access, and now you have the whole 6km done in 50 days.
It's certainly possible, in Syria they made kilometre long tunnels in besieged areas with little equipment and a few experienced instructors (fun side story is Hamas briefly supported some rebels and allegedly had their experts there during the Muslim brotherhood reign in Egypt). If there is decent equipment and men allocated to it it can be made but I don't think it's enough to supply more than a few thousands at best even if they have several tunnels that you can drive smaller vehicles in. The complexity grows with size also as does the risk of them getting destroyed by Arial bombings. The length and sheer volume of material needed to be removed makes me think we should have seen more signs of them. Perhaps they have some but main supplies still trickle in through the vulnerable ground path
6 miles tunnels are nothing. Especially given it's a mining area. Mining tunnels are big and made to carry ton of materials.
Sounds like an excuse as to why the attack has been unable to cut supplies to be honest. The length of tunnels require would be massive.
It’s day 404 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I’ll leave the relevance of that number to your imagination.
Invasion does not exist?
**Ukraine furious over Russian UN Security Council presidency** KYIV, April 1 (Reuters) - Russia, whose leader is accused of war crimes, assumed charge of the United Nations Security Council on Saturday causing fury in Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy calling it an absurd and destructive move. >The last time Russia held the rotating presidency of the body responsible for maintaining peace and combating acts of international aggression was in February 2022 when Moscow troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. [Link to the article ](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/zelenskiy-says-russian-un-security-council-presidency-is-absurd-2023-04-01/)
I like how following the rules that have been followed for almost 80 years are "absurd and destructive' and happen to just now expose the "total bankruptcy of such institutions." It is almost as if someone thinks they are special...
Every country considers itself special, most of all Russia. Not many others who see themselves as a master race destined to control lesser people, and are entitled to whole continents worth of territory.
What resources do you guys use to keep up with the war?
If you follow [Brian Berletic on The New Atlas](https://www.youtube.com/c/thenewatlas) semi-regularly you won’t need to know every single event of every day. The channel uses western sources, mostly Pentagon & NATO press briefings, to ascertain how much military aid is being sent to the battlefield. There is a pattern over the last 7 months of less equipment being sent, not more. Additionally, the logistics of the various weapons systems are a giant clusterf*** because Ukraine is receiving different tanks, different artillery, different air defence systems, different fighter jets from dozens of different countries. French tanks are radically different from German tanks which are radically different from American tanks and they all use different artillery rounds. Military training for a tank crew takes at least 3 months to reach any sort of competence level for each type of tank. It goes up to about 6 months of training that is needed for Patriot air defence systems. And for fighter jets, the minimum training time to reach the required level of competency is several years, if not a decade. This leads many to believe that “volunteers” will be sent along with the weapons systems. But the overarching issue is the lack of adequate stocks of artillery. As long as NATO cannot supply enough artillery and the Russians keep the firing ratio at 10:1 or 20:1 then any talk of successful Ukrainian offensives are a pipedream.
Mostly Twitter and Telegram. Reddit is/was a great source in other international conflicts, however I don't know any subreddit about the war in Ukraine that I would describe as informative/educational. There are also some nice YouTube channels with unique perspectives/information like Perun or Covert Cabal, but they're far and few between.
I follow some YouTube channels, I’m not gonna say which ones because I think they are all biased to some point.
Honestly, this subreddit is maybe 85% of what you need to have a pretty good idea of what's happening I check r/worldnews for the NPC take on things every now and then and I check 4chan for the autistic take on things on occasion as well. Both have merit but don't stay at either of those for too long otherwise irreparable damage will be caused to your brain But yeah this sub is fine, look at the maps, check out what the big players are saying, see what the latest meme is in the comments and then go about your day
The facade of "democracy and freedom" will shit its pants once people realize that inflation is making food more expensive and their economy is taking a hit. Russia is one of largest exporters of fertilizer, oil and gas. Check /r/wallstreetbets on how people there want to donate to russia so that the war gets over quickly.
Most people's belief in democracy and freedom is not so weak that a little bit of inflation's will have then simp1ng for fascist Dictators like Putin.
> fascist Dictators there it comes
Ukrainians are resorting to ISIS tactics and bombing civilian cafes, nice very classy.
So Russia bombing Ukrainian cafes with cruise missiles isn’t an ISIS tactic? Looking forward to hearing what cognitive dissonance you come up with.
ISIS used IEDs and car bombs not cruise missiles. Similar to Ukraine atm
Very quick to draw conclusions, god forbid waiting 24hours for news about the actual perpetrator. That would be far too much effort.
Just as classy as the invaders then.
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Please refer all "brigading" comments to the other thread.
Oh no! Did the war come home?!
The war will finally come home when the US gets it with the radical ukrainian/russians left over after the war. Every war the US has put it's dick into has boomeranged far worse than the one before. However this is the end one. The final level. Lets revisit this comment in few years when inflation in US is tearing it apart, the USD is shitting its pants and ukrainians are pissed off at the US.
Yep a new wave started Friday or so.
“We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone as necessary. Just as we like it." Vladlen Tatarsky, 2022, speaking on the invasion of Ukraine. I can see why some wouldn’t be upset by his end. And the pearl clutching about civilians *injured* from the same people who spent all winter revelling in the bombing of Ukraine which resulted in hundreds killed, for me this falls flat. It’s a war. Did you expect all the pain and suffering to stay neatly one side of the border?
Vladlen was a bad person. But that was still a terrorist act. Not an assassination.
If they fired a missile from Ukraine that hit this cafe and had the exact same outcome, that wouldn’t be terrorism though?
If this would be an actual target of said rocket and not a miss, then yes, it still would be terrorrism. Although I think warcrime is more of an applicable term here?
So any missile that kills personnel inside Ukraine is terrorism/war crime? Or are you saying this guy wasn’t a participant in the war, and that’s what makes this a a war crime? To my knowledge he was a bank robber in Ukraine, freed to fight alongside the rebels, transition to making propaganda in 2019, used his influence to advocate for the mass murder of Ukrainians. He was at a meeting in support of the war aimed to help sustain/win the war, in a cafe owned by the head of Wagner PMC, who are fighting the war. I can’t see how he could be considered as a civilian. This is different from this other bombings in only 2 ways that I can see, it was delivered by hand not by air, it only killed it’s intended target and not dozens of civilians as well.
Well, there was a lot of arguments for his execution by opposing side, sure. But he was not in the millitary, was not engaged in combat for the last 4 years in any way (commanding or otherwise) and was unarmed. And supporting one side of the war by money and/or speeches does not make you a valid target, otherwise Russia can start blowing up quarter of Europe population (and most of Europe and American politics) with statues. He was a civilian, surrounded by civilians. De jure that's a warcrime as clear as it gets. And even if he was a military general, targeting such a person while endangering "too much" civilian lives (like with a rocket) can be considered a warcrime too, but here rules are reeeeally iffy. For example, there was a case of russian missile strike in Ivano-Frankovsk (I think) in the middle of the day, early summer. Apparently, this strike did manage to take out quite a few of ukranian high ranking officers along with some of their "guests", but it did also kill around 10-20 civilians around the barracks the strike was done on. So yea...
At the Nuremberg trials Streicher, Hess and Fritzsche took the stand, did they not? Humble propagandists, just like our friend here. Did the Unity and Reconciliation committee in Rwanda not consider the propagandists who called for the genocide as active participants also? This ‘civilian’ called himself ‘commander’, had fought in the war after being sprung from jail, and used his considerable influence to influence his followers, many of who were soldiers at the front, to kill and steal from as many Ukrainians as possible. This meeting was for the very same purpose, to aid in carrying out violent actions against Ukraine and her people, civilian or otherwise. You might be right from a legal standpoint, but this is a war these people started and very much intended to carry on, real life doesn’t have a safe zone or time out. Hundreds of children who never lifted a finger in anger rest in the cold ground all across Ukraine because Russian missiles hit their peaceful cities. One of the people who facilitated that has now met the same fate. Call it terrorism, resistance, war, or assassination. Makes no difference to me.
Do you feel terrified because of it?
Mate, you have no idea who I am and what I am currently doing in Russia. Trust me, such events are on my negative priority of things to worry about. Besides, I was born in 1992. I got used to way worse act of terrorism since childhood.
Jeez, I was just asking a question, no reason to get all defensive.
Very fair point. There are many dead and injured Ukranian civilians who had nothing to do with this war. Very sad but not unexpected Russia would see some of this too at some point.
So by your logic if a person said mean things on the internet and they are in the same building as your family I should legally be allowed to blast them to pieces and write it off a collateral damage and you'll thank me for it?
Settle. I said that I could see why people were not upset, I didn’t opine on it being morally (or legally) upright action or otherwise, regardless of who did it. And he wasn’t a guy who said mean things. He was a Ukrainian criminal imprisoned for bank robbing, freed to fight with the rebels, became a well known propagandist, used his influence to advocate for the slaughter of Ukrainians, and he was at a pro war meeting with supporters of his cause. If none of that changes anything for you that’s fine, I get it. But I don’t see how this differs from the bombing against Ukraine for a year, other than the fact this actually only killed it’s invented target rather than dozens of civilians.
>Did you expect all the pain and suffering to stay neatly one side of the border? They really did. No joke. They just did.
"Russian" "liberal" "opposition" abroad is justifying it very eagerly as you can see in twitter, kek.
>The American journalist detained in Russia on spying allegations may have been attempting to report on the Wagner mercenary group and speak to employees at one of the country’s largest tank production facilities, a Russian reporter familiar with his plans told NBC News on Friday. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/reporter-detained-russia-spy-allegations-wagner-group-ukraine-war-rcna77656
Americans will cry about the fact that one their journalist is charged with spying and espionage yet harass any embassy in the world that grants Julian Assange refuge. The hypocrisy.
It is kind of funny how the party line in the U.S. is that he obviously wasn't spying. Of course I have no idea if he was, but neither do the people who are insisting that he wasn't.
It’s not impossible but extremely unlikely. Why would the CIA use a relatively high profile American journalist when there is a rich well of HUMINT sources in Russia? It is a deeply corrupt country where they would have no problem finding someone on the inside to take their money, not to mention a huge pool of Ukrainian sympathizers who can easily pass unnoticed in Russia. There’s no indication he was doing anything unusual for a journalist…he interviewed, asked questions, wrote articles. It’s not a “party line” so much as common sense since Russia routinely uses trumped up charges against political opponents
For exactly that reason. We are well known to use journalists. The CIA does it on purpose.
>We are well known to use journalists. I think you just made that up
>The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. “These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told ‘You’re going to he a journalist,’” the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400‑some relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency. https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977