Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

(...)

So more tinfoil bullshit from Bel mixed with false comparisons to  Afghanistan and Iraq and confusing "different news" with Anti Western Pro Russian Propaganda.

No propaganda has the power to change what is truly happening. Here is a report on intercepted phone calls of Russian soldiers:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/never-saw-hel...10024.html
 
- This is what’s happening right now as we are talking and this is simply terrible. You know I live in a place of the word where there is still compulsory military service for all men. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never been to war or in a war-like situation. And I was not in especially difficult locations either. But being in the military is tough. It causes a lot of stress. So here many people have some anger issues after their military service. Because the process itself is difficult.
 
   Here they are talking about looting, killing civilians, getting drunk in order to more easily kill “Nazis”. So my first question is: What will all these people do to you when they will discover they have been lied to all the time? And 2: These are 18 / 20 year olds. How does one kill when he is 18 year old and then have a normal life? + Russians and Ukrainians are nations with close ties to one another. So it’s like Americans Killing Canadians or me killing (for instance) Azerbaijanis. So this will mean thousands of psychopaths walking in Russian streets probably until the last two decades of this century.
 
So Populism is a hand grenade. That’s what it is

[Leonardo17]

- This is just a show of force. Their land army is gone. So they are hoping for a new offensive based on air superiority. But with all the air defenses that were supplied to Ukraine, I don’t think this is going to work either. So what a mess, what a mess.

I'm sure they appreciate the air defense we supplied - but, here, their own stuff is superior.  Ukraine uses the same aa missiles that russia, in desperation, has been refitting for ground targets.

- I don’t know a lot about the soviet era S-300. They are said to be good. But Nasam’s are better. And France + Germany has supplied some advanced systems that is allowing them to use these systems with more precision. + The UK Supplied Javelin’s are very good for land + air targets and are also very simple to use. But you have to send these + more so that Russians become unable to strike Civilian infrastructure as they did until January.

[Leonardo17]

Canada, the US, most of Western Europe, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia are under the sway of the corporate, pro-war media. When someone says "the world condemns Russia," these countries are what they mean by "the world." 

I live in Europe

Please tell me what news media i am consuming............right, you dont know. But what you know is that i am wrong because i dont agree with you, right?  Of course this is irrational (or even deliberately dishonest) from your side, and you know it, thats why you wrap this up in a nice "poisoning the well" fallacy: I am wrong, because i listen to the wrong media, yet you dont even know what i am consuming.

P.S.: You forgot to mention most of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and the Baltic, since they dont agree with you as well. They are under propaganda too, because.......right?

I think that this attitude is also slowly changing. I see there is a change of discourse on the part of the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In their 12 Point peace plan even they are slowly acknowledging Ukraine’s rights of sovereignty. As President Joe Biden dais in Warsaw 2-3 days ago, Democracies stood united with Ukraine. And the vote in the UN shows that no one is backing Russia’s military campaign right now.
 
A Historical parallel to this is perhaps Hannibal’s campaign against Romans in the 2nd century BC. Hannibal was hoping that when he would make it to the gates of Rome everyone would turn against Rome and he would be victorious. The effect of his invasion was the opposite. The citizens of Rome organized themselves and rebuilt their armies while most of the cities around Rome decided to remain loyal to Rome rather than Surrender to the Carthaginians + The Carthaginians themselves betrayed Hannibal who ended up being assassinated a few years later in a place in Asia Minor. (Or that’s how I see it).

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/wreck...14030.html

[Leonardo17]

If you listen to the interview, he says that he published the book in Japan because the mainstream media in France is all in for war. As in the US, anti-war voices are sidelined. It was that way before Afghanistan and before Iraq. 

Just to chime in on the "pro-war" detail.

I belive we are most of us anti-war.
The trouble is that a particular country decided to attack another country.

The Western world, led by the US, is trying to stop the war by returning to the previous status quo, where Ukraine retains its pre-war borders.... ideally including Crimea. I belive Ukraine wants that too.

I've heard quite a few voices claiming to be anti-war, but that just means that they want Ukraine to roll over and let Russia implement their puppet government (similar to Belarus) and let everyone carry on with their lives. Do the Ukrainians want to be ruled by a Russian puppet government? I'd say that the 2014 revolution and subsequent elections suggest otherwise.

At the heart of the matter, I think, we have who is responsible for this conflict.
Since the Russians are the ones who placed troops in another country, we say they are responsible.
The Russians claim that they were forced to do this by "The West", by NATO expansion, and so the US becomes responsible... and thus we have these two not-really-compatible points of view and the war continues until the smaller child gives up.

+ One such huge issue is the issue of Belarus. No one wants that Lukashenko either. Yet Putin is ramping up his plans the incorporate the country into Russia. + He is said to be wanting the Baltic States + some areas of Poland too.
 
The Kremlin being a very opaque area, there are many theories on what could be going on in there. But the truth is: No one really knows.

[Leonardo17]

The most pro-war position possible is allowing an aggressor state to benefit from an elective invasion.

Indeed how Anti War is it to reward invaders with land and concessions?

- This is a matter of principle. If you let Vlad do that, you must also let Xi Chi Ping take Taiwan etc.
 
+ I think Putin has been the sort of Tarzan of Europe for at least a decade and a half before the war in Ukraine. The world had to draw these lines. The main cause of WWII is that Democracies in that era were hesitant of restraining Hitler until he invaded Poland pure and simple.

[Leonardo17]

It's easy to talk of peace when war is half an ocean away.

Indeed how Anti War is it to reward invaders with land and concessions?

These two are the crux of it.  Sure, peace is great and war is bad, someone should convince the russian administration of this.  If, however, the way we choose to convince that admin that peace is great is by offering up a chunk of someone else's country - well......looks like war aint so bad after all, especially if you can use war to plead for a "peace" where you swallow your neighbors.

The people who think of the us as the great satan should really think long and hard about how the us could use such a "peace" proccess..itself.  A question was asked earlier whether or not latin america was part of the western world.  Not generally, but it sure as hell could be.....all we'd need to do was invade and then these people would tell latin america that they should allow us to annex their territory.  For peace.  Da?

I can already hear the batshit retort "but isn't that exactly what the us did in latin america and in the pacific during our imperial period!?!!!"-  Sure was...and was that a bad thing...or...?.  Peace for me by death to thee, I guess.

- This also not such a bright phase of US history (Nor were the War in Iraq of Afghanistan if you ask me). But this was the Cold war. That was the time during which the world was nothing less than a chessboard between capitalism and communism.
 
So what I want to ask is “What is the chessboard today?”. If it’s authoritarianism vs. Freedom most people will rather join the second camp. So it’s existential in a way for countries like China to make something good out of this conflict. But still I think that at least China is slowly understanding that there is no victory for them in this war.

[Leonardo17]

General Milley against endless war:

https://news.yahoo.com/general-milley-wa...36562.html

There was a debate on this on DW with Marina Ovsyannikova being a part of the debate. There was a German (I think) CDU politician who was asking “Yes but how does this war end? How can we end this war?”. There was also an Ukrainian Interviewee but I think the main answer came from Marina Ovsyannikova.
 
The oppressive regime has to go. Not Russia. Just the regime. The regime is not working.
 
Ovsyannikova is known for appearing on live state TV with a “No War – Everything they are telling you are lies” sign in the 14th of March last year.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220315-no-war-russian-state-tv-producer-interrupts-newscast-in-daring-act-of-dissent

[Leonardo17]

There actually was a referendum on whether or not people, by region, wanted to go with russia or ukraine.  Even in areas with a heavy concentration of russian speakers, the vote went to staying in ukraine.  This is why russia invaded, because even with all of it's fuckery, it could not do by political engineering what it has since failed to do by force as well.  If they were to do the referendum again, it would likely skew even more heavily pro ukraine..because, IDK if you knew this or not..but... the russian occupation forces haven't exactly treated the areas under their control with respect.  They've been particularly and especially rough with the separatists they managed to cobble together as a front for their invasion..ongoing since 2014.  Sure, russia claims it did just that, and wouldn't you know it, 98% of the people in Kherson, for example..they claimed..were totally in the tank for russia.  They certainly seemed upset after russia pulled out, huh - but I guess you'll have to decide whether you believe russian propaganda or your own lying fucking eyes on that one...eh?  

Putin says it's a land grab.  That seems pretty clear.  Ukranians aren't waking up in the morning thinking "how can we pursue american interests today?".  They're expelling the forces of a foreign nation that invaded their home and seeks to erase the country, it's culture, and it's people from the map.  Here again, putin has been crystal clear.  The rest of that shit about zelensky and nazis is just too fucking stupid at this point to respond to, if it was ever anything but exactly that stupid to begin with, and you should be ashamed for repeating it.  Find some other focus for whatever anti-american masturbation you feel positively compelled to engage in.  It shouldn't be hard, what with great satan and all.  It's certainly true that the us isn't friendly towards russian interests, but, ofc, there is no war in russia.  There is a war in ukraine.

+ There is like nothing in the area they are occupying. It’s only a matter of propaganda value if you ask me.

[Leonardo17]

Ukraine's army has been severely weakened, and they are admitting publicly that they don't have enough ammunition. They are begging.

This is not news. The Ukrainians are facing human-wave attacks.

Meanwhile Russia is poised to send 300,000 new troops into Ukraine -- perhaps as many as half a million.

New, raw recruits, untrained, wielding Mosin-Nagants ... in human waves. Lotsa grieving Russian mothers on the other end of the telegram.

The US has so far blocked efforts at a negotiated settlement. The former PM of Israel has said that he nearly had a deal which America prevented. But not negotiating peace at this point would be insane.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/...ation-war/

Why should anyone advise the Ukrainians to surrender? They're beating the dogshit out of the Russians.

Wait until the Ukrainian counteroffensive comes. That's why they're husbanding their forces. And when they succeed, you will once more fall silent just like you did in October. You're a fair-weather friend.

They have also lost about 100,000 men. + 8000 civilians according to some estimates.

[Leonardo17]

The claim made by Bel (and others) that the reason for the war was potential NATO expansion is purest bullshit - if that was truly the reason, Russia would have invaded Finland by now.

The real reason is that Ukrainian identity sticks in Putin’s crop.

Boru

I think it’s just ideology. Authoritarianism doesn’t want democracy on its doorstep + they thought it would be easy to subdue Ukraine. (They overestimated themselves)