I suspect that bout 5 super pro Putineers here are doing it as a job. They defend whatever Putin does 100 percent. Putin has blood all over his tiny little hands. They do too.
NATO’s Scorched Earth in Ukraine | Consortium News
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I suspect that bout 5 super pro Putineers here are doing it as a job. They defend whatever Putin does 100 percent. Putin has blood all over his tiny little hands. They do too.
'It’s like the USSR’: residents on life in Mariupol a year since Russian occupation
People tell Guardian of ‘primitive’ living standards, propaganda in schools and constant risk of arrest
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...e-in-mariupol-a-year-since-russian-occupation
It's this lack of understanding of the historical context that created this war that perpetuates the problem. You may recall a thread I started here with an article from John Mearsheimer a little over a week ago. Just in case you don't, it's here:
The Darkness Ahead: Where The Ukraine War Is Headed | justplainpolitics.com
For anyone who hasn't seen the article or even if you just want to know John Mearsheimer's credentials, I suggest you take a look at this thread, as well as Mearsheimer's article that I linked to in the opening post of that thread. Mearsheimer and others had been predicting that the U.S. breaking its word to not expand NATO one inch east of Germany has been provoking Russia since the late 1990s. For decades, Russia restrained itself, but offering Ukraine membership and then Ukraine actively killing thousands of ethnic Russians in Ukraine was a bridge too far.
There were 2 things that happened prior to Russia's military operation in Ukraine that I think pushed Russia over the brink. The first was the U.S.'s refusal to even try to negotiate with a draft treaty that Russia proposed back in December 2021 as writers and activists Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies pointed out shortly after Russia's military operation began:
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In December 2021, after a summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, Russia submitted a draft proposal for a new mutual security treaty between Russia and NATO, with 9 articles to be negotiated. They represented a reasonable basis for a serious exchange. The most pertinent to the crisis in Ukraine was simply to agree that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a new member, which is not on the table in the foreseeable future in any case. But the Biden administration brushed off Russia's entire proposal as a nonstarter, not even a basis for negotiations.
So why was negotiating a mutual security treaty so unacceptable that Biden was ready to risk thousands of Ukrainian lives, although not a single American life, rather than attempt to find common ground? What does that say about the relative value that Biden and his colleagues place on American versus Ukrainian lives? And what is this strange position that the United States occupies in today's world that permits an American president to risk so many Ukrainian lives without asking Americans to share their pain and sacrifice?
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Source:
How the US Started a New Cold War with Russia and Left Ukraine to Fight It | commondreams.org
The second was the heavy bombardment of the Donbass region by the Ukrainian military days before Russia launched its military operation. I started a thread that brought this up back in November of last year:
Former Swiss Intelligence Officer blows the whistle on West's Ukraine War Narrative | justplainpolitics.com
I'm guessing you're suggesting that now's the time to kick Russia out of Ukraine?
Certainly not if Russia has anything to say about it. And I think we can agree that Russia is sending a very powerful message that they're opposed.
You think Russia's just going to hope that NATO doesn't send them any nukes if they were to join NATO?
Why do you think I have a problem with that? As to Turkey "giving up" theirs, I don't believe they had a choice in the matter. As a matter of fact, the -reason- that Russia agreed to pull out their nukes from Cuba was precisely because they had made a secret deal with JFK that he'd pull out the nukes in Turkey in exchange.
I think that even Biden realizes at this point that allowing Ukraine to join NATO would be like pouring a can of gasoline on a fire. Anyway, I just read an article out today from NPR saying that Biden says that Zelensky is fine with waiting:
Ukraine can't join NATO yet. But Biden says Zelenskyy is OK with that | npr.org
Quoting from the article:
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Biden spoke to a crowd of hundreds of people in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the end of a NATO summit where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pressed NATO for a timeline for when his country could join the military alliance.
Zelenskyy left the summit without a timeline — but he did receive pledges for long-term security assistance by the United States and other G-7 nations.
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Yes, I'm sure Zelensky was just peachy with getting a bunch of sweet nothings whispered into his ear. He can now go home and tell his countrymen who are getting slaughtered that European countries have pledged "long-term security assistance", whatever that means.
On the other side of things, I think there is a -little- sense left in Biden for not wanting to tilt head first into a possible armaggedon.
If only Biden had been a bit more interested in what Russia felt on the matter -before- Russia started its military operation, back in December 2021, as I pointed out in my last post here.
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Geeko Sportivo
Verified User
I wasn't! Biden said all along that Turkey was not going to be a problem.
Biden doesn't lie, and I trust him in his foresight and insight and all his US world foreign policy experience!
Honestly, I think he's been pretty straight up about his core goals. He mentioned both in a speech that aired on the day he started his military operation. I think the most important one was arresting NATO's further expansion, in particular in Ukraine. I think the second goal was to protect the people in the Donbass region. Here's an excerpt from his speech that gets into both:
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Any further expansion of the North Atlantic alliance’s infrastructure or the ongoing efforts to gain a military foothold of the Ukrainian territory are unacceptable for us. Of course, the question is not about NATO itself. It merely serves as a tool of US foreign policy. The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile “anti-Russia” is taking shape. Fully controlled from the outside, it is doing everything to attract NATO armed forces and obtain cutting-edge weapons.
For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it.
This brings me to the situation in Donbass. We can see that the forces that staged the coup in Ukraine in 2014 have seized power, are keeping it with the help of ornamental election procedures and have abandoned the path of a peaceful conflict settlement. For eight years, for eight endless years we have been doing everything possible to settle the situation by peaceful political means. Everything was in vain.
As I said in my previous address, you cannot look without compassion at what is happening there. It became impossible to tolerate it. We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us. It is their aspirations, the feelings and pain of these people that were the main motivating force behind our decision to recognise the independence of the Donbass people’s republics.
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Source:
Here Is the Full Text of Putin’s Speech This Morning, Feb 24, 2022 | paulcraigroberts.org
What was easy? You said that I had said that "only Putin gets to determine what countries are sovereign". Only I never said that and I suspect you know it. Also, you do realize that I didn't just say "Agreed", right? There was a comma there. The full sentence:
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Agreed, though would you agree with the following saying:
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children"
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I'll spell out what I was getting at- land belongs to those who can occupy and defend it, but I meant the word in the 'possession is 9/10ths of the law' way of things. I'm not saying that when it comes to possessing things, might is right, I'm saying that that's the way of the world a lot of the time.
In terms of what's actually right in Ukraine, I think the people from the different regions should have a say. Russia thought so to, and it appears that those in Eastern Ukraine wanted to join Russia for the most part.
Tinkerpeach
Member
Yes but there are indications he has plans far beyond Ukraine.
He needs to take out Ukraine first because they are the biggest threat.
These are the things we can only guess at right now.
So the welfare of children is your metric for a military operation in another country being ok? How about this:
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On 11 April 2023, the Russian media RIA FAN published a chilling report in which a family evacuated from Bakhmut (Artiomovsk) by the Wagner group accuses Ukrainian soldiers of kidnapping children from their parents or relatives. The question that immediately comes to mind is why and where are these children being taken?
In this report, 11-year-old Milanya describes what she saw and experienced in Bakhmut (Artyomovsk), when the area where she was staying with her grandparents was still under Ukrainian control.
She recounts how Ukrainian soldiers from a unit called “White Angels” (which is wickedly reminiscent of the name of the pseudo-humanitarian terrorist organisation “White Helmets” in Syria) forcibly took away a four-year-old child, in front of her parents, who were powerless to stop the weapons pointed at them.
These same Ukrainian soldiers tried to take Milanya away from her grandparents several times, even claiming that the child’s mother had been killed by Russia, even though she was alive and well in another town in Donbass! But understanding that this was a lie, the grandparents and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood hid Milanya in order to avoid her suffering the same fate as the child who was kidnapped in front of her parents’ eyes.
See the report filmed by RIA FAN, with French subtitles:
https://odysee.com/@donbassinsider:b/vol-enfants-bakhmout-ukraine:d?src=embed&t=169.660206
Disturbingly, during one of these abduction attempts, the Ukrainian soldiers claimed that they had to take Milanya to Germany. Why Germany? Why not in another part of Ukraine?
And this is not the only testimony. On 3 April, Natalia Tkachenko, a resident of Bakhmut (Artiomovsk), told RIA Novosti how not only Ukrainian soldiers from the “White Angels” unit but also those from the “Phoenix” unit were forcibly taking children away in order to force their parents to leave for Ukrainian territory. If they refused to leave Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) with their children, the Ukrainian soldiers simply kidnapped them.
She explains that after the Kiev regime announced the evacuation of Bakhmut (Artyomovsk), the inhabitants were invited to leave for Ukraine with their families, and soon afterwards the children were sent en masse to camps and sanatoria.
“The children went on holiday and did not come back, and the parents were forced to go to Ukraine, even if they did not want to. Then, after a while, the forced evacuation of children by the ‘White Angels’ and ‘Phoenix’ units began. These were uniformed soldiers who went into houses, into basements, looking for children and took them away under duress, by force. If the parents agreed, they could accompany them. If the parents were against it, they took the children away. So there was a period when we just hid our children,” said Natalia Tkachenko.
[snip]
If these testimonies of child abductions by Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) are so worrying, it is because as this Arte report, published in 2019, reveals, one child in 10 victims of trafficking in the world comes from Ukraine!
However, I recall that in 2014, Ukraine already forcibly deported children from Donbass to other regions, and that several hundred of these children simply disappeared from the radar. Where have these children gone, and those abducted by Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut (Artyomovsk)? The mention of Germany in the attempted abduction of Milanya raises fears that these children will be sent abroad for all sorts of trafficking.
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Full article:
Residents of Bakhmut (artyomovsk) accuse Ukrainian soldiers of kidnapping children | Donbass Insider
I think it would be good to specify that I meant the Ukrainian government after the Euromaidan coup. Things were much different during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. Tell me, do you think it was "brotherly" of this government to kill thousands of Donbass citizens, many of whom were ethnic Russians? Do you think Russia thought it was all in good fun?
1940 was a while ago. The Ukrainian civil war was literally in progress and apparently getting hotter when Russia decided to step in.
You sure about that fulfilling bit? I get enough comments from someone like the one he made to you, I tend to just thread ban the person. I'm aware that it's a fine line though- thread ban too many and you can start to find that it's hard to get conversations going.
Tinkerpeach
Member
The referendums were conducted in warzones- soldiers are going to have guns. Gunpoint tends to mean they -point- the gun at people. The guns weren't pointed at them. My guess is they were simply helping them get to the polling stations considering this fact.
There were actually some foreign reporters in eastern Ukraine to document the referendums. Canadian American journalist Eva Bartlett did a video in Donetsk:
Here's her "Coles Notes" version:
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My overview of the DPR referendum to join Russia. It's mainly the people themselves talking, over the course of 5 days, including door-to-door voting (no, not at gunpoint) and voting in voting stations on the 5th day.
Western commentators would do well to listen to them (but we know they won't).
Summary:
-they waited 8 years for this
-they are tired of being bombed by Ukraine, they want peace & feel joining Russia will bring this
-they were not intimidated or forced to vote, many (like Syrians) faced potential shelling in order to do so, many volunteered in order to ensure the referendum went ahead
-they've long since given up caring what western commentators & "news" say about them (the same who whitewashed Ukraine's 8+ years of war crimes against the civilians of the Donbass).
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I take the time to make a carefully written post, complete with some lengthy quotes from an article written by a former Australian diplomat and journalist and this is your response? What -I'm- tired of is people like you whose first knee jerk reaction to a thread they disagree with is to simply attack the poster. I think I'll just thread ban you from my threads in the future, at least any threads discussing Russia. Then at least I can rest easy knowing that such noise won't be in my thread.
I'm guessing you made that assertion up on the spot, but if not, by all means share where you heard it.
You could say that:
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WHY IS UKRAINIAN MEMBERSHIP SO SENSITIVE?
A mutual assistance clause lies at the heart of the alliance, which was formed in 1949 with the primary aim of countering the risk of a Soviet attack on allied territory.
It is cited as one of the main reasons why Ukraine cannot join NATO while in conflict with Russia, as this might immediately draw the alliance into an active war.
The clause, Article 5 of NATO's Washington Treaty, states that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all allies.
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Source:
What would happen if Ukraine joined NATO? | Reuters
At that point, well...
First of all, how does insulting me add to your argument?
Secondly, Iraq only invaded Kuwait the first time. After that time, George Bush Sr. was smart enough to not invade Iraq in turn. His son, however, decided to invade Iraq, not because Iraq had invaded Kuwait again, but instead because of some false information that Iraq had acquired weapons of mass destruction.
Not you too -.-. I think it's possible that 1 or more more people here might be working for some U.S. government branch to keep the Ukrainian war effort rolling, but generally don't think that saying so is a good use of time. I think what we -should- be focusing on is trying to determine what points of view have the most evidence to back them up.