Russian Invasion of Ukraine
- Thread starter Rage Racer
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SestoScudo
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I watched the video of the wagners executing their defector with a sledgehammer.
Not for the faint hearted.
These guys have already been implicated in atrocities in Ukraine, CAR, Mali and Libya.
Tarhuna Mass graves in Libya have implicated the Al Kani Militia and Wagner group.
Not for the faint hearted.
These guys have already been implicated in atrocities in Ukraine, CAR, Mali and Libya.
Tarhuna Mass graves in Libya have implicated the Al Kani Militia and Wagner group.
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- Marin County
Read about this...not something I want to watch. This was released seemingly intentionally and I wonder - why? I guess the simple answer is to intimidate would-be defectors to not defect. But what it looks like to me is an impotent militarized extremist culture (I realize Wagner is non-state, but they are basically hand in hand with the Kremlin) taking out their frustration on their own people in barbaric fashion. Is this the civilization that Russia wants to establish as an alternative to the west?
edit: I hope they don't harm the raccoon.
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Hey Scaff, how are things?
"Whataboutism?" What's that?
Cherry picking facts? Like Azov is a neo-Nazi brigade?
You ask what's that got to do with modern Russia? That's like saying what's the sacrifice of British soldiers in WW2 have to do with the population of the UK today. These people sacrificed their lives to not live under the Nazi regime and to ensure the next generation wouldn't either. I'm not in any way excusing the actions of the USSR in Europe. Every government needs to take responsibility for atrocities committed. Problem is, Western governments conveniently never do. They always blame someone else.
I only know however that when the Nazis moved eastward, western Ukraine was a hotbed for mass war crimes against Jews and Communists. Babi Yar is an example. Not to mention the pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia etc. It wasn't all the Nazis doing, either.
Sure, I understand that in those areas, they suffered under the Bolsheviks but that doesn't excuse the barbarity that was unleashed on defensless civilians with 100,000s murdered.
I don't believe the argument that Putin is looking to expand westward into the Baltic States, Poland etc. He can barely hold the Russian Federation together as it is. What kind of manpower would it take? He can't even move westward past the Donbas let alone anywhere else. With NATO sitting at his doorstep, he's not that stupid.
If he wanted to attack them with nukes, he would have already done so.
As far as the percentage of Ukraine's parliament being far right, what exactly constitutes far right? Just as an example, Ivano Frankivsk, Ternopil and Khmelynytski are substantially large cities in western and central Ukraine (225,000, 237,000 and 274,000 respectively) , have mayors who are members of Svoboda (Serhiy Nadal, Ruslan Martsinkiv and Oleksandr Symchyshyn) Now, I'm not suggesting that all of those inhabitants are Svoboda supporters but it's interesting regardless. Svoboda is characterized as being "ultra-nationalist" and "far right"
Why would they? There aren't many ethnic Russians living there.
UKMikey
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No, what @Scaff asked was how big the 900-strong Azov regiment is compared to the 500,000 to 700,000-strong Ukranian army.
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- Kannon33r
Rumours are, this PMC-prisoner was exchanged with rate 1to45. Interview with him as goes viral with 8mil views and Prigojin himself ordered this exchange.Read about this...not something I want to watch. This was released seemingly intentionally and I wonder - why? I guess the simple answer is to intimidate would-be defectors to not defect. But what it looks like to me is an impotent militarized extremist culture (I realize Wagner is non-state, but they are basically hand in hand with the Kremlin) taking out their frustration on their own people in barbaric fashion. Is this the civilization that Russia wants to establish as an alternative to the west?
edit: I hope they don't harm the raccoon.
In interview he claims that he want to fight with Ukrainians, but also there is vk page with multiple antiUkranian post dated 2014+.
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- 11,788
- Marin County
Well, it's clearly tiny. But then, do we know what the political persuasion is of every Ukrainian soldier? Of course not, just like we don't know what the political persuasion is of every Russian soldier. However, distinctions are not necessarily made in the Western media concerning Russians. They just tarnish them with the same brush. For example, we always hear of war crimes committed by the Russians. Never seem to be any committed by the Ukrainians.
You could also look at it in a different light. When the USSR collapsed, NATO continued to exist. Why? To provide security against Yeltsin's Russia? He had a good relationship with Europe and the U.S. So the argument could be made that NATO exists for the purpose of expansion. Putin will naturally feel threatened. And of course, vice versa.
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Yeap
There were few cases, Ukrainian side is much more open and there are much less censorship. Most cases are placing artillery too close to civilian infrastructure or buildings, few cases of violent actions against captured russians.
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The USSR was a sovereign country that collapsed, NATO is a defensive confederation of independent sovereign countries.
Your next post will confuse the difference between a federation (weak individual components) and confederation (strong individual components) so I'll save you, and anyone else who doesn't know what NATO is, the bother and point out that if NATO was a strong federation with a strong central structure and whose members have no individual strength then NATO's general-secretary Jens Stoltenberg would be the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful army in the world. He isn't.
You don't know what you're talking about. Bore off.
Joey D
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“You don’t cancel your home insurance policy just because there have been fewer burglaries on your street in the last 12 months!” - Margaret Thatcher
A robust military defense alliance is not bad, especially when the states involved are similar. Global threats happen and if something were to happen to France, the repercussions would be felt across all the members of NATO whether NATO existed or not. It also allows for better training opportunities, greater strategic partnerships, and easier weapon development.
So again, who was NATO defending itself against post 1991? What enemies did it have? No one's asking you to reply to my post. But continue with the personal insults, please.
Quite right. However, there's more to this than meets the eye.
Ah, okay. Never heard of a single case from the UK based media. There's always a typical good guy and bad guy.
Okay, I respect your opinion. I don't necessarily agree with it but that's fine. Mainly because I don't think the states are that similar (not eastern European ones anyway)
Joey D
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No one really knew what would happen to Russia and all the newly formed former Soviet states after the fall of the USSR. While some states wanted freedom, democracy, and the like, others wanted to return to a dictatorship or outright commit ethnic cleansing. Starting in 1992, NATO had engagements in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then in 1999, they engaged in Serbia and Kosovo. In addition, NATO has engaged with various terrorist groups since 9/11. Turkey was also, briefly, attacked by Iraq in 2003.
There has definitely been a need for a military defense alliance in Europe even after the fall of the USSR. The new threat of Russia just resolidifies that need too, especially since Putin likes to threaten a nuclear strike several times a week.
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Countries that finally got independence from the Soviet occupation were seeking protection and progress from Europe and NATO.
The first new members joined NATO in 1999, almost 10 years after the Soviet collapse.
Baltic countries joined in 2004.
In the mean time Russia had 9 wars from 1990 to 2000 all around it's bordering countries. (Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, North Ossetia-Alania, Tajikistan, First Chechen war, Dagestan, Second Chechen War.)
In 2008 another war with Georgia, a country that was aiming to go west.
...the same thing Ukraine was seeking, and what cause the revolution. But Russia didn't want Ukraine to go west so they took Crimea in 2014 "bringing Russian lands and hero-cities back where they belong", "couldn't live seeing a NATO flag waving in Sevastopol" and ignited a conflict in south-east regions "to protect Russian-speaking population". But instead, caused many deaths, suffering, destruction and the rise of the famous nationalistic battalion Azov Regiment. Because they were highly motivated to fight for their country against the occupational forces of Russia. (Azov is the name of the sea in the south-east of Ukraine. Many members of the regiment are from those regions.)
Putin should not have been threatened. Russia is the biggest country in the world. But looks like it's not big enough for him and he wanted more land. So he prepared, tore up the Minsk agreements and launched again in 2022. Causing even more deaths, suffering and destruction.
Now Finland and Sweden wants to join NATO. I wonder why.
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Scaff
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The logical fallacy you've engaged in repeatedly
Yes, if your arguing that they represent a substantial percentage of armed forces, as you were.
So it has nothing to do with modern Russia.
I literally quoted him saying that was his goal, your arguing with Putin himself. Your also now moving the goal posts, as your claim was about intent, not ability.
As you don't want to bother actually checking, it's 2%, less than Italy, less than Portugal.
Odd that you opened that door without actually knowing this, almost as if your asserting a position without bothering with facts.
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These two things can both be true.
Russians who gave their lives 75 years ago during WWII can have been heroes.
And the current ruler of the country, who was only born in 1952 and wasn't even alive during WWII, can be a fascist.
This you?
Double standard much? You're OK with calling the current UK government criminal despite the UK's stalwart defence against Nazi Germany during WWII, but when someone calls Putin a fascist that's somehow too much because of the sacrifices the Russians made during WWII?
A lot of war crimes relate to involving civilians and civilian infrastructure in war. There's not a lot of Russian civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, what with it being Ukraine and all.
If you want the Ukrainians to commit war crimes, next time invite them to invade Russia.
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- eran0004
That’s like saying there was no reason to create NATO in the first place because Hitler had already been defeated and there couldn’t possibly be any new threats ever again in the future.
That’s because there is a very clear bad guy in this war. Hint: it’s the side who, completely unprovoked, decided to invade the other side in an excuse to hunt for imaginary Nazis and who tortured and murdered the civilian population when they said they had no idea where those imaginary Nazis would be hiding. It’s the side who is terror-bombing the other side’s capital, who repeatedly targets civilian infrastructure, who is annexing the territory of the other country (lebensraum, anyone?), it’s the side who has banned any mention of the war and still pretends like it’s not happening. It’s the side who claims that Ukraine has no right to exist. It’s the side who, would they win this war, would then go on to invade Moldova and Lithuania.
And what did Ukraine do to warrant this invasion? They wanted to seek independence from Russia and build closer relations with the west. Oh the horror!
And you’ve somehow dumbed it down to “but Ukraine have nazis so they must be the bad guys”, like the only source of information in your life is Russian propaganda. The war is not about Russia defending themselves from Nazis, it’s Russia waging a war against liberalism and fighting for a position where they can dominate Eastern Europe, like they did in the USSR and like they did as imperial Russia prior to World War I. That’s it.
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Okay, so no actual definition of what it means.
I wasn't claiming they represented a substantial percentage of the armed forces but that they exist and have committed crimes. Something which is hushed up by the UK media.
If someone provided me with a video showing Putin claiming that his goal was the subjugation of the entire world, it would convince me. A source such as the Guardian doesn't necessarily convince me.
I've actually seen 3% Just goes to show it depends on the source. Nevertheless, interesting how there was no denial or debunking what I said about those 3 cities. It would be the equivalent of about 3 cities slightly larger than Luton having mayors who were BNP or NF supporters.
Just to quote this- I appreciate people have their own views about the current situation in Ukraine and I don't necessarily want to be going around in circular arguments.
However, there are ethnic Russians living in Ukraine that consider themselves to be Russians rather than Ukrainians. Eastern Ukraine has a large Russian population and nearly 20% of Ukraine contains ethnic Russians. Crimea has almost 80% with a population of about 2.5 million. Which is why you have militia organizations in eastern Ukraine. They don't recognise the central government and don't want to be a part of it.
Just as Slovakia doesn't have only ethnic Slovaks or North Macedonia only Macedonians.
Scaff
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Your ability to google has been removed? Damn, that's a shame, but it does explain a bit.
The inference from you was quite clear, that the presence in both the military and government was both substantial and influencial, since that has been debunked you've now started to move the goal-posts.
Then you will be able to provide supporting evidence.
The article literally has links to videos!
It's also a bit rich for the member who has supplied an utter dearth of sources to complain about a source they have failed to read.
Those goalposts again.
Nor has anyone denied that a far-right presence exists in Ukraine, one would have to be a spectacular idiot to do so (feel free to cite people who have claimed as much - if not that's a new logical fallacy for you - the strawman - I've linked to this one, as you google abilities have been clearly curtailed), they have argued that doesn't then mean the country is awash with the far-right. and that it's not justification for invading the country. Had your're google ability still been intact, you would of course know, that support for far-right/ultra-nationalists has in fact collapsed in Ukraine since it's high of circa 10%.
Oh, and stop double posting.
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What's your point? There's people in Australia that don't consider themselves Australians too. It doesn't change the fact that the concentration of Australians in Australia is very high, and that if there was a war going on here the highest likelihood is that a war crime is going to be committed against an Australian just through basic statistical probability.
As far as what is a Russian versus a Ukrainian, is this a blood quantum thing or a location of birth thing?
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