Ukraine Forever

[butterweedstrover]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

"Believing" Putin to be the violent one? Yes, when he sends hundreds to thousands of troops into a sovereign country, lays waste to entire cities and kills maybe a hundred thousand people, whilst getting a similar number of his own people killed, yes, I think it's less a case of "belief" then "inarguable factual reality."

Certainly you can argue that the Ukrainians have not been 100% lily white about the conflict since 2014, and at various moments they have done things that killed civilians (just like we did in WWII, and almost every other war in history) that could have been avoided. But the imbalance between Ukraine and Russia in who is to blame for the conflict, who caused more death and destruction and who is now refusing to end it when they could at any moment is preposterously lop-sided in Russia's favour.

Putin is the person who has unleashed this chaos and killed a lot of Russians and a lot of Ukrainians. He is the only person who can stop this now, immediately, with no more need for bloodshed. He is choosing not to do that. I suggest you address your comments about "fantasizing about violence" to the person who is actualising his fantasies about violence.

Putin is not on this thread, if he were feel free to quote him. The people on this thread who celebrate the idea of Russians being killed are the ones promoting violence. 
And they get away with it by pretending their desire for revenge comes from sympathy for Ukrainians.

But they don’t care about Ukrainians, they just want this war to finish off Russia. And the only way you have to justify these people is to say anything less is equivalent to full support for the Russian war effort and for every crime they commit. 
 

[Toth]

11 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

But whatever, those people deserved it. Because they stood in the way of liberal reforms or something.  

There is a fantastic Arte documentary named "Battle for Donetzk", that I can unfortunately only find in German at the moment, which had a reporter team accompany the separatists in the Donbass and show their view on the matters. The most sympathetic view on them I have is that they were incredibly dumb fools deluded by Russian propaganda, their own conspiracy theories and Soviet nostalgia, funded and led by Russians who just so happen to be 'retired' FSB agents, who tore their country apart clinging to the hope of personal economic gain that they maybe possibly could get under whatever system they'd carve out of Ukraine.

In brief: They reminded me a lot of QAnon lunatics or our own brand of Reichsbürger fools, only playacting Stalinist communism instead of calling their opponents communists. I have watched them storm and tear apart their local town hall cheering, while their helpless neighbors were begging them to stop before they screamed them down and threatened them, then discuss calmly in front of the bloody cameras how many votes they need to fabricate to make their declaration of independence believable. Those same lunatics are responsible that men in the Donbass now have to hide in cellars or risk get dragged off the streets and press ganged into their redshirt army to die for Putin's hubris. That is not to speak of the disappearance of people who took part or were sympathetic to Euromaidan, or were unfortunate enough to be independent journalists, who were dragged to FSB torture cellars that had been in operation since 2016. Torture cellars that had gotten established in all Russian occupied territory since the invasion and frequently discovered every time Ukraine liberates another of their cities. Of course Ukraine will put them on trial for high treason and rightly so. Any country would do that.

At the same time I obviously get nauseous thinking how many of the 100.000 dead Russians didn't wish to be there, especially those conscripts dragged right to the hottest battlefields with no training whatsoever in a cold calculation that throwing their lives away would help freeze the front lines. This war could end if someone was nice enough to put a bullet between Putin's eyes and call these boys home. Barring that, there is no way for this conflict to end but to cross fingers for Ukraine to retake its territory over the corpses of those bringing ruin upon its people. Whether they are doing it by force, for duty or deluded righteousness, the Russians still fire rockets purposefully on civilian targets because they can't beat the Ukrainian military after all.

You may have found your calling in picking on Ser Scot, who... occasionally does tend to get overboard with accusations of extremes, but your one-sided vilification of Ukraine while ignoring completely Russia's role as the freaking aggressor in this conflict does paint you as someone who, while probably not cheering for Russia, feels quite superior about this 'middle ground' of both-sideisms where you don't need to stand for anything, but can be against those who do pick a side.

You know, I'm picking the side where there actually would be a peace possible at the end of the road instead of all the frozen conflicts Russia likes to surround itself with these last decades... and where Moldovia and Kasachstan won't have to fear about being next.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

Here is the thing, I don’t “justify” Russian atrocities nor do I deny they exist nor do I support the war. 

But then again that is how you have to think in order to justify revenge. You can’t comprehend someone who takes issue with glib mockery of Russian deaths also doesn’t support their war effort.  

Or how not thinking militarily forcing them out of Crimea and Donbas (pre-February) is the best solution equates to supporting the rape of innocent Ukrainian women.

So… allow Russia to take over Ukraine in small bites over many months or years?  It’s somehow wrong for Ukraine to seek to liberate the territory Russian forces have overrun?

[Derfel Cadarn]

6 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

Here is the thing, I don’t “justify” Russian atrocities nor do I deny they exist nor do I support the war. 

But then again that is how you have to think in order to justify revenge. You can’t comprehend someone who takes issue with glib mockery of Russian deaths also doesn’t support their war effort.  

Or how not thinking militarily forcing them out of Crimea and Donbas (pre-February) is the best solution equates to supporting the rape of innocent Ukrainian women.

Well they don’t seem to be leaving those parts of Ukraine voluntariky, do they?

Ukraine reclaiming its own recognised territory is hardly revenge. What they do once they get it will be scrutinised, especially as they’ve applied to join EU.

Re Crimea, that is up to Ukraine. Personally they may be better selling it to Russia. But they’d need a shit-ton of guarantees that Russia would stay out of Ukraine affairs. And can those be trusted?

[butterweedstrover]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Did you actually read what @Werthead said?  He exploded stated that a full collapse of the Russian State would be a bad thing, a dangerous thing, for everyone.  Further, care to explain why Russia… can’t simply withdraw its forces from Ukraine and end the war?  How helpful has the Black Sea fleet actually been to the Russian war effort for anything beyond mere terror attacks on Ukrainian cities?

Yeah, and I was criticizing people who find joy in Russia’s suffering who are the only ones promoting violence on this thread. 

The Russians aren’t here calling for more death, it is a bunch of westerners using the violence to justify more revenge. If Werthead isn’t one of them, then my comment isn’t directed to him/her. 

If you want this war to go on till Ukrainian troops are marching on Sevastopol and have control over Donetsk and Luhansk, fine. But that is not the same thing as a negotiated peace, that is total victory. And being against such things for ethical and political reasons doesn’t equate to support for Russian atrocities.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, butterweedstrover said:

If you want this war to go on till Ukrainian troops are marching on Sevastopol and have control over Donetsk and Luhansk, fine. But that is not the same thing as a negotiated peace, that is total victory. And being against such things for ethical and political reasons doesn’t equate to support for Russian atrocities.

By that logic, was it wrong, pray tell, for the French to seek to liberate French Territory overrun by German Troops during the Second World War? Was it wrong for the Soviets to seek to liberate territory overrun by the Germans in the same war?

How consistent are you regarding that particular assertion?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

40 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

If you believe Putin is the violent one you shouldn’t join his ranks and cheer for criminals shooting up Russian cities and slaughtering innocents with a glib tone. 

 

Which Russian cities? Moscow? St. Petersburg? Perm? Tula? Vladivostok?

Most certainly you are not talking about Ukrainian cities in the Donbas or Luhansk oblasts, are you?

42 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

Anyways you know the Russian state won’t willingly abandon Sevastopol and on the ethical side you know people in Donetsk and Luhansk (the cities) will be executed for “collaborating” with Russia (which is the same think that happened in Mariupol once the DPR retreated) so that is just a fancy way of saying you want the war to go on. Which is your prerogative, but celebrating the death of Russia isn’t standing up for Ukrainians, it using them to justify the cruelest possible outcome.

Says Russia Today? Simonyan, or one of those other tools?

If you want to stop the death of Russians, go to Vladimir Loserovich Putin and tell him to withdraw his troops from Ukrainian territory, plain and simple.

[butterweedstrover]

13 minutes ago, Toth said:

There is a fantastic Arte documentary named "Battle for Donetzk", that I can unfortunately only find in German at the moment, which had a reporter team accompany the separatists in the Donbass and show their view on the matters. The most sympathetic view on them I have is that they were incredibly dumb fools deluded by Russian propaganda, their own conspiracy theories and Soviet nostalgia, funded and led by Russians who just so happen to be 'retired' FSB agents, who tore their country apart clinging to the hope of personal economic gain that they maybe possibly could get under whatever system they'd carve out of Ukraine.

In brief: They reminded me a lot of QAnon lunatics or our own brand of Reichsbürger fools, only playacting Stalinist communism instead of calling their opponents communists. I have watched them storm and tear apart their local town hall cheering, while their helpless neighbors were begging them to stop before they screamed them down and threatened them, then discuss calmly in front of the bloody cameras how many votes they need to fabricate to make their declaration of independence believable. Those same lunatics are responsible that men in the Donbass now have to hide in cellars or risk get dragged off the streets and press ganged into their redshirt army to die for Putin's hubris. That is not to speak of the disappearance of people who took part or were sympathetic to Euromaidan, or were unfortunate enough to be independent journalists, who were dragged to FSB torture cellars that had been in operation since 2016. Torture cellars that had gotten established in all Russian occupied territory since the invasion and frequently discovered every time Ukraine liberates another of their cities. Of course Ukraine will put them on trial for high treason and rightly so. Any country would do that.

At the same time I obviously get nauseous thinking how many of the 100.000 dead Russians didn't wish to be there, especially those conscripts dragged right to the hottest battlefields with no training whatsoever in a cold calculation that throwing their lives away would help freeze the front lines. This war could end if someone was nice enough to put a bullet between Putin's eyes and call these boys home. Barring that, there is no way for this conflict to end but to cross fingers for Ukraine to retake its territory over the corpses of those bringing ruin upon its people. Whether they are doing it by force, for duty or deluded righteousness, the Russians still fire rockets purposefully on civilian targets because they can't beat the Ukrainian military after all.

You may have found your calling in picking on Ser Scot, who... occasionally does tend to get overboard with accusations of extremes, but your one-sided vilification of Ukraine while ignoring completely Russia's role as the freaking aggressor in this conflict does paint you as someone who, while probably not cheering for Russia, feels quite superior about this 'middle ground' of both-sideisms where you don't need to stand for anything, but can be against those who do pick a side.

You know, I'm picking the side where there actually would be a peace possible at the end of the road instead of all the frozen conflicts Russia likes to surround itself with these last decades... and where Moldovia and Kasachstan won't have to fear about being next.

There are no two sides going on, there is only the one and that is those who think the death of Russians is good and that their suffering is justified because of “revenge”. 

And this attitude doesn’t come from sympathy for Ukrainians, it’s a wide spread exploitation of their situation to destroy the perceived enemies. 

Maybe if people here saw it less through the lens of victory wanting negotiations might not equate to supporting the rape of Ukrainian women. 

Thinking about a full Russian withdrawal from Donetsk, Luhansk, and Sevastopol with anything less being seen as support for war crimes doesn’t suggest you are a moral person, but that you’re using your righteousness to justify more death.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, butterweedstrover said:

Thinking about a full Russian withdrawal from Donetsk, Luhansk, and Sevastopol with anything less being seen as support for war crimes doesn’t suggest you are a moral person, but that you’re using your righteousness to justify more death.

I’ll ask again.  Using this logic was it wrong for the French to seek to liberate territory overrun by the Germans during the Second World War?  Was it wrong for the Soviets to seek to liberate territory overrun by the Germans in the same war?

[butterweedstrover]

5 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Which Russian cities? Moscow? St. Petersburg? Perm? Tula? Vladivostok?

Most certainly you are not talking about Ukrainian cities in the Donbas or Luhansk oblasts, are you? 
 

People on this thread were linking to higher crimes in Russian cities because of a growth in guns. 

5 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Says Russia Today? Simonyan, or one of those other tools?

If you want to stop the death of Russians, go to Vladimir Loserovich Putin and tell him to withdraw his troops from Ukrainian territory, plain and simple.

This was back in 2014. Azov helped retake the city and executions of collaborators followed without due process.

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

There are no two sides going on, there is only the one and that is those who think the death of Russians is good and that their suffering is justified because of “revenge”. 

This is a strawman argument. Nobody has been revelling in the death and destruction of the conflict on innocents. There's even been wincing and criticism of Ukraine when it has caused civilian casualties, minuscule these have been in comparison to those caused by Russia. There was criticism of Ukraine when one military unit was exposed as having shot dead several Russian soldiers after they surrendered. There was also criticism of how slow Ukraine had been in de-Nazifying Azov, and that process had not been completed by the start of the conflict (though most of the most notable far-right members had been fired, and become failed politicians).

It has been said, many times here, that Russians suffering from Putin's delusions is a tragedy. It's a tragedy that Russians themselves can do something about, but granted the conditions in Russia are very tough to accomplish that. There are a lot of Russians complicit in Putin's crimes, but there are many more who are not, and who do not deserve to get blown to pieces on the battlefield or spend the rest of their life in prison.

But you can accuse the Ukrainians of gratuitous revenge when, having fully restored their territorial integrity, they then decide to invade Russia, seize Kursk and Belgorod and start shooting civilians dead in the street the same way that Ukrainians were in Bucha and Kherson. And if they do that, the people currently backing Ukraine will condemn them for that.

[butterweedstrover]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’ll ask again.  Using this logic was it wrong for the French to seek to liberate territory overrun by the Germans during the Second World War?  Was it wrong for the Soviets to seek to liberate territory overrun by the Germans in the same war?

It’s hard to liberate territory from its own people. People in Donetsk and Sevastopol aren’t waiting for the Ukrainian military to take charge. 
 

Which makes the situation a little more complicated. Not thinking a full military intervention in either of these cities is conducive to peace does not equate to “justifying Russian war crimes”.

[butterweedstrover]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

This is a strawman argument. Nobody has been revelling in the death and destruction of the conflict on innocents. There's even been wincing and criticism of Ukraine when it has caused civilian casualties, minuscule these have been in comparison to those caused by Russia. There was criticism of Ukraine when one military unit was exposed as having shot dead several Russian soldiers after they surrendered. There was also criticism of how slow Ukraine had been in de-Nazifying Azov, and that process had not been completed by the start of the conflict (though most of the most notable far-right members had been fired, and become failed politicians).

It has been said, many times here, that Russians suffering from Putin's delusions is a tragedy. It's a tragedy that Russians themselves can do something about, but granted the conditions in Russia are very tough to accomplish that. There are a lot of Russians complicit in Putin's crimes, but there are many more who are not, and who do not deserve to get blown to pieces on the battlefield or spend the rest of their life in prison.

But you can accuse the Ukrainians of gratuitous revenge when, having fully restored their territorial integrity, they then decide to invade Russia, seize Kursk and Belgorod and start shooting civilians dead in the street the same way that Ukrainians were in Bucha and Kherson. And if they do that, the people currently backing Ukraine will condemn them for that.

Oh I’m not accusing Ukrainians of revenge, I’m accusing non-Ukrainians of using their situation to justify revenge. 

I can read with my own eyes, people here were a few pages back showing pleasure at the idea of a collapse of the Russian state.

[SeanF]

2 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

Oh I’m not accusing Ukrainians of revenge, I’m accusing non-Ukrainians of using their situation to justify revenge. 

I can read with my own eyes, people here were a few pages back showing pleasure at the idea of a collapse of the Russian state.

It’s a State that is inflicting gratuitous violence on its neighbour and causing economic hardship worldwide.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

It’s hard to liberate territory from its own people. People in Donetsk and Sevastopol aren’t waiting for the Ukrainian military to take charge. 
 

Which makes the situation a little more complicated. Not thinking a full military intervention in either of these cities is conducive to peace does not equate to “justifying Russian war crimes”.

How do we know the people of Donetsk and Lukhansk want to be part of Russia?  And you really didn’t answer my question.

[butterweedstrover]

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

It’s a State that is inflicting gratuitous violence on its neighbour and causing economic hardship worldwide.

I don’t think you can blame them for economic hardship on the world. But even if you did, relishing in their misery seems questionable for a bunch of westerners not involved in the war. 

[butterweedstrover]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How do we know the people of Donetsk and Lukhansk want to be part of Russia?  And you really didn’t answer my question.

I did because it’s not comparable. It would be closer to comparing China’s “liberation” of Taiwan because it is part of their internationally recognized borders than France retaking land from Nazi germany.
 

And maybe you would know what this people think if western journalists actually went there to find out. The last time that happened was by a French media report and they immediately had their leashes pulled. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

I see, you went full Simonyan.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

And maybe you would know what this people think if western journalists actually went there to find out. The last time that happened was by a French media report and they immediately had their leashes pulled. 

So Donetsk, Lukhansk, and Crimea all clearly and unambiguously desire to be part of Russia?  There is no need for independent outside neutral verification of that desire?

Did the Baltic States desire “libertation” by the Soviet army during the Second World War?

[butterweedstrover]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So Donetsk, Lukhansk, and Crimea all clearly and unambiguously desire to be part of Russia?  There is no need for independent outside neutral verification of that desire?

Did the Baltic States desire “libertation” by the Soviet army during the Second World War?

That isn’t what the Ukrainian side wants. They don’t want international observers to hold Crimea and Donetsk, they wanted the places returned to them. 

I would be all for that, but the Ukrainian side claims all the pro-Ukrainians have been ethnically cleansed so no poll would do. 

My point is the military option is a bad one, yet collectively everyone is saying no to negotiations and want a full Ukrainian victory.  No matter what that entails.