Are there any credible reports that Putin expected to walk in and take control over all of Ukraine within days? It seems so unlikely. He's seen the struggles Russia had in Afghanistan and Chechnya previously. It's all very cloudy at the moment. What is the end goal? Is it all of Ukraine? Is it just strategic places in the east and south? Is it something else? Is this force all that Russia has or is it a smaller scale thing to measure the power of Ukraine? Do they have more tricks up their sleeve?

I think it's important, as darkeningday wrote above, to realize that there is an information war on both sides. As much as Russia is fed the Putin version we are fed the version of the brave underdog with the president on the front lines. We need to value them both and try to separate what is propaganda and what is likely in the situation. We must also realize that much of it we won't really know now but only years in the future when we've gained perspective (if ever since one side always gets more or less forgotten to time).

Did everyone see this? Mandatory viewing if you haven't. God damn.

There is a lot of discussion on Putin's motives here, but I think that to see what those actually are, we need to look at some historical context to what led up to this. That article another user posted with Fiona Hill, I don't buy her arguments about Putin being an irrational actor and this is some gambit for a resurrection of the USSR.

Let's consider:

1. NATO lost a proxy war against Russia in Ossetia, Georgia
2. In the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, NATO vowed to extend membership towards Ukraine.
3. Russia says doing so will incur a response.
4. Ukrainians are divided on the issue, some with the status quo to remain and argue that being neutral is better. Some say that joining NATO is the only way to become western and modern.
5. Either way, in 2014 the decision was made for them by the US backed Euromaidan revolution that ousted Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president who wanted Ukraine to remain neutral.
6. He gets replaced with Poroshenko, a pro-NATO candidate who also has a hate boner for Russia (banned Russians from media, education, and government).
7. In response, Russia takes Crimea to secure Sevastopol.
8. Russia also aids Russian separatists to keep Ukraine in a state of civil war thus preventing NATO membership.
9. Trump enters the scene, tries to befriend the Russians, changes his tune in 2019 and starts militarily training Ukrainians (might be because of political pressures domestically).
10. Biden comes into office, and petitions Europeans to halt Nord Stream 2, which was Russia's gambit to peacefully pacify Ukraine by making them irrelevant.
11. Europe pauses the project.
12. Biden also reignites NATO membership bid for Ukraine
13. Russia asks the US to retract its initiative for Ukraine NATO membership and for Ukraine to demilitarize in accordance to the Minsk agreement of 2015.
14. Gets ignored for 5 months, Russia begins to swell numbers on its borders all the while reiterating its demands.
15. Keeps getting ignored, Russia declares war.

Fiona Hill is a Brookings Institute gargoyle who became a media darling when she bravely said that Trump was kinda bad. At least she's better than Bolton.

9a. Ukraine passes a constitutional amendment to seek EU and NATO membership, backed and signed by Poroshenko.
9b. Zelensky runs as the peace candidate, bridging the divide between the polars of the deeply regionally divided Ukraine. He knocks out the incumbent Poroshenko in a landslide.
9c. Zelensky seems just as pro-EU and pro-NATO as his predecessor. Despite promising a peaceful resolution to the Donbas, he refuses talks because they're "terrorists" and should just leave their homes to go to Russia and he continues shelling them (they also shell back and lots of civilians are killed on both sides).

[???]. Putin pushes for Baltic NATO states to be demilitarized, (though they still would've been protected by article 5) citing NatSec concerns because they're on Russia's border, but that set off alarm bells for NATO because they're under the impression Putin wants to rebuild the USSR.

14a. Zelensky kinda sorta but not really implies at the UN security conference that maybe he should seek nuclear armament for Ukraine. Putin mad. I should add that this point really smacks of Russian propaganda because Z was really just pointing out how the Bucharest treaty had already been nullified. He shouldn't have poked the bear but this isn't the straw that broke the camel's back that Russian state media portrays it as.


It seems like it should all make perfect sense except that Putin goddamn knew the West was going to massacre the Russian economy, which has barely been skating by as it is. And on top of that, before the angry demands from Putin, NATO was going down the shitter due to internal strife, lowering public interest and a total lack of anything to shoot at. Now NATO finally has a reason to exist and it's stronger than ever. And Ukraine is finally united in completely hating Russia, probably forever, and the far-right paramilitaries are going to be the Mujahideen for the 21st century (coincidentally also armed by the US). There was also no impending danger of Ukraine joining NATO any time soon.

The only narrative I can subscribe to is that Putin wanted to be America and enforce the Monroe Doctrine WE ALL KNOW America would given the chance, and doing a ludicrously improportionate response to what is essentially hurt feelings. Why he thought making his entire population eat wallpaper for the rest of their lives for a personal project is a question that will probably never be answered (because everyone in Russia will starve to death in 20 years).

Not to mention that Trump's presidency exposed an enormous flaw in NATO. Trump basically held the keys to effectively dissolving NATO. Trump was the direct result of Russian interference with American presidential elections. It was |---| this close that Russia could've showed how they could dissolve the most powerful military alliance in the world with a mere troll factory and a bunch of bribes.

Here's to a repeat of something like this occuring ASAP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassi ... _Chung-hee
Otherwise the usually useless UN needs to strongly suggest/implement a cage match between the mayor of Kyiv and Putin to end this, winner takes all. I'll settle for Lomachenko instead of a Klitschko brother if the height difference is too much for Pootin.

I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/meeting-b ... netanyahu/

The U.S. could easily end the relationship between Russia and Israel, but don't hold your breath.

Don't forget lots and lots of blackmail. I don't necessarily believe in the pee tape, but that doesn't mean Russia doesn't have info on some GOP (and DNC! - looking at you, Tulsi) members. We've all seen how they're technologically inept, so it wouldn't surprise me if Russia had found damaging and/or embarrassing material by typing "12345" as password to some Senators' personal accounts...

Hello from Ukraine.

First of all, many thanks to people in MA who support Ukraine these days.



I've read this thread, and it seems it's much more about international politics... sorry, I'm not really into politics in general and I'm not able to talk about politics these days at all.

But as for other international-related directions and themes, I didn't see this mentioned in the thread: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna ... of_Justice
Could anyone please explain how it works and how efficient and effective it would be (and is it possible that the process will give some "real" actions and results ?)?
There are a lot of cases and evidences of the terrible crimes - https://tsn.ua/keywords/materiali-dlya-gaagi, but honestly, right now, to me it seems there is almost no hope that any court, laws, justice, whatewer can stop that violence and terrorism that Russia does in Ukraine.

Hey sjal, good to hear you're (relatively) okay. Stay safe. We're all supporting you, however frustrating it is that western powers won't intervene. I have enormous admiration for the Ukrainian spirit of hope and resilience. Your country is proving time and again that it's unconditionally dedicated to its freedom and independence. Things that are sometimes unfortunately taken for granted in Europe. These crimes that Russia is committing against your country are opening a lot of people's eyes, I hope they will wake up and see what's at stake. I live close to The Hague and went to the Russian embassy on Saturday. Ukrainians and Russians protested the war together there. It's actually close to the Peace Palace, I passed by it on the way. So I was thinking about that too, what role can and will it play in the time to come.

About the ICJ: some hearings are actually scheduled for the next two days, Ukraine on Monday v. Russian on Tuesday: https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/182
I'm not sure if that is about the conflict concerning Donbas region or the current full-scale invasion. In any case, Russia is increasingly acting like a rogue state and gets more and more isolated as a result. At this point, I even doubt that Putin would honour any UN-ruling that does not favour Russian interests. So how effective it is in the current climate remains to be seen. I wouldn't keep any expectations. At the same time, let's bring the full weight of the law upon Russia and make them pay for these crimes against humanity by all means necessary. They cannot get away with this.

You also have a country with actual nuclear capabilities. It's not so easy as just "Go in and win!" - that mentality can actually make it worse, which it has in the past.

My friend was at one of these today! Got detained and released because he had no record.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60640204.amp

Thanks for this, really enjoyed watching it!

I'm fully aware of the reasoning behind that decision. Yet civilians are being massacred and our hands are tied. Hence the frustration.

This war was started in 2014 by Monsanto/IMF/World Bank. Russia did not instigate this. https://theecologist.org/2014/sep/11/uk ... s-and-gmos

Can you summarise for me the part in that article that concludes that these entities started the war?

That article is obviously horseshit, but just for the sake of argument.

You mean Ukraine wanted to invest in agricultural industry? How evil. Also, GMO scepticism is mostly bunk.

I'm pretty sure it's Russian soldiers, Russian tanks, Russian bombs, Russian bullets, at the behest of a Russian egomaniac, that is murdering/raping/destroying Ukraine...

Also, the last line of that article tells you everything you need to know. Putin apologia.

Apparently the hacking group Anonymous have hacked Russian broadcasts and are posting live footage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine...

That article was mostly true but:
1) GMOs are fine; the problem is privatizing land at the behest of corporate interests on the other side of the globe next to a nuclear armed country. Most of the farmland is in the East and South, where generally the population is much more favorable to Russia's interests.
2) Monsanto was just one of many points of contention Russia had with their next door neighbor, and not a particularly big one. While the Maidan coup lit the fire--and it's really unfortunate Western media just papers over this clear subversion of democracy--Russia literally invaded. Even if every single grievance Russia had with Ukraine was true and a genuine threat to Russia's security/ethnic Russians in east Ukraine, that would still not even remotely justify an invasion.

315 out of 349 Ukrainian MPs voted for integration with Europe, and it had the backing of the vast of majority of the people, as evidenced by the mass uprisings following President Yanukovych's decision to go against their will.

Just out of curiosity-- and I'm asking this because I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here-- have you at any point questioned why virtually all your views on this happen to align with Russian disinformation operations?

Russia claims Euromaidan was an illegitimate coup sponsored by the West and the United States along the lines of the toppling of Allende or Arbenz-- even though it was a mass groundswell of demonstrations and opposition to an extremely unpopular decision by an already unpopular president who attempted to curtail freedom of press and speech, oversaw a police response that killed dozens of protesters, and then fled to Russia. As it happens, you also claim Euromaidan was an anti-democratic coup and drew irrelevant comparisons to the US (also, by the way, a favored tactic of Russia and Putin), which betrays a serious lack of comprehension about what it means to live in a post-Soviet state on the Russian periphery.

Russia claims Zelensky has undermined efforts at peace in Donbass and effectively prolonged the violence there by refusing to engage with the separatists and breaking the precepts of the Minsk agreement. The fact is, Zelensky's efforts to negotiate with the separatists flew in the face of public opinion-- there were demonstrations against his administration for agreeing to recognize the legitimacy of separate elections in the breakaway regions on the condition that Russian troops withdrew. As for Minsk, it has been generally recognized that the separatists broke the first agreement with Russia's blessing when they launched operations to retake territory lost in the summer of 2014-- the DPR breakaway administration outright said it would no longer abide by the agreement-- and that Russia was violating the second agreement from the very beginning by continuing to pump military equipment into the breakaway regions and effectively running their military and political apparatus. The only people who believe Ukraine actively sought to violate the Minsk agreements are the Russians. (And as a side note-- why should Zelensky have been expected to negotiate with the separatists anyway? To borrow your predilection for drawing inappropriate comparisons to the US, should Lincoln have negotiated with Southern confederates when they broke away?)

Russia claims that its invasion of Ukraine is a 'denazification' operation and that Ukraine's military and political leadership is fraught with far right fascist and Nazi elements. You were on this forum not two weeks ago parroting that exact talking point-- harping on Bandera (another favorite boogeyman of Putin's) and claiming that Ukraine is a hotbed of corruption and fascism, even predicting that Ukraine would overthrow Zelensky soon because they wouldn't "accept a Jew as their leader" (how's that prophecy panning out?).

Russia, recognizing that its previous efforts to justify invasion have fallen flat outside its own borders, has turned its disinformation and propaganda efforts instead to arguing that Ukraine and NATO share the blame for things escalating to this point. Nearly every post you have made decrying the invasion has hedged and included some kind of disclaimer attributing some, even a lot, of blame for the war to the west or to the Ukrainian authorities or claims that we 'have to think about it from Russia's perspective'.

Assuming your claims that you oppose the invasion are sincere, maybe you should reflect on why your posts here just happen to line up almost note for note with Russia's rhetoric and propaganda.

There are definitely nazi elements that shouldn't be there (because any nazi presence is too much nazi presence), but they have close to no influence. The Azov Battalion's membership is in the low thousands at best and their political party National Corps alongside three other far-right parties - they formed a coalition, failed to get a single seat in 2019 with 2% of the popular vote. Right now not a single far-right party holds a seat in the Ukrainian parliament, something that can't be said for a lot of other european countries.

"Your posts sure have elements that look like Kremlin propaganda, here's a post that could have entirely been written by Ned Price to refute the complex reality of the situation you detailed."

Denazification of Ukraine is literally Russia's rendition of protecting women's rights in Afghanistan, the latter of which Ezadara himself tried to argue to justify the U.S. continuing to do a 9/11 every single day.

And a coup overthrowing a democratically elected leader is by definition anti-democratic... oh, but suddenly when the result aligns nicely with the interests of the U.S. State Department, it's suddenly MORE democratic than voting in a peaceful transfer of power, and claiming otherwise is "Russian disinformation." Get real.

Ah, so you got nothing. Gotcha.

Can something align with the US state department... and the will of the people?

Crazy to think that years upon years of being under the thumb of Russia while not being able to reap the benefits of neighboring EU countries might just be a bit tiresome.

You have to use the term "Russian disinformation" because obviously you can't attack the substance of anything I said. Instead you have to tone-police and harp on bugbears because the cognitive dissonance of actually grappling with the realities of American empire, American exceptionalism and ultimately trying to turn the entire fucking world into America is too great. What's so brilliant about the term "Russian disinformation" is that it is in itself deeply Surkovian, and I suppose that was always the point. You know that I'm diametrically opposed to the invasion of Ukraine but you still turn apoplectic at even the vaguest insinuation at anything that doesn't completely lay the blame at the foot of either Russia or people not wanting to go to war with Russia, and I think that's incredibly interesting.

Seems a little hypocritical coming from somebody who resorted to ad hominem attacks instead of responding to any of the points where I pointed out why your claims a. are false and b. happen to have some real glaring parallels with Russian misinformation.

I'm not annoyed because, as you put it, you insinuate the blame falls on anybody other than Russia. I'm annoyed because the things you say are false. Constantly, repeatedly, demonstrably false. It's really that simple. You keep saying things that are, on the face of it, factually untrue. And I don't believe it's because you're knowingly trying to spread misinformation. I think it's because, no matter how many faux-obscure names you pepper into your posts or how many untenable parallels you try to draw between this situation and things involving the US, you just don't know what you're talking about. And that's real annoying to me because whether you realize it or not, whether you talk about opposing the invasion or not, the false things you say are playing into the narrative Putin's Russia is working around the clock to pound into the heads of westerners who just don't know any better. At the same time that you were telling this forum that Ukraine is not a legitimate democracy to be defended, that it's a mecca for Nazism because Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian, Vladimir Putin was on TV telling the world he was invading Ukraine to denazify it. Just a couple of weeks before you claimed that Zelensky had pushed Russia into war through his refusal to engage with separatist regimes that act effectively as Russian satellites, Putin was insisting that Russia needed to come to the aid of Russians in Donbas who were being victimized by Kyiv.

It's honestly not that complex. You keep saying things that are false. Those false things happen to be the false things Putin is saying. That bothers me. It's that simple.

Finally, something concrete! Let's see:

I objected to the US sending ground troops to get into a hot war on the other side of the planet with a nuclear-armed power. The fact that Ukraine is a barely functioning democracy and corrupt to levels only Russia could dream of is more an observation and hopefully a deterrent to those vulnerable to calls for WWIII in order to "defend democracy."

Because it is.



Dude, he's the literal hero of Ukraine. That you turn a blind eye to the adulation Bandera has recieved from Ukrainians for years is rather interesting.

Which was hilarious because Russia is stuffed to the gills with Nazis; talk about calling the kettle black. No one in the entire West--and according to my Russian friends, in Russia either--bought this dumbass justification for invasion. Your insinuation that I helped lay the groundwork for a narrative that rang false for everyone is idiotic.

My exact wording was, "The situation is complex. Luhansk and Donetsk are facing an existential threat by Ukraine who keeps shelling them, killing thousands of civilians. Yet a Russian invasion of greater Ukraine is a looming threat and I think any reasonable person should be opposed to that." Your insinuation that the people of the DPR and LPR are not actually humans and have no right to self-determination and are merely husks for Putin to wield is... once again, rather interesting. I'm undecided on their validity as "independent states," but in hopes to prevent an invasion I think handing those areas over to self-rule was the right thing to do; not sure how much difference it would have made, and neither are you. But never did I say this is why Russia invaded, another flagrant lie.

The best you could argue is that I exaggerated the importance of certain specific things, which we could at least have a conversation about. But no, you just went for the Trumpist "fake news" accusation for easily verified facts. Not a good look dude.

Didn't Alex Jones use this exact cop-out to avoid being legally liable for spreading dangerous disinformation? Or was it Tucker Carlson...

Proposing that Ukraine is as corrupt as Russia (or implying it's even more so, as you have in the past) is plain delusional. Nobody is arguing that Ukraine has absolutely no corruption issues, but the massive steps Ukraine has taken over the past decade to rectify those issues are very much in evidence. Russia, on the other hand, began the 21st century with serious corruption problems that have consistently and steadily worsened since then-- and those problems are deep, systemic, and beyond any one administration or figure, to the point that some have concluded that reform is effectively impossible.


Yeah, you linked that article last time around, too. Again, it doesn't make the point you want it to make. In fact, the article itself points out that the influence of the far right in Ukrainian politics has been minimal. You have used the far right in Ukraine to delegitimize the Ukrainian government and draw a 'both sides' moral equivalency between Ukraine and Russia-- but the far right clearly has no real presence in Ukrainian politics. As I said before, the fact that western Nazis are attracted to Ukraine is not an excuse to write off the entire country as a fascist country.


A few things here.

One, Yushchenko's decision to confer that honor on Bandera was deeply controversial and many Ukrainians, as historian Serhii Plokhy points out in a 2017 article on post-Soviet Ukrainian politics, opposed that decision-- which was why Yushchenko waited until he'd already been voted out of office to do it. It was almost immediately reversed, to little controversy, once Yushchenko was no longer president. And when lawmakers proposed a bill to confer hero status on Bandera again a couple of years later, the Parliament shot it down with little compunction or discussion.

Two, Bandera's status as a 'national hero' among Ukrainians has never been rock solid. In fact, Yaroslav Hrytsak in a look at surveys of Ukrainian popular opinion in the latter years of the 90s and the early 2000s found that Bandera was frequently one of the three most unpopular figures in Ukraine, along with Stalin and Gorbachev. Ukrainians were unanimous in pointing instead to Peter I and Bohdan Khmelnytsky as figures of admiration and unity. Bandera has always been a figure of controversy in Ukraine, not unanimous praise.

Three, those Ukrainians who do profess admiration of Bandera have always centered their admiration on his opposition to the Soviet Union and his support for an independent Ukraine. I strongly believe-- and clearly very many Ukrainians agree-- that his antisemitism and collaboration with the Nazis disqualifies him from that admiration, but your constant references to Bandera's status in Ukraine in the same breath that you refer to the rise of Nazism in Ukraine seems intended to insinuate that Ukrainians who approve of Bandera do so because of his antisemitism, or his Nazi ties. This is obviously not the case.


Please, don't pretend I was out here accusing you of 'laying the groundwork'. You didn't. You just parroted the same talking points that Putin was spewing out about Ukraine being a hotbed of Nazism that needed to be cleansed. And you know what? Plenty of useful idiots on the left bought into it. Many that didn't consider it a justification for the invasion nonetheless considered it a valid reason to not be particularly concerned about the fate of the Ukrainian nation or its people.


lol, you can certainly make up strawmen to attack with the best of them.


Yeah, we'll never know what might have happened if Ukraine had permitted Russia to effectively saw off parts of its territory. I mean, maybe Russia would have stopped there, who knows?

And those areas were never destined for 'self-rule'. Any time Russia foments separatism and then recognizes a breakaway region in a neighboring country, it is always a pretext for its eventual integration into Russia. Look at South Ossetia, where Russia has increasingly taken steps to absorb the territory's political, military, and economic structure into itself and render it a Russian subdivision. Donetsk and Luhansk have been flooded with Russian passports-- which, again, was done in South Ossetia and preceded large-scale structural integration efforts. Both have been acknowledged to be economically reliant on and politically dominated by Russia. Both have been acknowledged to be political instruments used by Russia for leverage rather than actual, functioning states built on a foundation of popular support.

To believe Luhansk and Donetsk don't exist primarily as weapons wielded by Putin against Ukraine is naive. To believe they are destined for actual self-determination and sovereignty rather than increasing absorption into Russia is laughable.

As for your claim that you never pinned Russia's invasion on Ukraine's actions towards separatists-- this is you a couple of pages ago.




What's 'not a good look' is regurgitating Putin's talking points and then resorting to dissimulation and ad hominem attacks when you get called on it. Or telling us we need to think about it 'from Russia's perspective'. Or saying Ukraine should have just surrendered its territorial integrity and its autonomy as a country rather than fight. Or spouting falsehoods and lies that seek to undermine the legitimacy of a democratic government as it fights for its life against an autocratic imperialist state bent on imposing its will against it.

That's 'not a good look, dude'.

No. I said Ukraine had a troubling problem with Nazis. Which it does: Tornado, Donbass, Aidar, Shakhtyorsk and of course Svoboda, Azov and Right Sector are all well-established paramilitaries. The Azov Battalion was absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard due to their "exceptional" service during Maidan and are on the frontlines in the conflict in the Donbas. But they aren't just militants against Russian separatists. From an article I posted earlier from a Ukrainian journalist:

The kicker is that Russia has largely the same problem. But Russia isn't under the US's purview; meanwhile, Ukrainian paramilitaries are often armed with US weapons. I'm not a fan of giving weapons to far-right militias.

Oh delightful, an article for atlanticcouncil.com by the lunatic who berated Johnson for not starting WWIII. When I refer to corruption in Ukraine I'm not talking about the same corruption problems that plague Russia, I'm talking about western neocolonialism and carving up the country for multinational corporations to exploit labor.


I never said that Ukraine is a "fascist country" and I never said the far-right had a strong presence in its electoral system. I said that Ukraine is a mecca for Nazis around the world. Which it is. The far-right militias and paramilitaries are often funded and armed by the Ukrainian government and much of that funding and arming comes indirectly from the US. As a citizen of the US, I don't like that, especially with the hindsight of my country arming the Mujahideen and the Contras. I rather jokingly referenced the Atlantic Council earlier but I may as well simp for the architects of geohell here, since I imagine this is one of the few sources you wouldn't immediately dismiss as "Russian disinformation."


I didn't know that the "hero" status was reversed. I also didn't know Banderasplaining was an integral part of Russian disinformation. My awareness of him came from the often large and frequent marches that appeared in centrist western media (a lot of Israeli media too), almost always accompanied by people waving Svoboda and Azov flags.


Are the Atlantic Council and Freedom House (of all fucking places) also useful idiots who bought "the same talking points Putin was spewing?" I just don't like arming far-right militias which very easily could backfire on the democratically elected president (not to mention the rest of the world especially as the far-right is more organized and pronounced now than it's been in decades). That's all.


Yep, when Russia captured part of Georgia 14 years ago they didn't stop there and now Georgia is part of Russia!


When they voted overwhelmingly for the guy who got overthrown by western Ukraine maybe, just maybe they would prefer to be under the protection of a country that better aligns with their interests? Or did Russia rig their ballots too?


Thank you for cherry picking my post, I think I also wrote something else after that but I guess it wasn't important.


There's two different conclusions you could draw from this: 1) every media publication, every study, every interview, every academic, every anecdote that you interpret as being in some way aligned with Putin's interests is controlled disinformation disseminated by the Kremlin and then repeated by idiots like me or 2) Putin occasionally stumbles into valid points to justify wholly unjustifiable acts. Your posts frequently seem to minimize the violence the far-right has committed against marginalized groups in Ukraine, literally dismissing the broken bodies of Roma, LGBTQ people and feminists as "Russian disinformation," but I'd never accuse you of carrying water for fascists. Why you can't offer the same to me is baffling. I drag Putin every chance I get.

But I also find it interesting you're so triggered about merely examining "the Russian perspective." Is Thomas Friedman a Kremlin agent for echoing the same? Something to think about.

None of this addresses the points I made.


Comparing the US supplying Ukraine to the US supplying the Mujahideen and the Contras is an intellectually dishonest comparison. For one, the US can-- and has-- specifically require that arms and aid to Ukraine cannot be used to supply the Azov Battalion. This obviously could not be done in the two cases you're referring to, since the US was directly arming both parties. The US does not directly arm Azov, and it has legislative mechanisms to prevent that from happening. At best, US supplies might indirectly end up in the hands of an extremely small unit of the Ukrainian National Guard.

Which also brings me to a second point: estimates of the Azov Battalion's size don't exceed 2,500 at the most generous. The very article you linked notes that Azov is the only far right militia that has had any kind of government sanction-- none of the others you mentioned do, and some of them, as a tangential point, don't even exist anymore (Tornado, which was always much much smaller than Azov, was disbanded in 2015 and many of its members and leadership were arrested and indicted by the Ukrainian government for their crimes; the Shakhtyorsk Battalion disbanded around the same time as well). The Ukrainian armed forces constitute about 200,000 personnel. I'm not going to insist that the US abandon them to the Russians because some of the weapons they provide might fall into the hands of a group that represents at best something like 0.01% of Ukraine's military.

Ironically, the article you linked at the end there makes it very clear that the Ukrainian government and state cannot be conflated with the activities of these far-right groups, and cautions readers that "The Kremlin won’t hesitate to cynically use the far right’s activities to push its false claim that Ukraine is a hornet’s nest of fascists." Sounds pretty familiar. And incidentally, the guy your article refers to as the sole patron of the Azov Battalion in Ukrainian government-- the main reason they were ever legitimized and received government support-- isn't even part of the Ukrainian government anymore.

Also, with regards to this--


Go back and look. The only person in this conversation who has made a habit of attacking the sources used is you. I generally don't have a problem with your sources, just your interpretation of them.


No, but they also weren't using the presence of a far right element in Ukraine to argue that the west should not assist Ukraine in fighting off a Russian invasion, or that Ukraine isn't a real democracy.


Again, betrays a clear ignorance of the situation. Since the Russian invasion, Russia has used a tactic that's been referred to by defense experts and scholars as 'borderization' to gradually and slowly annex more and more Georgian territory as a means of dominating Georgia without provoking international outrage. The idea is that doing so will fly under the radar of most casual observers and thus people who aren't really paying attention will have no idea that Russia is seizing Georgian territory, which... obviously worked on at least one person here.


Now you're moving the goalposts. First Donetsk and Luhansk deserved self-rule-- now they'd be better off under Russian 'protection'?

Also, both 'countries' are horrible places to live. The people there are absolutely not doing better now than they were as Ukrainian citizens. People in Donetsk and Luhansk suffer arbitrary detention, torture, imprisonment, and forced disappearances for expressing pro-Ukrainian views, for having family members in Ukrainian law enforcement-- or just because somebody in military or political leadership doesn't like them and there's no semblance of rule of law to stop them from doing it. Freedom of speech is nonexistent, dissent has been crushed, and political control is exercised by state security apparatuses that are effectively fronts for Russian intelligence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee the region because they wanted to remain part of Ukraine and were being terrorized into silence. And if you want to talk about far-right, anti-LGBT elements, you should be aware of how both Donetsk and Luhansk have eroded protections for the LGBT community that existed under Ukrainian rule, sanctioned violence against LGBT people, and created a culture of terror for LGBT people within their borders. Or maybe of how the genesis of both 'countries' is intrinsically interwoven with Neo-Nazi and fascist organizations in Russia and eastern Ukraine.


There you go again. As I already said, the only person who has attacked the sources being used is you. At no point have I accused any of your sources of being 'disinformation disseminated by the Kremlin'. I have accused you of misinterpreting and misrepresenting those sources or omitting key information (either out of intellectual dishonesty or because you just don't know better) to support your faulty conclusions.



Nah, you don't get to exaggerate the presence of the far right in Ukraine as a way of discrediting the entire country as a legitimate democracy and then turn around and accuse me of 'dismissing the broken bodies of minorities' just because I point out that you're wrong.

If you want to have a conversation about why Ukraine needs to do more to address far right organizations operating in its borders, we can have that conversation. I'm sure we'll find plenty to agree on. But we're not having that conversation right now. We're discussing your willingness to use those organizations as a pretext to delegitimize Ukraine and draw a moral equivalency between their government and Russia's that is, to put it lightly, spurious and logically unsound.


Yes, which is why I don't think you're a proponent for Russia or its government-- just someone who is ignorantly feeding into its narratives. And while you haven't accused me of carrying water for fascists, you do like to put words in my mouth and erect strawmen in my name so you can imply I don't consider the residents of Luhansk/Donetsk human, or that I don't care about violence against the LGBT community and women. I don't appreciate that much more than being accused of carrying water for fascists.

Thank you very much for the support. It helps a lot to read messages like these.

And thank you for sharing your thoughts about courts and justise.
I've found this article about the process in the International Court of Justice, and it doesn't look promising.
It looks like Russia is completely ignoring anything law-related:
https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/ ... 8/7135492/
At least, the court can give an official order (and it won't take long).


Yes, it seems that the trial in International Criminal Court about the Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity can be effective and can give "real" actions and results, but the problem is that it's a very long process.
Russian occupiers and Russian bombs kill/terrorize/starve innocent civilians here in Ukraine every day, and it looks like there is no way/possibility to stop it now. It's horrible.

That legislation was purely performative, a way to placate the anti-war left while keeping business as usual. The reality of actually enforcing it tells a starkly different tale. And the UK shares the same problem.

I'm aware of borderization. It's primarily to inhibit NATO expansion. Say what you will about it but it's a far better method than the horror happening in Ukraine. I don't know if lopping off a tiny part of the country would've prevented this war--and it seems like Zelensky was open to doing so but was terrified of the backlash from the more colorful characters in his constituency--but anything to minimize the likelihood of shelling Kyiv wouldn't have been a bad thing.

lol, I've had to wade through a lot of clueless nonsense in your posts, but this takes the cake.

This conversation is no longer worth having. Let's not waste any more time on it.

Yeah, I changed what I wrote pretty quickly. It was a dumb statement.

How great that there's no idiots like you in US government

Idiots like Obama resisted sending lethal aid to Ukraine, but big-brain geniuses like Trump started drowning the country in American arms.