Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Sir Mohamed]

Based Biden.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1510996562394103808

[It’s so Joever]

As several posters above have said - it’s understandable to be absolutely enraged by this - I’d be more worried if you weren’t (*cough* compucomp). I’ll confess where there are some days I want NATO planes to fly over the border and destroy as much Russian equipment in UA as possible. But in the current world order, that’s just not an adult or acceptable move. Escalation is a dangerous game, and not one the West is willing to play with Putin.

I'll largely hold my tongue on this because if I don't I'm in danger of getting banned due to "genocide denial" or something like that, but I read the update on CNN and saw that there were "20 bodies of civilian men" found on the street in Bucha. There were probably around 20 people that got shot dead in Chicago yesterday.

And this right here is why I care not for you or your family. As far as I am concerned, you all should be locked up if you don’t leave the country in a few days.

[Person Man]

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1510695804750766093

The Russian Orthodox Church has always been a tool used by those in power. Say what you will about the Catholic Church, but it represented an actual separate node of power throughout much of Western European Medieval history and thus could serve as a counterbalance against rulers who pushed their luck. The Orthodox Church is a glorified puppet institution.

So i.e., not really a church? Not to be hyperbolic, but a Christian Church that can't be an independent and powerful force in society that is separate from the Government can't really be a church, can it?

[Person Man]

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1510995048317571078



https://twitter.com/MKuefner/status/1510992063331975181

Two words that we all should know yesterday:

Kennel. Now.

[Person Man]

https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1510908227202002947?s=20&t=WSrXNAVt...

This thread includes an english translation of the article and it's F'ing points. All that's really missing for the historical record are claims that Ukraine should be opened up as Living Space for Russians and Russian enterprise.

I mean, if its anywhere that should be "opened up", its Russia right now.

[Hnv1]

Based Biden.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1510996562394103808

I'm all for. once Bush faces them over Iraq.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Based Biden.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1510996562394103808

I'm all for. once Bush faces them over Iraq.

I hate Bush as much as anyone but piss off with the false equivalence 🤬

[WMS]

I wonder if all the hideous people online in India and China and South Africa and Serbia and Kenya and Brazil and yes in the United States and other countries too who have been engaging in whataboutism and “both sides” and ‘but muh revolutionary support from the Soviet Union’ have enough self-awareness to feel deeply ashamed by now?

[Person Man]

Based Biden.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1510996562394103808

I'm all for. once Bush faces them over Iraq.

I hate Bush as much as anyone but piss off with the false equivalence 🤬

> Russia has done more in Ukraine in 6 weeks than Bush did in Iraq in 6 years and that was with Bush actually being able to take Iraq over.

> There was actually a good reason to invade Iraq but instead Bush lied about the causus belli. I originally favored it and still do in principle, but the corruption and incompetence quickly illustrated that it was a failed operation. Bush and members of his administration should be held responsible for the negligence and fraud that they committed and the unnecessary mercurial violence they encouraged in regards to Iraq.

> The only reason Russia invaded Ukraine was because they wanted  back the territory they lost during the dissolution of the USSR.

> Let's talk about the here and now instead of someone else kind of doing the same thing and getting away with it.
 

[Middle-aged Europe]

I wonder if all the hideous people online in India and China and South Africa and Serbia and Kenya and Brazil and yes in the United States and other countries too who have been engaging in whataboutism and “both sides” and ‘but muh revolutionary support from the Soviet Union’ have enough self-awareness to feel deeply ashamed by now?

Some Indians named their kids after Hitler because he was a "strong leader" who fought against the British Empire.

[John Dule]

I have been discussing this conflict with my old college roommate, a Chinese mainlander and ardent CCP supporter. While I agree that we should focus on the here-and-now, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the war crimes committed by the US in Iraq whenever people like this bring up their usual whataboutisms. Don't even try to contest the fact that Bush is a war criminal with these people. Just tell them that both he and Putin should be in front of a Hague tribunal.

[Person Man]

I have been discussing this conflict with my old college roommate, a Chinese mainlander and ardent CCP supporter. While I agree that we should focus on the here-and-now, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the war crimes committed by the US in Iraq whenever people like this bring up their usual whataboutisms. Don't even try to contest the fact that Bush is a war criminal with these people. Just tell them that both he and Putin should be in front of a Hague tribunal.

At this very moment, that's not important.

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1511041024063381508

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1511007679937884160

[lfromnj]

https://wargaming.com/en/news/business-operations-worldwide/
Belarussian gaming company based in Cyprus for Tax purposes is moving out of Russia/Belarus.

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1510986820196130818

[Middle-aged Europe]

https://mobile.twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1511035183650295812

[BlueSwan]

I wonder if all the hideous people online in India and China and South Africa and Serbia and Kenya and Brazil and yes in the United States and other countries too who have been engaging in whataboutism and “both sides” and ‘but muh revolutionary support from the Soviet Union’ have enough self-awareness to feel deeply ashamed by now?

I wouldn’t count on it. They are probably doubling down instead. These are dark dark times. Elections in Hungary and Serbia were disasterous. We should all fear the french election.

[Middle-aged Europe]

https://mobile.twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1511035183650295812

https://mobile.twitter.com/AFP/status/1511039450855452677

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In this instance, I don't think Katyn is an apt comparison either, given what we know about the focus on civilian or armed civilians. It may be closer to what happened in Srebrenica.

Ultimately Bucha is simply Bucha and hopefully we can get a better picture of what happened there.

I would agree that every massacre is its own event and can only be properly understood on its own terms (and details in this case are still lacking even if the overall picture is horrifically clear), however...

The thing about Katyn is that while it involved the murder of Polish officers, it is not correct to assume (as is often done, at least outside Poland) that the victims were entirely or even primarily career soldiers, though many were. The entire adult male population of Poland had been mobilised and every man under a certain age was in the army in some form or other, a fact that was reflected in the POWs captured by the Soviets. What happened was a calculated massacre of as much of Poland's present and future military and civilian leadership as was possible. A huge chunk of the country's intelligentsia was killed; anyone seen as a possible threat to the incorporation into the Soviet Union of what had been Eastern Poland was.¹

And it's the aim that is the relevant point of comparison here: this goal of 'slighting' Ukrainian society so that it cannot fight back either in the short or long term. Potential military and political threats are murdered, while a large number of civilians are deported into Russia to further break up any possible resistance.² What has happened has clearly been on a small scale compared to Katyn (where nearly thirty thousand were murdered, and it wasn't the only such massacre), but this is to be expected as Katyn followed a successful invasion whereas these murders have not, but the mentality and the logic behind them appear to be close to identical.

<sub>1. Of whatever ethnicity: nearly a tenth of victims were Jewish and many Ukrainians and Belarussians were murdered as well.
2. Again, an identical strategy: for a whole range of extremely grim reasons we don't know exactly how many Poles were deported to Siberia after 1939 (one of whom was the grandmother of my sister-in-law), but it was a lot.</sub>

[President Johnson]

Based Biden.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1510996562394103808

After this and "war criminal" remarks, I really can't imagine how he'd stand next to Putin at the G20 summit later this years or the ASEAN summit. If Putin isn't uninvited (doubtful), I could see the Western leaders either boycott these meetings altogether, or Biden sends someone else in his place (Kamala?).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

After this and "war criminal" remarks, I really can't imagine how he'd stand next to Putin at the G20 summit later this years or the ASEAN summit.

He should stand next to him and then kick him in his right leg. Many of us are curious and would like to find certain things out.

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1511063563028283398

[Cashew]

Based Biden.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1510996562394103808

I'm all for. once Bush faces them over Iraq.

I hate Bush as much as anyone but piss off with the false equivalence 🤬

> Russia has done more in Ukraine in 6 weeks than Bush did in Iraq in 6 years and that was with Bush actually being able to take Iraq over.

> There was actually a good reason to invade Iraq but instead Bush lied about the causus belli. I originally favored it and still do in principle, but the corruption and incompetence quickly illustrated that it was a failed operation. Bush and members of his administration should be held responsible for the negligence and fraud that they committed and the unnecessary mercurial violence they encouraged in regards to Iraq.

> The only reason Russia invaded Ukraine was because they wanted  back the territory they lost during the dissolution of the USSR.

> Let's talk about the here and now instead of someone else kind of doing the same thing and getting away with it.
 

That argument would have had more credibility outside the west if it was actually talked about rather than swept under the rug with "whataboutery" being one of the things keeping it in the public conciousness.

[Alben Barkley]

The bitterest of confirmations. Is anyone surprised at how Russia has acted in Ukraine? This is how they’ve been acting for the past twenty to thirty fucking years!!! Syria, Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, the CAR, South Sudan, and even more places. A thing I hadn’t gotten around to posting yet involves a question in Freedom House’s calculations: “Is the government or occupying power deliberately changing the ethnic composition of a country or territory so as to destroy a culture or tip the political balance in favor of another group?” It’s an additional question under Political Rights, Functioning of Government. It’s basically the Ethnic Cleansing and/or Genocide Question. Russia is guilty multiple times - South Ossetia, Crimea, the Eastern Donbas, and a bit further back in Abkhazia and Transnistria directly, and participated a little less directly in Syria, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and further back in Bosnia. Most of the other cases involve their buddies in China (both Tibet and in Xinjiang), Myanmar (the military government), Sri Lanka, the Sudan…all such sterling examples of human rights.

You know something else they have in common? They keep getting away with it, because it was deemed too costly to ever do anything about it. Some of us have been sounding the alarm since at least 2008*, only to be mocked and scorned by vile people from the left and right alike. But inaction is an action all its own. Many of you aren’t old enough to remember the Rwandan Genocide, where action could’ve saved some of the victims. Or Bosnia, where the killing only stopped when action was finally taken. Or ‘peace at any price’ applied to North Korea in 1994 - that sure worked out well**.

But it’s easy to turn your heads away when it doesn’t affect you personally, huh?

Well, wake up chucklefucks, because the people behind all of these atrocities are out to destroy democracy worldwide. Or have you not goddamned noticed the Russian and Chinese*** money and influence spread worldwide aimed at displacing both Western influence and Western values in order to replace them with something far grimmer****. That includes the support of anti-democratic forces in democratic countries, or have the examples of, say, Fidesz and the GOP not made that clear*****?

You think this world conflict can be avoided by appeasement? That’s what’s led to where we are now! The autocracies of the world will not stop until either democracy dies or autocracy is shattered. The options are surrendering or resisting. But holy shit do some people not get that. Or else they do get it, and welcome surrender, whether out of hate for the Western system that gives them the freedom to act like prats, or out of the belief that peace is worth any price, even global autocratic subjugation.

You can see what a world of autocracies would be like. Just start reading some human rights reports. Then apply that to everyone. Is this what you want? Because if not, then the democracies of the world are going to have to take a stand against their enemies both within and without.

I’m sure plenty of people are already dismissing me as an alarmist or a warmonger or a chickenhawk or whatever bullshit terms come to mind. But I’ve been right about this. Which is the bitterest confirmation of all, because cowardice and confusion and sociopathy and fear have led us all into an abyss that I worry will only be escaped from when it’s filled with the corpses of millions of innocents.

*I saw that thread on Russia invading Georgia from 2008 and yup, I was right. Unfortunately.
 **Yes, I would’ve supported intervention instead. How many millions of North Koreans have died of starvation and oppression since 1994? I bet it’s a LOT more than would have if the North Korean regime had been toppled at its weakest point. But blah blah money blah blah invincible North Korean military blah blah fuck the North Korean people amirite?
***And others. Usually under the rubric of opposing the West. This includes both the Saudis and Iranians. Plus their willing supporters.
****Unless you like the jackboots as long as you get to wear them? Looking at tankies and Trumpists alike, here.
*****Yes, the GOP is a clearly authoritarian party now, riddled with Russian influence. I guess after subverting the Greens the Russians decided to go big.