Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Thank you, George…

(miaow)

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

What’s the emoji for “nailed it” ?

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Hopefully, this reduces the number of missiles hitting Ukraine. Pretty much Russia's main tactic now is to bomb the country non-stop.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

You appear to be assuming that my dislike of the situation in Ukraine before the invasion (2nd most corrupt country in Europe/lots of actual Nazis/oppressing ethnic Russians/ allowing themselves to be used to irritate Russia) means that I am a fan of Putin. I'm not.

---------- Post added at 18:04 ---------- Previous post was at 17:54 ----------

Democratic?! You are aware that back in 2021 opposition party members were placed under house arrest? Or that TV stations were shut down?
OK, they were pro Russian politicians and TV channels but that was almost a year before things kicked off.
Ukraine was and is a byword for state and private sector corruption (second only to Russia) and we are meant to cheer for Zelensky and hate Putin? It's like being asked whether you prefer diarrhoea or constipation.
edit: For the record- I don't like Putin but I've been paying enough attention to the situation and history of what's been going in in Ukraine leading up to the invasion to understand that it's likely not a clear cut as we are being led to believe by the media. Both sides are corrupt and it's the people that suffer :(

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

But you don’t appear to have read enough to know that from Ukraine’s point of view it didn’t ‘kick off’ this year. They have been at war since 2014 and in a struggle with Russia since some time before that. The Orange Revolution in 2004-5 and the Euromaidan revolution of 2014 were both precipitated by Russian meddling in Ukrainian politics to try to secure Moscow-friendly governments in Kyiv. The Euromaidan event is most likely what made Putin realise that more direct attempts to destabilise the country would be required if his objectives were to be realised, leading to his sponsoring of separatist militias in the Donbas and, while everyone’s attention was in the east, the annexation of Crimea.

You’re right, it isn’t as clear cut as the media portrays it, it never is. The media likes a simple narrative that can be summarised in two sentences or less. But neither is it as clear cut as the equivocation you’re offering here.

And in any case, nothing - absolutely nothing - in Ukraine’s modern history negates its government’s right to assert control within its internationally recognised borders, even without the evidence of atrocities committed by Russians within those areas it has occupied.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Ukraine was invaded in 2014 so it's understandable that it would not tolerate TV channels endorsing the invasion.

Possessing a degree of corruption does not warrant an invasion from another country. Otherwise, France could invade us over PPE procurement and we could be invading Europe over the Qatar backhanders. And Putin has had a long-term stranglehold over power in Russia in the way that Zelensky has not had. But that's by the by.

The question is did one country invade the other's territory. The answer is: Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine and therefore should withdraw its occupying forces from Ukraine's territory.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

I'm not offering an equivocation ("an ambiguous or deliberately evasive statement"). I'm saying that they are both ( The Ukraine with the USAs help) pretty much as bad as each other. And civilians, as usual, are suffering .

---------- Post added at 23:05 ---------- Previous post was at 23:01 ----------

I agree. However NATO pressed forward since the fall of the Iron Curtain, despite promising not to do so. Russia is not innocent (obviously) but they were provoked. It's a shitty situation.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

That's paraphrasing Putin's argument.

Even if it were true, which it is not, as shown below, it would be no justification for Russia to invade Ukraine.

Here are some articles confirming the eastward expansion promise myth is precisely that:
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-...he-east-177085
https://www.politifact.com/factcheck...reement-again/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-matters-today

---------- Post added at 23:27 ---------- Previous post was at 23:23 ----------

You can't honestly believe that one country invading another's territory and murdering and torturing that country's citizens and deliberately damaging its infrastructure makes it as bad as the country it is invading?

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

I'm amused how you are linking to left wing media to justify your argument. Russia was nevertheless, provoked. Despite that, I don't think that it was right for them to have invaded.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

You were equivocating, as until your reply to Andrew here I suspect you were shy of offering a justification for Russia’s aggression. Now you’re plainly setting out what you think.

I have to say I don’t know exactly which well you’ve been drinking from these past couple of years but I don’t much like what it’s done to you. You’re coming off a bit too Tucker Carlson for my taste.

There is a disturbingly 19th century mindset at work behind what you say here. Sovereign states which are members of the United Nations simply do not invade one another, without clearance from the Security Council or in response to direct aggression (which is why, for all the crap that subsequently ensued, neither the Iraq nor Afghan wars of the early 2000s were actually illegal). That’s the ‘rules-based international order’ which has basically ensured world stability since 1945 and which Putin and the Russian State has completely trampled into the mud in Ukraine.

What you’re doing here is digesting and regurgitating watered down Russian propaganda (quite unknowingly I’m sure). The effect of what you’re saying is at best the assertion of sort of moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine. In fact I think it’s worse than that, because on the one hand you have been quite deliberately minimising Zelensky’s moral agency (by reference to a comedy routine from years ago) and that of the Ukrainian state (by misrepresenting the political upheaval it has experienced for almost 20 years now) whilst offering ‘provocation’ as the basis of a moral framework that reduces the gravity of the war crimes Putin has authorised. You would present Putin as someone misunderstood and misguided rather than what he is: a genocidal tyrant who will live in infamy.

Even the Daily Mail eventually acknowledged Hitler was a bad sort.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Stating something to be a fact does not make it one. I provided three sources for you to take your pick from in support of my argument of which only The Guardian is deemed left wing. What are your sources?

---------- Post added at 00:44 ---------- Previous post was at 00:19 ----------

It's timely to share Zelensky's joke he told on the Letterman show.
https://twitter.com/SabinaCiofu/stat...44390106185728

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Where did I do that? :confused:
I have repeatedly stated that I have no liking for the man. I'm sorry if I have come across as what you say. It was not my intention.
I have also already stated that the invasion was wrong.

The reason I posted what I did was to point out that before the invasion Ukraine was the second most corrupt nation in Europe and Zelensky was in charge of it. The fact that they've been invaded wouldn't have changed all that. Probably made the corruption worse if anything.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

I never said you liked him. I said that in legitimising the claim of provocation you lessen the seriousness of his crimes. He is not a 19th century emperor, he leads a senior member of the United Nations in the 21st century. ‘Provocation’ is not mitigation here.

The observation that Ukraine was, and remains, a deeply troubled society is totally irrelevant to the starting, continuing and the ending of the war and, again, has no relevance beyond reducing perceptions of the country’s moral agency. These observations are being promulgated by Russian propagandists precisely because they trigger MAGA Republicans in ways designed to lessen American support for Ukraine. I strongly suspect that your favoured internet sources are the ones that have been targeted by Russians in this way.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

One of the issues is that you claim the two countries to be as bad as each other.
Do you not agree that one country which invades another country illegally makes that country worse than the country being invaded? The fact that both Ukraine and Russia suffer from corruption does not alter this fundamental fact. It's just a red herring that even Putin would blush at using.

In terms of time lines, it's worth reminding ourselves that the first invasion of Ukraine was in 2014 and Zelensky became President five years after that.