> You really believe that's how it works? that russians can just choose not to be involved.
Yes. The Russians chose to invade, they choose to continue to occupy Ukraine and they choose to both commit terrible war crimes and act like idiots.
> Like the east Ukrainians can just choose to be autonomous?
This is a false equivalency.
Do you think it was wrong to call the Nazis monsters?, a Orc is merely a monster, calling someone a Orc is no less dehumanising than saying someones particularly heinous actions were monstrous.
What do you think of the Russian talking points that dehumanise the entire country of Ukraine and talks about them in a way that pretty much precludes that they are fake people and should be genocide'd if need be?.
> There are extensive documentaries predating the war on the Ukrainian Fascists that use Nazi iconography - Right Sektor, Azov, etc.
Same with Russia Nazi fascists everywhere, just look up the Wagner PMCs great SS lightning bolt lapel tattoos.
The difference is the Z swastika in Russia is promoted and run by the government.
> In war the first casualty is truth
There’s truth and proof to everything I’ve said but I get the feeling you would deny the existence of concentration camps in WW2 by spouting the same nonsense.
> Russia is taking all the ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine, which means 4 more oblasts.
So your answer to getting Russia out of Ukraine is to give Russia parts of Ukraine.
Russias actually lost its positions in massive amounts of land in Ukraine already in the past counter offensive and will lose more this time.
> Ukraine is historically Russian though the borders have been fluid on the west flank where it fell under the Mongols, the Polish, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Duchy of Lithuania.
What is this horseshit, Ukraine existed before Moscow was even on a map.
> One might say the same for Ukraine. Nazi Azov Battalion was the main attacker of Donbas, Nazi structures are definitely embedded into Ukrainian state.
> So it is natural to join forces for a shared goal.
That's like releasing a lion to eat your house neighbor because you had a quarrel. It's really THAT stupid. These are Nazis, they are not people with whom you can reason. Not to mention the message you are sending to others: I wanna come to power no matter what, I'll do whatever it takes (rape, kill, steal, etc) to stay there. So you're no better than the current ones, you might even be worse.
> And Ukraine is not a battlefield created by super-powers. Super powers only aligned with the sides after it erupted. And people don't give a shit about them anyway.
Do you know what are you even talking about? You think Klitschko and Yatsenyuk being in Berlin 24 hours before the mess, is just a coincidence. It might be, but I can't believe it. I'll go with the conspiracy that they got full support from Germany and USA and they decided that it was time to use guns. The fact that other forces, which are not controlled by the opposition weighted in, is irrelevant. I mean, THEY are the irrelevant part, not the other way around.
> People are just fed with corruption and criminals in power, all the political fighting is secondary here, despite Russian propaganda efforts to paint it otherwise.
And what exactly to propose for people to do: Overthrown the government not by elections but by force? This gave (actually already did happen) the excuse to USA, EU and Russia to weight in. We might even see an armed conflict there, as we saw in Syria.
The thing is that you can't fight fire with fire, because you'll get burned. Of course the largest part of the population - no in Ukraine, everywhere - can not see the big picture until it's too late. History repeats itself.
I feel for the people, I agree that both sides are equally corrupted but I don't think violence is the answer. It will only make things worst.
Yes, but most Russians are still not punished for their crimes like Crimean Goths. Moreover, they openly wear fascists symbol: ROA flag, and Russian Eagle is surprisingly similar to German Eagle.
> USSR was brutal. World War 2 was extremely brutal - they lost 30 million people
USSR lost 12 millions in WWWII, fighting Poland with Germany (1939), Finnish, and Germany with England and US. Losses are raised to 42 millions to hide 30 millions Ukrainians killed during Holodomor (7 million adults and 23 million children). RF accepted number (02.04.2008) is 7 millions only, but they are still hiding them in WWWII losses.
> USSR was pissed at how rabidly some Ukrainians and others killed people when they sided with the Nazis.
Guess what? If you kill millions of Ukrainians, they remember that for a long time.
Anyway, Berlin was taken by First Ukrainian front and Second Ukrainian front. No Russian army was involved in the taking of Berlin, because Russian Liberation Army (ROA) was on Nazi side.
Please enlighten me, what other European country not only gave the arms to a Neo-Nazi gang (making it a government supported armed gang), absolved them of from any persecution from their misdeeds (including torture of civilians, as documented by OHCHR) AND incorporated it as a full featured unit in it's own army?
Complete with a wolfsangel, black sun and reichsadler on the coat of arms, you know, a long standing historical symbols of Ukraine along with vyshyvanka ?
Can you imagine something happening in a present day Germany? Poland? Latvi... well, in Latvia it could happen just fine, sure thing.
The problem is not in Azov, the problem is what there is too many nazi (real nazi, adoring AH and German nazi, not just 'extremely nationalistic' ones) everywhere in Ukraine, including government AND army. If the layer of shit in the cake is only 2% it is still a cake with a shit layer.
> If Azov is all the nazis that Ukraine has, they are better than most western countries.
No, Azov isn't 'all the nazis' sadly. In the first week of war there was enough UPA flags in the videos to tell that.
without knowing of a minimum of related history, you're still feeling like you cam meaningfully comment.
>The narrative of the russian officials is like the ukranian army places its heavy units in residential areas which makes them difficult to attack without causing collateral damage.
You feel necessary to repeat Russian propaganda again. According to that Russia propaganda the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad are guilty of Stalingrad destruction not German Nazi.
Anyway, if Ukrainians are hiding heavy units in residential areas when why all this tremendous amount of videos of the widespread residential destruction by Russian bombings contain no Ukrainian weaponry? Showing destroyed Ukrainian tank which was hidden in the children sandbox would be a great propaganda scoop for Russians, yet somehow they still haven't managed to show anything like this.
Vacuum - in the linked video the explosion is pretty characteristic of vacuum munition https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H6Hj5VoZN_k . And there is a number or reports of Russian TOS-1 "Buratino" - vacuum munition missile launcher, and that weapon "shines", ie. extremely damaging in cities, not open field.
> Doesn't Russia has its own Nazi problem at the domestic level?
Every western country has some localized neo-nazi phenomenon. But I don't think any of them have official sanction or form part of that country's armed forces. This might be a first.
> It does not justify the invasion at this scale against a functioning democracy.
The only thing that matters here is Putin's words because he has the military power to back them. He says Russians have been murdered in large numbers. And there is some evidence that things like that happen.[1][2]
> If you're arming Kiev and Kiev is arming these "members with a problematic past" (nice euphemism) then you're also arming them
Which, again, is (largely) not happening. The Azov regiment fell last May; our weapons had barely begun arriving in Kyiv then.
> this logic worked well for Iraq and Afghanistan
You're describing supporting a dictator and terrorist insurgencies with supporting a democracy. Ukraine is closer to WWII. We aren't trying to create a state where one never existed, destroy a state that was previously stable or cause an insurgency to annoy someone; we're helping an extant state fight for its survival.
(Also, are you arguing nobody in Britain or France or Poland in WWII had problematic views? Does that mean the American war effort, and subsequent Marshall Plan, was in support of those elements?)
> the Azov Brigade has been long restored and rearmed. They have new members and they trained them already
So a new group of people adopted fallen symbols, and we're supposed to assume ideological continuity [1]?
I'm not going to argue there is no far-right element in Ukraine, or even in the Ukrainian military. In an ideal, world, they'd be expelled. But in an ideal world, Moscow wouldn't be launching a land war in Europe. It's misleading to the point of incorrectness to say we're arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine, or that these people form a significant amount of the present Ukrainian military or state, or that they have material influence over Kyiv.
> Russia has invaded Ukraine in order to protect Russian interests.
Russia has literally stated that they don’t consider Ukraine a real country they invaded to try and take over the country. I guess given Russias history you could count that as “protecting Russias interests”.
> The lives of the people of Russia are threatened by NATO armaments in Ukraine.
The only thing NATO armaments in Ukraine threatened is Russias ability to invade Ukraine. But once again I can see why given their history Russia might see a country being protected by others that they wish to subjugate and invade as a threat to themselves.
> It's more true yet since USA has supported the Nazi brigades who have killed civilians in Donbas ever since,
Your links literally don’t say this they mention the Azov and children dying separately.
> If Ukraine had sought peace with Russia, as the majority of Ukrainians would have chosen to do (this was Zelensky's primary, if Wilsonian, campaign promise when he won election) [5], this invasion probably would not have happened. So, yes, there are people associated with USA who bear a large portion of blame for the invasion.
Ukraine already had a promise from Russia to not invade or threaten its borders when it gave up its nuclear weapons. Look how much good that did, Russia doesn’t understand peace agreements only weapons. Any “peace agreement” with Russia just means they’ll invade on the future when they aren’t happy.
Let’s be clear, the only people to blame for this war are Russia, they decided to invade and they can leave at any point.
And if you want to talk about Nazis maybe you should think about which side is raping civilians, performing mass executions of civilians and running “filtration camps”.
The Russians are literally committing genocide in Ukraine, there’s only one side that’s the fascists here and that’s Russia.
>What is the actual goal here? Can someone please explain to me why this is all happening?
Well in Putin's own words, it seems obvious and clear. Ukraine's government are Nazis who are committing genocide over Russians in the new republics as Ukraine invaded the republics to reclaim the land.
“As I said in my previous address, one cannot look at what is happening there without compassion. It was simply impossible to endure all this. It was necessary to stop this nightmare immediately – the genocide against the millions of people living there, who rely only on Russia, hope only on us. It was these aspirations, feelings, pain of people that were for us the main motive for deciding to recognise the people’s republics of Donbas.”
“What I think is important to emphasise further. In order to achieve their own goals, the leading NATO countries support extreme nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine in everything, who, in turn, will never forgive the Crimeans and Sevastopol residents for their free choice – reunification with Russia.”
While all this nazi crap is absurd. We can also discount the possibility that Putin has been misled. He's ex-KGB. They were actively trained to be able to avoid exactly that. Instead this is obvious propaganda. The president of ukraine is jewish and target #1. Obviously not a nazi, this was more to mislead the russian duma and russian people.
>What an absolute disgrace that we fight each other over BS orders. So many lives, especially of young people, lost for what?
We have to figure out the 'they didnt go into iraq for wmds, they went there for oil'. It's all pure speculation. Go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Ukraine and throw a dart. Whatever you hit, that's it.
If you have been following... there's about a trillion $ of investment in new chip fabs. Everyone in the world is rushing to build chip fabs. Russia taking this neon production could give them the edge they need... To what end?
Oh, sure, the shit started only month ago and there was nobody else to defend except a Nazi unit of a regular army, amirite? And it didn't existed for 8 previous years, right?
> the blame for tolerance of Azov is purely on Russian aggression.
... blame for tolerance? What?
> The only reason it's still standing is because of Azov
Or maybe they just don't want to surrender because they somehow know they would receive the same treatment they gave all those years?
> This shows that the tolerance of Azov was unfortunately necessary in order to stop Russian aggression
And now you are justifying a literal Nazis... Or maybe you are just actually sympathize with them?
"The reason for the massacre, according to the historian Gerhard Weinberg, was that Stalin wanted to deprive a potential future Polish military of a large portion of its talent".
Also, if they wanted to destroy the Polish state, they probably would have then as Poland had no way to defend itself at the time.
> Because Russia is waging a freaking war with Ukraine right now and threatening nuclear holocaust to Poland?!
> Like WTF?!
Exactly. If you believe Russia is threatening nuclear holocaust and has an agenda to destroy all Poles for whatever reason, I can see how you would be prepared to do anything in your power to destroy them, perhaps kill off every one in their country, because that would be justified if your aprehensions are true.
That makes me scared for the future of Europe because this sort of hatred is bound to, one day, blow up again, sooner than most think (as it's doing now in Ukraine).
It does happen everywhere. European countries in NATO have been responsible for more deaths than the russians. It's hilarious. People are pretending ukraine is the only war that ever existed. Ukraine is the tamest ongoing war right now. The least civilian deaths of any serious war since the turn of the century.
> Made me think about how the allies made Germans face the atrocities that they where in denial about after the war, making them go to the camps, dig the graves, watch the footage
That is literally post-war indoctrination/propaganda. Had the germans won ww2, they would have made the british, americans, russians, etc confront their own war crimes.
What questions of any importance or relevance to this war would it possibly raise? Are you suggesting that if Ukraine really was wall-to-wall Nazis that maybe Russia is somehow justified here? Maybe WW2 wasn't quite finished after all? Good grief. Stop stirring the turd for no good reason other than to rile people up.
Exactly the same logic followed by US/Germany elites fuelling and capitalising on this war by selling weapons and preventing peace talks.
> Red Army had meat wave attacks in WW2 and lost millions, but achived all it's war goals (Poland, Baltics, Eastern Europe including half of Germany
This reads as if Red Army was aggressor and not Nazis, are you deranged ?
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