but he is right. there is ample evidence to support the position that the west overthrew a democratically elected government. even if said government was corrupt, it was elected, and the west did collude to overthrow it. what part of his statement do you find proposterous ? in a normal situation we would not mind if a pro-west government was created, but in this instance this we are literally knocking on russia's door. why do that ? and taking further steps down this road, like saying "hey we won't send troops, teehehe but wait till you see what we will do, steps like that - we literally lit the fuse for what is happening today, and we have the audacity to say this invasion came out of nowhere.

For sure we can say russia are the bad guys and elements are commiting attrocities and their president has fallen off the deep end, but to say they are a nation of orc's, that they attacked unprovoked etc, thats such bullshit. I want the west to win, because i am western aligned but, what does win mean here ?? there is no win here, and certain there are no good guys. the reason why WW2 was so easy was because it was clear who the baddies were.

This post was edited by ferdia on Sep 15 2022 03:54pm

Both of these things are obviously true, it's astounding that grown-ass adults are unable to accept it.

I came of 'political age' as a teenager while the second War in Iraq was starting up, I imagine that's true of a lot of people who are still playing D2 in 2022. It was bewildering watching adults around me being like "hmm, yes, those grainy tubes in this picture must be WMD!" I felt like I was going insane.

Years later, this anti-Russia and anti-China stuff strikes me as even more unbelievable. This guy you're talking with just flat out refuses to accept reality on both points. This other one just posts the same gif over and over.


They make them. They have factories that make them. You stick metal and dynamite in one end and on the other end a missile pops out. Maybe the only input they don't produce locally are the semiconductors but (1) I'm not even sure that's true and (2) they surely have years and years of stockpiles, because they're cheap-as-dirt 48nm+ chips like everything in military hardware.

This post was edited by kusotarre1 on Sep 15 2022 03:46pm

caveat- the emphasis has to be on "yet" for "Russia hasn't been targeting infrastructure yet"
Being set back / in retreat right now, it isn't a coincidence we're seeing:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/15/ukraine-dam-hit-by-russian-missiles-in-zelenskyys-hometown

I mean, a dam, like a power plant or a water facility, is an easy target and impossible to defend (against modern weapons, don't get started on ww2 torpedo nets)

Yep

From the article:
This is so delusional. Nearer the start of this war, I'd have wondered "are they being serious, do they think the Russians care where Zelensky was born?" But now I know they are completely serious, these people are deranged.

The flooding apparently wiped out all the Ukrainian pontoon bridges downstream, and the dam itself was being used as a river crossing.

Which of the points I highlighted is incorrect though? Nothing I said somehow elevates their capabilities unreasonably tbh.

They mobilized 150-200k out of 3 million (if counting reserves). They can bomb critical infrastructure and they can obviously deliver nukes. All large cities are vulnerable. Without water/gas/electricity quality of life would be very difficult in metros, I can see further waves of refugees. If they start crippling grids in Kiev or western cities, I would put money that more Ukrainians are coming to Germany.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Sep 15 2022 05:42pm

It's almost as if Russia wants to conquer Ukraine and make it part of its own empire, rather than raze it to the ground so they can rule over the rubble.... or control purported gas fields off Ukraine's shore or control their grain, or whatever other explanation for Russia's attack have been floating around. They will flatten a city if it's heavily defended and in a crucial strategic position (e.g. Mariupol and Lyssychantsk), but doing so everywhere would go against their goals in this war.

Also note that civilian infrastructure in population centers like Kyiv or Kharkiv was targeted all the time - train stations, hospitals, theaters, residential buildings and such. Taking the fact that Russia hasn't targetted the infrastructure they would themselves need after taking over these cities (e.g. electricity, heating, dams) as evidence for their restraint is a huge stretch.



Bad comparison. An outgoing president obviously has no authority whatsoever to overrule the election which booted him from office. In the case of Jan 6, there was no gridlock between different branches of government; Trump being reinstated would have happened on the heels of naked violence. By contrast, Ukraine's parliament had the authority to pass the EU-UA association agreement, just like Yanukovych had the authority to veto its ratification. Both sides held a legitimate position.

Then why did Yanukovych feel the need to let his special police attack the protesters on the Maidan square?




That's such a disingenuous framing...

Fact of the matter is that Ukraine was a deeply divided country and had been subject to a tug-of-war between the West and Russia since at least the Orange Revolution in 2004. When the legislative and the executive entered a gridlock over the association agreement in 2014, supporters of the pro-EU side started protests against the president, to which he responded with increasing nervousness and violence. At some point, things reached a boiling point, Kyiv entered a state of civil war and Yanukovych lost control and had to flee the country. The pro-Russia parts of the country weren't happy about this development and thus put up virtually no resistance when Russian forces occupied them a few weeks later. The whole development was a total mess.

Since the Euromaidan revolution and Russia's annexation of Crimea and large parts of Donbass were both not exactly squeaky clean from a democratic point of view, the West largely did not respond with tough sanctions or warmongering and instead tried to enshrine the new status quo. Hollande and Merkel tried everything in their power to find a peaceful solution, Obama denied Ukraine the javelin missiles they were asking for, and so on. This status quo is what we should still have today, but Putin decided to pull the trigger on a full-blown invasion of all of Ukraine instead, without a clearly defined proximate cause. He did it at the exact moment when gas and oil prices were high again for the first time since the fracking boom had started eroding them in 2014, at a time when he deemed the West weak and disorganized, at a time when he thought his preparations were finally finished.

The number of 3 million potential Russian soldiers only exists on paper. Also, drafting all of their reserves would totally cripple Russia's economy because these men would be missing in their regular jobs...
Pulling more of its regular troops toward Ukraine would come with great risk for Russia for the reasons I outlined. Drafting more young men from Russia's heartland instead of the boondocks would come with considerable political risk to Putin and his regime, which is the glaringly obvious reason why he has so far shied away from this option.


An unprovoked nuclear first strike by Russia would not only go against its own nuclear doctrine, it would carry a substantial risk of sparking a nuclear conflict with NATO. That's a line not even a cold, cunning daredevil will cross easily.


Ukrainian girls are hot, I would welcome more fresh meat and even lower prices in our German brothels.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2022 05:57pm

What you're describing is a coup. Not some legitimate political separation of powers and competing democratic interests of coequal branches of government. A violent mob overthrew the government, stormed their offices by force and instituted their own new government. Yanukovych was lawfully elected in a democratic election. The post-Euromaidan regime was put in power by the CIA micromanaging the aftermath of a coup. Like it was the good old days in south america. And what followed was a country split in half with the disenfranchised east separating. Further elections held no representation of them. It was pro-western forces overthrowing a democracy because they didn't like the consensus of the governed and wanted to impose their minority rule over a disenfranchised majority. Doesn't help that a considerable number of them were actual nazis.

None of that grants some grand moral standing for Russia's invasion, nor does the 8 year siege you kind of glossed over. What it does explain, however, is the rational self-interest of Russia and their motive for invading. The western sphere of influence crept across all the buffer states in east europe under Albright's aggressive NATO expansion until it reached right up to Russia's doorstep and knocked down their friendly regime in Ukraine by force. At that point, a forceful response from Russia was inevitable. And he acted in 2014, and he acted in 2022, and maybe he timed it optimally for our weakest moment, maybe what looks like grand strategic planning now will turn out in retrospect to be Putin's worst mistake, I don't know.

But its definitely not one-sided aggression. NATO expanded into the Russian sphere of influence by force. We can call it a passive-aggressive invasion versus an aggressive one, but it was clearly started on our end.

It's amazing how you (Black Xistenz) can type all this out without once mentioning the NED, the fascists firing on protesters, the burning of the trade hall and Victoria Nuland literally being recorded on what she thought was a private call deciding who the next president of Ukraine would be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2XNN0Yt6D8


They immediately imposed sanctions on Russia.

What's missing here is what was Russia's response to all this? Well, the same as Europe's - trying to get Minsk implement by Ukraine, keeping the country in one piece (sans Crimea) and putting an end to the slaughter of Russians in the defacto breakaway republics. So despite what you say, Russia ALSO wanted the status quo. Why didn't it happen? Ukraine and America.


Russia pulled the trigger on the war when it was clear that Ukraine, after 8 years of not implementing Minsk and terrorizing Russians in the Eastern parts of Ukraine, was going to launch a full-scale invasion of those parts of the country returning them to the control of the Kiev central government. A week before the invasion, the OSCE recorded strikes rising from their years-long average of around 20-80 per day, skyrocketing to over 1000 on some days. As the OSCE themselves note, over 80% of the ceasefire violations came from the Ukrainian side.

This is what prompted the Russian recognition of the breakaway republics and allowed them to appeal for direct assistance from Russia.

You keep trying to paint Russia (and Putin) as implacably hostile, just biding their time until they could strike at the despised Westerners, but in addition to what I've laid out above, consider that we know that Russia tried to join the EU multiple times as was rebuffed. We know Putin asked Bill Clinton about joining NATO (since the USSR was gone, now) and Clinton laughed in his face. All these things together paint a picture of Russia that was open to integration with Europe, that tried to find peace in Ukraine's civil war for almost a decade, that finally invaded after all these overtures were rebuffed and even then, much to the chagrin of so many Russian nationalists who are spitting all over their monitors because Ukraine retook Kharkov oblast, has fought this war without fully fighting this war.

This post was edited by kusotarre1 on Sep 15 2022 06:10pm