Quote (ferdia @ 2 Mar 2023 22:41)
afaik he got that number from the UN. let me guess, the UN is not a reputable source either ?
Number of civilian casualties during the war in Ukraine 2023. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified a total of 8,006 civilian deaths during Russia's invasion of Ukraine as of February 26, 2023. Of them, 488 were children.
/i would suggest that its impossible to verify total injured / dead and would agree it must be higher. but 200K ? no. oh did i whataboutism there.
where do you see anyone arguing for silencing criticism here ? you are literally creating your own narrative. you are dreaming up what you think we are saying when we are not saying it.
you once again uncritically side with (being sympathetic to his spin, while talking about those pushing back against his whataboutisms as "they") the obvious and unapologetic kremlin bot, and pretend that context doesn't matter. it does though.
if you merely want to point out that american foreign policy in the middle east has been disastrous, that's a fair point to make. i have said so for a long time in multiple threads, you can look at my post history to verify that. if you, however, ONLY ever do so as a reply to people pointing out russian war crimes - with the clear intention of
silencing said criticism and trying to downplay the war crimes by comparison then it's just pro russian hackery. american war crimes don't justify russian war crimes. how difficult is that to understand?
Quote (ferdia @ 2 Mar 2023 22:53)
The position held, by neutrals, is that Russia warned the West, repeatedly, to keep its hands off Ukraine. Gernany understood this in 2008. The US understood it but wanted to do it anyway. This is Fact.
the position held by people who don't live in 1986 is that ukraine is a sovereign country and as such free to ally with whoever it wants. russia has repeatedly acknowledged that officially, and in several treaties guaranteed ukraine territorial integrity and diplomatic independence. those are FACTS.
Quote (ferdia @ 2 Mar 2023 22:53)
The US (the key driver of the West) toppled the (corrupt) government in Ukraine in 2014 and replaced it with its own people/government. This is Fact.
a bit of a simplistic portrayal of a complicated issue, reducing a genuine political movement amongst large parts of the ukrainian population as merely a foreign coup, but ok, fair enough.
Quote (ferdia @ 2 Mar 2023 22:53)
In response Russia stole Crimea. They could not tolerate losing their naval port. This is Fact. (yes other reasons as well)
here's where you completely leave behind "facts" and replace them with narrative. FACT is that even with a pro western government in kyiv, russia would NOT have "lost" their naval base in sevastopol. FACT is they had a valid treaty with ukraine (which secured russia's ownership of the base until 2042, and included additional renewal options) that would not have been terminated by ukraine opening up to the west.
claiming russia simply "could not tolerate" that is picking a side, subscribing to a narrative - it's not a "fact", sorry. the factual framing would be "russia did not
want to risk ukraine unilaterally cancelling their treaty (for which there was no indication btw), so they decided to unilaterally cancel it themselves, invading and annexing the whole peninsula instead".
you might want to protest and pretend there is no meaningful difference between your chosen version and the factual one, but yours clearly implies that the invasion was reasonable, justified, or even forced - and that's simply not a fact.
This post was edited by fender on Mar 2 2023 05:17pm