It's clear the goal of the combined West is to absorb Ukraine into NATO / EU, causing armed conflict with Russia after which they double down sending Ukraine hundreds of billions worth of weapons.

I know which side to criticize.

The topic of NATO encroachment into Russia's sphere of influence has been discussed to death, that horse has long been beaten to death and is now strung up into a pinata.

Your position seems odd to me, you think it's absurd that a Russian citizen would believe the West wants to eradicate their culture, yet you also explicitly endorse dehumanizing genocidal language against them. What is a Russian citizen who supports the war effort to make of this argument - you don't want to eradicate them, but they're also barbarian orcs? It's also odd to me that you listen to the propaganda from the very same people who are letting Islamists into your nation to slaughter your children - this is just irrational in my eyes, it's like your hatred of Russia has left you blind in 1 eye. Besides, it's pretty clear that the more rational pro-Ukraine people absolutely despise Russia & Russian culture, this isn't a new viewpoint, that type of Western European has always seen Russia as that for hundreds of years, and like I mentioned the last 2 times the Western host tried to eradicate Russian culture they were repelled.

Russia is/was a beautiful nation and a mecca of high culture, from classical ballet to classical music and high literature. To deny this is absurd and is more evidence that you hate the wrong enemy. They are enlightened European White Christians, our brethren. In contrast, Ukraine is an undeveloped province of Russia - the Ukrainian language is a peasant's language, they have no great works of high art. A strong example of my point is that Ukrainian Jews, who have historically held professional positions such as doctors and lawyers, ALL speak Russian. It's their first language, because Russian is the high language, Ukrainian is the low language.

The dissolution of the Soviet system of government was not illicit, but the aggressive land-grab of their territory WAS illicit. To comment as well on the "revisionist" history that is recognized by Russia, it's common knowledge that the post-WWI Polish state was actively involved in genocide & ethnic cleansing of both Russian and German people in the years leading to the dual occupation of 1939, leading to two enemies making a deal to protect their people. The Devil repaid Poland in full for their actions, Poland was absolutely decimated and they still haven't recovered so Russian's shouldn't hold too much grudge.

This post was edited by El1te on Sep 3 2024 01:06pm

About 6 years ago me and my friend visited a friend of his in Vancouver. We took short 15 minute walk through a quiet suburban neighbourhood from his house and lo and behold, we were on Pickton's farm. It was surreal how this happened right within an otherwise homely place, alot of people around there still will not eat pork.

I'd happily stack up the cultural achievements of france, england, germany, spain, portugal, etc etc all of western europe, the US, maybe some mediterranean african states against russia. Poland had a fine run, one side has scriabin tchaikovsky rachmaninov, one side has chopin.
but the cossacks? What's up with picking losing battles, cultural comparisons are dumb to begin with but why pick a fight between folks barely one step removed from living in mud huts their whole history to a major world power and empire?

The biggest visible contribution ukraine has made to world culture is the stupid flags people put in their front lawns

This post was edited by Goomshill on Sep 3 2024 01:15pm

It isn't surprising to me that most Western people have no idea about the cultural achievements of Russia, especially in classical music. It is in-line with my general view that most Western people nowadays are untrained and uneducated degenerates who lap up corporate media propaganda like the lapdogs they are, and who look at sheet music and think it's some arcane sorcery.

During my stint as a classically trained orchestral musician (I'll go back eventually) the most technically challenging and beautiful solo piece I played was Scheherazade, composed by a Russian in the 1800s. Doubt many people here know what that is!

I don't endorse dehumanizing language against the Russia people at large, just against their soldiers who have a century-long track record of behaving like uncivilized savages.


Certain politicians or media figures being wrong on one issue doesn't automatically imply that they're wrong on every other issue, too. You, of course, start with the premise that anything Western politicians are saying with regard to Ukraine is nothing but propaganda. (Yet you seemingly don't see propaganda coming from the Kremlin...)





I never denied that Russia is one of the big cultural nations in the world. Their ballet and orchestras don't make their imperialism any better, though. What an utterly absurd stance. And for the record: I don't hate Russia, or its common citizens, just the decisions its leadership has made time and time again.


I don't care about skin color or religion, I care about the behavior and the culture/values by which people live. And fact of the matter is that Russia has been an aggressive, expansionist force bullying its geographic neighbors for the past 200 years and been openly antagonistic toward Western Europe for 100 of the past 120 years. And the remaining 20 years (1990 through 2010-ish) were only a breather because Russia was too weak.






Aaand there we have it. Like I've said: you simply deny that Ukraine and the other post-Soviet countries are sovereign nations which have the right, morally and legally, to make their own decisions and choose their own path.



Soooo... what you're saying is that the exact same pretense used by Putin for his invasion of Ukraine had been used by Hitler and Stalin before they invaded and devastated Poland?! Doesn't that give you any pause? How the fuck can you use this as an argument in support of your assertion that Putin is the good guy here?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 3 2024 01:28pm

- There isn't much of a difference between these two views. Russian soldiers are lawful combatants, and are not paramilitary or militia. The army is an extension of the civilian state and is accountable to civilian leadership. Besides, this is just false propaganda (their soldiers bad and are war criminals, our side good angels dindu nuffin), and there's plenty more evidence that the Ukrainian side is worse. There are always bad apples who torture & pillage in war, this is nothing new, and every single side ever in the history of warfare is guilty of it.

-It doesn't automatically imply it, but it is strong evidence that they are wrong on every other issue as well. If they lie to you about point A, it is irrational to believe that they won't lie to you about point B. And yeah I don't see the propaganda from the Kremlin because my country banned all Russian media, I don't look at or consume any Russian media.

- Their cultural achievements DOES make their Imperialism better!! How is that absurd? The moral justification for Imperialism is founded upon the inherent moral superiority of the Imperial state, such that their subjects have better lives. This is why British Imperialism was just, Roman Imperialism was just, Spanish Imperialism was just, French Imperialism was just. I guess this is a really big divide in our ideologies, I'm more of a classical right winger who believes in intrinsic morals.

- This again is really just propaganda. They haven't been a big nasty bully, they have defended themselves and their people like every other powerful nation state has. I mean by this logic, what is Germany? Not caring about religion & ethnicity I guess is a divide in our values, I view religion as the wellspring from which all culture flows.

- I do deny their "sovereign" right, because it is an illusion. Are we just supposed to forget that the democratically elected president of Ukraine, who was pro-Russia, was ousted in a violent USA-backed coup and had to flee for his life?

- The same "pretense" used for every war in the history of war. Defending your people makes you a good guy in my eyes.. of course, the other guy will see them as a bad guy, as is nature. NOT defending your people if they were being systemically slaughtered and ethnically cleansed (you know, happening in the UK and Germany as we speak....) makes you a very bad guy, and a traitor to your own people.

In Soviet times there was a second higher education "facility" of control and communication of Marshall Moskalenko, not sure how you place a hospital there

Many populous countries have produced both strong works of art and contributed strongly to human development. Don't forget that Russia for a long time was the USSR and was an absolute behemoth when it comes to things like math, science, chemistry, etc. Prior to that they do have a relatively rich culture. IMO as some have already said, some of their writers & other arts are on par with western large nations. It's hard to truly rank though. I do think countries like UK, France, Germany, US, have an edge but that could be argued as subjective.

They've had a pretty significant amount of Nobel laureates (a number that's actually artificially deflated as many 'born in Soviet union' or pre-commie imperial Russia are attributed to Poland and other sovereign as they emigrated eventually or became their own countries) which to me is a really good indicator of impact and high contribution to the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country#Russia_and_Soviet_Union

Overall though, it's really difficult to say that they are head and shoulders more brutal/evil/whatever than for example the US or what the Germans did to the Jews or Japan did to China/Korea. That's a lot of western centrism. It's not grounded in fair logic. How are you going to label Ukraine war so much more brutal while the US and allied countries have so destroyed and killed so many in places like Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen over the last 25 years. It's dishonest, western-centrism. A fair person questions why our soldiers killing backwater towel heads that were armed with only AKs as we're running strafing runs/drones are called heroes to be saluted and glorified, while Russian soldiers fighting in their war are to be viewed as sub-human orcs?

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Sep 3 2024 02:23pm

i am not sure why you as an informed and critical feel the need to use these propaganda buzzwords from the western media

ukraine is a hyper corrupt shithole with russia as big daddy

its a fact that the west heavily manipulated the country into the things that triggered this war, sovereignty and choosing their own path NEVER happened there

a western sponsored, violent coup triggered all of this, there never was an organic process


in the wikileaks US agencies literally stated that they knew russia would go to war over ukraine and that was like 15 years ago


just like the US almost triggered WW3 over soviet influence in cuba


its useless to take sides here, putin, biden, the EU, they are equally evil and each of them would get us killed in like 5 seconds for 10 bucks in profit



thats how the world is, pimp or be pimped

african shitholes were way better with us europeans running the place