Of course, because Seymour Hersh said so, which is irrefutable proof in and off itself. /s


What we do know for certain is that Putin had already closed the gas tap; the Nordstream pipelines were already shut down and no longer delivering gas to Germany a month before they got blown up. Russia was insisting that the gasflow wouldn't resume until the sanctions were lifted (i.e. not before the end of the war, possibly even later). Therefore, the pipelines were effectively dead to the Germans before they even got physically destroyed.



Nice dodge on my arguments btw. Let me reiterate just one of them:


This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 22 2023 06:39am

Because Finland is not in Russias sphere of influence meanwhile Ukraine always has been, so what happened in 2014 was an upset of long established norms.

So are you saying that Ukraine is not a sovereign country; that Russia still has a claim to rule them, simply because they used to rule them in the past?

because they were within the Russian sphere of influence for all but 9 of the last 369 years? That's hardly irredentism
its not like its a fight over sovereignty, its one master for another

im not having trouble understanding anything.

no i dont think Russia would invade a nato member.

yes it is a sign of american incompetence to get involved with an already trending regime change.

your post reads like you think you know my stance and are arguing against that rather than what im actually posting.

Its precisely irredentism. Literally, exactly irredentism. What's up with this hypocrisy when it comes to Russia's actions, its exhausting.

if someone breaks into my house and ties up my wife while I'm out buying beer, and I show up home and he's holding her hostage and barricading the doors, its not irredentism for me to try to dislodge him from my premises.
Western powers took Ukraine from Russia's sphere of influence by force, using a CIA/DOS color revolution and then setting up a puppet regime. Then when Russia immediately moved to occupy and later annex the pro-Russian regions and an entrenched civil war set in, the US was unwilling to invest the force necessary to claim dominion over Ukraine by right of conquest. If the Russians can't take back western Ukraine by force, they have no claim to it, but likewise America and the EU have no claim over eastern Ukraine, nor any sense of legitimacy for their puppets to make that claim.

We're not talking about aspirations for reassembling age old borders from a fallen empire long past, we're talking about an ongoing conflict which hasn't been settled.

There are varying degrees to "being within the Russian sphere of influence" though. After being violently forced under Russia's thumb for 69 years (1922-1991), it's no surprise that Ukraine's economy and culture were closely tied with Russia. This does not, however, mean that they were a sheer vassal for the thirty years since the fall of the Iron Curtain, nor that Ukraine had to forever remain exclusively oriented toward Russia. Which brings me to the next point:


Significant portions of Ukraine's society were drifting away from Russia's sphere of influence since the country's independence in 1991. You keep portraying the situation as if a significant majority of Ukraine wanted to remain aligned with Russia, but was then forcibly removed from mother Russia by the dark acts of the CIA or something like that. In reality, the country had been roughly evenly split between pro-Western and pro-Russia forces since the beginning of the 2000s. There already was a revolution 9 years before the Euromaidan, so this whole tug-of-war had been going on a lot longer than you give it credit. The 50:50 split, this inner disunity of Ukraine, is perfectly encapsulated by the democratic gridlock leading up to the Euromaidan, with the democratically elected parliament having a majority in favor of the EU-UA association agreement and the democratically elected president vetoing it because he was pro-Russia.

Talking about Yanukovych: do you think he was a Russian puppet to a lesser degree than the post-Maidan government was a puppet of the West? "The CIA overthrew their government by force and set up a puppet regime" is a juicy talking point, but neither factual (the dominos toward Yanukovych's fall from power were already in place, the West merely gave a little bump to speed up the timeline) nor a fair summary of the events (since there already was a puppet regime (of opposing allegiance) in place before the Euromaidan).

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 22 2023 09:16am

dumb analogy.

this situation is not like you just going out to buy beer. this is more like you and your ex got a divorce - and now you're breaking into her home and beating her up because she's with another guy. this is you claiming you have the right to do all that because you used to be her husband for a long time, and there's still stuff in the house that you feel entitled to.

This post was edited by fender on Feb 22 2023 09:36am

None of this would of happened under trump. Warmongering democrats back in power.