As ever, this is all based on anonymous insider information, so use your sound judgement. — SophistiCat
As this one: acting as if Russia is not a threat to the West, when it is, just because the West ought to be peaceful, is reckless too. — neomac
It’s not Ukraine that is fighting Russia, but rather it is a collective West. All decorum is set aside, and the goal is to inflict strategic defeat on my country. The US thinks the planet is their turf. — Vasily Nebenzya (Feb 22, 2023)
The West aspires to strategically defeat Russia, dismember and destroy it [...] the West has been and is turning a blind eye to the revival of neo-Nazism and the glorification of Nazi criminals in Ukraine — Vasily Nebenzya (Feb 23, 2023)
Arguably, Iran is technically in a proxy war against Ukraine, yet saying so is kind of misleading (incidentally, analogous to some comments hereabouts). — Feb 13, 2023
Russia's threat to 'the West' is entirely hypothetical — Isaac
The loss of their “empire” after the collapse of Soviet Union principally due to NATO expansion and the need to recover their hegemonic status overshadowed by the Americans. — neomac
offensive means to threat Western security — neomac
Russian hegemonic ambitions. — neomac
promoted/pursued an anti-West alliance with other authoritarian states (like China and Iran) with hegemonic ambitions. — neomac
Russia’s military activity beyond its borders up until now shows an actual non-hypothetical pattern of “Western containment” — neomac
The loss of their “empire” after the collapse of Soviet Union principally due to NATO expansion and the need to recover their hegemonic status overshadowed by the Americans. — neomac
...is hypothetical.
offensive means to threat Western security — neomac
...the actual use of which is hypothetical.
Russian hegemonic ambitions. — neomac
...which are hypothetical.
promoted/pursued an anti-West alliance with other authoritarian states (like China and Iran) with hegemonic ambitions. — neomac
...hypothetical ambitions. — Isaac
Russia’s military activity beyond its borders up until now shows an actual non-hypothetical pattern of “Western containment” — neomac
...not even going to dignify this bullshit with a response. — Isaac
There's no debate at all about the threat Russia poses to Ukraine. That's the difference. — Isaac
Isaac has serious difficulties in understanding definitions of English. He doesn't accept the definition of "imperialism" in Merriam-Webster dictionary.Let’s first clarify terminology. How do you understand the notion of “hegemonic”? And what constitute evidence of “hegemonic ambitions” to you? — neomac
This is quite illogical, which doesn't actually surprise me.Pretending the world is something it's not.
I ought not have to worry about bad drivers, but if I send my kids out to play in the road, are you seriously suggesting I share none of the blame if an accident happens?
Ukraine ought to be able to enjoy its sovereignty without being threatened by powerful neighbours. Pretending that's how the world is when it blatantly isn't is reckless.
But then everyone knew that, back before we had to pretend we live in Disneyland. — Isaac
Different peace scenarios and conditions are also influenced by a different understanding of the threat Russia poses to Ukraine. — neomac
Supporting Ukraine would be productive:How can some productive progress be made? — jorndoe
Best thing to happen to Russia would be a disastrous, humiliating defeat ... — ssu
Anyway, I think authoritarian dictatorships are bad and they should go. — ssu
Hence the solution would be to give Ukraine the ample resources to make this one of those defeats that Russia has suffered before... — ssu
Any idea how many lives your lovely plans would cost? — Tzeentch
A lot of the human suffering caused [by] the war has been outside of Ukraine,... Humanitarian needs globally are much higher this year because of the Ukraine war than they would have been without it, and a lot of that relates to the dislocation of the world’s food markets and the contribution of that to increasing starvation and potential famine. — Mark Lowcock, the former United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs
The idea is just unhinged... — Isaac
A totally crazy idea.Sounds like you're on a warpath. Who should be next? China? — Tzeentch
Likely more when you drag a war to continue. For the war to stop Putin should achieve his objectives. And if Ukraine does fall and Putin can claim success, this will huge consequences. Above all, might makes right and Russia's imperialism works. The next step is then Moldova, Georgia and perhaps an "anshcluss" with Belarus. See here. And the totalitarian system in Russia will continue.Any idea how many lives your lovely plans would cost? — Tzeentch
It seems that there are fates worse than death - Orwell's "a boot stamping on a human face forever". What price are you willing (for others, obviously) to pay for peace? And on what hinge do you hang it. — unenlightened
In July 2022, officers with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country’s chief law enforcement and domestic spy agency, entered Chemerys’s home, broke one of his ribs, and seized his electronics. (Chemerys provided Jacobin with medical documents from July 2022 documenting a fractured tenth rib). His crimes, according to the “official warning” he received after the visit, included “his openly pro-Russian position,” “criticism of the activities of the Ukrainian authorities”
On March 10, 2022, poet, satirist, and television host Jan Taksyur disappeared after armed men claiming to be from the SBU searched his apartment, turning it upside down and seizing his savings, according to accounts provided to local news outlets and to Jacobin by his family. It took two days for his wife and children to find out where he was: in a pretrial detention center, where he was kept for more than five months on charges of treason, and unable to get medical help despite a cancer diagnosis — not an uncommon situation, according to the doctor who eventually treated him.
The pacifist Ruslan Kotsaba, proclaimed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in 2015, went through a similar ordeal. Kotsaba’s prosecution for “high treason” predated the Russian invasion, after a 2015 video post labeling the war over the Donbas a “fratricidal civil war” and urging resistance to military conscription got him labeled a traitor, prosecuted, and imprisoned for sixteen months.
But Kotsaba says things took another turn immediately after Moscow invaded last February, when the judges presiding over his case took on a “more aggressive and uncompromising attitude.” Sensing the court would now more likely take their side, he says, prosecutors recalled the dozens of witnesses whose absence had previously gummed up the trial’s progress and proceeded without them.
the SBU announced it had “neutralized” the Workers’ Front of Ukraine in Odessa, a Marxist organization founded in late 2019, charging the group was “coordinated and funded by the occupiers.” Though providing no evidence for that charge, the SBU cited as among the group’s subversive activities the printing of “anti-Ukrainian materials,” trying “to spread the forbidden communist symbolism with calls for the resuscitation of the Soviet Union,” and planning “mass rallies.”
The outlets reprinting the SBU’s charges added that the group had also written “anti-capitalist posts.”
Drawing particular international attention has been the arrest and prosecution of communists Mikhail Kononovich, leader of the KPU’s youth wing, and his twin brother Aleksander. Ethnic Belarussians with Ukrainian citizenship, the brothers were accused by the SBU of working for both Russian and Belarussian intelligence and of holding “pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views.” The Kononoviches say that the accusations are fabricated and politically motivated and, in a recent statement, charged that they had been beaten and tortured while detained for seven months, stating that “now in Ukraine, ‘communist’ means death.” Before the war, they had campaigned against Zelensky’s push to allow private sell-offs of Ukrainian farmland and sparked controversy for a variety of views, including advocacy for the rights of Russian speakers and against fascist movements in the country.
left-wing activist Oleksandr Matyushenko. In the past, Matyushenko has charged that “after Euromaidan, the right[-wing] consensus fully dominates Ukraine,” and that government and right-wing opposition “compete with each other in anti-communism and xenophobia.” He has also criticized far-right militias like the Azov Regiment and the oligarch bankrolling them. One of the photos of his arrest shows a man’s hand hovering over a bloodied Matyushenko, holding the Nazi-inspired Azov emblem.
Matyushenko’s wife later told the German left-wing newspaper Junge Welt that SBU members had entered and searched their apartment, confiscating computers and other property, while another man in military uniform — the one brandishing Azov’s emblem — spit in her face, cut her hair with a knife, and beat her husband for hours. The two were later taken to SBU headquarters, she said, where officers interrogated them, threatening to slice off their ears.
Chesno (“Honestly”), a prominent NGO originally focused on fair elections and good government that had played a leading role in the Euromaidan revolution. On March 17, it announced it was launching a “Register of Perpetrators of Treason” focusing on politicians, judges, media figures, and law enforcement officers.
At the time of writing, it listed 1,118 names, many of them sporting rap sheets as dubious as some of those targeted by the SBU. Chemerys (a “propagandist of leftist views”)...
... in 2021, Chesno (the liberal NGO now running its own blacklist of alleged traitors) received 42 percent of its funding from the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), which contributed the lion’s share of that money. The NDI is one of the private NGOs aligned with one of the United States’ two parties, and is itself funded by the NED, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the US State Department, among others.
It's quite futile to argue with a person that totally declines to see the objectives of Russia in this war. (The actual ones declared by Putin himself)So what price ssu? What level of human cost do you want to pay for this brilliant goal of creating a post-Afghanistan Russia? — Isaac
It's quite futile to argue with a person that totally declines to see the objectives of Russia in this war. — ssu
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