I appreciated the link to Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism. Point 8 on the fascists is topical:
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
People generally don't like imperialist apologia. You can certainly criticise NATO, but if you're using criticism of NATO to imply that they're the bad actors in the invasion of Ukraine, you're going to get called out on it.
So what, you think that Russia invading Ukraine is a defensive war against NATO aggression? How can an invasion be defensive?
I'm not "cancelling" you here by the way, more just calling you wrong. Just like other people appear to be doing so, but sure, if you want to be a victim over it then that's your choice I guess.
"Although the United States has many wars of aggression on its conscience, it doesn’t justify Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. A dozen wrongs don’t make a right. Russia was wrong to invade."
Even though the Azov battalion is a fascist group, there is broader fascist sentiment in Ukraine and NATO were in talks with Ukraine, that doesn't change the fact that "de-Nazification" is an excuse for an imperial exercise. But then again, you seem to be OK with imperialism as long as its done by countries opposed to NATO and the US, like Russia. Are you a tankie or something?
>The liberal strategy to silence anyone opposing NATO and the escalation of war is to label them as traitors
I'm genuinely curious as to whether that has ever happened, that someone opposing NATO has been called a traitor. Do you have an example? I wonder who I'd betraying if I opposed NATO.
… no. You aren’t being arrested for treason, you’re welcome to make an ass of yourself, and while you’re disagreed with, you’re neither censored or censured for it. In Russia, you would face very real consequences for disagreeing with the party line.
> The liberal strategy to silence anyone opposing NATO and the escalation of war is to label them as traitors, or at best Russia-affiliated.
This whole "silencing" framing, where the act of criticism (and only the act of criticism, nobody is being persecuted by the government here) is considered "silencing" is incoherent.
By this logic, you are "silencing" pro-NATO people by accusing them of using fascist rhetoric.
I don't think so. Anyone who criticizes the NATO pro war narrative at the moment
is labeled as intruder, in the form of Russia-affiliate or traitor, and that's exactly what is described by Umberto Eco:
> The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders
So we're not yet at the "jail the traitors" phase, but this is exactly how a prematurely fascist movement behaves.
Also, I'm not silencing pro-NATO peopl in any way. They have on their side almost the totality of mass media and western governments. There is no way I can silence their narrative, in fact I'm very much subject to it against my will everytime I browse the web or watch tv.
In the West we do not get up to 15 year prison sentences for criticising NATO. We merely get in an argument.
> The liberal strategy to silence anyone opposing NATO and the escalation of war
The US president, Joe Biden, is opposing war or NATO intervention in Ukraine. He specifically kept the US Navy out of the Black Sea to avoid escalation because he believes it would trigger WW3. Nobody is being silenced.
> the complex geopolitical situation
It's not a complex geopolitical situation. It is a revanchard war, a one man's attempt and ambition to recreate the USSR and for Russia to be "taken seriously" again. He's the one obsessed with a NATO plot against Russia, when in fact there is no NATO plot. Eastern European nations have decided to join NATO themselves, after being part of the Warsaw Pact. Poland and Romania have decided themselves to host NATO defensive installations. They could have refused, but they did not. Why? Because in Eastern Europe, Russia is seen not as a friend, but as a threat. The recent war in Ukraine is further evidence that Russia is indeed a threat to Europe as a whole.
There's no need to "critically analyze the complex geopolitical situation" when one state is being invaded by another. That's like asking for "critically analyzing road safety" when someone is being rushed into the ER after a car accident. Leave the irrelevant for later when you have some leisure time, should you wish to spend it that way. Treat the accident victim before he bleeds out.
Unpopular opinion: the vast majority of people in the world do not need to get so emotionally invested in things happening in the world that don't directly affect them. As terrible as it is, in the broader context of all human history we are living in the most peaceful and prosperous time EVER RECORDED! (Suggested reading: Better Angels of our Nature by Stephen Pinker) There is a huge gap between the state of the world as viewed through statistics and scientific progress, versus the state of the world as viewed through Twitter. What concerns me more is what might happen when most people THINK the world is awful and lose hope.
the vast majority of people in the world do not need to get so emotionally invested in things happening in the world that /they can't affect/.
Nobody benefits from stressing about things beyond their control. Instead of doomscrolling ukraine updates, send in a donation if you can but otherwise move on. The only thing you're accomplishing by continuing to read the news on the situation, is upsetting yourself.
However, I don't think it's productive to ignore the problems in the world, even though the economy is ascendant, as Pinker is inclined to do. But we should generally try to focus on where we can make a difference.
> Instead of doomscrolling ukraine updates, send in a donation if you can but otherwise move on.
One can donate either money or time. Here are a few specific ideas.
- donate to a group in Ukraine that is working to feed, clothe, and shelter people
- donate to an organization that is helping refugees in Poland, Romania, or Hungary
- donate directly to the Ukrainian military (yes, they did set up a donation endpoint early in the war)
- assist with Squad303's efforts. Text Russian people about the war -- see https://1920.in
- utilize computer skills that enable you to help Ukraine remotely (I won't elaborate; if you're a candidate you know what I mean and likely have already considered this)
Thanks for expanding on the options for donations! It's important that people know that they can positively impact the world in ways that suit their personal situations. I'm going to have to disavow the 'computer skills' suggestion though :)
Your opinion is in fact the popular opinion through out history. Picture the see no evil hear no evil monkeys.
Stephen Pinker is a very nice man with a soothing voice and a very curly haircut. And he attended Harvard. And has a warm and fuzzy message of optimism in his best selling mass market book, which has angels in the title.
Pixar should make a character based on him. Practically a real life Dumbledore. Surely everything will pan out just so.
Meanwhile, the "sate of the world" is such that he wrote his prognostications over a decade ago when the US was still the single remaining superpower in a unipolar world steeped in the longest stretch of relatively violence free global economic expansion. And at the moment they ring hollow.
Of course we all wish for the positive trends to continue indefinitely, but the night is in fact dark and full of terrors. It really is. Baseless optimism is simply the flip side of the doomer-ism you deride.
As someone who left friends and family and language behind to emigrate across an ocean in search of a place with lasting peace and the rule of law and a semblance of human rights, a large scale war in europe strikes deep at my hope that human beings in large groups are even capable of what might be termed civilization. I was of the hope that it is here and just not evenly distributed yet.
I had hoped at least some of our species had learned enough from the big one that we may avoid a repeat. Time will tell, but it's definitely not 100% clear at this point.
This isn't something just happening to others. This is a real-time experiment being run in whether or not humans as a concern can avoid pointless megadeaths whilst continuing to play our monkey status game.
I tell my Mom this all the time. You don’t have to share in the misery of the news. Be informed enough to do the few things that actually make a difference, like voting. Any involvement and sharing of misery past that is hurting yourself and making the world no better of a place, only worse.
Interesting. I learned a similar concept from the late Hans Rosling in his book Factfulness.
He described that we tend to not derive actionable insights from most news we consume (my wording). I felt the concept to be too similar to be a coincidence. He probably knew Postman's ideas.
America is one of the leading forces of the world getting destroyed. America also has the power to fundamentally shift the world.
Americans don't get to say we can't do anything about it. Literally out of everyone in the world were the only ones that can make a lasting difference.
> It's far better for people to simply be occupied than fight back
You are joking I hope? Have you lived or been born in an occupied territory or perhaps forgot to read some history? You can argue about every single incursion by the US or otherwise, but there are definite ‘simply be occupied’ by internal or external forces where people were slaughtered and no one ever really lived in peace until the regime was disbanded.
Maybe you live somewhere safe and do not have family members to tell you how absurd this is after they actually did live in occupied territory; for instance in the USSR.
> resisting violence itself is the primary cause of violence
> better to just lay down an let things happen.
I really hope this is sarcasm or some elaborate intellectual joke. Sitting back and letting it happen as you describe it is exactly what the German population did before the Holocaust.
My preferred addition, usually attributed to Carl Schurz, is to add "if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." to the phrase. That addition changes it from a statement of blind obedience to a statement of social responsibility.
Well, Poland us doing the right thing right. Germany may have transcended the Third Reich but they are doing exactly the same mistake that the UK did pre 1939.
I think believing the propaganda for Russians is a matter of mental and physical self preservation. If you know it's a war and it's bad, what do you do? Remain silent - bad for mental health. Say or do anything about it - physically dangerous. It's easier and safer live in the comfortable "reality" presented by the propaganda, taking the attitude "just tell me what to believe so I will be safe"
This is also why, paradoxically, the more atrocious the actions of the state become, the more entrenched the people become in their belief in the propaganda. Because to question the propaganda would become dangerous existentially, if it would force you to accept the terrible things you've been party to, and the dire situation you are actually in.
We've certainly seen that in Germany during WW2, when the people _wanted_ to believe that 'they were the good guys' and absolute victory was imminent, when in reality Germany was responsible for a shit-ton of unnecessary deaths and the front line was already in the next town over.
There is a specific context though, that makes the propaganda far more believable to many Russians than what they read online through VPN or - for most Russians - through word of mouth.
I watched a Russian elderly lady, who appeared like a decent person, respond to a western journalist. She said that she knew for sure that the news from the West were untrue "when they said that Russians troops were shelling Kiev and Kharkov - which is impossible".
Many Russians - most in fact - consider that Ukraine is historically a part of Russia. Which is untrue, but that's "common knowledge". So Ukrainians are their cousins, their brethren.
Hence the syllogism: if Putin has sent the Russian army to Ukraine, then:
1/ it doesn't make sense to kill civilians and shell cities to the ground
2/ the attack must have valid reasons ("Nazism", existential threat to Russia by joining the USA' side through NATO, ...)
When you are in such representations, believing Putin's propaganda is quite rational.
By the way, we should also be more skeptical of what we are told on our own channels. Our media are relying all the time information they get from the US government, the British intelligence and the Ukrainian government WITHOUT any possible way to cross-check them.
No journalist can cross check the idea that Putin is being lied to by his generals, by his entourage and by the FSB. It is quite possible ; it would explain a lot of what happened during the last month ; it is logical since despotism reign by fear - and truly we have all seen how fearful these people appeared to be during the televised Russian security council.
But our journalists are relying what our governments and the Ukrainian government say, without verification. Most mention that fact, directly or indirectly ("according to...") - but they five credit to this narrative anyway by propaging it.
Russians are wrong to support this unprovoked and atrocious invasion of Ukraine - but they are rational, not gullible or escaping a disturbing reality because it's easier to cope with, even unconsciously.
Humans are rational. Russians are rational and we are too in the West.
A good reading about this: "the Savage Mind", 1962, by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. He demonstrates that Natives' way of thinking in the Amazonia was as rational then as we are today, as were people in the Middle Age or ancient Greeks or ... jihadists from All Qaeda.
Not that I like it - but just let's stop with the ideas that people we disagree with are not rational.
Even Flat Earthers are rational people! It sounds absurd at first but it's really not. The Enlightenment movement of the XVIIIth century was precisely of discuting everything that was proclaimed as a Truth in common knowledge or by authorities (the Catholic Church, ...).
It's not irrational to think that Earth is flat. Most of our day-to-day experience tend to prove this idea. Demonstrating that Earth is a globe is not that easy. It's easy to make simple experiments that hint that Earth is not flat, but explanations can be found to explain the discrepancies. Really proving to people that Earth is round without a mediation like films from space is not easy. Of course, the Flat Earthers are prone to detect conspiracies everywhere, so they discard the films as fabricated. Which is not irrational. The proof needs either a direct experience in which Flat Earthers would have total control, or a decent level in Mathematics and Physics. Most of people who are right to think that Earth is a globe don't know how to replicate the proof of it. They believe what Science says - which is a very rational attitude.
The only way to change the mind of most Russians is to find people they trust (for any reason), send those to Ukraine with cameras and have them do their independent reporting. Showing the atrocious results of Putin's invasion, eg massive civilian casualties, destruction of whole cities, war crimes, ..., will create the emotion that humans need to reconsider what their rationality led them to think.
Humans don't change their mind when confronted to a "rational presentation of facts". They need a strong motivation to accept to reconsider. Only emotions can provoke the shock required.
Many experimental psychology studies have demonstrated that "rational demonstrations" by scientists to whatever-believers (antivax, ultra-nationalists, jihadists, flat Earthers) lead to ... the reinforcement of their beliefs.
Our rationality is driven by our emotions. Which doesn't mean that we are not rational. Many scientists complain that they are perceived as super cold people, which they are absolutely not. But their very core of their job is to chase their own biases all day long. And that's a difficult task. Hence the crisis of reproducibility in many fields of Science, where the "publish or perish" tyranny nudges scientists to get results all the time. Some of them are just manipulators, of course, but the crisis of reproducibility is much deeper.
> The only way to change the mind of most Russians is to find people they trust (for any reason), send those to Ukraine with cameras and have them do their independent reporting. Showing the atrocious results of Putin's invasion, eg massive civilian casualties, destruction of whole cities, war crimes, ..., will create the emotion that humans need to reconsider what their rationality led them to think.
Interestingly anyone who finds anything less than this is accused of being a Russian propaganda agent.
And the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” does not have an asterisk beside it, referring you to the bottom of the page, where there’s a list of instances where it is okay to kill people.
I know he's just quoting someone, but as an interesting aside, it rather does. A more accurate translation is "thou shalt do no murder", and in historical-linguistic context it basically only applies to not killing Jewish people.
There are no records that capital punishment was actually ever delivered after the establishment of courts as it required many strict conditions. Regardless, that’s not murder but capital punishment for a certain offense.
> Regardless, that’s not murder but capital punishment for a certain offense.
That's exactly the point here. The article claims that the commandment is "do not kill", when the actual Biblical law is "do not murder". Per the Bible, there is a whole list of people you can legally kill (men who have sex with men, people from certain tribes, etc).
> There are no records that capital punishment was actually ever delivered
Do we have records of any of the "normal" executions carried out by the ancient Hebrew state while it was a theocracy (in the time of the first temple)?
It seems like it's so far back that we wouldn't get records of them executing gay people, even if it was actually happening.
You couldn’t even legally kill those people yourself. It was aimed at leaders and judges. What’s written is only a tiny small part of the whole legal and ethical system. You can’t try to understand it by reading a literal translation of just the written part.
Yes, there is a process and you wouldn't have been able to kill them yourself. If you wanted to kill a gay person, you would have had to collect evidence of them having gay sex and then present that to the court so that the court can kill them for you.
A Jewish friend once explained a similar thing about “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Raised Christian, I was always taught it was broadly “do not lie,” but apparently it was more specific about not perjuring yourself in a court of law.
I don’t think there is good evidence for what you described on a theological basis (I also do not believe that what you described is a very common interpretation). The word translated as “murder” is “retzach”. Conveniently, the book of Numbers talks about “retzach” quite a bit, and it’s described as killing (including accidentally) outside of warfare. It is not distinguished by race or religion, and although there are a number of justified causes for retzach, none are as broad as “all non-Jews”.
There’s a sort of precedent to “shalt not kill” in Genesis 9:6 as part of God’s covenant with Noah, and it’s very clear that it’s a prohibition to the murder of any human regardless of race or creed: “ Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
The old Jewish law contains a number of explicit protections for non-Jews, so it would seem very inconsistent if murder of non-Jews was viewed as not contrary to the law.
I think instead of foisting the most iron age-y least charitable interpretation imaginable you ought to realize that people have had a couple thousand years to develop a body of laws and thought around this.
Ask a Rabbi. They'll say of course not. Ask another, they'll also say of course not but they might provide you a completely different explanation as to why not.
you ought to realize that people have had a couple thousand years to develop a body of laws and thought around this.
This is of course true but I wasn't trying to say anything about modern Abrahamic religions or their practitioners. Jewish doctrine has changed over time just as Christian and Islamic doctrines have. Jewish people aren't some kind of insane throwback and I wasn't trying to imply that they were.
Well, good. But some nuance is still lost here in my opinion.
> in historical-linguistic context it basically only applies to not killing Jewish people
This is your own framing. Perhaps you are a timelord or a 3000 yr old man? :)
There is weird stuff in the Bhagavad-Gita, bringing your own context to it is ill advised as you are likely to misread the text. I suggest, very politely, that this is what happened here - I have only heard such interpretations as yours from non native speakers with only a passing familiarity of the original text.
In other words, I'm glad we agree that a modern day rabbi would disagree with this but it is not as if a rabbi from 1000 years ago would say the commandment only applies to non-Jews. Nor would one from the time of Moses.
I don't know where you got this notion. It doesn't matter. Ask someone knowledgable if you are interested.
Not true. How could it be that way? It’s literally “do not murder”. It’s even one of the seven laws applying to everybody regardless of their religion along with not to commit adultery and not to steal. You’ll have to back that discriminatory claim.
> As for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded.”
There is a difference between murder and killing. Killing is the act of terminating a life. Murder is killing without the sanction (or de facto sanction) of an authority. The contention is that there seems to be plenty of killing sanctioned by God, but (literally by definition) you will find no murder sanctioned by God in the Bible. If we tie this back to TFA, "though shalt not kill" is more appropriately phrased as "though shalt not murder" given how often people were instructed by God himself to kill.
Being in Ukraine, I appreciate such a cencire and public view on this war from a Russian citizen.
I have two major objections, though.
1) Solzhenitsyn & Brodskiy are very anti-soviet and famous guys, but they only go thus far. The first one was still an imperialist (at least in his later years) to a large degree and the second one had example(s) of a very anti-Ukrainian position in his poetry. Not the best characters to mention in the current context. And probably they illustrate a broader problem: it is so deep in the culture (history), that can not be treated as an accident.
2) The Man on top was not born out of a vacuum. Many generations before and during his "rise" share at least some of the responsibility. I don't want to blame the nation or "all the citizens", but too many individuals encouraged that. There was a point, when it was safe to protest, now it is not... but it is still much safer than to be in Mariupol.
> There are no nazis or fascists in Ukraine apart from those who just invaded the country and now bringing woe to the land we have deep historical and cultural bonds, families, friends, memories.
I mean, this is proved to be completely false.
This article is really emotional and that's fine with me, but I would not pretend I can critically analyze and understand the situation when I'm in such a mental state.
Ukrainian Nazis, while still ultra-right-wing and probably not nice people, trace their ideological lineage to WW2 Nazis not by believing in Hitler's vision (which would be dumb, Slavs were supposed to be genocided to make living space for more Germans) but because the Nazis treated (some of) Ukrainians better than the Soviets (some of the time). So they wear Nazi symbols but don't necessarily subscribe to clean race and taking over the world "for us better people" and genociding everyone else. Even the craziest Ukrainian Nazi is probably not looking to invade Poland and replace Poles with "superior Ukrainians".
Meanwhile the Russian Z's are running aggressive war, consider themselves superior culture and want to take over most of Europe. They are doing war crimes left and right and their stated goal is a genocide of Ukraine (see "Ukraine is not a country, Ukrainians aren't people" statements from Putin) and rule of Europe.
Genocide is of something Russians are fond of doing pretty often, see Holodomor and mass deportations and Russification for "more hard" and "softer" approaches. Oh and they're doing those things again right this moment - kidnapping people to Russia and attacking Ukrainian food stores and targeting fucking maternity wards of hospitals.
So you could argue that despite swastikas on clothes, the Russians are "the true Nazis" here. What makes a Nazi, symbols or genocidal aggressive war backed by ideology of racial superiority?
Normally, I'd say fuck all Nazis, but I can give a lot of leeway to people fighting to protect their homeland from genocidal murderous raping horde. Especially as repeating "but there are Ukrainian Nazis!" only helps Russia, and why the fuck would you want to help Russia?
> Especially as repeating "but there are Ukrainian Nazis!" only helps Russia, and why the fuck would you want to help Russia?
It's a fact. Saying "but stating the fact only helps the enemy!" doesn't change that it's a fact. You're suggesting we subscribe to a falsehood because you think the truth rhetorically helps the enemy.
So in order, nazism apology and inversion of the truth. I suggest you gather more evidence about the behavior and origin of Ukrainian Nazis, and the supposedly "genocidal murderous raping horde" that you call Russia.
I'm curious to know how you would adjectivize the US though. With north of 300,000 civlians killed just during the post 9/11 wars. Aren't they genocidal as well? Aren't they behaving like a fucking gang?
Let's skip the milions of slaughtered civilians in the last 50 years, beucase I don't even have an adjective that is offensive enough to describe such atrocities.
You know that we don't "conquer" cities, like Russia is doing, we just carpet bomb them and destroy and kill everything in it in a matter of a day?
> why the fuck would you want to help Russia?
Why the fuck would you want to help NATO? It's a gang of genocidal murderers. I don't want to help anyone to be fair, just to be objective.
Watch today's videos from Bucha, where Russian forces murdered who knows how many civilians just for fun. Some were shot while tied up. Some were tortured.
And you sit here and play whataboutist game and complain about NATO? About "Nazi"? Make up "millions murdered by NATO" and lie about carpet bombing and whatever nonsense?
Seeing as the west and Ukraine knowingly used tons of videogame footage and pushed it on us as real war footage, or used footage from Ukrainian soldiers and called them Russian if they do something ugly.
They lied knowingly to us several times, why trust them now?
I will just wait for the real information to come out, for the real war crimes investigations to finish. We will know then who was the war criminal.
> Seeing as the west and Ukraine knowingly used tons of videogame footage and pushed it on us as real war footage, or used footage from Ukrainian soldiers and called them Russian if they do something ugly.
Oh yes, yes, I'm sure they have.
> I will just wait for the real information to come out, for the real war crimes investigations to finish. We will know then who was the war criminal.
And if it wasn't for the NATO you hate so much, those same Russians would be doing this to you and your people, maybe for generations already.
I'm done here.
I have just one last word of advice. I'm sure your views are fine in Italy, but keep them to yourself in Eastern Europe or other places where people have personal experience with Russia. Saying what you're saying out loud around people who lost friends and family to Russia would get you hurt.
So your last argument is some whataboutism, where you share more fake news from the same media that used videogame footage to push their narrative? Go ahead, your choice.
As I heard a former war reporter that went to dozens of wars:
War is always the same. Now in Ukraine the only difference it that they are blonde, blue eyes, white and European. But the suffering is the same in all wars.
There were war before in Syria, promoted by the US and Saudi Arabia US friend. There was war in Libia before, promoted by France and the US. And of course there was war in Iraq and Afghanistan before, US invasions.
Those wars were created because of geopolitical interest, just like Putin's war.
Russia population believe Putin pretext in the same way the US population believed it was necessary to punish 20 terrorists from Saudi Arabia invading a country thousands of kilometers away or in weapons of mass destruction or what not.
So it is not really "the World". It is your World, my World. The US has always exported war without dealing with the consequences as it is isolated by Oceans.
Now Europeans have to deal with those wars closer and closer and its consequences. But it was always there.
I've often heard this argument being used to justify this war. Or to make anyone opposing it look hypocrite. Not saying you do this. But for me it shimmers through, so I'll repeat my common answer:
All war is bad. So this war is bad too. It is, above all, one war too many, like each war is. And therefore must be stopped no matter what. That is regardless of how many wars Europe, US, Israel, Arabia or even Polynesia have started recently. All of those were bad. All of those had to stop ASAP. Just as this one.
The point of mentioning this isn't simply to justify this war but to corrode the justifications behind the other wars. Immediately dismissing those who point out the unequal treatment of different wars simply makes it so the only lesson people learn now is that this war is bad rather than the more general lesson.
I generally agree with you that there is a lot of hipocracy in the west and I hope (arguably this might be wishful thinking) that Europe sees this as a sign that if we want to be believable on a world stage we need to be more critical of wrongs happening in other places be it criticising the US, the French, the Chinese and let's not forget that the European were pretty lenient towards Putin for a long time as well).
That said there are at least two key differences between Ukraine and previous conflicts.
1. Historically conflicts in Europe are the ones who go out of hand and become world-wide conflicts. I actually believe many in the west hoped that Russia would take over Ukraine quickly, install a puppet government and things could go back to the low intensity latent conflict.
2. Ukraine was an elected democratic government which really did not do much to easily paint them as "bad" guys. That's quite a contrast to Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan.
I'm not defending previous Western aggression, to be clear and have been highly critical of US foreign policy (as a side note one should criticise them for the behaviour in Latin America much more than the Middle East). That said it is very clear to me who the bad guys are here. A Russian student of mine said to me, "the Ukrainians are not just fighting for themselves there also fighting for us Russians to get rid of putin)
Although some wars are entirely created by external powers I find it a bit disingenuous to imply that the people at war don’t have grievances or don’t have free will to fight against their oppressors.
It reads as the author is more preoccupied in broadcasting his grief towards the “great evil powers” than the actual suffering caused by war.
This analogy is confusing. In Ukraine I get the impression there was only one foreign aggressor: Russia. And the 2014 revolution overthrowing the old ruler was to push back against their influence.
And because of the aggressor's response (annexation, mercenaries, un-uniformed troops) Ukraine themselves sought security guarantees from other partners.
The "World Wrecking"? It's a regional war over spheres of influence. Does NATO control Ukraine or does Russia? That's the question.
Yes, if an artillery shell hits your apartment building, that's tragic, but most people--whether economic migrants (so-called "refugees") or executives at Raytheon, or Neocons, or WEF sociopaths, or the same Russophobes who brought you the Steele dossier, and so on, are all using this to advance their own interests. Try, this time, to not be a sucker.
" I have trained myself to ignore the news, or rather I have trained myself to think I can ignore the news, or rather I thought news can ignore me and we both can mutually agree on ignoring without even temporarily igniting the interest or a glimpse of it towards each another."
and then:
"But now, a real war... A war, aggression, a direct invasion is something my consciousness cannot ignore. It devours all my attention, all my thoughts, all my emotions and feelings – everything."
"Pain because of all countless stories, photos, videos, and live TikToks of destroyed cities and injured people, shootings, shoutings, explosions. Pain because I have friends from and in Ukraine. They tell me stories about their families and other people hiding in the undergrounds and basements, or desperately trying to leave their country, without food, shelter, or medicine."
There was always stuff to be scared of on the news. But from his perspective, what's changed? He still doesn't have any personal experience of this war, any more than he had of the previous stories he saw or ignored.
What's happened is that he is bought into it, because of the scale of what is being presented to him on screens.
There are other wars, but somehow those are/were possible to ignore (eg Yemen, Afganistan, Iraq, Ukraine pre-2022, etc). Eg apparently 97 people were killed in Iraq last month: https://original.antiwar.com/updates/2022/03/31/iraq-monthly... ... but this is NOT news.
This war is only special because the media are putting it in our faces. The media is a part of this - they are playing a role. Their role is to increase fear, by bringing our attention to this all the time. It is likely to me that the media reaction plays a role in pushing people to do something - sign up to fight, flee their homes, etc.
I don't trust the media nor what is presented. I'd like to understand better why this war is sucking in all the air, and why we have this being presented to us. I expect that the mass co-ordination of the media in promoting this story, at this time (immediately after covid) indicates that we are being manipulated.
That this war is getting so much attentions but other wars is not can seem and is in some sense unfair.
But there are geopolitical consideration which means that this war is of much higher interest to the west than any other war going on. Both EU and NATO has large combined land borders with Russian and Ukraine, and a war on their border is deeply problematic for both organizations, and their members. Which both organizations, and their members actions after the attack bears proof of.
If you look at Europe, the political changes around security policy and that many European countries that have prided themselves on not shipping weapons to war zone have reversed their long standing policies on not doing that, is staggering, and it is clear a seismic shift in policies is happening in Europe.
Then there is the fact that this is the fastest growing refuge crises since the second world war.
All of these and many other considerations is the reason why the war is the story now. It might seem unfair and racist, and in some sense it is, but it isn't the medias fault. The war in Ukraine is the big story because it affects more and has bigger implications.
Btw. Just to be crystal clear, I'm not arguing that the lack of interest in other wars are just, or right. I'm just arguing why there is a difference, and what the reasons for them are.
I don't know where you live but 3 million refugees are pretty hard to ignore if you're in Europe. I was in Warsaw least week, there is 300,000 refugees in a city of 1.5M, many people are housing refugees in their spare rooms, hard to ignore that even without watching one bit of news.
If you're living in the US, maybe it's a good thing you guys hear what goes on around the world. I think foreign news taking up so little time in the US was always fascinating to me and really contributes to many of the wrong prejudices that are held about the rest of the world IMO (although news about war is probably not the best at reducing those) .
> But from his perspective, what's changed? He still doesn't have any personal experience of this war, any more than he had of the previous stories he saw or ignored.
His country began a war of aggression, with not even an attempt at reasonable pretence[0], against a country with people you could probably describe as having a sibling or cousin like relationship with his, for an attempt at an analogy, it would be like Australia invading New Zealand, or the USA invading Canada.
And it's causing schisms with his family members still in his country due to the heavy propaganda they ingest.
That's a fair bit of change there, mate. I'm assuming you read the same article I did, if so, not sure how your conclusion was "Screens bad".
[0]: Before we hit the whataboutism, GW Bush's government tried hard to convince the UN that they had evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Putin just yelled "Nazis!" and went for it.
From Germany it is closer to Kiew than to Rome and 5k refugees arrive every day in Berlin, so it seems very rational that this war is featuring as big as it is.
The big question is why we aren't capable of acting together to stop this war (and the others you are mentioned) without falling in the imperialist trap that Afghanistan was for the last 20 years. How can we stop the murdering Russian/Saudi/Talian regimes if their people can't seem to find the power to do it themselves?
Edit: lol, messed up the distances. Kiew to Berlin is pretty much Rome to Berlin. Anyway, the point was: this war is too damn close to ignore.
(Covid certainly isn't over when you look at the statistics in Europe btw)
False. It's ~1210 km from Berlin to Kiev and it's 1180 km from Berlin to Rome. If we are to take closest points between territories, the difference becomes much bigger.
Also it's ~1000 km from Berlin to Belgrad and I do not remember a similar outcry during the NATO invasion.
>How can we stop the murdering Russian/Saudi/Talian regimes if their people can't seem to find the power to do it themselves?
Right after the US and EU citizens will be able to stop numerous invasions by their governments with much higher death tolls.
A couple of days ago there was a similar discussion on Italian television and one of the politicians there was asking questions similar to yours.
Incredibly enough, the TV host interrupted him and said "but they (the Ukraininans) are like us!". They are like us! "They are European brothers", he added. I don't understand how you have the courage to say something like this on TV: if you don't have a better argument keep your mouth shut.
He immediately tried to retract it, saying that he was referring to geographical distance. Of course, when he was made aware that we also bombed Libya, which is way closer to Italy than Ukraine is, he didn't know what to say then.
> How can we stop the murdering Russian/Saudi/Talian regimes if their people can't seem to find the power to do it themselves?
Well first by ensuring there are channels and means for them to get out of the news cycle that keeps so many believing that everything is a-okay.
The massive exit from Russia for entities not covered by sanctions and so many of the senseless actions(TikTok dance to stop the war, banning Russian cats from shows, freedom fries 2.0 with Moscow mule), this basically has only strengthened the power of the news cycle in Russia, made it more credible that there is a conspiracy against Russians. Many Russians that did leave to neighboring countries survive only because of the Mir payment network (Russia's card payment system), those within Russia can't even circumvent the news cycle because they can't get access to VPN services to bypass restrictions.
There are a lot of people who want change in Russia and they need to convince those stuck in the news cycle. But now they can't and increasingly, it looks like the Russian systems support them through this event and the Russian systems alone.
The claimed intent is to punish the government and send a message; all it's done is punish ordinary people who do protest and do work to do exactly what those behind the sanction actions want.
The world is awash in propaganda and feel good moves, and ultimately it just harms the goal of stoppinh such behavior by removing the only power they had to do so in the first place.
I dont think you meant it as a judgement, but try to imagine being in the position where you're expected to enact change, and every resource you'd usually use to do so is taken from you because "you need to learn a lesson". What are people supposed to do?
I overheard a colleague talking to another colleague about it, and what he said was "this is a christian country they're invading!"
I privately raised an eyebrow at the time, but I later understood what he meant and probably what the media is saying: they might be coming for us next, i.e. other culturally christian countries.
We tolerated/ignored the Syrian conflict because we could not see ourselves in them.
Ironically one of the direct consequences of the West's intervention in Iraq and Syria was the decimation of the Christian communities in those countries from the ensuing instability. These are some of the oldest Christian communities in the world and they have survived wars and hostile rule for more than a thousand years, but in a short few years the wars started by the supposedly Christian West were more or less able to wipe them out.
Similarly ironic was the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. As the gateway to the outside world, Nagasaki contained the earliest and most significant Christian community in Japan. Again, they have survived persecution for hundreds of years, and was flourishing after Japan opened up to the West, until they were dealt a terrible blow by the bomb (together with the other unfortunate inhabitants of the city).
So judging by the consequences of the actions, the West have not been particularly successful in acting in the best interest of Christians in the rest of the world, and protecting Christians have certainly not been a foreign policy priority for the West for a very long time, if ever.
I wonder about his opinion regarding the US-NATO invasion of Yugoslavia in which christian Serbs got bombed into stone age to protect muslims and change state borders in the middle of Europe by force.
Ugh, such a cringeworthy and blatant lie. Serbia raged wars to prevent former Yugoslavia’s states gaining independence. They committed war crime such as the Srebrenica massacre. 8,000 Bosnian civilians were killed there by Serbians under UN’s watch. And not just Muslims Bosnians, many Croatians were the victims of the war as well. 13,000 civilians were killed in the Kosovo war, including more than 10,000 Albanians. Compared that to 500 Serbian civilians killed by NATO’s bombing.
The are actually two Serbian states: the independent Serbia with Belgrade as it’s capital and Republika Srpska (a constituent state in Bosnia and Hercegovina).
While I’m not denying that there was some collusion between the two, they largely operated as independent entities. The Srebrenica massacre was perpetrated by Srpska forces while the war in Kosovo was waged by Republika Srbija which as a separate event that happened a few years later.
And let’s not pretend that local Serbians weren’t also targets of ethnic cleansing during both conflicts (no I’m not trying to imply in any way that I support what Serbian armies died because of that)
The Serbs had bad PR at the time, having been seen to be responsible for some pretty awful things. I'm not saying they didn't do them, I'm emphasising that it depends on whether the west sees you as a bad guy like Saddam. Only after the bad guy level does it matter who you actually are in terms of proximity to Western culture. The Nazi regime were also Christian bad guys.
The media apparatus of the west can turn any people into its justified enemy; Christian or not - it really doesn’t matter once the machine gets rolling.
There was definitely some Christianity amongst the Nazis. I'm fairly certain that Hitler, and most of the leadership, were atheist. Modern Nazis are definitely very Christian.
Not taking sides, I am atheist but not a Nazi. I just don't think saying Nazis were Christians is necessarily correct.
Are you sure it doesn't work the other way around? That is, first the United States government (usually it's them, after all) decides you're getting hit with a war, and then you're portrayed as a bad guy, worse than Hitler, a threat "our democracy" and to all life on the planet — and the people eat it up, put the Ruritanian flag on their profile pictures, and "stand with Ruritania," because we'll fight the bastards to the last Ruritanian. And then we fund the bad guy to fight for us in our next conflict against the real villain.
> This war is only special because the media are putting it in our faces.
You don’t even have to do much work to understand that this is simply not true. 97 people were killed in Iraq, but probably tens of thousands of people were killed in Ukraine in the last month. It’s a two orders of magnitude difference just between these two numbers.
I honestly don’t understand how anyone can not see this unless they are actively trying not to see.
We might need to know from where country you are to understand better what your misunderstanding is.
I am from Romania, I don't watch TV, I don read news, but this was is different, nobody forced their media into me, I am going and checking to see what is happening. It is a bias and you can accuse me that I am not a robot and I care for people that are very similar to me (similar past, same religion, similar political insignificance compared with the giants).
So from my perspective some media gives us what we want, they are using their professional team to go and film,talk to people and verify the existing stories that we already find on social media but add their "cofimed or unconfirmed" label on that.
Btw I remember as kid I was watching TV with my grand=father, watching news from Chechnya war, and watching their leader speeches, I could not understand things then but I knew who were the patriots too, so at least here in Romania we always had an interest on who around us are Russians killing now and speculating are we next, or maybe our brothers in Modldova are next...
If we're going to start counting who gave up what to Germany there isn't a country in Europe that didn't make a deal with the devil hoping someone else would be eaten first.
Ukraine and Poland both invaded Irak in a recent war of aggression [2, 3].
Have you contemplated the question of helping to bring to trial the Polish leaders that signed off this violation of the international rule-based order?
Georgia and Moldova are on the same path as Ukraine, they want to be members of the EU.
All three countries are outside of NATO and EU, so they will have no one daring help them against a Russian invasion.
Putin has shown that he is willing to take on 44 million Ukrainians with the invasion of Ukraine, so it's impossible to know if Georgia and Moldova are also on the list.
Any country not a member of any defense pact are at risk, so membership of the EU is a sound but also dangerous choice.
A regime change in Russia would of course change the dynamics, but that outcome seems highly unlikely.
You are entirely correct, those countries have good reason to fear Russia (with the additional complexity of substantial numbers of ethnic Russians in those countries), but, as I wrote a month ago [1], there is a symmetry here and Russia also has good reason to fear NATO, for the latter, in the last 2 decades, have invaded (directly or through proxy forces): Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan. The sibling post [2] by "chrisco255" summrises some of the arrising issues.
Direct invasion isn’t the only existential threat a country can face.
I know the following hypothetical is implausible as a genuine reality, it’s purely for the sake of illustrating the first step of one possible ultra-Hawkish-Russian narrative:
“How screwed is Russia if NATO countries never end the current sanctions, and NATO slowly increases its sphere of influence until Russia was the only one outside it?”
The domino theory led the USA into Vietnam, after all, and Vietnam was never a threat to the USA.
Considering that in preparation for the invasion of Ukraine Putin more or less emptied his NATO borders (Norway, Baltics) of troops, it seems that Putin in reality is not afraid of any NATO invasion. It's just political rhetoric.
After seeing the Ukraine situation, and hearing Prof. Mearsheimer's take on it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4), I've begun to look at the world through a balance of powers political lens. Many of the countries we think of as independent nations, are only pseudo-independent. Much of the Western world has ceded its defense to the United States under NATO in the wake of WW2 and then again after the collapse of Soviet Union.
Ukraine is a pawn, unfortunately. A strategic middle ground wedge point from which NATO hopes to box Russia in and prevent it from redeveloping as a peer competitor. Russia wants to be a peer competitor so that it can have self-sovereignty, and dominating oil fields and the Black Sea is critical for them to achieve that. China does too, that's why it wants Taiwan, as a strategic location in the south China Sea.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, etc. these were all deemed strategic geography by the neo-cons and neo-libs that run the United States. They're playing chess with other people's homelands. The goal, from their perspective, is to contain threats (Iran, North Korea, etc) and prevent other great powers and peer competitors from emerging unless they agree to cede some sovereignty.
The thought is that these sort of behavior will prevent another world war. If you can spread democracy around, after all, it's extremely rare that two democracies that actively trade with each other do war with each other. But I think this grand experiment has proven to be a failure. Not all countries have the culture for democracy. And culture matters a great deal. For these countries, introducing democracy (or puppet democracy, as the CIA is wont to do) is often simply destabilizing.
I honestly hate my country's meddling around the world. I think it was something we reluctantly took on in the wake of WW2, but the whole military-industrial-technocratic-espionage apparatus that has developed in our country as a result of decades of this sort of policy has undermined our own democracy at home. And we're rapidly approaching a new world in which we are far from the 40s where we had 45% of the world GDP. And we've wrecked more countries than we've helped, in my opinion.
But at the same time, I am kinda anxious about a world where the U.S. leaves a vacuum for others to fill. We really won't have a choice, in the near future, though. The financial gravity of this situation will hit us sooner or later, and we'll have to scale back. We've already ceded ground to the Russians and Chinese on hypersonic, EMP, and submarine weaponry.
And I feel for the people stuck in the middle. The world is reverting back to a multi-polar state of affairs. I hope we do not repeat the 1930s and 40s as a result.
You're missing one important thing - all of the countries controlled by Soviets wanted out. Life at the other side of Berlin wall was objectively better. It is true till today (see protests in Belarus after elections, and as the matter of fact - current war).
This line of argument assumes, that if NATO refrained from expansion, east Europe would be a happy Russian family. That's not true. I'm living in a post Soviet country and I find argument, that we were pawn played into joining NATO repulsive. We wanted to join NATO because it was only way to stop Russia from exploiting us. It came with tradeoffs of course, but it's not directly comparable in any way, shape or form.
Russian propaganda loves this narrative about "geopolitical goals", because it is making them look like equal peer being challenged by expanding west. This is not true. They are bully trying to keep control of their victims.
I’m struck how many times I’ve heard the pro-Russia apologists here evoke Mearsheimer and his speech on NATO’s eastward expansion as a common-sense view of what’s happening in Ukraine. The damage the man has done.
edit: “Simplistic and wrong”: Sir Adam Roberts responds to John Mearsheimer, who recently argued in a guest essay for The Economist that the expansion of NATO was reckless and provoked Russia: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/03/26/sir-adam-...
I find this type of thinking thinking repulsive. Individuals and cultures are not allowed to decide their own fate? I can only assume you're not from a country threatened by a more powerful neighbour.
If you were would you be happy to sacrifice your freedoms, your democratic voice, the future of your children just in case it might annoy a bigger neighbour?
The West largely got over these urges after Vietnam. Invading and bombing the shit out of countries because they voluntarily decide to align themselves with others that we don't like is no longer considered acceptable. This is a hugely positive development and has meant the end of world wars but it clearly irks those who long for a world run along the lines of the 19th great game where a small number of great powers get to decide the form of government or alliances of weaker countries.
To attempt to draw parallels between NATO and the EU and Russia is disingenuous. NATO and the EU are voluntary associations - countries can join or can decide to leave. Countries don't align themselves with NATO or the EU because NATO or the EU threatens them - they do so because others threaten them.
> The West largely got over these urges after Vietnam. Invading and bombing the shit out of countries because they voluntarily decide to align themselves with others that we don't like is no longer considered acceptable.
I don't see the relevance. Military intervention in Libya was not motivated because the Libyans decided to align with Russia or China or another anti-Western power?
I'm not claiming the West became pacifist after Vietnam, as such a claim would be clearly nonsense. My claim is that the west no longer sees a country's political difference as a justification for military intervention - unlike Russia. Nearly all wars involving western powers since then have either been to intervene in an existing civil war (often misguided) or in response to military aggression.
In the Libyan, case it was the former - a civil war.
Russia moans about NATO encirclement, but it's being encircled because literally no country around it trusts Russia not to conquer them. NATO isn't a conquering alliance it's a mutual defense pact. The history of the Soviet-era is one of Russian genocide and racism towards literally every non-Russian soviet state, and millions dead in purges and legislated famines.
Russia's national identity has been that it's a victim, because it helps them ignore the fact that it's a national embarrassment that a country with that much natural resources wealth has a GDP smaller than Italy.
Ukraine is being invaded to the satisfy the ego and delusions of a despot who fears democracies and can't conceive of the idea of a free election. Recent events are a real good litmus test of who is worth listening to and Mearsheimer turns out to be yet another pundit running the DC track who spins happy fantasies that everything is "under control".
Quote from him prior to 2022: "If you really want to wreck Russia, what you should do is to encourage it to try to conquer Ukraine. Putin is much too smart to try that".
Another useless DC circuiter in the social sciences with nothing useful to say.
The US and CIA have almost zero interest in building stable prosperous and independent democracies. As long as foreign government serves their agenda it does not matter whether it's a democracy or not (Saudi Arabia, the Shah regime in Iran, Pinochet in Chile, autocratic government in South Korea during Cold War). And if a democracy does not follow the US will, well, it's worse for that democracy (see Muslim Brotherhood overthrown by military coup in Egypt and two unconstitutional power changes in Ukraine).
Invading a country with mostly non-white, non-christian people: not news
Invading a country with most white, christian people: news
I don’t think there’s any single global conspiracy, just some deeply seated bias in our systems. But when media outlets, governments, and other organizations all individually try to take advantage of or fall into the biases, you get what smells like global conspiracy.
To be fair, both Iraq wars were major, major news. But Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on for a decade plus, Americans got war fatigue. Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451, where the people are so distracted by entertainment, that the news of imminent war barely moves them emotionally.
“We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t, that’s sure!”
I'm not sure if you're serious promoting such a characterization of Ukraine.
Stable is especially egregious, given there's an ongoing war in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
Also, sovereignty is in no way tied to the government system: under international law, you have no more right to invade a dictatorship than a democracy.
Unless you don't agree on the definition of "stable", there's not much to say. You simply cannot define a country with an 8 years long conflict as "stable", whichever the reasons for this conflict are.
> Russian forces helped those who wanted to take up arms against Ukraine.
> Had there been no Russian help, things would look very different.
What you said is true but it fails to provide the context of why these people took up arms against their own government. This is a complicated topic and I don't have the time nor the will to write an in-depth answer, but had there be no Russian help there would be thousands more dead civilians in Donbas rather than the ~3000 there are now.
You mean the context being that the FSB, in a campaign of bribery and murder, ensured that pro-Russian voices assented, and then when the Russian military moved in, ensured that the referendums of the question of whether to join Russia were "properly observed"?
Just one of those things where the territory bordering Russia, easiest to occupy in a campaign of incremental encroachment of the style Russia was/is running in Georgia, also happened to wind up with a pro-Russian rebel group.
You are conveniently ignoring that a democratically elected government was violently overthrown in Ukraine, with the involvement of the US, and not everyone was okay with it.
After that, those who dissented ended up protesting, and later being supported by Russia. You are not mentioning the explicit discrimination against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, the extrajudicial kidnappings and killings, which were not only not condemned, but often cheered upon by the "new" institutions.
You are making it look like the war in Donbas did not arise from legitimate population concerns/their self-determination will, but rather a Russian operation.
You mean Euromaidan[1] in 2014? In which Russian puppet Yanukovych used riot police to fire live ammo on protesters, after publicly and "bizarrely" backing out of EU negotiations in favor of Russia, who afterwards was just so happened to find sanctuary in Russia and has been repeatedly named as the favored replacement for democratically-elected Zelensky, who Russia has repeatedly tried to assassinate in the past month?
Yanukovich was democratically elected as well, but, of course, you are using the adjective only when referring to Zelensky. The fact that you don't like his policies doesn't make it less democratic.
Just glossing over the "shooting protesters" part then?
Nothing stopped him re-contesting the election. Given that he was removed parliamentary vote [1], then disavowed by his own party and then mysteriously enjoyed the assistance of Russian Spetsnaz before he somehow turning up in Moscow.
But you know, apparently none of that counted as democracy - but, to be expected since you've just been parroting Putin propaganda.
> Given that he was removed parliamentary vote [1] [...] But you know, apparently none of that counted as democracy
The source you link says this:
> The constitutionality of Yanukovych's removal from office has been questioned by constitutional experts.[192] According to Daisy Sindelar from Radio Free Europe, the impeachment may have not followed the procedure provided by the constitution: "[I]t is not clear that the hasty February 22 vote upholds constitutional guidelines, which call for a review of the case by Ukraine's Constitutional Court and a three-fourths majority vote by the Verkhovna Rada -- i.e., 338 lawmakers." The vote, as analyzed by Sindelar, had ten votes less than those required by the constitutional guidelines. However, Sindelar noted in the same article that, "That discrepancy may soon become irrelevant, with parliament expected to elect a new prime minister no later than February 24." The decision to remove Yanukovich was supported by 328 deputies.[b][191][194][19][195]
> Although the legislative removal by an impeachment procedure would have lacked the number of votes required by Ukraine's constitution,[193] the resolution did not follow the impeachment procedure but instead established that Yanukovych "withdrew from his duties in an unconstitutional manner" and cited "circumstances of extreme urgency",[191][194] a situation for which there was no stipulation in the then-current Ukrainian constitution.[196]
Yes, ignoring the procedures doesn't count as democracy. Popular support doesn't give you a right to ignore constitution. Just because you feel the other party is a bad guy - and he may well be - doesn't mean you can invent new laws in the spur of the moment.
So where is the US interference? You were adamant it existed, but now your complaint is Ukranians didn't follow their constitution? Yanukovich was voted out and sought no petition with the Ukranian courts to resolve the issue?
How are those rubles spending these days? Dead Ukranian civilian blood didn't lubricate them very well did they?
> So where is the US interference? You were adamant it existed
No, I wasn't? You're confusing me with another commenter, possibly? I just said that the protesters enjoyed the rhetorical support of foreign officials, which is definitely true because I witnessed it myself, living in Poland at the time and remember what Radek Sikorski was saying back then. I also added that they turned foreign embassy - Canadian, to be precise - into a temporary field hospital. I also mentioned that I read on the wiki that the protesters were supported financially by foreign capital, though I'm not sure if it's true or what form did it take.
> but now your complaint is Ukranians didn't follow their constitution?
Yes, exactly. It's not a rule of law if you don't follow the law. Simple as that. I'm not saying Yanukovych was a good guy, I'm saying that by jumping the gun and removing him in an unconstitutional way you played right into the hands of your adversaries. You shouldn't have done that - you should have followed the law to the letter. That's my opinion, you can disagree of course, but then I'd like to know what did you get out of that way of doing things, that you wouldn't get if the new elections were held a month later.
> How are those rubles spending these days? Dead Ukranian civilian blood didn't lubricate them very well did they?
What are you even talking about? Could you please calm down? I'm not your enemy, I'm not pro-russia, and I don't care what Ukrainians do in their own country. I'm doing my best to maintain neutral stance, even though I'm personally affected by the genocide perpetrated by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army under the ideology of Bandera. I'm willing to let it go - it was a long time ago, after all - and remain neutral, but you're certainly not helping me in that.
There's exactly one government on earth currently invested in pushing the notion that Ukraine isn't a democracy, and boy it's been upset since their bought puppet they provided special forces protection and asylum too was ousted from power because his people didn't want to be sold out to Russia.
And mysteriously your only argument is a talking point about how his removal wasn't democratic, speaking nothing of anything which happened since then.
> And mysteriously your only argument is a talking point about how his removal wasn't democratic
It's written on the Wiki page you linked. Don't you think it would be better if it wasn't written there? Don't you think you'd have an easier time afterwards if there were no doubts about constitutionality?
Can't you just say that "yes, it would have been easier to counter Russian propaganda if there were no doubts like this, but we had no other choice" and move on? Or, if you believe that doing things in a way that cast doubts on the constitutionality of the process was not a mistake and helped you, can't you explain to me how did it help you or your cause?
Yeah, it's a "talking point" for Russia. You gave them that talking point on a silver platter. In my opinion, you've made a strategic mistake at the time. That's all. I'm not talking about anything before or after that point. I'm not judging, I'm not supporting, and I'm not condemning. I'm trying to give you an impartial perspective on the specific point in time, based on the description you yourself linked.
I see that you're not interested in such a perspective. You want unconditional support and praises for everything you did. However, I'm not interested in that. Being on the same side - having a common enemy in Russia - doesn't mean we have to agree with everything you did and how you did it. You will have my support because Russia is a threat to me, too. To get my sympathy, however, you'll need to be able to rationally talk about the less glorious events in history and in recent memory, too. Assuming that just because I criticize some development it must mean that I'm on Moscow's payroll is honestly insulting, and doesn't help any.
This conversation is the perfect example of why it's impossible to have a rational conversation about this topic, even with a demographic (HN) which one could consider "more rational" than others.
Even when you point out factually incorrect information you are automatically on the Kremlin's payroll.
I assumed you're Ukrainian and you're involved in or supporting the protesters of Euromaidan. I ignored your insults because I assumed your emotions run high due to your fellow citizens being killed and your cities being shelled and bombed into smoldering ruins.
If you're not, then you're just a mindless troll, and HN guidelines say that I shouldn't assume the latter.
I feel bad for trying to have a rational conversation with you.
Yanukovich was installed by Putin with the help of Paul Manafort. He lied to get elected and when he was found out he was forcibly thrown out of government. Had he fulfilled his campaign promises instead of working directly for Putin this would not have happened. Pointing to this overthrow is not valid as a condemnation against Ukrainian sovereignty & attempt to follow democratic ideals, it is confirmation of the nations strong desire for those things.
Yanukovych won the democratic elections. His Party of Regions was the biggest at the time. He made some unpopular decisions, well within his constitutional rights, and then an armed, violent mob started occupying a part of the capital, a mob that enjoyed all the rhetorical (and, I read on the Wiki, financial) support of foreign officials, up to the point of using foreign embassy as a field hospital. Yanukovych first tried to use force[1] to take care of the situation, which failed. Before fleeing the country, though, he repeatedly tried to strike some kind of deal with the protesters, offering talks and concessions to the other side, including holding new elections in about a month. The opposition leaders took up his offers, only to be ignored by the mob, which demanded removing Yanukovych from office effective immediately. Meanwhile, democratically elected local government of Crimea repeatedly warned that, shall Yanukovych be forced out of office illegally, Crimea will consider seceding. We know how that played out.
Was Yanukovych Russian puppet? Sure. Was he democratically elected president? Yes. Was he and his political circle corrupt? You bet. Was it strange at the time in Ukraine? Not at all. Were there masses of people who demanded his deposition? Obviously. Were there masses of people who opposed the perceived coup d'etat? Yes, there were.
There seem to be deeply rooted divisions in Ukrainian society and perhaps something like the Euromaidan was inevitable. Maybe Ukraine is better off afterwards, I don't know. What I do know, though, is that your comment here is part of the problem, not the solution. Foregoing the nuance, forgetting to consider narratives other than your own, and above all else - giving in to emotionally loaded arguments instead of rationally assessing long-term effects of what happened is exactly what caused the current situation.
[1] EDIT: yes, by firing live ammo at the crowd, which in itself is nothing strange. The guns and live rounds did not magically appear out of thin air - they were entrusted to the police to defend the state from perceived threats. Euromaidan protesters were perceived as a threat. They were aware they were perceived as such. They could have gone home, but chose not to. The effect was 20 dead and many more wounded. All deaths should be mourned, but it's unfair to blame them on just one side while both sides contributed to escalating the tensions.
What's strange about a state exercising its monopoly on the use of violence? Are the guns in possession of state officers meant for decoration? Would you vote for the police not to have access to lethal weapons? (For the record: I would, but that's me)
> While the initial protests were largely native expressions of discontent with the new Ukrainian government, Russia took advantage of them to launch a coordinated political and military campaign against Ukraine.[33]
Literally from your own link, second paragraph. Conflict wasn't started "when Russian forces helped".
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybook...