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BoldFace posted:Pretty radical shift in tone. That twitter user seems to not understand Ukrainian at all. quote:We are told that Feb 16 will be the day of [Russia's] attack. Let us instead make it our day of unity.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:37
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Red and Black posted:The Maidan coup lead to a pro-EU/US government as evidenced by them almost immediately taking on a huge IMF loan with structural adjustments. It really isn't that hard to connect the dots to potential NATO membership and handing over the naval base. This is the calculation Russia made and acted on. Russia promised Yanukovich a 15 billion loan that was cancelled amidst escalation of Maidan protests. Medvedev, then PM, explained that the loan would be back on the table if Yanukovich's government 'stopped being a doormat'.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:49
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Shes Not Impressed posted:More clarification: See, you need like one person who understands Ukrainian. Doesn't even have to speak the language, just understand it. And somehow CNN and NBC fail to have one person like that when reporting on a presidential address.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:55
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Red and Black posted:The US was one of several countries that invaded Russia right after the 1917 Revolution Explains why Poland was so eager to join NATO, considering the Polish-Soviet war around the same time. E: To clarify, this is to highlight how silly this type of reasoning is, not an actual argument. Paladinus fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Feb 14, 2022 |
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Feb 14, 2022 21:23
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TipTow posted:Can you cite an example of this happening prior to the Baltics' ascension? Transnistria.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:27
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QuoProQuid posted:it's actually an interesting question. War on the Rocks has a good retrospective on the Baltics and their path to NATO membership that makes the case that their entry was not something done casually or thoughtlessly. instead, the enlargement was something that was only agreed to after much internal debate and after the baltic states aggressively worked to demonstrate that they could "share the burden" and their democratic reforms wouldn't immediately collapse. Not to mention that in 2000 Putin was on board with Russia straight up joining NATO. Now that's a missed opportunity for NATO. They should have accepted Russia before Baltics and this whole thing could be avoided.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:39
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Red and Black posted:Can someone give me a run down on what evidence there is that Russia even invaded the Donbass? Here's a good video from back in the day. https://video.vice.com/alps/video/selfie-soldiers-russia-checks-into-ukraine/55ba5014018008e821c71e52
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Feb 14, 2022 21:46
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Gripweed posted:OK. I know you're trying to make my position look bad by comparing it do a completely unrelated bad position, but you're not going to trick me into saying that yes actually the US should arm nazi war criminals in Ukraine. Are you sure Azov specifically get American weapons? I am legitimately not sure if it's the case, considering there was a push the US State Department to designate Azov a foreign terrorist organisation. Would it be fine if America only gave weapons to be used by non-nazi military units?
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Feb 14, 2022 22:00
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Gripweed posted:That would certainly be better. But it would still be the US escalating a foreign war. I would still be opposed. As it turns out, America doesn't provide weapons to Azov since 2018, which I was relieved to learn. So there's at least that. Clearly, there are cases when military aid to sides of foreign conflicts is justified. I would say US did good with Lend-Lease during WWII, for example.
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Feb 14, 2022 22:24
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Gripweed posted:Sure, but that was 80 years ago. We don't have a great track record since then. America didn't have a great track record at the time either, to be honest. And yet they did a good thing by ending the policy of non-intervention and intervening. It's fine to say that Putin is not Hitler and the situation in Ukraine doesn't warrant any involvement by US whatsoever, but you must have at least some sort of a red line in mind where supplying weapons to Ukraine would become justified.
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Feb 14, 2022 22:43
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Gripweed posted:Sure there are hypothetical situations where arming Ukraine would in my opinion be the right thing to do. But reality is nowhere near any of those situations. So what would hypothetically need to happen?
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Feb 14, 2022 23:01
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Gripweed posted:I guess if Ukraine was a bastion of socialist thought and LGBT rights, and their opponent was dedicated to destroying socialism and LGBT rights, then that would certainly change my thinking, because I'd support Ukraine over their opponent country on political and moral grounds. I see. That's a very interesting position.
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Feb 14, 2022 23:19
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Paladinus posted:I see. That's a very interesting position. I realise I should probably disclose my own position. I think America's military aid is justified in principle in accordance with the Budapest Memorandum. It beats giving nuclear weapons back to Ukraine anyway.
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Feb 14, 2022 23:40
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Zedhe Khoja posted:The ban on arming them ended half a decade ago unless there was a second go of it. Seems weird of someone who posts about this nonstop every day not to know that. The ban seems to have been properly enacted in 2018 and stayed in place since. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis You might be thinking of the time in 2016 when the appropriate amendment wasn't included in the spending bill. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/congress-has-removed-a-ban-on-funding-neo-nazis-from-its-year-end-spending-bill/
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Feb 15, 2022 05:14
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They often don't use them even at actual parades. https://www.autonews.ru/news/5eeb689e9a79474019944841
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Feb 15, 2022 06:35
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My prediction is Putin's not going to sign it. See, unlike our Western partners, I have the political will to go against parliament just to honour international agreements. (also, my oligarch friends don't want their assets seized abroad due to sanctions)
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Feb 15, 2022 13:46
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gently caress you, Rupert Murdoch!
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Feb 15, 2022 14:10
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As I predicted, Putin's not signing the LDNR recognition bill. For now anyway.quote:MPs clearly share the deep concern their voters have for the people of Donbas. We must do everything to solve the problem of Donbas, but first and foremost it should be done through the not fully realised opportunities to implement the Minsk agreements.
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Feb 15, 2022 15:47
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CommieGIR posted:Wonder what the play is here. It's another attempt to make Ukraine follow the Minsk agreements. As explicitly stated. Do what you've agreed to, or we can recognise LDNR at any moment.
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Feb 15, 2022 15:54
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Inject someone else's piss into your bladder than piss it out in a Kremlin toilet as a funny prank. Two years pass, and Russia installs a cloned horse as Germany's chancellor.
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Feb 15, 2022 16:05
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I imagine foreign leaders just don't trust Russian doctors with shoving anything into their noses. Probably not that justified, but whatever, security protocols are weird.
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Feb 15, 2022 16:23
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TipTow posted:You can make up whatever bullshit strawmans you like. Raskolnikov expressed displeasure at the money the U.S. has been and will be spending on this, TheBuilder said "the West can afford it" and tried to buttress that position by juxtapositioning Russian poverty, and I was pointing out that poverty exists in "the West," too, which is why some Westerners may be unhappy about their government spending money on more war. America has a military budget of $715 billion. Russia's is $48 billion.
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Feb 15, 2022 16:48
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According to David Arakhamia, Zelenskyi's party's faction leader in Rada, the 'war hysteria' costs Ukraine $2-3 billion a month. Hope US and the UK will be willing to provide financial aid when the full scale invasion doesn't happen.
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Feb 15, 2022 16:59
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Hmm... That doesn't seem right... America's GDP is 14 times that of Russia.
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Feb 15, 2022 17:25
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Feb 15, 2022 19:54
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What am I looking at here? Wait a second, is this- drat it! Rick Rolled again! Orthanc6 posted:"Look at all those people, going about their lives" Russia is not being vague. They emphatically state time after time that they are not going to invade. It's fine not to trust them, I suppose, but as far as their public statements go, their position is very clear. Paladinus fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 23:22
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Moscow interpretation of Minsk agreements is utter comedy. These “separatist” regions are staffed by Russian soldiers, and ruled by Russian citizens, down to United Russia membership cards personally presented to them by Medvedev. Hell, Borodai, the first “prime minister” of DNR, is a sitting member of the Russian parliament. Yet at the same time Moscow pretends this is an internal conflict of Ukraine. It's not Russia's interpretation, this is just what was agreed on and there's no other way to interpret them. It's understandable that Ukraine now is in a different situation than when Minsk II was signed, and would want to revise some of its provisions, but it's clear that neither Russia or LDNR are willing to budge on elections.
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Feb 16, 2022 10:31
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Elections are the least controversial part of it. My argument is that Russia is a party to the conflict, yet Minsk agreements portray Russia as a guarantor/judge of them. There is no ambiguity in the agreement on the order of events. quote:Restore control of the state border to the Ukrainian government in the whole conflict zone, which has to start on the first day after the local election and end after the full political regulation (local elections in particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts based on the law of Ukraine and Constitutional reform) Ukraine is trying to reneg on this. The special rights of the regions are outlined in the law On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, which Rada passed in 2014 and renews every year. This law is explicitly mentioned in the agreement, and there is no ambiguity there either.
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Feb 16, 2022 11:10
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cinci zoo sniper posted:If we look at Minsk II (full text): It's pretty obvious in context that if control of the border is supposed to be transferred back to Ukraine after the election, someone else will be controlling it in the meantime. And the precondition to border control is elections. OSCE should in theory be able to highlight any breaches of their standards when elections are actually planned. Russia would presumably call back all Russian 'consultants' and regular units by that point. Again, I think it's fair for Ukraine not to be happy with Minsk II, but it's fairly unambiguous in how things are supposed to go, and Russia's interpretation is not different from France's or Germany's interpretation.
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Feb 16, 2022 13:58
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Zelenskyi promised to be a one-term president, so there's at least one election promise he's likely to keep. I don't think Poroshenko's ES attracted any Zelenskyi voters, though. You can see that other nationalist-adjacent parties have lost a lot of support, as Poroshenko managed to galvanise his audience amidst the criminal investigation against him. Meanwhile pro-Russian-adjacent and centrist politicians like Muraev, Razumkov, and Medvedchuk were the ones to profit from loss of confidence in Zelenskyi. A notable exception is Sharyi, and I imagine it has something to do with his and Murayev's weird beef.
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Feb 16, 2022 19:18
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Grape posted:You were comparing a minor militant group that has zero political power in its country (Azov), to a series of major militants who fully represented the resistance to a government that they eventually took out (Mujahideen). It bears repeating, but they do have political power. Their political wing is called National Corps. They are not represented in Rada, thankfully, but do have some representation in local governments. More importantly, though, they are very active in staging street protests and pushing the government towards the military solution of the conflict. It is also an open secret that they are used by an ever changing cavalcade of oligarchs and politicians (both nominally pro-Russian and nationalist) to steer all sorts of poo poo to score political points for them, and they often suspiciously avoid any consequences for things like assaulting journalists they deem pro-Russian, or harassing Russian-speaking foreigners in the streets, or disrupting Victory Day marches, or just publicly advocating for re-education camps for people who lived on occupied territories. This very real issue is blown out of proportion by Russian propaganda, but it shouldn't be ignored or dismissed out of hand. If you can acknowledge that when a bunch of totally not-nazis march with torches in American towns under the guise of protecting historical heritage of South's Civil War heroes, and a major political party tacitly approves of their actions, there is a systemic issue, even if the government officially condemns the radical right, you should be able to acknowledge the same happening in Ukraine. The same goes for Ukrainisation. It's not a genocide Putin claims it to be, far from it. The Russian language is not banned from schools or from media, but there are laws in place that limit its usage. The laws also limit the usage of other languages in a similar way, but EU languages, like Hungarian, are treated differently and enjoy some exceptions that Russian (and other minority non-EU languages) don't enjoy. It's a real systemic issue that is acknowledged by CoE's Venice Commission. On the plus side, at least from what I hear from Russian and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians alike, to the chagrin of far right nationalists, Ukrainisation laws are not properly enforced, especially in Russian-speaking regions. This, however, means, that small businesses or individuals do get from time to time targeted by said nationalists for real and perceived failures to adhere to Ukrainisation laws. Paladinus fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 03:44
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And I guess, because there are probably people in this thread who think brave separatists fight for equality and socialism for all, I should also mention that Ukrainians and other minorities are not treated particularly well in Crimea and in LDNR. If anything, their language and cultural rights are less protected than those of Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in unoccupied Ukrainian regions.
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Feb 17, 2022 04:00
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Sputnik is actually a slightly less unhinged version of Russian state propaganda.
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Feb 17, 2022 05:58
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Haven't watched it myself yet, but promises to be an interesting debate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ_kmAEk0fw
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Feb 17, 2022 20:51
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mdemone posted:https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1494441943803183105?s=20&t=oaJ-6WgJDn_KHW6RmSWh6w For context, this person is in the occupied part of Donbas, and supports DNR.
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Feb 18, 2022 01:04
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Cugel the Clever posted:This is a very important counter to the laughable idea that Putin is just a natural manifestation of the Russian public's alleged "innate" demand to be a great power "free from Washington's boot on its neck". The Putin regime has aggressively developed a sophisticated propaganda machine that amplifies this narrative to distract from and excuse failings by political leaders at home. According to all polls, including those conducted by the state-owned Russian Public Opinion Research Center, the majority of Russians are more concerned with domestic economical issues, not with geopolitics. Russia's propaganda machine aims first and foremost to disengage general population from political life, and it succeeds in that. If they it converts a dozen of people to kvass patriotism, it's just a nice bonus.
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Feb 18, 2022 08:31
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They should have at least given the exact date when Zelenskyi plans to retake Luhansk and Donetsk. That's how you know he's definitely going to do that.
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Feb 18, 2022 14:44
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cinci zoo sniper posted:https://twitter.com/liveuamap/status/1494674740790845442 Maybe Russian soldiers just can't tell Polish from Ukrainian.
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Feb 18, 2022 15:28
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Sir Bobert Fishbone posted:Apparently Rostov's leadership had no idea this was happening, so there are no evacuation centers set up to accommodate these people when they reach Russia. Something tells me the evacuation part was improvised by Pushilin without sign off by Russia. He was clearly tasked to mirror American and EU reaction to a possible impending invasion of Ukraine with evacuating diplomats, etc., but went too far.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:30
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Feb 18, 2022 17:18
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