Nobody interested in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

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Who cares what Yeltsin did or didn't do? If I find a Polish collaborator would that justify anything and everything that happened to Poland in the last century?

You are technically correct about the weapons, but as I recall Russia's complaint was that the systems deployed could be trivially reconfigured for a first strike.

They are caught between a superpower and a former superpower, it is not crazy to say that their options are limited.

The following elections aren't really important, the coup served its purpose, which was scuttle the Russian diplomatic attempt to keep Ukraine neutral. It also sent a strong message to Russia AND Ukraine : If Russia succeeds diplomatically in Ukraine - Ukraine's government gets overthrown. You were saying something about the will and opinions of Ukrainians were you not? Well, they are allowed to choose any future they like, as long as it's a future the USA approves of and this is true of everyone without the power to oppose the USA while it still exists.

Well that's my experience, saying "I've yet to meet one" certainly leaves 99.99% of the Polish population out of contention. At the risk of further generalising - I've yet to meet one who can accept the most obvious of truths about this war - that Russia was provoked but that's true of almost everyone else in this country, Polish or not. No, no, Putin is always Voldemort or Hitler or a combination of both and the Russians are all orcs. Then come the accusations of being a death eater myself, it's rather annoying.

I'm not even pro-Russian, I'm anti-stupid and anti-propaganda. I don't really have a dog in this race. The only people I feel sorry for are Ukrainian civilians and Russian conscripts, who are caught in the middle of this West vs. Russia war for control.

So you openly discard choices made by Ukrainians.

For some reason, it doesn't fit in your mind that we East Europeans want to ally with EU and USA and don't want to be part of Russkyy Mir - because we have experienced both and know the difference in practice.
For some reason, you keep disrespecting it like we weren't capable of having experiences, forming opinions and making choices about ourselves.

So, Lyman is Ukrainian-controlled now.
Apparent logic of Ukrainian army is to seek opportunities along major logistic trails. So, their logical next step would be Svatove or Kreminna - whichever has poorer defense. That would disable another railway from Russia to the frontlines, making the weak spot or Russians - logistics - even weaker.

A deep sunless pit with dates carved into the brick wall. A clammy underground jail that reeked of urine and rotting food. A clinic, a police station and a kindergarten.

These were among the 10 Russian torture sites located by Associated Press journalists throughout the Ukrainian city of Izium. Torture in Izium was arbitrary, widespread and absolutely routine for both civilians and soldiers during the six months the Russians controlled the city, an AP investigation has found.

The AP spoke to 15 survivors of Russian torture in the Kharkiv region, as well as two families whose loved ones disappeared into Russian hands. Two of the men were taken repeatedly and abused. One battered, unconscious Ukrainian soldier was displayed to his wife to force her to provide information she simply didn't have.

The AP also confirmed eight men killed under torture in Russian custody, according to survivors and families. All but one were civilians.

At a mass grave site created by the Russians and discovered in the woods of Izium, at least 30 of the 447 bodies recently excavated bore visible marks of torture — bound hands, close gunshot wounds, knife wounds and broken limbs, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office. Those injuries corresponded to the descriptions of the pain inflicted upon the survivors.

AP journalists also saw bodies with bound wrists at the mass grave. Amid the trees were hundreds of simple wooden crosses, most marked only with numbers. One said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. At least two more mass graves have been found in the town, all heavily mined, authorities said.

A physician who treated hundreds of Izium’s injured during the Russian occupation said people regularly arrived at his emergency room with injuries consistent with torture, including gunshots to their hands and feet, broken bones and severe bruising, and burns. None would explain their wounds, he said.

Men with links to Ukrainian forces were singled out repeatedly, but any adult man risked getting caught up. Matilda Bogner, the head of the U.N. human rights mission in Ukraine, told the AP they had documented “widespread practices of torture or ill-treatment of civilian detainees” by Russian forces and affiliates. Torture of soldiers was also systematic, she said.

It was also in the spring that the Russians first sought out Mykola Mosyakyn, driving down the rutted dirt roads until they reached the Ukrainian soldier’s fenced cottage. Mosyakyn, 38, had enlisted after the war began, though not in the same unit as Kotsar.

They tossed him into a pit with standing water, handcuffed him and hung him by the restraints.

“They beat me with sticks. They hit me with their hands, they kicked me, they put out cigarettes on me, they pressed matches on me,” he recounted. “They said, ‘Dance,’ but I did not dance. So they shot my feet.”

After three days they dropped him near the hospital with the command: “Tell them you had an accident.”

Mosyakyn was captured again just a few days later. This time, he found himself in School No. 2, subject to routine beatings along with other Ukrainians. AP journalists found a discarded Ukrainian soldier’s jacket in the same blue cell he described in detail. The school also served as a base and field hospital for Russian soldiers, and at least two Ukrainian civilians held there died.

But the soldiers again freed Mosyakyn, only to recapture him yet again and haul him to a crowded garage of a medical clinic. More than a dozen other Ukrainians were jailed with him, soldiers and civilians. Two garages were for men, one for women and a bigger one — the only one with a window — for Russian soldiers.

Women were held in the garage closest to the soldiers’ quarters. Their screams came at night, according to Mosyakyn and Kotsar, who were both held at the clinic at different times. Ukrainian intelligence officials said they were raped regularly.

The behaviour of Russian troops is like the Nazis in WW2. This will have major repercussions for decades to come.

I read an interview with an American general, he said that if Russians use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, NATO will use as much force as is necessary, without nuclear weapons, to wipe out every Russian weapon and soldier they can find...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... d-petraeus

Putin wanted glory for Russia and he'll drown her.

I read that using mass destruction weapons which would impact NATO territory (e.g. radioactive dust being carried by winds over Poland) would trigger art 5.

Where?

"Some analyses" from Kremlin experts, I understand.

Why did Ukrainians call for Donbas evacuation if they were supposed to need human shields?

Why do they invite international investigators to their territorry?

Consistent attributting internal processes to external conspiracies.

Should we all have tiptoed around Russia and let them take everything they wanted? Georgia, Crimea, Donbas, Kyiv...

Treaties do matter or we fall into wolf-eats-wolf anarchy. In case of treaties being harmful, they can be renegotiated.

Our options are always limited. Is it a reason not to respect the choices made?

For some reason, it doesn't fit in your mind that we East Europeans want to ally with EU and USA and don't want to be part of Russkyy Mir - because we have experienced both and know the difference in practice.
For some reason, you keep disrespecting it like we weren't capable of having experiences, forming opinions and making choices about ourselves.

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=404482&start=144#p8996441

Here is one instance I can recall from back in March. Part of an exchange between you, me and fxe. It should be clear I do sympathise with Ukrainian (and by extension other EE states') fears regarding Russia, while criticising the actual choices made that led to this state of affairs.

Mikah: If a country's foreign policy is on a course to seriously hurt your country there are many things you can rightly do in your defense, up to and including a pre-emptive invasion.

fxe: So you agree, Ukraine is fully justified in taking whatever steps are required to defend themselves from Russian aggression.

Mikah: Yes. They made a stupid choice in this case, but the principle I have no problem with.

Yes, yes. Everything I don't like is a Russian disinformation operation.

A fairly easy question magz, did you even need to ask it? No military and government is totally unified, especially during war time. Some soldiers can be committing war crimes left and right while others are acting like decent human beings.

The grand PR war. There may well be actual Russian war crimes to investigate, but even if there weren't they'd want as many eyes as possible reporting that they are investigating Russian war crimes. The headline alone is enough. Plus with the media the way it is there is little fear that Ukrainian war crimes will get much attention in the West.

You dispute the idea that the Germans backed Lenin and the Bolsheviks in an attempt to knock Russia out of the war?

Tiptoed? How about just not instigating or abetting unrest in other countries? Even if it weren't deliberately designed to pressure Russia and expand the Empire - it's not something that should be happening anyway or does muh sovereignty only matter when Russia is the one impinging on it?

Can you not even see the weakness of this Yeltsin argument, even from Polish point of view? Poland signed the Warsaw pact and related treaties. What might you glean from that? Was there no coercion involved? It was dissolved with yet more signatures, yet signatures is what made them legal in the first place... How might your argument be used?

I don't actually think treaties matter all that much. What matters is good will and without it treaties aren't worth the paper they are written on.

Absolutely, if your choices lead to an avoidable war that might potentially escalate into a third world war.

If the choices are moronic and lead to devastation, I reserve the right to call morons what they are.

Let's pretend there is no US pressure, that the US respects the sovereignty of Ukraine, cares about Ukrainians and that Ukraine was governed by smart and thoughtful people - that was never the case but let's play pretend. There is another route Ukraine might have taken that satisfies Ukraine, Russia and a hypothetically virtuous USA - a three way defensive pact between the US, Ukraine and Russia. The US and Russia agree to go to war to defend Ukraine from invasion both from each other and any third parties. In exchange there will be no NATO or Russian weapon systems or troops on Ukrainian territory outside of Crimea, Russia maintains access to Sevastopol as a naval base in perpetuity. Likewise Russia will allow whatever economic integration Ukraine sought with the EU, as long as their military concerns were met.

That's pretty much all it would have taken in this hypothetical world. I don't think this is or was actually possible, not because of Russia - but because of what the US wants, but there certainly were better options than forcing Russia into a position where they saw no hope except in direct military engagement.

Let's pretend there is no US pressure, that the US respects the sovereignty of Ukraine, cares about Ukrainians and that Ukraine was governed by smart and thoughtful people - that was never the case but let's play pretend. There is another route Ukraine might have taken that satisfies Ukraine, Russia and a hypothetically virtuous USA - a three way defensive pact between the US, Ukraine and Russia. The US and Russia agree to go to war to defend Ukraine from invasion both from each other and any third parties. In exchange there will be no NATO or Russian weapon systems or troops on Ukrainian territory outside of Crimea, Russia maintains access to Sevastopol as a naval base in perpetuity. Likewise Russia will allow whatever economic integration Ukraine sought with the EU, as long as their military concerns were met.