War in Ukraine: both sides are wrong

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Then I believe you have all the reasons to oppose emptying grain storages in Kherson Oblast, leaving landmines in fields and blocking Black Sea for Ukrainian exports.

I haven't heard of those things you just mentioned because I don't follow news closely. But from the way you described them, yes I oppose them.

However, I still think Russia should do something to undo the fact that it lost the cold war. It just goes about it in all the wrong ways.

Russia didn't "lose" the Cold War.

It was more like an economic collapse that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was the fault of Russian citizens. More so than anything caused by the West.

Since Russia can't seem to do so in a manner that isn't self-defeating they might need to consider other options.

It's kind of getting humiliating seeing how these attempts at a greater Russia only seem to lead to a further diminished Russia.

No. A million times no.

Firstly, on Hitler, there were some people in Europe who were very keen to avoid another war. Understandable, really. They let Hitler retake some of Germany's former territories, but he didn't stop there. And then he rounded up all the Jews and Roma and even large numbers of Slavs. Moreover, the Czechs for example didn't want to be part of Germany, and the Germans didn't have a "right" to annex their country.

Then on Putin, a lot of the same arguments apply. Ukraine was part of the USSR, but that doesn't mean Russia has any sort of right to it - no more than Ukraine has to Russia, or Britain to India. Some places have been under multiple empires over the years - do all of those empires still have a claim to them?

Let's all not lose sight that Ukraine has a problem (even if some here would like to pretend it's a necessary evil).

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/u ... cna1290946

The Japanese also publicly praised certain WWII war criminals. (I believe this is fairly common in racism-insensitive region, i.e. non-colonial region.)
The Chinese as direct victims did not invade them.

Don't paint Ukraine with a "Nazi" brush.

The populace of Ukraine is not primarily Nazi-----or nearly Nazi.

There are certainly neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine. Alas, we have neo-Nazi militias in the US, too.

The President of Ukraine is Jewish. The populace knew he was Jewish when they voted for him for President.

Actually according to ADL survey, between a third and a half of Ukraine's population is antisemitic, depending on a year. And yes Ukraine is more antisemitic than Russia based on those surveys. Although Russia is still a lot more antisemitic than the US.

Ukraine 2014: https://global100.adl.org/country/ukraine/2014
Ukraine 2015: https://global100.adl.org/country/ukraine/2015
Ukraine 2019: https://global100.adl.org/country/ukraine/2019

Russia 2014: https://global100.adl.org/country/russia/2014
Russia 2015: https://global100.adl.org/country/russia/2015
Russia 2019: https://global100.adl.org/country/russia/2019

USA 2014: https://global100.adl.org/country/usa/2014
USA 2015: https://global100.adl.org/country/usa/2015

But I do see why its silly though. Because Ukraine is not the only country that ranks high. For example, every single country in the middle east ranks far higher than Ukraine, yet Putin has good relations with them. Belarus ranks very similar to Ukraine yet Putin has good relations with Belarus too.

I think Russian claims against Nazism might not necesserely be pro-Jewish, since Russia seems to buy into "Jews=Nazis" line of thinking. But their version of this claim is a bit more unusual than the claim that others are making. Because if you look at a typical pro-Palestinian people, they would often say "Zionism=Nazism" in reference to Jews targetting Palestinians. But Putin, even though he is also pro-Palestinian, would never equate Jews with Nazis in the Middle eastern context (at least I haven't heard him do that). What he did instead was to equate Zelensky with Judenrats (Jewish traitors hired by Hitler). So instead of "lets defend Palestinians against the Jews" its more like "lets defend Jews against themselves". This sounds actually opposite to antisemitism because antisemites are claiming that Jews are very smart and very selfish so everyone else needs to be defended against Jews. But Putin is saying Jews are stupid so Jews needs to be defended against themselves. Yet Israeli people said that this claim is, too, antisemitic and had Putin apologize for it.

I do, however, think that Russian people at large (other than Putin) are likely to equate Jews with Nazis in a more traditional sense. Yet they would still parrot Putin's claim about Nazi regime in Ukraine in defense of the war, even if they don't particularly like Jews. So I do see that once the word is used, its being blindly repeated without really that much thought given to its exact context.

^I...don't really trust ADL's findings on non-core Western countries to be informative.

Ukraine's anti-Semitic score ranges from 38% to 46%.
South Korea's anti-Semitic score is 53%.
I would be surprised if this proves that the Nazis are stronger in South Korea than in Ukraine.

US's anti-Semitic score ranges from 9% to 10%.
China's anti-Semitic score is 20%.
Hmm...if it's really a completely random sample, I suspect many of these Chinese have no idea what "Jew/Israel" is. The vast majority of Chinese have never heard of Semitic.
And data from China shows that 18% of the sample are Buddhists and 21% are None/Atheist. Apart from temples, I have no memory of meeting anyone in my life who claimed to be a Buddhist. I haven't even met a few people who are not None/Atheist.
Moreover, the total population of China in the data differs by 300 million from the actual population at that time.

India's data has more Muslims than Hindus.

Being in the "Russian sphere of influence" was all suffering for Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, even many Russians themselves.
With opening of the world, those people are able to build better lives.
There's nothing "right" in pushing them back to a system of terror and corruption.

To "not use the wrong methods", Russia would need to change itself very deeply... including letting others choose their own fate. Which would render your argument void.

BTW, for many centuries, both before Moscow raised to power and after it did, Ukraine and Belarus belonged to Poland-Lithuania. So what? Should we now reconquer them? Or maybe we should reconquer our borders from 1612?
It doesn't make sense. It's just setting the world on fire again and again.

Countries aiding Ukraine has severely hurt Russian ability to play monopoly with more countries

Hurting any country's ability to play monopoly with more countries isn't a good thing?

Last edited by SkinnedWolf on 17 May 2022, 1:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

There can be many forms of the same thing, Hitler’s had a hatred of Jews but not every Nazi did, in fact many more intelligent ones had no issue with them but just went along with it.

In fact what defines a Nazi? Is it solely hatred of Jews rather than any hatred?

The USSR had a different form of communism to China but it was still communism.

Trump is a republican but is different to other republicans like Ron Paul or late John McCain.

Russia sees Nazism as hatred of Russians only nothing to do with Jews.

When the new style gov came to power back in 2014 they banned the Russian language and introduced many anti Russian laws plus expressed their admiration of controversial war criminal band era who although was a Ukrainian freedom fighter was also a Nazi who sent Jews to their death.

The gov pulled back some of these new measures but it was too late in Crimea the majority ethnic Russians saw what was going on and rose up against the gov. The same in Donbas.

Russia lost 27 million in the war so view Nazism as hatred of Russians more than hatred of Jews.

The situation was made worse by the canceling of Russia by the west including the social media attack. Again Russians saw this as nazism feeding their narrative and rallied together giving Putin a popularity boost among the population.

Ideally Russia needs to withdraw from Ukraine and a free monitored referendum needs to happen in all these republics to determine where they want to be.

Ukraine needs a more inclusive gov reflective of its ethnic population

Also the countries surrounding Russia should remain neutral and not join NATO

Then US and Russia should discuss peace cooperation and nuclear disarmament rather than getting one over each other.

Just on both these points. After integrating into the Ukrainian forces, Ukraine rely heavily on the neo-Nazi Azov battation to protect it's eastern front with Russia. How much? according to news reports the Azov battalion are all that stand with some of the last towns holding out against the Russians.

China, Japan and the US do not employ nazi militias in their armed forces

It’s a good thing yes