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> just for the reason of ethnical difference... How the hell has this suddenly become an explanation for the war (or even a thing in the first place)??? No one

by brabel 5y ago

> just for the reason of ethnical difference... How the hell has this suddenly become an explanation for the war (or even a thing in the first place)??? No one had ever mentioned Ukrainians being "discriminated" by Russians before the war, quite the opposite, Russian-ethnics and Ukrainians have lived peacefully in Ukraine AND Russia for generations (except for a small minority of far-right nationalists). > committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. This is a desperate attempt by some Ukrainians to paint a picture of Russia as being equivalent to Nazi Germany, playing the same Hitler card that Putin did to start the war. They are doing that to try to make the West feel morally obliged to act even if that means war spreads to the whole of Europe and potentially, turns into a nuclear war. Even though there is a lot of suffering happening in Ukraine and Russia is indeed bombing cities in the fight with the Ukrainian army, it's an absolute disgrace to compare that to a genocide, and the claim Russia is trying to ethnically cleanse Ukraine should be as strongly rejected as the claim by Russia that Ukraine is governed by people with Nazi beliefs, both being ridiculous.

sofixa 5y ago
> This is a desperate attempt by some Ukrainians to paint a picture of Russia as being equivalent to Nazi Germany, playing the same Hitler card that Putin did to start the war. You can't deny there's similarity in how they operate, the excuses they used for "reasons" ( that's not a country, people there are Russian) and the even flimsier excuses they used for the "provocation" (false flag operations) they're "responding" to. There's even the "foreign element we just want to get rid of"(Nazis vs Judeo-Bolsheviks). Heck, even their strategy is similar, and they even get slowed down by the same mud. The comparisons are very apt. Yes, it is a genocide to try to clean out the local population of a city through destruction to settle it with your own (Mariupol).
- brabel 5y ago
  No, I can deny, there's no similarity at all.. There's no concentration camps. There's no gas chambers. There's no ideology of a supreme race. Nothing at all is similar. While I do agree Putin's speech was based on flimsy excuses, the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum[1], which you seem to have forgotten, which only asked one thing of Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-...
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. No, for Ukraine and NATO to sign a guarantee Ukraine will never join NATO. Which is a ridiculous thing to ask, just like Danzig, or the Autro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia was. And of course, it was 1) deliberately unacceptable 2) all for show, as Kadyrov's leaked communications show ( he's talking about the impeding invasion weeks in advance). The lack of complete parity doesn't impede drawing parallels where they exist, and there are a lot of them.
    - brabel 5y ago
      > The lack of complete parity doesn't impede drawing parallels where they exist, and there are a lot of them. The parallels you're drawing could've been drawn with every single other armed conflict in history.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        Do share a few examples where: * the aggressor makes an impossible to accept ultimatum * claims their enemy isn't really of a different ethnicity and historically belongs to the aggressor * stages false flag operations to excuse their invasion None of these is in any way new, or revolutionary, and wasn't invented by the Nazis, or the Austrians in WWI, but it's not a mandatory element of every other armed conflict of history. And even if it were, it's still valid to compare to other such conflicts, like WWI and WWII, including the Nazis.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum The actual trigger of the war was Putin’s order to invade. The list of demands issued to the West prior wasn't even cited as a pretext for the special military operation when it was announced, though it had some conceptual overlap with a subset of the very long lost of grievances and excuses cited in the announcement of the “special military operation”. > which only asked one thing of Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. This is true in a sense: the only thing the ultimatum demanded of Ukraine was that it be permanently prohibited from entering NATO. BUT it also demanded of NATO that it be permanently banned from any further expansion, that it withdraw all troops and equipment from all countries that joined NATO after 1997 (which is a weird date, as no countries were admitted to NATO between 1990 and 1999, so it really means 1990), and that it be banned from holding drills in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, or the Caucasus without advance permission from Russia. While the invasion was targeted at Ukraine, the ultimatum was targeted at NATO, and specifically at removing it's capacity to interfere should Russia choose to invade, or threaten to invade as a means of dictating internal policies, it's neighbors (including existing NATO members) in the future.

by brabel 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

> This is a desperate attempt by some Ukrainians to paint a picture of Russia as being equivalent to Nazi Germany, playing the same Hitler card that Putin did to start the war. You can't deny there's similarity in how they operate, the excuses they used for "reasons" ( that's not a country, people there are Russian) and the even flimsier excuses they used for the "provocation" (false flag operations) they're "responding" to. There's even the "foreign element we just want to get rid of"(Nazis vs Judeo-Bolsheviks). Heck, even their strategy is similar, and they even get slowed down by the same mud. The comparisons are very apt. Yes, it is a genocide to try to clean out the local population of a city through destruction to settle it with your own (Mariupol).

brabel 5y ago
No, I can deny, there's no similarity at all.. There's no concentration camps. There's no gas chambers. There's no ideology of a supreme race. Nothing at all is similar. While I do agree Putin's speech was based on flimsy excuses, the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum[1], which you seem to have forgotten, which only asked one thing of Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-...
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. No, for Ukraine and NATO to sign a guarantee Ukraine will never join NATO. Which is a ridiculous thing to ask, just like Danzig, or the Autro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia was. And of course, it was 1) deliberately unacceptable 2) all for show, as Kadyrov's leaked communications show ( he's talking about the impeding invasion weeks in advance). The lack of complete parity doesn't impede drawing parallels where they exist, and there are a lot of them.
  - brabel 5y ago
    > The lack of complete parity doesn't impede drawing parallels where they exist, and there are a lot of them. The parallels you're drawing could've been drawn with every single other armed conflict in history.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      Do share a few examples where: * the aggressor makes an impossible to accept ultimatum * claims their enemy isn't really of a different ethnicity and historically belongs to the aggressor * stages false flag operations to excuse their invasion None of these is in any way new, or revolutionary, and wasn't invented by the Nazis, or the Austrians in WWI, but it's not a mandatory element of every other armed conflict of history. And even if it were, it's still valid to compare to other such conflicts, like WWI and WWII, including the Nazis.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum The actual trigger of the war was Putin’s order to invade. The list of demands issued to the West prior wasn't even cited as a pretext for the special military operation when it was announced, though it had some conceptual overlap with a subset of the very long lost of grievances and excuses cited in the announcement of the “special military operation”. > which only asked one thing of Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. This is true in a sense: the only thing the ultimatum demanded of Ukraine was that it be permanently prohibited from entering NATO. BUT it also demanded of NATO that it be permanently banned from any further expansion, that it withdraw all troops and equipment from all countries that joined NATO after 1997 (which is a weird date, as no countries were admitted to NATO between 1990 and 1999, so it really means 1990), and that it be banned from holding drills in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, or the Caucasus without advance permission from Russia. While the invasion was targeted at Ukraine, the ultimatum was targeted at NATO, and specifically at removing it's capacity to interfere should Russia choose to invade, or threaten to invade as a means of dictating internal policies, it's neighbors (including existing NATO members) in the future.