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Thousands have been killed on both sides of that conflict since 2014, handpicking a temporary downturn in 2021 is a bit disingenuous, no?

• int_19h 4y ago
  It wasn't a "temporary downturn". If you look at the graph of casualties in Donbas before 2022, the first 2 years of fighting in 2014-2015 see the vast majority of casualties, and then it goes down sharply from there. By 2021, this much lower rate was a well-established status quo, and this was reflected even in official government briefings from separatist republics and Russia itself. For example, DNR published (https://regnum.ru/news/polit/3467017.html https://regnum.ru/news/polit/3467017.html) its own stats claiming a grand total of 70 military casualties and 7 civilians for the entirety of 2021 - a proportion, by the way, that tells you volumes about where that fire was aimed.
  • yucky 4y ago
    I can show you the same trend in the Iraq War, and it doesn't make it not a war. I guess I'm not sure of the point.
    • int_19h 4y ago
      The point is that it is an extremely silly justification to start a war which resulted in these numbers spiking ~100x for the civilian population in the affected areas.
      • yucky 4y ago
        I don't think Donbas is the entire justification is it? Also, we probably had even less justification to invade Iraq yet we stayed for 20 years. Makes it really hard to take any of the moralizing from the US & NATO seriously.
        • int_19h 4y ago
          It's hard to say what the "entire justification" even is in this case, since the goalposts have been moved so rapidly since the beginning of the invasion that it's basically all blurry. Remember back when they said it's totally not about taking any land from Ukraine? But, anyway, Donbas is the primary justification for the population of Russia. The other one - that this is all a pre-emptive strike to forestall some kind of NATO invasion against Russia proper - is significantly harder to believe in and thus doesn't have as many adherents.
          • yucky 4y ago
            > It's hard to say what the "entire justification" even is in this case, since the goalposts have been moved so rapidly since the beginning of the invasion that it's basically all blurry. Is this referring to Russia in Ukraine, or the US in Iraq?
            • int_19h 4y ago
              To both, so please spare us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
              • yucky 4y ago
                The problem is, the US has invaded more countries in the last 50 years than the rest of the world combined and it's always based on lies and/or ulterior motives. So we have zero credibility on this. At this point, if you don't instinctively assume our CIA/State Dept are actively working to undermine other nations then you haven't been paying attention. Why should we ever trust anything they say or do? Because Putin is a dick? Sorry, that's not quite enough to undo decades of lies I've had to listen to these turds shovel down our throats.
                • int_19h 4y ago
                  As it happens, I am still a Russian citizen, so you might consider that your perspective about "why do we ever trust those guys when they always lied to us" is equally applicable from the other end. I don't need to listen to Biden to tell me that Putin is a dick; I lived under him for a decade, and still have family and friends who do. As far as comparisons go, US did a lot of shitty things internationally in the past 50 years, but I don't recall a war to directly annex parts of another country being one of them. And yes, it is far worse than "regime changes" (which are also bad, to be clear) just because of how inherently destructive such a thing is.