Ukraine 3

[Timber Rattler]

Why didn't you object to the US and GB shutting off negotiations before the first bombs fell @berdie

There were no negotiations.  That was a lie spread by a pro-Kremlin blogger that all the other pro-Kremlin blogs picked up.  And what was there to negotiate anyway?

[Hoodat]

Why didn't you object to the US and GB shutting off negotiations before the first bombs fell @berdie

Negotiations?  lol

That would be where Zelenskiy stated back in January that Ukraine would  not be joining NATO.  And then Putin invaded anyway.  But you knew that already.

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Stopping the years of  brutal military assault by the Azov Battalion on the Donbas region (at the direction of Kiev) is one of the reasons Russia took action.

But now this fact is being erased from history to manipulate and justify our war on Russia.

Best as I can tell, while neither side is guiltless, the atrocities were started by the Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic separatists, and exceeded those committed in response by local militias loyal to Ukraine.  They are actual Stalinists there.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/ukraine-donetsk-pro-russia-militants

Even pro-Russia Al Jazeera called them out on it.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/3/22/some-stay-some-die-the-horror-of-ukraines-war-camps

[Hoodat]

Stopping the years of  brutal military assault by the Azov Battalion on the Donbas region (at the direction of Kiev) is one of the reasons Russia took action.

The Azov Battalion ceased to exist in 2015, a fact which you already knew.  Yet here you are again posting lies about it.

[DB]

The Azov Battalion ceased to exist in 2015, a fact which you already knew.  Yet here you are again posting lies about it.

That's all she's got.

[Right_in_Virginia]

"It’s Orwellian.  They act as though years of contrary reporting never existed, and reality is as they now choose to define it."  (Video)

https://mobile.twitter.com/SystemUpdate_/status/1607832287940603904

"The media has also been burying years of inconvenient reporting on the neo-Nazi affiliated Azov Battalion. Watch the @NYTimes soften their language in real time, as they rebrand the Azov Battalion from openly neo-Nazi, to far-right, to heroic defenders of Ukraine " (Video)

https://mobile.twitter.com/SystemUpdate_/status/1607832281443635200

"One of the most remarkable features of the Ukraine war is how the media rewrote years of history, almost overnight, to support U.S. intervention in Ukraine. Before Russia invaded, Zelensky was not exactly the poster child for virtuous democratic leadership:"  (Video)

https://mobile.twitter.com/SystemUpdate_/status/1607832269791662081

Shockingly illustrated by the comments that followed this original post.   

[Hoodat]

That's all she's got.

Yep.

https://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,468874.msg2650188.html#msg2650188

https://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,468874.msg2645001.html#msg2645001


And there's this from last May:

Good guys - Ukraine
Bad  guys  - Russia

It should become apparent once one checks the veracity of the claims that have been coming from Russia for the past ten years.  Take the "Azov Battalion" narrative, for example.  A militia unit was founded as a response to a 2014  Russian invasion, and was led by a political extremist.  By the end of that year, that leader was expelled, entering the field of politics instead.  The "Azov Battalion" was then incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, being given the new designation of "Azov Regiment".  Under the new authority of the Ukrainian Military, the unit ceased being a political militia.

Yet Russian propaganda has continued for eight years, painting a false narrative on its current status and designation.  That same false Russian propaganda has littered these boards for the past three months.   And no matter how many times that propaganda is exposed and discredited for the lies they are, it keeps getting posted.

Hope that helps.

All this is readily available information.  Yet there is a poster here who continues to parrot the lies of the Russian Federation regarding the Azov Battalion, with malice and forethought.

[Hoodat]

More posting history:

There's only one poster here having difficulty accepting the truth.  Here it is again:

Factbox-Last Defenders of Mariupol: What Is Ukraine's Azov Regiment?

May 17, 2022, at 5:36 a.m.

(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin looks poised to take full control of Ukraine's southeastern port city of Mariupol after the apparent surrender of the last Ukrainian forces holed up at a vast steel works.

At the core of that last stand has been the Azov Regiment whose fighters are lionised as heroes in Ukraine, but reviled by Putin's Kremlin as a band of Russia-hating neo-Nazis.

AZOV'S ORIGINS

The Azov Regiment began as one of many militias of volunteer fighters who banded together to fight pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow who carved out two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine in 2014 after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Mariupol is the spiritual home of the Azov Regiment which it helped Ukraine recapture from pro-Russian fighters in 2014 and where it had a permanent base until the 2022 invasion.

The militia emerged from Andriy Biletskiy's Patriot of Ukraine organisation that critics say championed white nationalist, anti-immigrant extreme-right ideas.

Its logo resembles a black "wolfsangel", a symbol that was used by some Nazi units and is seen by critics as neo-Nazi. The Azov say the logo represents the letters N and I of "national idea" and deny it is neo-Nazi.

Patriot of Ukraine later renamed itself the National Corps and, despite allying with other nationalist parties, failed to win election in 2019. The U.S. State Department labelled the National Corps a "nationalist hate group" in 2018.

Reporting Radicalism, a Freedom House-backed group investigating political extremism in Ukraine, says Biletskiy has written several openly racist texts. Biletskiy denies holding racist or neo-Nazi views and says he believes in values-based nationalism.

The Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation describes the group as "an extreme-right nationalist paramilitary organisation based in Ukraine".

NATIONAL GUARD

In 2014, the Azov militia was folded into Ukraine's National Guard - a military wing of the interior ministry. Kyiv says it has been reformed away from its radical nationalist origins and that it has nothing to do with politics.

"They are the official army of our state. Anyone who wanted to be involved in politics - they left and are now in politics. Those who decided to serve in the Armed Forces became part of the Armed Forces," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview with Greek channel ERT on May 1.

In a statement to CNN last month, Azov said it "appreciates and respects Andriy Biletskiy as the regiment's founder and first commander, but we have nothing to do with his political activities and the National Corps party".

The statement said that Azov's "motivation has always angered Russia. Therefore, disinformation attacks on the Azov Regiment have not stopped since 2014".

It denies allegations of fascism, Nazism and racism and says that Ukrainians from various backgrounds including Greeks, Jews, Crimean Tatars, and Russians serve in Azov.

The regiment's current and fourth commander is Denys Prokopenko, who has been dubbed a Hero of Ukraine by Zelenskiy, who is Jewish.  .  .  .

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-05-17/factbox-last-defenders-of-mariupol-what-is-ukraines-azov-regiment

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Just to add two things:

1)  The National Corps is an ultra nationalist organization, not an anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi organization.  They hate Russia, but also want nothing to do with NATO.

2) They are a tiny fringe political group that got barely 2% of the vote in the 2019 elections, and have exact zero seats in the Ukrainian Parliament.  The idea that they somehow control Ukraine is an absolute joke.  And that means the entire "deNazification" justification advanced by Russia is a joke as well.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

What exactly does Russia have to gain by attacking the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine? Yeah I get that we've done things like that in the past, but this is a limited war. Why not stick to military targets?

[Kamaji]

What exactly does Russia have to gain by attacking the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine? Yeah I get that we've done things like that in the past, but this is a limited war. Why not stick to military targets?

Terror.

[Timber Rattler]

What exactly does Russia have to gain by attacking the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine? Yeah I get that we've done things like that in the past, but this is a limited war. Why not stick to military targets?

It's a terror campaign, like Hitler's V1 and V2 strikes against the British and Dutch during World War II. 

Also, Putin's strategy has become clear now. He wants to inflict enough suffering and damage on Ukrainian citizens to force Zelensky to surrender or negotiate on Russia's terms (disband his government and leave the country, turn it all over to a Russian puppet, and Russia gets to keep the LPR and DPR and its four illegally annexed oblasts and the Zaporizhia nuke plant). 

It's also a perverse echo of Sherman's March through Georgia and South Carolina during our Civil War and the Allied bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan during World War II, and even Desert Storm in 1991 and our march to Baghdad in 2003, at least in Putin's twisted mind.

[Kamaji]

It's a terror campaign, like Hitler's V1 and V2 strikes against the British and Dutch during World War II. 

Also, Putin's strategy has become clear now. He wants to inflict enough suffering and damage on Ukrainian citizens to force Zelensky to surrender or negotiate on Russia's terms (disband his government and leave the country, turn it all over to a Russian puppet, and Russia gets to keep the LPR and DPR and its four illegally annexed oblasts and the Zaporizhia nuke plant). 

It's also a perverse echo of Sherman's March through Georgia and South Carolina during our Civil War and the Allied bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan during World War II, and even Desert Storm in 1991 and our march to Baghdad in 2003, at least in Putin's twisted mind.

I'm not sure the analogies with Desert Storm or Baghdad are on all fours, but it definitely has echoes of the Allied bombing campaigns, once those moved from a targeted strikes footing to a "total war" footing.

[Maj. Bill Martin]

I'm not sure the analogies with Desert Storm or Baghdad are on all fours, but it definitely has echoes of the Allied bombing campaigns, once those moved from a targeted strikes footing to a "total war" footing.

I'd agree with that. The air campaigns for both Desert Storm and the War in Iraq focused on air defense, command and control, and critical defense related infrastructure.  More importantly, they were followed up with coordinated ground assaults designed to end the war as rapidly as possible. The goal wasn't to push the people into submission - It was the soften up Iraq's military resistance.

Putin is just tossing missiles into Ukraine purely to make civilian life as miserable as possible.

[Timber Rattler]

I'm not sure the analogies with Desert Storm or Baghdad are on all fours, but it definitely has echoes of the Allied bombing campaigns, once those moved from a targeted strikes footing to a "total war" footing.

Putin has made those analogies though, and twisted them to his purposes. 

In Iraq during both wars, the Allied Coalition did make targeted "surgical strikes" on key Iraqi infrastructure targets like government buildings, bridges, airports, and electrical stations to degrade Saddam's military, but it was not indiscriminate, and our commanders made every effort to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage.  Putin, doesn't care, and is taking a more scorched earth approach, in true Russian fashion.  But he justifies it in his mind, and to the Russian people, in that he is only doing the same thing that the U.S. and NATO have done before, setting those precedents.

With that said, Putin's invasion is thoroughly evil, and does not represent his endgame, but only another step in his drive to restore the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire before it.

[sneakypete]

There were no negotiations.  That was a lie spread by a pro-Kremlin blogger that all the other pro-Kremlin blogs picked up.  And what was there to negotiate anyway?

@Timber Rattler

@Right_in_Virginia

There ain't no such critter as "negotiations" with the Soviets. They only PRETEND to negotiate when they they are in trouble,and need a cease-fire to regroup and to prevent having a loss.

They care NOTHING for civilian casualites,troop deaths,or politics (after all they are dictators who elect themselves),or any other factor. The ONLY thing they care about is maintaining absolute power.

[sneakypete]

What exactly does Russia have to gain by attacking the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine? 

@Weird Tolkienish Figure

When you are a dictatorship, you MUST establish your "Authori-Tay" over your subjects/slaves,less they start to get cocky and thing they are free.

Russia is,and other than a VERY short break during the Yeltsin years,has been a Soviet Communist dictatorship ever since 1917.

The leadership is composed of ABSOLUTE dictators and there has never been such a critter as a dictator that was willing to let go of his death grip on power since the dawn of time.

[sneakypete]

It's a terror campaign, like Hitler's V1 and V2 strikes against the British and Dutch during World War II. 

Also, Putin's strategy has become clear now. He wants to inflict enough suffering and damage on Ukrainian citizens to force Zelensky to surrender or negotiate on Russia's terms (disband his government and leave the country, turn it all over to a Russian puppet, and Russia gets to keep the LPR and DPR and its four illegally annexed oblasts and the Zaporizhia nuke plant). 

It's also a perverse echo of Sherman's March through Georgia and South Carolina during our Civil War and the Allied bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan during World War II, and even Desert Storm in 1991 and our march to Baghdad in 2003, at least in Putin's twisted mind.

@Timber Rattler

The ONLY people who can't see this are people who don't WANT to see this because it is an uncomfortable truth,and they live their lives by telling little lies to themselves,and believing them.

There were people justifying dictatorships since the dawn of time because facing the truth would be too painful for them.

Their ancestors justified the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe,just like they justified the Nazi takeover of the rest of Europe.

In short,they are natural born "Surrender Monkeys".

[sneakypete]

Putin has made those analogies though, and twisted them to his purposes. 

In Iraq during both wars, the Allied Coalition did make targeted "surgical strikes" on key Iraqi infrastructure targets like government buildings, bridges, airports, and electrical stations to degrade Saddam's military, but it was not indiscriminate, and our commanders made every effort to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage.  Putin, doesn't care, and is taking a more scorched earth approach, in true Russian fashion.  But he justifies it in his mind, and to the Russian people, in that he is only doing the same thing that the U.S. and NATO have done before, setting those precedents.

With that said, Putin's invasion is thoroughly evil, and does not represent his endgame, but only another step in his drive to restore the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire before it.

@Timber Rattler

Of course they are thoroughly evil. What else would anyone expect from a man that retired from the KGB as a Full Colonel,and then convinced the hard-core communists in Russia to vote him in as President for Life?

[Right_in_Virginia]

This thread needs a logo.  Here's a suggestion......

[Maj. Bill Martin]

@Timber Rattler

Of course they are thoroughly evil. What else would anyone expect from a man that retired from the KGB as a Full Colonel,and then convinced the hard-core communists in Russia to vote him in as President for Life?

As best as I can tell as a refugee from TOS, there is a point at which fear of the WEF/globalism/Deep State, and/or an extreme fondness for former President Trump, can go around the bend and make Putin/Russia the good guys simply because our current Administration supports Ukraine. 

[Kamaji]

As best as I can tell as a refugee from TOS, there is a point at which fear of the WEF/globalism/Deep State, and/or an extreme fondness for former President Trump, can go around the bend and make Putin/Russia the good guys simply because our current Administration supports Ukraine. 

That seems to be the case in a number of instances.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

As best as I can tell as a refugee from TOS, there is a point at which fear of the WEF/globalism/Deep State, and/or an extreme fondness for former President Trump, can go around the bend and make Putin/Russia the good guys simply because our current Administration supports Ukraine.

Also Tucker Carlson.

[Timber Rattler]

Also Tucker Carlson.

Yeah, Tucker's lost his mind and jumped the shark for sure.

[Hoodat]

As best as I can tell as a refugee from TOS, there is a point at which fear of the WEF/globalism/Deep State, and/or an extreme fondness for former President Trump, can go around the bend and make Putin/Russia the good guys simply because our current Administration supports Ukraine.

On the surface, it is a clear logical fallacy.  It ignores the fact that one can support Ukraine's cause without supporting the Biden regime.  One could also argue that the Biden regime itself does not support Ukraine's cause since it continually denies to Ukraine the weaponry needed to defend itself.

The official position of the Biden Regime is to extend the duration of this war indefinitely.   And that is a position which I have vehemently opposed since Day One.  Russia is the bad guy here.  Ukraine is the victim.  And the sooner we take away Russia's ability to continue this action, the better.  The world will be a safer place when Russia loses its ability to invade other states and perpetrate atrocities against civilians.