O/T:- Ukraine [Incorporating 'Congrats to Russia' thread]

[andy6025]

It's weird how Andy never mentions any of the mountains of evidence of Russian war crimes but seizes upon any flimsy claim of Ukrainian wrongdoing.

Totally not a Kremlin propagandist at all!

By this logic, given that you haven’t mentioned any Ukrainian war crimes, does that make you a CIA propagandist?

I get that consistency isn’t your strong suit.

[Notts78]

By this logic, given that you haven’t mentioned any Ukrainian war crimes, does that make you a CIA propagandist?

I get that consistency isn’t your strong suit.

It bothers me that I believe we have shared several beers and JD’s.

[andy6025]

It bothers me that I believe we have shared several beers and JD’s.

I’ve shared beers with people that are extremely bright and others that are as dumb as pigshït. I have good will towards them all. Short of Nazis, I’m able to agree or disagree with anyone and not hold personal grudges.

[Jampie]

I’ve shared beers with people that are extremely bright and others that are as dumb as pigshït. I have good will towards them all. Short of Nazis, I’m able to agree or disagree with anyone and not hold personal grudges.

You can't hold the high moral ground if you're also waving pom poms for genocidal war criminals, sorry.

[andy6025]

You can't hold the high moral ground if you're also waving pom poms for genocidal war criminals, sorry.

Can you show where I’ve waived pom poms for genocidal war crimes?

[Jampie]

Can you show where I’ve waived pom poms for genocidal war crimes?

Criminals. Put your reading glasses on maybe.

[Robertomac]

Do you not think Putin's conduct and ideology is very closely aligned with Hitler?

[andy6025]

Do you not think Putin's conduct and ideology is very closely aligned with Hitler?

In relation to “conduct” am I right to assume you’re referring to the theory that just as Hitler had ambitions to militarily conquer all of Europe and exterminate millions of people including the slaughter em mass of all Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, communists, homo***uals, the disabled, and others, then so too does Putin?

If so, I don’t see any convincing evidence to support this theory. Not only has Putin not given any indication that he intends to invade other European countries (nor is there any evidence that he will) but both his many public declarations as well as his seeming military strategy and force deployments in Ukraine are evidence that he has never intended to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine. Nor do I see any evidence of a purported ‘genocide’ against any groups, despite the many declarations by western politicians and our media that he’s doing so. Even if we take Ursula Von der Layen’s recent numbers at face value that around 20,000 Ukrainian civilians and more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine (with American estimate of Russians killed about the same) and even if we wrongly assume that every one of those civilians were killed by the Russians, then the civilian to soldier deaths ratio simply doesn’t support such a theory. In WWI civilians made up around 45-60% of casualties. In WWII the ratio was around 2 civilians for every soldier killed. The Korean War and Vietnam wars also had a 2:1 ratio.

Yet by western numbers (200,000 soldiers killed and 20,000 civilians), this war has a 1:10 ratio.

Not only does this fly in the face of claims that Putin is committing genocide, but would actually be evidence to support an argument that Russian troops in general have been extremely careful in avoiding Ukrainian civilian casualties. There’s all kinds of other evidence to support this counter-theory as well, but I’ll leave that for further discussion if you’re genuinely interested in the topic.

As for comparing Hitler and Putin’s ideologies... I don’t know what you mean here. I’ve yet to hear anyone who knows a modicum about political ideologies compare the two in any serious manner. Is there something specific you have in mind where you think their ideologies are comparable? I’d say that we can see a lot of ideological similarities between many Ukrainians and Hitler, such as the Banderites. Denazification of Ukraine is one of Russia’s declared goals, after all. But between Putin and Hitler they are ideologically quite radically different.

[Jampie]

both his many public declarations as well as his seeming military strategy and force deployments in Ukraine are evidence that he has never intended to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine.

This is just straight up false. What was the entire northern campaign for? Why did they attack Mykolaiva? Why occupy snake island or bomb Lviv?

And his public declarations? Yikes. You would have trouble finding ten of these relating to his illegal war of aggression that haven't turned out to be blatant lies. You can't seriously expect me to believe you're gullible enough to believe the man's words.

[andy6025]

Criminals. Put your reading glasses on maybe.

Nope, I don’t support war criminals or war crimes.

This is just straight up false. What was the entire northern campaign for? Why did they attack Mykolaiva? Why occupy snake island or bomb Lviv?

And his public declarations? Yikes. You would have trouble finding ten of these relating to his illegal war of aggression that haven't turned out to be blatant lies. You can't seriously expect me to believe you're gullible enough to believe the man's words.

Since neither of us have had access to the Russian plans the best we can do is listen to various analysts and use logic to determine what theories are most likely to be true.

That which I think most likely to be true is that Russia’s northern campaign served two purposes: first, present a big enough threat to Kiev in order to pin down Ukrainian reserves and prevent them from reinforcing the nationalist battalions in Donbas and southern Ukraine. Second, force Zalensky to the negotiating table. Both of these seemed to work. Turkey, who brokered the negotiations, confirmed that the two parties were close to a deal if not about to put pend to paper, and that they satisfied most of Russia’s key objectives.

I think they attack Mykolaiv because it’s en route to Odessa. The Russian people regard Odessa as Russian and will extremely disappointed in Putin if he doesn’t acquire it, especially after all of those people were burned alive by Nazi Ukrainians in that massacre in 2014.