Originally Posted by
andy6025
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.