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

[irishpete]

I'm sure British soldiers did some barbaric things in WW2 but it would never excuse the atrocities the Germans committed.

No doubt they did, did it ever get mentioned? No.

[drillerpie]

I'm not denying what the Russians have done, You'll see my views on Putin & Russia in previous posts, but people are only seeing on the News what the Russians have done. The Ukranian Army & vigilanties will have done things that there is absolutely no mention of, to the Russian Army prisoners they have/had. We know what the Russians have done. The Ukranians will be no Saints
Neither side will be sticking to the rules of war, as seen.
Being reported this morning that the Russians have lost 20000 men since this started

Yeah I get what you're saying, I suppose I just don't understand what you think the relevance of it is.

It's a bit like if someone posted an article about a man attacked and killed in the street by a gang in Nottingham, and you added that yeah it's awful but he was cheating on his wife and never used to get his round in - I mean it could well be true but it's not really the big story.

Do you really think that all militaries from all countries have the same level of discipline and show the same level of cruelty? There are no variations and it all evens itself out in the end?

Do you think that a soldier living in a highly nationalistic dictatorship like Russia, with a tightly controlled media environment telling you that the place you're being deployed to isn't even a real country, and is just full of drug addicts and Nazis, might have something to do with the contempt they show for Ukranians?

[BigFatPie]

Yeah I get what you're saying, I suppose I just don't understand what you think the relevance of it is.

It's a bit like if someone posted an article about a man attacked and killed in the street by a gang in Nottingham, and you added that yeah it's awful but he was cheating on his wife and never used to get his round in - I mean it could well be true but it's not really the big story.

Do you really think that all militaries from all countries have the same level of discipline and show the same level of cruelty? There are no variations and it all evens itself out in the end?

Do you think that a soldier living in a highly nationalistic dictatorship like Russia, with a tightly controlled media environment telling you that the place you're being deployed to isn't even a real country, and is just full of drug addicts and Nazis, might have something to do with the contempt they show for Ukranians?

It’s very strange. All the usual suspects on the far left and far right seem desperate to get Russia/Putin off the hook for what seems very clearly evidenced war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere. They did the same for very clearly evidenced war crimes in Syria as well, so I don’t suppose it’s strange at all.

What I really don’t understand is what the far left and far right seem to find so admirable in Putin and why are they so eager to excuse what his soldiers have been doing in multiple locations for years?

[i961pie]

It’s very strange. All the usual suspects on the far left and far right seem desperate to get Russia/Putin off the hook for what seems very clearly evidenced war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere. They did the same for very clearly evidenced war crimes in Syria as well, so I don’t suppose it’s strange at all.

What I really don’t understand is what the far left and far right seem to find so admirable in Putin and why are they so eager to excuse what his soldiers have been doing in multiple locations for years?

This

[sidders]

I'm not denying what the Russians have done, You'll see my views on Putin & Russia in previous posts, but people are only seeing on the News what the Russians have done. The Ukranian Army & vigilanties will have done things that there is absolutely no mention of, to the Russian Army prisoners they have/had. We know what the Russians have done. The Ukranians will be no Saints
Neither side will be sticking to the rules of war, as seen.
Being reported this morning that the Russians have lost 20000 men since this started

Pete,
What you seem not to heed is just who is the aggressor here. Invading another country is an act of war and one which must expect revenge by the victim nation.
If a criminal invades your house and presents as an ultimate killer, you are entitled to take him out and your anger might not be controlled. Same drink, smaller bottle.

[irishpete]

Pete,
What you seem not to heed is just who is the aggressor here. Invading another country is an act of war and one which must expect revenge by the victim nation.
If a criminal invades your house and presents as an ultimate killer, you are entitled to take him out and your anger might not be controlled. Same drink, smaller bottle.

I know exactly what is going off, my point is what the Russians have done is horrendous, but don't think for one minute the Ukranian Army won't have carried out acts on the Russians. Believe you me they won't be Saints, but do we hear this ? No.

[Old_pie]

I know exactly what is going off, my point is what the Russians have done is horrendous, but don't think for one minute the Ukranian Army won't have carried out acts on the Russians. Believe you me they won't be Saints, but do we hear this ? No.

What, Russian civilians, women, children and hospitals. Wars are supposed to be fought army v army. Russia is using its old fashion tactic of terror. Your viewpoint is very hard to understand.

[i961pie]

I know exactly what is going off, my point is what the Russians have done is horrendous, but don't think for one minute the Ukranian Army won't have carried out acts on the Russians. Believe you me they won't be Saints, but do we hear this ? No.

The difference is the Ukranians are killing soldiers who have been sent kill them, the Russians are killing women, children and unarmed civilians who offer no threat to them or Russia.

[cher1]

It’s very strange. All the usual suspects on the far left and far right seem desperate to get Russia/Putin off the hook for what seems very clearly evidenced war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere. They did the same for very clearly evidenced war crimes in Syria as well, so I don’t suppose it’s strange at all.

What I really don’t understand is what the far left and far right seem to find so admirable in Putin and why are they so eager to excuse what his soldiers have been doing in multiple locations for years?

Well said BFP.

I wonder what changes in people's psyches to makes them capable of these atrocities, when presumably at least some of them are/were functioning members of society. These acts weren't committed by rogue individual soldiers, it appears to be endemic - yet no-one says hang on a minute, these are human beings, we shouldn't be doing this.

It's no different to any other atrocities I guess, from concentration camps to Srebrenica to Oradour. What on earth happens to the mind of a soldier when you put a gun in his hand and send him off, that torture, r a p e, horrific murder of unarmed civilians can become their normal?

[drillerpie]

What I really don’t understand is what the far left and far right seem to find so admirable in Putin and why are they so eager to excuse what his soldiers have been doing in multiple locations for years?

The posters on here who have historically been sympathetic to Putin and his way of doing things, in the face of overwhelming logical and ethical reasons not to be, could probably answer this better than I can.

But I'll have a go a anyway, based on conversations I've had and what people I know have written on social media.

The intellectual left has had a soft spot for anything Soviet since the coup that brought them to power, partly through sympathy for its aims, partly because they thought it was the only force strong enough to defeat fascism / Nazism.

Cambridge University was a fertile recruiting ground for Soviet spies, the left-wing intelligentsia refused to acknowledge Stalin's terror, and so on. This carried on through the decades, and they eventually swapped in NATO instead of fascism as the evil to be defeated.

The right on the other hand, including the far right, was ideologically opposed to Russia throughout the Cold War, but the change from communist government to apolitical autocratic rule in Russia, with the recent rise of an anti-establishment right in the West, has meant they can now align with Russia comfortably.

I think the left sees in Putin an anti-Western figure to rally round, and by cheering him on they feel like they are opposing the things they don't like about the West, like capitalism, NATO, cultural imperialism, fascism etc.

The mental gymnastics it takes to choose someone like Putin as this figure - a man who has concentrated vast amounts of Russian wealth in the hands of himself and his inner circle while keeping his people in poverty (just look at the Russian soldiers now pillaging Ukraine and calling home to say they have discovered a land of plenty, where people have electrical appliances and "all the houses are made of bricks"), who has imperial ambitions of territorial expansion, and who has created a nationalistic and militaristic national mindset closer to actual Nazism than anything we've seen since WW2, is obviously alarming, but it is what it is.

The anti-establishment right, on the other hand, sees a white, unashamedly Christian (in terms of symbolism and rhetoric at least), unapologetically traditional (almost to the point of reviving the medeival fiefdom/serfs model), 'strong leader' who is the opposite of the archetypal puny, indecisive Western beta cuck leader. This is partly due to the amounts of Russian money spent backing the anti-establishment right in Western countries, and partly due to disillusionment with liberal Western society.

The thing that unites them both is the mistrust of Western society, particularly Western institutions and official news sources. To borrow from another thread, how can you trust a society or institutions that tell you a man winning a female swimming race is perfectly normal? I don't know, but I do know that the answer won't be found on Russia Today, (Iranian state) Press TV, Chinese state media, or one of the many disreputable news sources that were either set up deliberately to misinform, or have fallen prey to audience capture.


It's saddening for me to see these people, on both the left and the right, turn a blind eye to the absolute horror unfolding in Ukraine, on the basis that the alternative isn't perfect. Sometimes you have to choose between bad and less bad, and if nobody stops Putin I think we might all have to make some very real choices soon.