I’m just showing these comments I saw earlier, which were interesting. Since it is true, that we’ve been hearing that “Russia is cornered”, since the invasion started. I personally just want this shit to end.
These comments are relating to an article from this week.
I wonder if we will ever know what truly happens on the ground (i.e. when it comes to casualties and many other things)
The Ukrainian will be banned since this is probably the combat footage sub which is filled with people who want to invade the entire world.
Iirc this was r/worldnews, hence my surprise. The WarReport subreddit or wtv it’s called is worse.
Nah worldnews is pretty much the same now. The mods ban anyone with a slightly different opinion on any topic.
Worldnews has been a sewer for years and years
What happened to all the people on Reddit who seemed to have loved peace? Why is every single Redditor a war hungry monster? Did I hallucinate those people?
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reddit is astroturfed and full of bots pushing US state department propaganda. Eglin air force base was identified as the most “reddit-addicted” city in 2013, but reddit removed the blog post.
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every redditor who is bloodthristy right now has simply internalized the narrative that Russia attacked Ukraine unprovoked and that the US has done nothing to cause or prolong this war.
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the imperial core has always been genocidal and bloodthirsty, and reddit users are majority in the imperial core.
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You’re thinking of tankies. Tankies are the people calling for an end to the war, and the anti imperialist peace loving democrats are the real Gandhis
Reddit libs use the same type of phrases and terminology when describing Russia and other “enemies” of the US State Department, as fascists and far right freaks in Europe do when describing Muslims and Arabs / Middle Easterners (same thing in their mind really). It’s fucking terrifying how quickly they got on board with the whole “enemy of the free world” shit that also got them to support the interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
This is why transparency from governments to their citizens should be mandated by the masses. You have no idea what you’re really doing when you’re being fed propaganda. For better, sometimes, perhaps, but almost always for worse. The exceptions simply aren’t worth the risk imo.
Ok, so I want to know, if anyone would be kind enough to humor me, what’s the general understanding of the context behind the war in Ukraine here, on Hexbear?
My personal understanding has been shaped by just passively existing on the Internet through this event, and I’m curious if there’s another perspective that I’ve not been exposed to.
Ukraine’s government was overthrown in 2014, and the new government banned certain opposition parties, which alienated a lot of people in eastern Ukraine, many of whom have cultural ties to Russia, and a seperatist movement seized control of Donbas. The two sides signed a cease-fire, Minsk II, but Ukraine violated that cease-fire by shelling civilian targets, causing Russia to answer the request for aid by the seperatists.
The perspective of NATO supporters is that the seperatists are just a Russian proxy while the Russian perspective is that Ukraine’s new government is a NATO proxy. It’s difficult to evaluate what people actually want, but the fact that Ukraine felt the need to ban opposition parties and the fact that there are a bunch of people with Russian ties in the disputed territories indicates that the seperatists have some genuine support.
There were many diplomatic off-ramps that could’ve been taken to avoid the conflict, such as upholding the cease-fire, or perhaps giving the disputed territories a referendum to leave. As it stands, the war has reached a standstill and the general perspective here is that Ukraine can either give up some territorial concessions now, or give up some territorial concessions after throwing a bunch more lives into the meat grinder. Peace now is the best option for the Ukrainian people, but likely US pressure will keep the war going because it’s profitable for the defense industry.
Also, Ukraine has a significant Nazi problem, including both paramilitary groups and the government itself. For instance, Ukraine had to fire their ambassador to Germany after he engaged in Holocaust denial right on TV.
Thank you for the reply! This has been super helpful in guiding some reading and providing some context. It’s very interesting that there was quite a bit of criticism from all sides about the laws outright banning discussion and support of communism. Following that, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of responsiveness to that criticism. Even the Venice Commission was pretty highly critical of it, and of conflating Communism with Nazism.
Afaik, no far-right parties were banned under the law. There are a lot of Banderites in Ukraine and that’s where “Slava Ukrani” comes from. Bandera worked for Nazi military intelligence and wanted an independent Ukraine closely allied with Nazi Germany, and enthusiastically performed pogroms on his own initiative (denying his role in the Holocaust was specifically what happened with the Ukrainian ambassador). The only thing was that Hitler didn’t want Ukraine as an ally but under his direct control, so that’s where they came into conflict.
While there is diversity of opinion on Hexbear (wow that bit sounded really ChatGPT of me I’m sorry, Im literally currently playing with it lol) most folks on Hexbear agree that while Putin’s decision to invade was a reprehensible one, the the decision was provoked by Ukraine and the West via NATO encirclement (and its important to understand that NATO has always inherently been a hostile power to Russia as to why the encroachment of NATO would provoke Russia) and also the War in Donbass and the treatment of the ethnic Russians there.
Right, I know NATO was literally created as a show of united force against the Soviet Union post WW2- when you say encirclement, what does that mean? Is it specifically the growth of NATO to include more States in what’s traditionally Russia’s sphere of influence?
Yes. It’s the fact the US has been making MISSILE agreements with every single nation that borders Russia in Europe. The US promised Soviet leaders that NATO would end after the cold war and then Yelstin that it would remain, but they wouldn’t expand further. By 2014 all that was left was Finland, Ukraine, and Belarus.
To put that in context as to how that was an aggressive move by the US: What happened when Cuba, a US neighbor, attempted to make a missile agreement with the Soviets in the early 60s? Did the US respond with the understanding that this is something the people of Cuba might want, or did they respond by threatening to set the world on fire?
Copy and pasting from my previous post. The war in Ukraine is a failure of diplomacy, of parties refusing to listen to each other’s concerns. It could have been easily prevented if one party had been more accommodating of another, but this was never going to happen, because the animosity served the interests of certain parties as you shall learn below:
Hinge Points (Hexbear edition): Ukraine
The events leading to the war in Ukraine did not happen overnight. It was the consequence of a decade of diplomacy failures, and was 100% preventable if only a couple things had gone differently along the entire chain of events.
1 ) The 2013 Maidan coup in Ukraine would never have happened if everyone had just gone with Putin’s suggestion of holding a tripartite meeting so they can revise the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA-DCFTA) such that European goods could not flood the Russian market without paying for tariffs (due to Ukraine’s existing tariff-free agreement with Russia). Putin did NOT object to Ukraine signing the agreement, simply that they revise the clauses for the tariff-related issues. The EU declined to meet.
Of course, Russia was looking out for its own economic interests and wanted Ukraine to join their Eurasian Customs Union, which was flatly rejected by the EU for being incompatible with the DCFTA (Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement), which would have required Ukraine to liberalize its economy (i.e. remove tariff barriers to allow foreign goods to enter), while the Customs Union would have a common external tariff to prevent “re-exportation”. Nonetheless, it should be noted that Russia did not reject Ukraine from signing the AA-DCFTA so long as their economic concerns were addressed.
(Note: Ukraine did get screwed by the AA-DCFTA which was signed after the Maidan coup, just as Russia warned. Europe ended up protecting its own market while taking advantage of cheap Ukrainian agricultural imports, and they didn’t even get the loans like the Greeks did (which was a disastrous and shitty deal for Greece). That’s how bad Ukraine was treated by the EU - their economy literally crumbled after siding with the EU post-2014)
Instead, the European imperialists got greedy and wanted to eat into Russia’s market, thinking that Russian economy is too weak to do anything against them and therefore ripe for bullying.
2 ) The 2013 Maidan coup probably would not have happened if EU didn’t force Ukraine to take IMF loans.
Ok, you’re Ukraine, signing the agreement with EU is going to lose you trade revenues with Russia if you don’t revise the clause of tariff, fine, but now you’re being forced to take IMF loans that demand cutting social spending and education as well? That’s just you signing your own slave contract.
Ukraine’s then president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom I assure you was very pro-EU and not a Russian stooge in any way, was stumped by the demands and asked for more time to negotiate with Russia. He did not reject the EU agreement, nor did he take any deal from Moscow. He simply postponed signing the agreement, and that was enough to be couped by the fascists before he could do anything about it.
Of course, the imperialists have always had in their minds the perfect economic warfare against both Russia (destroy its domestic industries by flooding Russian market with EU goods through “free trade agreement”) and Ukraine (through IMF debt that demanded austerity). They simply couldn’t help not impoverishing the countries at their periphery through their cleverly-devised economic policies.
3 ) The 2014 Ukrainian Civil War would most likely not have happened if the fascist coup regime didn’t ban Russian language in Donbass.
Ok, so the coup happened, you’re now under a new management. Fine, but the fascists couldn’t help themselves by lashing out at the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
The very first act of the coup regime on February 22nd, 2014 was to repeal the Kolesnychenko-Kivalov Language Law, a 2012 bill that granted the status of regional language to Russian and other minority languages. The law was in full accordance to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages for the preservation of language-minority rights and had widespread societal support in Ukraine. The repeal of the Kolesnychenko-Kivalov Language Law by the fascist regime marked a severe infringement of minority rights and their intent to ethnically cleanse Russian culture in the country.
Clashes between both sides started to ramp up and the highly tense situation would quickly devolve into the Ukrainian Civil War.
Russia was forced (by design, I should say) into the conflict because the Ukrainian army was being mobilized to fight against the Donbass separatists, a region where ethnic Russians are the majority.
Of course, the imperialists couldn’t help it: they believed that they could cripple Russia’s economy by involving it in two fronts - Syria and Ukraine - at the same time. Surely Russia had no capacity to fight two wars at the same time? Crimea was immediately annexed by Russia for obvious reasons, and I still remember Western pundits laughing at Russia thinking that there’s no way they have the capability to build the Crimean Bridge.
4 ) Implementing the Minsk agreements could have marked the peaceful ending to this conflict.
Ok, the Ukrainian armed forces were defeated by the Donbass militia aided by Russian military in the civil war. A peace deal had been brokered. Russia said: “ok we don’t want to deal with this Donbass shit anymore, can you take them back please? Just promise not to commit genocide or ethnic cleansing in the region. We just want to continue doing business with Europe, we’ve been sanctioned enough and we really don’t want to get bogged down by this shit in Ukraine.”
Minsk was supposed to be the path for a peaceful return of Donbass to Ukraine, but with increased autonomy to the local governments, so that nobody can impose a nation-wide ban on language and culture without regards for the people living in the regions.
However, the fascists couldn’t help it and immediately broke the truce, leading to them being beaten once again. The German chancellor Merkel and the French president Hollande actually had to drag Putin back to the negotiation table and promised to be the guarantors of Minsk II: that Ukraine will really stick to the plan this time.
Interestingly, both Merkel and Hollande have since admitted publicly in 2022 that the Minsk agreements were simply to buy time for Ukraine to be militarized. Why does Ukraine need time to militarize? There really is only one answer to this question: to militarily re-capture Donbass and Crimea instead of implementing the peace plan.
5 ) NATO arming Ukraine exacerbated Russia’s security concerns
Ok, so you have a peace plan, but instead of start holding talks toward a concrete resolution, what Russia saw was Ukraine being armed and trained by NATO over 7 years.
Once again, Russia proved to be the idiot in this conflict by actually believing that Ukraine was ever going to implement Minsk agreement. And yes, Putin is an idiot. Surely his good friend Angela Merkel would never lie to him?
Of course, the Western imperialists truly believe in the supremacy of NATO military equipments and tactics that if you have a fully NATO-trained Ukrainian army, they would be able to beat Russia’s obsolete military quite easily.
I will also add that the Nazi regiments, now fully incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces, have never been prosecuted for their atrocities committed against civilians in the Donbass. They were glorified as heroes in state media.
6 ) Biden’s aggressive policy in Ukraine made Russia’s worst fear came true
In 2021, the new Biden administration began to pivot aggressively against Russia. After the meeting between Biden and Zelensky (who was elected as a peace president and was supposed to bridge the divide between Ukraine and Russia) in Washington, the latter started to spout aggressive rhetorics that increasingly alarmed the Russians, such as talks about Ukraine joining NATO.
That former Soviet republics joining NATO has always been the thorny issue for Russia since the end of the Cold War, and Ukraine was to be the center-piece of this increasing encirclement of Russia that has been ongoing since the 1990s. There is not a single government in Russia, whether they lean left or right, that will not be alarmed by this development, given their prior encounter with the Nazis some 80 years back. And it’s the same Banderites in Ukraine this time, not some generic fascists.
7 ) The last ditch effort to stop the war
At this point, at least for the Russians, it was pretty clear that the new administration is going to ramp up its belligerent foreign policy against Russia. There was only one last thing to do: a last ditch effort to persuade Washington to stop its aggression.
The Russian diplomatic team prepared hundreds of pages of proposal, hoping to convince the other side of the seriousness of its security concerns, and Russia-US summit was conducted in June 2021 to resolve the crisis. Instead, the US sent Javelins and Stingers to Ukraine, first in August 2021, then in December - completely laughing in Russia’s face about their security concerns.
If you were Russia, what would you think of the American’s responses? Would you think that they were being serious about addressing your security concerns? If you told your harasser to stop, and they resume stalking you the following week, what would that tell you?
Soon, Zelensky started to talk about joining NATO, commenting about abandoning the Budapest Memorandum that was the basis of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, the increased mobilization of military units towards the eastern front (Donbass), and the increased shelling of the regions by the Ukrainian side.
The diplomatic solution has failed.
Maybe Redditors need to have this explained in meme terms to understand.
You, as a liberal, are like Lord Farquaad from Shrek. While you send Ukrainians to die for capital F Freedom (also known as Privatization and Profteering by those pesky RuZZian disinformation bots) you sit back here at your brunch spot saying “Some of you may die, but it is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
Reporter: @[email protected]
Reason: Spam or Abuse
This isn’t really a post about the news. Try posting this kind of stuff to c/politics next time.
Oh god why is this thread back in hot oh no
I don’t know. I don’t see that much new activity. Unless, I missed something
idk it popped to the top of hot in my feed, so I thought they had re-ignited the flames
1400+ comments babyyyy I know we can do it. I wanna see more libs analyse the war
(i.e. when it comes to casualties and many other things)
Obviously this is just kinda coming out of my ass, but I’m almost certain that 100,000 people have already died. Can’t say what the exact number is obviously, but I imagine it’s the kind of thing that the lib media would rather not release because it would dampen people’s enthusiasm for it
Here is an estimate for ukraine. https://www.noahsnewsletter.com/p/how-many-people-have-died-in-ukraine
Russia should be 1:4 or 1:5 based on artillery ratios.
Author self identifies as a “moderate conservative”. Bad source.
Why is that relevant to counting bodies?
But he posts the metodology and it seems ok. There is always some error. And we can never be sure in these cases but 190k seem more resonable than the 70k nato is claiming.
The methodology is completely pulled out of his ass.
There’s a lot wrong with it but the main thing is using linear regression for “do you know someone who has died of X?” This is cannot be a linear relationship. As the number of casualties goes up, the % of people who know a casualty logarithmically approaches 100%.
This means the % of people who know a casualty will rise dramatically at first, and taper off. It also means it’s not a good indicator for actual deaths.
Thats a hood point. I did not think of that. Sorry. I guess there arent enough datapoints for a logarithmic regresion.
The question is if at 60% there is enough deviation from the linear function? As more people die. Intervewed people would know more than 1 victim leading to undercounting. Is this efect enough to counteract the logarithmic trend?
Disregard my previous post. You are completly rigth. I apologise for psting it. I just found an estimate that seemed plausible and had an explanation without cheking it properly. I have now read the rest of that guys posts and i realize i look like a cretin promoting him.
No need to apologize. Just remember to meet independent media with the same level of skepticism as main stream media.
As someone who is very much pro-Ukrainian in this conflict and has talked to many Ukrainians, anyone who believes the hype that Russia is days away from collapsing (again) or that Russia’s army is made entirely of uneducated starving peasants who have never held a gun before is taking crazy pills.
War economies can last a very long time, and this kind of attritional artillery based warfare on both sides (they started with almost the same doctrines) with a contested airspace is an absolute meatgrinder.
Curious, what is your rationale behind describing yourself as pro-Ukrainian.
There’s a few different aspects to this:
1st is that having a successful war of naked conquest is a very dangerous precedent to have. If this is normalized, then we’re going to see a lot more armed conflict. I’ve seen people here claim all sorts of justifications for Russia’s actions, but Putin himself in the announcement for the “special military operation” was waxing nostalgic about the Russian empire of Catherine the Great. He’s been relatively clear in his statements what he’s doing and why. He wants to build a new “Ruskiy Mir”, where whether you want it or not, Slavic peoples will be absorbed.
2nd is nuclear proliferation. Ukraine gave up it’s nukes for security guarantees from the US and Russia. This sets the precedent that the only way to be truly safe from wars of aggression is to have nukes and threaten your neighbours with them.
Combining these 2 points, to prevent nuclear proliferation and naked imperialism, Russia must not only lose, but be seen to lose internationally and unequivocally.
Finally, there’s the self-interest here: if Ukraine was to lose, Moldova goes next. Moldova would barely be a speedbump to Russia. Moldova is extremely close to Romania, we share a culture, language, and Moldovans get automatic Romanian citizenship if they want it. I have close Ukrainian friends too, but it’s different when you share a language and culture.
having a successful war of naked conquest is a very dangerous precedent to have
the US has been doing exactly this and setting up puppet states since the end of WWII, has never stopped for a second, and will never stop until they’re forced to. there has never been any other precedent. prior to WWII, colonialism ruled the world.
US wars since WWII:
- Korea
- Vietnam
- Laos
- Indonesia
- Lebanon
- Cuba/the Bay of Pigs
- Dominican Republic
- Korea again
- Cambodia (on the side of the fucking Khmer Rouge)
- Lebanon again
- Grenada
- Libya
- Iran
- Panama
- Iraq
- Somalia
- Bosnia/Serbia
- Haiti
- Kosovo
- Afghanistan
- Yemen
- Iraq again
- expansion of the war in Afghanistan to north-west Pakistan
- Somalia again
- Libya again, this time destroying the country so badly that slave markets opened on the streets
- Uganda
- Niger
- Iraq a third time
- Syria
- Libya a third time because no shit the Islamic State took up residence, who could have seen this coming
the idea that there has EVER been a way to prevent wars without nuclear proliferation does not respect the historical record. states seeking to arm themselves with nukes is deeply rational. Cuba was under constant threat of invasion until the Soviet Union deployed nukes there – the US refused to negotiate with the Cuban government. then, once there were nukes, what do you know! suddenly the US will negotiate and will agree not to invade Cuba.
I think where you are deviating from the wider hexbear opinion here, and also where I think you’re wrong, is based in a belief that precedents are meaningful first off. Before this war was even thought about, these realities were already clear to all powerful people in the world. Acting from the basic material assumptions (and proving that they are ALREADY true) is not making them true. Not having nukes has been a death sentence to countries (eventually, without socialism) since the moment the first one existed. This war doesn’t impact that nor how rational global actors work. The ability to do “naked aggression” literally never went away, it was just hidden in plain sight with shitty western justifications. Every world power understood this well before this war, and their rational/justifications won’t be impacted. Only new material conditions to work from will arise. Russia’s loss or success actually only would give 1 major new piece of info to the world: is it possible to offensively take in the Imperial core indirectly without the result being total destruction of yourself? That’s what we’re going to learn. We learned from Korea and Vietnam that fighting defensively can work. We learned from middle eastern imperial wars that guerilla struggle is possible to slowly tire out the US.
We will Also learn small details about fighting and material and weapons and strategy, of course. But the worldwide impact is literally just “is it possible to defend yourself from US interests WITH OFFENSE?”
Also I agree with CyborgMarx, best case scenario is Donbas is free to choose to be Russian along with Crimea and Ukraine is forced to reckon with its right wing, fascistic side by being stuck between NATO and Russia after a loss
You’ve obviously put some thought into my position here and tried to understand it, so I will do my best to return the favor.
Realpolitik is certainly prevalent, and my country is no stranger to this. Words on paper are only as good as people’s willingness to do what it says. I completely agree that the majority of the time, “rules-based diplomacy” just means gunboat diplomacy with extra steps. However, that veneer of western justification at least kept the absolute worst impulses of imperialism at bay, even if just a bit. That “just a bit” part is important, because as you quite rightly say, new material conditions will result in new possibilities. What the result of those possibilities are is important. They directly affect my life in substantial ways.
The point about lessons and thinking about this in purely academic terms is difficult when you have friends and family of friends sucked into the conflict. It’s very difficult for me to engage with a point as academic as this being so close to the conflict. I know that is an admission of a lack of impartiality and perspective, but it’s the honest truth.
As I said in another comment in this thread, I see Russia as more fascistic and right-wing than Ukraine. So in my head, what you’re saying with that final sentence is “Ukraine is forced to reckon with its right wing, fascistic side by being stuck between the global hegemon and even worse right wing fascists”.
I see Russia as more fascistic and right-wing than Ukraine
Who cares, socialists in imperialists countries don’t support their side in proxy wars, period.
I disagree entirely that that “just a bit” exists at all. Direct imperial wars were limited only by the conditions and interests of the imperial power, and the justifications only resulted in extra work AFTERWARD the decisions were made to make convincing arguments (or find a way to hide the war).
With all due respect, you’re not just influences by perspective or lack of impartiality, but by your own interests. Being just west of Ukraine means that the fascistic border for expropriation (I mean from the West, but also possibly from Russia) will come closer the further west Russia can push. You benefit at least minmially from global imperialism by having that expropriation lead to imports on your side. I don’t blame you for desiring to not be hurt by that “border” movement, and I have to hope I will stay strong and support my comrades and movement when that inevitably comes to my place and not try to gain/maintain personal benefits. It’s always violent, just usually somewhere else.
This article is the best description for my understanding of Fascism: https://redsails.org/really-existing-fascism/
Russia is just as fascist as every capitalist government. But so far, Crimea hasn’t been experiencing the violence anymore than any other group and less than from the imperial core when they were under Ukraine. If “more fascist” means more violent and expropriating more", which is in line wiht that essay, then I think Russia is less fascist. They have legitimately experienced less of the expropriation than before. I think Donbas would be the same, and there’s a chance that that continues westward as fascism attempts to consume the border regions for profits.
I think another point of contention here is that I have a fundamentally different understanding of what the word “fascist” means compared to you, which I’m glad you’ve identified and tried to rectify. Maybe we’re just talking about different things. I’ll read that essay when I have the time, and hopefully the next conversation I have with you I’ll be a bit more capable of talking with common terminology.
Yeah my definition is more “niche” but I just fundamentally disagree withe philosophical underpinnings of definition like Umberto Eco gave and such. I think it’s clearly a liberal definition lacking in material or dialectical understanding of the world and fails to ever define anything really.
Regardless, definition itself isnt the basis of the convo. If what I call fascism was called “time-location-based-expropriation-interests”, we could still have the convo. we’re talking about real things regardless of the word. I still think we disagree after that though, unless the essay also convinces you of an evil you didn’t previously understand and results in you agreeing with my analysis or so.
Literal Ukrainian living in the country on the verge of being drafted into the meat grinder: pls stop the war
Huge brained liberal who is better than them: Sorry sweetie, time to go die to own PUTLER
It’s so nice to see so many people so concerned for Ukrainian lives and how they are lost fighting Russia.
I wonder how all of you imagine Ukraine fighting back without even this limited western help. How would this look like and what kind of casualty rate would you expect as Russia would profil their fantasies of removing Ukrainian culture and erasing their nation from history?
Because let me tell you, that doesn’t sound a very peaceful plan and certainly Ukraine is having non of it. Helping them with everything we can seem a way more peaceful plan. But hey, that’s just me, I not a deranged putinist jerking off on his picture like some people here, so I might have a different view.
Russia wants nothing of the sort. If you’re not some sad troll but actually believe Russia has “fantasies of removing Ukrainian culture” etc, you are so deluded it’s disgusting. It was Ukraine that has been attempting to ethnically cleanse people of Russian heritage that is mostly what kicked this whole conflict off. Russia has been making sure civilians have a corridor to safety while the Ukrainians have been openly talking about purging the population of Crimea if it were able to take it from Russia (which they can’t, not even in their wildest “fantasies.”)
Russia has wanted to negotiate reasonable peace terms since the beginning of the war, but it has been repeatedly scuttled by NATO/Ukraine, most famously when Boris Johnson intervened to make sure peace did not happen.
All of that is the reality of the situation, but the propagandists and those who ate up all their lies like to project the crimes and failures of their own masters onto their enemy, and we end up with the mirror world that this sorry know-nothing fool believes in.
Russia would profil their fantasies of removing Ukrainian culture and erasing their nation from history?
When you invent reality, you can argue for anything and have it be incontestable.
their fantasies of removing Ukrainian culture and erasing their nation from history
gonna need some sources on that one
https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1695548095877017857 ukrainian culture be like:
"A crowd of Ukrainians sings the anthem of the OUN, a BRUTAL Ukrainian WW2 organisation that massacred more than 100 thousand people while fighting alongside German N@zis.
Led by Stepan Bandera, it is considered a role model by Western Ukrainians to this day."
that’s the culture Russia wants to destroy?
holy shit i love putin now
My favorite bit of Bandera trivia, is when people say he eventually turned on Hitler and was imprisoned, they don’t say why.
Bandera simply wanted his own Fascist republic and to do away with the undesirables in a Ukrainian way. Hitler basically told him to fuck off and kept his troops in Ukraine, and Bandera was like
as he was put in a camp. After that, the group he had previously led continued to massacre 35k-80k Poles.Literally the two worst people you know poking eachother in the eye and trying to garner sympathy.
What a lot of people fail to grasp about why Ukraine isn’t advancing more quickly despite having superior equipment and training than the vast majority of the Russian army is the realities on the ground. For example, NATO tactics assume no, or very few mines. Ukraine is the most heavily mined place on Earth now. NATO tactics assume air superiority. Ukraine has very few fighter jets, and won’t receive new ones from Western countries for several more months.
The reality is that despite being better equipped and trained, there are still several extremely difficult obstacles in the way of them reclaiming their land, and so they’re taking it fairly slow in an effort to not throw lives away unnecessarily. Even so, every square inch they liberate is paid for in blood.
Still, I’m optimistic about the next few months. Ukrainians just reached the first Surovikin line near Novoprokopivka, and the latest reports suggest they’ve already entered the eastern side of that village. If they can take it and the high ground in that area, they’ll have about 12km of contact with the trench network. If they can make a breakthrough at any point along that line, they can assault the length of it from 3 different directions, and collapse a whole front.
Also, with the death of Prigozhin, there’s a decent chance of more unrest in Moscow, which would likely move Russians off the front line to quell any dissent back home. That, combined with morale among the Russian forces being at an all-time nadir makes me optimistic about Ukraine’s chances of advancing to Tokmak this year. And Tokmak is a lynchpin of the entire Russian defense in the area. It’s a major hub, as it is where all of the rail lines from the east join the west. If the Ukrainians control Tokmak, practically the entire area south of the Dnipro will be cut off from supplies.
So yeah, fingers crossed!
fingers crossed!
Yay, hoping for Ukraine to become even poorer and then what’s going to happen to the millions of Russians living in Crimea and eastern Ukraine? Do they just get genocided or flee en masse in another Nakba, lib?
:eat-ass: :PIGPOOPBALLS:
