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Ukraine is a recognized sovereign nation Period. Put invaded it in act of naked aggression. The War Crimes being committed rise to the level of Genocide. That's what the world see's right now.
Again, sovereignty doesn't give them a right to perpetrate ethnic or linguistic cleansing. If this were any other country within the European sphere they would already have been turned into a pariah state that's universally condemned. Ironically it's happening to Russia right now but if anyone has actually been following the strategy of Russia's engagement in Ukraine they've taken surprising pains to minimise civilian casualties. Doesn't mean they're perfect or that war criminals won't emerge but compared to the US bombing of Baghdad or Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen, the latter of which the UN human rights council coincidentally dropped the investigation of not too long back, they've taken a slower more precision based approach to this conflict. The Western media is full of it in this regard and blatantly contradicts the testimony of people who would actually be affected by this war in the heat of it all. I'm still waiting for Fakhrudin Sharafmal to be fired and charged for invoking Adolph Eichmann and calling for the genocide of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
Again, sovereignty doesn't give them a right to perpetrate ethnic or linguistic cleansing. If this were any other country within the European sphere they would already have been turned into a pariah state that's universally condemned. Ironically it's happening to Russia right now but if anyone has actually been following the strategy of Russia's engagement in Ukraine they've taken surprising pains to minimise civilian casualties. Doesn't mean they're perfect or that war criminals won't emerge but compared to the US bombing of Baghdad or Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen, the latter of which the UN human rights council coincidentally dropped the investigation of not too long back, they've taken a slower more precision based approach to this conflict. The Western media is full of it in this regard and blatantly contradicts the testimony of people who would actually be affected by this war in the heat of it all. I'm still waiting for Fakhrudin Sharafmal to be fired and charged for invoking Adolph Eichmann and calling for the genocide of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
What nonsense. Have you seen the pictures of Mariuopol? Or Kharkiv?
There's very little care by the Russians. We were very careful in Baghdad.
When they get close enough to a city with their artillery, they level it.
What nonsense. Have you seen the pictures of Mariuopol? Or Kharkiv?
There's very little care by the Russians. We were very careful in Baghdad.
When they get close enough to a city with their artillery, they level it.
Yes, they attack particular targets of interest where there's a concentration of Ukrainian armed forces. Oftentimes, and this is from the testimonies of civilians afterwards, the AFU had positions close to them or in the same building being used as human shields. In the case of Mariupol the Russians engaged in street by street urban warfare which is notorious for being highly costly in terms of lives for the combatants and potentially civilians unless they're evacuated in advance which I understand efforts have been made for civilian corridors but Ukraine has often denied due to one reason or another.
Baghdad and Iraq as a whole had its infrastructure devastated. This is going on in Ukraine in major areas of engagement between the two sides but in the broader region and country as a whole the electrical grid is still functioning, running water is still available, and access to the Internet is possible.
If Russian sympathizers want to live in a nation run by Putin, they are free to do so.
Russian 'sympathizers' are most likely to fall among the ethnic-Russians. Ethnic Ukrainians for whom Russia is their first language appear to largely reject Russian state domination as shown in polls and by the lack of support (extensive evidence) for the Russian invasion. Zelensky, for example, is a native Russian speaker. During the USSR era, Russians moved to all parts of the Soviet empire in numbers proportionally greater than earlier effectively leaving them stranded when the USSR disbanded.
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Originally Posted by Pryvete
Doesn't really work like that. Donbas and really much of what used to be known as the 'Wild Fields' was sparsely populated until the settlement of Russians in the 18th century not counting earlier Cossack inhabitants. Industrialisation was carried out by the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union in the Donbas. Many if not most of those people have been there centuries before Ukraine existed as a separate nation. To uproot themselves because of some US installed and backed government that's been co-opted by extremists with an ideology prevalent primarily in the western part of the country would amount to or at least some pseudo form of ethnic cleansing. The historicity of Russians' presence there and importance in the development of eastern Ukraine exacerbates the unscrupulousness even more.
A Greece source (many Greeks in the region specifically Mariupol) disagrees: "Now home to a majority of Russian-speaking people, they moved there only in recent decades." https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/22...netsk-luhansk/
More, movements of peasantry into portions of the Donbas began much earlier than the 18th century. It was basically unpopulated up until the second half of the 17th century (Greek Reporter) with that population always forming a majority until the present. At no time did Russian settlers predominate (demographic data).
HISTORY OF THE AREA:
The 'Wild Fields' lay in present-day Eastern and Southern Ukraine into Western Russia, north of the Black Sea and Azov Sea. A portion of the Wild Fields that extended into the Donbas contained the Zaporizhian Sich which became a proto state of Cossacks existing from the 16th to the 18th century. The Sich was increasingly populated by serfs who fled the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and were termed the Ukrainian peasantry. Bohdan Khmelnytsky took over the Sich and established the Cossack Hetmanate in 1648.
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Although initially seeking only a redress of grievances from the Polish crown, Khmelnytsky, following his arrival in Kyiv, began to conceive of Ukraine as an independent Cossack state. ... In 1654 [seeking protection from the Poles) at Pereyaslav he concluded with Moscow an agreement whose precise nature has generated enormous controversy: Russian historians have emphasized Ukraine’s acceptance of the tsar’s suzerainty, which subsequently legitimized Russian rule, but Ukrainian historiography has stressed Moscow’s recognition of Ukraine’s autonomy (including an elective hetmancy, self-government, and the right to conduct foreign relations) that was virtually tantamount to independence (see Pereyaslav Agreement). https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Cossacks
In Ukraine, Khmelnytsky is generally regarded as a national hero although he is criticized for allowing the Crimean tartars to take large numbers of Ukrainian peasants as slaves. He is also claimed as a Russian hero for 'reuniting' Ukraine with Russia.
"The Donbas remained for the most part under the control of the Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate and the Turkic Crimean Khanate until the mid-late 18th century, when the Russian Empire [under Catherine the Great] conquered the Hetmanate and annexed the Khanate." https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/22...netsk-luhansk/
DEMOGRAPHICS:
At the end of the 18th century, many Russians, Serbs and Greeks migrated to the region. It was now integrated into the Russian Empire as "New Russia."
The rise of the coal industry in the 19th century did lead to a "population boom" in Russian settlers. Landless peasants from Russia also arrived.
Further demographic figures and changes:
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According to the Russian Imperial Census of 1897, Ukrainians comprised 52.4% of the population of the region, while ethnic Russians comprised 28.7%. Greeks, Germans, Jews and Tatars also had a significant presence in the Donbas, particularly in the district of Mariupol, where they comprised 36.7% of the population. ...
Ukrainians living in the Donbas were further decimated by the state-sponsored 1932–33 Holodomor (meaning ‘to kill by starvation’) famine and the Russification policy of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. ...
[later large numbers of both Ukrainians and Russians were killed by the Germans during ww2] then during the reconstruction the most recent wave of Russian citizens ... descended on the area after the War. https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/22...netsk-luhansk/
The net result was most ethnic Russians moved to the Donbas only in recent decades. Simultaneously, ethnic Ukrainian peasants also moved to the cities and began to use Russian as their first language. Specifically:
"By 1959, the number of ethnic Russians living there was 2.55 million; just 33 years prior, it had been just 639,000. The Russification of the area accelerated after the 1958–59 Soviet educational reforms, which led to the near elimination of all Ukrainian-language schooling in the Donbas." https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/22...netsk-luhansk/
Yes, they attack particular targets of interest where there's a concentration of Ukrainian armed forces. Oftentimes, and this is from the testimonies of civilians afterwards, the AFU had positions close to them or in the same building being used as human shields. In the case of Mariupol the Russians engaged in street by street urban warfare which is notorious for being highly costly in terms of lives for the combatants and potentially civilians unless they're evacuated in advance which I understand efforts have been made for civilian corridors but Ukraine has often denied due to one reason or another.
Baghdad and Iraq as a whole had its infrastructure devastated. This is going on in Ukraine in major areas of engagement between the two sides but in the broader region and country as a whole the electrical grid is still functioning, running water is still available, and access to the Internet is possible.
That's only because the Russians have been beaten back from those parts of the country. The stories from the front lines all tell of water and power being gone.
The Azov movement was created in 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and was predominantly a paramilitary unit of radical nationalists, which – including its founder and leader Andriy Biletsky—openly espoused anti-Semitic and other far-right ideology. The movement has attacked anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, media outlets, art exhibitions, foreign students, the LGBTQ2S+ community and Roma people.
A 2016 report issued by the Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights details accusations against the Azov movement’s militia known as the “Azov Battalion” of torture and other war crimes in the ensuing conflict in 2014. The Ukrainian National Guard later took the Azov Battalion into its ranks – where it is now more commonly known as the Azov Regiment."
So seriously - what is it with the left and their support for the ultra-right forces in Ukraine lately?
Azov about half Russian speaking from the eastern Ukrainian with a number from the Donbas (hence their base in Mariupol) has been engaged in a civil war with the Separatist militias. Other nationalist militia from Eastern Ukraine. Both sets - Ukrainian and Separatist - are cited for human rights violations by agencies like the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International in numbers that appear roughly comparable.
Referencing LGBT, with an aside for religion:
Quote:
Before the war, the gay community in Donbas enjoyed a well-developed infrastructure that included organized social groups, HIV Service Centres and themed clubs. ... The homophobic campaign in the Russian Federation, and in particular the passing of a law forbidding "homosexual propaganda", has led to a surge of hate towards sexual minorities in Donbas. ... In 2014, the rhetoric of separatist rebels was littered with references to Gayropa, while homosexuals were branded as the "fifth column" of the West. ... When the separatists took power, they became a genuine threat to LGBT people and members of sexual minorities were forced to flee their homes. https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/A...he-USSR-170214
Written in 2016, this may well now be in force for Donetsk with reports for a criminal penalty for homosexuality also in Luhansk.
Quote:
The authorities of the separatist republics are aiming to consolidate discrimination against LGBT people at a statutory level. The "Constitution of the Donetsk People's Republic [DPR]" includes the clause: "No form of perverted union between people of the same sex is recognized or permitted in the Donetsk People's Republic, and [any such union] is subject to penalty by law." Further, the document notes that the "dominant faith" of the "DPR" is Orthodox Christianity. [Looks like the bold was enacted into the "Constitution" then later removed.] https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/A...he-USSR-170214
Still isn't it a bit bizarre: incensed that Ukrainian becomes the state language but themselves willing to make Orthodox Christianity the "dominant faith." The following appears to be current ((only a nominal registration needed for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate):
Quote:
The present situation can only get much worse, given a new DPR rule prohibiting the activities of any religious organization which has not undergone ‘re-registration’ by 1 March 2019. This, IRF explains, is in accordance with the so-called ‘DPR law’ on freedom of faith and religious organizations, passed back in April and in force from May 2018. ... This is not just some bureaucratic requirement. In order to obtain re-registration, each religious organization will have to undergo an ‘expert assessment’. https://khpg.org/en/1530976690
Attacks reported on churches, specifically evangelical Christian.
Referencing the Roma:
Quote:
Pro-Russian members of the Donbass People's Militia began a pogrom targeting the Romani population of the town. According to the International Renaissance Foundation, a Ukrainian NGO, separatist militiamen entered houses inhabited by Romanis, beat the residents, including women and children, and stole their property.[51] The militants claimed they were acting on orders from "people's mayor" and militant leader Vyacheslav Ponomarev.[52] ... According to Ponomarev, he held talks with Romani who he alleged were involved in drug trafficking, and "removed them from the city." Ponomarev said the incidents were not attacks on Romani, but rather "cleaning drugs out of the city."[54] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Ukraine
What you accuse Azov of the separatists states appear to sanction in the Donbas.
Azov about half Russian speaking from the eastern Ukrainian with a number from the Donbas (hence their base in Mariupol) has been engaged in a civil war with the Separatist militias. Other nationalist militia from Eastern Ukraine. Both sets - Ukrainian and Separatist - are cited for human rights violations by agencies like the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International in numbers that appear roughly comparable.
Referencing LGBT, with an aside for religion:
Written in 2016, this may well now be in force for Donetsk with reports for a criminal penalty for homosexuality also in Luhansk.
Still isn't it a bit bizarre: incensed that Ukrainian becomes the state language but themselves willing to make Orthodox Christianity the "dominant faith." The following appears to be current ((only a nominal registration needed for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate):
Attacks reported on churches, specifically evangelical Christian.
Referencing the Roma:
What you accuse Azov of the separatists states appear to sanction in the Donbas.
In this case I was simply quoting the article.
I understand that in your world "the separatists" are as bad as (if not worse) than Azov.
But in the REAL world, the *separatists* are your regular Russians ( actually even more traditional Russians than Russians in "Russia proper,") so there is no danger of them being supported by the "progressive Western left wing," with their Donbass' patriarchal culture.
My question was why something like Azov ( with their clearly non-liberal, non-"progressive" stance) has so much support and admiration of the "liberal and progressive" part of the West, while you can clearly see what Azov is all about?
Yes, they attack particular targets of interest where there's a concentration of Ukrainian armed forces. Oftentimes, and this is from the testimonies of civilians afterwards, the AFU had positions close to them or in the same building being used as human shields. In the case of Mariupol the Russians engaged in street by street urban warfare which is notorious for being highly costly in terms of lives for the combatants and potentially civilians unless they're evacuated in advance which I understand efforts have been made for civilian corridors but Ukraine has often denied due to one reason or another.
Baghdad and Iraq as a whole had its infrastructure devastated. This is going on in Ukraine in major areas of engagement between the two sides but in the broader region and country as a whole the electrical grid is still functioning, running water is still available, and access to the Internet is possible.
All while Ukrainian military targets specifically civilian/residential buildings in Donbass, over and over again.
It's just the Western media doesn't report any of it.
All while Ukrainian military targets specifically civilian/residential buildings in Donbass, over and over again.
It's just the Western media doesn't report any of it.
Why not? ........... They just don't think anyone would be interested?
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