Then They’d have done no pushups in the last 6 years and thus had atrophied muscles.

the EU happily come to “rescue” Uyghurs from Beijing

Politcal expedience, that smear campaign was effective in the west against China. There never was a any sort of genocide there.

or Kosovars from Belgrade

Again, NATO got a wonderful strategic military base and drug hub (with a bit of country around it) out of it.

or Chechens from Moscow

Anything to weaken Russia.

the pattern I find is always to support Washington DC

Almost as if the west does not actually give a shit about anyone not white? It’s all divide and conquer.

Well, you deserve an answer regarding your economic question for the way. Russias economy is doing pretty well, its government used the time from 2014 onwards to create alternatives to western markets. For example gas and oil go to India(who resells some to the EU) and China now. And the US who, of course, does not comply with the sanctions. Another factor of Russias resilience to western sanctions is the historical fact that the west sanctions non-western countries all the time. This created a situation in which most of the world is under western sanctions of varous kinds, the sanctioned countries are less inclined to follow western dictates regarding Russia. So Russia still can trade with most of the world.

Meanwhile Europe did expect to get cheap gas as always no matter how much it antagonized Russia. Unfortunately for them, Russia did not renew the delivery contract it had with the EU countries(which would guarantee delivery for a pre-settled price). Leading to the EU having to buy Russian gas on the spot market (highly variable prices). Some EU countries did not antagonize Russia as much, and thus had their contract renewed, thney got fucked another way by big daddy Washington. With the US blowing up Northstream 2 and Ukraine stopping transit over its territory, the EU is physically cut off from Russian gas and and has to find alternatives fast.

One adress was Qatar, who can not cover the demand. Another was the US, who can but wants multiple times what Russia demanded. Furthermore, in either case the delivery would happen in liquified form. Which is ecologically problematic to say the least.

Liquidification requires lots of energie and produces a shitload of CO2 emissions. Driving it over by special ships (of which not enough exist) again pumps lots of CO2 out and poisons the oceans because the large ship machines are using the absolute worst for fuel. That stuff then has to get on land, sufficient terminals only existed in Spain, in Germany they had to be built ignoring safety standards, because they were needed asap. The US gas is extracted from shale, as a side effect of shale oil extraction. This process poisons the land and water, leading to tab water being flamable in many parts of the US.

Overall this means rising energy costs in the west, which means less favourable conditions of energy intensive companies. The US solves that way by pulling all restrictions regarding shale oil extraction, digging up Alaska and so on and providing tax incentives for companies moving to the US - in short: They loot their vassal states in Europe.

Europe is fucked. Which, of course, leads to tensions within NATO. Especially as the US wants the euros to shoulder the cost of their occupation now, too. Teh EU countries have already been weakened by austerity and neoliberal politics, now have to pump billions into their militaries. Said money is created via debt on one side, via further cuts on social services on the other, creating internal tensions. Said tensions can be observed by the rise of the far right in every EU country.

Another reason for inter NATO and EU tensions is the fact that the countries in the Eu who did not antagonize Russia, now also are fucked. Because the US and it’s ukranian dog blocked direct pipelines.

So put together the situation, the EU got fucked by the US and its own stupidity, Ukraine got fucked by NATO, EU, US and its own stupidity, Russia got away cleanly, the US got away cleanly at the cost of its imperial periphery. Climate Change won big. Humanity lost big.

“To be an enemy of the United States is risky, to be an ally is fatal.”

That would make both states just two more puppet states the US eventually shot in the head. At no point did these states oppose the US empire, they were just good lapdogs until daddy US took them behind the shed and put a bullet to their head.

I’m pretty new to Lemmy, but I start to understand how these places works, and jezz, lemmy.ml seems a spin off of RT.

Lemmy does not have the bot farms curating pro-western opinions. If you adopted those opinions via osmosis (happens to the best of us, that’s why those bots exist.), their abscence is bound to weird you out.

Both Palestine and Russia are on the western “to be conquered”-list. The difference that Russia can muster enough military power to directly oppose those plans. Palestine is in amuch worse position. Both however, are support worthy because of their place on that list.

Firstly, they’re supposed to not be there at all.

As I mentioned, ethnic cleansing was already in process in Donbas and all peaceful diplomatic attempts of solving the issue failed, or in case of Minsk 2 were just lying to Russia while arming Ukraine. Did you think diplomacy was some sort of game after whichs failure everyone just goes home and nothing happens?

I didn’t adress the mass graves because it is Ukraine who has the history of “cleaning up saboteurs”(killing whoever wants to stay, or whoever aided russian forces delivering humanitarian aid in the occupied regions, Bucha is a good example), not Russia. Also all the links you posted are from western "N"GOs. I think you might see the issue of a very real bias. I agree that bombing of critical infrastructure is indeed a warcrime. For what it is worth, Russia only started doing so after Ukraine started assassination campaigns of civlians. It was a tit-for-tat escalation. During the first year Russia did not bomb critical infrastructure, which greatly suprised western military leadership, who’s “Shock and Awe” doctrine aims to destroy civilians infrastructure first. Ukraine eventually escalated from its usual shelling of civilians in Donbas to killing civilans in Russia and shelling nuclear plants, so Russia escalated in turn. I’m not defending it, just stating what happened.

and can end the war at any time by just leaving,

Russia intervened into a ongoing civil war after recognizing the sovereignity of the breakaway donbas republics and answering their calls for military assistence. It neither started that war, it started 2014 when the US did a regime change in Kiev and put people venerating the fascist Stepan Bandera in charge, one of the first things they did was abolishing all official languages but ukrainian, that pissed off roughly half the country enough to storm local government buildings and declare secession.

Nor would it end should Russia leave, because as the regime in Kiev stated multiple times: They want to ethnically cleanse Donbas. To become a second Isreal.

you are responsible for what happens in that war. Second, yes morally and legally militaries are supposed to not blow up civilians on reports that there are enemies around. Was Israel justified in bombing schools and hospitals in Gaza if Hamas had fighters inside them?

No, you are forbidden of using schools and hospitals as firing positions as defender too. That law applies for both sides in a war. Ukraine deliberately set up artillery next to schools, quarted its soldiers in schools and hospitals and regulary sets up firing positions in civilian areas. Hamas did not use hospitals as firing positions during the Gaza genocide, it does follow the laws of war to the letter. Please stay with the facts. Do not equate a moral army such as Hamas with the moraly bankrupt army that is the ukranian one.

Oh, great, we’re just accepting the stated goals of aggressors now? I guess I have to apologize for all the things I said about Israel and the US defending themselves from terrorists in Gaza and Iraq and definitely not doing genocide or trying to militarily secure access to oil. What a joke.

The difference is that Russia has a history of sticking precisely to its stated goals. Israel however literally never did. Ergo, the statements of the former carry some weight, the ones of the latter aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. It’s the old “cry wolf” thingy.

Is not a NATO member, and can’t be as long as the dispute with Turkey persists.

Fair point regarding Cyprus, I misremembered. Thank you for clearing that up.

Arrived in small numbers in March 2023, after a year of fighting and months of begging. A far cry from the article’s lies about high-tech weapons in Ukraine from the beginning. A few dozen decent tanks and howitzers do not constitute a modern army, particularly with NATO’s emphasis on air power and missiles, both of which arrived very late and with strict limitations.

As for the quantity of equipment by the west to Ukraine: The problem there is that the west flatout can not send much. It’s for-profit weapons industry do not produce the quantities needed for such conflicts. The “few decent tanks and howitzers” were already taken from active arsenals of western militaries. Western arms are for generating profit and shooting brown people who can not fight back, not for actual peer level wars.

Correct, initially the russian forces only numbered a bit over 140.000 men. Not even enough to take Kiev by force.

The initial goal was to end the ethnic cleansing in Donbas(by 22, one million people had fled to Russia), this of course means destroying Ukranian military capabilities involved in that. The stated cassus belli was resposibility to protect, referencing the NATO campaign against Serbia to seperate Kosovo from it. Back then (when the West was bombing Serbia) Russia stated that this would serve as bad precedent case.

Everything else had been tried. Ended with the west lying to Russians face (Minsk 2). Once peaceful diplomatic means are exhausted, what did you think would happen? War is diplomacy by other means. To freely quote Klausewitz.

First time contact with reality, I see.

The idea that Russia landed airborne troops in Kyiv without wanting to at the very least overthrow the Ukrainian government (just as the US likes to overthrow Latin American countries, which leftists rightly deride as imperialist, but many can’t seem to recognize when non-western countries do it) is laughable. It also ignores Putin’s clearly-stated belief that Ukraine has no legitimate existence as a separate country, a belief that he reiterated during his interview with Tucker Carlson instead of saying anything that Western supporters of Russia wanted him to say. It ALSO fails to mention reports from early in the invasion that Putin has personally rejected a peace deal because he wanted to go to war.

Which was not the stated goal, his position regarding the ukrainian state is pretty irrelevant to this matter.

The idea that the war was over NATO membership is outright nonsense, since that goal HAD ALREADY BEEN ACHIEVED by the annexation of Crimea and support for separatist factions, since NATO membership requires territorial integrity.

Not the first time NATO made exceptions, half of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey. Just because you do not know history, do not assume that others also do not.

The statement that the West gave Ukraine their most advanced weapons is a ridiculous lie to anyone watching Ukraine beg for years to get moderately updated tanks and jets, and mid-range ATACMs. In reality, the Biden administration had been withholding the best weapons specifically because they wanted the war to end like this and just didn’t want to admit it. The things people do are more important than what they say.

Ukraine got Leo2s in the most up to date configuration, PzH2000 and just to mention the modern german tuff they got. Yes also lots of old stuff, like Leo1s. But among the stuff they got, modern weapons were there.

The article conveniently fails to mention any Russian war crimes, such as the repeated bombing of civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals (only a bad thing when Israel does it, apparently), the Bucha massacre, or reports of mass graves in occupied areas.

This leaves out the fact that Ukrainian forces were and are known to use these locations for fire positions. Even more obvious if you saw pictures of those locations. The old soviet complexes were well planned and compact, schools were often surrounded by a ring of connected high rise habitation units. This meant that the schools were well protected from the weather, but also made the while complex veritable fortresses.

What are russian troops supposed to do? Not fire back? No matter ones position towards the SMO, this is a ridiculous notion.

That power is the US…

Maybe actually learn what happened before 22. We had a neat little thread about this recently: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7112898

“The lost war must continue because I love it when people die.” - You

If you love war so much, go there and get yourself killed.

In all fairness, Israel should be wiped off the map.

It being a CIA front has been outright confirmed by the CIA in the 80s.

You also make the mistake of believing “promoting democracy” is meant in any way seriously.

1. What sort of democracy? Venezuela, Cuba, China all are democratic per their own people which are highly supportive of their states, yet the NED was active there. NED was never active in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Monacco or other absolutist monarchies. The difference? The first group of states are on the US shitlist, the latter are subservient. Ergo, “promoting democracy” can only mean “installing people in power which are subservient to the US”.

2. Democracy? NED was and is very active in Ukraine, which has banned all opposition parties, no longer has elections and is snatching people off the streets to throw into the meatgrinder instead of making peace. NED also was very active during the Arab spring. Which lead to Sisi in Egypt (after the elected muslim brotherhood government dared not to continue selling Israel oil far below market price) and not-Al-Qaida in Syria (which famously are not opposing Israels invasion of Syria and previously staged a false flag gas attack on civilians, which the US supported via falsifying evidence and supressing on the ground findings)

Again we can see a trend of installing subservient governments in the name of “democracy”.

This trend is contiuned everywhere, the supported Opposition is rabidly pro-US (see Thailand or Georgia for current examples), in no way to the benefit of their own people.

The matter is not remotely grey. You need to learn to read between the lines.

Every public communication is propaganda, that is the point being made (which you missed). The difference between good or bad propaganda are the goals.

For example: Propaganda for higher wages and polical participation? Good.

Propaganda for wage depression and chauvinism of any kind? Bad.

Which brings us to your post: Most soviet propaganda indeed was of the good kind. While most american propaganda indeed is of the bad one.

Every public communication is propaganda, politcal content is irelevant. It depends on the goals of said proaganda if it is bad or not.

If you compre both events beyong the absolute surface you might find the difference:

The soviets kept them under lock and key, extracted their knowledge and then got rid of them.

The US gave them high paying jobs, citizenship, honored their work after they passed, and amnesty for their crimes.

Everyone dying is hardly a loss for just Russia, mankind as a whole would lose because it would no longer exist.