Thank you for the context. I read up a bit and it seems that due to poor management by the Ukrainian government, since 1994 the Donbas province has suffered from poverty and a harsh life. Also, despite voting to become Independent, their votes were ignored by the Ukrainian government (Now I understand why Putin is calling the Ukrainian facists... I just thought he went demented).
I wonder why this story isn't told, why the people of the donbas didn't appeal to the UN to establish independence (or Russia, if they wanted to become Russians)... Why did it end up such a bloody mess instead of a diplomatic solution?
This war doesn't come off as a liberation war.
why the people of the donbas didn’t appeal to the UN to establish independence
They did. No country outside of South Ossetia, itself an unrecognized country, recognized their independence. Sadly not even Cuba did when specifically asked. Yes that means Russia also didn't. Despite significant internal pressure to do that (most significantly, by the communist party), Putin and Russian government hoped for peaceful resolution by the Minsk agreements. This turned out to be mistake since both west and Ukraine never intended to honor those agreements but used them to arm up Ukraine. Between 2014 and 2022 international situation changed significantly though, Ukraine buildup for the all out invasion of Donbas finally forced Russian govt to decide, either join the war or just watch as Donbas is massacred (and potentially risk political instablity in crucial time since it would be incredibly unpopular move which could easily lead to lose nationalist support for govt).
Ok, I'll assume it to be correct. I can't corroborate much except for the Minsk agreements, but they make the rest make sense since Russia tried to negotiate these twice.
I can see why Russia intervened, I can't see why Russia committed mass murder on civilian population.
I can’t see why Russia committed mass murder on civilian population.
They didn't. Civilian losses are very low in that war, UN estimated it for around 10000 dead (for both sides). Compare it to when US Shock and Awe any country and kill milllions. Russia is incredibly restrained as far as the modern warfare goes.
The numbers seem expected, not low.
Bucha is probably an exception to the rule, but mass Graves are not a pretty sight.
Also, the fact that America is a multiple war crimes veteren doesn't negate my original claim. A serial killer doesn't make a single murder ok, arguments don't work that way - rhetorically.
Expected? By whom? Liberals seems to expect millions because they as usual projected the US army standard. I said America not because some kind of dreaded whataboutism or deflections, i used that example because as foremost warmonger on the planet they do set up the standard of contemporary warfare, which is to bomb everything, drone weddings, burn cities with white phosphorus, poison the earth and people with defoliants and depleted uranium, drop millions of bombs that kill people even decades later... yet no one else except their puppets seem to even want to get close to that standard. And look, they are sending the same shit to Ukraine.
Expected because during 1948 in the Israeli independence war (also known as Nakba for the Palestinians), 10000 Palestinian civilians died in multiple instances including several war crimes.
Comparatively to other wars where civilian population was involved, it sounds about right.
Doesn't mean that every war will end up in 10k, it just makes sense due to a comparison. Used here not as an argument in and of itself, but as a ruler to measure expectations.
And again, your well founded accusations of America as being worse than Russia doesn't make Russia free of blame. If you killed 50 people, does that mean that if I kill you, I'm a hero that showed restraint? No. I'm a criminal. I'm not a serial murderer, but I am a murderer nonetheless. Even a police officer that were to kill you would be under an investigation to establish that he had no choice, and if proven that he could've brought you to justice alive, he would face prison (at least, if the justice system works).
Also, I am not American. I am not saying America is ok. Right now, America is getting rich off of death of Russians and Ukrainians the same way they've been doing since 1910 - as the world's largest arms dealer. Their capitalist hunger fuels a military industrial complex that spreads war, chaos and death. America is also hypocritical enough to be fighting a proxy war with Russia through the Ukraine in retaliation of the Russian invasion, under the guise of "We supply weapons". Bullshit they do more than supply weapons and aid. They train Ukrainian soliders and send free mercenaries in.
Why are you say anything about justification now? I was rebuking your argument that Russians committed mass murder in Ukraine, which they didn't and you agreed saying the numbers were expected, but you suddenly moved into some kind of moral argument for some reason.
Now i don't agree with the expectations, because you still didn't said who expected it and from reading of nearly all liberal articles about those numbers they not only expect much more but are even making them up contrary to the apparently most trustworthy assessments.
Nakba is comparable in terms of numbers of victims and lenght of war but the military forces were much lower than the ones in Ukraine and intensity of the war was also much lower - just compare the ratio of military to civilian losses.
Tl;Dr - My original argument that Russia is conducting mass murder (genocide) is false, the facts refute it. War crimes are in question. Your arguments are emotional and that triggered my antagonistic responses.
Thank you and the rest of the participants in this thread, you've made me see this war in a new light.
Bucha is a red herring. The event was thoroughly investigated the very day after it was suddenly mediatized, and two pieces of evidence stick out:
The mayor of Bucha, when UA retook control of the city, made no reference to any mass murders or anything. He certainly would have mentioned it if he knew about it.
Videos were filmed shortly (a day or two) also before UA retook the city, and there were no bodies in the streets.
These civilians were killed by Ukraine. They didn't publicize it right after they retook the city, it took them a few days to talk about it -- plenty of time to commit a massacre. There's more inconsistencies but these are the two big ones to me. Like some people raised the problem that the bodies looked very fresh (and that nobody talked about the massacre online before UA retook the city), when the official narrative was that the massacre was committed a month before.
edit: as for mass graves, one of them I believe to have been made by Ukraine. I couldn't tell you which one exactly though at this time, but Esha K. talked about it on twitter. Russia had made proper graves and even brought UA POWs to witness the processions. They filmed everything and that's why I mentioned Esha, she has the video on her twitter somewhere. They had also offered to send the bodies to Ukraine for proper burial, which Ukraine refused. So they buried these soldiers themselves. Ukraine then opened the graves and threw the bodies in a mass grave to once again pin something on Russia.
Remember that Ukraine has committed verifiable war crimes (they boast about them) in just the first months of the war, I posted about this before trying to keep track of them.
There was another red herring, a woman supposedly wearing nail polish, which NAFO trolls jumped on to claim she was a civilian, but there are women in the UA army and they're allowed to wear nail polish like you don't stop wearing it just because you're a soldier. So it doesn't mean anything.
The nyt(yea I know) deep dive convinced me at least a large part of killings were carried out by Russian soldiers. Tying phones, street cameras and other evidence to specific deaths was fairly exhaustive. It seems a case of revenge killing and is still a war crime. Massacres do happen and soldiers who commit them should be prosecuted, although I doubt the nyt would spend the hours to do this and call for the prosecutions on Americans for the millions who died in the middle east.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-massacre-victims.html
You can say well the Ukrainian push for regular people to fight back or whatever leads to things like this and you can be right. I don't think that gets these soldiers off the hook.
I'm reading through it through firefox's reader to bypass the paywall and most of their stories are conjecture (I read most of them and skipped the rest). Even worse, they're just that: stories. They have no dates attached, just a name, age, and "was never seen again". I don't doubt these people were in Bucha in March, but beyond that the NYT is not tying them to the massacre itself. Just that they were in the fighting. Like there's telegrams screencaps saying "this person was killed march 5 can you help me move their body" but the message itself isn't dated, very amateur.
NYT is the journal that has been cheering for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan for decades, they have a very high bar to clear if they want to be taken at face value.
The part about how they reported this is word salad, it's the exact same method Buzzfeed used to find the "Uyghur concentration camps" that were actually factories and schools: google maps and their "sources"
There are literally videos of Russian bmps shooting people in the article I linked, maybe the ad block is blocking it. The video done with the article maybe presents it in a more digestible format.
Again nsfl bc dead bodies ect https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008299178/ukraine-bucha-russia-massacre-video.html
Yeah I saw some of those videos, but Ukraine has been known (and indeed as far back as the early days of the war) to impersonate Russian soldiers and film propaganda videos.
We're talking about the country that had a guy proudly cook human skulls in soup on video. There was also the video where a driver got scared in town and drove his armored vehicle over cars in the city trying to get away and the propaganda machine instantly claimed he was Russian, but it turned out to be UA forces.
I don't personally know enough about Russian/Ukrainian armoured vehicles to say if they're similar or Ukraine had somehow seized one back in March of last year but again, NYT has a very high bar to clear if they want to be taken seriously. And then we went from "Russia didn't commit the Bucha massacre" to "oh but they did kill civilians even if it wasn't a massacre" which I don't know what the goal of this reframing is :/
I don't understand are you saying these videos are fake? I understand there is propaganda I'm saying in this instance it seems pretty cut and dry.
I never changed my stance as you suggesting. With
And then we went from "Russia didn't commit the Bucha massacre" to "oh but they did kill civilians even if it wasn't a massacre" which I don't know what the goal of this reframing is :/
My second comment is addressing this from your 1st response
Even worse, they're just that: stories. They have no dates attached, just a name, age, and "was never seen again". I don't doubt these people were in Bucha in March, but beyond that the NYT is not tying them to the massacre itself.
The video ties many of these people to specific videos of their deaths, their phones to specific calls made to Russia by soldiers who took their phones along with eyewitness accounts. Your assertion that its just stories is not accurate. It would be valid to say the article does not account for every death (I don't think that is what you are trying to say?) but I do feel like that line of discussion is really bad faith and gets away from the core of what we are discussing by moving the goalposts.
My second reply I made in good faith, maybe nyt was fucking with the ad blocker or you simply missed the embedded media accompanying the article. The article clearly shows more evidence than:
They have no dates attached, just a name, age, and "was never seen again".
It often identifies multiple cctv shots of a killing and contemporaneous photos taken by hidden residents in the neighboring buildings. It doesn't just list their name, it states the circumstances of each death and accompanies many of them with photographic and video proof to corroborate testimony and phone records.
In my personal view of the event as a whole, the evidence doesn't show a picture of genocide that libs like editorialists at the nyt would attribute to it. It does show a specific military reprisal against civilians done by a military unit that would constitute a war crime. War crimes committed by Russia and Ukraine are not unique and a consequence of the wests utter genocidal (in this case it's genocidal bc slavs historically and today are viewed as lesser, see "asiatic horde" portrayals online) meddling.
It feels really disheartening the way in which you have mischaracterized not only the article but what I'm trying to say. By accusing me of reframing the conversation for some unnamed "goal" it feels like you are basically calling me a fed or ignorant.
Overall im contesting that it is not correct to claim "These civilians were killed by Ukraine" As you did in your original comment. I think the proper analysis of the event is that it was a crime but it as not endemic as evidenced by comparing this conflict with one like Iraq or Vietnam.
I'm sorry in advance if I was clear or am missing the point your trying to make.
Thank you for the context. I read up a bit and it seems that due to poor management by the Ukrainian government, since 1994 the Donbas province has suffered from poverty and a harsh life. Also, despite voting to become Independent, their votes were ignored by the Ukrainian government (Now I understand why Putin is calling the Ukrainian facists... I just thought he went demented).
I wonder why this story isn't told, why the people of the donbas didn't appeal to the UN to establish independence (or Russia, if they wanted to become Russians)... Why did it end up such a bloody mess instead of a diplomatic solution? This war doesn't come off as a liberation war.
They did. No country outside of South Ossetia, itself an unrecognized country, recognized their independence. Sadly not even Cuba did when specifically asked. Yes that means Russia also didn't. Despite significant internal pressure to do that (most significantly, by the communist party), Putin and Russian government hoped for peaceful resolution by the Minsk agreements. This turned out to be mistake since both west and Ukraine never intended to honor those agreements but used them to arm up Ukraine. Between 2014 and 2022 international situation changed significantly though, Ukraine buildup for the all out invasion of Donbas finally forced Russian govt to decide, either join the war or just watch as Donbas is massacred (and potentially risk political instablity in crucial time since it would be incredibly unpopular move which could easily lead to lose nationalist support for govt).
Ok, I'll assume it to be correct. I can't corroborate much except for the Minsk agreements, but they make the rest make sense since Russia tried to negotiate these twice.
I can see why Russia intervened, I can't see why Russia committed mass murder on civilian population.
They didn't. Civilian losses are very low in that war, UN estimated it for around 10000 dead (for both sides). Compare it to when US Shock and Awe any country and kill milllions. Russia is incredibly restrained as far as the modern warfare goes.
The numbers seem expected, not low. Bucha is probably an exception to the rule, but mass Graves are not a pretty sight.
Also, the fact that America is a multiple war crimes veteren doesn't negate my original claim. A serial killer doesn't make a single murder ok, arguments don't work that way - rhetorically.
Expected? By whom? Liberals seems to expect millions because they as usual projected the US army standard. I said America not because some kind of dreaded whataboutism or deflections, i used that example because as foremost warmonger on the planet they do set up the standard of contemporary warfare, which is to bomb everything, drone weddings, burn cities with white phosphorus, poison the earth and people with defoliants and depleted uranium, drop millions of bombs that kill people even decades later... yet no one else except their puppets seem to even want to get close to that standard. And look, they are sending the same shit to Ukraine.
Expected because during 1948 in the Israeli independence war (also known as Nakba for the Palestinians), 10000 Palestinian civilians died in multiple instances including several war crimes. Comparatively to other wars where civilian population was involved, it sounds about right. Doesn't mean that every war will end up in 10k, it just makes sense due to a comparison. Used here not as an argument in and of itself, but as a ruler to measure expectations.
And again, your well founded accusations of America as being worse than Russia doesn't make Russia free of blame. If you killed 50 people, does that mean that if I kill you, I'm a hero that showed restraint? No. I'm a criminal. I'm not a serial murderer, but I am a murderer nonetheless. Even a police officer that were to kill you would be under an investigation to establish that he had no choice, and if proven that he could've brought you to justice alive, he would face prison (at least, if the justice system works).
Also, I am not American. I am not saying America is ok. Right now, America is getting rich off of death of Russians and Ukrainians the same way they've been doing since 1910 - as the world's largest arms dealer. Their capitalist hunger fuels a military industrial complex that spreads war, chaos and death. America is also hypocritical enough to be fighting a proxy war with Russia through the Ukraine in retaliation of the Russian invasion, under the guise of "We supply weapons". Bullshit they do more than supply weapons and aid. They train Ukrainian soliders and send free mercenaries in.
Why are you say anything about justification now? I was rebuking your argument that Russians committed mass murder in Ukraine, which they didn't and you agreed saying the numbers were expected, but you suddenly moved into some kind of moral argument for some reason.
Now i don't agree with the expectations, because you still didn't said who expected it and from reading of nearly all liberal articles about those numbers they not only expect much more but are even making them up contrary to the apparently most trustworthy assessments.
Nakba is comparable in terms of numbers of victims and lenght of war but the military forces were much lower than the ones in Ukraine and intensity of the war was also much lower - just compare the ratio of military to civilian losses.
Tl;Dr - My original argument that Russia is conducting mass murder (genocide) is false, the facts refute it. War crimes are in question. Your arguments are emotional and that triggered my antagonistic responses.
Thank you and the rest of the participants in this thread, you've made me see this war in a new light.
Fair enough, i guess my argument was emotional because i'm drowning in the absolutely inane prowar propaganda in polish and enlish media every day.
Whatever... You're too busy being right to listen. Dasvidania chelovek, enjoy life.
Bucha is a red herring. The event was thoroughly investigated the very day after it was suddenly mediatized, and two pieces of evidence stick out:
These civilians were killed by Ukraine. They didn't publicize it right after they retook the city, it took them a few days to talk about it -- plenty of time to commit a massacre. There's more inconsistencies but these are the two big ones to me. Like some people raised the problem that the bodies looked very fresh (and that nobody talked about the massacre online before UA retook the city), when the official narrative was that the massacre was committed a month before.
edit: as for mass graves, one of them I believe to have been made by Ukraine. I couldn't tell you which one exactly though at this time, but Esha K. talked about it on twitter. Russia had made proper graves and even brought UA POWs to witness the processions. They filmed everything and that's why I mentioned Esha, she has the video on her twitter somewhere. They had also offered to send the bodies to Ukraine for proper burial, which Ukraine refused. So they buried these soldiers themselves. Ukraine then opened the graves and threw the bodies in a mass grave to once again pin something on Russia.
Remember that Ukraine has committed verifiable war crimes (they boast about them) in just the first months of the war, I posted about this before trying to keep track of them.
There was another red herring, a woman supposedly wearing nail polish, which NAFO trolls jumped on to claim she was a civilian, but there are women in the UA army and they're allowed to wear nail polish like you don't stop wearing it just because you're a soldier. So it doesn't mean anything.
The nyt(yea I know) deep dive convinced me at least a large part of killings were carried out by Russian soldiers. Tying phones, street cameras and other evidence to specific deaths was fairly exhaustive. It seems a case of revenge killing and is still a war crime. Massacres do happen and soldiers who commit them should be prosecuted, although I doubt the nyt would spend the hours to do this and call for the prosecutions on Americans for the millions who died in the middle east. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-massacre-victims.html
You can say well the Ukrainian push for regular people to fight back or whatever leads to things like this and you can be right. I don't think that gets these soldiers off the hook.
I'm reading through it through firefox's reader to bypass the paywall and most of their stories are conjecture (I read most of them and skipped the rest). Even worse, they're just that: stories. They have no dates attached, just a name, age, and "was never seen again". I don't doubt these people were in Bucha in March, but beyond that the NYT is not tying them to the massacre itself. Just that they were in the fighting. Like there's telegrams screencaps saying "this person was killed march 5 can you help me move their body" but the message itself isn't dated, very amateur.
NYT is the journal that has been cheering for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan for decades, they have a very high bar to clear if they want to be taken at face value.
The part about how they reported this is word salad, it's the exact same method Buzzfeed used to find the "Uyghur concentration camps" that were actually factories and schools: google maps and their "sources"
There are literally videos of Russian bmps shooting people in the article I linked, maybe the ad block is blocking it. The video done with the article maybe presents it in a more digestible format.
Again nsfl bc dead bodies ect https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008299178/ukraine-bucha-russia-massacre-video.html
Yeah I saw some of those videos, but Ukraine has been known (and indeed as far back as the early days of the war) to impersonate Russian soldiers and film propaganda videos.
We're talking about the country that had a guy proudly cook human skulls in soup on video. There was also the video where a driver got scared in town and drove his armored vehicle over cars in the city trying to get away and the propaganda machine instantly claimed he was Russian, but it turned out to be UA forces.
I don't personally know enough about Russian/Ukrainian armoured vehicles to say if they're similar or Ukraine had somehow seized one back in March of last year but again, NYT has a very high bar to clear if they want to be taken seriously. And then we went from "Russia didn't commit the Bucha massacre" to "oh but they did kill civilians even if it wasn't a massacre" which I don't know what the goal of this reframing is :/
I don't understand are you saying these videos are fake? I understand there is propaganda I'm saying in this instance it seems pretty cut and dry.
I never changed my stance as you suggesting. With
My second comment is addressing this from your 1st response
The video ties many of these people to specific videos of their deaths, their phones to specific calls made to Russia by soldiers who took their phones along with eyewitness accounts. Your assertion that its just stories is not accurate. It would be valid to say the article does not account for every death (I don't think that is what you are trying to say?) but I do feel like that line of discussion is really bad faith and gets away from the core of what we are discussing by moving the goalposts.
My second reply I made in good faith, maybe nyt was fucking with the ad blocker or you simply missed the embedded media accompanying the article. The article clearly shows more evidence than:
In my personal view of the event as a whole, the evidence doesn't show a picture of genocide that libs like editorialists at the nyt would attribute to it. It does show a specific military reprisal against civilians done by a military unit that would constitute a war crime. War crimes committed by Russia and Ukraine are not unique and a consequence of the wests utter genocidal (in this case it's genocidal bc slavs historically and today are viewed as lesser, see "asiatic horde" portrayals online) meddling.
It feels really disheartening the way in which you have mischaracterized not only the article but what I'm trying to say. By accusing me of reframing the conversation for some unnamed "goal" it feels like you are basically calling me a fed or ignorant.
Overall im contesting that it is not correct to claim "These civilians were killed by Ukraine" As you did in your original comment. I think the proper analysis of the event is that it was a crime but it as not endemic as evidenced by comparing this conflict with one like Iraq or Vietnam.
I'm sorry in advance if I was clear or am missing the point your trying to make.