What is really happening in the Ukraine Conflict?

[Scott777]

He doesn't actaukmy call him a hero.

Zelensky said in a 2019 interview with Ukrainska Pravda. "He is a hero for a certain percentage of Ukrainians, and it's normal, and it's cool."

So it's "cool", which kind of sounds like he approves, but no, I'm sure it's all just accidental.  🤣

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/6768

[Borg Refinery]

He doesn't actaukmy call him a hero. The machine translation reads
".... There are undeniable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain percentage of Ukrainians, and this is normal and cool...."
I (and I suspect you) don't speak enough Ukrainian to draw out the subtext of this exchange.

He could be saying he thinks SB was a hero, or he could be saying that some sections of Ukrainian population do and that this is OK for them. To hold differing views (effectively the free speech argument)

And, for the avoidance of doubt, I was not in anyway apologising for anything SB did. Merely pointing out that a major motivation of his was getting rid of the Soviets. A solid dash of anti-semitism probably helped him align with the NAZIs and helped him commit atrocities. It is not unusual for historical figures to be revered in one country and vilified in another. Winston Churchill (greatest ever Briton by some public votes) had a less than stellar reputation in some parts of the world. We just gloss over some of his less savory aspects.

I am opposing Russian aggression and am in no way excusing past atrocities.

But I believe the narrative that Ukraine was some sort of 3rd Feich reborn poised to invade poor peace loving Russia, who only wanted to defend herself is pure bullshit.

Putin wanted the rest of Ukraine to be fully within his sphere and decided the best way to achive that was a tank column striking Kyiv.

The fact the local population resisted strongly enough to halt a Russian army rather gives lie to the idea that the Ukrainian population would like to be Russian and are being forced into fighting by their western enthralled puppet leaders.  Contrast how there seems to be distinct lack of push back from the Russian civilians in now occupied Kursk.

Yeh you also missed out this key part didn't you Beel?

This is one of those people who defended the freedom of Ukraine

Kind of instructive I expect.

I don't speak Ukrainian per se but I know quite a bit of Russian now, many phrases in those languages are mutually intelligible.

Это один из тех людей, которые защищали свободу Украины

Eta = this
Adin = one
tex lyudei = these people
Kotoryye zashchishchali svobodu ukrainyy = who defended the freedom of ukraine

Svoboda means freedom in both Ukrainian and Russian, many of those phrases are the same in both languages

I think the meaning is clear, but as with the Canadian parliament Nazi thing, you are seeking to downplay what they did. And no one called for Zelenskyy to be censured, despite the inference in your post that I think he should be.

We all hope Putin loses (maybe with the exception of Scott), but not all of us are going to make excuses for the sick stuff Ukraine has done both today and yesteryear.

The fact is Ukrainian troops committed war crimes by killing POWs and have had Nazi units fighting with them. This is unacceptable. I see no need to defend many of the things they've done in the war, while also wanting them to win the war largely for selfishness sake - because we're in the West and are directly impacted if Putin wins, also it's just the right thing for a would-be colony to fight its would-be imperial overlords

[Sampanviking]

So this is all going to Putin's master plan?

Come on, this 3 day special operation had dragged out over 2 years. He's lost vast amounts of men and equipment, foreign troops are on Russian soil and even Moscow is being attacked.

He thought this was going to be a re-run of 2014 but bigger and it's turned into Afghanistan and Vietnam rolled together in some WW1

Sure they are making gains essentially around one area, Pokrovsk but still at vast expense. The defensive line is being errided but it isn't crumbling - Kursk was an example of a defensive collapse

As for Russian "restraint" - that's just a variation of "oh Russia hasn't sent their best troops yet" ie  bullshit.

What has Russia got left that it has restrained itself from using? It's already at near full stretch. It's consuming troops as fast as it can generate them. It's used every weapon in it's conventional arsenal against pretty much every target including civilians.

Ukraine on the other hand has literally been restrained. What Russia desperately doesn't want is Ukraine's supporters to let them use the full range of their weapons.

I don't know is Ukraine will eventually prevail. Alot depends on the US election but I do know the myth of Russian power has been shattered and the Chinese know it too.

And your opening lines are just the case in point.
Can you find footage on one Russian leader in early 2022 saying they would win in three days? No I am sure you cant, as none did.
The only person on record saying this was US General Mark Milley who was at the time Chairman of Joint Chief's of Staff, nobody in the pro Russian community took it seriously at the time. In short it was a Media strawman arguement. Just like the Master Plan.
If Putin had a plan, it was to force a Peace deal before the fighting got to savage. This was nearly done at Istanbul in April 22, when a dela was signed by the Interlocuters. It was sunk after Bumbling Boris convinced Zelenski to renege, based i the promise of unlimited Western Military and Financial support.

 The restraint has always been the end game. Even to this day, a declaration of war has not been made. The fighting in the East is a "Special Military Operation", the Fighting in Kursk is an "Anti Terrorist Operation".

A Declaration of War would mean no restraint in the levels of recruitment and no restraint on where conscripts to be used in the fighting. No constraints on the amount of money and resources which the Russian state would allocate to the war.

The real end of restraint is the appeals from Russia's friends for a Diplomatic solution. This died with Kursk and now there is nothing to stop Russia just rolling across the whole country. No one from the Global South is going to denounce Russia as The Zelenski Regime and its NATO backers have been shown as negotiation in bad faith.

It does not matter how long it takes, because it will happen and the Russian will to go to the end will be stronger than the Ukrainian will to resist and stringer than the Wests appetite or physical ability to continue to support.

I would say  that your problem, is that you have looked at the West's neo colonial adventures of the last thirty years and thought that these were real wars. The war in the Ukraine has showed us what a real war of the early 21st Century really looks like. No official NATO army has ever fought one .... yet. I doubt they would really be up to it, to fight a peer competitor.

As for why the West will not give permission, well I dealt with that in my last post. Bluntly, it would start the real WW3 and escalation would be rapid and total. Only a raving lunatic would think this was a good idea.

[BeElBeeBub]

I'm impressed at how you can distort what happened so much without feeling ashamed.  He was introduced to the House as a man who fought against the Russians in WWII, which is a kind of clue to which side he was on.  But instead, you deceitfully make up what happened to suit your pre-conceived agenda which is: Russia=bad, Zelensky=good.

It's only 1 piece of evidence, not to mention the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and Zelensky's determination to join the EU with its Nazi founding father, Walter Hallstein, and as Bjorn Borg points out, his support for a Nazi collaborator, Bandera.  But try not to let all that evidence get in the way of your preferred mindset. 

F@@@ me mate, you really have been drinking the Russian Koolade.

Are there people in Ukraine who think the NAZIs were great? Yes. Just like there are in thr UK and France and America and Russia

Answer this simply. 

Do you believe Russia was justified in attacking Ukraine in self defense? 

[BeElBeeBub]

The problem is that Zelenskyy himself calls Stepan Bandera a "hero".


https://www.rbc.ua/rus/news/vladimir-zelenskiy-nam-vygodno-raspustit-1555546435.html

And to claim that Nazi collaborators are "nationalists" - who were doing the right thing - when they killed Jews too, as some have done here, sounds suspiciously like apologism for those atrocities.

One can oppose Putin's invasion and imperialism without bowing down to, or making excuses for Nazi war crimes; whether or not Zelenskyy is imperfect and Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in that region, they should still rebuff the invasion into their land regardless, because imperialism is always wrong and that's that. You won't catch me defending war crimes though.

He doesn't actaukmy call him a hero. The machine translation reads
".... There are undeniable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain percentage of Ukrainians, and this is normal and cool...." 
I (and I suspect you) don't speak enough Ukrainian to draw out the subtext of this exchange. 

He could be saying he thinks SB was a hero, or he could be saying that some sections of Ukrainian population do and that this is OK for them. To hold differing views (effectively the free speech argument) 

And, for the avoidance of doubt, I was not in anyway apologising for anything SB did. Merely pointing out that a major motivation of his was getting rid of the Soviets. A solid dash of anti-semitism probably helped him align with the NAZIs and helped him commit atrocities. It is not unusual for historical figures to be revered in one country and vilified in another. Winston Churchill (greatest ever Briton by some public votes) had a less than stellar reputation in some parts of the world. We just gloss over some of his less savory aspects.

I am opposing Russian aggression and am in no way excusing past atrocities. 

But I believe the narrative that Ukraine was some sort of 3rd Feich reborn poised to invade poor peace loving Russia, who only wanted to defend herself is pure bullshit.

Putin wanted the rest of Ukraine to be fully within his sphere and decided the best way to achive that was a tank column striking Kyiv.

The fact the local population resisted strongly enough to halt a Russian army rather gives lie to the idea that the Ukrainian population would like to be Russian and are being forced into fighting by their western enthralled puppet leaders.  Contrast how there seems to be distinct lack of push back from the Russian civilians in now occupied Kursk.

[Unlucky4Sum]

You keep telling yourself that, while I'll look at the evidence.  Enjoy. 

youtube.com/shorts/H9vBZtqIiS8

F@@@ all evidence. It was a screw up and the person responsible for not properly checking resigned. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66943005

And if that's the 'best' you've got to support your Putinesque theory about Nazi invasions of Russia you really ought to stop digging now.

[Borg Refinery]

I'm impressed at how you can distort what happened so much without feeling ashamed.  He was introduced to the House as a man who fought against the Russians in WWII, which is a kind of clue to which side he was on.  But instead, you deceitfully make up what happened to suit your pre-conceived agenda which is: Russia=bad, Zelensky=good.

It's only 1 piece of evidence, not to mention the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and Zelensky's determination to join the EU with its Nazi founding father, Walter Hallstein, and as Bjorn Borg points out, his support for a Nazi collaborator, Bandera.  But try not to let all that evidence get in the way of your preferred mindset. 

Sadly, a lot of people have been indoctrinated by Western propaganda to believe that Stalin was even worse than Hitler, the plan by the Allies being to turn on Stalin towards the end and retake the entire Soviet Union, a lot have expressed dismay there wasn't an even bigger war where Stalin was taken out. I can't remember the quote off the top of my head but a US general said something to the effect of we should have taken East Germany straight away.

While it's true a lot of people died under Stalin and holodomor (the Ukie famine) killed millions, it's also a fact that we couldn't have won the war without him. I'd never support Nazis over Stalin, even though Stalin supported the Nazis in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact himself, in other words we all allied with whoever we thought would win us the war, many in the West allied with Fascism in the late 1920s and early 1930s - even Keynes, Churchill and FDR openly praised Fascism and suggested it was doing wonderful things around the world before eventually turning on the Fascists when it become apparent that were going to be a threat to the Western world order

CHURCHILL EXTOLS FASCISMO FOR ITALY; He Declares It Has Taught the World the Antidote for Communism. "CHARMED" BY MUSSOLINI His Conferences in Rome, He Says, Dealt With Improving Condition of he Wage-Earner. (NYT, 1927)


Also see:

Roosevelt himself called Mussolini "admirable" and professed that he was "deeply impressed by what he has accomplished." The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt's 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, "Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices.... Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism." The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" and "the development toward an authoritarian state" based on the "demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest."

Link

[Borg Refinery]

I've seen that from years back. BTW, your link when translated does not contain the word Bandera.
I thought that Bandera was seen to support Ukraine as a nationalist, rather than as a Nazi. Bandera was obviously a horrible individual.
I have little time for Putin or Zelensky, to be honest. They are all into playing very dangerous games.
Some will say Putin is mad and that explains everything, but I think the EU have some culpability in this conflict, they have ignored all the warning bells for years. Does the unelected politburo in Brussels has a lot to answer for?

I tried word search on my browser and it said Bandera wasn't in the article - But then I c&p'd it into Notepad and alas..

You talk about things that separate and unite. How do you feel about decommunization? Will it be continued in case of your presidency? After all, on the one hand, there is decommunization, on the other hand, Stepan Bandera avenues are appearing. In your opinion, how should it be?

- In general, I have a normal attitude towards decommunization. Society chose, and that's fine. There are undeniable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain percentage of Ukrainians, and this is normal and cool. This is one of those people who defended the freedom of Ukraine. But I believe that when we call such a large number of streets and bridges by one and the same name, this is not quite correct. By the way, it's not about Stepan Bander. I can say the same about Taras Hryhorevich Shevchenko. I really respect his amazing creativity. But you and I must remember the heroes of today, the heroes of art, the heroes of literature, simply the heroes of Ukraine. Why don't we call them by their names - the heroes who unite Ukraine today? There is such a tension in society that it is necessary to do everything possible to unite Ukraine. Someone asked me why they didn't name a street after Andrey Shevchenko? He is a hero for me, I really think so.

I'm quite certain browser word search doesn't work properly 90% of the time these days, whether that's due to new HTML5 coding that somehow messes it up, I'm not sure, but just something to watch out for as a lot of people have been caught out by it, me included of course

I'm pretty sure Bandera committed war crimes himself directly

Notes from his Wiki page:

• Bandera aimed to make of Ukraine a one-party fascist dictatorship without national minorities. UPA partisans murdered tens of thousands of Poles, most of them women and children; some Jews who had taken shelter with Polish families were also killed.[54][55] He was also later responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Poles,[56][57] pogroms against Jews,[14][58] and implicated in collaboration with Nazi Germany.: 15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera

I liked your post as I largely agree with your sentiments. I'm just against war and imperialism really, that's why I hope Russia lose. All our countries around the world are imperfect and I don't really think we should say "our country is so much better than theirs" all the time, constantly

[Scott777]

The incident in the Canadian parliament was embarrassing for all. The speaker of the parliament invited an old Ukrainian who had fought in WW2 to parliament without bothering to check on which side he fought.  Everyone got up applauded inc Zelensky. How the eff is he supposed to recognise a random old guy. He's told "oh look we have a WW2 Ukrainian veteran" so he claps.
Of course it was a major propaganda coup for Russia who spat it out repeatedly to confuse the simple minded

I'm impressed at how you can distort what happened so much without feeling ashamed.  He was introduced to the House as a man who fought against the Russians in WWII, which is a kind of clue to which side he was on.  But instead, you deceitfully make up what happened to suit your pre-conceived agenda which is: Russia=bad, Zelensky=good.

It's only 1 piece of evidence, not to mention the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and Zelensky's determination to join the EU with its Nazi founding father, Walter Hallstein, and as Bjorn Borg points out, his support for a Nazi collaborator, Bandera.  But try not to let all that evidence get in the way of your preferred mindset.  

[Barry]

The problem is that Zelenskyy himself calls Stepan Bandera a "hero".


https://www.rbc.ua/rus/news/vladimir-zelenskiy-nam-vygodno-raspustit-1555546435.html

And to claim that Nazi collaborators are "nationalists" - who were doing the right thing - when they killed Jews too, as some have done here, sounds suspiciously like apologism for those atrocities.

One can oppose Putin's invasion and imperialism without bowing down to, or making excuses for Nazi war crimes; whether or not Zelenskyy is imperfect and Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in that region, they should still rebuff the invasion into their land regardless, because imperialism is always wrong and that's that. You won't catch me defending war crimes though.

I've seen that from years back. BTW, your link when translated does not contain the word Bandera.
I thought that Bandera was seen to support Ukraine as a nationalist, rather than as a Nazi. Bandera was obviously a horrible individual.
I have little time for Putin or Zelensky, to be honest. They are all into playing very dangerous games.
Some will say Putin is mad and that explains everything, but I think the EU have some culpability in this conflict, they have ignored all the warning bells for years. Does the unelected politburo in Brussels has a lot to answer for?

[Scott777]

If NATO were so hell bent on forcing Ukraine to join.... Why have members consistently said they would veto it joining since the late 90's, why didn't Ukraine request to join in 2014 rather than waiting for 2 Russian invasions before finally requesting in 2022 and why isn't Ukraine a NATO member now?

For an organisation desperate for Ukraine to join they seem to be oddly reluctant for Ukraine to join.

Let's break down your question to see how silly it is.  

NATO is not a single unified entity.  It's a military alliance.  The leaders of each member can have different opinions.  So, who said NATO is forcing Ukraine to join?  It's not NATO that's in control here, it's the US deep state, such as the CIA, that wants Ukraine to join, as well as certain rich people with globalist interests.  But like a child, you attempt to simplify a complicated reality.

[Borg Refinery]

The problem is that Zelenskyy himself calls Stepan Bandera a "hero". 


https://www.rbc.ua/rus/news/vladimir-zelenskiy-nam-vygodno-raspustit-1555546435.html

And to claim that Nazi collaborators are "nationalists" - who were doing the right thing - when they killed Jews too, as some have done here, sounds suspiciously like apologism for those atrocities.

One can oppose Putin's invasion and imperialism without bowing down to, or making excuses for Nazi war crimes; whether or not Zelenskyy is imperfect and Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in that region, they should still rebuff the invasion into their land regardless, because imperialism is always wrong and that's that. You won't catch me defending war crimes though.

[BeElBeeBub]

You keep telling yourself that, while I'll look at the evidence.  Enjoy. 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H9vBZtqIiS8

Yeah, there were NAZI collaborators in Ukraine during WW2. They were nationalists who wanted to be free from Soviet control. 

Think about how shit you habe to be that the NAZIs seem like a better option. 

There were NAZI sympathisers and collaborators in the UK and USA during WW2.
Here's a picture of a gathering at Madison square Gardens

It's possible that one or two attendees there are still alive. 

Does that mean the USA is all NAZIs? 

The incident in the Canadian parliament was embarrassing for all. The speaker of the parliament invited an old Ukrainian who had fought in WW2 to parliament without bothering to check on which side he fought.  Everyone got up applauded inc Zelensky. How the eff is he supposed to recognise a random old guy. He's told "oh look we have a WW2 Ukrainian veteran" so he claps.
Of course it was a major propaganda coup for Russia who spat it out repeatedly to confuse the simple minded 

[BeElBeeBub]

I'm not bothering to read any more of your crock of shite, because Ukrainians did not vote for the revolution of 2014, certainly people can be forced to have their country join NATO, and more importantly NATO has been in Ukraine without any popular consent.  Only the government need to ask.

Give you bloody head a wobble mate. Listen to yourself. Where do you get your info? Russia Today?

Answer this question. 

If NATO were so hell bent on forcing Ukraine to join.... Why have members consistently said they would veto it joining since the late 90's, why didn't Ukraine request to join in 2014 rather than waiting for 2 Russian invasions before finally requesting in 2022 and why isn't Ukraine a NATO member now? 

For an organisation desperate for Ukraine to join they seem to be oddly reluctant for Ukraine to join. 

[Scott777]

Any intelligent person knows that's a crock of shite

Unlike the Russian federation, you aren't forced to join NATO and you have to ask and then NATO has to unanimously accept

I'm not bothering to read any more of your crock of shite, because Ukrainians did not vote for the revolution of 2014, certainly people can be forced to have their country join NATO, and more importantly NATO has been in Ukraine without any popular consent.  Only the government need to ask.