Was President Putin or Russia the victim of any kind of violence or the threat of violence then? If not, his actions are unjustified.

What peaceful options did he have anyway? The US - Ukraine agreement stated in no uncertain terms that their goal was to 're-unify' Ukraine, that is, re-integrate Crimea.

You're confusing his anti-Western stance for being pro-Putin. — baker

No, he's genuinely being pro-Putin. Did you read through the his quotes that I gave? Likely not.

Neither @Isaac or @StreetlightX or anybody else is saying such obvious pro-Putin arguments and willing to carve up Ukraine. Nobody else promotes such nonsensical views.

"You're denying the agency of Ukrainians!"

This is a line you've probably had bleated at you by propagandized empire livestock if you've engaged in online debate about the role western powers have played in paving the way to this war. ... Imperial narrative managers have even been working overtime to make the word "westsplaining" happen, which is their progressive-sounding term for when one makes the self-evident observation that western powers influence world events. Mainstream westerners are actively trained to regurgitate lines like "Stop westsplaining to Ukrainians about coups and proxy conflicts! You're denying their agency!"

Well, I'm saying it. This is a proxy war. Kyiv is a puppet regime. Ukraine does not have independent agency in any meaningful way. This is not the fault of the Ukrainian people, who are obviously far and away the greatest victims of the Russian invasion, but of the giant western power structure which deliberately worked to take away the nation's agency many years before the invasion took place. I mean, my god. The US and its allies are pouring billions of dollars worth of weapons into Ukraine from around the world, the CIA has been training Ukrainians to kill Russians, the US intelligence cartel is directly sharing military intelligence with Kyiv as we speak, and this follows US-backed coups in Ukraine in 2014 and in 2004 before that. This is a proxy war. This is exactly the thing that a proxy war is. The only "agency" Ukraine has is the Central Intelligence kind.

...The US power alliance does not care about Ukraine's sovereignty beyond what measures need to be taken to actively subvert it. When people object to criticisms of the way the empire has actively robbed Ukrainians of any real agency, what they are actually doing is defending the most powerful empire that has ever existed from attempts to highlight its malfeasance... Denying the western role in subverting Ukrainian sovereignty doesn't benefit ordinary Ukrainians, it hurts them. You can't fix a problem you don't understand, and until there's widespread understanding of the way the US empire uses proxies to advance its agendas of global domination, nothing can be done to stop these ugly proxy wars from happening.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-only-agency-ukraine-has-is-the?s=r

:smile:

Neither Isaac or @StreetlightX or anybody else is saying such obvious pro-Putin arguments and willing to carve up Ukraine. Nobody else promotes such views. — ssu

Just to clarify, lest I'm absolved of guilt unfairly - I have supported 'carving up' Ukraine. I think an independent Donbass and a Russian Crimea are perfectly sensible solutions. I don't give a fuck whose flag flies over the government buildings and I'm not so naive to think that life in Russian Crimea is going to be materially so much worse that it's worth another ten thousand dead bodies to avoid it. We have as much chance of making Russia a more democratic and prosperous place for its people as we have of keeping a Putin-lead Russia out of Ukraine permanently. Give Russia the Crimea, stop the war, then overthrow Putin (and the like) so that it doesn't matter one jot what colour the passports are.

Of the two barriers to either strategy (improve Russia or militarily keep them out of Crimea), I can't see any compelling reason to think the latter is somehow the obvious, easier option. The last 20 years of failure in either cause would not seem to raise either one above the other.

Objection to 'carving up' Ukraine is misplaced, as if 'Sovereignty' were some kind of measure of human flourishing above all other, like if we all kept to our borders, everything else would be fine. The border between Ukraine and Russia is not the issue, the abject poverty, powerlessness and immiseration of the people on either side of it is.

Yeah, I mean, those primitive people over there have no agency of their own, do they? They are nothing but pawns of the powerful. They couldn't have risen up against a corrupt and oppressive regime without Nulland engineering the whole thing. They wouldn't even dream of resisting an invasion by a force that threatens their existence as a people without great powers "convincing" them to fight. — SophistiCat

Bravo.

But as you so well put it, this is the thinking of many here.

Here the agency comes into view so well when you compare the fight the Ukrainian armed forces are putting up and the fight the Afghan Natioanal Army put up against the Taleban. I think it would be good to compare Zelensky and his actions to Ashraf Ghani to his. Ghani, who left as a young boy Afghanistan, went into an American high school and continued to Berkeley, then made a stellar career in international organizations like the World Bank. And then fled Afghanistan with presumably a large fortune.

Talk about agency. And real puppet regimes.

Just to clarify, lest I'm absolved of guilt unfairly - I have supported 'carving up' Ukraine. I think an independent Donbass and a Russian Crimea are perfectly sensible solutions. — Isaac

And how well you know these independent states of Luhansk and Donetsk?

Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, neither your nor your nor @SophistiCat's taking offence at the suggestion changes the facts on the ground. People are not given agency because you're offended by the suggestion they don't have it.

And how well you know these independent states of Luhansk and Donetsk? — ssu

My knowledge of them is irrelevant. Even if we assume that life in 'independence' would be worse for the people there (a significant assumption), the fact remains that two options are open to us to do something about that

1. Keep fighting wars to keep them under the control of the (marginally) better government.
2. Keep fighting revolutions to make it not matter what government they are under the control of.

The latter has the advantage of freeing millions more from misery and you've presented little by way of clear evidence that the former is somehow so much easier as to commend on the grounds of achievability alone.

Ukrainian-American Yuliy Dubovyk writes the following:

Like any other US puppet regime, Ukraine doesn’t have any real independence. Kiev has been actively pushed to confront Russia by every US administration, against the will of the majority of Ukrainian people.

...

The support for Ukraine that fills the Western media now is not out of real solidarity with the people of Ukraine. If that were the case, the US wouldn’t have overthrown our government twice in a decade; it wouldn’t have supported the policies that made us the poorest country in Europe; it wouldn’t have fueled a brutal civil war for the past eight years.

The reason US media outlets and politicians are all backing Ukraine now is because they want to use the Ukrainian military and civilian population as cannon fodder in a proxy war with a political adversary.

People are not given agency because you're offended by the suggestion they don't have it. — Isaac

:up:

It seems the Ukrainians are successfully dismantling the group west of Kyiv, and have retaken Irpin.

An intercepted phone call recording was released by Ukraine’s Security Service late yesterday, indicating total disarray on the Russian side in this area.

Ukrainians have agency alright. The Russians, not so much. An army of slaves.

So what? A guy says something and?

It seems the Ukrainians are successfully dismantling the group west of Kyiv, and have retaken Irpin.

An intercepted phone call recording was released by Ukraine’s Security Service late Tuesday, indicating total disarray on the Russian side in this area.

Ukrainians have agency alright. The Russians, not so much. An army of slaves. — Olivier5

So what? A guy says something and?

My knowledge of them is irrelevant. — Isaac

Yet you have firm convictions about them being perfectly sensible solutions.

Documented, recorded, with satellite images backing it...

Your buddies are taking a beating, me think.

Yes. I'm firmly convinced of the fact that no minor fact of geographical or cultural heterodoxy will have any impact on the logical existence of two options, nor the global facts about which are better/more achievable.

When Russia invaded, did you caution our condemnation? Did you say "hang on, unless we have intimate geographical knowledge of this area we can't be sure bombing the fuck out of them is a bad thing".

If you have a point, make it. What local knowledge changes the options as I've presented them?

Documented, recorded, with satellite images backing it... — Olivier5

I was referring to your conclusions, not your evidence. We're all just 'some guy'. The entire point of this forum is that we respond in some reasoned manner to the things that 'some other guy' says.

Dismissing them on the grounds that they're just 'some guy' renders the entire format redundant.

2. Keep fighting revolutions to make it not matter what government they are under the control of.

The latter has the advantage of freeing millions more from misery — Isaac

We have a few guillotines left, we could lend them to the Brits if they seriously want to get rid of their kings and queens.

Dismissing them on the grounds that they're just 'some guy' renders the entire format redundant. — Isaac

But why would anyone post the opinion of other person than himself, of some random dude out there? Yuliy Dubovyk is welcome here if he wants to contribute.

It seems the Ukrainians are successfully dismantling the group west of Kyiv, and have retaken Irpin.

An intercepted phone call recording was released by Ukraine’s Security Service late Tuesday, indicating total disarray on the Russian side in this area. — Olivier5

Yes, they seem to try to encircle the Russian forces. This I think could be the first major operation as the counterattacks before have been tactical ones. But seems like at least for a while, the push towards Kyiv by the Russian forces has halted and they are on the defensive.

Anatoly Tsubais resigned and seems he has left the country. Had lasted there since Yeltsin times.

After Putin's stadium performance, flags dumped into garbage. Sometimes a picture tells a lot, actually.

Russia will come to regret this Nazi adventure.

After Putin's stadium performance, flags dumped into garbage. Sometimes a picture tells a lot, actually. — ssu

In this day and age? Like people cheering the destruction of twin towers which never happened. I don't trust images especially if they're unsourced and don't quite understand why you would.

Of course you don't. And these people came all with their own flags to the stadium, which they cherish so much. They weren't handed to them by the organizers, no?

Of course you don't. And these people came all with their own flags to the stadium, which they cherish so much. — ssu

Imagine thinking the Russians in that photo lack agency! They can't just decide for themselves that they like Putin's agenda. No, you have to go and assume they must be manipulated by some greater power, tsk! Shame on you!

Obviously Putin does have his supporters, no doubt.

But one should notice that Putin's Russia is authoritarian, and spontaneity is usually controlled "spontaneity". Letting people to be spontaneous is not the correct way in Russia.

And of course those who are against the "special military operation" and even say it would be a war, can face jailtime.

I'm pretty confident the REUTERS picture happened. Not so much about the dumpster. It's possible and even likely, I'm just saying that there's plenty of proof out there of fake pictures and videos. We're being flooded with fake news in normal times, it's even worse now. I'm just saying, be careful with what you believe and source your pictures so we have a chance of vetting it.

I'm pretty confident the REUTERS picture happened. Not so much about the dumpster. It's possible and even likely, I'm just saying that there's plenty of proof out there of fake pictures and videos. — Benkei

Of course. I'd agree it's likely, but the probability of it being fake isn't zero. And even if it's simply thoughtlessness of those who cleaned up the stadium, it still shows that in an authoritarian system you cannot be sure just how original or astro-turf public support is.

I don't object to your assessment of Russia. I object to your assessment of Ukraine.

This need to polemicise is at the heart of the problem. Russia is no North Korea and Ukraine is not Utopia. It's not that citizens in Russia are controlled like robots, nor is it that Ukrainians are somehow immune to the US's billions. Influence doesn't only take the form of a Stazi with a cosh. And even then, Ukraine is not lacking in coshes.

As I've already shown, by every metric issued, by authorities such as the UN and the World Bank (with no love of Russia), Ukraine and Russia are simply not that far apart in indices of human freedom. You can post all the images you like, but I'll take the United Nations report over your photos.

What likely isn't fake news is that Russia has lost many generals (perhaps four or five) and high ranking commanders in the war. This does tell about that the operation hasn't gone well and that in a hierarchial organization like the Russian army, lower commanders taking initiative isn't supported, hence the generals have to come and lead from the front. It also tells about a highly working SIGINT of the Ukrainians that they can find the location of the generals and then use artillery at them. That the West has it's finger on this, can be likely.

In a documentary of the Russo-Georgian war these's footage of the 58th Army commander doing exactly this: before the drive to South Ossetia, a the general spoke a huge crowd of various officers and soldiers just how the lead formations will move Tskhinvali.

Here's finally some good analysis of claims made and repeated on Western media.



Really concise analysis a historian, well, or so he calls himself ... history will be the judge of that.

At the end of the video, he mentions -- as @Benkei has already -- that more evidence of context is required to assert war crimes especially if the only evidence we have access so far is provided by one side, and, even more intellectually honest, that we can also argue war crimes by the Ukrainians ... with their own material.

I object to your assessment of Ukraine. — Isaac

That it's a poor corrupt country where the people have been long angry about their ruling politicians? That even those who have promised them change have disappointed too?

If there's something I have tried to point out, is that when the leader who starts a war against a country says the "country is artificial", there's not much appeasement that the country could have taken to avoid the war. Surrendering would have only enforced the idea of Ukrainians being "lesser-Russians" or "little-Russians". NATO expansion wasn't the only reason for this war. And since Ukraine has a lot of problems, it would have been in my view very easy for Russia to keep Ukraine out of NATO. After all, Russia got all those US bases closed in Central Asia (that now the US desperately would want to have) without invading them.