> I would have misunderstood the meaning of the word 'moral'.

Which is? — neomac

It's used to describe behaviours and attitudes such as avoiding thousands more innocent people dying.

offer a counter argument on logic grounds — neomac

Show me then how my reasoning goes wrong — neomac

Both of these are impossible tasks. I cannot 'show you' how your reasoning goes wrong because whether an argument is reasonable or not is an opinion you hold about it, I can't show you it isn't any more than I can show you that my cup of tea is nice.

Even if I made an argument as simple as "Either A, or ~A", you could still dispute it by rejecting the LEM. What we're discussing is massively more complicated. The idea that either of us could present some 'logical' argument that somehow 'proves' one side or the other is laughable. You're either persuaded by my argument, rhetoric and all, or you're not. That's entirely your preference.

it doesn’t work that way for me. — neomac

I don’t have world views and then look for a pool of experts based on titles and not evident conflict of interests to support my pre-established world views. — neomac

Then you are a true exception to all of humanity that's ever been studied. Well done.

On Russian state TV: host (and modern day Goebbels wannabe) Vladimir Solovyov threatens Europe and all NATO countries, as not only Ukraine has to be denazified:

Wow. Threatening to attack the countries who are arming the one they're at war with!

In other news, bear shits in the woods.

What the fuck did anyone expect to happen? Putin to come on and say "Fair enough I suppose, after all, we're the bad guys"?

Funny how [...] — Isaac

Ukraine has a Neo-Nazi problem. Putin used it (and specifically, US covering up their alliance with them) as a justification an excuse for the invasion. — Isaac

Double standards, hypocrisy (straight from the initiator/invaders).

Us then going ahead and doing exactly what Putin wants to say we do (denying the blindingly obvious Neo-Nazi issue) is playing directly into his propaganda. — Isaac

"blindingly obvious" is sort of a weasel phrase here (slant, bias), but OK then, maybe it's time to secure extremist-infested Russian areas by force (call it, say, "an armed humanitarian operation")?

Right, yes, there are extremists in Russia and Ukraine (and elsewhere). Edging towards stability + freedom and such might help with sidelining/decimating them? Heavy emphasis on the problem just in Ukraine (by Putin in particular) is out of proportion though, and it's not like (headline) "Nazi Ukraine marching on Moscow". Speculation: if the Ukrainian parliament had sessions discussing/addressing the problem, then Putin might just have found another excuse.

^{• List of neo-Nazi organizations, • Racism by country, • List of white nationalist organizations, • Geography of antisemitism}

Combatants:

• Attackers: Russia (led by Putin), Chechens/mercs/who knows, ...
• Defenders: Ukraine (led by Zelenskyy), some volunteers/Belarusian separatists, ...

Otherwise involved (in αβic order, incomplete):

• Ukraine: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Turkey, UK, USA, ...

Double standards, hypocrisy (straight from the initiator/invaders). — jorndoe

Yep. Are we seriously still surprised that Russian narratives aren't actually true?

"blindingly obvious" is sort of a weasel phrase here (slant, bias), but OK then, maybe it's time to secure extremist-infested Russian areas by force (call it, say, "an armed humanitarian operation")? — jorndoe

No. Why the hell would we do that? Haven't we just got through repeating in painstaking detail how Neo-Nazis are not justification for invasion?

Heavy emphasis on the problem just in Ukraine (by Putin in particular) is out of proportion though — jorndoe

Not at all. Denying the existence of Neo-Nazis in all those other countries hasn't just been used as a pretext for war, so the lack of emphasis is completely warranted. It's irrelevant whether there are Nazis in Russia, or Azerbaijan. It's incredibly relevant how we react to the Nazis that are in Ukraine because that's the reaction Russian propagandists are currently using to maintain the (increasingly fragile) support for the war in Russia.

> It's used to describe behaviours and attitudes such as avoiding thousands more innocent people dying.

Does the meaning of “moral” exclude fighting for one’s own country and identity against a criminal aggression from another nation as moral?

> Then you are a true exception to all of humanity that's ever been studied. Well done.

Really?! Where are these studies that show that all of humanity has world views and then looks for a pool of experts based on titles and not evident conflict of interests to support their pre-established world views?

> Both of these are impossible tasks. I cannot 'show you' how your reasoning goes wrong because whether an argument is reasonable or not is an opinion you hold about it, I can't show you it isn't any more than I can show you that my cup of tea is nice.
Even if I made an argument as simple as "Either A, or ~A", you could still dispute it by rejecting the LEM. What we're discussing is massively more complicated. The idea that either of us could present some 'logical' argument that somehow 'proves' one side or the other is laughable. You're either persuaded by my argument, rhetoric and all, or you're not. That's entirely your preference.

After moral also logic is matter of preference. I think we are done here.

Does the meaning of “moral” exclude fighting for one’s own country and identity against a criminal aggression from another nation as moral? — neomac

If one is fighting against criminal aggression then one's country is immaterial. It's perfectly possible for both Ukrainians and Russians to fight against criminal aggression together.

The moral element is the criminality, not the countries. Anyone fighting the criminality is behaving morally, anyone supporting it is not. Regardless of the country they pledge allegiance to.

Where are these studies that show that all of humanity has world views and then looks for a pool of experts based on titles and not evident conflict of interests to support their pre-established world views? — neomac

They're generally in journals, preprint servers, libraries, bookshops...

After moral also logic is matter of preference. I think we are done here. — neomac

Someone proposes moral relativism and logical non-realism (two perfectly normal philosophical positions) and you terminate the discussion, lest you encounter views counter to your preferred world views.

You were saying about your exceptionalism...

> If one is fighting against criminal aggression then one's country is immaterial. It's perfectly possible for both Ukrainians and Russians to fight against criminal aggression together.
The moral element is the criminality, not the countries. Anyone fighting the criminality is behaving morally, anyone supporting it is not. Regardless of the country they pledge allegiance to.

But that doesn’t exclude that Ukrainians could fight Russians because their aggression is criminal either. And there is nothing in the meaning of the word “criminality” that excludes that an act of aggression is criminal precisely because it violates one's country national sovereignty and self-determination.


> They're generally in journals, preprint servers, libraries, bookshops…

Can you literally quote and reference any of these studies?


> Someone proposes moral relativism and logical non-realism (two perfectly normal philosophical positions) and you terminate the discussion, lest you encounter views counter to your preferred world views.

No it’s simply that the word “preference” loses its contrastive meaning in the way you use it. Neither logic nor moral is matter of preference. You simply make no sense, dude.

What the fuck did anyone expect to happen? — Isaac

I think they're softening people up for the idea to have martial law. And then there isn't any fig leaves left to disguise Putin's Russia from the authoritarian system it is.

But that doesn’t exclude that Ukrainians could fight Russians because their aggression is criminal either. — neomac

No, but they'd be fighting for freedom from criminality, not for their country, which is merely an incidental grouping. Unless you're suggesting Russian's are just criminals by birth.

And there is nothing in the meaning of the word “criminality” that excludes that an act of aggression is criminal precisely because it violates one nation sovereignty and self-determination. — neomac

Well, technically there is, since neither sovereignty, nor self-determination are enshrined in law sensu lato, otherwise things like federations, customs unions and the UN would be illegal, but I get what you mean. Still, the people would be fighting for sovereignty or self-determination not for a country.

A moral fight is a fight for moral ends, a country is not a moral end. Associating countries with moral ends is nationalism. It's what gets us into wars, not what gets us out of them.

Can you literally quote and reference any of these studies? — neomac

I've hopefully been clear that I've no interest in these games. If you we're interested you'd have found them by now (unless you're very young), so your comment is intended to show (somehow) that I can't find them. But I knew that before I started, and so did you. So I obviously can find them (otherwise I wouldn't have made the claim, I'm clearly not an idiot), you know that, but you also know anything I find will be sufficiently vague (not to mention directly critiqued, somewhere) for you to oppose it. But I know that too, and you know I must know it. So why, exactly, are we bothering?

Neither logic nor moral is matter of preference. You simply make no sense, dude. — neomac

I can't account for your inability to make sense of fairly common positions.

then there isn't any fig leaves left to disguise Putin's Russia from the authoritarian system it is. — ssu

You think there's any now?

Yeah, that's the big question. Sometimes wars lead to greater unity. A citizenry that has defended its self goes on to demand greater economic equality and social mobility, and puts aside old differences. Ukraine has long running issues with extreme corruption and powerful oligarchs holding back any reform, as well as radical ideologies infecting the nation's politics. They also have a huge debt problem and are incredibly poor compared to most of Europe. For now at least, Russia has made the Ukrainian government immensely popular, something it could not boast about before.

New found unity from the war, EU membership, and a stream of aid and debt restructuring/forgiveness could see them into a new era. But just as often war only makes entrenched interests more powerful, and radical politics more appealing.

It might not be the worst thing for them to lose the newly discovered gas fields out east. Certainly they could provide capital for development, but resource revenues actually tend to retard economic development and decrease democratization in weak states.

Such a loss seems less and less likely though. Ukraine is now fielding more tanks in theater than the Russians. Their mobilization efforts to date have merely replaced losses, there haven't been new BTGs entering the fronts. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, that is about to change, with new BTGs taking up less active positions on the front and allowing veteran units to retrain on new equipment and deploy to the hot areas. So soon, Ukraine will also boast a large numerical advantage.

To counter this, Russia is filling out its war crimes bingo card by planning to conscript Ukrainians around Kherson and push them into combat. They've also done this to a shocking degree in the "republics," picking men off the street and pressing them into service. They're allegedly down to taking teens and old men. This seems pointlessly cruel, it isn't generating new combat power for them, and very short sighted. They already have partisan activity behind their lines. They seem to be turning the populations of the places they've held since 2014 heavily against them and increasing the risk of partisan activity harassing supply lines across their entire eastern advance.

Most relevantly, once Ukrainian teams are trained on the large influx of M777s coming in, they will have a large artillery advantage that should allow them to begin much more effective counter attacks and cut out the Russian artillery advantage.

Russia is using a lot of old ancient D20s and aside from that is mostly fielding 2S19s (also fairly old). They have a smaller number of 2S19M1s, and some batteries will have Krasnapol shells.

These have a range of 11 and 25 kilometers respectively, a bit longer for the 2S19M1 with the modern shells, but still under 30km.

The M777 with the Excalibur guided shell can hit targets up to 70 kilometers away, 45 with the older version of the shell, with a great deal of accuracy (newer versions have in air target acquisition and course correction and can hit moving targets). The US also has a cheaper package to turn old shells into smart shells. These aren't just "guided" like the shells of the 1980s, with laser targeting, but have deployable fins that steer the shell on to a target, or submunitions that fire our at acquired targets in the terminal phase.

Even older shells will get them 43 kilometres. The M777 also sets up faster and had a higher ROF, as well as better integration with radar and drones. Obviously outranging your opponent by 13-60 kilometers makes for extremely effective counter battery fire, and allows you to make advances with indirect fire support that isn't under effective counter battery fire.

Point being, Russia might soon be at a significant firepower disadvantage, so it's unclear why they are continuing with the ineffective attacks and sending conscripts to their deaths. They seem to be making it more likely they lose land they've held since 2014.




I agree. The tank is still going to be useful as a survivable vehicle offering a lot of firepower. I do think we might see a shift to the guided mortars of the Merkava over the main gun to some degree. The US is doing a ton of projects for 155mm shells, the standard for artillery and naval guns now (has been for a while but the Navy filled out their stealth ship with a non-155mm gun with ammo too expensive to use). Aside from smart munitions, there are also rocket assisted rounds in the works with up to 200+ km range and a new hypersonic round that can be used to intercept missiles, which is already being tested. It seems pretty infeasible to retool the current fleet for 155mm, but I could see the tanks of the future being more heavily armored mobile mortar and drone launchers, with HMGs for infantry, and a main gun that is able to function more like a howitzer at a distance.

I think the days of the armored division are done though. After this, many nations are probably going to switch to something like the Armored Brigade Combat Team, realizing that tanks need to move with interceptor assets, recon assets, and indirect fire assistance.

When it comes to artillery, drones and smart munitions are just the enabler of this ancient arm of the military. In fact I assume that easiness of drones as forward observers, just few mouse clicks and you have sent the coordinates to the artillery for a fire mission, is this "revolution" that drones have given us. Far easier if the other option is for you to have the forward observer hiding somewhere and seeing the target, then who has to inspect a map, then get the coordinates correctly and send them by a voice radio to somewhere in the organization. Yet the only thing what needs to happen is for air defence systems to adapt to kill small slow vehicles the Cold War era systems weren't designed to defeat.

Yup, and drones are just the beginning. The US just announced the replacements for the M4 and M249 SAW. Much of the focus had been on the switch to 6.8mm ammo. This was done to double the effective range of the round, something the new optics and built in ballistics computers should make more of an asset, and to deal with the proliferation of body armor that can stop numerous M4 rounds (6.8mm still won't penetrate Level IV armor though). The big debate is if this will actually work for urban combat, because higher recoil makes automatic firing more difficult, and the added ammunition weight and size means carrying 20 vs 30 round mags and less ammo.

This is burying the lead though, which is the new XM157 fire control system. Rather than just an optic, it's a range finder and targeting system with a ballistics computer built in (which may one day offer some "smart scope" functionality. Current smart scopes already let journalists who have never held a gun before hit targets at a distance better than trained marksmen, but are too delicate and expensive for widespread use.)

The new system will allow interconnectivity between squads and drone, air, and artillery assets across the battle space. So, it's not just drones doing recon for artillery; every soldiers' rifle can send out precise data on where they need a shell extremely quicky.

Get pinned down by fire from a window? No sitting on the phone waiting to call in indirect fire as you might be getting flanked. Your squad ground drone can lay down high caliber suppressing fire. Your new IFV can move, unmanned, into position to hit the window with 30mm autocannon fire, a small drone above can hit the window with a 40mm grenade, or a 155mm shell can get fired off from 70 kilometers away and hit the target.

The other big deal is the IVAS, an augmented reality HUD overlay for all soldiers. This will lay out the location of OPFOR spotted by drones and other soldiers that are currently out of sight of the operator. It will also give soldiers a real time map of their location, with the position of OPFOR and other squads relative to them. Biometric data can also get medevac going right away following injuries, and lets command know when soldiers are at their limit.

All really neat stuff we've been hearing about for years that is (finally) actually ready for force wide implementation.

I for one am just excited to get to shoot the new Sig. Maybe one day this stuff will get cheap enough for paintball too; that'd be fun. Or airsoft, which I've been meaning to try because apparently it's better for milsim.

I'm just not seeing how that's a coherent argument. You need to invade a country because there is a neo-Nazi force there that can field 900 soldiers, but then you cultivate a 6,000+ man neo-Nazi force within your own borders?

That's not whataboutism because we're talking about the exact same event; recruiting neo-Nazis to fight neo-Nazis.

BTW, Putin has personally commended the units implicated in the Bucha massacurres and slated then for medals. I guess this is some weird sort of deflection.

The other people implicated? The Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group, who, incidentally were hired in Mali to conduct COIN after they booted the French out (lol). The French kept eyes on their old base, and what do you know, they see the Wagner group carting in corpses and doing some filming. They then release some whataboutism propaganda video about French massacurres of civilians, seemingly unaware of 21st century surveillance techniques and that they had been observed doing the whole damn thing.

https://youtu.be/rpVrpJ5s6nE

Embarrassing, especially since there is barely any sunlight between the Wagner group and the Russian MoD. Imagine thinking "hmm, let's do some more war crimes to distract from our recent abhorrent war crimes, that will work!"

No, but they'd be fighting for freedom from criminality, not for their country, which is merely an incidental grouping. — Isaac

Still, the people would be fighting for sovereignty or self-determination not for a country. — Isaac

You just conceded enough to grant moral plausibility to the Ukrainian patriotic resistance against Russian criminal invasion. And if that's all I can get from your preposterous claims, fine with me.

I've hopefully been clear that I've no interest in these games. If you we're interested you'd have found them by now (unless you're very young), so your comment is intended to show (somehow) that I can't find them. But I knew that before I started, and so did you. So I obviously can find them (otherwise I wouldn't have made the claim, I'm clearly not an idiot), you know that, but you also know anything I find will be sufficiently vague (not to mention directly critiqued, somewhere) for you to oppose it. But I know that too, and you know I must know it. So why, exactly, are we bothering? — Isaac

Enjoy your echo chamber then.

I can't account for your inability to make sense of fairly common positions. — Isaac

"Fairly common positions" among people who share your "stupid" views (according to your own definition), I could concede that to you. But there isn't much one can make sense of in self-defeating positions like yours anyways.

I'm just not seeing how that's a coherent argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What argument? I'm struggling to see how any argument I've just made is rendered incoherent by Russia's use of far-right paramilitaries.

I made the argument that...

Us then going ahead and doing exactly what Putin wants to say we do (denying the blindingly obvious Neo-Nazi issue) is playing directly into his propaganda. Read the speech. It's not about the mere presence of Neo-Nazis, it's about Western tolerance of them. The exact tolerance useful idiots like we have here are amply demonstrating. If it suits Western purposes (in this case, opposing Russia), we'll turn a blind eye to the far right. It's precisely what Putin used as justification and it's precisely what we're showing to be absolutely true. — Isaac

...and you're saying it's incoherent because Russia uses far-right paramilitaries? How does their use of those groups impact that argument?

You think there's any now? — Isaac

Just look at what you can do with martial law in Russia:

Evacuation of important objects and people;
Strengthening the protection of public order, critical infrastructure and other important facilities;
Restriction of entry, exit and freedom of movement, search, restriction of choice of place of residence;
Curfew;
Military censorship in the field of communications;
Increased secrecy in state and local authorities;
Restriction of the sale of weapons, dangerous substances, drugs, drugs and alcohol, their temporary withdrawal from citizens;
Ban on rallies and strikes;
Prohibition of public, international or foreign organizations that undermine the country's security;
Forced labor for defense needs, to restore destroyed facilities and fight fires and epidemics;
Seizure of private property with subsequent compensation;
Internment of unreliable citizens and citizens of aggressor countries (applies only directly in case of aggression and in order to prevent riots).
Restriction of economic activity, including property turnover;
Restriction of search and distribution of information;
Change of ownership of organizations;
Change in working hours. The abolition of the system of voluntary employment and the introduction of conscription labor obligation (mandatory for all citizens over 14 years old)

Of course many of the above you can already see happening in Russia.

Yet if you have problems either because of the Western embargo or for other matters in getting defense production up or in something else, above you can find a toolbox to use. But of course then you have to admit that the issue is larger than just a "special military operation".

Interesting stuff, but I'm sorry my question wasn't clear. You said...

there isn't any fig leaves left — ssu

... I asked you why you thought there were any now. Fig leaves, that is. Not martial law.

Point being that if de-nazifying Ukraine is being used as a fig leaf to cover political power grabs, then attacking the countries who are deliberately frustrating your 'anti-nazi' crusade isn't "no fig leaves left" is it? It's 'one more fig leaf' (or a whole fucking fig tree)

I'm clearly not an idiot — Isaac

That made me chuckle. You're a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The M777 — Count Timothy von Icarus

When do you estimate these could be operational? From what I read they would effectively tip the balance in favor of Ukraine.

Way to go, Antonio.


UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will travel to Russia on Tuesday for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin since February 24, before heading to Ukraine two days later to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The United Nations accused the Russian army on Friday of actions "amounting to war crimes" in Ukraine.

That made me chuckle. You're a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Just what I was thinking.

Something tells me we're not the only ones.

You guys are priceless.

On a thread full of people claiming to be able to divine Putin's motives from their armchairs, predict moves even CIA strategists missed, work out battle plans from a few newspaper articles, judge war crimes using Facebook, and all without the need for experts but rather their own "rational induction"... The one calling out such nonsense is the one exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect.

You couldn't make this stuff up...

A friend who worked with them extensively told me it could be really quickly, two weeks of drills or even a bit less if they are working with experienced teams. That jives with DoD messaging of "about a week." The superiority in range means that the team's ability to rapidly set up and take down the gun to reposition isn't quite as important, at least at first as they fire from safer positions while they gain experience. Rapid repositioning will matter more as they start trying to use indirect fire for advances.

Apparently the digital fire control system isn't that hard to learn, but integrating whatever else they are using for target aquisition might be trickier. Obviously they have been using drones to spot, as the copious video of successful arty strikes shows. I don't know if NATO is also sharing satalite imagery and data. The Army did a bunch of press releases on integrating of the M777 fire control with satalite guidance a few years ago. They might also be using the Air Force's SBIRS, which should be updating every 10 minutes. The Excalibur shell can be satalite guided.

While involving more interconnectivity, that might actually make training quicker, since teams would have up to date information on the location of Russian batteries and could set up out of range, where speed isn't as much of an issue.

The teams will still have to worry about Russian air assets, but Russia doesn't seem to have the ability to rapidly deploy that sort of support, still has to worry about the AA network, pilots are probably quite hesitant due to getting painted by AWACS each sortie (Russian cockpit info infamously only gives the pilot an indication of the strongest radar painting them, so there would be the fear that an S-300 is also targeting them), and the Russians appear to have been mostly out of guided munitions for a while, making hitting a mobile towed weapon difficult.

Given it's been 11 days since the announcement and the weapons were already in Europe, I would guess they'd be appearing fairly soon. DoD messaging suggest the weapons are only arriving now, from the US (Canada is sending M777s too) but that could just be an effort to obscure when they will show up. I'd imagine they had them ready as the authorization was set up.

A M142 HIMARS was also sent, which has an effective range of 310 miles. This might explain the alleged hit on a meeting of the entire Russian command yesterday (if it actually happened). It certainly won't be good for any new multi-kilometer convoys that show up again.

They'll be a game changer, particularly because the Russian artillery, while having a major numerical advantage, seems absolutely terrible. For instance, you have a self propelled gun specifically designed for shoot and scoot. You fire, then move about 10m back into the tree line, where you also have conveniently parked all your ammunition right next to each other, within the range of a single incoming shell, so that cook of will destroy all of them.

Then you also park your vehicles right next to the building you're hiding in and sit there for several hours, giving ample time for your adversary to tow up their own guns and put a shell directly on to where you clumped all your assets.

https://youtu.be/VRaA-aNss0E


Russia's argument isn't about Western hypocrisy. You don't invade a country over hypocrisy. Its messaging is explicitly about a major military threat posed by Neo-Nazi militias operating in Ukraine, which are, in fact, smaller and less well armed than the Neo-Nazi militias Russia allows to operate in Russia. And indeed, Russia has also long funded and provided direct support to these larger Neo-Nazi groups.

On a side note, with the French gone and the Russians in, the ISIS affiliate in Mali has already overrun one of their bases. These forces they've cultivated seem capable of war crimes against unarmed civilians and not a whole lot else.

predict moves even CIA strategists missed, work out battle plans from a few newspaper articles, judge war crimes using Facebook, and all without the need for experts

You do realize open source intelligence reports exist, right? It isn't all "newspaper articles and Facebook." News outlets are a terrible place to learn about the course of any war, that's true, because they don't assume any military knowledge on the part of their audience, or an interest in the military details of the war. OSINT outlets do include this. You also have the Ukrainian General Staff's public reports. If intelligence reports by former intelligence staff that is overseen by former general officers doesn't count as "expert" opinion, I'm not sure what does.

The war crimes investigation is also being conducted by professionals, namely the ICC, who arrived on the ground as Russia pulled out, not via Facebook.

3moReplyOptions — I like sushi

Maybe Russia should start by real free elections at home to see how long the current regime would last

In the figures I've seen the Russian majority, in "Russian majority areas" does not exceed 50 or 60 % of the population in those areas. To claim these regions should be independent or annexed to Russia based on suffrage looks like a complete tranplling on human rights and republican institutions.

The Nazi argument doesn't make sense either. Because everyone knows that in war zones extremist groups tend to rise. We've seen the same thing with Islamic extremists in the ME and Communists in occupied France. It is the agressor and instigator of separatism that is to blame.

Russia's argument isn't about Western hypocrisy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is. I quoted the relevant parts of Putin's speech in support of that. You just saying "it isn't" is meaningless. Where does that get anyone?

You do realize open source intelligence reports exist, right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, it's not the data I'm referring to, it's the interpretation. The data needs careful and expert interpretation. One can't simply look at some intelligence reports, even of the highest confidence, and say "well, I reckon that means..."

The war crimes investigation is also being conducted by professionals, namely the ICC, who arrived on the ground as Russia pulled out — Count Timothy von Icarus

Key word being 'investigation'. The conclusions we read here are straight off social media.

The conclusions we read here are straight off social media. — Isaac

This place is a social media, so anything you read here, is by definition straight off social media...

On Russian state TV: host (and modern day Goebbels wannabe) Vladimir Solovyov threatens Europe and all NATO countries, as not only Ukraine has to be denazified: — ssu

I could be wrong but if Putin plans to attack any country that helps Ukraine, then it is a given that we have to help Ukraine any way we can.

Putins reason for trying to "denazifie" is a moot issue. He reason for denazifiing any place is about as good as saying that he wants them to stop making ham and cheese sandwiches and that Russian must invade country "X" in order to do so.

IMHO it is all just naked aggression and Russian (Putin and those that support him) merely want to turn modern Russia back into the old USSR again however they can.

Ukraine has long running issues with extreme corruption and powerful oligarchs holding back any reform, as well as radical ideologies infecting the nation's politics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's the one issue Ukraine doesn't have (ironically, given the context). Since the Maidan Revolution in 2014, radicals have signally failed to make any political gains. On the contrary, as @ssu has been pointing out, they have been progressively losing what little hold they had in Ukrainian politics.

In 2014, in the wake of regime change, annexation of Crimea and Russian invasion in Donbass, when one might have expected nationalist sentiments to be running high, the two ultra-nationalist candidates collectively claimed less than 2% of the presidential vote, and none of the far-right parties were able to clear the 5% barrier in the parliamentary elections (although a few of their members won majoritarian seats). Radicals have been losing popular support ever since. The Right Sector - one of the main boogeymen of Russian propaganda - is all but extinct. Svoboda - the largest nationalist party in Ukraine - again failed to make it into the parliament in 2019, winning even fewer votes than in 2014. There is a plethora of far-right movements in Ukraine, but they have virtually no political power.