Ukraine Updates: Kremlin Admits Deporting Over a Million Ukrainians to Russia
President Zelenskyy: Russia is trying to “empty” the Donbas of people
As war in Ukraine enters the 66th day, Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov admitted moving over one million Ukrainians into Russia since the invasion began. The admission comes amid media reports that advancing Russian forces were forcibly deporting Ukrainians to Russia in huge numbers.
The BBC reported Russian foreign minister’s claims:
More than a million people have been evacuated from Ukraine to Russia since the start of the invasion of Ukraine – according to Russia’s foreign minister.
Sergei Lavrov told Chinese state media thousands of foreigners, as well as people from the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, were among those who had been evacuated.
Ukraine has previously accused Russia of taking people across the border against their will and allegedly using them as hostages.
Moscow’s disclosure also gives substance to the Ukrainian claims that Russia was trying to alter the demographics of the captured region. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to depopulate Ukraine’s eastern Donbas.
The UK’s SkyNews reported President Zelenskyy’s remarks:
Russia is attempting to “empty” the Donbas of people and peace talks are in danger of collapsing, Ukraine’s president has claimed.
Speaking in his nightly address, Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of carrying out “constant brutal bombardments” on buildings and residential areas of the eastern region of his country.
Russia Intensifies Offensive in the East, South
After pulling back troops from the Kyiv region in the north, Russia appears to be consolidating its gains in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government confirmed that the Russian offensive was picking up in the east. “Ukrainian authorities also reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas — the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin says is its main objective — and near Kharkiv, a northeastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive,” the Associated Press reported Friday.
Russia is building up troops for a fresh ground offensive in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military says. “Russia was continuing to mass troops near the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region at the eastern Ukrainian border, the Ukrainian General staff added. Russian units also fired at targets with rockets and artillery in the Dnipropetrovsk region, southwest of the city of Kharkiv, the [Ukraine military] update said,” German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported Saturday.
Kyiv Launches Manhunt for Russian War Criminals
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has identified Russian soldiers behind the massacre in Bucha, where reportedly a mass grave of Ukrainian civilians was uncovered after the Russian retreat from the outskirts of Kyiv.
“Ukraine has launched a hunt for 10 Russian soldiers accused of war crimes in Bucha – the town outside of the capital Kyiv where civilians were tortured, raped and murdered,” the BBC reported Friday. “The Ministry of Defence – which shared pictures of the soldiers – described them as ‘the despicable 10’.”
The town of Bucha, located just 15 miles from Kyiv, was under the control of Russia’s 64th motorized infantry brigade for more than a month.
The Unending Siege of Mariupol
After weeks of heavy Russian bombardment and shelling, a tiny number of Ukrainian defenders are still holding on to a pocket of resistance in the industrial part of Mariupol, a strategically vital eastern Ukrainian port city.
“Many of the troops are thought to be injured, some of them seriously. An unknown number of families are also at the site, civilians, children and the elderly,” German weekly Der Spiegel noted on Friday.
Last week, President Vladimir Putin called off the storming of the city’s last Ukrainian holdout. The Russian leader instead wants the his military to ‘seal off’ the defenders inside the industrial zone, telling his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in a televised meeting to “block it so a fly can’t pass.”
The fall of Mariupol will create a land corridor between the Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
The TV channel France24, on Saturday, reported the renewed Russian offensive against the holdout:
Russian shelling continues in the beseiged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, where local officials warned of a dire situation unfolding in the Azovstal steel plant. The city’s mayor held an emotional press conference Saturday calling on the international community to help evacuate Mariupol, saying that there were 600 wounded Ukrainian fighters and civilians holed up in the plant.
The United Nations is trying the broker the evacuation of trapped civilians, news reports say.
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Comments
A million people “deported” from their own country.
And of course the well-prepared, exquisitely well-organized Russian military is going to see to it that every one of them is given the most humane possible treatment?
War crimes on top of war crimes. Evil beyond measure.
This war should have NEVER happened. It was intentionally provoked by Biden/Obama’s puppeters.
For God’s sake: the chaos of the ‘Biden Administration’ is INTENTIONAL:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/why_biden_pursues_politically_suicidal_policies.html
“This war should have NEVER happened.”
On that much we agree absolutely.
“It was intentionally provoked by Biden/Obama’s puppeters.”
Bullshit. The autocrats of the Moscow Kremlin- whether Tsarist, Soviet, or Post-Soviet- have historically been TERRIBLE, oppressive neighbors and lieges. Indeed, Hetman Khmelnitsky was aghast at the terms of a treaty of union in 1654 because of how short a shrift it gave his people, how haughty and heavy-handed the Tsar’s Courtiers were, and how this would likely lead to conflict. He agreed to it only because he was in the middle of a war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and ever after regretted it.
Likewise, even Putin’s man in Ukraine Yanukovych came to power promising to negotiate an EU Association Agreement to try and get some economic lifeblood pumping, and it’s telling that (given what WE Know of the EUcrats) even a lot of Yanukovych’s Pro-Russian “Blue” base n Eastern Ukraine supported it. But Putin decided to intervene and forced Yanukovych to do a 180 on the Association Treaty in exchange for (what were at least seen as) humiliatingly meager concessions.
Then when this blew up in a way far beyond the expectations of anyone- from Biden to Obama to Soros, Yanukovych, or Putin or any of the other people who had been playing influence games in Ukraine for more than 20 years- Putin demanded Yanukovych resort to increasingly violent , dubious, and ultimately illegal measures that saw him called out before his own Duly-Elected Rada (which was largely dominated by his own party). Rather than face his own legislature, Yanukovyh went on he run and was deposed by legislative vote just as Putin geared up to invade.
Yeah, the chaos in the Biden Administration is intentional and the junta has greatly weakened ups. Which is why nothing in regards to Ukraine should divert our focus from the fight at home. But that doesn’t mean we need to ignore history.
I think the word your looking for is “Kidnaps”
The USA should have stayed totally out of this conflict.
There is no USA interest there to protect.
Biden is just like evil Wilson who got USA into the Great War!
USA should be defending the invasion from the Southern border.
If there was a halfway “thumbs up” and “thumbs down”, I’d click it. The question is much more complex.
Biden/Obama’s puppeteers ordered this war started. Now that is has been started, we have to deal with it.
But ending the war isn’t about weaponry: it’s about negotiation, and from a position of strength.
Another but: Biden/Obama puppeteers don’t want it to end. Ever.
“The USA should have stayed totally out of this conflict.”
Perhaps that is true, but even if it were so i would be frankly moot. For better or worse we decided to promise the Ukrainians that if they disposed of their nuclear weapons their territorial integrity would be maintained by agreement with us, the UK, and the Russians. Now the Russians have violently broken that, and if we do not want to look even weaker than these corrupt fools already have we will need to make them suffer.
“There is no USA interest there to protect.”
Disagree. Besides the welcome sign of free (or at least freeish) citizens taking to arms to defend their country and inflicting great discomfort on a Great Power’s invading forces (many of them irregulars with the same small arms we were told would be useless), Ukraine is kind of important not just for The Big Guy and Hunter’s endemic corruption but also global food production and fuel. The US of course would be self-sufficient if only we could use it, but A: We can’t, due to our junta, and B: That won’t inure everyone and the instability will only empower COVID Karens and globalist bureaucrats.
“Biden is just like evil Wilson who got USA into the Great War!”
Wilson and Biden were evil, but they didn’t get the USA into WWI.
Indeed, we know the people who did. Their names were Kaiser Wilhelm von Pruessen of the House of Hohenzollern the Second, Erich Ludendorff the Quartermaster-General of the German Empire and John the Baptist of modern totalitarianism, Paul von Hindenburg the autocratic and prestigious military rubberstamp, and Henning von Hoeltzendorf the Naval Understudy and advocate for limitless maritime terrorism against neutrals.
I’ll skip past a lot of the details (in part because the odd and irrationally one-sided cold war the German Empire found itself in with the US since 1887 is something even I struggle to fathom), but by 1917 the German leadership had violated American rights and neutrality more egregiously than the Barbary Pirates, or indeed any other nation n history up to that point except MAYBE Britain leading in to the War of 1812. Violation of neutral shipping? Check. Sponsoring of terrorism against US interests and nationals in Hispanic America? Check. Attacks on the US Mainland? Black Tom didn’t blow up by itself and the raid on Nogales says plenty.
What a lot of people ignore is that Wilson spent a LOT of time and effort downplaying and trying to ignore these in large par BECAUSE he was a “Progressive” who greatly admired the Prussian Socialist form of “rational” Bureaucratic Tyranny. But the German renunciation of the Sussex Pledge to not attack neutral shipping was to much even for him.
And it is a shame that few people know this on the Right, because it explains SO MUCH about he problems that have blighted our nation in particular and this world as a whole, given how central and inspirational German absolutism was to modern totalitarianism (whether of Bolshevik, Fascist, National Socialist, or Prog Leftist flavors).
So while Wilson was evil, he was also responding to meritless aggression by people vastly more evil than him. And I ask: what would your line be to say “Enough!!!”?
“USA should be defending the invasion from the Southern border.”
Absolutely agreed. I am something of an anti-Putin hardliner, but getting involved in another war is delusional, especially without the ability to secure our country’s sovereignty and freedom from domestic tyranny.
Sadly, I only have one upvote to give. Thank you for the excellent explanation.
Thank you very kindly! I appreciate it.
I am not thrilled with fighting other people’s battles. I do think that ignoring Putin’s actions will result in even worse problems later.
That’s a false equivalence. There are a huge range of options that fully encompass acknowledgment of Putin’s actions but fall way short of US involvement; aka fighting other peoples battles.
What specifically do you fear will result from a refusal of the US to enter into this conflict?
A: Define “Enter this conflict” or “fight other peoples’ battles.” I am staunchly opposed to sending American forces to fight in Ukraine , especially with the OVID Cheka at home and the clear indications our military s corrupt and undermined by illegitimate goons. But I AM in support of just about everything up to that point, including the gifting of war material a and intelligence as well as diplomatic support.
B: Simply put, I have no reason to want to encourage foreign bad actors- like the PRC, Iran, and the like- to make more funny business while we’re already bogged down trying to straighten our own house out. The feebleness of the US military and political leadership is crystal clear from things like the Iran Scam and the Kabul Klustereff. We’ve also seen how the Left uses the Kremlin as a boogeyman to persecute us and justify our repression while the Kremlin helps enable truly destructive policies like the Green Gang. Neutering Putin’s power and seeing him suffer a military repulse will not solve all the problems of the world and will probably create new ones, but it will make it harder for the Left to hold up up as the Great Satan and can help give us some badly-needed stability in the face of the Crisis Addicts and those using them to seize power..
Edit: Forgot to mention, but Putin’s specific justifications for this are chilling. I DO NOT want to know what MEChA and La Raza will do with the justification to reconquer “traditional lands” and maybe some encouragement. The US also- wisely or not- vouchsafed Ukraine’s territorial integrity with the UK and Russia in exchange for Ukraine abandoning its nuclear weapons. This invasion is compounding our humiliation and making us look even weak, and weakness is provocative (as Biden and the junta show).
Turtler,
A. Enter conflict = entering Ukraine, land sea or air by US or for that matter, NATO or EU personnel.
B. The left uses Russia as a boogeyman so your solution is to play along with that idea and vastly widen the ongoing proxy war? Not to mention the impact of a longer duration conflict on Ukrainian food exports and of course the secondary and tertiary impacts:
1. Belarus not shipping fertilizer to the west
2. Russia not shipping grain, fertilizer, PM, reduced oil exports to the west and in some cases no Nat Gas sales.
C. Flimsy pretext for invasion might result in La Raza doing what exactly? It seems to me that they have been getting all they can realistically hope for handed to them; mass immigration from Mexico, Central and South America and Caribbean, defacto amnesty, sanctuary cities, and successive admin that abrogate their responsibility to secure the border. If you don’t like invasion based on flimsy pretexts does that apply at all times? If so, please explain Granada, Panama and Iraq.
Bottom line is that the leadership elite of the west is hastening the collapse of their preferred international rules based system. They are pushing the BRICS to create a closer and parallel mechanism that others may join; Turkey, Iran among others. These western DAVOS/WEF elites are in effect destroying the system in a bid to save it from Putin.
CommoChief
“A. Enter conflict = entering Ukraine, land sea or air by US or for that matter, NATO or EU personnel.”
Very well, and on that front we are agreed. The US and EU must not enter this conflict openly. We are in no moral or psychological state for it after Afghanistan, and even if we were it would be vastly less important than dealing with the Biden Junta.
” B. The left uses Russia as a boogeyman so your solution is to play along with that idea and vastly widen the ongoing proxy war?”
My solution is to neuter the Kremlin’s ability to be a threat, both in actuality and as a boogeyman. Not only because we have seen how hysterical and sadly effective using “Muh Russia Collusion” has proven to be in the hands of our domestic tyrants, but also because Putin and the Kremlin have proven to be thoroughly bad actors in their own right happy to help our enemies and so in general the world will be better without them.
” Not to mention the impact of a longer duration conflict on Ukrainian food exports and of course the secondary and tertiary impacts:”
The blame for which firmly goes upon the Russian government. This war didn’t start in February of this year, it just escalated on that. It’s been going on to one degree or another for 8 years, with Putin largely being deterred from escalating by a combination of battle casualties and sub-par results from the 2014-2015 campaign in the face of stiffening Ukrainian loyalist resistance, and Trump’s own strong line on the issue. Sadly the latter is no longer directly in play and apparently Putin and co have forgotten enough about the former to think it is worth it.
“1. Belarus not shipping fertilizer to the west”
Which is true and also unfortunate, especially in the age of COVIDIOCY, but again a product of Lukashenko and co.
“2. Russia not shipping grain, fertilizer, PM, reduced oil exports to the west and in some cases no Nat Gas sales.”
They’re quite happy to ship that stuff, albeit under some conditions (usually payment in Rubles to try and strengthen their Sub-Fed level currency manipulation), but it is probably good for us to move away from dependency on that. After all, half of the problems from this war came from weak, corrupt, globalist leadership in the West neutering our efforts at self-sufficiency and non-dependence.
Ask the Keystone XL pipeline workers how they feel about the North American public being hit at the gas tank over this.
“C. Flimsy pretext for invasion might result in La Raza doing what exactly?”
I don’t know, and I also don’t want to know. But as a refugee Californian Conservative who fled to Ohio in order to keep my family’s finances somewhat sane, parts of the border are already defacto outside the writ of American law. That’s made worse by the terrifyingly bi-partisan consensus South of the border that it is the Mexican Government’s to violate and the one North of the border to not take a stand (with Trump being a relatively rare exception), it doesn’t take that many stretches of my imagination to figure that Sonora or Jalisco Cartels might start intensifying their connections with the radical Chicano and Aztlan crowds to start expanding their influence even further North.
It won’t be the kind of sudden and unsubtle invasions that the Kremlin did in 2014, but if anything a nastier and slower rotting away.
” It seems to me that they have been getting all they can realistically hope for handed to them; mass immigration from Mexico, Central and South America and Caribbean, defacto amnesty, sanctuary cities, and successive admin that abrogate their responsibility to secure the border. ”
You probably haven’t dealt with them up close, because while the cooler and more coldly calculating among them realize all that and are by and large happy to conspire along with our corrupt government’s self-destruction of our borders, the HOTHEADS among them (and let me remind you that this is a culture- one that’s been particularly endemic to criminal influence in the past few decades- where even the Left-Leaning Ivory Towers have published multiple “peer-reviewed” papers on alcoholism and spree killing) are not so easily satisfied and have generally liked getting out in force to apply pressure on behalf of Mexican supremacist militants and turned Cinco de Mayo into a glorified rally.
Which is something multiple Mexican governments have happily exploited to stick fingers in our eyes.
Sure, I can believe my early life growing up in a “border state” and doing volunteer work has clouded by judgement and affects how I can see it, but that doesn’t change the fact that Putin’s propaganda has been happily gearing this up.
“If you don’t like invasion based on flimsy pretexts does that apply at all times?”
I don’t, though if I think it does less evil than it cures (which is clearly not the case
here) i am prepared to grudgingly tolerate it.
Moreover, the Kremlin didn’t even have a flimsy pretext for its invasions in 2014. It straight up lied that there was no invasion (at least in Crimea until after it had been secured).
” If so, please explain Granada, Panama and Iraq.”
Only one of those counts as a “flimsy pretext”, and that’s Grenada, which was ostensibly because A: A coup in a British Commonwealth country that murdered the acknowledged government (which would be more convincing if it wasn’t just more Commie Bastards murdering the old Commie Bastard, AND if we had bothered notifying the UK about it), B: That our avowed enemy Castro’s Cuba and the Soviet Union were increasing its presence on the island (which was true, they provided a large portion of the REDFOR on the Island) and C: That they were reorganizing the island in concert with the even-more-illegitimate government to pose a military threat to its neighbors (also true).
None of that was enough to outdo the angry backlash, and frankly it was very much motivated reasoning of “They’re weak, we can get together some pretexts, let’s go.” And mercifully it was rapid enough that the wider issues and thinness didn’t cause much trouble beyond the UN.
But Panama and Iraq are remarkably solid even Today.
Panama is very simple. We had extremely compelling evidence that the commander of the Panamanian Military was acting as a Drug Lord and International Terrorist, to the point where he was issued a summons to appear by the DEA. Normally, we’d ask the relevant government to extradite his rear end.
However, this ran into an obvious problem: Manny Noriega had usurped absolute power in Panama in a military junta, treated the government as puppets of his, and indeed forcibly deposed the Constitutional/Legal leader of Panama, President Delvalle (which as much as anything spurred serious plans for the invasion). Faced with the fact that the “Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution” was ruling a nakedly criminal regime and was never going to allow himself to be extradited for his crimes, the US reasoned that the only option was to have the military serve the arrest warrant and then transition to a sovereign and democratic Panama in the wake of the invasion.
Iraq is quite long and I don’t have time to get into all of it, but there’s a reason why the Authorization for the Use of Force by Congress was so long. That was because they wanted to make absolutely sure that even if some of the charges in it were found out after the fact to be based on misinformation or lies, they absolutely wanted enough to stick. And they did.
Indeed, it’s telling that pretty much every single category of charges issued in it- from illegal retention of WMD (and yes, Sarin Artillery Shells are WMD, even if they are old), sponsorship of terrorism, and so on was broadly confirmed by captured regime documents. Which makes it incredibly enraging for myself to deal with idiots who still insist Saddam never helped Al Qaeda (on the basis of extremely tortured writing by people determined to downplay the connection in which they said there was “no direct connection”, and by which they mean Saddam giving funds directly to a known Al Qaeda cutout/satellite group is “Not direct”) or that he had no WMD>
In any case, I can VERY EASILY defend all three of those- including the one I think had rather weak justifications in the case of Grenada- as being far more legitimate and honest than the Russian invasions of Ukraine.
Moreover, on some level the Russian Government knows this, because it has consistently lied about its motives and behavior since day one of this invasion when a bunch of Little Green Spetznaz stormed into Crimea. The US- for all of its derpy and dishonest conduct- at least cited its reasons very carefully and did not have to outright lie.
“Bottom line is that the leadership elite of the west is hastening the collapse of their
preferred international rules based system. ”
Which will only accelerate if it is not enforced.
“They are pushing the BRICS to create a closer and parallel mechanism that others may join; Turkey, Iran among others. ”
I get kind of annoyed by people who try and treat “BRICS” as if it were a parallel organization or alliance on par with the likes of NATO or its Partners for Peace. It’s not. It is, above all, an economic bloc.
And as we’ve seen multiple times, economics has proven subordinate to politics.
The only two countries on that list that have solid political and military connections and would most likely share intelligence and arms in a war are the R and C: Red China and Russia.
Indeed, China’s most pressing enemy outside of the US (and possibly even INCLUDING it since it actually isn’t fighting an undeclared war with the US with thousands of casualties YET) is INDIA, a country that for various reasons was never worse (from a Western POV) than a Soviet-leaning neutral and which steadily increased its rapprochement with the West for the past several decades.
Brazil and South Africa (along with Turkey) are the wild cards because they are prone to extreme switches in orientation, as shown by the Socialist Government’s downfall in Brazil in favor of Bolsonaro and could go either way.
So an actual parallel alliance would most likely be CCIRPNV: China, Cuba, IRAN, Russia, Pakistan, NorkIstan, and Venezuela for the reasons I’ve mentioned. More can be added to that list depending on how the West screws up or the alliance performs, but even then it is vanishingly unlikely Iran will outright make an alliance with Russia, and all but impossible it will do so with its greatest enemies: Pakistan and the PRC.
“These western DAVOS/WEF elites are in effect destroying the system in a bid to save it from Putin.”
Which I don’t doubt. And why I have no love at all for them. But I’d be remiss to throw the baby out with the bathwater even because such a system is supported by Nazi collaborator Soros and co.
On the dangerous ideals of la raza and other militant brown shirts – I lived in El Paso for ten years and interacted with the adherents of their philosophy. Trust me they are quite happy to keep the conditions they have going. They realize that public awareness and anger of the true extent of the situation since the Immigration Act of 1966 would result in an immediate demand to close the border, round up illegal aliens in the interior, prosecute their employers, deport the lot of them and build not only a border wall but in effect a buffer area inside Mexico controlled by the US v the cartels.
Russian claims to portions of Ukraine are not specious in comparison to other territorial claims made and accepted by many govts. The difference is timing; those currently opposed already got theirs and only now view conquest of territory populated in some degree by people with similar language, religion and cultural affinity with the conquerors as norm breaking.
The impacts will be felt. Higher fuel, higher food prices. Less available PM, industrial metals, fertilizer and minerals needed for battery production. Hungry people are desperate and act accordingly. Nations move to a food nationalism; Indonesia banned export of palm oil as an example. Get ready for a far more destabilized world as a direct result of the choices Land by DAVOS/WEF indoctrinated western leadership.
To be clear, I am not arguing in favor of allowing Putin to do whatever he wants. I am insisting that the supposedly free citizens of then western democracies be given every piece of information and every potential outcome of the actions the globalist leadership wants to take in Ukraine. Then we can decide for ourselves if the benefit outweighs the cost. So far there seems to be a massive effort to disguise and dismiss any negative impacts or if acknowledged to blame them on Putin v on the deliberate choices our leadership made in respose.
@CommoChief
“On the dangerous ideals of la raza and other militant brown shirts – I lived in El Paso for ten years and interacted with the adherents of their philosophy. Trust me they are quite happy to keep the conditions they have going. They realize that public awareness and anger of the true extent of the situation since the Immigration Act of 1966 would result in an immediate demand to close the border, round up illegal aliens in the interior, prosecute their employers, deport the lot of them and build not only a border wall but in effect a buffer area inside Mexico controlled by the US v the cartels.”
It sounds like you have far more experience and knowledge of them than I have since I am fundamentally a resident of the Bay Area (yeah, I know, I know, Mordor with worse Traffic) who went down to visit friends in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas or to do volunteer work. Still, the ones I encountered seemed to have a bunch of numerous and vocal hotheads- especially in their youth movements- who are happy to push as well as “cooler heads” who fit what you describe. They’ve taken heart by the fact that even public disdain and demands to close the border have amounted to little, and I don’t want them to get any more eager.
“Russian claims to portions of Ukraine are not specious in comparison to other territorial claims made and accepted by many govts.”
Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are specious and illegitimate at rock bottom. The Russian Government forswore all territorial claims on Ukraine in the 1993 Budapest Memorandum and vowed to protect its territorial integrity in order to get the nuclear weapons in country relocated. It never bothered advocating to reform this policy or re-examine it, in no small part because this would lead to obvious questions like “Mkay, so you going to give the nukes back?!?”
Which for obvious reasons is a dog the Kremlin wants to lie asleep from here on out. So they resorted to state-sponsored terrorism and calculated disinformation that’s handily destabilized the world yet further. That needs to be punished.
” The difference is timing; those currently opposed already got theirs and only now view conquest of territory populated in some degree by people with similar language, religion and cultural affinity with the conquerors as norm breaking.”
No, there are many differences beyond timing. To be sure, this isn’t particularly unusual on the grand scale of history, but that doesn’t change the fact that false flag attacks and this level of calculated dishonesty were viewed negatively even in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, let alone millennia later.
When news leaked that King Gustav III of Sweden had acted very similarly to how Russia did by dressing up Swedish soldiers and attacking his own troops while inciting revolt across the border (ironically against Russia), it utterly mortified late 18th century Europe and the Atlantic World and alienated the Anglo-Dutch who had previously supported the Swedes and was one reason why the Swedes had to settle for a draw.
So let’s not play cultural relativist. While modern mores and laws and prejudices have a role in how this was perceived, they are FAR from the only reasons why.
“The impacts will be felt. Higher fuel, higher food prices. Less available PM, industrial metals, fertilizer and minerals needed for battery production. Hungry people are desperate and act accordingly. Nations move to a food nationalism; Indonesia banned export of palm oil as an example. Get ready for a far more destabilized world as a direct result of the choices Land by DAVOS/WEF indoctrinated western leadership.”
Oh I agree, don’t get me wrong. This is going to be ugly and bitter fruits of a mixture of Globalist indoctrination, corruption, and the opposition to American self-sufficiency.
“To be clear, I am not arguing in favor of allowing Putin to do whatever he wants. I am insisting that the supposedly free citizens of then western democracies be given every piece of information and every potential outcome of the actions the globalist leadership wants to take in Ukraine. Then we can decide for ourselves if the benefit outweighs the cost. So far there seems to be a massive effort to disguise and dismiss any negative impacts or if acknowledged to blame them on Putin v on the deliberate choices our leadership made in respose.”
Largely agreed, and in particular I note with bitterness how Biden and co are trying very hard to blame Putin for everything under the sun here when in reality the ball was rolling on inflation, price hikes, and scarcity long before Putin made his move, and indeed were probably a reason why he did act.
In any case, while I have my passionate leanings regarding Ukraine, America must come first. No commitment to Ukraine can come at the direct expense of the US, which unfortunately is unlikely given the corrupt junta.
WRT the Cartels, I find it hard to believe they have not bought American obviously-for-sale politicians and LEOs. Would explain the irrational push to end all southern border control. Hell, the FBI had a special deal with Sinaloa.
I am not surprised Russia is, if this is correct and not Propaganda, taking people from Ukraine to Russia, they have a history of doing that.
Southern Border Updates: “White House admits to deporting millions of Mexicans to the United States”
I hope this is the last gasp of a manifestly failed regime that has been repeatedly enabled and appeased by idiotic and naive European Leftists (e.g., Frau Merkel and Schroeder) and American Dumb-o-crats, for the past twenty years.
Recall how European and American media lauded and feted the vile Merkel for her alleged sagacity and leadership, especially during President Trump’s tenure, holding her up as allegedly representing the west’s “true” leader. History now fairly paints her as a dim-witted, gullible dupe and fool.
This is not surprising. Putin is imitating Stalin. Stalin invaded Poland, like Putin invaded Ukraine, with the intention of subjugating it. Poland became part of the Soviet Union, dominated by Moscow.
Stalin then deported between 1 and 2 million Poles to the gulags in Siberia to work as slave laborers until they died.
If you want to predict what Putin intends to do to the Ukrainians, so far he’s been following Stalin’s actions in Poland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_citizens_(1939%E2%80%931946)
Biden/Obama are imitating Benedict Arnold – on steriods.
Benedict Arnold was at least a brave officer and charismatic leader of men who fought hard, lost a leg in service of his country, and had enough remorse to regret his betrayal at least to some degree. Obama and Biden make him look to be an exemplar.
“Deporting” or “evacuating”?
Show me photos of the Russian concentration camps holding 1,000,000 people against their will.
I hate that it’s come to this, but I trust Putin more than my own government.
A large camp settlement does not indicate whether the individuals left voluntarily or not. It merely reflects the conditions of the place they are staying.
As much as I hate to agree, Russia faces the problem of trying to feed and house a million people in an area where they can barely feed their own army. Evacuating those people to someplace where Russia *can* put them or let them starve is the choice. Well, the Russian solution of killing them is a possibility too, but the modern Russian army is not the Russian army of the past, thankfully. It has some similarities, but…
Show us the photos of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens being treated well in Russia.
Shouldn’t be hard, they’ll have phones with them if they’re being treated well.
Of course, if they’re being tortured they won’t be taking photographs as they’ll have had their phones stolen by the brutal Russian torturers. We’ll only find out what’s happening to them when they’re exchanged for Russian POWs.
Things like https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61249158
Not sure the numbers, but am certain many German civilians were used in slave labor in Russia AFTER WWII ended.
Russia invented, or at least perfected governmental gaslighting.
As someone whose first political memory is Hungry, 1956, I’m kind of shocked by some of the stupidity on display here.
I’m old enough to remember when Chamberlain was a bad word.
I can certainly see the argument that Biden, or his handlers, are cynically exploiting the war, hoping to reverse his unpopularity. This doesn’t bother me, because it’s not working.
Russia was not manipulated into this war. They have been preparing for this since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The fact that they prepared badly and misjudged the situation does not absolve them.
Yes, the war could have been averted, and there are probably hoards of people in DC having wargasms. I find it just a bit ironic that my generation, the peaceniks, are suddenly chicken hawks.
But that does not make Russia the good guy.
“But that does not make Russia the good guy.”
A fact that seems lost on many. It’s possible to loathe the biden puppeteers and the russians at the same time.
Sounds more like “kidnap,” for the purpose of holding them as hostages.
Reports of significant volumes of grain also being transported to Russia.
But then, Russia have previous on that, even just in Ukraine.
Holodomor v2?
And lots of farm equipment is being spirited away as well.
Spoils of war. What’s happening in Ukraine is a exactly what happens when western/westernized nations go to war. It’s absolutely brutal. This is the first post WWII conflict between western or westernized nations with the possible exception of the Yugoslavian breakup/civil war which was no picnic.
It’s not simple or clean. It’s horrifyingly imprecise with a good deal of damage to infrastructure and dead, missing or displaced civilians. Add in lingering resentment, mistrust among neighbors some pro Russia and some pro Ukraine and it takes on the base characteristics of a civil war.
The images are horrifying but fully anticipated by those of us who understand the realities of warfare. It’s not a damn video game, there is no reset button. People are are injured, maimed or killed. This is why warfare should always be the absolute last resort among nations. It’s why we must be willing to listen to potential adversaries and understand what actions may drive them to react v what they view as an unacceptable provocation.
We shouldn’t be surprised if our potential adversary indicates that a particular action or series of actions is a red line that will cause a military response if diplomacy fails to resolve the issue. That’s not to say we allow our potential adversaries to control our freedom of action, far from it. It does mean we should know and understand the the inflection points that may trigger a military response and then have a national debate to achieve consensus before rushing headlong into a military confrontation.