Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.
“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
So from having had a few exchanges with pro Russian accounts on Lemmy (which seems to be infested with a few very active ones) this is a summary of their arguments:
- “Ukraine is Nazi”
- “Well far right parties got a total of under 6% of the vote, and they elected a Jewish man president”
- “yeah but Bandera and whatabout America”
- “Ukraine killed ethnic Russians”
- “A huge percentage of their population are ethnic Russians, including in government, and they are fine, and were until the Russian invasion. And now it’s Russia that has killed, maimed and raped more ethnic Russians, including civilians, than Ukraine every did or even could. Including their own people thorough incompetence and corruption”.
- “Yeah but Bandera, and whatabout America”
- “Ukraine is fighting because they are forced to by their colonial masters, the USA and NATO, and Ukrainians will keep dying so long as they keep being armed”
- “Actually > 90% of the population wants to continue fighting for their country back, so what you’re basically saying is you think Ukrainians should be abandoned to Russian enslavement”
- “Yeah but Bandera, and whatabout America”
- “NATO and USA are colonialists and this is just more colonialism”
- “Actually both Russia and China are actual, bone fide land empires, with ethnic minorities that are forced to live like colonized people - including doing the fighting for Russia while their families back home live in misery and squalor and Putin’s Mafia collect mansions, private jets and yachts”
- “Yeah but Bandera, and whatabout America”
I take it you had to deal with the Hexbears? Idiots.
they’re on other instances as well
edit: having to go through posts like these and blocking all the invader apologists isn’t fun, but it beats accidentally reading their drivel again
Such a worthless use of brain cells. Imagine being the product of billions of years of evolution and becoming that.
I’m sure some are on a payroll. You don’t get a weird narrative like that started without planting a seed.
It’s not a coincidence they look like a better version of 2015 the_donald.
They even mocked me when I said I expected to get banned for saying that… and then banned me. Weird how that works.
oh god the russia bot reddit npc dialogue script has leaked onto lemmy nooo
Yes, the Russian troll farm pays me to post for the dozen weirdos who actually read this on here. Money well spent!
Makes perfect sense.
Ikr? I wonder what their parents think of them.
Didn’t lemmy.ca defed with Hexbear because someone called (in jest) for death to landlords while Canada experiences it’s biggest housing crisis ever and rents are rising rapidly YoY solely because landlords, who otherwise deliver no intrinsic value in their position, found a way to make more money from the increased demand?
No, that wasn’t the reason and if it’s the only one you can think of you have no idea how toxic and disgusting the hexbear community is. I hate landlords too but these people are really taking it so much further than joking about dead landlords.
That was one of the big reasons made in the post about Hexbear defed.
The other ones were nebulous concerns about Hexbear comments in other instances… Which, by definition, is the responsibility of those other instances.
That all sounds like brigading emotional nonsense. In fact, there were strong reasons for Russia to invade. It is probably true that Russia was manipulated into invading, it had no choice because of strategic decisions made by Ukraine. It’s a shame none of the people you talked to were able to argue the issues sensibly.
Well here is your chance. Argue this issues sensibly.
Probably the tired line of NATO expansion fears. How’d that work out? Does Russia have more or less NATO countries near their borders? The invasion itself is the best sales pitch NATO could ever need.
This just supports that explanation? Use your brain man.
Lol, lemmygrad. GTFO with your bullshit
Great contribution there Mr Feynman.
Why thank you good sir
So Russia says: “Nooo, nooo, don’t band together to defend yourself against our aggression! You mustn’t band together to defend against me! Wait if you even dare think about it, I’ll invade you. So here come the tanks”
What aggression? NATO is the obvious aggressor here? You don’t even believe what you’re saying. This propaganda is stale man. Even NATO admits it was the provoker.
What aggression? See Ukraine
But that was a response to NATO aggression?
Lol Ukraine strategically decided not to surrender their territory, thus manipulating the peaceful Russians to invade
Why should Russia strategically be required to invade exactly?
I’ve never heard a cogent argument on this point.
Ask Jens Stoltenburg. He just fucked up and bragged about how he forced them into it.
Most people haven’t. We all have a filter bubble.
Here is a first draft, my attempt to provide the missing context. Please leave comments on anything bad or missing you notice. https://lemmy.ml/post/4848742
That is just a list of Russian propaganda points. There is no evidence for any of it.
It’s because Russia sees NATO as a threat and wants to take control of Ukraine to keep buffer states on the west side. Also, to keep it’sblack sea fleet safe. Why it happened now and not sooner or later - nobody knows. The official reasoning, of course, is bullshit, just like with any other war. Not the worst one, though.
I mean look, it’s a nation we talked in to giving up it’s nuclear weapons in exchange for protection and recognition by us. We really had no choice but to invade.
Background? Link?
There’s a reason Western Europe focuses on the Nazis in the context of the Holocaust: the Nazis never saw the Western Europeans as a stain on the Earth like they did the Jews and the Slavs. Russians don’t need to point to Jews to claim Nazism: they can point directly to the treatment of ethnically Russian Slavs during WW2 and the plans that Nazi Germany had for the eradication of Slavs.
Russia doesn’t need to point at how Ukraine treats Jews because to Russia, the Holocaust is dwarfed in societal impact by the issues that motivated Operation Barbarossa. The Russians lost 19 million Russian civilians in the war, why would they care about the Jews?
Nevermind that minorities in China get so many advantages it’s actually silly how much affirmative action goes on. Provinces dominated by minorities get significantly more funding per capita and even get loss-leading infrastructure projects like the Tibet and Xinjiang railways. Students from minorities get additional bonuses on gaokao (basically SAT, but imagine if schools didn’t look at anything else). Minorities are exempt from family planning policies and get massive interest-free loans for starting businesses. They get proportional representation in government. Hell, there are 55 minority groups in China making up 8% of the population.
In the army? The prevalence of rural populations in the army has been observed AROUND THE WORLD. It’s a function of rural communities being rather poor and underserved by governments in general, as well as the lack of economic opportunities that living on a farm provides. In fact, the entire notion of the underserved countryside is what allowed communism to rise in Russia and China.
Oh yeah CCP is all about diversity and minorities right?
I mean just ask the people of Tibet, or the Uyghurs right? They will tell you how much the Chinese government supports their minority culture.
Filthy fucking genocidal cunts. That’s what the Chinese Communist Party is. And your attempt to create a positive spin of them is not as subtle as you think.
Tankie scum!
Have you ever been to China? Ever talked to a person from a Chinese minority? Clearly not.
By and large their complaints are about a lack of economic opportunity (because, y’know, Inner Mongolia isn’t exactly the most hospitable climate) and that the government affirmative action isn’t enough to address the gap in resources. That’s what you’ll hear on the ground… And that’s an absolutely fair concern.
I have. I’ve known Tibetans personally and I can assure you that they wish China had never invaded their country and taken it over.
Ah yes, because Tibet before the CCP was a bastion of human rights protection. Who do you think you’re convincing?
Still, clearly never been to China 🤷♀️
Well it’s sure as shit not a bastion of human rights after the CCP invasion.
You’ve clearly never met a Tibettan refugee.
Do you understand Tibetan history up to that point? At least it’s no longer a serfdom system (which Tibetan advocates will say was equal because of the one-in-a-million chance that one of the peasants can become the Dalai Lama and that everyone was totally happy because everyone was working towards bettering Buddhism). How many Tibetan refugees do you know who experienced serfdom?
The Tibetans should get to chose their government, not a communist dictatorship of a foreign country who undertook a military invasion and then practiced cultural and ethnic eradication in Tibet. If the Mao had not lied to the leadership of Tibet, and the chinese communists had not invaded, Tibet would most likely be a peaceful democracy now, as is the democratically elected government in exile. How’s China going? Hold up a poster of Winnie the Poo in Beijing and let me know how you go.
Fuck off idiot, don’t try to push a narrative that I’m nieve or uninformed. The persecution of minorities in China under the oppressive CCP is well documented and none of your tankie bullshit will change that.
I don’t care how much revisionism, whataboutism, alternative facts, or straight up propaganda you throw at this, the fact remains the CCP is an oppressive, genocidal and brutal regime run by cunts.
And you in support of said cunts makes you a cunt. I don’t like people who act like cunts. So fuck you!
So… I’ll take that as a no?
No first party sources, no evidence, and probably has never left a NATO country. Truly a well-informed opinion.
Improved infrastructure and better access to education is not the win you think it is. Whether infrastructure and education is good or not depends on what you do with it. If you use your infrastructure to connect unruly provinces to your center of power in an effort to better exert control, then the infrastructure becomes a net-negative for the people on the receiving end. As an example, I’m sure nobody sane enough would claim that the US building the railroad was positive for native americans. Likewise, if you use your education to indoctrinate people, then better educational opportunities go hand in hand with increased oppression.
So… You’d rather people be poor and uneducated than wealthy and educated? Huh?
I didn’t say that at all. What I did say is that you shouldn’t take China providing infrastructure and education as a purely philantrophic endeavour.
improved infrastructure and better access to education is not the win you think it is
What exactly do you think you’re saying? That infrastructure and education are bad?
minorities in China get so many advantages it’s actually silly how much affirmative action goes on
You claim China is engaging in affirmative action to strengthen its minorities. I’m pointing out that the actions China is taking can just as easily be turned against the minorities you claim are helped by China.
The actions such as… Giving them additional points on gaokao? Interest free business loans? Exemption from family planning policy? The horror.
The Russians lost 19 million Russian civilians in the war, why would they care about the Jews?
Nevermind the fact that it was Russia itself that treated (and keeps treating) its soldiers as cannon fodder
I’d recommend that you read a more insightful commentary on Red Army practices during WW2 rather than following Nazi propaganda from that period. David Glantz’ work is particularly insightful.
Either way, those are 19 million civilians. That isn’t military dead, that’s civilians.
One thing they always forget to mention is the USSR was allied to Nazi Germany in order to partition Poland.
No doubt the Soviets suffered greatly in WW2, and contributed greatly to the allied victory. On the other hand they did not do it alone, and they certainly did not expect to have to fight the Germans at all, at least not at that point.
So? The Great Powers had decided on a policy of appeasement against Nazi Germany. What exactly would you have proposed the USSR do? They signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact prior to the war for a reason.
Without the Eastern Front, Europe was lost. Hitler only launched Operation Barbarossa because he thought the Western Front was all but won. Continental Europe was under German control and the UBoats were locking down most of the Atlantic, meanwhile imports of Russian materials was sustaining the German war economy (similarly, imports of American materials was sustaining Japan’s war in China and the Pacific)… Of course, it turns out that dividing your forces and taking on Russia in the winter aren’t the best ideas, but at the time Germany wanted energy independence and the Caucasus was seen as an easier target than the Middle East (which at the time out produced Romania but wasn’t yet the oil superpower it is today).
That’s all well and good, but that’s never taught at all to Russians and ignored by tankies.
And if you actually read your dumb narrative, your first paragraph is contradicted by your second. You really need to work on your story.
Here’s the truth: the USSR, like Nazi Germany, was an authoritarian expansionist nightmare that was happy to get Poland for free. They only fight the Nazis because they had to. And Stalin was a shit strategist.
25% ish of the Russian population live in huts and shit in holes in outhouses for a lack of plumbing (mostly ethnic minorities), all while the ruling Mafia collects yachts and private jets, and launches wars.
I’m not saying there isn’t wealth inequality elsewhere, but how about a bit of perspective here. Russia cannot actually conscript too many ethnic Russians or use them as cannon fodder, since that is the only ethnicity in Russia that matters politically, since they are the middle class. Instead they send the colonized people, who happen to be those who shit in holes for a lack of plumbing.
Poor people are overrepresented in the army? No way!
It’s a conscript army. They shouldn’t be.
You say that, but conscription always has exceptions, which usually include having an important job or going to university, which would presumably skew the result towards more poor people in the army. There’s also corruption of course.
How were their ethnic Russians fine when this shit was happening?
I’d ask you to cite your sources but this is all sensationalized. Also, nice summary on Bandera, and the Azov fighters everyone keeps shuffling around to parliaments and fundraisers.
If you’re all so blood thirsty go put some skin in the game.
Do you believe the Ukrainian army started shelling Donetsk without any reason?
You mean the US backed, far-right led coup?
No I mean armed insurrection taking over government buildings at gunpoint.
I don’t know what country you’re from but I don’t think there are many that are going to keep the kids gloves on for long in such a situation
Yes, when there was insurection in France and the Paris Commune was created, the government sent the army and killed everyone.
It was a bad thing when France did it, and it was also a bad thing when Ukraine did it. Monarchists and fascists are just equally disgusting.
Yeah I’m sure if you go through human history you can find some insurrections you support and others you don’t :)
Perhaps you’ll want to pick another example though, as this particular one was started because their government capitulated to a foreign invader while Parisians wanted to fight. So just a little bit of irony there
