You can see in the replies here and everywhere else that the people want war. Because surely this time it is different. Governments and media made the EU citizens ready for war in the span of a few weeks. It"s truly scary.
Most people do not want war, but we have the war regardless, it has been imposed on us. In such situation, people want to keep the war as far away as possible. Hence support of Ukraine.
I'm talking about threatening nukes for helping the victim to defend. Denying existence of nation and its state. Russian TV debates with Solovyov. Religious leaders sanctioning military aggression.
None of that is civilized, but however, that is not the end of it. Covert operations blowing up arm depots in other countries. Financing anti-system helpers and being successful in finding traitors who sell classified information. Russian government having ambitions in toppling post-Cold War status quo in Europe. All this induces massive militarization in Europe, which will get stronger as Russia comes closer.
I don't understand you. Russia was finally helping the victims -- DNR and LNR -- to defend themselves. And the West is helping the bully to regain its power over victims.
Russia was not in any recognized position to help militarily any hypothetical political group in Ukraine. Ukraine was not in war with any other group than Russia. Remember, money and propaganda are a fair game, weapons to helpers and invasion are not.
The European Court of Human Rights has determined that there were no such things as DNR and LNR; they were a Russian military ruse from the get-go to justify the invasion of Ukraine.
Facts are facts. Russian representatives were given an opportunity to demonstrate how LNR and DNR were domestic separatists and not members of Russian military, and they completely failed to do so. The facts against them were overwhelming.
As to the ECHR itself, it is one of the most respected courts on the planet.
In a country where the courts themselves are corrupt. See the 6 part Dutch documentary called “De Villamoord” wherein 9 innocent people were framed and jailed. One committed suicide. At the end of every episode they post the names of the two responsible people. One of which was the former head of the organised crime unit in Arnhem. Now she is the president of the court of Maastricht. And it’s not the only time she had perverted the course of justice.
One guy wrote a book about it. Within days the book was pulled from the shelves and he was fined 17,000 euros. Now he won’t talk about it with anyone.
And in the Netherlands it’s written into law that all government officials can lie under oath without fear of being prosecuted for perjury (New addition around 2020, the law itself said anyone in a profession that has an obligation to secrecy, which is all of Dutch government these days. The real reason for the law). Yes that’s right, and I have a letter from the attorney general stating explicitly that perjury doesn’t apply to prosecutors.
I want the war in Ukraine to end, and. There are two options: to let Putin get what he want and risk my country being next, and to help Ukraine. Do you have other suggestions? Of course I would love it if Russia tomorrow decided to say "whoops sorry that was an accident" and retreated, but I find this highly unlikely.
I appreciate the downvotes, but I'm honestly looking forward to hearing a better alternative (than helping Ukraine financially and with weapon shipments). I imagine people expressing "anti-war" opinions live far away from the frontline, don't have to worry about their country being next, and it's easy for them to say "just end the war". But maybe I'm wrong. So please when downvoting also spare a minute to share what your preferred solution is.
I didn't downvote. There are alternative approaches. For example, U.S. can cease support as loss of Ukraine is not really a big problem for them, as long as Russia stays in non-NATO countries; Europe+UK can then say we won't be able to keep this together without U.S. and say Ukrainians, if you want, make a deal with Russia, and who wants to flee, you're welcome in Europe. Russia gets Ukraine and the small part of population there unable to leave or those with russian-compatible thought processes. No further war necessary for some time (in other words, we get some pause, which we will use to arm the f up).
This scenario sucks, shows weakness, it has its own risks, russian-controlled Ukraine is a big security and money problem for neighbouring states, and is not necessary while Ukraine can fight with western weapons, and thus nobody relevant wants to try it as of yet. But anti-war naives do not think that far ahead.
If Ukraine runs out of soldiers, or U.S. backs out, some variant of this may however get on the table and we will be subjected to massive militarization.
Hitler conquered several countries in under a year and there were no signs of that slowing down, Russia has been at a stand still in Ukraine for over 2 years now. Current war is closer to ww1 than ww2.
And why was Hitler's Germany able to conquer several countries and kill millions? Because big powers felt "we're afraid of repetition of the 1st war" and "peace in our time" and "let's make deal with him againt the others". Those policies caused utter disaster.
When you find a scorpion at your doorstep, even if it talks smoothly, and proposes to share the room as mutually advantageous, you don't negotiate with it.
Oh, now I see what meant by "with russian-compatible thought processes". Dehumanizing other people by likening them to insects and attributing incompatible 'thought processes' sounds familiar. The last time the USSR lost 26 million people because of European invasion.
You misunderstood. I meant the dangerous poisonous nature of the scorpion, not that I hate the insect; I am fascinated by scorpions, but I don't bring them home. I can rephrase - when Russian state official is at your doorstep, and makes suggestions that part of your space will now be his, don't negotiate.
> The last time the USSR lost 26 million people because of European invasion.
No - it lost them because it allied with Hitler in destroying Europe as it existed then. From the Winter War against Finland, to invading Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to invading Poland with Hitler and jointly holding a victory parade as the rest of Europe watched in horror. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military...
USSR lost many people not only because of the German invasion, but also because they had a terrible leader who co-started WW II and misjudged Hitler. And Europe and America made sure USSR won that war.
Tell me, how long other countries on the European continent fought Nazis?
>Europe and America made sure USSR won that war
That's funny, almost all of Europe fought along with Nazi with small exceptions like Greeks. And no one in Europe was in position to "make sure the USSR won the war"
Europe was divided, we know that. My people fought both against USSR and together with it against Germans. History and its significance can't be explained in single historical essay, and it certainly should not be misused to advance one's poor argument.
'Helped a little bit' are the right words. And helped only out self-preservation fearing what would happen to them if the USSR loses and its resources become available to Nazis.
My impression is that they helped a lot: they supplied the USSR with trucks, jeeps, food, clothing, experts in industrial engineering, etc; their ships endured attacks by the German navy to deliver this aid to Soviet ports; their bombing campaigns had the opposite effect on Germany, i.e., to make manufactured goods and things like refined petroleum products a lot more scarce than they would otherwise be.
Yes, their campaign in Africa too. But compare that to 2/3 (or 4/5 depending on the source) [0] of total Nazi casualties that happened on the Eastern front and now it's not so much.
The assertion this thread is talking about is, "Europe and America made sure USSR won that war". How many casualties Europe and America took in the course of doing so is a separate question. The US and Britain had competent leaders and an advantageous strategic position, so they were able to make sure the USSR won the war at a cost of relatively few US and British casualties.
Helping isn't measured by numbers of killed Nazis. It was about massive material support of the USSR so it was able to fight the aggressor and kill so many Nazis. The West enabled that.
Here, from the bigshots from USSR:
"Khrushchev went further and admitted: “Several times I heard Stalin acknowledge [Lend-Lease] within the small circle of people around him. He said that . . . if we had had to deal with Germany one-to-one we would not have been able to cope because we lost so much of our country.”"
"Perhaps the last word should be left to Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who masterminded the Red Army victories. He admitted, in a bugged conversation in 1963, that without Lend-Lease the USSR “could not have continued the war”."
Not according to Comrades Stalin and Khrushchev, who were in a position to know about such things:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.
-- Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918–1945
