If some other nation had done a similar air strike which killed innocent civilians, there would be sanctions one after another. E.g., Sanctions were imposed on Belarus just for landing the plane with a fake hijacking plot. The same was done by American gov on President of Bolivia Eva Morales due to the possibility that Snowden was on the flight.
So why would the US lie about this? I’m very open to ideas - I’m not one to trust the government - but I just don’t see any motive here. It seems like an honest warning that Russia is going to lie and try to make it seem like Ukraine attacked them.
And I agree these sort of lies have been done before, and they’re still being done. They’re used to justify a lot of US military actions which are unjustifiable (e.g. drone strikes). But the motive here is just not that clear to me because we already have enough of an excuse to do whatever we want to Russia over Ukraine.
Other people know there was a color revolution in Kiev that ousted a democratically elected president who was, just as Ukraine historically has been, aligned to Russia and put in place someone else who was completely against an alignment with Russia and went straight to alignment to the west. Then Russia invaded. To forget all this you need some serious cognitive dissonance since it's essentially the Cuba crisis of the 60s except with inverted roles.
So no, the US has nothing to justify what it has been doing since the crisis began in 2013. That is why it needs to keep making up excuses, they're meant for US people and its allies' people to believe and support action against Russia, by driving the narrative that poor ukrainians are being oppressed. No, the ones oppressed are the ones who voted Yanukovych and had their democratically elected representative forcefully removed from power.
1) US, presumably through the CIA, supports a color revolution in Ukraine to oust a democratically elected leader.
2) The newly installed leader, presumably with CIA influence, is markedly more favorable to the west.
3) Russia invades and occupies Crimea. Russia sends troops into eastern Ukraine.
4) (Potential future) Russia sends troops into other areas of Ukraine.
Did I get that right?
If so, what are the justifications for (3) & (4)? That Russia is upholding the rightful choice of Ukrainian democracy?
You mean just like Russia recently did in Africa?
>On 16 and 17 January 2022 at least 65 civilians were killed by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group supported by armed forces in Aïgbado and Yanga villages near Bria in the Central African Republic during operation against rebels from Coalition of Patriots for Change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%AFgbado_massacre
These "mercenaries" have just been relocated by Russia to the Ukrainian border.
Has the world already forgot the daily Russian bombings in Syria a few years ago that killed thousands of civilians? Russia and Russian-armed Syrian groups were responsible for the vast majority of casualties in Syria.
Context matters.
Not to mention, the "Russian bounty hunters" story that was completely fake.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-learning-they-s...
The Russian made up story where troops from Ukraine killed children came days earlier.
Did they try to hide this information?
Belarus.