Obviously the loss of life was terrible. People in my town died in the Twin Towers.
But I grew up mostly with American propoganda. I didn't know that the US had a long history of overthrowing governments in the Middle East and South America, and generally meddling in their affairs.
Not to mention trading Oil with corrupt Arab leaders who hold their countries hostage.
There is not an equivalence between the bad behvaior of the American and Russian state. I'd say Russians are worse in some ways, and Americans are worse in other ways -- largely because Americans are more powerful and influential.
So I'm basically agreeing with your argument, although I don't think it's "fair" for the people to suffer (e.g. all the people who died in 9/11). However Americans also have to realize that we largely haven't faced any consequences as people, except a few outliers of terrorist attacks.
(throwaway since I usually don't comment about politics)
I'm sorry, but this is whataboutism in its full glory.
The US has a free press, and its unfortunate history of overthrowing or supporting governments was and is well documented by the press and by historians in the United States. This documentation and publication resulted in many public scandals, lawsuits, and public intrigue, particularly through the 1960s to 1980s when the US's activities in this regard were perhaps that their peak. The resulting history is taught in universities and in elementary schools across the USA.
Now, there are well-known political parties or other people with a vested interest in spinning things in their own way, as is the case in any country, but if you think the United States press is anything like the press in Russia, or that its public is anywhere as ignorant of the facts as the public in Russia and similar countries, or if you felt you were unaware of the US history in this regard while it was going on, then you perhaps led a sheltered life. But it wasn't for lack of trying on part of the US press.
> I'm sorry, but this is whataboutism in its full glory.
Dismissing every argument with whataboutism seems to be flavour of the day, even when it is not whataboutism.
I lived during most of the period discussed by the GP. Everything from the Bay of Pigs to supporting the Shah to Iran Contra to the invasion of Grenada was well covered and well criticized in the US press. And the US invasion of Iraq was highly criticized in the US press even as the US government was facing an uphill battle to convince the world that it was proper by brandishing fake bottles of poison at the UN.
The US has done a lot of bad stuff. But claiming that the press just went along with it is historical revisionism, full stop.
That's even ignoring the fact that the Press itself is a propaganda tool for the US military-industrial complex, while steeping in biases of its own.
You're welcome to live in your own bubble of facts.
My point is, even those russians who know the situation well on the level of knowledge, could be emotionally detached and think that's just how the world works - but now that they see unprecedented response, it can sink in emotionally that their government has really done something terrible.
but when Apple Pay stops working, when costs skyrocket the blame will be on companies and on the west
take it from ex-Russian
The other half knows better, but also knows better than to talk about what they know publicly. Which is how Russia differs from the West.
The struggle is real (TM).
In other words, he was tolerated with some approval. Not much thought was given to the trade-offs and some goodwill was assumed when these were made.
This approval is still there, but now it hinges on keeping masses fed with propaganda bullshit, to keep them believing that their fight (and suffering) is for the right cause. But when your life comforts take a nosedive, it will work only for so long.
So pulling a rug from under the unwashed gray masses is the exactly right thing to do in this situation. It's literally the only thing that could shake them off their consumerist nirvana, force to look around and realize how much they willingly exchanged in past 20 years for something that not only wasn't guaranteed, but could also be completely taken away on a very short notice.
Maybe in your circle.
You should open Odnoklassniki for a change. Or any propaganda website that gets tens of millions of readers per day. And those who know the truth would never open that because there is zero pieces of truth in them.
As for western media, while no doubt less manipulated than Russian media, I don’t think it is safe to assume that western media is above manipulating public opinion to suit their agenda.
For example, I find it curious how little coverage the Ukraine-Russian conflict has received by western media until last week when this conflict has been a hot war since 2014.
Even here in Lithuania we got quite a few people eating up Russian propaganda and supporting Putin. I’ve no doubts it works even better in Russia.
Any media is biased. That’s how humans operate. The key is to watch different sources. And don’t get into „both sides have some truth“ BS. No, sometimes one side is flat out lying. But IMO it’s important to understand the other side narrative to understand their logic.
Here in Lithuania we got non-stop coverage of Ukraine since 2014. But I’m sure we get no coverage on stuff that is far away and public doesn’t care much.
It is easy to claim that sanctions against the US would have been legitimate when it is clear to most that they would have had little to no meaningful impact.
Now, just china imposing sanctions, would seriously fuck with US economy. Add on EU to that, and the situation would be pretty bad for americans.
* There are a lot of Indians openly support Putin. I guess there is an excuse to justify the invasion because Russia is not the first one doing that.
* Inside China there are a lot of debate. Russians invasion obviously breaks the international law. But if US did the same thing in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria ...(Let's not debate if US conducted good invasion to avoid to going to rabbit hole), also indirectly caused humanity disaster and refugees, why put Russia in a different standard?
Not making judgement of which is correct or wrong, just saying it's difficult to convince certain population if different standards were applied.
An area with a minority, self declared independence, minority and majority fighting every now and then, and then the "outside player" deciding to attack the whole country to "protect the minority".
For us in the balkans, america has always been a bigger threat to peace (and still is), especially after having plane fly above our roofs to bomb a country 200miles away, and not that long ago, we were still a same country.
In 2001 I don't even think I had a cellphone, we didnt have social media like we do now, the only source of news was the News Paper and TV.
If it happened now we would be blastered on twitter with videos / photos of it happening in real time like we are know. Much more aware of war crimes happening.
We can't change what happened in the past but I would like to think we can change the future, and Iraq doesn't happen again.
(I was living in NZ at the time still at school when 9 11 happened)
Maybe the next US war will be different ? I doubt it. US propaganda makes Russian propaganda look like amateur hour. Stuff that doesn't fit the mainstream narrative will be shutdown hard, while stuff that fits it will be amplified continuously.
But this is the start of the war, and there is A LOT of propaganda everywhere... everyone in the west is trying to show russia as losing everywhere, while they're conquering basically everything, on the other hand, they say that russians have destroyed whole cities, and only two short clips of the same building are showed, and now fearmongering like this reuters article.
I live in the balkans, and (obviously) I'm against any kind of war... but what putin is doing is no different than americans choosing a random middle eastern country (or even yugoslavia in 1999), and destroying the fuck out of it... but somehow it's different when americans do it.
Ps. A lot of people left RT because of it's propaganda and it's idiocracies even before the ban.
It doesn't matter that they left, the problem is the lack of free speech, because RT was the only medium that reported some things that most european newshouses avioided.
Obviously RT is displaying propaganda now, but so is everyone else, sadly.
I mean I'm ultimately against banning media, I linked to RT a few days ago to make a point about the propaganda they spread, back at the time of the Iraq War I was a huge Jon Stewart fan and watched him every night just crap on that bad ol' media using clips from the media and you can't really do that effectively while banning that same media. However, I've got to say, I don't think banning American Media in the early Bush era would have been a preposterous idea. I mean at the end of the day the US media succeeded in selling that war to the "coalition of the willing". US war propaganda is probably more dangerous than Russian war propaganda because it's more sophisticated in the way it manufactures consent and has this veneer of journalistic freedom.
[1] A wiki article that summarizes popular criticisms of US media from this time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War
Depends on if there's another incident akin to 9/11. Right now, if you tried to run the Iraq playbook again it would fail. But if something major happens which makes the US populace feel insecure, that could change.
I do think that there's a lesson in how difficult it would be to actually change the minds of Putin supporters in how slow the US reassessment of Iraq has been.
> US propaganda makes Russian propaganda look like amateur hour.
That's because US government narratives get continually sharpened and refined against the grindstone of challenges from the free press. This is different from countries where the government shuts down the press, such as Russia where the ridiculous canard that Ukraine needs to be "denazified" actually flies.
How can we let more average Russian citizens have access to real facts? It's now a crime in Russia to publish 'lies" about the Russian army. It's hard. And it's even harder because any information you manage to smuggle through is always tainted by coming from the corrupt west.
Just thinking aloud: what if the information reaching Russians does not come from the west but from other countries, all other countries, the global south, the far east? They can't be all corrupted by the west, can they?
Evidently you didn't want to see.
Apart of breaking a new world record in number of people participating, they were a total lose of time.
All the opposition to a regime gathering together in a street, so can be conveniently netted and arrested like a school of fishes, is just making the life much easier for dictatorships
* Make life unpleasant enough for the oligarchs that they replace Putin with someone less intent on ruining the nice thing they had going.
* Handicap Russia's ability to wage war. This includes eliminating their ability to buy supplies and destroying their morale.
It's the second goal that is, in my mind, the motivation for the economy-destroying sanctions.
This should be and opportunity to catalogue just exactly who the oligarchs are and what are their assets and how are they affected.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/11/politics/executive-order-...
So any hit to a Russian Oligarch can eventually lead to a personal hit to Putin.
However, with all the resources of an entire nation under his singular pudgy fist, im sure he has plenty of shell-assets all across the west.
Also, ne thing we are not talking about is how the Russian mafia is profitting.
There is a huge Russo-Israeli mafia (speocifically in NYC (Kutchner fam)) and they apparently own a ton of real estate in NYC. This is who co-opted 1980s Dnald Trump...
If you arent familiar with this part of history, its been well hidden - but the Russo-Israeli Mafia in NYC is powerful. Follow the money and all that...
The human cost of all of this is going to result in a shitstorm of suffering on the part of young russian women as human trafficking is going to spike in the next ~18 months.
But if we still fear the atomic war, he can still threatens Europe with that.
There’s no defence against submarine based warheads; enough will get through.
It’s the reason that NATO isn’t going establish a no fly zone over Ukraine. They know it too.
The guy is 70 years old. An old, lonely, bitter man. His wife left him in 2013 and his kids are far away from him. All his Wealth is blocked, he will never be able to enjoy his life outside of his little empire. He has nothing to loose.
He could choose the bunker, but maybe he decides to bring the whole world with him. And if he decided already, nothing that we do, will make him happy. We are just deciding to die without even a fight.
The song that describes Putin right now:
"I am alone, this bitter man that I've become Hold my breath, laid to rest Drown in my tears, there's nothing left of me I am alone, the angry man upon his throne I can't pretend, the great descent Take my hand until the end You see me on the horizon I am the air you breathe I sold my soul to the seven seas Condemned and lost, pulled off course I will never leave, I'm always yours"
Any given day - Bitter Man
I can’t see what he has to gain from this war. There’s no upside for him.
All I can think is that he’s got something like Parkinson's, knows he’s on the way out and just wants throw his weight around one last time.
Honestly though your guess is as good as mine.
Cornering a dictator with a nuke is the stupidest foreign policy I can think of.
So, you can try to claim that Russia doesn't have oligarchs, but if they exist you can't say that they don't run the country.
EDIT: For example, if the country is run by the military as you say, then the top leaders of the military would make up the oligarchy and each of them would be an oligarch.
I'm unsure how any dictator could run a country in the absence of some form of supporting oligarchy.
Wonder who are the oligarchs of USA by that definition?
An American billionaire is a successful businessman. A Russian billionaire is an oligarch.
He has had all the time in the world to insulate himself and plan exactly for that situation. I bet he doesn't even come in contact in person with anyone he doesn't know from the Soviet days at this point and the people he does are probably guilty of all kinds of things themselves if Putin was done away with.
Russians have to decide: do you want to continue living in peace with the rest of the world, or not. In the former case, retake control of your country and stop invading, raping and murdering Ukrainian civilians.
Even if some might want it to go further, it won't, because the coalition will not hold. If Putin stops the war and pulls back to pre-invasion boundaries, the group of countries imposing sanctions will not continue to hold out for Putin's ouster in addition.
An outright revolution by the Russian people is not necessary, though we might hope for unrest which degrades Russia's ability to wage war. The suffering of Russia's common citizens isn't desirable. But it can be justified, since Ukrainian citizens have it far worse.
Americans about Russian wars: 'the average Joes need to go out to the streets and bring Putin down'
Many other countries escaped from Russian influance thanks to mass demonstration (Poland, East Germany, ex USSR nations).
It is not easy, but there is not other way. Only Russian can dethrone Putin, no one else.
Furthermore Maidan had assistance from the US. No such thing exists in Russia.
And yes, they don't risk 3-15 years of jail. They have hundreds of times higher chance to die.
But they don't use it as an excuse.
You sure? Or just speculate to support your point?
The only small numbers are russian army that wants to take a 44 mil country with weapons, cities, etc by their demotivated 150k troops that don't have the slightest clue how to fight.
Not by accident, or a rogue element, but purposefully.
When was the last time the US jailed, not by a mistake in justice but on purpose, all who dared speak out about her actions? And killed them when possible?
Many reading the above will say "But this one time...", yet that is the point. It is an aberration for such things in the US, not the norm. Not the standard.
Russia is not even remotely the same. It is a dictatorship, lead by a single, non-elected, blood thirsty, malicious murderer.
The whataboutisms are so weak, and paper thin here, it is absurd.
I'm against war in Ukraine and against Russian dictators, but Putin doesn't want to never leave, he wants to install pro-russian government, like USA does in attacked countries. But yes, we didn't hear about slaughtering civilians in our west-centric media, only from those russian propagandists like Assange and Snowden.
> When was the last time the US jailed, not by a mistake in justice but on purpose, all who dared speak out about her actions? And killed them when possible?
Like with Snowden, Assange and journalists involved in panama papers or Epstein case (who hanged himself in constantly observed cell)?
What is different from my perspective about Russia: USA is still one of the best economies in the world, still have democratic rulers where you can change them and wants other countries to become like it (which means better than their current state). Russia just wants other countries to work for Russian might. We had anecdote in Poland, that USSR is not that bad, because it takes coal from us for free, but in exchange we build ships for them for free. So, while many Poles would not really fight that much if USA wanted to take over the country, we would (and do alredy in Ukraine) oppose Russia with all we have.
I say this as a US citizen hasn't improved of any of the US invasions and wars in my lifetime.
The idea that bombing and invading Syria Iraq and Afghanistan were somehow defensive wars is a joke
This isn't an ethnic genocide. Had Putin wanted to kill civilians you wouldn't have 100s of deaths but millions like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just like the US he is looking to overturn the government.
The reality is that some people in Ukraine (Donbas and large portion of the East) do support Russia. Truth is never black and white.
However, we should not forget why this is so.
During WWII and after WWII, the Russians have forcibly moved a very large number of people from the territory that is now in Ukraine, to various unpleasant locations in the Soviet Union, mostly in Siberia.
Then they have brought Russian colonists, who were settled usually in the houses from which the natives had been evicted.
The descendants of those Russians brought in Ukraine, mostly by Stalin, have obviously not been happy with the independence of Ukraine, when they have become a 2nd rate nationality from a previously privileged one, like also the Russian colonists from other former parts of the Soviet Union, e.g. the Baltic countries or Georgia.
I agree that the Russians, now in minority, have their rights like anyone else, and they should not be persecuted by the new majority, but at the same time I do not believe that people who have so recently occupied by force the land on which they live now have the moral right to request "democratically" that their present country should become again a part of the empire which gave them houses and jobs, but those houses and jobs were provided by what was stolen from the former inhabitants.
Is this some grim joke? Had putin wanted to kill civilians, he could use nuclear weaponry in various forms to kill billions.
But putin, like everyone in this world, is limited by various factors, like army morale, or the patience of its neighbors. The economical situation of russia is terrible, but it can always get worse, and making a full scale attack against civilians, would end up with even more dramatic response like even China sanctioning them, or EU sanctioning them completely with complete disregard to own economy (no gas) or some kind of alliance actually attacking a nuclear empire for the first time in history (not counting the Japanese who didn't expect USA to develop the technology so fast), or... Simply putin would be killed by some highly ranked officer.
> Just like the US
What is it with all this symmetrism on HN? putin invaded Ukraine without casus belli.
I don't think we can find a diplomatic solution unless we truly try to understand the enemy. Saying he did this with no reason doesn't help this.
There's always a reason for any war. Bush had a reason to invade Iraq after all, didn't he? What was the real reason?
Putin views this as a proxy war between US and Russia. Cuban missile crisis was similar: US placed nukes in Turkey, too close for Russia's liking. Russia said they'd place nukes in Cuba. After US threatened WW3 a deal was reached and both sides pulled their nukes.
We could have achieved a similar deal and saved countless lived. But for whatever reason nobody wanted to negotiate with Putin. That would be fine if NATO would actually protect Ukraine instead of leaving them to fight on their own.
Actually, I tried to understand Pooking by inducing paranoia in myself. When I did that, all his actions become quite logical. He sees RF as victim of evil NATO. Any action of NATO is a step in evil plan to destroy RF. RF is so smart, so they see the evil plan of NATO, while others are blind, or pretend that they doesn't understand, or are playing their roles in the evil plan. Your text is quite logical when I'm switching to «paranoia» mode.
He wants to keep control over Europe and that would have been an instant loss as soon as production went live.
I believe the takeover over Crimea was primarily for this. The rest was a result of what he thought "preparation" to cement commodities/gas within his influence.
He's a bit jealous of China too. Russia has all this territory and doesn't even remotely gets the respect he screams for, at least he isn't getting it from the west.
It's a tiny man with a big ego.
> UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the war as illegal, saying in a September 2004 interview that it was "not in conformity with the Security Council"
However, I find comparing Ukraine to Iraq simply unconvincing. The latter had a recent history of aggression [2], which largely fueled the suspicion about the "weapons of mass destruction".
Comparing saddam husein [3] to Volodymyr Zelenskyy also fails spectacularly.
The comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis is a miss too: in Ukraine the opposite happened, the nuclear weaponry was removed which was the Ukraine's part of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances [4]. However russia doesn't respect its part:
> 1. The Russian Federation [...] respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
That's why I call it symmetrism: on one side there's an aggressive country, run by a tyrant with proven crimes against humanity, on the other a democratic country that wants to be free and independent and choose its allies. But putin considers it aggression.
It's one thing if it's a valid casus belli - people thinking so I consider to be unreasonable.
Another thing is, that putin calls a lot of things an aggression against russia. Recently he called sanctions such aggression. So now pretty much the entire world, in this madman's mind, has attacked russia and *IF* we accept the casus belli used against Ukraine, we have to accept a cassus belli against any other country putin attacks next. In other words, the idea behind cassus belli corrupted to the point where it's useless. It's like defining "cold" as colder that a quadrillion °C - now everything is cold, even the center of the Sun. The word became useless.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Saddam_Hussein [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
Here’s the situation and the order of events that led to this invasion:
Pro-Russian government was in power pre-2014.
Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.
This caused the mostly ethnic Russian region of Donbass to declare independence and break away from Ukraine, resulting in war.
Russia tacitly supported them, but did not recognise them.
The Minsk Accords was supposed to end the fighting in 2015, but Ukraine has not lived up to the agreement.
Ukraine has been shelling and bombing the region on and off for 8 years now.
Putin finally decided enough is enough and recognised the region as independent.
He sent troops into the area to protect it and his invasion of Ukraine is meant to destroy the Ukrainian military to prevent them from attacking Donbass.
Now its up to you whether you think Putin is sincere or he's just using it as an excuse to grab Ukrainian territory. Geopolitics is complicated and believing anyone is innocent in geopolitics is ludicrous at best.
Sounds about right.
> Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.
That's already where the chain breaks. Ukrainian people, not military, overthrew the government. Of course that can be argued, how do we know that - did the majority agree with the protesters? You could make a poll, but to be sure the results aren't manipulated, you have to make a referendum... Or just an election, in which who was elected? Did Putin send observers to control the elections, did he point out the problems with the system? No? Well, that's where this narration breaks. The world is full of such subtle solutions like election monitoring; it's ridiculous to claim benevolence but skip those solutions and go straight to violence.
historically, a majority of Americans supported both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when they started, and public opinion did not turn against them for several years, and even then it was not an overwhelming majority.
Obama campaigned on the folly of those wars but chose to stay involved because it was believed by many that some level of success could yet be achieved for the people in those countries, who were in many cases partnering with the US.
Nevertheless, the eventual unpopularity of those wars did in fact lead to "regime change" in the US, because the US is a (somewhat) functioning democracy.
Americans are in fact at this very moment preventing the US from engaging in this war in Ukraine.
The US getting more directly involved in Ukraine was never a likely outcome, for reasons that have nothing to do with American public opinion. Throughout the Cold War, both the USA and the USSR made a policy of never directly engaging in conflict on the same soil, because the risk of it escalating into a nuclear war was just too great. Instead, they would fight proxy wars where at most one country was a direct combatant, and the other country merely provided material support to an ally.
We can expect the war in Ukraine to continue following the same playbook, and for the same reason. And other NATO countries will also avoid sending their own troops into Ukraine for fear of creating a slippery slope that pulls NATO's nuclear powers into the war.
America had its own share of propaganda, that brought popular support for those wars... some even very fake one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony America also had hippies and other anti-war groups, so the situation is not that much different.
Doing the same to Russia should be our target. If we cannot end the totalitarian regime without starting World War III, we can still neutralize it as a threat to the rest of the world.
So, we should give them weapons?
> disorganised and divided
You think that overthrowing their government would work? Maybe with some "special military operation" perhaps?
> "we're afraid to confront your bully, he's just too strong and cruel for us."
Or maybe - we have a rule where we don't try to assasinate leaders unless strictly necessary. And before you say about Iraq and nin Laden - that was USA operation, not NATO. But I still think that would be best solution which minimises losses in people. But try to do this, even bin Laden was not found in one week, it would be much harder to find Putin in some vault. Plus, after he is killed, there will be some other former KGB agent to replace him.
And yet, here we are. Maybe this is the rule that needs to change. How many of these wars will we see in the coming decades if we simply start assassinating the leaders of aggressive countries?
I understand there are often power vacuums and things can be worse afterward, but maybe a good, 20-year run of assassinating aggressive world leaders would lead us to a better place.
Why is it always the average Joe that has to pay his life for the leaders?