Can we stop comparing Putin to Hitler (and calling this war a genocide while we're at it). Words have meaning, you can be a piece of shit blood thirsty autocrat without being Hitler or nazi, you can kill civilians without it being a genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil
Also > "...solution of the Ukrainian question..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution
The US had plenty of "military operations"/"special operations" and "solutions" for Iraq and Afghanistan, they killed plenty of civilians yet they're no Nazi and the president isn't Hitler.
This is hardly unprecedented in Russian-Ukrainian relations, even in the last century; in a 1953 speech, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide" and foundationally established international law against it, called the Holodomor and post-Holodomor Soviet control of Ukraine "the classic example of Soviet genocide ... the destruction of the Ukrainian nation. [I]f the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priests, and the peasants can be eliminated, Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it ... which, in short, made it a nation rather than a mass of people."
There was the bombing of the children's hospital, which may turn out to be a war crime, but I don't see how anyone can know whether it was intentional. And if collateral civilian deaths are equated with genocide, then what should we call the US wars in the middle east?
almost there keep going.
They haven't setup the gas chambers, I give you that, but the future of Ukrainian identity if Russia prevails is grim.
They pound the cities until there is nothing left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994–1995)
What's happening in Ukraines right now is nothing in comparison, and even the Grozny siege isn't considered a genocide.
afaik Kharkiv is the most badly bombed city right now and it's nowhere close to Grozny (yet?)
I know everyone is emotional and outraged, it's not an outrage competition though, using big (and invalid) words doesn't help
Kharkiv itself: https://tinyurl.com/nh4kwymp. It is way larger than Grozny so there is more buildings left to pound.
From that perspective it seems apt. Also, unless OP edited their post, you're the only one to bring up genocide or the comparison to Hitler.
I put it in parenthesis because of that, but I've seen both the Hitler comparison and genocide accusation popping up hundreds of times in the last few days, usually by the same people.
We get it, Putin is bad, and Hitler is the baddest of the bad guys, but still, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We can call him Putinéon or Putin Khan while we're at it
That's the History of Europe since there are people in Europe though. I don't get why people get so fixated on Hitler to be honest. The Russians fought him in ww2 do you think they identify as him ? Why not compare Putin to Stalin ? Soviets also invaded Ukraine.
I think the comparison is much dumber than that. People think Putin is bad, they also think Hitler is the badest of the bad, and that's enough for them to start calling him "Putler". Meanwhile you have literal neo nazis fighting for Ukraine against Russians right now, ironic.
- no opposition parties at home
- few leaders that oppose him get killed
- all protests are quickly ended by the police (brown shirts)
- uses fascism to expand his country: outside threat, we must defend ourselves, focus is on the nation, not the individuals
- uses rich private businessmen to further his goals, when this fails he just nationalizes what he needs
- boosts military spending and might
- keep expanding territory and keeps expanding control
He is different than from the previous, communist dictators in that he is alone at the levers. The high ranking commies were able to remove insane autocrats (Khrushchev), nobody in Russia can remove Putin now.
Putin also seems to be bent on returning to a former empire (see Third Reich comparisons).
Edit: People on this thread seem very confused as to what the word 'genocide' means. Here is the definition from un.org.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
There is no evidence of that happening. Yes, Russia has been committing atrocities. Not all atrocities are genocide.
I think the definition of genocide is very clear and after watching the daily footage from Ukraine, it's quite difficult to make the argument that there isn't intent to wipe out a large portion of the population systematically. Yeah, their names aren't in a spreadsheet maybe, yet, but this is just beginning.
Putin invasion is illegal, many war crimes were committed, but it's nowhere close to a genocide. What word will you use for real genocides ?
> and after watching the daily footage from Ukraine
That's the main issue with this war, people are fed clips after clips of bombings videos, crying civilians, dead soldiers in blood pools &c. It's an information war just as much as it is a regular war
If we had the same level of publicity for the invasion or Irak or Afghanistan would you have condemned the US of genocide ? Many more civilians died. Would we have banned the US of swift ?
What about the siege of Sarajevo ? genocide committed by nato ?
It's a war, did people forget about them ? Civilians always suffer, either directly or indirectly (starvation, exposure, &c.)
Unplug, stop watching war porn, read experts reports if you want to keep up to date, don't fall for the news cycle/social media bait. There are 30 or 40 other wars going on in the world right now, all with civilians getting killed, if you want to be outraged every single second of your life feel free to look them up. There even is a real genocide going on for the last 10 years or so in Darfur, have you heard of it ? it's not making the news, 100k to 400k people were killed though
> I think the definition of genocide is very clear
It is, and no serious source calls this a genocide...
Again, incorrect. The Ukrainian government has called this genocide. Are they not a serious source? The UN has also had at least one hearing so far to determine if there is genocide happening in Ukraine right now, which, I'll note, the Russians did not show up for. [0]
I'm going to go ahead and stop replying to you at this point. You've made a number of assumptions about my level of engagement and education on the topic that are incorrect, and I don't feel like we are going to get anywhere.
At any rate, insisting that the systematic carpet bombing of cities and murder of fleeing civilians _isn't_ genocide, seems like a questionable hill to die on.
[0] - https://www.dw.com/en/russia-refuses-to-attend-un-court-hear...
And Russia says there is no war... don't you think Ukraine and Russia stances might be slightly biased ? If we're arguing with that level of bad faith I agree that it won't go anywhere.
> insisting that the systematic carpet bombing of cities and murder of fleeing civilians _isn't_ genocide, seems like a questionable hill to die on.
It's a warcrime, it's not a genocide, I'll die on that hill, words have meaning. Otherwise every single conflict is a genocide, but then the word loses its meaning entirely so why not stop using it ?
Again, it's a question of scale and intent. Putting every single jew you find in trains for death camps is a genocide, killing every single Vietnamese you find is a genocide, killing a few civilians while bombing a city at war is a war crime.
The point when it enters the definition of the word....
> the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
We're not talking about a few hundred or thousands civilians hit by bombs, we're talking organised and methodical wiping of entire villages/cities/regions
The jewish holocaust was a genocide, the Khmer Rouge were conducting a genocide, the Turkish committed a genocide against Armenians, &c. The scale and goals are completely different, what's happening in Ukraine is a war, it's ugly, it's revolting, it's disgusting, it's still "just" a war.