Russia is pretty clearly committing war crimes and directly targeting civilians, there is a lot of evidence for that.
To say that "Russia has no interest in massacring and torturing civilians" is a barefaced lie considering the numerous soldiers' testimonies to the opposite.
Two, how do you know the guy is actually a Russian soldier, how do you know he's telling the truth, how do you know he's free to tell the truth? You should be a little more skeptical of random videos posted online during a war. Both sides have been caught putting out blatantly fake propaganda.
Well, they don't have that as their end goal, just as the method of choice for accomplishing their real goal (capturing territories + forcing Ukraine to surrender). Because if they did, you are correct, that wouldn't make sense, since they could've just done it earlier.
Wiping out a country serves no purpose, no benefit, and attracts massive downsides all around. But harming them to the point where they would consider surrendering those territories and capitulating, that makes way more sense.
Horrific.
There are two kinds of people: those who had to deal with Russian military, and those who spout nonsense like the one above.
He says as they shell residential areas, hospitals, etc.
Edit: re "you are a fool" maybe tone down the personal attacks?
We have zero evidence of the military operating out of civilian infrastructure that doesn't come from Russia. We have independent evidence of the Russian military targeting civilian infrastructure which had zero military presence.
Hate to have to look at this kind of stuff, but a 61-day old account parroting Putin's propaganda points doesn't look credible per se.
https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/tje6...
I personally think - technically - that is a fair target in war / urban combat. But it's also incredibly dangerous and reckless to bomb such a huge building in a city. So there's basically no good rational here if the war itself is not justifiable.
In that instance (see link) "Israel bombs UN school in Gaza" doesn't sound very nice.
Certainly it is a fact that this is an illegal war which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians. Whether those deaths were, uh, "procedurally valid" is not really relevant.
> That is why not every Nazi officer was a war criminal, only the ones who committed war crimes, even though they were ultimately carrying out an illegal war of aggression.
Yes. Hopefully we'll be able to hold these Russian officers accountable. Though I think it's unlikely unless they slip up and travel to the wrong country where the United States and allies have enough sway to extradite and bring these criminals to trial.
Please don't spike the conversation.
2) Nobody said that historically, Russians have been perfectly rational. So whatever you think would or would not be appropriate is irrelevant, and in any case recorded facts about events that actually happened trump your feels about those events.
3) Russians may not even be in possession of neutron bombs suitable for ground delivery. The only ones they've had were installed in ABM systems and had a whopping 10 kt yield.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/putins-bombers-could-devastate-ukra...
That's what they're heading to now that their maskirovka of "liberating oppressed Russians" has failed.
You're gonna have to explain to me how that TV station in central Kyiv was killing Russian soldiers. Explain to me nice and slow. Or are Russian troops so incompetent that they mistake a TV tower for another target?
We know where the Russian troops are, maybe 50km north of Kyiv. None of them are in downtown Kyiv yet, and they certainly weren't there on March 1st (when this video was posted).
The Russian troops at the time were trying to take Hostomel Airport, a few dozen miles north of Kyiv at this time. So there's no military reason to destroy the TV station. It was clearly an attack on civilian infrastructure. (Military communications don't use TV Towers)
No, the TV tower wasn't hit on this video, you can really see it with your eyes. The shopping mall destroyed by Kinzhal was in fact the military base/ammunition store, and some local guy made a photos of GRADs in that base(he was caught and god knows what they did to him). The guys on Zmeiny Island never said "Fuck you, Russian warship" and never died, they just gave up.
But most of this propaganda is easily swallowed by public.
But sure, propaganda. The "tower was never hit", etc. etc. There's one side on this discussion who is consistently lying about the events, and its not the "Kyiv TV Tower was attacked" people.
upd: you would see the tower itself shackles somehow if it was hit. It don't
upd2: so who is lying on events picking angles?
The video is self evident and your discussion points do not meet my expectation of reasonable discussion.
An example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_the_Radio_Tele..., where there’s no agreement on whether that bombing in any form could have been justified.
“Our military leaders at NATO believe … that the Serb television is an essential instrument of Mr. Milosevic’s command and control. … It is not, in a conventional sense, therefore, a media outlet. That was a decision they made, and I did not reverse it.” - Clinton
The US and NATO were lavished with praise for their part in that war.
What was the Kyiv TV Tower broadcasting, that made it a legitimate military target?
Capt. America punching Hitler is propaganda. I happen to agree with it. You'll need to be specific with me. Not all propaganda is bad, and it takes particularly bad propaganda before I think that military action is required. Would you support say, hypothetical German Bombers attacking Marvel Comics over their depiction of Capt. America?
I think Bill Clinton is also a war criminal. The question is will you call him a war criminal or will you go quiet or bullshit an excuse for why it's ok when WE do it?
Edit : He never did call him a war criminal.
My issue is about whataboutism in general. If you're man-enough to admit the fault of the situation, then you've proven your point.
Whataboutism will disappear as soon as the perpetrators get punished. If a country does some awful things and walks away free and the world looks the other way it sets the example for others.
But a lot of Russian propaganda online is 'what about X? Let's ignore both X and Y'. It's just a distraction and fails to address the core point.
So I have no doubts that the R should an will be fixed and for good reasons. I am also pretty sure that X, Y and Z would continue do what they do and laugh all the way to the bank.
Because Slobodan Milosevic was committing genocide.
If you are suggesting Putin deserves similar praise for illegally using force in Ukraine, I’d like to ask why?
TV/radio controlled by the other side spread information against your interests. Taking over this is step 1. Controlling electrical power stations and resources are next.
There's more cultural significance to this object than there is practical military value. The broadcasts are being filmed on other buildings inside the city. The actual tower itself is a big landmark.
If you watch more carefully, you'll see a giant movie-like explosion which indicates that there was something very flammable in this area. Storage of gas? Some ammunition?
For a brief period of time, the warhead of a missile.
It was a ... a ... a Nazi transformer mecha in stealth mode! /s
And Russia is very obviously shelling entire cities indiscriminately, there is no possible way to claim this has a direct military purpose. Bombarding an entire city with artillery is a war crime.
It’s an illegal armed conflict, thus all use of force is illegal, even use of force on legitimate military targets is illegal.
> Do you really think Russia doesn't have the capability to just bomb central Kiev out of existence?
Capability? Maybe. The will? Absolutely not. Putin is no doubt a war criminal and despot, but: 1) he rightly fears potentially military response from the international community; 2) he has very practical considerations due to the close ties of the Russian and Ukrainian people, which goes directly to Putin’s propaganda that this isn’t war but a special military operation against a Nazi regime, he must at least try to balance his acts with his propaganda or lose support of his people and possibly his troops.
Knowing the real numbers it's impossible, but we can take the UN-provided numbers as a baseline:
> From 4 a.m. on 24 February 2022, when the Russian Federation's armed attack against Ukraine started, to 24:00 midnight on 22 March 2022 (local time), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 2,571 civilian casualties in the country: 977 killed and 1,594 injured. [1]
Let's double this number and assume 5000 civilian casualties.
The US estimates that between 2000-4000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. [2] This means that the number of military Ukrainian "casualties" (which includes wounded and not only killed), should be higher: let's take the middle of the range (3000) and double it to account for 6000 Ukrainian military casualties.
If you look at the ratio it's almost a 1:1 civilian to military casualties. Just for comparison:
> Figures by the Iraq Body Count from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013 indicate that of 174,000 casualties only 39,900 were combatants (Wikipedia)
This means that there are 134100 civilian and 39900 military casualties. This puts the ratio at 3.3.
This calculation is anything but scientific, but these are the only numbers we have at our disposal. (I would be interested if somebody has a better way to compute this estimate.)
Besides numbers, there are also military analysts that say this is not happening (deliberate targeting of civilians). One of them is working for the Pentagon, hardly an outlet for Russian propaganda:
> "I know it's hard ... to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is," says the DIA analyst. "But that's what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations." [3]
I don't really see what would be the edge for Putin in intentionally targeting civilians, when it's obvious this would be a PR nightmare.
Lastly, I just want to say that there are reports (mainly from Mariupol) of the Azov battalion using civilian infrastructure (e.g. schools) as military outposts, while leaving the civilians inside. These have not been widely circulated in the mainstream media and I haven't found a way to verify them myself (it's pretty much impossible), but I wouldn't put it past them to do something like that, because they have been shown (just read OHCHR reports) to be capable of really horrible atrocities.
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/ukraine-civi...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-death-toll-invas...
[3] https://www.newsweek.com/putins-bombers-could-devastate-ukra...
There were no kids there though.
I dont really see a problem with that personally.
The real winner is US. Europe will pay for this war by its' economy.
In general some countries in Europe, notably Germany, have been relying on the US and to a lesser extent France, UK and Poland to defend them from Russia. But recent events have caused a change in tack here.
The incompetence cuts both ways. They're unlikely to win a land war in Europe. But they're apparently happy to start wars they can't win.
Good point though! I hadn't thought of that.
If you paid any attention to recent weeks, it would have occurred to you that the rest of Europe would obliterate Russian forces if Russia dared to attack with its absolutely inept ground forces.
Also i'm not sure there is a chance for any Russian fighter to avoid getting hit by a Meteor, so i guess Russia would have to destroy Eu satellites and hope the US doesn't lend theirs?
Also i think Europe have more MICA-VF than Ukrainian had manpads. So the Russian would have to go ground-only. I don't think they have something as good as MICAVF to defend against let's say SCALP, so most of the artillery would have to stay under cover (and again, need to destroy EU satellites).
I'm pretty sure the fuel tech used in the Meteors could be used in AtS missiles too, and that would render any artillery useless as long as any EU satellites can discover the piece. Basically, mechanized infantery and tanks would have to be the way to go.
hmmm.
Given the petrodollar hypothesis for dollar dominance is a debunked myth, no. (TL; DR Oil is priced and trades in numerous currencies. America is not dependent on foreign oil. The global transaction volumes in oil, across currencies, pales next to total U.S. dollar volumes.)
We've in all but explicit name cancelled the deal with the House of Saud that created the petrodollar because petrodollars are no longer useful to us.
Saudi Arabia seems to be interested in trading oil in Yuan now [1], which would mark an enormous shift away from the petrodollar. And from one of the US' biggest oil trading partners, at that.
Does anyone with more context in the energy / geopolitical world care to add some color?
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-acceptin...
edit: add link, +" away from the petrodollar"
The only existential threat to the USD is an actual civil war in the United States. I don't even view cryptocurrency as a threat.
I also reject the notion that Ukrainians only fight because of romanticism or having been duped about their prospects. Plenty of what I've seen in their own messaging seems very aware, and like people fighting for their homes and way of life against harsh odds. Perhaps there are some who would fall under your characterization, but to generalize them all so you can wax armchair Foreign Affairs correspondent undermines your entire comment.
Also, I keep seeing these comments crop up. All manner of semi-literate arguments for why a country is better off to roll over and accept, in this case, Putin as their new overlord. It's always cloaked in the veneer of "regrettable truths if only all could see..." and a tone of reluctant pragmatism that's manufactured to a painful degree.
Propaganda doesn't kill tanks, planes, helicopters, and soldiers. Weapons do these things.
> The average Westerner and Ukrainian has an unrealistic idea of their prospect of victory, and an inflated sense of Russia's desires to commit cruel atrocities for the sake of it.
Putin has been arresting generals and intelligence personnel who had an unrealistic idea of their prospect for victory. Russian citizens have such an unrealistic idea of how the war is going that they can't even state how many have died or that there is even a war at all.
> There's a small chance this unrealistic expectation of victory becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I doubt it.
It isn't unrealistic. Russia doesn't have a much larger economy than Ukraine and though it has a much larger military its spending was dedicated to fighting a very different type of war than the type it is waging against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been preparing for this attack and has the support of larger economies than Russia.
> That is, they are dying for Poland, the Baltic states, and American hegemony, and perhaps for a romantic idea of going down fighting, but not for the best outcome for their people.
Your comment calls this conflict a war. That is illegal in Russia. What you said, under Russian rule, isn't allowed. You are a criminal according to Russia. You deserve, according to Russia, time in jail and/or fines. You yourself have shown through your own use of liberty to be an enemy of Russia. You use a freedom without thought to its value. You walk free, rather than in jail. Yet you imply that Ukraine fights for nothing. That there is no value to itself in preserving the freedom that you yourself enjoy. In my eyes this is cowardly hypocrisy: shouldn't you despise your own freedom before you criticize others for fighting for those freedoms?