BBC: Killings in Bucha are deliberate massacre – Ukraine
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
But bodybags don't lie, and there's hundreds or maybe thousands of videos that show the opposite of the above narrative.
How is Russia able to withstand that? Is it cultural ? Or are we the ones not getting the full picture here?
Why the “Buchan Massacre” is fake
Ukraine is spreading a new “crime against humanity”. Entering the cities of the kyiv region, which the Russian troops abandoned as part of the regroupment, the nationalists of the terbats suddenly found the streets littered with the corpses of civilians. Traces of torture, tied hands, scarlet blood: images of the city of Bucha shake the soul.
Ukrainian propaganda paints a terrible picture of the “Russian occupation”, under which real sadists intimidated the locals. Here it is, Ukrainian Srebrenica. By analogy with the “massacre” of Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia, of which the Serbs were accused. Although his version, which was significantly inferior in scale to the official one, no one took it into account.
I will now explain why Srebrenica in Bucha is a lie.
...
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I did not put link intentionally.
This is the core of tribalism. You don't need to prove or disprove, you just need to rouse
"Massacre" in quotes reminds that Russia officially denies that what happened in Srebrenica was genocide.
Consider how well it works on you. Do you do any research when you read news (especially such terrifying news)? Most people do not - they have some opinion and then reinforce it. This is war and all parties lie, and there are questions to be asked (if you, for some silly reason, want to get closer to the "truth").
Like, the US has a largely free (if not particularly competitive) media landscape, and ~30% of Americans believe that Trump won the election; this is _highly_ correlated with what media they consume. It's obvious nonsense, and ~nobody _outside_ the US believes that, but if the only media you consume tells you that all other media in the world is fake news... If it's like that in a country with independent media, imagine how much worse it'll be in a country with no significant independent media.
One simple thing: only a very misguided person would claim that voter id laws are an "assault on democracy". Oh, it makes harder to vote? Good! Voting is a right, if a voter isn't willing to lift a finger to exercise this right, then it's fair that his opinion doesn't count.
Also war still has not been declared officially and the Russian side is still fulfilling the obligation to Kolomoyski, that is the pipelines are still pumping gas and oil. And why Russia destroyed storage tanks at Kolomoyski's oil refinery only a few days ago? Has it something to do with Kolomoyski's friend Abramovich taking part in the negotiations recently? Obviously, we don't see the full picture here and unlikely will.
Regarding to what happened in Bucha we still have no names of the victims, not to mention a forensic report which is infinitely harder to fake than a news video. On the other hand we see videos where Ukrainian troops torturing their Russian army prisoners (shooting legs, cutting throats) and numerous reports from civilians in Mariupol of Azov shooting them while they were trying to leave the city and using them as a human shield, occupying higher floors in residential buildings and placing their firing points there etc.
Recently, we had the Nayirah Testimony[1] that was widely reported as true prior to the first gulf war, and the well known weapons of mass destruction present in Iraq testimony before the second one. There was also the Dr Rola testimony that later turned out to be fake that was widely reported during the Syrian civil war[2].
Anyway, it is possible to want Russia to lose this war and simultaneously be aware that one's own government has a good reason to, and perhaps is lying and exaggerating for war propaganda purposes.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony [2]https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Dr_Rola [3]https://books.google.com.vn/books/content?id=A1AEAAAAMBAJ&hl...
It is fine to reserve judgement where there is no good evidence, but that's not what you're doing by comparing it to [1].
The null should be that the Kremlin is lying, especially in the context of fairly solid lines of evidence, and given their recent history of lying about everything and denying everything, even that which we can observe with our eyes (e.g. Lavrov's "We are not invading Ukraine" -- said in March).
At the end of the day we need to accept that this is just how superpowers act. They go in, kill millions, and nothing ever changes.
A fallacy fallacy doesn't really get you anywhere. Businesses are already complicit with murder considering majority of them operate in the US.
What about this basic fact makes you uncomfortable?
"Lithuania cuts off Russian gas imports, urges EU to do same" https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/lithuania-cuts-off...
Your government does something bad, then you should push back against it, or you are to an extent complicit and you should understand if other countries don't trade with you as a result.
We don't owe our geopolitical enemies trade. Nobody owes anyone trade.
However, my conscience is not clear. I'd like to see a more peaceful world.
But I am not, and cannot possibly be responsible for the actions of any other man or woman. I never asked anyone to go kill anyone else. However, I am not doing everything in my power to stop people from doing so. So there is some conflict here.
I was taught that the government acts on behalf of its citizens in the interests of its citizens. I largely don't think that's true, but if it is to any extent, then to that same extent we are culpable for its actions. If not then we're knowingly casting away our responsibility, essentially the bystander effect on a grand scale.
If it's not true at all and the government doesn't act on my behalf or for my benefit, then there is a coercive, violent force acting in my name without my consent.
Either way, whether or not I am responsible, I must oppose its violence.
There is. Or really, there are people that believe they are doing what is right in the name of government.
I did not vote for the people who claim to have the right to rule. Even if I did, could they prove they are acting as my agents? They are simply doing what they chose, using their own free will, either for good or for evil. Not once did I delegate any of my authority to them, even if I could.
Here's a thought: let's say that 2/3rds of a group of people decide it would be nice to have a place where the downtrodden can go get free meals, which sounds like an admirable goal. However, instead of using their own effort to build this place, they instead decide to appoint another group of people, they label "the government" to do so. They cast votes anonymously, and select 10 people to act as "the government". These people decided that in order to build their place to feed the downtrodden, they will go and take (by force if necessary), the property of other people, such as money, land goods, etc.
Is there really a government, or are there people that believe there is a government, and act as if they have the right to use force?
Another question, how are you opposing its violence? I ask because with all my talk, I am only taking baby steps to oppose it, and maybe you have come up with a better way.
"Neutrino beam could neutralise nuclear bombs":
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3734-neutrino-beam-co...
EDIT: removed uncited rumor
See "MAD -Criticism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction#Cri...
I would argue for the top secret program.
I do not however believe that Russian politicians and military recognize this concept beyond its application to NATO meaning that they would hope we believe in it. There isn't one document I can point to but rather all of their political and war history suggests they would believe a nuclear war can be won and they don't really care if half their population were wiped out. The political elites can hide in bunkers deep under ground for a very long time. They have been preparing for this since at least WWII. Add to this the evolution of smaller, faster more efficient tactical nuclear weapons and HANES EMP weapons would bolster their confidence in winning. I don't really know what winning means given they would be economically destroyed and the surviving civilian population would be starving and sick. I am just looking at this through Russian history tinted glasses.
But UK got better medical care and education.
Nevertheless.
Ukraine is very special and there’s no proof whatsoever that Russia is interested in conquering or attacking any EU/NATO countries. And they’ve also shown that they probably couldn’t manage it even without NATO or the nuclear deterrent.
Russia wants NATO to be back into 1997 borders. Exactly because it wants to get EE countries back into its sphere of influence. If NATO allows this to happen (and there were people arguing for it) - Russia would blackmail these countries to become Russian vassals. And if they don't want to - it would invade them.
Russia already invaded Baltic states in 1991. Chechnya in 1994 and 1999. Georgia in 2008. Ukraine in 2014 and now.
It's not exactly a secret. Putin and his ideologues (Dugin for example) wrote about the need to "recreate Russian empire". The only reason they don't is because USA remains active in Europe and NATO remains a credible defensive alliance. But it's not guaranteed forever. There are political forces in US and the rest of NATO that consider it too costly.
It's about the gas that was found there.
Their current actions seems to have made NATO stronger ( eg. Finland and Sweden possibly joining). Don't believe Russian rethoric too much.
They don't only want Crimea. They already had Crimea before this invasion. They are occupying large parts of Donetsk and Lugansk provinces and some other parts of Ukraine and they tried to siege the capital city and nearby provinces.
It's also not just about when they talked about NATO. There were already constructing ( shell of memory serves me right) gas extraction around Crimea. It was crippled during the invasion in 2014.
It could have probably replaced ALL Russian gas imports.
This was supposed to be just the beginning.
What will be hysterical is in fifty years when it all becomes unclassified after the new weapon has to be used outing its existence and we all learn that there was a deep state after all and they hid the existence of the weapon from Trump. I'll be long dead, but I would have enjoyed it immensely.
What would be even better is an announcement like, "The US has voluntarily destroyed all of its nuclear weapons and generators and welcomes the world to verify there is no longer any massively fisionable matter anywhere in the country. Also, along with this announcement we have constructed a 600 mile long accelerator which can instantly detect and detonate any such material found anywhere in the world, instantly. Everyone's nuclear weapons are now their own worst nightmare and we encourage all countries to rid themselves of such weapons as quickly as possible. Starting with you, Russia."
Can you imagine?
- Neutrino accelerators.
- EMP weapons.
- Human Engineering.
- Espionage.
- Real time tracking 24/7 of the location of government officials that could give such order.
- A type of SEAL Team 6 team ready to go anywhere and disable them.
- Most important you need an EMP solution to disable Nuclear submarines.
That could be the beginning of the novel/Netflix series/pre-announcement mystery as all the scientists in the world notice something just happened, but aren't sure what for a while...
I also love the idea of doing it all as a hoax. Like a bluff. We mock up fake demos and then convince the entire world we have this power to detonate any nuke anywhere as if we owned it... And say, "We really don't want to have to demonstrate it for real, but if we have to." And the world voluntarily disarms...
"How to dismantle a nuclear bomb" (2019)
"MIT team successfully tests a new method for verification of weapons reduction."
https://news.mit.edu/2019/verify-dismantle-nuclear-bombs-092...
Similar hyperbole is trotted out in every conflict. The Saudis are Nazis to the Yemeni people, the Israelis are Nazis to the Palestinian people, so we should have a mass boycott and divestment not just from Russia, but from Saudi Arabia and Israel as well. Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression doesn't actually exist for the United States (see Iraq as well).
As far as nukes, we'd be back in the large-scale tank battles of WWII without nukes. They generally have a stabilizing influence as the architects of wars are notably reluctant to place themselves on the firing line; sending kids off to die somewhere else is not a problem for them, but facing the nuclear annihilation of their own home is another matter.
There's reports of Russia extracting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to camps within Russian borders. We don't know the exact scale or nature of these camps yet.
> Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression
Ah, whataboutism. We're not doing shit about one terrible situation, so we shouldn't do shit about any terrible situation.
This article has 3 entries from 3 teenagers, the last one is from a teenager of a Pro-Russian family who have been relocated to Russia. He's writing they've been rescued from the "tyranny": https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/apr/01/w...
So just about any country... given that nations themselves are mostly-immoral geopolitical entities.
> trying to play global policeman open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy.
Perhaps. But massive outrage at atrocities can't be blunted with "eh, your country didn't care about it elsewhere."
Your first comment is very strange. Russia seems to be following the expansionist genocide playbook. But they can't be compared to Nazi Germany because, uh, they've not managed to secure too much of the Ukrainian population yet, and there's not ironclad evidence of mass incarceration of Ukrainians yet?
Every country has skeletons in its closet. Should we then just ignore crimes against humanity?
> Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
Nope, hypocrisy by itself isn't a problem. To understand why consider a criminal that once thought stealing is ok, then got caught, was in prison for his sentence, repented, and now thinks that stealing isn't ok. Can he complain to authorities that his neighbor was robbed?
You are saying he shouldn't. It's not only absurd - it's also morally repulsive. The only reason you could think avoiding hypocrisy justifies ignoring crimes against humanity is if you're trying to defend the murderers.
Dude. Just don’t.
I recommend cracking a history book. That's literally every country.
> A uniform standard of justice is a key requirement of any legal system of accountability, in my opinion. Pointing out hypocrisy could be called 'whataboutism' I suppose, but what about hypocrisy? Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
I couldn't care less about your hypocrisy charges. If something is bad it should be stopped. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter by who. You can get your high-minded moralizations on once the dust settles. Moralizations are for the living - a champagne problem if you will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
This system of forced labor concentration camps was active in USSR till 1987.
> The tentative consensus in contemporary Soviet historiography is that roughly 1,600,000[b] died due to detention in the camps
That's on top of outright mass killings and ethnic (yes - ethnic) cleansings done by USSR. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
You can argue nazis killed more people, but it's the same order of magnitude (millions).
Nobody was held responsible for these crimes against humanity. There was no Nuremberg trials for soviet mass murderers and torturers. These people often worked for NKVD/KGB and remained in power after it turned into FSB (which Putin was a member of).
These people (or their subordinates) are still ruling Russia. So there's no wonder they are still doing ethnic cleansings, mass murders and terror.
I stand by my opinion - Russia is a nazi germany with nukes.
For example there were many pogroms, some inspired by Russia some by Germany, many were "grassroots".
Soviet brutality is a fact, but suddenly bringing this up in 2022 when everybody’s obviously not bothered by it that much any more and drawing a parallel with Nazi Germany is bizarre to say the least. I think you must have realized yourself that the comparison was far fetched and you’re fishing for anything which would make it seem at least halfway logical.
Russia literally invaded Ukraine and mass murdered civilians in occupied cities.
Putin made a speech in which he said Ukraine is a "fake nation" and that "Ukrainian question must be solved".
There were lists of people to be eliminated prepared before the invasion.
Thousands of Ukrainians from occupied cities were moved to Russia against their will. It's not clear what happened to them.
Russians have pseudomilitary training for kids and population is wearing stylized Z symbols to show their support for the "operation".
Calling the "operation" a war is an offence for which people go to jail. So is criticizing the Russian army.
And you're saying it's "bizzare" to compare this to nazi Germany?
What do you want - a signed letter from Putin admitting it?
If Russia wasn't behaving like USSR in its totalitarian period I wouldn't be reminding people of these examples. But it is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Front_(World_War_II) [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_the_Balti...
I don't know about you, but this gives me massive "We've always been at war with Eastasia" vibes. We really shouldn't be normalizing "reviews" of our attitude towards other countries in the context of history, based on whatever is politically expedient today.
I think you are misled about the degree to which much of our "history" is based on what _was_ politically expedient at the time. Nothing the parent poster has said is false, it is precisely addressing convenient myths that have been left to stand.
To provide some examples:
The Wehrmacht was not innocent when it comes to the holocaust, but it was politically expedient to pin the blame on the SS and promote the idea that the Wehrmacht was largely "clean". So until the past couple of decades, that's what the histories said.
Hitler wasn't single-handledly responsible for most of the decisions that were pinned on him by the German military high command after the war. But the German high command were tasks with writing the histories, and it was certainly in their best interests to do so.
A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
As to how this applies to the Russian myths of WWII, here is a thread from a historian: https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/14973067463306...
What changed between now and the cold war? You'd think that it'd be very expedient to do some revisionist history when they had nukes pointed at us, or were engaging in proxy wars all over the globe.
>A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
Of course, the revisionism isn't going to be as blatant as "We've always been allied with Eastasia" today and "We've always been at war with Eastasia" tomorrow. This time it's going to be "removing the convenient lies of the past", and the next time (when we want to be allied with russia) it's going to be "judging them by the standards of the time" or whatever.
Don't worry, this has been already happening for years. Nazis are being normalized constantly.
btw you'll be surprised but England made a deal with Nazis a few years prior to Soviets. Another thing that may surprise you is that Poland occupied small part of Czechoslovakia when Germans conquer it (after they made deal with England).
Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
No need to twist my words here. You know very well what I meant with it.
> Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
I’ve lived in different political and economical systems and on both sides of the iron curtain which makes me think I have developed good immunity against all kinds of propaganda.
Also the Russians made a peace treaty with Germany after the UK and France had. Neither the UK or France would agree with a mitual self-defense treaty with Russia prior to the Ribbentrop peace treaty.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1939pact.asp
"In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilna area is recognized by each party. Article II. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish States and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. In any event both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement. Article III. With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinteredness in these areas. Article IV. This protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret." Moscow, August 23, 1939.
That is not really an argument. I can select an arbitrary time period (other than 20 years) and show that none of these were part of Russian empire at that time.
I mean, so what? Modern Russia is not the Russian Empire; it is a successor state of the Soviet Union. It formally seceded the same day as Ukraine (and Belarus). If it wasn't happy with this situation, then it shouldn't have done so.
Even if modern Russia _was_ a rump state of the Soviet Union (which, again, it isn't) it would have no more right than anyone else to former dependencies.
It’s strange that these stories never make it anywhere near the top.
This:
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In general I’ve seen a handful of insightful comments on the Russia-Ukraine war, most comments are various levels of moral outrage or repeat the mainstream story without much critical thought.
Seems like many miss it.
Personally, I flagged this, because I don't see any evidence of "interesting new phenomenon" (quoting the guidelines again). War is not a new phenomenon, countries engaged in war being accused of war crimes is not a new phenomenon... hell, I grew up at the tail end of the cold war, so Russia being accused of war crimes is not a new phenomenon.
There are a million places on the internet to discuss politics and world affairs. Hacker News generally isn't one of them. I don't ask my book club to talk about MMA, I'm not sure why people insist on discussing the war in Ukraine here.
I'd much rather come to Hacker News to discuss these events as i find the moderation and general attitude of commenters to be very good.
And yes Hacker News is absolutely much more, but it's hard to ignore what is currently going on in Ukraine.
"The Ukrainian mother who had to bury her own son"