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Comment by wiz21c | Hacker News Reader

Russia is not a terrorist state. It's a country waging a war. It's not the same. You can find it OK or not OK (I personally don't) but it's not terrorism. Many countries have done that before, France is such a country.

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It’s perfectly reasonable to call them a terrorist state if they’re actively encouraging war crimes against civilians.

In that case you might as well classify the US as a terrorist state as well. Continues dronning of innocent people doesn't make it OK when you call it the "war" on terror.

Whataboutism at its finest.

The US drone policy is very aggressive. But it’s multiple orders of magnitude less than the scale of what Russia is trying to do now, which is flagrant genocide.

But we’re not discussing the US so let’s get back to the terrorist state of Russia.

It's not just drones - US leveled cities too, like Raqqa, or started wars based on fabricated evidence that killed more people than current war in Ukraine.

p.s. exposing hypocrisy isn't whataboutism.

That’s really great. But we’re talking about the terrorist state of Russia here.

You mean like this : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_... ? Or maybe this : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima... ?

Those are immense human tragedies but they’re not the same. Both of these examples have significant debate on whether they were justified. Perhaps you believe they were not.

There is no such debate around the missile strikes on shopping malls far removed from the front, or bombing civilian evacuation routes your promised to permit. Or deporting thousands of children to your country.

And again, whataboutism is not helpful here. The discussion is on Russia.

USA _and_ russia always justify civilian bombings claiming they aimed at military targets first. Do you think USA or russia will ever admit they happily roasted babies alive on purpose ?

The difference is that Russia’s MO is to level cities and kill every single person they can. The US is far from perfect, but this is not what they do. Whataboutism is not relevant here

So you don't really disagree with the parent comment then. Unless you are denying French war crimes in Algeria and Africa

They said Russia is not a terrorist state. I disagree with them. I don’t really give a shit about French war crimes 70 years ago. That’s not a gotcha, it’s just a shitty whataboutism, and not even a particularly relevant one.

Terrorism is be definition non state activities. If a state is doing it, it can't be terrorism.

In some definitions sure.

Which even the UN has had to admit Ukraine shares the blame on[1]. Not only that, the Human Rights chief of Ukraine stepped down and subsequently admitted that she invented a lot of human rights violations[2]. It's actually amusing that the UN complained about the Ukrainian shelling of a maternity ward in June with most reports saying that it was Russians doing, with very few correcting this to stating it was in fact the Ukrainians[3].

Here's the Washington Post saying that Ukraine placed their fighters in civilian buildings therefore enabling attacks on civilian infrastructure[4] as early as March 28th

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/un-says-ukraine-bears-share-041554667...

[2] https://www.ibtimes.sg/lyudmila-denisova-disgraced-ombudswom...

[3] https://blog.tagesschau.de/2022/06/16/fehler-in-der-tagessch...

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/28/ukraine-kyiv...

The UN consensus has been very clear. Russia is singularly responsible for the war, and has committed numerous war crimes. Including many, many attacks on positions that are civilian only. And forcing Ukrainians to join the Russian army as canon fodder. And encouraging mass rape. And stealing whatever isn’t nailed down. And storing munitions in an active nuclear power plant. And attacking evacuation corridors they promised to allow.

Ukraine is not perfect, but it’s not even close to comparable.

Your post history has a clear Russian lean to it. So, whatever. I presume it’s pointless to talk.

Your #3 link seems to be talking about a market, not a maternity ward. Did you give a wrong link by mistake?

There is a very easy way to find out who is in the wrong here. Using the statement you probably have seen before: If Ukraine stops fighting, they stop to exist. If Russia stops fighting, there is no more war.

Succint

I call it a terrorist state due to its deliberate attacks on civilians in Vinnitsa, Kramatorsk, Kharkiv, Nikopol, Idlib just in the last week. City centers with no military targets, in some cases very far from the front - the intention is to terrorize Ukraine into submission.

I would have gone for criminal or mafia state rather than terrorist, but I guess you could argue that openly poisoning political dissidents is designed to elicit terror

Ehm, blowing up ammunition depot in Czech Republic was not terrorism?

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2021/04/26/how...

It's not only the ongoing war. Russia's leadership seems to be enganged in state terrorism for several decades now. Here's an interesting interview with Catherine Belton a journalist and author who did year long research on that matter:

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2022-07/catherine-belton-vlad...

Even if only half of the claims is true it's IMO quite justified to call Russia a terrorist state.

It is a country conducting an illegal war of aggression, which means that any action they take is a war crime, but aside from that when you shell civilians trying to flee through _humanitarian corridors you created_ you are committing acts of terror.

So is shooting cruise missiles at shopping centers.

I won't pretend to be neutral in this matter, nor give a shit about anybody who is, but what russia is doing is very much acts of terrorism.

Yeah the US has too, and they acted like terrorists in Iraq. Not trying to demonize Russia but we should call it as we see it.

> Many countries have done that before, France is such a country.

You could also conclude that France was just such a terrorist state.

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