You mean America was doing the defending? That's hilarious.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
And then there's the horror show of American intervention in South East Asia, and then there's the meddle, I mean Middle East.
Last I checked, Ukraine hadn't invaded its neighbors, gassed ethnic minorities, or taken freedom from its entire female population.
The US handled Afghanistan and Iraq poorly, and lied about reasons for going in, but there were actual underlying reasons.
Ukraine is only being invaded because Russia thinks it can.
Hell, Ukraine explicitly gave up its weapons of mass destruction... in exchange for security guarantees... from Russia.
As far as I know, Ukraine never had a military big enough to actually do any invasion of other countries, but if Ukraine was the size of the US with the military of the US, I wouldn't bet on them not being horrible when invading other countries.
Russia is systematically deporting Ukrainian children to Russia and integrating them into Russian families as a matter of state policy.
They're also indiscriminately bombing civilian targets weekly.
Even during the worst days of Fallujah, the US and UK didn't pull back and just arbitrarily pound the city to dust with standoff munitions out of spite.
Ukraine inherited a substantial amount of Soviet materiel after the collapse of the USSR, as well as the personnel trained in its use, however this quickly deteriorated as the support industrial base was in tatters (in Ukraine and Russia).
But in the early 90s they absolutely could have made a very credible invasion against most of their neighbors. [0,1]
Especially, say, the Cobasna ammunition depot in Moldova that's right on their border with up to 20,000 tons of Soviet munitions. [2]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperati...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobasna_ammunition_depot
It didn’t stop them from taking part in the invasion of Iraq:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
IMHO, once military forces reach rough parity, civil wars should never be a justification for external involvement, because it always ends badly.
Internal problems need internal solutions.
If Russia and NATO had both stayed out of Ukraine, it would have been better for all Ukrainians. But we zoomed past the Rubicon on that when Crimea was invaded with actual Russian troops.
Nice try. How do these compare at all to the Ukraine Donbas conflict? During the span of 2014-2022, the war in Ukraine (pre Russian invasion) between Ukraine and Donbas region resulted in the following:
Ukraine troops 4,647 killed, 70 missing, 13,800–14,200 wounded
Donbas troops 6,517 killed, 15,800–16,200 wounded
3,404 Ukrainian civilians killed 14,200–14,400 Donbas killed 51,000–54,000 wounded overall
1.6 million Ukrainians internally displaced; over 1 million fled abroad
The Russian invasion began in 2014.
How do you think these 'separatists' got Russian anti air equipment and Russian MBT's?.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/18/788874844/how-u-s-military-ai...
Im not sure what you think an invasion is, but wouldn't a foreign power, stationing their military in your country without your consent qualify?.
Where as when you invite another military to help you out its not really an invasion?.
it's been around 100 killed per year (both civilians and army) for 5 years before the current war - still 100 more than should be, of course, but it's less than the number of DAILY casualties since February 2022. Also, what you call a "Ukrainian Donbass conflict" is called a Russian military aggression, if you're not a pro-putin shill
No you didn’t, since the allegation is directed at the post-Maidan Ukrainian government and there has been no time since that government existed that it has not been the target of intense Russian propaganda (and, also, war, the Russo-Ukrainian war having been launched by Russia as a direct and immediate response to the Maidan Revolution.)
The french has most of africa on lockdown in that regard
Lol.
> Our grandparents told us stories about the russian army that many found hard to believe. And here we are proven that they were right all along.
This is true for any military power, read stories about areas under occupation from "freedom loving" or "non-freedom loving" (?) military groups, and you'll find it is equally horrible no matter what country the groups are from.
- Haditha massacre
- Mahmudiyah rape and killings
- Abu Ghraib prison
- Enhanced interrogation techniques
- Sơn Thắng massacre
- Countless of others
All by US officials and/or military members.
And lastly, don't forget about the only nuclear bombs that have been dropped have been dropped by the US military. That was indiscriminate killing at a scale never seen before, or since.
Look, Russia is horrible, the invasion is super fucked up, I wish they weren't do that and it'll take a long time before I'll ever forget about the horribleness that Russia put others through, as I've personally helped people being received from Ukraine into the country where I currently live. But that doesn't mean other military powers aren't as horrible as Russia, all of them are, it's their purpose so that's what they do.
No, millions is not an exaggeration. It’s an understatement. The only thing we reproach the USA: that they didn’t intervene. They were no angels, but there is no comparison. They are not the same and any attempt to muddle the waters and make them all seem the same is a desperate strategy of a falling imperialist power to throw the blame around. But we are immune to this, we grew up with the KGB monitoring jokes and pillow talk. We know this dirty game and here in Eastern Europe your tricks don’t work anymore. We have eyes to see and we know who are the good guys making the unfortunate occasional mistake and who are the pure evil ones.
I wish those atrocities were just "a centrury ago" but they're in fact pretty recent.