This is underrated comment. And by looking at the knee-jerk reactions from accounts with 0-10 karma, might just be right on the money.
For me, having moved from the US to eastern Europe has been eye opening in this regard. Based on somewhat shallow sampling of parents of our kids classmates in $$$ IB school, everyone but one seem to be vocal about the fact that everything in the west is from the 'ass'. I admit that it has crossed my mind more than once that if you really feel so strongly this way, or are upset that people don't want to speak russian with you, then why are you still here and not on your way back already?
Let's just say it the way it is: russia is attacking Ukraine, a free nation. Russia is committing atrocities and war crimes against Ukranian people. When russia stops fighting and leaves Ukraine, the war ends. That is all there is to it.
> Well, yeah but they have nuclear weapons so that limits the amount the West can do to help.
It doesn't limit it, it makes it risky. How big of a risk is questionable and depends on wether you think Russia will risk MAD over Ukraine which personally I think is ridiculous. I don't think the Russian leadership have deluded themselves into thinking that they are in the right - they are doing this because they think they can.
If the west had the balls to send actual support from day one then Russia might have pulled out quite soon. Instead it seems NATO wants to use Ukraine to wear down Russia. Good for NATO perhaps but I'm not entirely convinced this drip feed of weapons is actually helping Ukrainians - their losses aren't publicised but they are definitely not small.
Even if one third of Russias nuclear weapons work (2k out of 6k), its far more than enough to destroy the US and Europe. The counterstrike would obliterate Russia. Eighty percent of the rest of the world would starve (all the way to death starvation) in the aftermath.
When I read this, I wondered 'how do wars usually end?' and went to look up recent conflicts [0]. That list makes quite depressing reading; the only thing especially interesting about Ukraine is that the world's top two nuclear powers are locked conflict.
The length of the list defeated me. That being said, I think there are other ways that this war could end. At this point it seems unlikely that the Russians will leave.
I guess russian leadership failed to consider this when they started their illegal imperial war to annex Ukraine. People of russia are almost irreversibly becoming the new 'nazis' of whose attrocities the kids will learn at school and of whom they will learn to despise for the rest of of their lives (while the earlier ones will be just another chapter in the history books that is read with the same enthusiasm that most study geopolitics behind WW1 currently).
This is not to suggest that the attrocities (at this point anyway) would be comparable, but that history is moving ahead.
Sorry about political angle, but due to my circumstances, I am very angry of what is happening, and I think these things cannot be repeated too many times.
What Russia is doing is horrible. War crimes and all. However I wouldn’t go so far as call them nazis, think it dampens that metaphor when it’s over used.
Russia feels NATO expansion is too close to their doorstep, he warned many times and this is the outcome.
Obviously not condoning it, and it’s many millions of lives displaced and tens of thousands lost. Generations will be effected.
Russia using the excuse of nazis in Ukraine, and the need to free the Ukrainian people is a tall tail. Though there is a small amount of truth, of actual nazis existing in some of the armed forces of Ukraine [0]. But by no means justifies what’s been done.
Oh, I see, the ones you call actual nazis, that would be the far-right hooligans with some tattoos or whatever that every single country in the world has? And the ones you wouldn't go as far as calling them nazis, that would be the completely innocent and harmless Russian dudes, invariably sent into Ukraine unawares, thinking it was just some military drills, or liberating people from evil banderites, or both at the same times apparently, the same completely harmless Russian dudes whose only teeny tiny little fault is that they for some reason can't help but commit genocide and other war crimes on a scale unseen in almost 80 years? Did I get that right?
> People of russia are almost irreversibly becoming the new 'nazis'
Is this really "new"? It's like you never heard about Stalinism, or even earlier: Leninism. Starting from 1920 war Bolsheviks tried to invade Poland; they starved millions in Ukraine in holodomor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ), they backstabbed Poland in 1939 only to "free" it, just like they "freed" rest of Eastern Europe. Later they crushed the Czech uprising in 1956 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring )...
Not to mention millions who died in gulags.
It's like history 101. High school level stuff. You really never heard about it earlier?
Sadly, the way high school curricula are set up in many countries doesn't leave much time for 20th century history, so only a rough outline of post-war events is taught. As for more recent history, there has been almost no research (or even awareness) of Russian imperialism in Western academia until now (gee, wonder why)...
I haven't been completely unaware of those and other things. But vast majority of my history classes and bringing up focused on nazi germany being the sole responsible for everything WW2 and how we beat them. And then soviets being the commies and the enemy of the free world. And then the wall came down and everything was swell again.
So yes, I have been ignorant. Of which I am sorry. I may be late in the game, but let's put it out a loud: where are the russians living outside of russia that are protesting against russias war on Ukraine?
Everything with US is reversible, just wait until next election... I really hope not too many people will die until then. Iran, Afghanistan, Lybia, Syria, Jemen... another pointless war. World needs something better!
For me, having moved from the US to eastern Europe has been eye opening in this regard. Based on somewhat shallow sampling of parents of our kids classmates in $$$ IB school, everyone but one seem to be vocal about the fact that everything in the west is from the 'ass'. I admit that it has crossed my mind more than once that if you really feel so strongly this way, or are upset that people don't want to speak russian with you, then why are you still here and not on your way back already?