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by excieve 1428 days ago
They're actually quite explicit in what the goal is, at least in propaganda towards the internal audience[0]. If one does equate a Ukrainian to a "nazi" that must be exterminated, burns this into the minds for years, builds a chauvinistic version of history to frame it into then the rest comes out naturally — don't even need an order.

The behaviour of the Russian army towards the non-combatants so far has been aligned to what you could expect of this concept — mass murder, rape as a weapon, "filtration" camps, forced deportations, burnt ground tactics. These are not singular cases, it's the pattern everywhere the Russian army is or has been active.

It's not even the first attempt in the history — the last one was less than a century ago.

[0]: https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1510910740261134338

1 comments

That's unadulterated bullshit and I think both of us know it.

"mass rape, mass murder etc".

Look, I don't think the Russians are innocent in this at all. Obviously they have economic incentive and don't mind killing some folks to get what they are after. They don't want to kill everyone though or they would act very differently.

It's not genocide. Very simple. Even by a stretch of the word to include removing Nazi elements from the armed services.

Unfortunately it's not bullshit. I wish it was - read the summary of the OSCE report: https://osce.usmission.gov/response-to-moscow-mechanism-repo...

It's even worse.

Yep. The Russians are posting the same kind of thing for their populations to consume. I fully believe neither.

Here is what I do know. As of last week less then 5,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed so far in the campaign. Contrast that with the US did during Iraq, or even in Raqqa. Was that genocide? No, it was just we didn't care. Which is pretty disturbing especially now as we try to proclaim moral high ground and talk about atrocities.

This is not genocide either and false flags and exaggerations abound on all sides.

Edit: responding to the comment below because I'm obviously on a time out at this point:

`As delivered by Ambassador Michael Carpenter`

This is a guy, with a strategic national interest, who addressed the org you are talking about with some claims. Not an series of independently verified facts.

Have bad things happened? Yes. It's a war. Have Russian soldiers done some bad things? Almost certainly. Is there widespread or systemic murder of civilians and rape by Russian troops? No, that is not happening. And it makes sense as it would be counterproductive to Russia's aims.

In short. Unadulterated bullshit.

> `As delivered by Ambassador Michael Carpenter`

This is summary post from some ambassador. Read the original report at the OSCE website: https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/3/e/522616.pdf

These are independent verified facts.

This is from the OSCE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_... - Russia is a member of the OSCE. This not some think-tank or media exaggeration. This is as serious and legit as possible.
> Have bad things happened? Yes. It's a war. Have Russian soldiers done some bad things? Almost certainly. Is there widespread or systemic murder of civilians and rape by Russian troops?.

They literally ask for permission to rape the Ukrainians from their partners.

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-rape-russian-soldier-wife-by...

They literally executed civilians in Bucha.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre

If you want to learn more about the Russians armed forces sexual crimes in Ukraine you can find a depressingly large article here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_the_2022_Ru...

> This is not genocide either and false flags and exaggerations abound on all sides.

It is literally genocide per the UN definition of the word.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Russians are easily doing at least the last (forced transfer of children) and are arguably doing the first, and second based on the terrible conditions they leave the cities they level in leaving the Ukrainians to die in the street.

> No, that is not happening. And it makes sense as it would be counterproductive to Russia's aims.

The rape and deportation of locals to Russia is par for the course for the USSR's and Russia's conflicts. They did the exact same thing in Chechnya. If you want to learn more about the terrible crimes that Russia has committed in Ukraine and past wars (like Chechnya) look up what a 'filtration camp' is.

This isn't counterproductive to Russia's aims, it _is_ one of Russias aims.

> In short. Unadulterated bullshit.

In short, it's the Russian army doing Russian army things, at this point it seems they are incapable of conducting wars without committing a tonne of war crimes.

> "mass rape, mass murder etc".

> That's unadulterated bullshit and I think both of us know it.

I think there's some pretty well documented cases of both of those things within the past few months alone. I'm not sure it's bullshit at all.

I think it might be difficult to understand if you're not living in this context yourself.

In this context the Russian soldiers are telling you that you're a "Nazi" because you're speaking Ukrainian, served in the army (no matter how long ago), or have a Ukrainian flag in your home, a tattoo or a haircut they don't like, or just camouflage-styled clothes and therefore don't deserve to live. A shot in the head usually comes after, sometimes worse than that.

This is a story of _each_ village in my area near Kyiv that came under the occupation for just a month. Probably would have been one for my family too if we hadn't fled to safety in time as we'd be considered, in your words, "Nazi elements" too.

Do I really need to link the photos of mass graves, bodies hastily burned to conceal the evidence and accounts of the survivors? Even this is a small fraction as we're not seeing what's happening in the currently occupied areas (there are only some accounts).

How different does it need to be? Does the pointless flattening of Mariupol fall under your definition? Or do we need to wait and see what happens if Russia wins this and there's no real visibility at all?

> It's not genocide. Very simple.

It is genocide, very simple; heck, Putin is pretty up front about the intent to destroy the Ukrainian people as a people, because he views the existence of that identity distinct from Russia as anathema.

And even without Putin’s statements the piles of evidence from the acts on the ground admit no other explanation.

> And even without Putin’s statements the piles of evidence from the acts on the ground admit no other explanation.

Bucha, Irpin, Kharkiv, Mariupol etc... It's all there, anyone denying this is either utterly blind or a Russian apologist, these are all war crimes. And Putin's (convoluted) rhetoric has arrived at a single point: that Ukraine are not their own people or culture.

The latest Russian missile attack was on a civilian shopping center FFS! This isn't war conventional between militaries, this is terrorism on civilians when Ukraine attacks on Russian munition depots in Ukrainian territory or some other military target is successful.

Russia has bombed Lviv and Kyiv as well when similar successful military strikes took place with civilian casualties.

The truth is that this is really looking less like a proxy war and more like a hyper-localized World War, if Iran is really supplying UAVs to Russia and China and India is buying their energy to bypass sanctions than the BRICS alliance looks like the geo-political strata is shaking out; one cannot help but feel that if this isn't fought qnd won then Taiwan will be the CCPs next move as it is starting to crack under it's own myopic weight as the Zero COVID policy is taking it's toll and making internal civil war inevitable as the bank freezes/bail-ins are happening there.