[DIARRHEA_xd]

Is it possible to understand that Russia is the aggressor but also oppose sanctions? Russia has absolutely committed more atrocities than Iran and Cuba, but none of these countries are democracies, and therefore I find it difficult to support measures that disproportionately affect the citizenry over the ruling class in any of these countries.

I also hope the dialogue in these threads can improve. The quality of the comments, at the time of writing mine, are poor and quippy.

[SllX]

It doesn’t matter what form of government Russia has on paper when they’ve invaded a separate sovereign nation and worst than that: appear to be very serious about genocide and also appear to be very serious about using their nukes in some capacity.

They can stand equal among nations with advanced financial markets, medicine and technology if they want. I have no problem with that, but it comes with a price: checking their territorial ambitions at the door. At this point I would even add on to that fully surrendering their nuclear arsenal because the leaders they’ve either chosen or “chosen” (and for the purposes of this conversation it doesn’t really matter which anymore) have proven to be irresponsible caretakers.

[swe_dima]

I hate Putin and completely oppose this war, but there's no genocide.

Putin's words are that Russians and Ukranians are the same people and Ukraine is not a real country, but a part of Russia.

There are many casualties among civilians because of how idiotic this war is, but nobody is killing Ukrainians on the basis of their ethnicity.

[euos]

I am Ukrainian so I will explain.

Russians do not consider us a separate nation and consider our language a "broken Russian". They are in fact trying to erase our language and our culture. They call anyone who considers themselves Ukrainian and not Russian a "nazi" that should be killed. This is a genocide.

[swe_dima]

I am Russian, so I am going to explain the way I and my friends and relatives that I speak to think about Ukrainians.

We consider Ukrainians brothers in the best way possible. We don't care what language you speak, but it feels especially warm when we hear that you can speak Russian as well. Like you are speaking to a relative.

The government propaganda is trying hard to convince Russian population that they are fighting a small group of Nazis who took over government and against NATO mercenaries, not Ukrainians, because they know Russians don't want to fight them.

It may be hard for you to accept, given what's happening, but this is the bullshit that propaganda made some people believe.

I am telling you this as a person, whose girlfriend has heated arguments with her grandmother over a phone every week. It goes something like this:

"grandma! There are no mercenaries! They are fighting Ukranian military! Destroying cities! Where would they find so many mercenaries??? I don't care what you saw on TV! ... ".

The same thing every time.

There are probably ~3-5% of people who are fucked in the head and hate Ukranians, but most people do not.

[celticninja]

>We consider Ukrainians brothers in the best way possible

Lets hope you dont start considering the rest of the world brothers.

> It may be hard for you to accept, given what's happening, but this is the bullshit that propaganda made some people believe.

That same bullshit propaganda has been spewed out by Russia for years and no one inside Russia did anything against it. When Nemstov was killed you all cowered away, when the first arrests for speaking out against the Ukraine war were made the rest of you hid away. This is your mess. This is on you to fix it. The rest of us have to deal wiuth the shit you allowed to come into power, and through inaction and ambivalence you allowed to to accumulate more and more power until we get to where we are today.

[therusskiy]

oh, the good ol' victim blaming

[SllX]

If the result is to erase Ukrainians as a people and Ukraine as a nation, then the result is still genocide.

I know this is a contentious word for a lot of reasons, but this is completely within the scope of genocide.

[swe_dima]

According to Wiki "Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people, usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group...".

The initial goal of this war was to change Ukraininan government to a more friendly one. I have no idea what the current goal is, but it's very clear it's not killing people. Propaganda is trying very hard to deny any killings of civilians that do happen, if the goal was genocide they would try to portray Ukrainians as less than humans, the way some Germans considered jews to be vermin during Hitler.

Russians identify deeply with Ukraine, many have relatives and roots there (myself included). For this reason propaganda is trying to say that they are not fighting Ukraine, but NATO mercenaries. Again, this is horrible but does not sound like genocide.

[lostmsu]

> Propaganda is trying very hard to deny any killings of civilians that do happen, if the goal was genocide they would try to portray Ukrainians as less than humans

I fail to follow the logic here. If I beat you with a baseball bat, and will try very hard to deny that, does it mean my goal was not to beat you with a baseball bat? What if at the same time I will post articles in popular blogs about how you are a great human being and we are basically brothers?

[justsomehnguy]

Let me rephrase it: if the goal was the genocide then there would be much, much more civilian casualties. For now, civilian death count is slightly more than a total deaths from the car accidents in the whole country in the previous years. Doesn't pass the sniff test.

[swe_dima]

It may be semantics, but even by law a murder is different based on person's motivation.

If John kills Jane because she is black it is different than killing her by reckless driving. In this war civilians are getting killed because of disregard for human lifes while trying to kill the military, not intentionally because of the group they belong to.

I am not trying to say they are not killing people, it's the intention that I am questining. How can it be a genocide of Ukranians if Putin is killing a bunch of Russians that live there as well? And if there are many Ukranians in Russia's military doing the same thing.

[SllX]

The Holocaust is not the end all be all of what defines a genocide. The man who created the word wasn’t even trying to limit it to that when he was fleeing the Holocaust because he realized that there is more than one way to destroy a people even whilst the Germans were abjectly and mechanically destroying his people in a gruesome manner.

Here is Putin on the record in a speech he gave:

“ Putin said in a Monday speech: "Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood. There has never been a sustainable statehood in Ukraine."

He argued that Ukraine was a creation of the Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin, its first leader, despite extensive evidence of a distinctive Ukrainian culture before that.

Putin also made a claim that Ukraine was a part of Russia's historic territory.

He said in his speech: "Let me emphasize once again that Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space.”

Here is the link for additional context including some nice words about having ties to Ukraine not dissimilar to what you just said: https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-denies-reviving-russia...

Maybe there is a cultural dissonance here and what Putin said means something completely different in Russian, but this to me reads as someone walking a fine line trying very hard not to admit that his goal is to erase Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as distinct from Russia and the Russian people. That was in February two days before launching a full scale invasion of Ukraine, and I don’t trust that the “official” reasons are the real ones. Putin is former KGB: deceiving foreigners and citizens alike is literally his bread and butter.

[therusskiy]

The official reason was not changing government, it's "denazification and demilitarization".

As for "not a real country", there's an opinion that I think has some truth to it, that Ukraine, Russia as well as other states were all forged in the flame of USSR. As I visit ex-USSR states they are very similar, like different flavors of the same country. National cloth and parts of language is all that is left.

This way there's not much need to change Ukraine to be like Russia, all of us already have the USSR culture.

[sofixa]

Thankfully there's an internationally recognised description of genocide:

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

The mental element, "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", is publicly there, in official speeches and everything.

The physical element ticks every box besides "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group", that we know of. The Russian army tortures murders civilians indiscriminately, puts them in grave peril (without access to food, water, heating), and kidnaps children.

It's textbook genocide.

[euos]

No. Initial goal was to occupy eastern Ukraine. There was no government in Kharkiv, Ukrainian south and such.

Stop repeating Russian propaganda.

[therusskiy]

I listen to Russian propanganda a couple times per month for educational purposes :-)

Believe me, that is not it.

You are likely right here though, that Donetsk and Lugansk would have likely became a part of Russia. I don't think anything would change for them, however, since these areas are already largely pro-Russian and were already controlled by military affiliated with Russia.

I expect after this war they are going to reconsider how much they want to be in Russia, because after promising to protect them, Putin sent all their young men to war.

[pessimizer]

> appear to be very serious about genocide

Words don't mean anything anymore.

[megous]

You sure? https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Russia_Should_Do_with_Ukr...)

[SllX]

No context? I might be agreeing with you.

But Putin led off with “Ukrainians aren’t a real people”. Signaling counts for a lot in war and diplomacy.