Totally understood that not everybody is in a position to make that choice, now or maybe ever. But there is safety in numbers.
https://www.inyourpocket.com/gdansk/the-story-of-solidarity-...
FWIW I was in Poland at the time, the people there were absolutely phenomenal, and the amount of personal hardship and risk endured blew me away. Unstoppable, they would have happily run their country into the ground first. Big difference: they had relatively little left to lose, Poland had been bled dry by the Soviets over decades. By contrast Russians today have far more to lose, or so they may believe, when in fact they probably have more to lose from Putin's continued presence.
A dictator is one thing, an unhinged dictator quite another.
Sanctions are cruel and ineffective.
You know what's cruel? War is cruel.
It is only normal people, most of whom are against war, who will suffer as a result. Doctors who can't source medicine, workers who can't pay their staff, et c.
These sanctions will not negatively affect Putin; he has expected them for years and indeed has been explicitly preparing to cope with them.
Regardless: if Russia doesn't come to its senses quickly the country will likely not recover in the next 40 years or so from the kind of damage they are doing to their stature on the international stage, this is not the kind of thing you walk away from and claim it was 'just Putin'. Time is running out, and the easy solutions have all already been pre-empted by events.
Should cancer patients in Oklahoma not be permitted to buy chemotherapy medications because Bush invaded Iraq?
We banned collective punishment in the Geneva Convention because it is insane and unjust.
I have persian friends with family in Iran who can testify firsthand to how damaging sanctions are to people who have no ability whatsoever to remedy the problems that caused the sanctions to be put in place. Personifying countries is an error.
Yes, and I'm sorry about that. But that is the country that is currently invading another country.
> Should cancer patients in Oklahoma not be permitted to buy chemotherapy medications because Bush invaded Iraq?
I'm out of patience for the day for silly arguments, sorry.
> We banned collective punishment in the Geneva Convention because it is insane and unjust.
That's not what collective punishment is about.
> I have persian friends with family in Iran who can testify firsthand to how damaging sanctions are to people who have no ability whatsoever to remedy the problems that caused the sanctions to be put in place. Personifying countries is an error.
Yes, this is called collateral damage. See also: photos of Ukrainian kids sheltering in the Kiev subway today in fear of the Russian onslaught headed towards their city, if you want to personify this then maybe have a look at those instead of trying to gain sympathy for the citizens of the aggressor nation.
Using techniques that will not affect those who caused the war, while severely punishing those who are not involved in the war (simply because of where they live), will not help the situation, it will make it worse.
Protests don't even work in the west, how can they work in Russia?
Accountability for criminal homicide of Black people, especially by law enforcement, has definitely increased since BLM became a force. Whether that's a lasting effect is, of course, too soon to say, but it's not to be casually dismissed as you have.
Especially by law enforcement, or only by law enforcement? Criminal homicide of blacks is way up since BLM.
Without Russia propping him up Lukashenko would be out by now.
Think Solidarity, not BLM and get the whole country to grind to a halt. That will make a difference. By the time the police and the army have to decide if they want to open fire on their family it can be won. But for that to happen something major will have to change in Russia first.
Those instances are rare, but that's an existence proof that you can't deny (and there are, historically, more examples).
Note that the support for those Canadian protests amongst ordinary Canadians was minimal.
According to the Russian authorities, yes. According to me: those people are real heroes, right now it is far more dangerous to join such protests than when the numbers are higher, especially in places like Russia.
Of course, I'm not sure there are many parallels here to the situation in Russia/Ukraine.
To be clear, against all war and what is happening in Russia is also equally unacceptable.
Please excuse my ignorance but how did the US and EU put the UA people in danger?
This is pretty well documented.
Russian people are infested and brain washed with decades of propaganda. I hope this war and sanctions will cripple the country back into 1990s and Russian state cease to exist in its current form, regime, and borders.
Russia is seriously sick and must rid itself from Putin first
Factually incorrect, the word 'Russia' doesn't appear in NATO's charter, it is first and foremost a security pact. That Russia ends up in the position of the main party to worry about is in principle unrelated to that, but obviously it is the reality, as Russia has proven beyond any doubt now.
> You can google the map and you will see the strategic position of those countries.
Those countries were and are where they always were, and they were happy to join NATO precisely because they feel threatened by Russia, which is not without reason, they were under Russian occupation for decades.
> In the West, only Belarus and Ukraine have not been added to this list of Russian neighboring countries.
You missed Sweden and Finland.
Belarus is a vassal state of Russia, and does not have a functioning democracy. Ukraine has asked to join but this has to date not happened. The fact that it just so happened to be Ukraine that is attacked seems to lend credence to the fact that being a NATO member has its advantages and that those countries made the right decision.
> The USA & EU has been running military drills at those locations for many decades in an act of intimidation.
No, you run military drills to ensure that if and when you ever need them they will work, if you need to figure that stuff out - especially with multiple nations operating together - when you need it then you have already lost.
FWIW Russia does exactly the same thing.
> 2. Sanctions are effecting mostly the everyday people of Russia.
Yes.
> This is gathering more support internally for Putin’s aggression.
You have cause and effect reversed.
> 3. The Ukraine has a major movement toward the west in the last decade.
Which they were entirely free to make. Russia needs to 'stay in its lane'.
> Making Ukraine NATO would be another enemy at the boarder and this would be unfavorable for the Russian’s.
Note that you want to see NATO as 'the enemy'.
> 4. There has been no attempt by the USA to work with Putin or the Russian officials.
The USA is not involved in this conflict. China hasn't attempted to work with Putin or Russian officials either. And FWIW those Russian officials that were worked with were lying through their teeth, which is on the record.
> Even using Russia as a scapegoat for the Wikileaks dump in 2016.
Which has nothing to do with Ukraine.
> And of course so, so much more anti Russian sentiment in our media ahead of this.
'our'?
> 5. Biden and his sons involvement in the Ukraine (as reported on in 2020 by some of the US media) shows the constant strain that the Ukrainians are under.
Not relevant.
> A pawn between the USA and Russia.
In your mind, perhaps, but not in the mind of Europeans or Ukrainians for that matter, who mostly just want to get on with their lives, which a deranged dictator has now made impossible. This confrontation is on Russia and Russia alone, and any kind of attempts to whitewash it or to paint some alternative story is so much bs.
> Open to thoughts and opinions by everyone!
If anything the EU and the US should have done more, not less to arm the Ukraine, but they were under the mistaken impression that that would trigger a Russian response, if they had known then what we know now I'm fairly sure the situation would be completely different. But we're on to it now, and those that still aren't will wake up soon enough.
But you can.
> Well, we are not able
No, you won't.
That's fine but don't make it seem like there is no choice, there is plenty of evidence of people in Russia protesting and they have made a different choice than you.
And "current operation" is distancing language. It's an invasion or a war, not an operation.