A key difference being that American society has evolved over the last 200 years to largely outgrow the cultural elements that produced those abuses. We fought a very bloody civil war to get rid of slavery, and black people/women have had the right to vote for some time. We're also not massacring Native American villages anymore. Not saying the problems are 100% solved, but no one can argue it's night and day compared to 100 years ago.

Putin by contrast is a return to a 19th century Tsardom in everything but name.

> We fought a very bloody civil war to get rid of slavery, and black people/women have had the right to vote for some time

is that what gets taught in american schools these days? i wonder how the black and natives feel

> Putin by contrast is a return to a 19th century Tsardom in everything but name

what does tsardom mean? if anything putinism is a caricature of the russian government in Red Alert 2. by that i mean a mix of soviet and tsarist symbolism and orthodox church. its so bizzare

Better to be black in America than Russian in Russia. We got our problems over here, but at least we aren’t being conscripted and thrown into the meat grinder of a pointless war.

> being conscripted and thrown into the meat grinder

I will be labeled as a brainwashed ruskie and downvoted into oblivion if I point out that it isn't really true, right?

How come? Several of my friends' coworkers were conscripted and sent to the front (the friends themselves managed to leave the country the next day). I don't even need to believe what the newspapers are saying — it's straight from the horse's mouth.

The conscription has not reached Ukraine's levels yet, but only because 2024 is not far away, and Putin expects to get his 75% without too much trouble. After that, who knows.

i know plenty of ukranians that left ukraine in order to dodge conscription. although they hope russia looses they say they would not give their life for benefit of the corrupt elite. to me that is a smart decision. same for russians that leave russia in order to escape conscription. this war sucks as do all sides supporting it

russia is the only side supporting the war, russia can fuck off from Ukraine any time it wants and the war will be over immediately.

i don't think you speak for all ukranians though

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/21/whats-behind-pro-ru...

so you are saying that the so-called "separatists" form a different "side" from russia tho they both want the war to continue?

nothing "so-called" about them. by all definitions of the word, they are separatists, and ones who support russia's intervention. by their account, zelensky can end the war immediately by recognizing independence of donbas, or initiating a referendum

If the goal is to recognize Donbas then why the fuck were the tanks rolling towards Kyiv? Why was Odesa bombed? Why did the annexation involve two other regions?

Let alone that it is public knowledge that the "separatists" are and always have been under russian control. Little green men came from russia and made the war happen.

seperatists are eastern ukranians that dont want to be under central kiev government, run by ukranian nationalists with nazi sympathies. that they would rather see themselves as russian just goes to tell you how much of a failure the right wing policies of the ukranian government have been

Because the Ukraine signed the Minsk agreements in bad faith with no intention of implementing them.

"it is public knowledge"

I suggest you read Wikipedia about anti-Maidan unrest in the Eastern Ukraine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukr...

I suggest you read Budapest Memorandum [0]. After russia blatantly violated its commitments from there any pointing out to Minsk is just idiotic.

Any violation of Ukrainian internationally recognized borders has been highly illegal and no matter how much whitewashing you want to do you are shilling for genocide. Also you will remove any claim that it was putins war after Ukraine has won.

Pointing out random events 9 years ago somehow justifies mass murder of civilians now? Also you need to go that far back to find anything at all is quite telling.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

its not that simple. ukranian nationalists overthrew an elected, internationally recognised government and as a consequence eastern ukranians revolted. its not very clear that budapest memorandum was violated at that point. no ammount of russia bashing can clarify that

"After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, Canada,[25] France, Germany, Italy, Japan,[26] the UK,[27] and US[28][29] stated that Russian involvement was a breach of its Budapest Memorandum obligations to Ukraine and in violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Whats not clear about that?

for one, their authority and capacity to objectively judge. for two, their hypocricy

"Pointing out random events 9 years ago somehow justifies mass murder"

You are confused. You claimed that the sole reason of the war in 2014 was Russian meddling and I suggested you read how the events really unfolded. It's still not too late to do just that.

How cute that a russian justifying russian war of aggression and genocide is gaslighting others with statements like "You are confused".

but you are confused. ukranian nationalists broke international law first. not only that but one of the first things the nationalists did after illegaly overthrowing an elected government was tell russia they were not going to be paying any outstanding debts. their policies only brought about what the whole world knew was gonna happen. never mind the feigned shock in the media. even my grandmother on the other side of europe knew what was gonna happen. the us egged them on to piss russia off. the eu told them to stay put. the us told ukranian nationalists infamously to "fuck the eu". its all common knowledge

the people in the eu largely support ukraine because they dislike russia. but no one sees them as our freedom fighters. lol. everyone knows the us is behind it and when living standards accross europe deteriorate people will lose patience with both the ukraine and the us

You have drunk the Kremlin propaganda really hard to think like that.

You think in one thread that russia had the best revolution in the history and in an another you call Ukrainian revolution illegal.

Also even if you don’t like that another country shakes lose of autocrat cronies, how does any of that justify tanks and bombs and Bucha?

Your thinking is comparable to a common thug: you were speeding, therefore I can kill all your relatives, rape your wife and kids.

i think you are incapable of having a civilized conversation

read about the russian civil war for a historical lesson about what can happen when there is a revolution. not just the russian civil war, but the ukranian civil war that followed the bolshevik revolution, as well as the heroic ukranian figures like Nestor Makhno and other noble ukranians that faught for a free and independent ukraine. but for some reason the ukranian nationalists in charge today glorify the nazi Stepan Bandera and made themselves and ukraine a vassal of us imperial ambitions. this is not the ukraine i want to support

I don't see how giving a link to an article in the English language Wikipedia and suggesting you read it can be classified as gaslighting.

"russia can fuck off from Ukraine any time it wants and the war will be over immediately"

You mean leaving the people of the Crimea, DNR and LNR to the mercy of nationalistic Ukraine?

Saving the people of occupied territories from russian rape, murder, forceful deportation, looting of property, etc.

im sure ukranians are much better. just like serbs and croats, same sh* different flag

That's not how the life is in Crimea. Ukraine was 'saving' Crimeans by cutting water and electricity supply.

As for DNR and LNR, it's as meaningful as saying that Russia is saving people in Ukraine from being burned alive by Ukrainian nationalists [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odesa_clashes#Trade_Union...

You seem to conveniently omit the fact that the first victims in Odessa on 2 May were on the Maidan side, 2 activists, Andrei Biryukov and Igor Ivanov. And that victims of the burning themselves were armed with incendiary weapons: https://youtu.be/FWBGM9G4kF8

Classic victim blaming.

I'm Russian living in Russia and it is really true.

> Better to be black in America than Russian in Russia

you really think that russians are scared of police when they walk down the road? i mean im not surprised. this is a very common misconception about how societies in e. europe work

> but at least we aren’t being conscripted and thrown into the meat grinder of a pointless war

given how brave people seem to be online i dare say, "not yet"

> wonder how the black and natives feel

That they’re better off than being slaves.

sorry to break it to you but black men and women are born free. its just that americans put them in chains. im sure that today they are grateful for being treated as 2nd class citizens

> today they are grateful for being treated as 2nd class citizens

That isn’t what you said. You pushed back on the notion that people fought and continue to fight for others’ rights in America in a way they don’t in modern Russia (or China). That isn’t true, and it isn’t true that America Blacks or women are worse off today than they were two hundred years ago, as OP argued when you pushed back. Perfect is the enemy of good; you’re arguing against American values on a thread about modern Russia.

i just love reminding americans that the high pedistal they immagine they sit on when they lecture everyone is actually just a kitsch pigsty

So long as you acknowledge that our current pigsty is much cleaner than Russia's. The best you can point to is genocides and atrocities we committed 170 years ago, whereas Russia is attempting to commit similar genocides as we speak. And it's not the first time the Russians have committed genocide against Ukrainians. I guess when your nation doesn't change that much in 100 years it's hard to understand that other nations do, so calling up crimes from generations ago makes sense. I bet you berate the modern Mongolians for the crimes of Genghis Khan, and modern Italians for the many massacres committed by the Romans.

>The best you can point to is genocides and atrocities we committed 170 years ago, whereas Russia is attempting to commit similar genocides as we speak

russia's war in ukraine: 25,000+ civilians killed

number of civilian victims in Vietnam killed by US armed forces: 100,000+

number of civilian victims killed due to US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan: 200,000+

number of civilian deaths due to war in iraq: 200,000+

need i point out more?

as i said, kitsch pigsty. understand the evils committed by your own government before you lecture others. after all you have more freedom than russian people, hence more personal responsibility too. if people do this across the world, world would be a much happier place

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/My...

> russia's war in ukraine: 25,000+ civilians killed

> number of civilian victims in Vietnam killed by US armed forces: 100,000+

You do know the US involvement in Vietnam lasted 20 years, and Russia is barely past the 1 year mark in Ukraine, right?

those are statistics for 12 years of civilian deaths by the us military directly. they are not all the civilian deaths that occured during the vietnam war

during the same period, for a time span of 3 years, the us bombed cambodia and killed over 200,000 civilians as a result

> And it's not the first time the Russians have committed genocide against Ukrainians

im curious, when do you think was the first one? i mean there was the period of famine while ukraine was part of the ussr, but if thats what you mean lets get few simple facts straight

1) ukraine was an equal republic of the ussr

2) russia was a seperate republic of the ussr. russia had no authority about what goes on in ukraine

3) ussr at that time had a supreme ruler who was of georgian ethnicity

so even if we agree that systematic genocide did happen, it is very hard to argue that russia had anything to do with it

curiously, every time a russian ruled ussr, ukraine was rather well off. for example, under lenin ussr promoted ukranianization [1], under khrushchev ukraine got gifted crimea, while the ussr got a ukranian as its supreme leader [2]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Brezhnev

If you are referencing Holodomor, then it was not targeted at Ukraine. Yes Ukraine was hit hard by it, having half of total death toll from communist-induced famine. But other half were also Russians and Kazakhs. Bolsheviks while not being shy about ethnic-based genocide didn't really care about ethnicity of victims at that case.