Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by boffinAudio on Monday April 17, 2023 @09:32AM
(#35600434)
>Russia’s expansionist policy
Citation requested. I'd love to see direct references to Kremlin-sourced materials which back up the assertion of these policies.
And no, just saying "everyone knows Russia/Putin wants to rule the world" isn't enough.
Point to the Russian documents with the same clarity and direction that one can, for example, point to the PNAC policy statements [1], which resulted in Iraq losing 5% of its population.
>Since then, the foreign policy of the Russian Federation made it clear that the country still considers the former republics its own.
They surely must exist, these policies. Hopefully they can be read, and not just through the lens of spooks ..
>a dark future ahead if the world meekly submits to Russia’s dark impulses.
Where are these dark impulses described in official state policy? What, specifically, are the impulses that are considered so dark? Generalizations and hearsay do not qualify - please refer us to official state policies which support these suppositions.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by somenameforme on Monday April 17, 2023 @10:49AM
(#35601598)
They've been directly tied in with every US government for decades. For instance the founder was Robert Kagan who's married to Victoria Nuland, the current Under Secretary of State, serving just under Antony Blinken - even though she's rather less visible. She's been involved in regime games with Ukraine since 2014. John Bolton was another cofounder, who goes without saying. And you can probably find even more extreme examples - those are just a couple off the top of my head.
Incidentally if you ever want to understand US foreign policy (and geopolitics in general), the PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" [1] is an absolute must-read. You'll find it not only describes Bush's foreign policy but literally every single president's up to and including Biden, to a tee (with some slight wobble around Trump). It can help send geopolitics from this sort of inscrutable tenticular mess to something where everything suddenly makes perfect sense.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by boffinAudio on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @06:58AM
(#35612324)
Thank you for engaging in this argument and providing real references to official state policies, adopted by the American people, which have resulted in 34 million war refugees clogging the borders of the world, immense calamity and destruction of multiple sovereign states, and an entire region of the world left to dig its children out from under the piles of burning rubble.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by avmich on Monday April 17, 2023 @10:15AM
(#35601019)
Often the dark actions are wrapped in good words. So we either read "we Russians stand for the world peace" and understand we need to prepare for war, or don't read nothing at all, except intelligence reports about increasing military forces on the borders.
> Otherwise, this is just agitprop.
On whos side?
Will anybody honestly argue about Russia's expansionist policy? After events which can be interpreted as a solid confirmation of that? Will anybody honestly willing to twist words and images as much as to question this? If so, what's the dictionary which can be agreed upon, so the dialog is possible at all, at the level of "citation requested"? Where's the evidence that if a picture is presented which describes the events the discussion won't move to the critique of the description, not to the conclusions the picture was meant to illustrate?
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by boffinAudio on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:05AM
(#35610861)
If you have chosen sides, you've lost.
This is about preventing the circumstances whereby yet more war and calamity are foisted on the world.
Western public love to pontificate that they 'know' (telepathically?) what the Russian state 'wants'. But they can't point to a single policy document to support their argument - just more agitprop.
>Or, in other words, who's doing agitprop here?
Those who profess to know what official state policy is, without actually having read any.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by boffinAudio on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:02AM
(#35610840)
Any blowhard can say what they want. I want to see official state policy.
Are you going to call every belligerent think that, for example, Trump or Obama said, as official policy?
Like we saw with the US' PNAC policies, which were adopted and implemented by the US government, and which resulted in 5% of Iraq's population being murdered by the American people.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by illiarian on Monday April 17, 2023 @01:09PM
(#35603598)
> Point to the Russian documents with the same clarity and direction that one can, for example, point to the PNAC policy statements [1], which resulted in Iraq losing 5% of its population.
Current Russian regime knows that it cannot clearly explain the invasion of Ukraine. And yet, they invaded, occupied territories, quickly annexed them etc.
Something something "actions speak louder than words".
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by boffinAudio on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @03:07AM
(#35610871)
>Current Russian regime knows that it cannot clearly explain the invasion of Ukraine.
How do YOU 'know' that? This is supposition and not based on any evidence.
Show me where a representative of the Russian Federation states, with clarity, that they know they cannot clearly explain the invasion of Ukraine.
This is just coffee-shop psychology, weaponized. You don't actually know anything. Read more official state policies - especially those of your own state.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by iforgetti on Monday April 17, 2023 @02:03PM
(#35604263)
The author (who grew up in Poland while it was a puppet state of the USSR) offers examples literally in the same paragraph that you quoted. The full paragraph is:
Russia’s expansionist policy, on the other hand, continues to cast a long shadow across Europe. The country has a long history of conquest, but for centuries, its vast dominion resembled a loose federation of fiefdoms, not a single state; it wasn’t until the emergence of the USSR that a cohesive national identity — along with a renewed focus on global expansion — started to take hold. Through various machinations, the USSR soon ended up annexing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; and seizing military and political control of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and other neighboring states. For decades, the residents of these lands suffered repression and economic hardships — and were barred from leaving the Soviet-controlled world.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by 542354234235 on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @09:16AM
(#35613566)
I think I am confused. Isn’t invading another country and annexing their territory an expansionist policy? Are you saying that is not happening or that the Russian military is operating without Kremlin approval?
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by kstenerud on Monday April 17, 2023 @09:44AM
(#35600608)
> In contrast to Nazi Germany, the days of the Soviet Union are not a point of national shame; former communist dignitaries are not banished from public life, streets and entire towns still bearing their names. Nostalgia coupled with bitterness continues to define Russian politics.
Actually, Nazi Germany was filled with nostalgia coupled with bitterness over the treaty of Versailles. They felt hard done by in WW1, and wanted to reclaim their rightful place as rulers of Europe. And of course xenophobia, genocide and atrocities come along for the ride when you put your trust in a strongman who goes to imperialist war.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by baseballdork on Monday April 17, 2023 @09:51AM
(#35600698)
Poorly worded, I suspect. I think the comparison is how modern Germany treats the nazi part of their past to how modern Russia treats the Soviet part of their past.
Re:A Perspective on Ukraine
by kstenerud on Monday April 17, 2023 @09:55AM
(#35600740)
What I mean is: Russia today is more akin to Germany in the 1930s, bitter over their past failures and humiliation at the hands of allied states a decade or so earlier, and eager to get back to conquest to show the world how great and powerful they are.
Citation requested. I'd love to see direct references to Kremlin-sourced materials which back up the assertion of these policies.
And no, just saying "everyone knows Russia/Putin wants to rule the world" isn't enough.
Point to the Russian documents with the same clarity and direction that one can, for example, point to the PNAC policy statements [1], which resulted in Iraq losing 5% of its population.
>Since then, the foreign policy of the Russian Federation made it clear that the country still considers the former republics its own.
They surely must exist, these policies. Hopefully they can be read, and not just through the lens of spooks ..
>a dark future ahead if the world meekly submits to Russia’s dark impulses.
Where are these dark impulses described in official state policy? What, specifically, are the impulses that are considered so dark? Generalizations and hearsay do not qualify - please refer us to official state policies which support these suppositions.
Otherwise, this is just agitprop.
[1] = https://www.rrojasdatabank.info/pfpc/PNAC---statement%20of%2...
> Citation requested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi...
Nice try at spreading yet more agitprop.
Wasn't PNAC a non-government think-tank?
Incidentally if you ever want to understand US foreign policy (and geopolitics in general), the PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" [1] is an absolute must-read. You'll find it not only describes Bush's foreign policy but literally every single president's up to and including Biden, to a tee (with some slight wobble around Trump). It can help send geopolitics from this sort of inscrutable tenticular mess to something where everything suddenly makes perfect sense.
[1] - https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses
Now lets do this for Russia, too ..
> Otherwise, this is just agitprop.
On whos side?
Will anybody honestly argue about Russia's expansionist policy? After events which can be interpreted as a solid confirmation of that? Will anybody honestly willing to twist words and images as much as to question this? If so, what's the dictionary which can be agreed upon, so the dialog is possible at all, at the level of "citation requested"? Where's the evidence that if a picture is presented which describes the events the discussion won't move to the critique of the description, not to the conclusions the picture was meant to illustrate?
Or, in other words, who's doing agitprop here?
This is about preventing the circumstances whereby yet more war and calamity are foisted on the world.
Western public love to pontificate that they 'know' (telepathically?) what the Russian state 'wants'. But they can't point to a single policy document to support their argument - just more agitprop.
>Or, in other words, who's doing agitprop here?
Those who profess to know what official state policy is, without actually having read any.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2020/07/01/there-is-no-ukraine...
https://time.com/6150046/ukraine-statehood-russia-history-pu...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/opinion/ukraine-war-natio...
Is the deputy prime minister of Russia demanding Alaska back enough of a citation?
Or do you actually not care for any evidence, comrade?
Are you going to call every belligerent think that, for example, Trump or Obama said, as official policy?
Like we saw with the US' PNAC policies, which were adopted and implemented by the US government, and which resulted in 5% of Iraq's population being murdered by the American people.
Being murdered proximally to Americans is very different from being murdered BY Americans (but still bad).
Current Russian regime knows that it cannot clearly explain the invasion of Ukraine. And yet, they invaded, occupied territories, quickly annexed them etc.
Something something "actions speak louder than words".
How do YOU 'know' that? This is supposition and not based on any evidence.
Show me where a representative of the Russian Federation states, with clarity, that they know they cannot clearly explain the invasion of Ukraine.
This is just coffee-shop psychology, weaponized. You don't actually know anything. Read more official state policies - especially those of your own state.
February 24th, 2023, so it's not some ancient history...
Russia’s expansionist policy, on the other hand, continues to cast a long shadow across Europe. The country has a long history of conquest, but for centuries, its vast dominion resembled a loose federation of fiefdoms, not a single state; it wasn’t until the emergence of the USSR that a cohesive national identity — along with a renewed focus on global expansion — started to take hold. Through various machinations, the USSR soon ended up annexing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; and seizing military and political control of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and other neighboring states. For decades, the residents of these lands suffered repression and economic hardships — and were barred from leaving the Soviet-controlled world.
What policy? This is a generalization. Specifically, which articles ratified by the Kremlin make this official state policy?
Any blowhard can say what they want. Where is the official state policy to support this argument?
Actually, Nazi Germany was filled with nostalgia coupled with bitterness over the treaty of Versailles. They felt hard done by in WW1, and wanted to reclaim their rightful place as rulers of Europe. And of course xenophobia, genocide and atrocities come along for the ride when you put your trust in a strongman who goes to imperialist war.