As a Russian who is hosting Ukrainian refugees I can definitely say this is false. I can understand probably around 90% of raw speech in Ukrainian without any support and 0 prior experience.
It is not for lack of trying on part of Russia. They send plenty of missiles in that direction. It's just that Kiev is protected by modern air defenses more than any other Ukrainian city.
So far Russia has not hesitated completely destroying relatively large Ukrainian cities. If you need a link to the pictures, let me know.
Russia's actions in Bucha, Mariupol and just about everywhere in this war (Cherson during occupation comes to mind) have been horrid, as is its disregard for its own soldiers, many of whom are just used as cannon fodder. Russia is targetting civilians all over the place.
Those other wars are horrible too, but comparing them just by number of casualties is disingenious.
Also, Yalta? What?
That's a lie.
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-...
> “The actual death toll of hostilities on civilians is likely thousands higher,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said... Bachelet added that right now it is "impossible to know" the exact death toll.
Even Russia doesn't think it's that low, and they've reason to want to undercount.
https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2022/12/30/russia-says-3000-c...
> Russian officials say that 3,000 civilians were killed in the attack on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, in Moscow's first estimate of the death toll since the siege several months ago.
But a lot more civilians than that were killed.
[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/high-commissione...
> To date, OHCHR has verified 1,348 individual civilian deaths directly in hostilities in Mariupol, including 70 children. These deaths were caused by air strikes, tank and artillery shelling and small arms and light weapons during street fighting. The actual death toll of hostilities on civilians is likely thousands higher.
The other comments by the same poster in this thread do not lead to the “honest” conclusion.
It isn't an accurate reading, but if you spend any time at all on the internet you will detect that honest people are often quite inaccurate. And wrong even while being able to back their opinions up with evidence. But it still isn't fair to imply that they are liar, lying or spreading lies. They are just wrong. Happens to literally all of us.
Even if hypothetically he was a habitual liar in every other comment he ever made on HN, this is not a showcase of lying.
Doesn't affect holoduke though, and he could still honestly quote you as having viewed 20 potatoes.
That's just plain wrong. Please read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_civilians_in_the_...
"Poland forced Germany to attack" (1939) by Putin, Moscow propaganda supports genocide. Atrocities in Bucha, Izum is result. Relatives? They speak nothing or support "liberation" by occupants.
It's pretty disgusting to reduce what happened to civilians in those cities to "some exceptions".
Yes, there are lots of family and friendship ties between the countries. It's sad that Putin has destroyed any chance of good relationships in the future, and basically solidified Ukraine as a nation in opposition to his aggression.
Additionally, even in government run universities in the west, there is the concept of academic freedom[2], meaning that faculty are able to teach their material freely without having to fear retaliation from the government (in the United States, this is effectively limited to "tenured" professors, it's more general in other countries.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom
Of course not, but government and elite universities are deeply interconnected. Here [1] Yale bragging that "over 500 Yale alumni have been elected to Congressional positions." Just imagine amount of nepotism going on in institutions like Yale, to think that US ruling elite is built upon pure meritocracy is to fool yourself. Of course there would be opportunist like Snyder that will capitalise upon this hype around Ukraine.
Navalny himself attended Yale in 2010, where one might argue he found connections to US private money in fight for democracy against totalitarian Russian government.
[1] https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/11/11/yales-congressiona...
Yale have more in common with United States Military Academy At West Point where [1]
> The runner up after Harvard is Yale University, claiming 5 U.S presidents as alumni.
> Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower are the only 2 U.S. presidents who attended the United States Military Academy At West Point. They are also 2 of the most important military generals in American history
[1] https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/where-did-most-u-s-presidents-...
On top of having zero credentials yourself, you're also making some pretty weird, muddled arguments here:
"Snyder is on the government payroll! Okay so maybe he isn't. But Navalny attended Yale. And so did some people who ended up working for the government. So plainly Snyder in the pocket of ..."
If you don't have time to watch all 23 episodes, the last one is a bit of a summary, discussing the history of European imperialism and colonialism, particularly Nazi German imperialism (conquering Ukraine was a central strategic goal of WW2), and pointing out some European hypocrisy in their reckoning of this history, and how Russia is exploiting that to pursue its own imperialist and colonialist goals.
Here’s a good video to help clarify things for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions_and_occupa...
Even Russia is very diverse ethnicaly and culturaly, as expected of such a huge country. The differences between the Far East, Sankt Petersbug, Daghestan and Buryatia are quite significant.