Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by jiggawatts on Thursday July 11, 2024 @06:44PM
(#40941274)
This was a few days ago and from my airmchair looks like a simple “oops” mistake — a legitimate(ish) target was apparently across the street.
When Russia had more ballistic rockets available something else more horrifying was occurring that didn’t gain much mainstream attention: using outdated maps for targeting.
About a year ago when a bunch of apartment blocks were blown up by Russian missiles the journalists interviewed the locals. Often they said something along the lines of: “Oh yes, there was a military building there but it was demolished in the 90s and replaced by the apartment building.”
I just cannot express the depth of my dismay at this.
That Russia is basically stuck in time, like a fly in amber, refusing to admit that anything happened after 1991.
That someone in an office took a 30 year old military map (probably printed on yellowed paper!), shrugged their shoulders and said: “good enough!” before setting the coordinates and sending the launch order.
That the whole reason for this war is that Putin is old and thinks the distant past, now two generations ago is present reality. Heck, their propaganda still talks about “nazis”, something that happened at a small scale seventy years ago!
It’s hubris of the highest order with the deadliest of consequences.
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by jiggawatts on Thursday July 11, 2024 @07:48PM
(#40941640)
Yes, small.
There has been extensive non-partisan (historically accurate) analysis of this, which I won't repeat here because it just invites the wrong kind of nit-picking debate over minutiae that don't matter.[1]
Meanwhile, actual fascists and literal NAZI party members took over most of Europe in the 1940s. Italy was fascist. Austria joined the NAZIs. Hungary did too. Hungary is turning increasingly fascist right now and Russia loves this:https://theconversation.com/i-watched-hungarys-democracy-dis...
Apparently, that's no longer a problem, but a single long-dead[1] collaborator with no real impact on Ukraine even when he was alive is apparently reason to invade with... drumroll... a merc army lead by a neo-NAZI with SS tattoos: https://aijac.org.au/fresh-air/russia-sends-its-pet-neo-nazi...
You can't make this stuff up. If this was a script for a movie, the author would be laughed out of the room.
Sigh.. the whole "Ukraine is NAZI" talking point is just that. An excuse, a throw-away comment that works on Russians and nobody else. It's like the bully that punches the kid in the playground because they wanted to, and when asked, comes up with some "reason" on the spot, like "Oh, I didn't like the way they looked at me" or somesuch.
[1] A favoured argument tactic by those people who know they're in the wrong with respect to the fundamental points. Ukraine could have been 100% NAZI and saluting Hitler in school, but this doesn't matter if it occurred when 80% of the current population hadn't even been born yet!
[2] In the dirt for more than half a century now! Bandera died in 1959! that was 63 years before the start of the current invasion. THIS is my point precisely, that Putin's justifications are out-of-date, based on politics that have zero relevance to modern-day Ukraine.
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by slavaukro123777 on Thursday July 11, 2024 @10:46PM
(#40942388)
The expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders is very real and very modern. Enough of a justification for the current Russian push back. Blame for the current events is fully on NATO warmongering aggressive policies.
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by jiggawatts on Thursday July 11, 2024 @11:13PM
(#40942484)
> warmongering aggressive policies
Russia invaded Ukraine in a war that has -- so far -- killed at least a hundred thousand people and wounded about half a million.
Is that a defensive or aggressive policy towards neighbours?
How many people have died as a consequence of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland joining NATO?
What material aggression has Russia experienced, in terms of casualties?
This whole thing is actually very simple: Russia's senior leadership wanted to invade Ukraine. It's something they've been planning for decades. There's numerous interviews with various world leaders stating that they've known about these plans since at least the early 2000s.
Ukraine joining a defensive pact is a "threat" only to invasion plans. Invading right before a country has a chance to join is simply confirming that the need for defensive alliances was a real one.
It's like a burglar feeling "threatened" by the installation of security cameras in a place they've been scoping for months, and robbing the place right before the security system installers turn up.
No matter what that burglar says about the police, or the "spying" of the cameras, or whatever matters. Fundamentally, they had criminal intent and are just making things up to justify that.
Every Russian excuse is just nonsense when examined critically. E.g.: "We had to defend ethnic Russians from the bad Ukranians". Okay... then why was it that after the invasion the Russian military immediately used the locals as discardable cannon fodder? What kind of "protection" is that!? https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1d7b6gs...
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by slavaukro123777 on Saturday July 13, 2024 @10:28AM
(#40954318)
If Russia has wanted to invade Ukraine since 2000 is because NATO aggressive expansion towards it since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As simple as that. America is contending the European space because it needs it for its hegemony. They are not the good guys. Just big-power politics. Russia cannot allow American bases on its borders. It’s simple geopolitics. Ukraine should have been smarter and found a way to remain neutral.
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by slavaukro123777 on Saturday July 13, 2024 @10:32AM
(#40954337)
I am glad you recognize this is a push back. Because that’s exactly what it is: a push back on American imperialism. And since the US is responsible for the forward advance that triggered the push back, it is also responsible for the deaths you mention.
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by protomolecule on Monday July 15, 2024 @05:35AM
(#40966402)
"That Russia is basically stuck in time"
That's quite an over-generalization, extrapolating from a mistake of some dumb military commander to the whole country.
"their propaganda still talks about “nazis”, something that happened at a small scale seventy years ago!"
Then NYTimes, WP, Israeli and Polish Foreign Ministers are "Russian propagandists".
"Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History" [0]
"From the Fires of War. Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right" [1]
"Ukraine Has Better Heroes Than This Friend of Fascism" [2]
"In row over Holocaust history, Israel and Poland issue joint critique of Ukraine"[3] :
"Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in recent years over differing interpretations of the history of the Second World War, came together on Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis."
"Ukraine tells Israel to stay out of debate about honoring Nazi collaborators" [4]
Notably, most of the articles you linked were also written after the 2022 invasion, and all were written after the 2014 invasion.
Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper.
This is a "problem" in the same way that skinheads are a problem: local.
Russia in no shape, way, or form faced any kind of material threat from Ukraine's local neo-nazi, fascist, or extreme right-wing groups.
Invading a country and killing hundreds of thousands is so many orders of magnitude worse than some people walking up a street chanting the name of someone long-dead that's it's just absurd.
Remind me again: how many Russians died because of Lenin? (An estimate to the nearest million will do) Any 'statues', 'pictures', or 'posters' of him anywhere in Russia?
Yes, or no?
How many do you estimate if yes?
Do any Russians revere him in any way?
How many Russians died because of Bandera? Now give me an estimate Putin. The nearest hundred thousand will do.
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by protomolecule on Monday July 15, 2024 @08:05AM
(#40967084)
How is that cherry-picking? If you think that I have omitted some important information about Ukrainian nationalists and the support for them from the post-2014 regime in Kiev, tell me, what have I missed.
If you skim the article you linked to, you'll find that despite being written in 2022, the latest example is dated to 2016. That matches my own perception of wide crack-down on neo-Nazis in Putin's time. They've got jailed and some died in prison [0]. I fact-checked a random fact from the article -- the Kremlin tolerance for the music band Kolovrat. It turns out that almost 50 of their songs are listed in the "List of extremist materials" and their distribution is a crime. [1]
"and all were written after the 2014 invasion"
Coincidentally (sarcasm), 2014 is also when Ukrainian nationalists came to power.
Nonetheless, you are welcome to listen to the Bush Sr's speech in Kiev in 1991: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred".[2] Americans later did support them, of course. [3]
"Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper."
This statement is surprising. Let me quote the article [4] more extensively:
"The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in recent years over differing interpretations of the history of the Second World War, came together on Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis.
The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
“Remembering our innocent brothers and sisters murdered in the occupied territories of Poland 1935-1945, which now constitute a part of Ukraine, we the Ambassadors of Poland and Israel believe, that celebrating these individuals is an insult,” Lion and Cichocki wrote.
“Glorification of those who promoted actively the ethnic cleansing is counterproductive in the fight against Antisemitism and the reconciliation of our People,” they continued.
...
Thursday’s letter is the second time that Lion and Cichocki have come together to call for a change in Ukrainian memory policy. In June, the pair signed a joint letter to the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankisvsk, protesting the unveiling of a monument honoring Roman Shukhevych, a collaborator with the Nazis who was implicated in the murder of countless Jews and ethnic Poles.
Following Ukraine’s 2014 revolution, the former Soviet republic’s parliament passed a series of bills known collectively as the Decommunization Laws, meant to sever the country’s ties to its Russian and Soviet past. One of the bills prohibited what it called the “public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century.”
In practical terms, these bills paved the way for the rehabilitation of Ukrainian ultranationalist figures who had collaborated with the Nazis.
Over the last several years, streets all over Ukraine have been named after far-right figures and steps have been taken to rehabilitate their images, casting them as fighters for democracy whose followers saved Jews from the Germans.
Asked about the letter, Ambassador Lion told The Times of Israel that Israel and Poland “have a common interest in combating Holocaust denial and rewriting of History.” "
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by racional on Monday July 15, 2024 @10:14AM
(#40968081)
And yet the idea that Russia has or ever had some rational reason to be threatened by any of this noise, or that it any other substantive way led to the invasions of 2014 or 2022 -- is still entirely fake. It's just another form of this basically:
Re:Russian Missile Attack Levels Children's Hospital
by racional on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @01:54PM
(#40978708)
But it isn't really fact-based. It only appears that way.
It doesn't matter how many individual factoids you lay out -- if the greater narrative you cast around them (and subordinate these facts into) is so plainly and fundamentally broken. That's why your salad wilts at first contact with fresh air, and your essay yields such a terse response.
Three unconditional conclusions in connection with the deliberate missile attack (X-101 class missiles) on the largest children's hospital of Ukraine "Okhmatdyt"...
1. This is a completely calculated action, specially designed and approved by the subject Putin. On the eve of the NATO summit. Like a slap to the Alliance. The Russian Federation is sending everyone an informal signal with something like this: "Even the outright killing of children will not force them (the Alliance) to make all the necessary decisions. And that's why we continue to attack..."
2. Almost simultaneously with the deliberate attack on children in the Ukrainian capital, the leaders of Hungary and China once again called for an "immediate ceasefire." This demand is not addressed to Russia. It is addressed only to the West and Ukraine. And its purpose is to create a false impression: the aggressor has the right to kill, because he is talking about "peace", and the victim must not defend himself and therefore must immediately stop resistance, leaving the territory and his own citizens to the aggressor... This has an extremely unnatural appearance and absolutely definitely stimulates Russia to continue attack…
3. Just now, the country that deliberately inflicted a massive attack on Ukrainian cities and a children's hospital in Kyiv continues to preside over... the UN Security Council. This is an absolutely blasphemous signal to all neutral countries: there are no rules, and outright cannibalism is encouraged. Moreover, there is no proper response from the UN, which directly points to the obvious: if the war does not end in the total defeat of Russia, the world is in for a terrible short story of bloody chaos, in which life has no value and death is the new synonym for the word "Russia".
When Russia had more ballistic rockets available something else more horrifying was occurring that didn’t gain much mainstream attention: using outdated maps for targeting.
About a year ago when a bunch of apartment blocks were blown up by Russian missiles the journalists interviewed the locals. Often they said something along the lines of: “Oh yes, there was a military building there but it was demolished in the 90s and replaced by the apartment building.”
I just cannot express the depth of my dismay at this.
That Russia is basically stuck in time, like a fly in amber, refusing to admit that anything happened after 1991.
That someone in an office took a 30 year old military map (probably printed on yellowed paper!), shrugged their shoulders and said: “good enough!” before setting the coordinates and sending the launch order.
That the whole reason for this war is that Putin is old and thinks the distant past, now two generations ago is present reality. Heck, their propaganda still talks about “nazis”, something that happened at a small scale seventy years ago!
It’s hubris of the highest order with the deadliest of consequences.
small?
There has been extensive non-partisan (historically accurate) analysis of this, which I won't repeat here because it just invites the wrong kind of nit-picking debate over minutiae that don't matter.[1]
Meanwhile, actual fascists and literal NAZI party members took over most of Europe in the 1940s. Italy was fascist. Austria joined the NAZIs. Hungary did too. Hungary is turning increasingly fascist right now and Russia loves this: https://theconversation.com/i-watched-hungarys-democracy-dis...
Apparently, that's no longer a problem, but a single long-dead[1] collaborator with no real impact on Ukraine even when he was alive is apparently reason to invade with... drumroll... a merc army lead by a neo-NAZI with SS tattoos: https://aijac.org.au/fresh-air/russia-sends-its-pet-neo-nazi...
You can't make this stuff up. If this was a script for a movie, the author would be laughed out of the room.
Sigh.. the whole "Ukraine is NAZI" talking point is just that. An excuse, a throw-away comment that works on Russians and nobody else. It's like the bully that punches the kid in the playground because they wanted to, and when asked, comes up with some "reason" on the spot, like "Oh, I didn't like the way they looked at me" or somesuch.
[1] A favoured argument tactic by those people who know they're in the wrong with respect to the fundamental points. Ukraine could have been 100% NAZI and saluting Hitler in school, but this doesn't matter if it occurred when 80% of the current population hadn't even been born yet!
[2] In the dirt for more than half a century now! Bandera died in 1959! that was 63 years before the start of the current invasion. THIS is my point precisely, that Putin's justifications are out-of-date, based on politics that have zero relevance to modern-day Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in a war that has -- so far -- killed at least a hundred thousand people and wounded about half a million.
Is that a defensive or aggressive policy towards neighbours?
How many people have died as a consequence of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland joining NATO?
What material aggression has Russia experienced, in terms of casualties?
This whole thing is actually very simple: Russia's senior leadership wanted to invade Ukraine. It's something they've been planning for decades. There's numerous interviews with various world leaders stating that they've known about these plans since at least the early 2000s.
Ukraine joining a defensive pact is a "threat" only to invasion plans. Invading right before a country has a chance to join is simply confirming that the need for defensive alliances was a real one.
It's like a burglar feeling "threatened" by the installation of security cameras in a place they've been scoping for months, and robbing the place right before the security system installers turn up.
No matter what that burglar says about the police, or the "spying" of the cameras, or whatever matters. Fundamentally, they had criminal intent and are just making things up to justify that.
Every Russian excuse is just nonsense when examined critically. E.g.: "We had to defend ethnic Russians from the bad Ukranians". Okay... then why was it that after the invasion the Russian military immediately used the locals as discardable cannon fodder? What kind of "protection" is that!? https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1d7b6gs...
How many people died in the course of Russia’s current pushback?
Which of these actions are you arguing is justified?
That's quite an over-generalization, extrapolating from a mistake of some dumb military commander to the whole country.
"their propaganda still talks about “nazis”, something that happened at a small scale seventy years ago!"
Then NYTimes, WP, Israeli and Polish Foreign Ministers are "Russian propagandists".
"Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History" [0]
"From the Fires of War. Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right" [1]
"Ukraine Has Better Heroes Than This Friend of Fascism" [2]
"In row over Holocaust history, Israel and Poland issue joint critique of Ukraine"[3] :
"Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in recent years over differing interpretations of the history of the Second World War, came together on Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis."
"Ukraine tells Israel to stay out of debate about honoring Nazi collaborators" [4]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/world/europe/nazi-symbols...
[1] https://cup.columbia.edu/book/from-the-fires-of-war/97838382...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20220817121012/https://www.washi...
[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-row-over-holocaust-history-...
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-tells-israel-to-stay-o...
I can cherry-pick articles too.
Notably, most of the articles you linked were also written after the 2022 invasion, and all were written after the 2014 invasion.
Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper.
This is a "problem" in the same way that skinheads are a problem: local.
Russia in no shape, way, or form faced any kind of material threat from Ukraine's local neo-nazi, fascist, or extreme right-wing groups.
Invading a country and killing hundreds of thousands is so many orders of magnitude worse than some people walking up a street chanting the name of someone long-dead that's it's just absurd.
Remind me again: how many Russians died because of Lenin? (An estimate to the nearest million will do) Any 'statues', 'pictures', or 'posters' of him anywhere in Russia?
Yes, or no?
How many do you estimate if yes?
Do any Russians revere him in any way?
How many Russians died because of Bandera? Now give me an estimate Putin. The nearest hundred thousand will do.
If you skim the article you linked to, you'll find that despite being written in 2022, the latest example is dated to 2016. That matches my own perception of wide crack-down on neo-Nazis in Putin's time. They've got jailed and some died in prison [0]. I fact-checked a random fact from the article -- the Kremlin tolerance for the music band Kolovrat. It turns out that almost 50 of their songs are listed in the "List of extremist materials" and their distribution is a crime. [1]
"and all were written after the 2014 invasion"
Coincidentally (sarcasm), 2014 is also when Ukrainian nationalists came to power.
Nonetheless, you are welcome to listen to the Bush Sr's speech in Kiev in 1991: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred".[2] Americans later did support them, of course. [3]
"Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper."
This statement is surprising. Let me quote the article [4] more extensively:
"The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in recent years over differing interpretations of the history of the Second World War, came together on Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis.
The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
“Remembering our innocent brothers and sisters murdered in the occupied territories of Poland 1935-1945, which now constitute a part of Ukraine, we the Ambassadors of Poland and Israel believe, that celebrating these individuals is an insult,” Lion and Cichocki wrote.
“Glorification of those who promoted actively the ethnic cleansing is counterproductive in the fight against Antisemitism and the reconciliation of our People,” they continued.
...
Thursday’s letter is the second time that Lion and Cichocki have come together to call for a change in Ukrainian memory policy. In June, the pair signed a joint letter to the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankisvsk, protesting the unveiling of a monument honoring Roman Shukhevych, a collaborator with the Nazis who was implicated in the murder of countless Jews and ethnic Poles.
Following Ukraine’s 2014 revolution, the former Soviet republic’s parliament passed a series of bills known collectively as the Decommunization Laws, meant to sever the country’s ties to its Russian and Soviet past. One of the bills prohibited what it called the “public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century.”
In practical terms, these bills paved the way for the rehabilitation of Ukrainian ultranationalist figures who had collaborated with the Nazis.
Over the last several years, streets all over Ukraine have been named after far-right figures and steps have been taken to rehabilitate their images, casting them as fighters for democracy whose followers saved Jews from the Germans.
Asked about the letter, Ambassador Lion told The Times of Israel that Israel and Poland “have a common interest in combating Holocaust denial and rewriting of History.” "
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Martsinkevich
[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Коловрат_(группа)#Запрет_отдел...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkjxf76xRTw
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahn...
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-row-over-holocaust-history-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead Banderist on the table!’ is what your footnote salad amounts to.
That's very regrettable attitude to fact-based discussion which is the only kind of discussion that is interesting for me.
It doesn't matter how many individual factoids you lay out -- if the greater narrative you cast around them (and subordinate these facts into) is so plainly and fundamentally broken. That's why your salad wilts at first contact with fresh air, and your essay yields such a terse response.
Je ne regrette rien.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40755784
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-air-defence-e...
Three unconditional conclusions in connection with the deliberate missile attack (X-101 class missiles) on the largest children's hospital of Ukraine "Okhmatdyt"...
1. This is a completely calculated action, specially designed and approved by the subject Putin. On the eve of the NATO summit. Like a slap to the Alliance. The Russian Federation is sending everyone an informal signal with something like this: "Even the outright killing of children will not force them (the Alliance) to make all the necessary decisions. And that's why we continue to attack..."
2. Almost simultaneously with the deliberate attack on children in the Ukrainian capital, the leaders of Hungary and China once again called for an "immediate ceasefire." This demand is not addressed to Russia. It is addressed only to the West and Ukraine. And its purpose is to create a false impression: the aggressor has the right to kill, because he is talking about "peace", and the victim must not defend himself and therefore must immediately stop resistance, leaving the territory and his own citizens to the aggressor... This has an extremely unnatural appearance and absolutely definitely stimulates Russia to continue attack…
3. Just now, the country that deliberately inflicted a massive attack on Ukrainian cities and a children's hospital in Kyiv continues to preside over... the UN Security Council. This is an absolutely blasphemous signal to all neutral countries: there are no rules, and outright cannibalism is encouraged. Moreover, there is no proper response from the UN, which directly points to the obvious: if the war does not end in the total defeat of Russia, the world is in for a terrible short story of bloody chaos, in which life has no value and death is the new synonym for the word "Russia".