You cannot be serious. The EU has put up tariffs on EVs because the EU car industry who had 10 years to get ready decided that it was better to keep building diesel engines than invest in EVs.
Now, they are caught with their pants down and they lobbied for the tariffs because they know that as of today the quality and the range of the Chinese EVs are so good that should the Chinese be allowed to sell them unimpeded, the legacy EU carmakers would be bankrupt within the next 5 years.
Then, the politicians go on TV and urge you to take your bicycle to work and to turn off your router at night to save the planet.
> The Ukraine war is the most clear-cut aggressor/victim situation in a long time, even compared to setups like the Vietnam war: There is not even a puppet government with any legitimacy that the Russians could be claiming to act in support of, and there is no credible casus belli either. It's just blatant expansionism at the cost of a sovereign nation.
You forgot the Irak war and Afghanistan and the fake WMDs. It's funny how people are quick to point that Russia is the aggressor but when the US was invading countries, few people opposed them.
Not to mention the number of south American governments that have been toppled by the CIA.
Rules for thee not for me.
Stop lumping Iraq and Afghanistan together. I see this everywhere and it's tiresome. It's either outright lying or people who weren't old enough to make memories when these things happened.
Afghanistan harbored Osama. They refused to give him up. NATO invaded the country to get him. It was justifed.
The fake WMDs were in Iraq (or not, since they were fake). Only the US, UK, Australia, and Poland invaded Iraq. Literally all the other "Western" countries were very strongly opposed and refused to participate. It was an unjust war.
Muhammad Umar told Pakistan that he would be willing to turn bin Laden over to a third country, but the US refused, demanding a direct handover.
>On 21 September, Muhammad Umar rejected both Bush's demands and the advice of the council, again denying that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
Again, some lunatic from your country just attacks the world's strongest military power, killing ~ 3,000 people, and you refuse? The Taliban deserve exactly what they got.
The only mistake we made in Afghanistan was trying to build a 'nation' out of a geographic collection of hill tribes. We should have locked down the porous Afghan border and let SF and northern alliance troops declare open season. As it stands we didn't so much 'lose' the Afghan war as lose interest in imposing democracy on a people that had no desire for it.
Strange that the NATO did not invade Pakistan, then?
I really don't understand how this question can come up, honestly. This is 1 + 1 = 2 stuff.
Strange they didn't have to kill 40k+ civilians in Pakistan to capture him, like in Afghanistan. Which would have been totally justified, like GP claims. So, why not?
They were both illegal wars that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians for no reason other than getting 1 guy. There were many ways to get him if your government really wanted to.
On a side note, it's pretty bold of you to assume I wasn't around when these wars happened.
> Afghanistan harbored Osama. They refused to give him up. NATO invaded the country to get him. It was justified.
Oh I see, is that how you justify a war?
Let's flip the script here. Ukraine harbors Zelensky as he is deemed a criminal by the Kremlin. Ukraine refuse to give him up. The war in Ukraine is justified.
Do you see the problem with your argument here?
If it's good enough for the west to invade a foreign, sovereign country in order to get 1 man, then it should be good enough for anyone else. You can't have double standards.
> Literally all the other "Western" countries were very strongly opposed and refused to participate.
The opposition from the other countries was a show. Nobody kicked the US out of the SWIFT payment system, nor were any sanctions places on the US.
> It was an unjust war.
The fact that you can't bring yourself to say that it was an illegal war is very telling. Using an euphemism here is rather bold if you ask me.
Voters in Europe are not screaming for cheaper Chinese EVs-- they want economies improved, mostly, and anything weakening the local (automotive) industry (even electrification itself) is regarded very skeptically (especially in countries like Germany, France, Italy).
> You forgot the Irak war and Afghanistan and the fake WMDs.
I'm not saying that those were justified (especially not in hindsight), but the Americans had gotten hit very hard before and had a somewhat credible justification at the start.
Russia, on the other hand, never experienced a Spetember 11-- they only shot down those civilian airliners themselves (MH17).
Maybe not on that scale but they had a few major terror attacks of their own: Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, the 1999 apartment bombings, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the Beslan school siege, and most recently the Crocus City Hall attack.
And honestly, Russians have their current and past governments much more to blame for this, considering all the shit they did in Chechnya (starting with mass deportations in '44, followed by 2 wars and a bunch of warcrimes).
Not saying that the US was blameless with all the middle east messups, but IMO Russia collected a lot more karma debt in Chechnya over the last century by comparison...
France had almost 200 people killed in 2015 at the Bataclan. They did not invade another country because of this.
This is a very weak argument.
SH was a dictator for sure but these wars were illegal just the same and I did not see the EU kicking the US out of the swift payment system of impose sanctions on them.
The moral posturing of the west is a show. The west is happy to go to war when it pleases it but should anyone else do it, then that is a problem.
Here is some random example.
https://www.sinnerbikes.com/en/modellen/comfort/comfort-e/
1990
The electric versions are somewhat lagging behind the human powered velo
https://en.velomobiel.nl/snoek-l/
They are not cars but for transporting yourself from a to b they should do more than fine. Almost no power consumption very little danger als they are to light to do the infamous car crash. They use almost no space on the road and the road lasts much longer.
You also get physical activity which extends life span. Travel normally consumes life span. Under 30 minutes per day you get to the destination in 0 minutes.
This is not nearly as hypocritical as people want to think it is.
I suspect that the philosophical root of this position is cultural relativism. The idea that all countries, by and large, are both good and bad and that one country's politics and culture is not necessarily better or worse than another. That a country that throws journalists in prison and doesn't recognize freedom of expression or religion, for example, is on par morally with the United States of America.
Fuck that. That position is literally evil as far as I'm concerned, because it dispenses with the very concepts of liberty and morality, putting the worst of the worst dictatorships on a level footing as free, rights-protecting countries.
In my world view, government is a necessary good but it is necessary because human beings have the capacity for both reason and force. When people deal with one another through reason, we get peace, prosperity and life flourishes (reason is a human being's primary tool of survival). When people choose force we get gang warfare, anarchy, death, destruction and life struggles.
My working definition of "liberty" is an environment where all interpersonal relations are consensual. This is achieved by removing the element of force from civil existence, placed into hands of a monopoly (the government) that recognizes that an individual has rights and uses that monopoly to protect and defend those rights. Never to violate them.
Therefore, and I know this will be controversial (I'm certainly not trying to troll as I genuinely hold this position), a free, rights respecting country, even one that is imperfect, has every moral right to invade and liberate a dictatorship if and when it decides that it is in its best interest to do so.
A country that routinely infringes upon the rights of others is morally illegitimate. It is certainly unfortunate that every country in the world today does that to some extent (taxes are theft). Still, that doesn't mean that you can't evaluate a country based on how well it implements this raison d'etre.
So in any conflict between the USA (or any other rights-respecting country) and <pick one: Iran, China, Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.>, I will side with the USA 10 out of 10 times and I see no hypocrisy. The USA, as a government, is imperfect but still better than China in every single possible way and I have no problem saying that, in my opinion, the Chinese population at large would be better off if the CPP were taken out by a free nation. And yeah, I know that the USA has ended up making things worse, practically, in many countries through interventionism. Iran is a great example. I'm not saying that they should invade any country and I'm not saying that they wouldn't screw it up if they tried. I'm just saying that morally and rationally I would be on their side every time.
I will happily criticize the USA when they lie to us about weapons of mass destruction or anything else. I think that any lie is immoral and they were wrong to do so. This is one of many things that makes the USA imperfect. But I also don't think that they should have NEEDED that lie to justify invading Iraq and ending Saddam Hussein's reign. There are valid arguments to be had about whether or not Iraq is better or worse for liberty today than it was pre-2003. But morally they had every right to go in and should have done it even harder.
Can't place the name of a German guy who espoused a similar kind of Supremacism ("my in-group better than yours").
Don't project.
> Scream Hitler all you want
You're a better judge of your own faults. I had someone else in mind.
You sure 200k+ dead civilians wasn't hard enough of a rampage?
> will happily criticize the USA when they lie
Seems you're more happy when the USA goes on a pillage.
> will side with the USA 10 out of 10 times and I see no hypocrisy
You may not; but others will.
> free, rights respecting country, even one that is imperfect, has every moral right to invade and liberate a dictatorship
You're in for a surprise at the number of dictators the US props up. Also, some critically view Presidential powers as totalitarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
Pretty facetious comparison. Iraq and Afghanistan were on the whole a mistake, but completely different from Ukraine. There was never any idea that the US would take the territory. It was just a huge waste of money for the US.
The very best case scenario for the US (which everyone realized was never going to happen within 2 years) was something like Japan and South Korea, setting up US-friendly democratic governments and corporations. There was absolutely no element of expansionism. Ask the Japanese and the South Koreans whether they are mad about being oppressed under the thumb of "US imperialism".
Contrast this with Russia's actions in Ukraine. They are taking over economically and militarily valuable lands, directly expanding their borders, expelling or re-educating Ukrainians who won't pretend to be Russian, and nakedly pursuing the revanchist fantasy of reclaiming lands that were ruled brutally by a totalitarian Muscovite empire for hundreds of years.
Conflating the two situations betrays an extremely shallow understanding of current events and a complete ignorance of history.
When I step in dog poo on my way to work, that's a mistake. When hundreds of thousands of people are killed by your actions, that is not a mistake as you put it. Especially when your legal standing to do so is shaky if not downright illegal.
My guess is that you agree with the saying: the death of 1 man is a tragedy but hundreds of thousands of them is a statistic.
> setting up US-friendly democratic governments and corporations.
Ok, lets flip the script here. When the US sets up government for their own interest, it's just helping democracy. When Russia does it, we call them puppet governments. Double standards much?
> There was absolutely no element of expansionism.
You are right, the US coalition simply installed military bases there for 20 years and propped up a government that was not capable of doing the job and was not popular either but all that mattered was that it was friendly to the US.
In Lithuania, when the Germans invaded in WW2, they consider that they were occupied by Germany for about 2 years.
The US stayed there for 20 years but according to you, this was not an occupation. You just ran it, tried to change it according what the west thought was acceptable, and interfered in every possible aspect.
I guess I got confused between the two, after all the difference is rather slim.
> Ask the Japanese and the South Koreans whether they are mad about being oppressed under the thumb of "US imperialism".
I am sure the Japanese are rejoicing knowing the US turned two of there cities into ruble in order to test a new weapon.
I think you meant to say "specious".
The commenter doesn't understand what they're saying sufficiently for it to qualify as facetious.
Humanitarian aid doesn’t help preventing bombs kindly donated by the US from falling. The large difference in casualties (what is it? 40 Palestinians for every Israeli?) tells me it’s not a civil war, but an extermination.
Israel settling occupied territories doesn’t earn them much sympathy either. If you want a buffer to feel safe, annex and protect the people who live there while fully demilitarising the land.
Difference in casualties is not a measure of who is right. What was the ratio of casualties in the war between the US and ISIS? or between Japan and the US in WW2? That's not how wars work. You kill one of mine I kill one of yours.
It is a certain indication one side uses disproportionate force and that it’s not a “war”.
> You kill one of mine I kill one of yours.
It’s more like “You kill one of ours, we kill 40 of yours. Or their neighbours. Or someone who looks like them”
Soldier: Captain they're firing on us, what should we do?
Capatain: Wait till they kill one of us, we can't fire back until then.
It is most certainly a war. It will stop being a war when one of the sides stops fighting. Since Hamas is still attacking the IDF and still attacking civilians in Israel with rockets and still holding hostages we still have a war.
In Lenbanon the ratio of casualties was also skewed. Again it is some magical fairy thinking that Israel would allow Hezbollah to keep firing rockets at its civilian population centers in order to meet some casualty ratio metric. Again it doesn't pass the simplest smell test. I think you need to look a bit deeper at why you're saying this and think a bit more critically. Once Hezbollah effectively surrendered, and we have an agreement, there is no more war. They could have not started that war, they could have surrendered earlier, the outcome is on them. Just like the outcome in Gaza is on Hamas.
The ratio of casualties means absolutely nothing. It pretty much means Hamas fighters are ok to keep fighting even if a lot of them get killed. No country will stop fighting when its enemy is still fighting just to meet some casualty count ratio.
In terms of "someone who looks like them" Hamas' choice of having its combatant pretend to be civilians and embed amongst civilians is the root cause of a higher number of uninvolved getting killed.
EDIT: Basically the statement that we can make value/moral judgements strictly based at looking at post-event casualty counts is just very obviously false. This is true on the micro when e.g. police kills some criminals and the ratio may be infinity. It's true in self defense situations where you kill any number of attackers trying to kill you. and it's true in the macro, there are many wars when one parts manages to have an overwhelming victory and certainly many examples of battles in history that are like that.
In modern times there is no such requirement on a military according to "international law". The only requirement is that a specific action serves a military purpose, the number of combatant killed is unlimited and collateral damage is also acceptable. There are protections for soldiers that surrender but in this specific situation because Hamas combatants do not wear uniforms they don't even get those protections.
Early in the war when Hamas was launching massive barrages of rockets into Israel and has killed many civilians Israel was totally justified to use deadly force to stop those launchers. If they're buried in shafts then using heavier bombs is also justified. Hamas is the responsible party since its actions are those that created the need to stop this. Israel's warning to civilians to evacuate was above and beyond what other western armies have typically done in these situations. Hamas' using force to make civilians stay is again on Hamas.
If you want to call this an asymmetric war then by all means. It still doesn't change anything.
And just a by the way, in the war US led against the Islamic State there were: 6 US serviceman killed, 16 US serviceman wounded. France who also fought the war had 2 serviceman killed. 83,000 ISIS militants killed (at least 13k civilians killed by coalition strikes). Take that for a casualty ratio.
Do you see the problem? Those in control screw up and they expect to get bailed out by forcing people to buy their inferior and expensive products.
> The Ukraine war is the most clear-cut aggressor/victim situation
It's actually not that clear cut and if you apply the same filters for both of the countries you will see it. Try testing for internationally recognized borders and the situation is same for the Israeli invasion and Russian invasion. Test for separatist movements and you will find very similar things, test for minorities getting attacked and you will see that its quite similar. Not the same but when you pick something like "Russia must respect the internationally recognized borders" and you don't apply the same for Israel then you are a hypocrite, you are not doing it from standpoint of a principle but due to your own interest and if you are doing it out of your own interest people start asking why I'm paying for it? Where's my cut if this thing pans out?
> The non-private jets are a much bigger problem actually
I don't know if that's true or not but you ask people to sacrifice their comfort for a common cause, then everyone should do it.
> Because the people inside those borders don't want other people with no capital wandering
But then people start noticing that it's not the poor immigrants who want to work who buys al the properties. Some people want the poor stopped at the border and the rich welcomed. Others want different things, a lot of people don't want oligarchs buying all that property and leave it empty.
> I'd say the economy is not great, not terrible
In the case of the US elections, there were many opinion polls showing that people are not satisfied with the economy. They are also not satisfied with many other things related to the economy. Just yesterday someone killed an insurance CEO at a filthy rich location and so many people were cheering for the killer.
I do not understand your point. Ukraine has borders that were recognized by Russia itself (Budapest Memorandum). They violated those borders when they annexed Crimea-- their excuse: those people want to be part of our empire-- ok.
8 years later they marched on Kyiv-- whats even the excuse for that? Do you think the people in Kyiv want to be liberated from their president, and governed by some Russian oligarch?
If Russia is in a similar situation than Israel, then were are the massive acts of terrorism against Russian citizens comparable to October 7th? Where are the missiles fired towards Moscow, before 2014?
Are you by any chance assuming that Israel is absolutely innocent, therefore I must be claiming that Russia must be also innocent? It's the other way around, they are both aggressor and invaders. Anyone claiming that countries shouldn't invade other countries and respect the internationally recognized borders then should support Ukraine and Palestine.
Russias invasion of Ukraine on the other hand, does not have an October 7th-- there were no waves of rockets fired towards Moscow, and the Ukraine also was not part of Russia, giving them no real excuse to send soldiers there in the first place...
I'm actually fan of Israel, It's a country I want to visit a lot and I actually admire the things they achieved in that barely livable land. Which makes me extra sad too see into what they have turned.
You don't get the three major religions with community at the core, in a place like Mars. It is Mediterranean coast with documented habitation spanning millenia. The incredibly dehumanising colonial propaganda, that is a land without people for a people without land, is just that; A dehumanising propaganda which reduces the native population to savages and not-human.
Zelensky massed the largest land army in Europe excluding Russia, and then in March 2021 officially declared imminent war on Russia. Only then did Russia start heavily militarizing its border and a year later, after many failed attempts at diplomacy, formally invaded.
Gaza can't even do many of the these things because they don't have statehood, much less a real army.
It is offensively disingenuous to argue that Israel's genocide and illegal occupation is justified by Oct 7, but Russian military operations can never be justified even by an official and credible declaration of war by military-peer Ukraine.
Do you also dispute that there were Russian troops on Ukrainian territory before 2021, fighting alongside Ukrainian separatists with Russian provided materiel? Because there is a long report on this, since they accidentally shot down a civilian airliner...
> "but what about 8 years before 2022 Russian invasion?"
I'm not going to engage further with this obviously bad faith trolling. No point. Have a good weekend!
Also note that accusing others of trolling or shilling is against the site guidelines.
> thinks Israel-Palestine conflict started on October 7.
I most certainly did not think or say that. But this was a discussion about the analogies between the Ukraine war and the Israel/Palestine massacres, and bringing up '67 or the first intifada would have been about as relevant to that discussion as Holodomor or the Ukrainian Peoples Republic short history (which is why I did not talk about any of those).
> "but what about 8 years before 2022 Russian invasion?"
My point is that you picked a highly arbitrary date to support your position-- pretending like Ukraine set up the conditions for war with Russia out of the blue, followed by honest diplomatic attempts and a formally declared war from Russia out of any other options.
This is simply not the case: Russia built up its invasion troops months before attempting the invasion, and its fishing for excuses, false-flag operations covered ceaselessly in state media (to manipulate public opinion) and efforts to misrepresent the Donbas situation are quite well documented. There also never was a formal declaration of war, and calling the march on a sovereign nations capital a "peacekeeping operation" seems a bit of a stretch to me.
I honestly believe that there could have been genuine reasons for Russia to involve itself in the Ukraine-- even to send soldiers into the Donbas. But insisting that Russia shifted troops into Belarus to help or protect the people in Donetsk and Luhansk is frankly insulting (given hindsight).
In direct response to an official declaration of military action by Zelensky against legal Russian territory [1]. Sevestapol is a Russian city according to Ukranian law.
Why do you consistently ignore these crucial facts, but for that they undermine the political narrative you are tirelessly pushing?
It was not "legal Russian territory". The very edict you cite refers to it as "temporarily occupied". (It's also not why Russia invaded, but that's a side matter).
Sevestapol is a Russian city according to Ukranian law.
Also plainly false.
Yes, this is what Russian state media insinuated.
If Russias utmost effort was to protect the minorities in Ukraines east, spearheading a peace-keeping effort would have made a lot of sense (even stationing army there, possibly).
But this is not what happened, Russia fanned the flames in that region instead, aiding the separatists with undercover soldiers and materiel `(this is very well documented because they shot down a civilian airliner by mistake, which pissed of the dutch victims and their government to no end, investigating the whole clusterfuck in excruciating detail).
> The fact that's it a puppet government is easy to confirm.
Insisting on Zelensky being a non-democratic puppet government is a bit rich after Putin had his last political opponent poisoned, but ok...
> Why ban elections if the Ukrainian people are still really behind them
Because they are at war.
> Also Ukraine is not getting helped for free. More like they've mortgage their land and resources to the likes of Blackrock and other banking interests. That will keep the future generations in indebted servitude, while they rob them of their resources.
So Russia trying to annex the Ukraine is actually a plot by western colonialists? Why is Russia helping those colonialists in your opinion? Who exactly are those colonialists? Germany? UK? France?
Alexei Navalny's popularity within Russia was always a western media fabrication, and at best a whole lot of wishful thinking. Navalny was a fringe candidate, with about the same amount of popularity as Chris Christi, and pushed and financed be the same neocons. To what degree Russia is democratic can be disputed, but the fact is that Putin still has the backing of a vast, vast majority of Russian people.
There are J6 political opponents still rotting in jail on decade long sentences over protesting a highly suspicious election. Some have been kept in solitarily confinement (torture) and some have also died in prison. So Jailing political opposition is done in the states at this point too. Trump survived two assassination attempts. Biden a less popular candidate (as proven by this election) had his justice department attempt to jail him for hundreds of years.
>So Russia trying to annex the Ukraine is actually a plot by western colonialists?
Russia voluntarily let Ukraine secede from the USSR under certain conditions, which they have not kept. If Ukrainians have a right to self determination. Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority that lives in eastern part of Ukraine does as well.
Russians were not a majority in eastern Ukraine. The split was roughly 55% Ukrainian, 40% Russian, 5% other in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, and much less in other oblasts Russia has officially annexed - Kherson was 82% Ukrainian and 14% Russian.
The right to self-determination applies to distinct "peoples". It's not very well defined, but generally understood as a globally distinct ethnicity living on their historic territories. Native American tribes could exercise this. They are a distinct people living on their historic land and without their own established state anywhere else in the world.
This right does not extend to ethnic minorities living in other countries. Russians have already exercised the right and have a country, they don't get to claim any piece of land on the planet that has Russians living there. Russians have about as strong claim to eastern Ukraine than Israel has to Brooklyn (22% Jewish). I think it would be pretty insane to argue that Brooklyn "should belong to Israel" purely on this, and start a major war that drives away millions as refugees, kills hundreds of thousands, and razes many East Coast towns to ground.
We have a similar situation in Canada where the Province of Quebec has a large percentage of francophone speakers (French Heritage). If one day, Canada were to try to join the US, a large percentage of the Quebec region would either decide to form their own country, or link up with France in some way. Even more so likely if the Anglophone Canadians would start ethnically cleansing Quebecers.
If you believe in the principals of democracy, then you should support the will of the local population to self determination under such circumstances.
All this talk of democracy, but Zelensky's party will not hold new elections, because they've lost the support of the majority of Ukrainians. So if not the interests of the majority, who's interest does this party represent going forward?
That's simply not true. Pre-war surveys showed 1% support for joining Russian Federation in Kherson and up to 13% in areas with the largest number of Russians. So it was a fringe idea even among ethnic Russians. Leaked surveys conducted by Russian military admin after the invasion showed similar low levels. They got 99% support in their fake referendums only through extreme intimidation:
Moscow-backed forces are going door-to-door armed with machine guns forcing Ukrainians to vote in "sham" referendums that will annex newly occupied areas to Russia, sources have told the Telegraph. Voting began on Friday morning and is expected to continue until Tuesday, with polling stations featuring see-through ballot boxes and armed guards set up across Russian-controlled parts of the Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, as well as Russia itself.
Ukrainians living in territory that Moscow has taken since the start of the war have been told their families will be massacred if they refuse to take part, with soldiers sometimes even leaning over their shoulders and watching them as they vote. “We are forced to go under the pretext of being shot. If we didn’t go, they said that they would shoot or massacre the whole family,” said a resident in Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, who wished to remain anonymous due to fears of reprisals. “We're scared. At the referendum, turnout is required or arrest or worse. Many are being forced with a threat to life.”
If you care about the free self-determination of local population, then this is the polar opposite - plain coercion by foreign invaders.
But the comparative proportions identifying as "Ukrainian" or "Russian" in the last pre-war census is not, and in fact, in this wonderful utopian future we now live in. And even starting from scratch, you can easily zero in on a reliable answer to this question within minutes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Ukrainian_census#National...
I invite you to look at the numbers for the 5 regions which Putin is currently intending to grab (and which the Trump administration apparently intend to just hand over to him, with an order of fries on the side), and tell us what you find there.
Even more so likely if the Anglophone Canadians would start ethnically cleansing Quebecers.
The thing is, under normal circumstances they most definitely would not. And if you were to go up there today, and tell them that 10 years from now they'd all be at each other's throats, with one side insisting it just had to ethnically cleanse the other and they no longer had any real choice about the matter -- they'd look at you like you were crazy.
And that was pretty much the situation in Ukraine, until very shortly before 2014. What changed that was (to some extent) various political events. But what pushed these changes of sentiment into violence was -- a tide relentless propaganda and disinformation.
Of exactly the type you are echoing, above.
Please identify the specific treaty/protocol you are referring to, and which clauses you believe Ukraine has violated.
Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority that lives in eastern part of Ukraine
There was no such majority before Russia's invasion of 2014 (as explained in the other comment). It seems you may be confused by the fact that there were higher numbers voting for pro-Russia parties, or who spoke Russian/Surgyk. But that's not the same as being, or identifying as "Russian" -- any more the fact that English is the dominant language in Ireland means everyone living there must be "English".
This is one of the most important things to understand about Ukraine.
Just read the wiki article for a quick summary, or e.g. the bellingcat reports for details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexei_Navalny
Navalny was a patriot that fought corruption and abuse of power in his nation-- would he have won elections in Russia? Probably not, but he was most certainly highly inconvenient for the corrupt oligarchs there (Putin among them).
Regarding J6: I don't doubt that some of those protestors had good intentions. Do you suggest letting perpetrators go unpunished if their attempt at a coup is incompetent enough, and fone with "pure" intentions? Because I feel that sets a very bad precedent for a democracy in general; I don't think you would find a majority for this, either.
> If Ukrainians have a right to self determination. Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority that lives in eastern part of Ukraine does as well.
First-- the Donbas is not a nation, which is what makes it more complicated to exercise any self determination in general. So that situation is different from Russia vs. Ukraine already.
Second-- Russia being primarily concerned about regional autonomy of eastern Ukraine is a pretty transparent sham, because they never actually stood up for the autonomy of those regions-- they annexed them instead, after sending soldiers there to further escalate the situation.
Pretty much clear. Unless you watch Russia Today everyday. If you throw away tons of Russian lies it is clear expansion invasion.
Russians did this many times. Annexation of Poland, Finland, Baltic states and more recent annexation of Ichkeria and occupation of Georgia.
You are misrepresenting my argument. I don't say that Russian are innocent, I say that Israel is just as guilty.
Just a reminder to that moment:
1.Russia sponsored separatist movement in Donbass with money, weapons and agents. 2. Russia directly occupied Crimea while lying they do not. 3. Russia signed a Budapest memorandum to respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders and restrain to use force against it. 4. Russia signed a series of Minsk peace treaties.
Why you think that they really offered a peace in a good faith? History of modern Russia, USSR and empire show any peace treaty or other international documents with nothing, just a waste of the paper.
Russians always lie. That's putty western world are blind because Russian bribes are too good to miss.
In return, Ukraine would have gotten some guarantor states safekeeping its newly drawn borders (but Russia would have been able to veto any action of those guarantor states in case someone, possibly Russia, attacked the Ukraine again).
This seems a bit of a complete joke to me? Can you explain, why, exactly, Ukraine should have taken that offer? This is basically "I give you everything we are currently fighting over, in return I get an absolutely worthless promise from a serial liar". No deal.
Ahem... You're suggesting that Ukraine killed over a thousand Russians and took them hostage, and thereby provoked a war? That would actually be the correct analogy. No, Russia simply invaded because it felt it could. The situation is very different to Israel and Gaza and you're deliberately leaving out the fine details that make the difference.
Maybe, just maybe you could have a look at what Gaza was like before the said event. It was blockaded by Sea, Air and Land. It was oppressed and occupied, not to mention the settler terrorism in West Bank. It is a myopic view to hold that it was peace before the Oct 7 incident.
> For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making the world better place better than they do?
Because the EU is a bunch of democracies, and a few of the biggest ones do not want to accelerate electrification bad enough to threaten parts of their industry/economy right now. This tracks with the electorate; support for green policies is rather low across the board, almost every nation has different primary issues.
> Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the international law, borders and trande? If so why they support Ukraine against Russian invasion and then support Israel who occupies Palestinian territories since many years?
The Ukraine war is the most clear-cut aggressor/victim situation in a long time, even compared to setups like the Vietnam war: There is not even a puppet government with any legitimacy that the Russians could be claiming to act in support of, and there is no credible casus belli either. It's just blatant expansionism at the cost of a sovereign nation.
Israel/palestine is a complicated mess-- it is basically a civil war of sorts, and the Americans DO support people in Gaza/Westbank a ton (humanitarian aid).
> Can you tell me why people should drink from paper straws when the rich fly private jets?
Note: The non-private jets are a much bigger problem actually, but since there's not enough popular support to curtail air travel significantly, the easy pro-environmental actions happen first.
> Can you tell me why the capital can go anywhere but people should be stopped at the borders?
Because the people inside those borders don't want other people with no capital wandering in. The capital alone (or its owners) they don't really mind as much.
> Can you tell me how the economy is s great when so many people suffer?
Can you be more specific on this? I'd say the economy is not great, not terrible, and its about the same for the people (talking about central Europe here).