I guess there were a lot of Nazis in this city, so it was bombarded, or bombed, or whatever word one thinks is appropriate to describe causing a lot of explosions, damage and deaths.
This is why the war should never have started and why we should stop the war as soon as possible. Ukraine can survive and thrive as a neutral country.
Paul - when there are reports of "increases in what we call long-range fires, bombardments, rocket attacks, artillery, as well as missile strikes, and we do assess that these strikes are hitting civilian targets, infrastructure, residential areas."
Do you think these are accidents and that they're just off on missing their military targets? Or are these reports anti-Putin propaganda?
I don't think the US deliberately targeted civilians in Fallujah, Mosul, Raqqa when it devastated those cities with every type of armament. I think it's the same with the Russians in this war.
I don't think the US deliberately targeted civilians in Fallujah, Mosul, Raqqa when it devastated those cities with every type of armament. I think it's the same with the Russians in this war.
Is that a whataboutism? So Vlad is in fact not hitting civilian areas on purpose - just like the US. Good to know.
This is why the war should never have started and why we should stop the war as soon as possible. Ukraine can survive and thrive as a neutral country.
You seem to place a lot of trust in Putin's claims that he would accept a neutral Ukraine. What was it that won you over -- was it when he insisted he wasn't planning on invading Ukraine, then launched the largest military invasion in Europe since WWII?
Paul - when there are reports of "increases in what we call long-range fires, bombardments, rocket attacks, artillery, as well as missile strikes, and we do assess that these strikes are hitting civilian targets, infrastructure, residential areas."
Do you think these are accidents and that they're just off on missing their military targets? Or are these reports anti-Putin propaganda?
I don't think the US deliberately targeted civilians in Fallujah, Mosul, Raqqa when it devastated those cities with every type of armament. I think it's the same with the Russians in this war.
Paging Janine. Janine, please come to the medical office.
A bombardment is really a barrage of bombs dropped or fired at an area. Or maybe Vladimir is using expired Chinese fireworks? I can’t figure out these explosions…
I guess there were a lot of Nazis in this city, so it was bombarded, or bombed, or whatever word one thinks is appropriate to describe causing a lot of explosions, damage and deaths.
This is why the war should never have started and why we should stop the war as soon as possible. Ukraine can survive and thrive as a neutral country.
"This is why the war should never have started" makes it sound as if "the war" has its own agency and self-determination. It doesn't. Claiming that it does removes any person or nation from responsibility for its existence
The proper statement is: "This is why Russia should not have started the war." Only once that (honest) statement is made, can the cure for the condition be prescribed.
“I would like to appeal to the mothers, wives, sisters, brides and girlfriends of our soldiers and officers who are now in battle, defending Russia during a special military operation. I understand how you worry about your loved ones. You can be proud of them just as how the whole country is proud of them and worries about them together with you. I emphasize that soldiers who are serving in the military are not and will not participate in hostilities. And there will be no additional call-up of reservists from the reserve," Putin said.
"The tasks set are solved only by professional military men. I am sure they will reliably ensure security and peace for the people of Russia," he added.
Now we are witnessing the same process that Putin warned Ukraine about four years ago. And now the Russian president is again appealing to the reason of Kiev politicians: “If they continue to do what they are doing, <…> they generally call into question the future of Ukrainian statehood, and if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience ".
At least someone in Ukraine should understand that the uncontrolled distribution of weapons to the population not only cannot be a way out of the situation, but, on the contrary, aggravates it, intensifies the processes of disintegration of statehood as such, turns the country into a territory of anarchy, chaos, lawlessness. Neither Russia nor Ukraine can be interested in this, let alone the Ukrainian population, which is the main victim of the "terodefense from the high road." That is why this process must be stopped. One can only hope that there will still be sensible people in Ukraine who will understand this and take responsibility for restoring order in the country. Russia and its Armed Forces are always ready to help them in this.
Speaking about the situation in Ukraine, Trump traditionally did not forget himself. "The catastrophe would never have happened if it weren't for our rigged elections and if I were president," he said.
At a conference of US conservative circles, he noted: "I remain the only president of the 21st century under which Russia has not invaded another country." He added that Putin is certainly smart, but the main problem is that US leaders are stupid. And the Russian president will now "get the whole country for two dollars worth of sanctions - pretty smart."
Trump called Putin's decision to recognize the DPR and LPR "brilliant". “He is going to become a peacemaker. This is the largest peacekeeping force. <...> We could use it on our southern border,” the billionaire reasoned, referring to the unfinished wall project between the United States and Mexico.
On Fox News, Trump boasted of "good relations" with Putin and suggested that the special operation in Ukraine began only because of the weakness of the White House administration. Air host Tucker Carlson supported the former president, and then expressed his own opinion.
Carlson also ridiculed the sanctions policy. “Kamala Harris is a jester, but the White House does not understand this. Nobody (in the Russian government. — Approx. ed.) expects these restrictions to lead to something. Nobody believes you anymore, Joe Biden,” commented he is the statement of the head of the White House and the vice president about "unprecedented measures against Russia."
But everything is not so simple, he noted: there is no democracy in Ukraine either. “Its leaders once sent millions of dollars to the Joe Biden family. The President of Ukraine arrested the main political opponent, closed newspapers and TV channels that dared to criticize,” the Fox News host emphasized.
"I'm on Russia's side," podcast writer Joe Altmann announced in late February. In Telegram channels and Facebook groups like "Voice of a Patriot" and "Texas for Donald Trump 2020", participants also spoke for Russia. Some have argued that they trust Putin more than Biden. In general, according to the analysis conducted by Zignal Labs, the number of pro-Russian messages in English-language social networks, cable TV and media increased 26 times over the past week compared to the first week of February.
I have to say - the tone if the state sponsored news has changed a bit. The following headline alone makes it feel like Kviv has survived and things won't persist:
As the second week of the special military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine comes to an end, its capital is undergoing new changes.
There is still little evidence of the war itself in Kiev .
Yes, cruise missile strikes stopped the operation of the main and reserve TV towers - although if you don’t look closely, you won’t be able to see the results of the strike on the main TV tower. It is reliable, but does not work.
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Also, it feels like Vlad is starting to highlight his accomplishments like this:
54 settlements passed under the control of the LPR
A total of 54 settlements, which were controlled by Ukrainian troops, came under the control of the Lugansk People's Republic, the LPR People's Militia said in a statement .
"In the course of offensive actions from March 5 to March 8, units of the People's Militia liberated 8 settlements of the Republic," the ministry said.
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So what will he get out of this - the Donbass region, and will be happy he fractured enough infrastructure and military.
I truly think Vlad has crossed many red lines - with the Russian people. Wonder if Vlad realizes how angry his people are when they lost Netflix?
Medinsky hopes to reach an agreement with Ukraine on Crimea and Donbass
Assistant to the President, head of the Russian delegation at the talks with the Ukrainian side Vladimir Medinsky, in an interview with RT , expressed the hope that at the meetings it would be possible to find a solution to the issue of recognizing Crimea and Donbass.
“According to them, it is practically impossible. In my opinion, there is a big difference between “impossible” and “practically impossible,” Medinsky said.
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The question is - do we let him have it? In the meantime he's hammered the rest of the country just enough that they'll have an uphill climb to be as much of a threat then they were 2 weeks ago. If it does happen - Putin will step back until he is provoked. Which he'll be fine with if it's a year away. He'll probably think he can negotiate a deal to start up Nord Stream 2 in 6 months.
Now we are witnessing the same process that Putin warned Ukraine about four years ago. And now the Russian president is again appealing to the reason of Kiev politicians: “If they continue to do what they are doing, <…> they generally call into question the future of Ukrainian statehood, and if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience ".
At least someone in Ukraine should understand that the uncontrolled distribution of weapons to the population not only cannot be a way out of the situation, but, on the contrary, aggravates it, intensifies the processes of disintegration of statehood as such, turns the country into a territory of anarchy, chaos, lawlessness. Neither Russia nor Ukraine can be interested in this, let alone the Ukrainian population, which is the main victim of the "terodefense from the high road." That is why this process must be stopped. One can only hope that there will still be sensible people in Ukraine who will understand this and take responsibility for restoring order in the country. Russia and its Armed Forces are always ready to help them in this.
The West should back a peace agreement and Russian withdrawal by offering Russia the lifting of all new sanctions imposed on it. The offer to Ukraine should be a massive reconstruction package that will also help Ukraine to move towards the West economically and politically rather than militarily – just as Finland and Austria were able to do during the Cold War despite their neutral status.
The demands by the Russian side are that Ukraine should sign a treaty of neutrality; engage in “demilitarisation” and “denazification”; and recognise Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which was seized back by Russia after the Ukrainian Revolution. These demands are a mixed bag of the acceptable, the unacceptable, and the undefined.
[ . . . ]
President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly hinted that a treaty of neutrality may be on offer; and he is right to do so. For two things have been made absolutely clear by this war: that Russia will fight to prevent Ukraine becoming a military ally of the West, and the West will not fight to defend Ukraine. In view of this, to keep open the possibility of an offer of Nato membership that Nato has no intention of ever honouring, and asking Ukrainians to die for this fiction, is worse than hypocritical.
As to “demilitarisation” and “denazification”, the meaning and terms of these will have to be negotiated. Demilitarisation is obviously unacceptable if it means that Ukraine must unilaterally dissolve its armed forces; but the latest statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has suggested that Russia would accept a ban on missiles based in Ukraine. This could be modelled on a similar guarantee to the US that ended the Cuba Missile Crisis.
As for “Denazification”, this presumably means that Ukraine should ban extreme right wing nationalist parties and militias at Russia’s behest. This is a completely unacceptable interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs; but perhaps Ukraine could make a counter-offer that would meet Moscow’s concerns about the rights and future of the Russian minority in Ukraine by guaranteeing these under the Ukrainian constitution – which, by the way, is something that the West should support anyway, in accordance with its own principles.
There remains the demand for recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea. Here, respect for international law (slightly ambiguous in the case of Crimea, which was only transferred from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet decree in 1954) must be tempered by considerations of reality, the prevention of future conflict, and the interests of ordinary people in the region – which is essentially what we have been asking Russia to do in the case of Kosovo.
Ukraine has already lost Crimea, and cannot recover it, as Serbia cannot recover Kosovo, without a bloody and unending war that in this case Ukraine would almost certainly lose. Our principle in all such disputes must be that the fate of the territories concerned must be decided by local democratic referenda under international supervision. This should also apply to the Donbas separatist republics.
These proposals will be denounced as “rewarding Russian aggression”; but if Putin’s original aim really was to subjugate the whole of Ukraine, then by such an agreement Moscow would fall far short of its maximal goals. Moreover, such an agreement would give Russia nothing that it had not in practice already achieved before launching the invasion.
The West is morally right to oppose the monstrous and illegal Russian war and to have imposed exceptionally severe sanctions on Russia in response, but would be morally wrong to oppose a reasonable agreement to end the invasion and spare the people of Ukraine terrible suffering. America’s own record over the past generation gives no basis for such self-righteous hyper-legalism.
Anatol Lieven is senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
This is why the war should never have started and why we should stop the war as soon as possible. Ukraine can survive and thrive as a neutral country.
You seem to place a lot of trust in Putin's claims that he would accept a neutral Ukraine. What was it that won you over -- was it when he insisted he wasn't planning on invading Ukraine, then launched the largest military invasion in Europe since WWII?
Read the Guardian article by Anatol Lieven that I just posted.
"The history of Western tensions with Russia over Ukraine is long and complicated, with many overlapping and competing analyses. Reasonable people can disagree over solutions like those put forward by groups like Stop the War.
"But to simply dismiss them as the lies and propaganda of Western traitors, Putin apologists, and dangerous fringe figures secretly in league with the Kremlin is false to the point of being Orwellian. These are mainstream arguments that have been made for years by current and former US diplomats and foreign-policy thinkers across the political spectrum, along with figures from the ranks of the Western establishment."
Well, since were inserting articles. Here's another character reference for Putin.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-1999-russian-apartment-bombings-led-to-putins-rise-to-power-2018-3