Pretty relevant, is WWIII going to kick off?
Pretty relevant, is WWIII going to kick off?
Article 5 isn't an automatic rule, Poland would have to decide to actually call on NATO to defend it and even then it could be a response as mild as the US moving more air defenses into Polish territory. The missile strike was just 15 miles from the border of Ukrainian land, not something like a missile strike into Warsaw. I'd be surprised if any government acts like this is a big deal since de-escalation is in everyone's best interest.Pretty relevant, is WWIII going to kick off?
I feel the need to respond to this specific part because the range itself has been quoted as likely being accurate by British government officials, all the way back in 2007. Common Dreams has a good article on this here. I understand that it is surprising for many people that the death toll could be so high, but it should seem equally surprising that so many media and government organizations never seem to quote these higher death counts.Just want to point out that while the Iraq war was undeniably not excusable, the death toll estimates range from 100,000 to 1,000,000 with the median number somewhere around 200k. The 1 million dead statistic came from one single source, the Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll, who got their results by calling 2,000 random families and asking if someone they know had died, and scaling those results to the whole country. While it isn't impossible that the number is 1 million, this extreme outlier points more towards this polling method being flawed. AP news reported ~100k, Iraqi Health Ministry reported 87k, Iraq Body Count reported 200k, The World Health Organization counted 151k, Iraq war logs (wikileaks) reported 176k etc. I'm not saying it can't be 1 million, it certainly could even be higher! But there's many different independent numbers and most of them point to a much lower number. Cherry picking the high end is somewhat disingenuous and a bit disrespectful to the people who actually died by manipulating their deaths to prove a political point.
I'm not going to respond to the specific assertions about Ukrainian history and their relationship with Nazism apart from saying that the moralizing of Ukrainian nationalism during WW2 as "picking the lesser of two bad options" is ridiculous. Ukrainian nationalists during WW2 were willing collaborators with the Nazis, and the crimes they committed are inexcusable.As for de-nazification well, that's been unfounded. It's true Ukraine has more of a slightly positive history with the Nazis than most of Europe. In WW2 to some the Nazis were liberators. Stalin was a brutal dictator and in some ways the Germans weren't quite as bad. To many it was choosing between the lesser of two bad options. But fast forward to the present and and major remains of the Nazis has long since been eliminated. Though the Azov Battalion HAS had credible connections to neo-nazis well... I mean so has Trump. So has some element of every major government. But hey at least unlike Trump Zelensky has the balls to denounce Nazism. However, an opinion piece by state-run news agency Ria Novosti made clear that "denazification is inevitably also de-Ukrainisation" - in effect erasing the modern state. Ukrainian children have been reported being shipped off en-mass to Russia which as defined by the UN, is textbook genocide.
Common Dreams (which your link is an opinion article by the way, not an officially published research paper) didn't do any polling or research, they literally just took Opinion Research Business (ORB)'s poll and applied some additional math to stretch the numbers out. ORB's methods were an extreme outlier suggesting they were flawed. As I said before, the majority of sources I can find suggest the deaths are around 200,000. It's certainly possible that the number is in the millions, but the few sources that suggest that are in the minority, and or have questionable tactics for getting those numbers.I feel the need to respond to this specific part because the range itself has been quoted as likely being accurate by British government officials, all the way back in 2007. Common Dreams has a good article on this here. I understand that it is surprising for many people that the death toll could be so high, but it should seem equally surprising that so many media and government organizations never seem to quote these higher death counts.
If the majority of sources say the toll is around 200k, and the extreme outliers have questionable or non-existent data collection, and yet still you post between 400-1 million dead (and are now linking to an opinion article stating 2.4 million) I think you are in fact picking the sources that tell you what you want. I'm not just picking general pro-US sources. The Iraq Body Count, which has even been counting deaths after the war's end, states 288k.The insinuation that I have picked the supposed "high end" of the death toll for political purposes is nonsense; the number of people who died in that catastrophic war (and those who continue to die as a result of it) are irrelevant to the quoted point at hand. I have no problem with someone deciding to post lower, albeit somewhat suspect in context, death toll numbers. But I am appalled at any accusation that I am "manipulating their deaths" (???) to prove a political point; the point is that wars with disastrous effects happen for some set of valid/invalid reasons. Not that "the USA does this stuff and nobody says anything".
I haven't seen anything posted by reputable news sites or research that would suggest ANY serious Nazi collaboration in modern Ukraine, at least no worse than is found in the US far right (or any other nation's far right). It seems that any connection to Nazis has been greatly exaggerated by Russian state media. I've seen too many examples of proven photoshops or easily disproven lies to really take any of it too seriously. Stepan Bandera is certainly a form of national hero in modern Ukraine but not because he was sending Jews to the camps (he was definitely an anti-semite but he had no part in the Holocaust). Again, these were a people who had to pick from one violent dictator or another. Prior to WW2 Ukraine suffered greatly under Stalin, in particular the Holodomor genocide. Bandera and others collaborated with the Nazis because at that point it was clearly the lesser of two evils. They didn't pick the Nazis for ideological reasons, but because ten years prior their own government starved 3-5 million Ukrainians to death. Ukraine tried to gain independence after the start of Barbarossa but the Nazis crushed the revolt and sent Bandera to the death camps. He was released back to Ukraine when Germany was losing in the hopes his pro-independence fighters would harass advancing Soviet troops. Bandera later escaped to the West where his Ukranian partisans fought for independence until the KGB assassinated him in 1959. Today Bandera only has a 32% approval rating. There is some historical connection with the Nazis but not in a "there's too many Jews, Hitler is my best friend" way, but in a "fuck Stalin so hard, we love the guy who gave his life to fight him even if he was a little garbage" sort of way. Tl;dr yeah he collaborated with Nazis but not in the way everyone assumes. The Soviet Union was just so fucking terrible that it was the clear lesser of two evils.I'm not going to respond to the specific assertions about Ukrainian history and their relationship with Nazism apart from saying that the moralizing of Ukrainian nationalism during WW2 as "picking the lesser of two bad options" is ridiculous. Ukrainian nationalists during WW2 were willing collaborators with the Nazis, and the crimes they committed are inexcusable.
It is not the fact that some Ukrainians participated in this back in WW2 that is concerning; it is the fact that those who did are being celebrated today as if they didn't! Nationalist-hero worship is not surprising among a populace, but government commemoration of those who collaborate with Nazis is. Zelensky is on record for saying that it's a "cool thing" for a portion of Ukraine to consider Stepan Bandera, known Nazi collaborator in WW2, a hero without any kind of immediate qualification. This is not the kind of "denouncing" I was expecting, conditional on the importance a person has to a country's history and independence. Zelensky's own bodyguards have been photographed alongside him with Nazi patches like the Totenkopf, optics so bad that people were claiming it was photoshopped!
None of this is really relevant to Russia's stated reasons for invasion and their exaggerations of Nazi influence, although I'm certain that they're pleasantly surprised with how often Nazi insignia keeps cropping up on Ukrainian soldiers in these photo-ops. Trying to sweep away the acceptance of this ideology by Ukrainian forces is a great travesty. This kind of logic is why the USA is somehow hosting members of the Azov Battalion, despite the fact that they were designated as terrorists by multiple organizations across the entire world.
I'm going to assume that you decided to skim the article and not actually evaluate what is being said there. I apologize for not being more clear in the original post. The part in the Common Dreams article I'm referring to isn't its estimated death toll, it's The Lancet's 2006 study which put its death toll estimates at approximately 600000. This study was reviewed in 2015 and was found to have a consistent and robust design. The study authors have responded to criticism of their work. This is not some kind of quack propaganda piece. For clarification, the Common Dreams estimated death toll is not the total from the Iraq War, it's their estimated death toll from 2003 till the time of publication.Common Dreams (which your link is an opinion article by the way, not an officially published research paper) didn't do any polling or research, they literally just took Opinion Research Business (ORB)'s poll and applied some additional math to stretch the numbers out. ORB's methods were an extreme outlier suggesting they were flawed. As I said before, the majority of sources I can find suggest the deaths are around 200,000. It's certainly possible that the number is in the millions, but the few sources that suggest that are in the minority, and or have questionable tactics for getting those numbers.
If the majority of sources say the toll is around 200k, and the extreme outliers have questionable or non-existent data collection, and yet still you post between 400-1 million dead (and are now linking to an opinion article stating 2.4 million) I think you are in fact picking the sources that tell you what you want. I'm not just picking general pro-US sources. The Iraq Body Count, which has even been counting deaths after the war's end, states 288k.
Again I'm not saying it's impossible that it could be higher. I certainly don't know. But based off the many sources that say the same thing, and a tiny handful of questionable outliers, I'm going with the reasonable answer that it's probably at or around 200k. Too many respectable sources has stated this so unless something OTHER than ORB thinks it's higher I'm going to take the reasonable answer instead of the one we seem to want to hear.
I don't understand this part at all. Bandera's OUN-B participated in the massacres of Poles, Jews, and Russians. Poland would not stand for denial of this. I am pretty sure this is exactly the kind of "collaborating with Nazis" in the way that everyone assumes.There is some historical connection with the Nazis but not in a "there's too many Jews, Hitler is my best friend" way, but in a "fuck Stalin so hard, we love the guy who gave his life to fight him even if he was a little garbage" sort of way. Tl;dr yeah he collaborated with Nazis but not in the way everyone assumes. The Soviet Union was just so fucking terrible that it was the clear lesser of two evils.
Obviously Zelensky himself, considering that he deleted the picture from Twitter. Fascist insignias cropping up everywhere is terrible optics. Does Ukraine really want to confirm Russia's exaggerated claims about Nazi influence?As for a 3 pixel wide skull on a Ukrainian soldier's backpack who took a selfie with Zelensky, who gives a shit lol.
The opinion article you linked takes a flawed study that counts 1+ million dead, mixes it with a 600k outlier, and arbitrarily mathematically determines that the death toll must have been 2.4 million. As I said before there have been dozens of other estimates and the majority range from 100-300k most of which around 200k. If you disregard all the other numbers and instead cling to the outlier it means yeah, you're biased. You previously stated the Iraq war deaths range from 400k to 1 million when actual numbers and good data suggest it's much lower. If you instead double down on a demonstrably false claim, instead linking to opinion articles that back that number up with bad data I think it just means you want one result.I'm going to assume that you decided to skim the article and not actually evaluate what is being said there. I apologize for not being more clear in the original post. The part in the Common Dreams article I'm referring to isn't its estimated death toll, it's The Lancet's 2006 study which put its death toll estimates at approximately 600000. This study was reviewed in 2015 and was found to have a consistent and robust design. The study authors have responded to criticism of their work. This is not some kind of quack propaganda piece. For clarification, the Common Dreams estimated death toll is not the total from the Iraq War, it's their estimated death toll from 2003 till the time of publication.
Is The Lancet's study absolute? No. Is it a separate and distinct study from the ORB one? Yes. Does it contribute a valid death toll? Yes. I cannot understand why you keep saying I'm "picking sources that say what you want". My previous post was clear that producing a study that gives a lower death toll is fine, because that is how these studies work. Implying that any death toll estimate above 300000 is an extreme outlier that has "questionable" or "non-existent" data collection (a claim which is completely undemonstrated in the case of The Lancet's study) is garbage, however.
The upshot of this is that the previous range I gave is completely valid. I don't want to derail this thread with this discussion any further.
It means the Ukrainians were the victims of two multi-million dead genocides within ten years and for some of them one dictator was better than another. Fast forward 70 years and it isn't so hard to see why a Ukrainian could say that their grandfather fought these assholes, so now I will as well. The Soviets in WW2 were only slightly better than the Nazis from a Western perspective, to a Ukrainian who just went through the Holodomor it's reasonable to see why some would pick the Nazis. If anything Russia's aggression would stimulate some of that cultural history, but it's certainly in the minority similar to how some in the US fly the Confederate flag even when they might not directly support slavery.I don't understand this part at all. Bandera's OUN-B participated in the massacres of Poles, Jews, and Russians. Poland would not stand for denial of this. I am pretty sure this is exactly the kind of "collaborating with Nazis" in the way that everyone assumes.
Obviously Zelensky himself, considering that he deleted the picture from Twitter. Fascist insignias cropping up everywhere is terrible optics. Does Ukraine really want to confirm Russia's exaggerated claims about Nazi influence?
This is a pretty flawed way of looking at war. I quickly looked up wikipedia's list of russian empire/soviet/russian wars post-1850, and the # of wars that werent "teaming up with militarily viable countries" or "think they're big enough to beat them instantly" was like... a grand total of 5. Miniscule sample size, and Russia won like half of them anyway. I would assume most British wars and French wars post-1850 were "teaming up with a militarily viable ally" or "planning to instantly beat a smaller foe" too.In terms of military victory, Russia usually isn't one who comes to mind. Apart from the times they team up with actually Military viable countries, Russia's history suggest they struggle to make any real war impact on their own. They look at a smaller country, think to themselves that they're big enough to beat them instantly, and then do so.
I feel like you are talking past Always! here. Are you implying collaboration with the Nazis meant Ukranians like Bandera and the OUN had no choice but to massacre Jews and other minorities? Because that seems suspect. Nazi collaboration varied wildly in enthusiasm and degree; NDH Croatia was notorious even among collaborators for its brutal violence, Sweden attempted to appear neutral under pressure, and Finland collaborated actively but with clear friction, to the point where Jewish Finnish soldiers held services in earshot of Nazi soldiers. Internal protest pushed Bulgaria to partially protect its Jewish population, while the same wasn't true for Romania. I don't know the particular details of Ukraine's situation, but I assume the OUN lay somewhere along that continuum, and in my extremely limited understanding, it doesn't seem like they lay towards the Sweden or Finland side.It means the Ukrainians were the victims of two multi-million dead genocides within ten years and for some of them one dictator was better than another. Fast forward 70 years and it isn't so hard to see why a Ukrainian could say that their grandfather fought these assholes, so now I will as well. The Soviets in WW2 were only slightly better than the Nazis from a Western perspective, to a Ukrainian who just went through the Holodomor it's reasonable to see why some would pick the Nazis. If anything Russia's aggression would stimulate some of that cultural history, but it's certainly in the minority similar to how some in the US fly the Confederate flag even when they might not directly support slavery.
What Russia has over almost every other country in the world is its nukes and if the West keeps poking Putin then I wouldn't underestimate his ability to actually use them. I think the west should leverage all the billions of dollars worth aid to get Ukraine to be open to compromising on some key issues to try to fizzle out the conflict.With what army lol?
This is not even close to some of the biggest threats the defunct Soviet army faced (see Vietnam war or Korean war) and even then when they were a superpower in those times that could afford to fight equal foot to the west they still didn't use their nukes. They are basically reduced to empty threats that amount to nothing since Russians very well know the second a nuke is used is the second Russia goes down in nuclear hell, they are the biggest losers of a nuclear war. They are basically best Korea 2, electric boogaloo.
There is no peace deal. Ukrainians have all the right to fight to the last Ukrainian to get their land back, THEY want to fight to regain their land back. The only way for peace is if Russia stops this farce and leaves Ukraine, period. The west can't force Ukraine to accept cohesions just so Russia can safe face, colonialism is unacceptable on a modern world.
Bruh. What exactly do you think Ukraine should compromise on? Only genociding half their citizens? Only annexing half their territory?get Ukraine to be open to compromising on some key issues
Well for starters for Ukraine to never join NATO and recognize autonomy for the Donbas Region. Ukraine had that deal lined up months ago but decided to turn it down. They had a out, but they didn't take it so it's on them. I am not defending Russia but I don't have any sympathy for the Ukrainians anymore and this conflict could very easily blow up to affect more of the worldBruh. What exactly do you think Ukraine should compromise on? Only genociding half their citizens? Only annexing half their territory?
So compromise means "only annex a major part of their territory", got it. They weren't joining NATO in the first place when Russia invaded. But they sure as fuck are going to now, so Russia doesn't invade them again. It's abundantly clear that NATO membership is necessary for them to defend themselves from a genocidal imperialist empire.Well for starters for Ukraine to never join NATO and recognize autonomy for the Donbas Region.
Ah yes, the capitalist ego of *checks notes* Ukraine being actively genocided.This is a war purely made of capitalist ego from all involved.
Not only are you arguing for appeasement, but you can even say that you're defending Russia, a fact that becomes pretty obvious when you insist that you have no sympathy for the people facing a literal war of elimination.Well for starters for Ukraine to never join NATO and recognize autonomy for the Donbas Region. Ukraine had that deal lined up months ago but decided to turn it down. They had a out, but they didn't take it so it's on them. I am not defending Russia but I don't have any sympathy for the Ukrainians anymore and this conflict could very easily blow up to affect more of the world
The only political parties that were banned had been over their (verifiable) ties to Russia. And that wasn't even all of them, the Communist Party for instance wasn't banned until this summer (by a court) when in reality it should have been banned with Borotba and other far-right allies. It's also a mistake to simply treat the invasion as a continuation of Soviet politics when in reality Soviet policy on Ukraine was a continuation of that of the Russian Empire.20. The ilegallisation of political parties made by Zelensky is a big mistake, except those with actual ties to Russia.
I'm confused on people stating to being anti-war/wanting the war to end faster, while also being pro-ukraine escalation and sending arms to it. You can't really be both: you're just pro-war on the side you want to win being anti-war means you'll be against Ukranian military support and Russia's sanctions just as much as you are against Russia's attacks and threats.
Sure, you can dream up on Ukraine's epic destruction of Russia or whatever the libs are salivating at rn, but the longer this goes, the worse it'll be for Ukraine: it may win against Russia, but no real progress will be made, it'l just become a debt ridden country trapped in a frozen war, an asset to western ego and the shadows of the red scare (over a capitalist Russia no less lol?) There's a reason the west keeps instigating and shut down peace talks before. I don't know how many more Ukranians and Russians have to be thrown to this meatgrinder for people to realize that.
All wars end on papers being signed, but I fear the tipping point where the west can just sign it for them, genuinely.
Also I think if anyone goes "oh so youre pro russia" im going to die, so have my disclaimer of I don't support Russia either here before anyone tries something funny. This is a war purely made of capitalist ego from all involved.