Here’s how Ukraine was being reported by the West before the war.

Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.

These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.

Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march. A neo-Nazi battalion in the heart of Europe

If you whitewash NAZI POGROMS just because you want to beat Russia, fuck you. Siding with far-right fascists to defeat far-right fascists doesn’t make you the good guy. There is no lesser of two evils here.

If you dismiss any criticism of Ukraine as Russian propaganda, you might want to ask why the rest of the world, including the West, was concerned about Nazism in the area and then suddenly changed their tune only after the war started.

We should be getting both sides into peace negotiations, not prolonging the bloodshed and providing Nazis with illegal cluster bombs

  • tuga [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The US got heat from other supporters of Ukraine for that even

    Getting heat doesn’t matter if everyone falls in line anyway.

    concern about ethnic Russians in Ukraine

    Why do you consider this bullshit, exactly? Do you disagree that russians in eastern ukraine were treated unfairly?

    • GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s the excuse used every time a country wants to claim dirt from another one, at least historically. Is that all it takes to justify a war now?

      Would you be defending France if they invaded Belgium in order to protect French-speakers? Mexicans and other Spanish speakers are threatened in the United States, does that mean Mexico is entitled to invade Texas and Florida?

      The idea that Russia has any right to protect anyone besides its own citizens in its own borders is based on the idea that Ukraine is “meant” to be in Russia’s sphere of influence, but I don’t believe in spheres of influence.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Mexicans and other Spanish speakers are threatened in the United States, does that mean Mexico is entitled to invade Texas and Florida?

        If Mexico could win that conflict, unequivocally yes I would support them. The US has repeatedly committed kidnappings, forced sterilization, and summary executions against those populations. The US government should be destroyed, but even just those state governments being destroyed would be great.

        The idea that Russia has any right to protect anyone besides its own citizens in its own borders is based on the idea that Ukraine is “meant” to be in Russia’s sphere of influence, but I don’t believe in spheres of influence.

        No, the idea is that countries are not people, people are people. If a country is going to fuck people over and those people want a specific other country to intervene, the people running that other country are free to intervene. Who gives a shit about what a federal government says about a region that deservedly hates it?

          • Babs [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            One of the first actions of the maidan government was to suppress the use of Russian language in the east. Why are you accusing Russia of a theoretical that Ukraine actually did?

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            So if Ukraine had surrendered, Ukrainian language started to be suppressed and Ukrainian history erased in order to promote the view of a “Russian world” distinct from West or East, do all the western Ukrainians have the right to beg Poland to come liberate them?

            I don’t think Putin would annex western Ukraine, that certainly wasn’t part of the discussion in any of the several previous iterations of negotiations over the civil war.

            I just noticed that a self-styled communist user was implying that Mexico invading Texas would be bad because of it violating US sovereignty. Take that fucking hammer and sickle off of your profile picture, you miserable poser. You’re a neoliberal with radical aesthetics and an embarrassment.

            Anyway, it’s also worth noting that Ukraine is perhaps the most historically-revisionist country in Europe (followed by Poland). The cult of Bandera is now basically just saying whatever they want about what happened during the Holocaust, or rather they are saying anything short of “the Jews had it coming,” and the government promotes it. Things weren’t looking great before, either. Whatever Russia has to say about textbooks in Dobas – aside from correctly having most of them printed in the native language of their readers, i.e. Russian – would be a clear improvement over this.

            Sure, and the people of the Middle East hate the US for its freedoms. You interested in this bridge I’m selling? Do you unironically believe that all 6.5 million residents of the Donbas circa 2014 all begged in unison for Daddy Putin to save them from the scary EU?

            afaik Donbas didn’t care intrinsically about the EU, it cared about the actions of the reactionary government that was installed by coup in order to push Ukraine towards the EU over Russia.

      • Francophone Belgians are not french. They barely were part of the same country. While for centuries there wasn’t an distinction between Ukrainian and Russian. Half of Ukraine has only been part of Ukraine since the 1920s.