Certainly couldn’t do any worse than your beloved hard right.
In reality normal people - so obviously that doesn’t include you - would like governments that aren’t obsessed by insane right wing culture wars, aren’t bought off by corporate influence, which value facts, work to redistribute wealth towards achieving fairer and more prosperous societies, and have decent values and stand up for freedom at home and abroad.
You prefer governments which push US far right culture war bullshit and work for kleptocracy, which is your right, but you shouldn’t then complain when your rights get trampled over.
The absolute innocence on display here would warm your heart.
If you can’t see that the US were/are instrumental in creating this war to curb the spread of Russian financial influence world wide there’s no hope for you. It’s the cold war 2.0. and the poor Ukrainians served up as a sacrifice.
What’s your current read of how it’s going and what’s going to transpire? Saw some tweets last week saying the Ukrainians were taking a pummelling in the Donbas but more recent reports that the latest influx of weapons is being used to good effect over there.
Nobody really knows. The current situation is a meat grinder. Putin cares nothing about the lives of those fighting for him.
Slovyansk and Kramatorsk are very important and really Ukraine needs to be holding them. The HIMARS weapons are good alright because they can penetrate further than the Russian artillery can, which is a huge advantage, but even if Ukraine does push the Russians back the Russians will surely just keep launching missiles like the one on that shopping centre in central Ukraine last week which was launched from inside Russia, they’ll keep doing this even if they were pushed out of all of Ukraine.
The longer this goes on the greater the destruction of Ukraine. That’s the point I’ve made since the start - Putin is utterly intent on the destruction of Ukraine and its depopulation, whether through murder, fleeing to the west or forced deportation to Russian gulags. The aim is Holocaust level genocide.
This is a war to the death. Stalemate means Ukrainian destruction. Meanwhile in the west we continue to wring our hands. The west has a massive dog in this fight - its very survival. It should be fighting properly.
Is this auld shite still going on? Its like covid19, no one cares anymore. With Boris gone, that annoying Zelensky will become even less relevant. I suppose all the Hollywood muppets will still queue up for photo ops on Kiev
We’ve had U2 flying in having a concert, in a war zone. Ben Stiller rocks up no hassle too. World leaders turning up for a weekend trip away. It’s all a bit odd.
The propaganda is quite something. Not a mention of a ceasefire anywhere. Nato, the tans, the yanks all looking at their feet while the last 20% of the Ukrainian army obediently fight on. But western principles must be upheld apparently…not because a slice of Ukraine that wants to be russian is fought over by russians who dont want it and Ukrainians who despise it.
And apparently were supposed to believe that this is a struggle between good and evil, and money, oil etc have nothing to do with it.
The United States has identified at least 18 sites set up by Russia to detain and forcibly deport Ukrainian civilians to Russia, an American diplomat said this week, adding that Moscow appeared to have made preparations for the so-called filtration camps even before its forces invaded the country.
Courtney Austrian, the deputy head of the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that Russian officials — with the help of proxy groups — had set up “filtration camps” in schools, sports centers and cultural institutions in parts of Ukraine recently seized by their forces.
“At least 18 filtration locations along both sides of the Ukraine-Russia border have been identified thus far,” she said in a speech on Thursday to members of the organization, an international security monitoring group in Vienna.
Testimonies given to The New York Times and other news outlets by people who have escaped Russia after their “filtration” have included accounts of interrogations, of beatings and torture of people deemed to have ties to Ukraine’s armed forces, and of disappearances. After the filtration camps, Ukrainians have been sent on to cities across Russia — often to regions near China or Japan, according to the testimonies.
Ms. Austrian said U.S. assessments indicated that Russian officials were preparing for filtration procedures even before starting their invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. “Russian officials likely created lists of Ukrainian civilians deemed threatening to Russia’s control of Ukraine, including anyone with pro-Ukraine views, such as political figures and activists, as well as security personnel, for detention and filtration,” she said.
She called the filtrations a “Stalinistic process,” adding that they were “the latest in a long Russian history of using mass deportation and depopulation to try to subjugate and control people.”
Ukraine’s government has said that about 1.6 million people have been forcibly relocated to Russia — including about 250,000 children. Those numbers are impossible to independently verify.
“There is no public register; there are no hotlines that can be called; there is no accountability,” Ms. Austrian said.
She cited interviews that escapees from filtration camps have given to the news media describing how their passports had been confiscated and how some of those fleeing had been encouraged to apply for Russian citizenship.
Pushing for an international effort to help document these cases, Ms. Austrian suggested that Washington would seek prosecution of those involved. “Let me be clear: All those responsible for forced transfers of Ukrainian civilians to Russia will be identified and held to account for violations of international law,” she said.
