Russian Invasion of Ukraine Megathread

[Delicious Diversity]

Yeah, good point. Politicians are known for their integrity and incorruptible nature, and elections are completely fair, particularly in underdeveloped countries. 15% of people supported Zelensky's government, who should deny them their ability to change their country?

Ukraine uses a direct popular vote to elect its president, with two voting rounds, the first of which eliminates the least popular candidates to leave two standing for the second round, guaranteeing the winner ultimately has a majority of support (if not first-choice support among all voters). This is pretty conventional and used in many other democratic countries, I believe France for example uses basically the same system.

Zelensky won with 73% of the vote in the second round, with a turnout of 62% of the electorate in both rounds. I am not aware of any evidence that the election was rigged, and it was subject to the usual international monitoring that would highlight such irregularities. Oh but I'm sure that is the result of an international conspiracy to hide the truth while Crimea's referendum under military occupation was 100% legit. Lel.

You are right though, politicians are corrupt and Zelensky is not special. In fact one of the main concerns was that he was too friendly to Russia and could be influenced by Putin, because he is a native Russian speaker and ran on a campaign of ending the Donbas War via peaceful means involving Russia in the process. No but of course he actually hates Russians and wants to genocide them, Putin would not just make shit up surely!

Lol, sorry, I'm not even sperging at you specifically really. I'm just getting sick of the constant one-dimensional perspectives I see in this thread whereby Russia is some poor honest victim with special privileges and everyone else in the world is part of some evil conspiracy of lies and manipulation.

I don't think anyone is honest or sincere in this war, but least of all fucking ex-KGB Putin.

 

[Captain Autism69]

Let's not forget Putin sanctioning Ukraine for even thinking about a trade deal with the EU. Even Yanukovich new where the desires of the population of Ukraine were... then he basically folded when Putin gave him an offer he couldn't refuse. He got bought off, and didn't find himself drinking polonium, so it was a win for him. Until the riots started, he killed 100 people, and the riots got worse.

The EU deal was dogshit, and the Russian deal was better; that's why he didn't sign it. But glowops didn't like that so it was coup time! Wonderful having that cunt McCain down on Maidan encouraging the overthrow of a democratically elected government!

 

[H. Bergeron]

The EU deal was dogshit, and the Russian deal was better; that's why he didn't sign it. But glowops didn't like that so it was coup time! Wonderful having that cunt McCain down on Maidan encouraging the overthrow of a democratically elected government!

We need a term for Putin glowies like this. Plowies?

 

[Harvey Danger]

I found it hilarious Ameritards are saying the Ukrainian doesn't have the right to fight for their nation and country, especially when its invaded by an enemy. You people love talking about how you fought the Brits for your freedom, and now you're saying other nations don't have the right to do the same? You burgers are hilarious

They do have the right to fight, but if they lose Americans aren't affected at all.

What you don't like is that, simultaneous with them having that right, Russia also has the right to knock NATO away from their borders. These 2 rights conflict, but the world isn't a good vs bad Marvel movie. You don't get clean and easy morality.

(And to be brutally honest, if Ukraine loses the history of "Ukraine" won't be affected much in the grand historical sense. This region has been part of nearly a dozen empires or external states over the last 1000 years. A 30 year blip where an entity called "the country of Ukraine" had larger than usual borders before ceasing to exist, won't change the story much.)

 

[The Ugly One]

You mean when they kicked out the Tartars and moved in Russians to strengthen their hold on the region. Like they always fucking do? Or was it when they destroyed 1/4 of the Crimean economy by taking it over, hiding who they were like pussies? Or was it when they installed a puppet dictator?

Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense.

Sounds like a good argument for making Crimea an independent republic. What's the argument for having it ruled by an American puppet government based in Kiev?

 

[Strix454]

Ukrainian democracy is a complete meme. Show me a Ukrainian leader who hasn't tried his immediate predecessor for treason and either directly banned their party or quasi-banned it as well as shut down hostile media. This is without getting into how double nationality is about and like half the people involved are nationals of other states.

There is no democracy in Ukraine. The only difference from Russia is that the political leaders in Ukraine are not in charge at all. The Oligarchs directly run Ukraine and the politicians (including the President) are their puppets or in the case of Zelensky, their creations.
The best way to describe how Ukraine is governed is that its comparable how Russia was run in the latter years of Boris Yeltsin.

 

[Kaede Did Nothing Wrong]

You are right though, politicians are corrupt and Zelensky is not special.

ukraine is only slightly less corrupt than russia according to every nonprofit who attempts to index this stuff.

Lol, sorry, I'm not even sperging at you specifically really. I'm just getting sick of the constant one-dimensional perspectives I see in this thread whereby Russia is some poor honest victim with special privileges and everyone else in the world is part of some evil conspiracy of lies and manipulation.

i'm not following this thread bc I hate russia too but you are just presenting the other over simplification. this country is not worth ww3.

 

[Coccxys]

There is no democracy in Ukraine. The only difference from Russia is that the political leaders in Ukraine are not in charge at all. The Oligarchs directly run Ukraine and the politicians (including the President) are their puppets or in the case of Zelensky, their creations.
The best way to describe how Ukraine is governed is that its comparable how Russia was run in the latter years of Boris Yeltsin.

I mean they couldn't make it more obvious if they tried. Setting up a government entirely made up of people who's known profession is playing parts and reading scripts others have written for them is pretty obvious.

 

[Captain Autism69]

Sounds like a good argument for making Crimea an independent republic. What's the argument for having it ruled by an American puppet government based in Kiev?

There's been a couple of referendums in Crimera about making it an independent republic, but Kiev said 'lol no fuck you you're ours!' abolished the Crimean parliment and consitution and held a veto over any action it would take. Not a stretch of the imagination to understand that when Crimea's man was pushed out in 2014 during a coup/revolution, that they were pretty welcoming of joining Russia. Ukraines response was to block the source of 90% of all Crimea's water and try to cause a famine/drought.

 

[Titos]

You're just jealous you have to spend anywhere from two to four letters to write ч and ш.

Jokes on u fgt i use as few ltrs as i pssbly can. Seriously though any language that doesn't have a word for "the" or "an" is dumb as fuck. It's like Bahasa Indonesian where to say a plural version of something you just say the same word twice, except that actually makes some sense.

 

[Mussi]

You mean when they kicked out the Tartars and moved in Russians to strengthen their hold on the region. Like they always fucking do? Or was it when they destroyed 1/4 of the Crimean economy by taking it over, hiding who they were like pussies? Or was it when they installed a puppet dictator?

Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense.

Are you talking about when Russia initially conquered Crimea, under Stalin, or later on under Putin? Because I really hate to break it to you, but the poor oppressed Crimean Tartars are not indigenous to Crimea and did not come peacefully; they enslaved and massacred an unknowable amount of Greeks and Goths, who in turn massacred and enslaved the previous residents. Facts are, Russians have been the biggest ethnic group of Crimea since the late 19th century and Crimea should have never been made part of Ukraine.

 

[Delicious Diversity]

Ukrainian democracy is a complete meme. Show me a Ukrainian leader who hasn't tried his immediate predecessor for treason and either directly banned their party or quasi-banned it as well as shut down hostile media. This is without getting into how double nationality is about and like half the people involved are nationals of other states. Fattie Vindman was gonna be the Ukrainian defense minister, let's not forget. And in any case as regards 2014 it doesn't matter since the government there was appointed by the State department. It's what Victoria Nuland's leaked 'fuck the EU' call was about though the media and the people both focused on "Wow, Vicky said a mean word to our friends" though for different reasons.

As regards them fighting tooth and nail, I entirely understand the people on the ground who don't want their homes levelled and their kids shot. But their leaders have an obligation not to throw them into a lost cause and my sympathy for said leaders ran out when our own puppet government decided to handicap its economy and made my life worse on their behalf while their talking heads fill every airwave begging us to die in nuclear war for their non-country.

I mean, this is kinda just quibbling bro. I don't think anyone really cares if Ukraine is a model democracy or not. I was just making the point that the current government has popular support, so you can't detach its views of Russia from the views of Ukrainian voters so casually.

I will agree that the 2014 Yatsenyuk government was essentially formed in a coup, but again, who cares really. It doesn't bear much relevance to the positions of the current government beyond some recent historical context. You said Ukraine was "anti-Russia" and I disagree.

I strongly disagree about the government being obliged to surrender. The primary, by far most important role of government, is national defense. The government is obliged to mobilise the country for total war if necessary and resist for as long as it has the capacity to do so.

What kind of fucking government orders its people to lay down their arms and accept occupation? Maybe when the fight is well and truly lost but right now the Ukrainian armed forces are very much still operational and in control of most of the country. Give it a few months at least.

 

[The Foldless Brain]

There is no democracy in Ukraine. The only difference from Russia is that the political leaders in Ukraine are not in charge at all. The Oligarchs directly run Ukraine and the politicians (including the President) are their puppets or in the case of Zelensky, their creations.
The best way to describe how Ukraine is governed is that its comparable how Russia was run in the latter years of Boris Yeltsin.

Yes, and you'll notice how wishing Russia had stayed like it was under Yeltsin is either the subtext or the outright wish of both regular people in this thread and more importantly the law and opinionmakers in the broader West.

 

[Borscht]

ran on a campaign of ending the Donbas War via peaceful means involving Russia in the process.

Remind me again what he did towards achieving this goal during the 2 years he spent in office other than "fuck all".

 

[Corpun]

Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
View attachment 3065920

Zelensky should put as much effort into fighting as he does begging for help.

Try telling an american that. They have no idea how corrupt puerto rico is and how the culture is different.

I had a friend from your corrupt little island in High School and he was always telling me how funding there would vanish because of the insane amount of corruption there. He mentioned during the hurricane that hit it when Trump visited how that was probably a good thing he got a picture of handling aid to it and dealing with the corruption and even then shit would go missing.

That's Poland. Ukrainians are a meme identity that's had a few flushes, mostly in the 20th century and goes nowhere. You can see as much when after the dawn of the glorious Ukrainian national government in 2014, which was selected by Americans, the parliament featured an Armenian and a Georgian arguing with each other in Russian on who was the biggest Ukrainian.

You forget the best part, Ukraine's borders are literal Middle East tier lines drawn on a map. Some politicians throughout the 20th century just decided where and when Ukraine starts and ends, and it's borders shifted every few decades. Crimea was added by Krushev despite being majority Russian and the east of the country is largely Russian speaking.

View attachment 3066066

The separatists really love to put a lot of Z in captured Ukrainian armor.

I bet they think : "Got to stick it to the Ukrainians, fuck them for shelling my home for 8 years"

This gives me the idea to make a tspring account and just sell shirts with a spray painted Z on them. I know journalists will be crying about it.

 

[Jarolleon]

I will like to welcome the zoomer generation to the new cold war, where we were always threatened by the original mega-death. Bombs.

Ignore and continue on with your life, you're gonna die anyway no point in getting worked up over it.

So boomers learned to live like there's no tomorrow because they literally believed they could get nuked any second now? No wonder high-time preference behaviour pervades modern management culture, from Blizzard Entertainment to the US government.

 

[BULLY HUNTER_77]

View attachment 3066177
the comments are incredible. twitter flipping out on biden like he has canceled the next avengers movie they were promised.

I KNEW it. This is because Biden and his handlers know, with certainty, that the globalhomo will die in nanoseconds if they escalate things in Ukraine with a nuclear power like Russia.

The Twitter NPCs will fall in line once they realize that this represents yet another programming update. The Redditors are expected to volunteer and die as international mercenaries without any formal support from the US military. The bugmen have weathered more jarring programming updates, they'll weather this one.

 

[mrdk_04]

View attachment 3057349
"Just get a Tesla bro"
"Don't drive for 2 weeks bro"
"Ride a bike, bro"

I've never wanted to fedpost as much as today. American talkshow hosts aren't human.

Russia: I will fuck up Ukraine.
Europe: Stop, don't do that.
America: Europe, I need you to commit economic suicide.

Europe is fucked. Our high standards of living, healthcare programs, great public transit, etc. require a functioning economy. Middle class businesses got axed en masse due to 'rona, with many economists speculating more bankruptcies to follow at the end of this fiscal year. Screwing over Russian oligarchs will impact local industries as well, as some have invested rather heavily in certain industries, I look forward to paying 3 times the usual price for bread a month from now.
USA may have absolutely shit infrastructure and hang non-urbanites out to dry, you can't miss what you didn't have in the first place.
Luckily, certain circumstances (fixed energy contract, living in the vicinity of nearly everything I'll ever need, career advancement ) ensures my suffering will be limited.

View attachment 3060403
That'll show that Tchaikovsky what he gets for being Russian!

Tchaikovsky was a Russian nationalist, not to mention how the USSR used him as this infallible benchmark for their "The West is decadent and beyond saving" spiel. A performative gesture, but not wholly unwarranted.

Regarding sanctions, keep in mind they are most effective against democratic regimes. There is a direct line between Kaatje's frustration at having to scrounge for vending machine bread and any of the hundred political parties in Windmill country seeing their voters go to antidemocratic radicals. Autocratic regimes are not suspectible in the same way democratic regimes are, people are used to harsher material circumstances, such governments have insulated themselves to the will of the people (to a degree).
Even then, revolution requires more than just depriving the serfs of their Macbook Pros, not to mention Russia specifically can certainly sweat out the brunt of this punishment due to grand monetary reserves, relatively low debt and downsized imports. The less said about the recklessness of our industries and political kayfabe, the better.

Sanctions are useful, necessary and a good middle ground to fling shit at eachother without resorting to open violence. However, we cannot afford to sanction Russia without mutilating our own economies in the process, certainly with our Green Deal requiring massive investments to meet the 2050 deadline. Mark my words, the EU will allow Russia to assrape Ukraine without sanctions come the end of this year.

 

[Delicious Diversity]

ukraine is only slightly less corrupt than russia according to every nonprofit who attempts to index this stuff.


i'm not following this thread bc I hate russia too but you are just presenting the other over simplification. this country is not worth ww3.

Yeah I think everyone here knows Ukraine has serious problems with corruption.

I don't agree I have oversimplified anything, I've tried to provide some context that people who are staunchly supporting Russia are either not aware of or are actively not discussing.

Or in some cases stating blatantly untrue things, like saying Zelensky has 15% support. I don't doubt he is as corrupt/useless as previous Ukrainian leaders, but to assert that baseless figure is just a flat out lie.

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

I had a friend from your corrupt little island in High School and he was always telling me how funding there would vanish because of the insane amount of corruption there. He mentioned during the hurricane that hit it when Trump visited how that was probably a good thing he got a picture of handling aid to it and dealing with the corruption and even then shit would go missing.

And the media blamed Tump for the inevitable disaster recovery mismanagement while glorifying the corrupt mayor who was a large part of the mismanagement. The Puerto Rican government purposely neglected the power grid in hopes the US government would rebuild and upgrade it using American tax dollars. The US changed their policy to just repairing after they discovered the shithole commonwealths were pulling that shit and the Puerto Rican politicians sperged about it. Everyone knows everyone in Puerto Rico and there is a pretty severe income/influence divide. If you know a friend working at a tourist hotel, you can probably use the pool or get free drinks at the bar. You have the rulers living in something akin to the tourist area in terms of looks and cleanliness when 10 minutes away there is a shack with a donkey out back in a 20'x20' mud pit. Also Puerto Ricans speak lazy spanish and it drives me crazy. I get hating your economy is tourism but the culture is just shit.