this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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I think my question was misunderstood.
Your original post makes it seem like you think NATO are the bad guys here because they are supplying weapons to Ukraine to defend themselves.
I asked "who attacked who" because to me, it seems pretty clear that Russia, a dictatorship whose government has a history of human rights violations and disregard for human life, is doing a bad thing when they invade a neighboring country and start shooting missiles at civilian homes on a daily basis for a year and half.
Could you explain how this is not a clear "Russia doing bad thing, we should help Ukraine" situation?
Do you think the people of eastern ukraine have a right to defend themselves?
nato is willing to fight to the last ukranian, going so far as scuttling peace talks, which you can read about in a ukranian Pravda article about Boris Johnson's visit.
NATO is mostly responsible for the dead Ukrainians. Ukraine has no reason to fight this war. If they lose, fine, the Russian part gets renamed and a higher minimum wage. Only rich assholes lose out. If Ukraine wins they get dead sons and burned schools but the US oil companies are happy.
It is pretty clear Ukraine shouldn't be fighting this war for the US companies.
What percentage of Ukrainians support defending their country?
Should it be their decision whether to keep fighting?
If it were up to Ukrainians to collectively decide whether or not to continue the conflict, Zelensky would not have canceled the elections for his position later this year.
The Ukrainian constitution does not allow for elections to be held during periods of martial law, which was declared at the start of the war.
If there is ever a good time to declare martial law, being invaded by a neighboring country might qualify as a justifiable time.
In any case, it's constitutional, but Ukrainian political process isn't what we are here to talk about.
Fundamentally, I agree with you - If the majority of Ukrainians were to decide they don't want the war to continue, the war should stop. The number show, however, that the people are not ready to give up.
The constitution of one of the most corrupt states in Europe has a mechanism whereby the executive can arbitrarily suspend elections?
Shocking.
Again, Ukrainian political process isn’t what we are here to talk about
You don't get to set the topic. If you don't want to discuss it then nobody can compell you to do so. Don't pretend it's irrelevant to the topic you've chosen to engage with just because it's inconvenient for your arugment to engage with it.
No, it's definitely a side topic.
The topic is technically "did China supply Russia with weapons etc?" But the topic we've been talking about for a bit now is "is the invasion justified," not "is the Ukrainian constitution constructed in an ideal way."
The ideal-ness of the constitution has no bearing on whether the invasion was justified, because invading your neighbor and killing thousands of civilians, even if their constitution is not completely ideal, cannot be justified.
I'm officially announcing now that I am going to sleep. Goodnight, and I hope you can all do some reflecting on whether invading neighboring countries is good or bad. I'm done responding to all of this.
No reflection needed. Stalin shouldn't have stopped at Berlin.
Oh no, the topic decider is gone. However will we go on?
Dead people don't get a vote. People lining up to die are even less trust worthy about their choices.
While humorous, that isn't actually how polls work. I'd suggest looking up the statistics. The majority of Ukrainians, even in the Eastern regions, still support defending themselves.
Does that mean that the majority of Ukrainians support fighting the war for the sake of US companies? Or could there be something else they are fighting for?
They are fighting for honor glory and pride. However they will die for it and get none. While all the worst people in mu country will buy a new jetski off the profits they made from the ordeal
Is it possible they are fighting to protect their freedoms and their families? Honor and glory is nice and all but I'd imagine that most of them aren't Game of Thrones characters.
No, none of that is at stake. Russia has better labor rights than Ukraine. So if they cared about their families, especially the people in the region in question, they would be slfighting for russia.
I have to push back on "none of that is at stake."
When Russia sends missiles and drones into Kiev that hit civilian buildings, homes, and kill regular people on a daily/weekly basis, is the message they are receiving "Russia has better labor rights than Ukraine?"
They are at war. That is what happens during war. They are only at stake because there is a war on. If the war stopped those would go away. And as Russia would likely increase thr labor standards in territory under their controll things would improve on every front for the lives of the average Ukrainian if the didn't do the war.
Russian-supported polls can't be trusted, but the targets of 8 years of pogroms definitely aren't be coerced by Ukraine!
I understood. It's an unserious question, so I gave an unserious answer. China isn't militarily supporting Russia. They sent some kids toys and the same raw materials they exported everywhere anyway.
Ah, I see what happened. I didn't address the China part of your original question because I actually agree with you there. They aren't militarily supporting Russia based on this article. I don't see why China would do that, since it wouldn't really benefit them.
I was addressing part 2 of your comment, where you implied that NATO is doing a bad thing by supporting Ukraine. Unless I misunderstood - I assumed "They are the good guys trying to end the war" was sarcasm.
Don't bother. There is no actual intelligence or reason there.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/
You're responding to the user who refuses to spend five minutes reading a reply, I think you've misplaced your estimate of intelligence or reason.