- Ukraine says it has liberated four villages in the south-east, calling these the first settlements won back from Russia since Kyiv’s counter-offensive began
- On Monday morning, officials reported that “the national flag is once again waving” over Storozhove, in the Donetsk region
- A day earlier, footage showed Ukrainian troops celebrating in Blahodatne and Neskuchne - and a minister said nearby Makarivka was also taken
- The settlements are relatively small - and Moscow is yet to confirm any retreat
- The Institute for the Study of War backs up Kyiv’s claims, saying Ukraine captured “multiple settlements” along the frontline over the weekend
- On Saturday, President Zelensky acknowledged that the long-awaited counter-offensive was under way
undefined> Basically, everything you just described is the natural consequence of war. That’s not excusing the Russians, but acknowledging that there are always examples of everything on that list on both sides in basically any war. I
Except the Ukrainians aren’t intentionally striking civilians, raping, killing soldiers who have surrendered, castrating soldiers - we would have heard about it from the russians (though anything they release has to be treated with suspicion).
The russians appear to want to be labelled as “evil”.
And so they will be, except by russian sympathizers, whether they admit it or not.
The Ukrainians have explicitly struck civilians. They’ve accepted responsibility for some of them and lied about some of the others where the US’s intelligence agencies believe that it was the Ukrainians. Fuck, in the recent discord leaks, we discovered that our security agencies don’t even know what the truth is with Ukraine because we don’t really have intelligence assets with the Ukrainian side, and we know that the Ukrainian lie to us about a lot.
Who used an unwilling suicide bomb to take out a strategic bridge? Who attacked a NATO countries infrastructure in an act of war? Who used a car bomb against a Russian, I don’t know, unpopular political figures daughter? The car bomb intentionally killed civilians, and did so intentionally in a civilian area. Dugin is, within Russia, right now, effectively only a pro-war blogger. He doesn’t have political power. He also doesn’t even have the ear of powerful people, really. But killing him(who was the likely target), a civilian, was apparently worthwhile for the Ukrainians. He and his daughter were civilians.
For the other stuff, the Russians absolutely are saying that that is happening. I agree with you that those claims, coming from the Russians, do need to be treated with skepticism. But you are wrong that the Russians aren’t claiming the Ukrainians are doing those things. They absolutely are. The fact that you don’t think they are making those claims makes me wonder where you are getting your information from.
So, the worst crime the Russians committed was starting the war. All of their other crimes follow from that first crime. Without it, none of the others would have happened. That is because war itself is evil. It makes good people do horrible things. Don’t even think about what it makes bad people do. Every side in every war, has done, and will do what you are saying the Ukrainians haven’t done. They have. I’m not saying it is official policy, but that probably isn’t true, even for the Russians.
The Russians don’t want to be labelled evil. Do you really think that? NO ONE THINKS THEY ARE EVIL. HITLER didn’t think he was evil. No. The Russians don’t think they are evil, and they don’t want other people to think that either. Saying that doesn’t require any knowledge about this war, just knowledge about human nature. You want to think they’re evil? That is entirely fair. But if you actually believe they think they’re evil, that is just stupid.
To be clear, I’m not a Russian sympathizer. As said above, the Russians committed the largest crime possible by invading. Everything else came about because of that. I am a war nerd. It is something I find interesting. Part of the problem with the fucking propaganda for this war is that it makes actually finding out what is happening the most difficult to follow of all of the wars in my lifetime. It also leads to just stupid fucking opinions, like if someone says the Ukrainian offensive is going poorly means that that person is a Russian Sympathizer. Being morally right doesn’t mean that everything you do is effective.