Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.
“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
I mean, there’s usually more to say than just that. I don’t think no discussion is the answer.
Well then discuss.
What justifies the torture, rape, pillage, kidnapping, Russia has inflicted on Ukraine?
Mmmm… nothing. Putin is just an ultranationalist asshole on top of being a kleptocrat asshole.
Hey, I didn’t say the discussion had to be long, and this is a pretty cut and dried case.
Edit: Now, consider for contrast the invasion of neutral Iceland by Britain in WWII.
I agree, but ignoring who started the war and who is the one actively invading who, while having already occupied territory from a past war, not too long ago, isn’t right either. Doubting the motivations of the agressor with a past in agression is important. And yes, "TheWest"™ does it too, but Ukraine, who revolted their puppet government (as told to me by people I know from there) in 2014 and having been invaded as a result, isn’t really an agressor to other countries.
I’m from northern Spain, we have had our fair share of civil revolts, the sides I support lost, and I would be SO angry with portugal or france if they had militarily intervened. Several international volunteers came to help in several of them, but volunteers != an official invasion.
I honestly feel like several commies hate "TheWest"™, and by proxy anyone that wants to be related to them so they just eat up the “There’s Nazis in power in Ukraine” speech Putin used.
And yeah, context is important, this is what I know about the whole thing, told to me by my partner, whose family lives in Ukraine and lightly searched by me:
There was a revolt in Ukrained around 2013, where they took away the alleged corrupt puppet president that was manipulating elections and funnelling tons of money to Russia. He has to flee the country when people went to his home, and he apparently had a golden toilet. So after that elections were done and another dude was put in power.
They started to de-russiafy some stuff because they were fed up of russia’s influence in a separate sovereign country, and as a result Russia invaded in 2014. They took Crimea, taking the home away from several Crimean Tatars who were originally from there. Ukraine tried to get international help but since "TheWest"™ didn’t want a full scale war against Russia, they kinda forced Ukraine to give up Crimea, since they obviously don’t have enough resources to defend alone.
Zelensky, an actor, made a TV show where he starred as a good professor that suddenly became president, and fought against the big bad of the country, corruption and oligarchs. People were quite happy by the idea he was promoting, and after popular demand he tried for elections, going into power with a huge majority. He started to de-russiafy again and try to gain more economical support of "TheWest"™, which are the countried whom they have most economical relations. He wanted to join both the EU and NATO, and Putin REALLY disliked that, since he felt threatened. Suddenly, war.
This time, "TheWest"™ decided to support Ukraine more heavily for what I’m sure are their personal reasons, but it’s important to see who the aggresor is. That the US made a bridge for Zelensky offering NATO to pressure Russia we don’t know, maybe, but the fact that a sovereign country is forcing another sovereign country against treaties that the second one wants is clear.
From now on, all the new info that I get on the subject is passed through all the before mentioned context, assuming that all info is completely tampered with. All of what I told you was stuff I knew about before this war, so it’s not like it was propaganda, for me.
As an addendum, some of the family members of my partner work for the military (tech job), and told us that there had been issues with russian agents in Donbass with removing the Ukranian passport to people and giving them the russian one, I believe that the military of every country is fed tons of propaganda, so idk about this one.
What do we also know about Russia? There are several indications that they tempered with international elections by creating fake internet movements and promoting disruptive real ones as we have seen with the whole Trump fiasco. If they did so mcuh effort for countries that are that far, I have zero ounces of doubt that the manipulation strategies Russia actively performed pre-war, in a non-NATO coutry, were a lot more aggresive. Again, commies and tankies don’t trust anything about "TheWest"™ so to them all the manipulation reports hold no weight, it’s clear that there is a divide in ideology here around how Russia operates things.
I don’t have any reputable sources to support my context because I can’t bother to search for them, I’m just browsing the web while working like all of us lazy asses, but given this context I have, it’s really hard for me and tons of people living in "TheWest"™ to trust anything Russia says, since they have a really long history of tampering with their neighbouring countries (Yes so does USA but this is about Ukraine and Russia).