I know both of us were raised within the system. I can tell instantly when a particular framing of the news is pro-russian, and likely laundered by the usual propaganda channels. that shit is in my skin. i could recite it word by word as told to me by people in my family, or in my school, or some other totally-apolitical person who somehow after a couple of shots of vodka opines that ukrainians should just shut up and forget about crimea because of the great motherland, and it was never their to begin with, etc. etc.
you may not consume it daily, although i don’t think you are being truthful about that. but you do sound EXACTLY like the information coming out of every possible russian outlet. propaganda is actually two fold, half arguing for the war as an imperative, the other shouts about the horrors it will bring onto ukraine.
you literally have to be completely outside of russian state media to see any mention that Russia will be incurring thousands of deaths themselves. it’s in our very nature to justify russian expansion by neglecting the costs it will impose on russian and ukranian people alike.
You’ve already compared the Ukraine to a sex worker looking for the toughest pimp, which is a pretty disgusting analogy.
Why should anyone believe your view that the Ukrainian people have no legitimate reasons to seek alliances to prevent Russia from again trying to destroy their country, as happened during the famines 100 years ago.
Equating US/West and NATO interests is a huge part of Putin’s justification for denying Ukraine’s right to seek membership. that’s the reason why all of this talk sounds a lot like misinformation that seeped its way into this discussion.
Ukraine isn’t joining the US to help them into Russia or anywhere else, and the US isn’t annexing Ukraine. Ukraine is trying to join NATO, a mutual defense pact that would ultimately contain russian expansion along russian borders in europe.
This is extremely insulting to Zara. You are accusing her of consuming Russian propaganda news sources and lying about it, I think just because her primary concern is innocent lives? That has always been Zara’s primary concern with military conflicts, even conflicts in the West. I think you have a bad read here. Or at least one best left unsaid.
He’s accusing her of consuming Russian propaganda NOW, when she just said she doesn’t. And this “read” was apparently based on the fact that she is hugely concerned for innocent lives, which is apparently 50 percent of the CURRENT propaganda feed.
All I’m saying is that Zara has been most concerned about innocent lives in every military conflict or potential conflict that we’ve ever discussed, anywhere in the world, for like 15 years or so. So maybe that has been part of Russian propaganda forever, not sure, but that wasn’t the basis of the claim at all. He claimed that she is currently lying about not consuming Russian propaganda as evidenced by her concern for innocent lives. Seems disrespectful. I’ll drop it because Zara just said that she’s going to look past it.
If your goal is to avoid war at all costs, you should be 100% in favor of giving Ukraine all of the short range weapons they want. The only reason not to is you’re fine with the Russians taking whatever they want unopposed.
What is Ukraine if not a victim of aggression while in pursuit of their own destiny?
Where is Europe in this discussion? All of EU (possible exception of Hungary) are concerned Putin isn’t going to stop at ukraine.
I would like the US to provide whatever help it can to Ukraine, and then continue to operate with their allies in NATO as they did normally. naval exercises in baltic and black seas. without firing a single shot at a foreign target. that’s just normal state of things, in which Russia used to participate. The do not believe the US is annexing Ukraine as territory or colony, although I am sure to russian expats like me and you, an american/euro investor opening a business in Ukraine could be construed as “selling ukraine to dirty capitalist west”.
that’s basically it. From Russia point of view, the american threat over Ukraine is simply that US/EU will be nicer to Ukraine that Russia ever was. lol indeed.
propaganda is ubiquitous. you are consuming it all the time. i am accusing her of repeating the propaganda talking points that only benefits putin’s side in the conflict.
I think you need to back this up. A quick Google search turns up some 2020 and 2021 polling that suggests a small majority of EU citizens favor Ukraine membership and a small majority of Ukraine citizens favor Ukraine membership in the EU. It seems like it is a polarizing question but one where the general will slightly favors Ukraine to be more integrated with Europe.
It seems more likely that your own unique perspective is making everybody that disagrees with you sound like a Russian shill, rather than that we’ve all suddenly started consuming heavy doses of Russian propaganda.
Let’s compare how badly Estonia, Poland, etc have done under the oppressive yoke of the EU. Estonia now has a GDP similar to Spain and low corruption. Poland is still a developing country, but its doing ok and its issues are mainly a result of bad leadership. Lithuania has a $17k per capita GDP, Latvia has a $16k GDP, Russia is $11k. Also, their citizens can feel like they have some say in their destiny.
The problem with Russia meddling in countries internal affairs is that Russia is and always has been terrible at governance. It’s just a poorly run petro state with a bad attitude and the world’s biggest chip on its shoulder. China used to have a big chip on its shoulder, particularly under Mao. Millions died from bad policies that could not be criticized. It changed its attitude (mostly) in the 90s and has been extremely successful.
The “choice” for Ukraine, as far as I can tell, is to continue to integrate into the community of nations and world economy or to be under the thumb of Russian nationalist authoritarians actively exploiting it for its own ends.
I don’t think Ukraine is worth fighting a war with Russia over, but I think giving any credit to the belligerent Russian etho-natiuonalism is very bad. Russia has had 100 years to not always choose the worst option and it almost always chooses the worst option, for itself and anyone who gets involved with it.
edit: I’m being harsh but am currently reading a history of the last days of Stalin, and Russia was soooo fucked up. It’s leadership and politics have consistently been terrible.
