Russia invaded sovereign Ukraine in an unprovoked attack, violating their territorial integrity, international law and world peace.
They were aided and abetted in this criminal act of war by neo-fascist Pukes here and abroad. Puti Pu Putin’s Useful Idiot went so far as to call the wannabe Catherine the Great, auto / klepto crat dictator a ‘genius.’ All these fascists have blood on their hands.
All freedom loving people should come to the aid of an independent Ukraine now.
“Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” VOLTAIRE
Please share widely!
Agreed, whoever it was that sent troops to authoritarian Poland should be impeached. Along with the person responsible for arming the neo-Nazi Azov brigade. Impeach both of them, unless it’s the same person.
Would Poland have requested American troops of Russia has not been a consistent threat to their sovereignty? Would NATO have expanded without the consent of the nations asking to join? Why did Russia turn down multiple opportunities to join NATO? Do the Ukrainian people get a say in who governs them, what voluntary associations their nation can participate in? Neutrality and Ukraine not being in NATO are the existing status quo, so clearly Putin is after more as his land grabs in Crimea and now the Donbas should show.
When the elected president of Ukraine decided against NATO, we staged a coup and replaced him with someone who did want to join.. Nuland-Pyatt leaked phone conversation _COMPLETE with SUBTITLES – YouTube
Nuland is still employed by this administration.
The best analysis I’ve seen on the whole mess is from several years ago. Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer – YouTube
John’s an old professor of mine but he contradicts his own initial take that Ukraine was foolish to give up its own nuclear deterrence since Russia would always seek hegemony over it. He conceded this as recently as a year before that lecture.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/ukraine-should-have-kept-its-nukes
He cannot have it both ways. A Ukraine with a viable nuclear deterrent would have neither been a vassal state of Russia which it was under the corrupt Yanukovich, who was ousted in a people power movement that left hundreds of activists and protestors dead, nor a reliable American partner. It would not have been the neutral power it is today that Mearsheimer claims it has to agree to for Putin to back off.
We do not even need to speculate now, as Putin’s speech yesterday made clear this has nothing to do with NATO expansion, which he barely mentioned, and everything to do with correcting a mistake made in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. That “mistake” being a free and democratic Ukraine with its own identity, language, and culture distinct from Russian imperialism.
The civilized world can’t allow a tyrant to invade a sovereign democracy and get away with it.
Well, well, well ! Where ya been hidin, stranger? Welcome back to the fight. This time I know we’re going to win.
“Whenever Law ends, Tyranny begins.” John Locke
None of our business.
Catherine the Great kinda established ownership.
That’s bullshit! You’re talking out of your ass.
Ukraine had a national identity 100 years before the USSR existed! After Reagan told the Communists to “TEAR DOWN THAT WALL”, Ukraine and many other states became INDEPENDENT, SOVEREIGN democratic republics. Ukraine gave up their nuclear arsenal when the West promised to protect their territorial integrity against foreign attacks. They are a proud people of 40 million and the largest country in Europe. They are a FREE people who identify themselves with Western peace-loving democracies, not Putin’s totalitarian delusions of returning to anti-democratic authoritarian monarchies of the past.
Putin’s greatest fear is that once the people of Russia see the benefits of life in a free democracy they will throw his lying fascist ass into the dustbin of history!
It’s a small world – it’s all our business. You don’t get to just march across the border and claim territory – PERIOD!
Tell that to the people in Palestine. In East Jerusalem or the occupied territory.
I don’t think Palestine, East Jerusalem, or the occupied territory are comparable to Ukraine. I’ve loudly supported criticism of Israel’s behavior in all this, and still do.
Still, nobody has fired missiles into Russia from the Ukraine (to my knowledge). Nobody has sent terrorists into Russia to kill civilians.
Israel’s behavior towards the Occupied Territory is irrelevant to a discussion about Russia and the Ukraine.
There is no defense for Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.
“You don’t get to just march across the border and claim territory – PERIOD!”
So is it PERIOD! or PERIOD (asterisk)?
The US has supported the occupation of territory in Palestine since it happened in 1967. That occupation is illegal no matter what we think of the behavior of Israel or Palestine.
I’m not defending Russia’s invasion–just pointing out that the reasons the US government gives for opposing it are specious.
My PERIOD doesn’t require an asterisk when discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Your mileage may vary. 🙂
There may be good reasons for what the US is doing in Ukraine, but the fact that the government is putting out transparently bad reasons is a red flag.
The US sort of cares about respecting borders and not taking land by conquest–except when it defends and subsidizes those practices.
It is unfortunate you and other respectable people from my old professor John Mearsheimer to Tom Friedman continue to draw false equivalencies between Russian and American actions.
For critics of American policy on the right and left the crisis started when the U.S. agreed to expand NATO. For the Ukrainians it started with the Budapest Memorandum when they became the first country in history to voluntarily give up their nuclear arsenal in exchange for a written document that respected Ukrainian sovereignty with joint security guarantees from the US and Russian Federstion. The RF has routinely violated that agreement and it’s own Minsk Accords since 2014.
The Monroe Doctrine comparisons do not hold since the US committed itself to preventing imperial powers from taking further territory in the Western Hemisphere. It did not oppose existing territory nor did it suppose an American sphere of influence, it mainly is defensive in nature. Times when the US has been a bad actor in Latin America are not the same as violations of the Monroe Doctrine nor do they negate its validity.
Similarly, the US is bound by the Budapest Memorandum to preserve a free Ukraine. Those that want Ukraine to stay out of the EU and NATO have a decade or more if evidence that Ukraine is not actively seeking such membership. The only aggressive actor in this case is Putin who has routinely violated international law in the name of destroying a free and independent Ukraine.
“Those that want Ukraine to stay out of the EU and NATO have a decade or more if evidence that Ukraine is not actively seeking such membership.”
Some of what you say is reasonable, James. but the above quote is just mystifying. Russia since before Putin has been loudly objecting to the eastward expansion of NATO.
Ukraine does not qualify to join NATO but it’s not from lack of trying.
Mearsheimer’s analysis still seems to make the most sense to me. I don’t see what your criticism of him over Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament has to do with anything.
Okay, so if Russia doesn’t want Ukraine in NATO and Ukraine has not been actively trying to get into NATO, who is trying to start a war over getting Ukraine into NATO?
Russian started this war by invading Ukraine to destroy her fledgling democracy.
Nobody is trying to start a war over getting Ukraine into NATO.
Vladimir Putin is starting a war in order to assert his vision of Russia’s territorial imperative — he asserts that Ukraine has always been part of Russia.
In his own press appearance with the separatist leaders this week, Mr. Putin made only a brief mention of NATO as an afterthought.
Most of his address was a diatribe asserting Russian claims on Ukranian culture, language, and territory.
For the record the US does not formally recognize the legality of the occupied territories. It did (foolishly imo) recognized occupied Jerusalem as the rightful capital/embassy, The reason that move was so brazen is because it ditched decades of presidential condemnation of the settlements.
I think we both can agree that withholding formal recognition is necessary, and also a completely inadequate response–both for Israel/Palestine and Russia/Ukraine.
“I do not want my pictures in your offices, for the President is not an icon, an idol or a portrait. Hang your kids’ photos instead — and look at them each time you are making a decision.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy President of Ukraine