There has been extensive non-partisan (historically accurate) analysis of this, which I won't repeat here because it just invites the wrong kind of nit-picking debate over minutiae that don't matter.[1]
Meanwhile, actual fascists and literal NAZI party members took over most of Europe in the 1940s. Italy was fascist. Austria joined the NAZIs. Hungary did too. Hungary is turning increasingly fascist right now and Russia loves this:https://theconversation.com/i-watched-hungarys-democracy-dis...
Apparently, that's no longer a problem, but a single long-dead[1] collaborator with no real impact on Ukraine even when he was alive is apparently reason to invade with... drumroll... a merc army lead by a neo-NAZI with SS tattoos: https://aijac.org.au/fresh-air/russia-sends-its-pet-neo-nazi...
You can't make this stuff up. If this was a script for a movie, the author would be laughed out of the room.
Sigh.. the whole "Ukraine is NAZI" talking point is just that. An excuse, a throw-away comment that works on Russians and nobody else. It's like the bully that punches the kid in the playground because they wanted to, and when asked, comes up with some "reason" on the spot, like "Oh, I didn't like the way they looked at me" or somesuch.
[1] A favoured argument tactic by those people who know they're in the wrong with respect to the fundamental points. Ukraine could have been 100% NAZI and saluting Hitler in school, but this doesn't matter if it occurred when 80% of the current population hadn't even been born yet!
[2] In the dirt for more than half a century now! Bandera died in 1959! that was 63 years before the start of the current invasion. THIS is my point precisely, that Putin's justifications are out-of-date, based on politics that have zero relevance to modern-day Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in a war that has -- so far -- killed at least a hundred thousand people and wounded about half a million.
Is that a defensive or aggressive policy towards neighbours?
How many people have died as a consequence of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland joining NATO?
What material aggression has Russia experienced, in terms of casualties?
This whole thing is actually very simple: Russia's senior leadership wanted to invade Ukraine. It's something they've been planning for decades. There's numerous interviews with various world leaders stating that they've known about these plans since at least the early 2000s.
Ukraine joining a defensive pact is a "threat" only to invasion plans. Invading right before a country has a chance to join is simply confirming that the need for defensive alliances was a real one.
It's like a burglar feeling "threatened" by the installation of security cameras in a place they've been scoping for months, and robbing the place right before the security system installers turn up.
No matter what that burglar says about the police, or the "spying" of the cameras, or whatever matters. Fundamentally, they had criminal intent and are just making things up to justify that.
Every Russian excuse is just nonsense when examined critically. E.g.: "We had to defend ethnic Russians from the bad Ukranians". Okay... then why was it that after the invasion the Russian military immediately used the locals as discardable cannon fodder? What kind of "protection" is that!? https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1d7b6gs...
I am glad you recognize this is a push back. Because that’s exactly what it is: a push back on American imperialism. And since the US is responsible for the forward advance that triggered the push back, it is also responsible for the deaths you mention.
Notably, most of the articles you linked were also written after the 2022 invasion, and all were written after the 2014 invasion.
Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper.
This is a "problem" in the same way that skinheads are a problem: local.
Russia in no shape, way, or form faced any kind of material threat from Ukraine's local neo-nazi, fascist, or extreme right-wing groups.
Invading a country and killing hundreds of thousands is so many orders of magnitude worse than some people walking up a street chanting the name of someone long-dead that's it's just absurd.
Remind me again: how many Russians died because of Lenin? (An estimate to the nearest million will do) Any 'statues', 'pictures', or 'posters' of him anywhere in Russia?
Is he still revered by any in Russia: yes, or no?
By how many do you estimate if yes?
How many Russians died because of Bandera? Now give me an estimate Putin. The nearest hundred thousand will do.
How is that cherry-picking? If you think that I have omitted some important information about Ukrainian nationalists and the support for them from the post-2014 regime in Kiev, tell me, what have I missed.
If you skim the article you linked to, you'll find that despite being written in 2022, the latest example is dated to 2016. That matches my own perception of wide crack-down on neo-Nazis in Putin's time. They've got jailed and some died in prison [0]. I fact-checked a random fact from the article -- the Kremlin tolerance for the music band Kolovrat. It turns out that almost 50 of their songs are listed in the "List of extremist materials" and their distribution is a crime. [1]
"and all were written after the 2014 invasion"
Coincidentally (sarcasm), 2014 is also when Ukrainian nationalists came to power.
Nonetheless, you are welcome to listen to the Bush Sr's speech in Kiev in 1991: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred".[2] Americans later did support them, of course. [3]
"Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper."
This statement is surprising. Let me quote the article [4] more extensively:
"The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in recent years over differing interpretations of the history of the Second World War, came together on Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis.
The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
“Remembering our innocent brothers and sisters murdered in the occupied territories of Poland 1935-1945, which now constitute a part of Ukraine, we the Ambassadors of Poland and Israel believe, that celebrating these individuals is an insult,” Lion and Cichocki wrote.
“Glorification of those who promoted actively the ethnic cleansing is counterproductive in the fight against Antisemitism and the reconciliation of our P...
And yet the idea that Russia has or ever had some rational reason to be threatened by any of this noise, or that it any other substantive way led to the invasions of 2014 or 2022 -- is still entirely fake. It's just another form of this basically:
But it isn't really fact-based. It only appears that way.
It doesn't matter how many individual factoids you lay out -- if the greater narrative you cast around them (and subordinate these facts into) is so plainly and fundamentally broken. That's why your salad wilts at first contact with fresh air, and your essay yields such a terse response.
27 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 69.1 ms ] threadsmall?
There has been extensive non-partisan (historically accurate) analysis of this, which I won't repeat here because it just invites the wrong kind of nit-picking debate over minutiae that don't matter.[1]
Meanwhile, actual fascists and literal NAZI party members took over most of Europe in the 1940s. Italy was fascist. Austria joined the NAZIs. Hungary did too. Hungary is turning increasingly fascist right now and Russia loves this: https://theconversation.com/i-watched-hungarys-democracy-dis...
Apparently, that's no longer a problem, but a single long-dead[1] collaborator with no real impact on Ukraine even when he was alive is apparently reason to invade with... drumroll... a merc army lead by a neo-NAZI with SS tattoos: https://aijac.org.au/fresh-air/russia-sends-its-pet-neo-nazi...
You can't make this stuff up. If this was a script for a movie, the author would be laughed out of the room.
Sigh.. the whole "Ukraine is NAZI" talking point is just that. An excuse, a throw-away comment that works on Russians and nobody else. It's like the bully that punches the kid in the playground because they wanted to, and when asked, comes up with some "reason" on the spot, like "Oh, I didn't like the way they looked at me" or somesuch.
[1] A favoured argument tactic by those people who know they're in the wrong with respect to the fundamental points. Ukraine could have been 100% NAZI and saluting Hitler in school, but this doesn't matter if it occurred when 80% of the current population hadn't even been born yet!
[2] In the dirt for more than half a century now! Bandera died in 1959! that was 63 years before the start of the current invasion. THIS is my point precisely, that Putin's justifications are out-of-date, based on politics that have zero relevance to modern-day Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in a war that has -- so far -- killed at least a hundred thousand people and wounded about half a million.
Is that a defensive or aggressive policy towards neighbours?
How many people have died as a consequence of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland joining NATO?
What material aggression has Russia experienced, in terms of casualties?
This whole thing is actually very simple: Russia's senior leadership wanted to invade Ukraine. It's something they've been planning for decades. There's numerous interviews with various world leaders stating that they've known about these plans since at least the early 2000s.
Ukraine joining a defensive pact is a "threat" only to invasion plans. Invading right before a country has a chance to join is simply confirming that the need for defensive alliances was a real one.
It's like a burglar feeling "threatened" by the installation of security cameras in a place they've been scoping for months, and robbing the place right before the security system installers turn up.
No matter what that burglar says about the police, or the "spying" of the cameras, or whatever matters. Fundamentally, they had criminal intent and are just making things up to justify that.
Every Russian excuse is just nonsense when examined critically. E.g.: "We had to defend ethnic Russians from the bad Ukranians". Okay... then why was it that after the invasion the Russian military immediately used the locals as discardable cannon fodder? What kind of "protection" is that!? https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1d7b6gs...
How many people died in the course of Russia’s current pushback?
Which of these actions are you arguing is justified?
I can cherry-pick articles too.
Notably, most of the articles you linked were also written after the 2022 invasion, and all were written after the 2014 invasion.
Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper.
This is a "problem" in the same way that skinheads are a problem: local.
Russia in no shape, way, or form faced any kind of material threat from Ukraine's local neo-nazi, fascist, or extreme right-wing groups.
Invading a country and killing hundreds of thousands is so many orders of magnitude worse than some people walking up a street chanting the name of someone long-dead that's it's just absurd.
Remind me again: how many Russians died because of Lenin? (An estimate to the nearest million will do) Any 'statues', 'pictures', or 'posters' of him anywhere in Russia?
Is he still revered by any in Russia: yes, or no?
By how many do you estimate if yes?
How many Russians died because of Bandera? Now give me an estimate Putin. The nearest hundred thousand will do.
If you skim the article you linked to, you'll find that despite being written in 2022, the latest example is dated to 2016. That matches my own perception of wide crack-down on neo-Nazis in Putin's time. They've got jailed and some died in prison [0]. I fact-checked a random fact from the article -- the Kremlin tolerance for the music band Kolovrat. It turns out that almost 50 of their songs are listed in the "List of extremist materials" and their distribution is a crime. [1]
"and all were written after the 2014 invasion"
Coincidentally (sarcasm), 2014 is also when Ukrainian nationalists came to power.
Nonetheless, you are welcome to listen to the Bush Sr's speech in Kiev in 1991: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred".[2] Americans later did support them, of course. [3]
"Nobody except some Israelis cared about this, and even they cared only so much as to complain in a newspaper."
This statement is surprising. Let me quote the article [4] more extensively:
"The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in recent years over differing interpretations of the history of the Second World War, came together on Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis.
The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv, Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart, Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing faction of the OUN.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant banner with Bandera’s picture over the city administration building, prompting anger from Jewish activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in honor of Melnyk.
“Remembering our innocent brothers and sisters murdered in the occupied territories of Poland 1935-1945, which now constitute a part of Ukraine, we the Ambassadors of Poland and Israel believe, that celebrating these individuals is an insult,” Lion and Cichocki wrote.
“Glorification of those who promoted actively the ethnic cleansing is counterproductive in the fight against Antisemitism and the reconciliation of our P...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead Banderist on the table!’ is what your footnote salad amounts to.
That's very regrettable attitude to fact-based discussion which is the only kind of discussion that is interesting for me.
It doesn't matter how many individual factoids you lay out -- if the greater narrative you cast around them (and subordinate these facts into) is so plainly and fundamentally broken. That's why your salad wilts at first contact with fresh air, and your essay yields such a terse response.
Je ne regrette rien.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40755784
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-air-defence-e...