Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[nett]

Ken, the Azov battalion is well known as using neo-Nazi imagery. What is surprising to me is how many people are defending them.

I don't know if they are or not. The quality of the "proof" that you shared is quite poor.

It's also a 10-year old photo passed around various internet forums which you discover if you do a reverse image search.

I can't find any evidence of that picture existing prior to Feb 2022, where do you get 10 year old from?

Yes I'm sure there are right-wing extremists in Ukraine. Just like there are plenty of the same thing in Russia and in every western military except perhaps one.

Unbelievable. Handwaving actual nazi battalions in the Ukrainian military, just unreal.

But there is only one nation that is engaged in a fascistic war of aggression in this conflict and it isn't Ukraine. Even the real Nazis tended not to target children's hospitals like the Russians are currently doing.

Ken, can you please take a break from parroting sensationalized, unverified talking points? I thought you would have learned your lesson after you posted the fabricated Zaporizhzhia reactor story.

[temporal1]

“Invasion” requires 1 invader. Not all invasions are via armed military. Russia invaded, no one disputes this.

“War” requires 2 or more.

biden claims to be Catholic. (i refrain from judging political leaders’ claims to faith). including Putin and Zelensky.

i continue to pray for talks to bring resolution. i pray the West allows resolution.
the West’s huge investment, militarily, and psychologically, is for open war.

not unlike Trudeau just modeled in Canada against his own unarmed countrymen. i hope folks are taking notes.

[temporal1]

nett:
I can't find any evidence of that picture existing prior to Feb 2022, where do you get 10 year old from?

not only does the lib mainstream depend on SHORT memories, or NO memories, the current thing now is to dismiss (whatever they choose) based on “it’s old.” As tho, old were a valid defining negative judgment on its own.

you may notice, some older reports are now tagged with “alerts” like, “this article is 3 years old.”

it’s important for the masses to have “memories of fleas.” really-really important for the propaganda machine.

[Jazman]

It's well documented that the Azov battalion uses neo-Nazi imagery and has a history of human rights abuses. The stretch is whether this justifies a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Russian assertion that the Ukrainian government is run by Nazis is unsubstantiated -- Zelensky (who is Jewish) seems like the least likely Nazi ever.

Multiple things can be true. NATO expansion into Eastern Europe was provocative. The Azov battalion has neo-Nazi sympathies and ideology. None of these things justify the current war.

Exactly...
Numerous EU countries have groups of neo-Nazis... for years now. I remember seeing them in the late 90's when I visited Europe. But it would be pretty unwise for the rest of the EU/Nato (or the US) to throw them out of NATO/EU or invade them, etc. If you use this argument 'look! there's a fly in the ointment', then you should be ok with Russia invading US! We've got quite a large share of the world's neo-Nazis ourselves... they really started coming out into the open the last 5-7yrs... Now, I think we should stand up to them, try to persuade these groups with Christ's love, but deal with them by military means, especially from an outside country? No. (I'm sure we wouldn't appreciate an invasion from Canada if they thought we were too far right of them and they insisted we needed saving from the 'nazis' in our midst...)

[Szdfan]

It's well documented that the Azov battalion uses neo-Nazi imagery and has a history of human rights abuses. The stretch is whether this justifies a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Russian assertion that the Ukrainian government is run by Nazis is unsubstantiated -- Zelensky (who is Jewish) seems like the least likely Nazi ever.

Multiple things can be true. NATO expansion into Eastern Europe was provocative. The Azov battalion has neo-Nazi sympathies and ideology. None of these things justify the current war.

Exactly...
Numerous EU countries have groups of neo-Nazis... for years now. I remember seeing them in the late 90's when I visited Europe. But it would be pretty unwise for the rest of the EU/Nato (or the US) to throw them out of NATO/EU or invade them, etc. If you use this argument 'look! there's a fly in the ointment', then you should be ok with Russia invading US! We've got quite a large share of the world's neo-Nazis ourselves... they really started coming out into the open the last 5-7yrs, encouraged by certain election results and certain people gaining power... people who gave them hints, wink/nudge/nudges, etc...wonder who that could be... hmmm?

The issue though is that the Azov battalion is integrated into Ukraine's National Guard -- so it's not just an independent neo-Nazi group. They were initially a volunteer paramilitary group that formed in response to the annexation of Crimea and the separatist overthrow of Donetsk and Lugansk. They are a problem, but it also doesn't mean that the Ukrainian government is overrun with Nazis.

[Szdfan]

Here's an excerpt from an article on the propaganda use of the Nazis in Russian media:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/tech ... raine.html

Some of the most disturbing images from the war have come from Mariupol, a port city in the southeastern coast. Shelling battered the region, killing several civilians who were trying to flee the area, during what was supposed to be a cease-fire.

But Russians got a different explanation online: Ukrainians had fired on Russian forces during the cease-fire, and neo-Nazis were “hiding behind civilians as a human shield,” according to the Russian state news website Tass.

Neo-Nazis have been a recurring character in Russian propaganda campaigns for years, used to falsely justify military action against Ukraine in what Russian officials have called “denazification.” Those claims have only continued during the conflict. To explain away attacks on other Ukrainian apartment buildings, the same article by Tass claimed that neo-Nazis had placed “heavy weapons in apartment buildings, while some residents are forcibly kept in their homes,” providing no evidence.

Russian social media accounts have used a mix of fake and unconfirmed photos showing Ukrainian soldiers holding Nazi flags or photos of Hitler. An analysis by the Center for Information Resilience, a nonprofit focused on identifying disinformation, showed that the number of tweets connecting Ukrainians to Nazis soared after the invasion began.

“Propaganda works when it coincides with your existing assumptions,” said Pierre Vaux, a senior investigator at the Center for Information Resilience. “The stuff that chimes into the Nazi stuff is really effective.”

For example, Russian media is stating that the Avoz brigade was at the maternity ward that the Russians bombed yesterday. I haven't seen anything that supports that claim.

[Szdfan]

nett:
I can't find any evidence of that picture existing prior to Feb 2022, where do you get 10 year old from?

not only does the lib mainstream depend on SHORT memories, or NO memories, the current thing now is to dismiss (whatever they choose) based on “it’s old.” As tho, old were a valid defining negative judgment on its own.

you may notice, some older reports are now tagged with “alerts” like, “this article is 3 years old.”

it’s important for the masses to have “memories of fleas.” really-really important for the propaganda machine.

Tagging reports with alerts that warn that an article is older provides context and helps prevent misinformation by manipulating old stories and photographs in a different situation.

[Neto]

I'm sure there are plenty of other pictures like the one you provided - pictures that have been edited and offensive elements added in to serve as propaganda. Why not swallow your pride and admit that you were wrong to have accused the Azov battalion of posing with a swastika flag? You insist that Bootstrap ought to admit when he makes a mistake - why do you refuse to admit when you are wrong?

Probably because he's not wrong. Neto got confused by the low-res, high contrast version that Josh posted.

Not in the least convinced. I DO see the white patch now, so they didn't mess up on that part. Another sign that this is photo shopped is that as you can see, the top red band is curved (as it should be, considering the higher left corner of the "flag"). But hold a piece of paper across the bottom red band, and you will see that it goes straight across. Not possible, unless that band of color was offset on the "real" flag.

[nett]

I'm sure there are plenty of other pictures like the one you provided - pictures that have been edited and offensive elements added in to serve as propaganda. Why not swallow your pride and admit that you were wrong to have accused the Azov battalion of posing with a swastika flag? You insist that Bootstrap ought to admit when he makes a mistake - why do you refuse to admit when you are wrong?

Probably because he's not wrong. Neto got confused by the low-res, high contrast version that Josh posted.

Not in the least convinced. I DO see the white patch now, so they didn't mess up on that part. Another sign that this is photo shopped is that as you can see, the top red band is curved (as it should be, considering the higher left corner of the "flag"). But hold a piece of paper across the bottom red band, and you will see that it goes straight across. Not possible, unless that band of color was offset on the "real" flag.

There is a crease in the flag, and it's hanging straight down due to gravity.

Why are you sure someone would even want to photoshop this? Did they photoshop the Wolfsangel flag as well?

The official NATO twitter account accidentally tweeted a picture of a female soldier with a black sun patch on her chest, was that photoshopped too?

[Ken]

I can't find any evidence of that picture existing prior to Feb 2022, where do you get 10 year old from?

Here is a discussion from 2014 on a military forum about whether this exact photo was photoshopped and the swastika added later by photoshop. They concluded it was photoshopped. You can judge for yourself: http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.com/2014/1 ... alion.html

It is an old photo. Whether it is also photoshopped I'm not equipped to judge. The links to the older original versions of the photo have all been taken down.

I found this in 10 seconds doing an image search.