Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[Josh]

Ken,

Why are you so invested in providing Russia is completely evil and the current Ukraine government is completely good?

Are you really invested in believing in the west?

[Soloist]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220401180 ... yskih.html

This is interesting, the mayor seems to be saying they mined a confectionary plant and poisoned the cookies. Makes no mention of other atrocities. Another page there applauds the civilians for being sneaky and poisoning the Russians with pies. Maybe the mines were revenge for the pies.

This video was removed later and is no longer available except with the wayback machine.

[temporal1]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220401180 ... yskih.html
This is interesting, the mayor seems to be saying they mined a confectionary plant and poisoned the cookies.
Makes no mention of other atrocities. Another page there applauds the civilians for being sneaky and poisoning the Russians with pies. Maybe the mines were revenge for the pies.

This video was removed later and is no longer available except with the wayback machine.

i viewed. i do not understand the language.
lots of destruction of motor vehicles and buildings.

i do not understand why these types of videos do not show lots of blood remaining in vehicles, on the street?
does this indicate they were not occupied when destroyed? (i hope so.)

destruction of property is bad enough. but is the intended message that people were killed when they were not?
i don’t know.

[temporal1]

.. Why are you so invested in providing Russia is completely evil and the current Ukraine government is completely good?
Are you really invested in believing in the west?

The Hollywood Way.

[Ken]

Okay, I get it. You are invested in this. Can you produce a picture of the area in high resolution from this open source satellite imaging? Seems to me there isn't any way to verify the images as what a commoner like myself can access is low resolution images of Bucha. My point is you have to trust that a pro-Ukrainian news source isn't fudging data.

As for the image of the Russian vehicles, how do you know those are Russian tanks and not Ukrainian tanks? because the media says so?

I’m not going to buy the satellite data myself. But if the NYT and BBC got it wrong I would expect the Russians and their allies to be all over it. Because these reports are affecting world opinion and sanctions. So it is high stakes. But they are not. Instead crickets.

[temporal1]

It’s a mistake to presume anything when silence is all you have.

Silence is/can be more powerful than noise.

[Ken]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220401180 ... yskih.html
This is interesting, the mayor seems to be saying they mined a confectionary plant and poisoned the cookies.
Makes no mention of other atrocities. Another page there applauds the civilians for being sneaky and poisoning the Russians with pies. Maybe the mines were revenge for the pies.

This video was removed later and is no longer available except with the wayback machine.

i viewed. i do not understand the language.
lots of destruction of motor vehicles and buildings.

i do not understand why these types of videos do not show lots of blood remaining in vehicles, on the street?
does this indicate they were not occupied when destroyed? (i hope so.)

destruction of property is bad enough. but is the intended message that people were killed when they were not?
i don’t know.

Explosions often kill through concussive force which doesn't necessarily lead to lots of bleeding. You don't generally see a lot of bleeding of bombing victims. In addition, when vehicles explode they tend to burn at extreme heats until all the fuel and combustible materials are exhausted. Which would obviously burn off any blood that might have been there. That is why so much war wreckage starts to immediately rust. All the paint is burned off exposing the bare metal to the elements. Exposure to fire and high heat also causes accelerated rusting of steel, sometimes overnight.

[Neto]

I picked up a copy of the Plain Communities "extra" (post office trash) and read the article that is probably the one referred to earlier in this thread (as having been published in the 'Plain News'). There are a lot of details included in the accounting of recent history of the relationship between The Russian Federation and Ukraine, lots of things I did not know, in fact. But I do not see how any examination of this can be considered remotely complete or accurate w/o starting at least back as far as the years immediately following the fall of the Russian Empire - the fact that the developing Soviet "empire" invaded Ukraine, and put down the Republic of Ukraine that had formed at that time. They were not 'partners' - the Soviets SUBJUGATED the Ukrainians. And then the Holodomor (Stalin, 1930's) was also completely passed over. <I Will Remember Them.>

One more comment: The author also repeated the Kremlin's line about promises made to 'Russia' during the final year or so of the USSR. When the new Russian government was formed (under Yeltsin, as I recall) extensive measures were taken to prevent a return to communism. The USSR and The Russian Federation are not the one and same country. Same ethnicity to a large degree (since Russia was the core of the USSR), much the same land, but not the same government. If China took over Taiwan, would the USA be expected to keep promises they made to the no longer existing Taiwan, defending China instead? Rather doubtful.

[Ken]

Ken,

Why are you so invested in providing Russia is completely evil and the current Ukraine government is completely good?

Are you really invested in believing in the west?

So when you have nothing intelligent to add to the discussion you resort to these sort of ridiculous ad hominem attacks? Based on what you wrote earlier in this thread you seem to think this entire war is an anti-Russian and pro-western plot to promote a pro-LGBT agenda. I might ask you if your hatred of LGBT people is so intense that you are actually willing to whitewash war crimes, atrocities directed at civilians, and growing evidence of genocidal policies. But there is no point going down that road as this war isn't actually about you or me or what we think.

In point of fact, nothing I have written here paints Russia as completely evil or the Ukrainian government as completely good. And you know it.

Like many others I am simply playing close attention to events in Ukraine from afar because this is a seminal world event. It is the first war of territorial conquest we have seen since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 32 years ago. And the Yom Kippur war nearly 50 years ago. And it is the first war of conquest waged on the European continent since the end of World War 2. So we are at an extremely consequential moment in world history. The outcome of this war could well determine how future conflicts are settled for decades to come.

To be clear, I think wars of aggression are always wrong, regardless of who the target is. I also opposed Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003. Not because I thought that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in any way "good." But because offensive war is the wrong tool to undertake political change. And it wasn't for us to determine Iraqi politics anyway, that is for the Iraqis to do for themselves. I was equally suspicious of Obama and NATO's intervention in Libya. And had I been old enough I would have held similar opinions about Vietnam.

So no, I'm not pro-Ukrainian any more than I am pro-Polish or pro-Slovakian or pro-Estonian. What I am is opposed to the use of war as a policy choice to resolve disputes. And so I have an interest in seeing it fail. If only as an object lesson to future leaders who might contemplate the same. And because I want my children and future grandchildren to live in a world where war is the last resort and not the first. As a professed Anabaptist I am frankly shocked that you spend so much time here trying to whitewash and excuse what is a brutal war of aggression. What you condone defines you Josh.

[Ken]

I picked up a copy of the Plain Communities "extra" (post office trash) and read the article that is probably the one referred to earlier in this thread (as having been published in the 'Plain News'). There are a lot of details included in the accounting of recent history of the relationship between The Russian Federation and Ukraine, lots of things I did not know, in fact. But I do not see how any examination of this can be considered remotely complete or accurate w/o starting at least back as far as the years immediately following the fall of the Russian Empire - the fact that the developing Soviet "empire" invaded Ukraine, and put down the Republic of Ukraine that had formed at that time. They were not 'partners' - the Soviets SUBJUGATED the Ukrainians. And then the Holodomor (Stalin, 1930's) was also completely passed over. <I Will Remember Them.>

One more comment: The author also repeated the Kremlin's line about promises made to 'Russia' during the final year or so of the USSR. When the new Russian government was formed (under Yeltsin, as I recall) extensive measures were taken to prevent a return to communism. The USSR and The Russian Federation are not the one and same country. Same ethnicity to a large degree (since Russia was the core of the USSR), much the same land, but not the same government. If China took over Taiwan, would the USA be expected to keep promises they made to the no longer existing Taiwan, defending China instead? Rather doubtful.

In point of fact, the USSR was a massive multi-ethnic state that was only 50% ethnic Russian. It was highly centralized in Moscow and largely Russian-controlled. But it was not Russian. Ukraine, Lithuania, and Kazakhstan have as much right to claim heritage to the USSR as Russia does. And it is telling that virtually every non-Russian population in the USSR from Lithuania to Kazakhstan sought to escape centralized Russian rule from the moment that became possible.