1. Why does it not matter to pro-Ukraine Twitter that Ukrainian militias started bombing t/f out of Donbass on February 16, 2022, with lethal aid that the U.S. had just sent the Ukrainian government?
2. People who mention these bombings are silenced with accusations of "justifying Russia's brutal invasion". But if Ukraine actually did start bombing t/f out of Donbass, then Russia's SMO, launched in defense of Donbass, actually was justified.
3. There is no good reason to denounce Russia's military assistance to Donbass, only bad ones. Bad ones... like somehow believing that Donbass does not have the right to defend themselves or to be defended by anyone if they are facing a stronger aggressor.
4. #DonbassLivesMatter. What evil dark magic has convinced people otherwise?
True, but the bombings significantly decreased after Minsk Accords were signed, and mostly happened in the buffer zone (aka no-man's land). February 16, 2022 marked a *complete* break of the peace (by the UA side), albeit it was always a fragile peace.
https://twitter.com/anglichanin_lj/status/1619284362314534912
I agree. Many would rather not deal w/ the question of 'now what?' if they admit the SMO was justified, because propaganda has programmed them to treat ppl who justify the SMO as if they're justifying the murder of civilians (who UA put in harm's way).
https://twitter.com/d1rogue/status/1619283619411034112
These are ridiculous ideas meant to hijack leftist anti-imperialist language for anti-Rus propaganda. Russia never had to "foster" Russianisms in Ukraine. Ukraine was part of the original Rus, which was full of Russians. Russia was born in Kiev.
https://twitter.com/labson939261844/status/1619284041538347008
It's a good point, even if not a valid one. A lot of people will gladly disregard truth and the legal issues if it suits their moral imperative. In this case - a badly formed and false sense of anti-imperialism (while being tricked into zealously supporting Western imperialism).
This way of "coping" (aka cognitive dissonance) tends to falsely equate Russians with Nazis by comparing Crimea and Sudetenland, but that argument ignores that "Russian speaking" Crimeans ceded to Russia because they felt threatened by Ukrainian Nazis.
Back to the first Tweet above, since some are asking for links, MOA provides OSCE report links... moonofalabama.org/2022/05/ukrain…
... and Jacques Baud wrote a piece condemning the Western media's coverup of the incidents. scheerpost.com/2022/04/09/for…
Here's one way the Western media dishonestly covered the whole thing up... by acting like Donbass was lying about being attacked (because US officials claimed they had intel that Russia was preparing a false flag Op). archive.ph/n24Xn
I ask now: Intel from who? The Ukrainian military who was planning to (and did) attack Donbass?
Can I point out that this article was written with rhetoric of criminality? The authors comment as if people in "separatist held Donbass" were denying they were being bombed, but if you read what the people are actually quote to say...
... what they *actually* said was, "We're fine... we're not panicking... we're used to it... this has been going on for 8 years." archive.ph/n24Xn
Also, the author is telling us not to believe the videos some have seen of people evacuating Donbass, because an anonymous person told them on the phone that the evacuation wasn't real. What was it that Orwell said about the government telling us not to believe what the eyes see?
In the same article, they also interviewed people who said the evacuation was real, but after the first day a lot of people did not want to leave. After initial panic, they decided to dig in and not be afraid of the bombs... which they had grown accustomed to after 8 years.
Increased shelling started Feb 16, 2022. Unlike previous sporadic shelling which were largely limited to the buffer zone, new attacks reached heavily populated areas because UA acquired longer ranged weapons from the U.S. First shipment, in January: bbc.com/news/world-eur…
February 18th, when Russia started evacuating people, two days after escalated shellings started: Zelensky says the world must condemn Russian efforts to bring those people to safety as a "provocation". Skillful mirror propaganda, and the West fell for it. archive.ph/E9JB3
The Russian response did not start out with missile attacks against Kyiv. It started with evacuations, to protect people from escalated bombings from UA... and the West condemned those evacuations (like Zelensky demanded) as a provocation.
I wonder if people recall that Western leaders did just as Zelensky demanded, called the evacuations a provocation, and started demanding preemptive measures against Russia. Everything from harsher sanctions to nuking Moscow to "deter" Russian aggression.
How are OSCE reports of escalated bombings not proof of escalated bombings?
https://twitter.com/thomasmellman/status/1619312612843606018
Pro-Ukrainans: "So you're justifying Russia's brutal invasion?"
Me: "I am justifying Russia's defense of Donbass. The real question should be about why people don't think Donbass has a right to have their lives defended."
Me: "I am justifying Russia's defense of Donbass. The real question should be about why people don't think Donbass has a right to have their lives defended."
The biggest mistake that pro-détente influencers make right now is refusing to acknowledge that Russia's SMO is legitimate & justified. This includes people like @TulsiGabbard and @aaronjmate. But pro-détente folks won't win this argument unless and until they do.
IMO, this refusal stems from holding non-interventionist principles. If we are to condemn our own country's wars of intervention, we should not condone interventionism when other countries do it either...
But I am not a pacifist, and I do believe in upholding the UN principle of Responsibility to Protect, meant to prevent genocide an ethnic cleansing. While I've called myself an anti-interventionist in the past, I need to adjust my own self-description. I am against unjust wars...
The problem with U.S. wars of intervention, which invoked the Responsibility to Protect: They were based on lies.
The other problem: The conflicts that we've sent our bombs in to settle were orchestrated by the CIA and other Western intel agencies to begin with... and this includes the Ukrainian civil war.
If by "can" you mean do so in accordance with UN law, the UN's principle of Responsibility to Protect says you can and should, when that country is engaged in state sponsored genocide or ethnic cleansing.
https://twitter.com/chippennubbit/status/1619341914209411072
Example of dishonest Western reporting: AP posted a vid on 25 Feb 2022 titled: "Devastation in Donetsk, Ukraine After Russian Shelling." But in the description they noted it was an attack against "Donbas region, controlled by Rus-backed separatists" ...
Nowhere in the video do we actually hear any of those residents complaining about Russians shelling them, and it's ludicrous to act like the Donbass side was shelling themselves.
On February 19th, Reuters posted a tiny snippet about rebel controlled territory north of Donetsk city being bombed. reuters.com/world/europe/m…
Also on February 19th, Reuters posted a tiny snippet about the center of rebel controlled Donetsk city being bombed. archive.ph/5XViT
It is also extremely dishonest for any news outlet to report that the OSCE claims that both or either side is responsible for bombings. As a rule, the OSCE never assigns blame and only reports on where explosions happen. They've practiced this rule since the Georgian conflict.
It's difficult to conclude from OSCE reports who is responsible for anything that lands in the buffer zone, but it should be obvious who launched bombs and artillery against LDPR controlled territory.
This footage from 19 Feb 2022 was released by the Ukrainian military, and it's supposed to show that the Donbass side was shelling a checkpoint. I have a few things to point out about this...
At the very beginning of the footage, you can see from the smoke trail from the first projectile that it was launched from whatever direction the camera is mounted, and toward the holding area. The cam is high enough to assume it was fastened on the outside of a tallish building.
The description says this is the Shchastia crossing point, which is north of the rebel-held city of Luhansk.
Here's some earlier footage of the Shchastia crossing. You can see there are a ton of buildings on the Ukraine side of this crossing.
Here's some earlier footage of the Shchastia crossing. You can see there are a ton of buildings on the Ukraine side of this crossing.
Based on these two videos, I think it's safe to conclude that the artillery shown in the first video was fired from the Ukrainian side, not the Lugansk side... but it was passed off as an attack from the LPR.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Donbass side fired back at Ukrainian forces, as they had been for the previous 8 years, but they have never acted in a way other than in self-defense, and they never had anything with enough range to reach past the buffer zone.
This is exactly the sort of evil dark magic I'm talking about. #Jingoism
https://twitter.com/David32652357/status/1619698772404994050
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