Ukrainians are not supposed to be personal shields for NATO and the EU. The policy of Ukraine weakening the Russian army for the rest of the world is immoral. The number of Ukrainians killed and injured cannot justify this slow approach or chipping away at Russia’s military.
1/5
It also ignores that Russia forcibly mobilizes UKRAINIANS from Russia-occupied Ukraine, and that the burgeoning anti-western Axis of Evil is happily providing Russia with weapons to kill Ukrainians and destroy Ukraine.
2/5
It ignores that the population of the Russian Federation is far greater than Ukraine’s. There are far more Russians who can die in the war than Ukrainians before it is felt by the nation in any meaningful way.
3/5
It ignores that Russia has forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children whose Ukrainian identities they are erasing, brainwashing them to be Ukrainian-hating Russians who will be old enough to fight against Ukraine in the RU Army sooner than they realize.
4/5
It ignores that it means years of war for Ukraine. The slow and steady approach to weakening the Russian army is the slow and steady approach to destroying Ukraine. And it does not achieve the necessary goal of DEFEATING Russia.
5/5
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Russia's war against Ukraine has ALWAYS been genocidal in intent and nature.
Moscow's reasoning for attacking Ukraine in 2014 was effectively the same as it was in 2022, and i's objective is 100% IDENTICAL - to destroy the modern Ukrainian nation.
1/5
Russia's STATED "Novorossiya" plan for Ukraine in 2014 was a plan to DESTROY Ukraine. This is GENOCIDAL. Just as today, there was no ambiguity about the aim to DESTROY the Ukrainian nation and people.
2/5
For years I've argued that the world refused to formally & officially recognize that Russia was waging a war of aggression against Ukraine from 2014 to evade obligations triggered by recognition of this FACT. I've argued the SAME thing about the refusal to recognize genocide.
3/5
The @UN commission says it doesn't have sufficient evidence to conclude that Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine, claiming it "is a question of intent"
Until Putin plainly says, "We are committing genocide of the Ukrainian nation & people," the UN will say, "we cannot know"
The UN also seemed not to believe there was sufficient evidence that Russia was waging its war of aggression against Ukraine from 2014, not recognizing this legal fact until only 2022, and even THEN ignoring the FIRST 8 YEARS of Russian aggression.
So the UN will recognize this LEGAL FACT of genocide either when Putin plainly says, "We, the Russian Federation, are committing genocide of the Ukrainian nation & people, and have been doing so since February 20, 2014," OR after another 8 yrs of genocide. Whichever comes first.
I keep thinking about how much Ukraine's population has shrunk as a result of Russia's genocidal war of extermination forcing Ukrainians to flee the country. Mothers who fled with their children. Wives who aren't with their husbands, the children growing up w/o their fathers
1/9
The "lucky" ones who get to visit their husbands & fathers once or twice a year. The mothers who will likely never return to UA with their children because their children are in schools abroad for so long they are becoming assimilated. The brokenness of those families now.
2/9
I think about how many Ukrainian refugees will have created new lives abroad and will find it too difficult to return after two or three years of building a new life elsewhere, especially with the knowledge that there is NO safe place in Ukraine - only places less unsafe.
3/9
I disagree strongly with takes about how Russia desires Ukraine to be a "puppet satellite state", and find this to be a dangerously unhelpful starting point for analysis. Russia doesn't want a puppet state in Ukraine. Russia wants to destroy the Ukrainian nation and people.
Russia is waging a genocidal war of extermination of the Ukrainian nation and people. Russia is actively seeking to exterminate Ukrainians from Ukraine and to eliminate the nation of Ukraine. This is not about having a "puppet govt" "friendly" to Moscow, or a "satellite state".
If Russia wanted a "puppet govt" in a "controlled" Ukraine, it wouldn't have bothered illegally annexing Ukrainian territory, including illegally absorbing large swaths of Ukrainian territory into the Russian Constitution.
We should not pretend total destruction isn't the aim.
Russia began to station nuclear weapons in Belarus in June. The reasons, I believe, are not merely to intimidate Ukraine & Poland, but to provide "plausible deniability" cover for RU. With threats being made against PL & Wagner pressing the border, this demands attention 1/9
The threat of armed provocations, or even a hybrid attack on Poland and Lithuania, has increased substantially in connection with the Kremlin's probable plans to carry out acts of sabotage from the territory of Belarus under the guise of the "Wagner group".
2/9
At a bare minimum, the topic of a possible attack, which Moscow and Minsk have inserted into the public debate, may have an impact on the parliamentary election campaign in Poland. RU may be want to intimidate the Poles by an elevated risk of hostilities spilling over to PL.
3/9
Like today, DC based its Russia policy not on international security and stability, not on peace and justice, but on the pursuit of its own interests. Russian intentions stated loudly and clearly weren't "misunderstood" but IGNORED, and deliberately so.
1/13
The notion that absolutely everyone in the US was so stupid that they couldn't see the threat Russia posed (something many 'ordinary' folk could clearly see) because they simply misread the room is far fetched.
2/13
Yes, there were the naive, and the foolish. The blind, and the gullible. But there were also American interests that were - wrongly and dangerously - prioritized over the greater good, and ultimately even U.S. security against the aggressive Russian threat.
3/13