I hate how “anti-war” has been hijacked by these people to mean, let imperialist countries invade whoever they want with no consequences. (in the case of tankies, any imperialist country that isn’t in NATO).

  • 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠
    1•11 hours ago

    The writer of that article is an apologist as well. He cites tons of imperialist arguments for why Ukraine as a sovereign nation apparently doesn’t matter and how everyone should bend to Russia because they are a “great power” (an imperialist concept). He has also written other articles that seek to blame the West for what happened, despite having terrible and easily countered arguments for it. His article on “western meddling in Ukraine” is especially terrible. In it, he claims EU meddling was brazen, because (and I’m not joking here) one high-ranking EU official expressed her support for the protesters and handed out cookies.

    The US meddling was supposedly more brazen, with a leaked phone call discussing who the US would like to see take power. But as others have already noted:

    Yale University professor Timothy Snyder said, “Imagine just how much evidence the Russians have of what the U.S. was doing in Ukraine, given that they had access to that telephone call. That was the best bit they could come up with. And in the context of the time, what that telephone conversation showed was that the Americans were, A, not up to date about what was happening in Ukraine and, B, unable to influence events happening in Ukraine.”

    It’s also blatantly ignoring that nothing unconstitutional happened (other than the firing on protesters killing over a hundred civilians), that Yanukovych was voted out of office by a large majority of the democratically elected parliament and that the first thing they did was hold new elections.

    It’s also blatantly ignoring Russian meddling, providing 2 billion to Yanukovych and effectively ordering him to crush the protests (possibly the final trigger that led to his removal).

    You can’t accept the arguments in that article without also accepting that Ukraine is a vassal state to Russia, which it just isn’t. Russia could have done plenty to make themselves more popular with their neighbours, but never did. They did nothing but demand, demand, demand. Nobody is required to listen to those unreasonable demands, and claiming that not doing so is “provocative” is total horseshit.

    Some of us are more concerned with human lives than preserving imaginary lines drawn a map.

    If only that was true for Putin.

    • @TokenBoomer
      -1•6 hours ago

      I see you are not fond of citing sources that can be verified. I don’t have such misgivings:

      The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin

      For more than a decade, the United States has nurtured a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia.

      The underground bunker, built to replace the destroyed command center in the months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve center of Ukraine’s military.

      There is also one more secret: The base is almost fully financed, and partly equipped, by the C.I.A.

      “One hundred and ten percent,” Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy, a top intelligence commander, said in an interview at the base.

      But the partnership is no wartime creation, nor is Ukraine the only beneficiary.

      It took root a decade ago, coming together in fits and starts under three very different U.S. presidents, pushed forward by key individuals who often took daring risks. It has transformed Ukraine, whose intelligence agencies were long seen as thoroughly compromised by Russia, into one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.

      The C.I.A.’s partnership in Ukraine can be traced back to two phone calls on the night of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

      That’s a lot of cookies 🍪 and Fremdschämen

      No doubt Putin and Russia were meddling in Ukraine before 2014; but let’s not pretend NATO and the U.S. did not influence the situation.