A court in the Russian city of St. Petersburg sentenced anti-war activist Olga Smirnova to six years in prison on August 30 on a charge of spreading fake news about the armed forces.
Russian pacifists want Russia to stop invading Ukraine.
Western “pacifists” want to send NATO tanks to Ukraine.
They are not the same.
Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.
But an important consideration should be whether one’s actions actually contribute to Russia withdrawing sooner, or if they instead help justify further, equally self-interested NATO involvement in the war.
Unless you are Russian, it’s most likely the latter.
There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn’t matter which one of them technically started it.
There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn’t matter which one of them technically started it.
I’m sorry, but when it involves one imperialist bloc invading a smaller country, then it does matter.
Do you have the same position regarding the Vietnam war, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Or do you only support whichever side is not aligned with the US?
The Vietnam War? You mean the one where a rebel faction backed by Russia rose up against a smaller, recently established pro-Western government, and the US came to the defense of that government, because if they lost the enemy would surely keep expanding more and more across the entire region, and all the peace advocates were dismissed as supporting appeasement? That Vietnam war?
Yes, we take a similar position on that as we do to this, do you?
No, we want Ukraine to stop trying to ethnically cleanse the Donbas and give the people there self determination. And we want the Ukrainian government to stop forcibly conscripting people to go die needlessly on the front in a clearly losing war. We want NATO to stop enabling all of that (it literally wouldn’t be happening if they weren’t demanding that it continue). That’s what it is to be a peace activist. And I’m fairly sure I can speak for all of us, we are not pacifists, lol. But we are advocates for peace and the end to the horrible and needless loss of life.
Nice try to completely twist reality, and completely misrepresent us, as you war mongering dronies always do.
Edit: We actually give a shit about all the Ukrainian people being thrown into a fucking meat grinder. We care about their lives. The people who just say “more weapons to Ukraine!” do not give a shit about the lives of the people there. They’re happy to just let the war keep dragging on until the last capable Ukrainian is dead. An example of how WE feel about the tragedy of the situation: https://hexbear.net/post/503747 (hexbear link to a lemmygrad news post)
Edit: We actually give a shit about all the Ukrainian people being thrown into a fucking meat grinder. We care about their lives. The people who just say “more weapons to Ukraine!” do not give a shit about the lives of the people there. They’re happy to just let the war keep dragging on until the last capable Ukrainian is dead. An example of how WE feel about the tragedy of the situation: https://hexbear.net/post/503747 (hexbear link to a lemmygrad news post)
So be fucking outraged then that Russia started, and is continuing this war. They’re the ones killing Ukrainians in their homeland.
A comment from that link:
Omg, it’s a full on genocide of Ukrainian people. Just damm the Western libs… Fuck this planet.
Russia is committing genocide. They’ve been raping and killing civilians since the start, this is where your anger and energy needs to be. Imagine being outraged at the nation defending itself from genocide, and those countries that are sending the tools that they’re being asked for to help defend themselves.
They’ve been raping and killing civilians since the start
You know this is not genocide, right?
You are describing war crimes. War crimes are horrible. Two rapes are two rapes too many. Every side in every war does them, which is a major reason war is so horrific. Genocide is much more than a series of war crimes, though. To believe otherwise is to declare all sides in all wars genocidal, rendering the word meaningless.
They’re kidnapping Ukrainian children and trying to “re-educate” them, and given Russian soldiers have had specific orders to “kill everyone” from commanders, and video evidence of random civilians being targeted and killed, I can’t really think what else is could be? Seems like they’re trying to eradicate the Ukrainian people and their culture.
They’re kidnapping Ukrainian children and trying to “re-educate” them
Let’s start with a source for this one. I’ve seen nothing akin to the indigenous boarding schools ran by the U.S. and Canada in actual campaigns to destroy a people’s collective identity. What I have seen are reports of children whose parents are not available/alive to take care of them (a fact of any war) and Russia putting them in school and/or up for adoption (something any state would do).
We meet just a few days before the international criminal court issued warrants for the arrest of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his commissioner for children’s rights, for directly supervising the atrocity of kidnapping Ukrainian children for “adoption” and “re-education” in Russia.
I mean it’s a pretty well known enough to trigger an international arrest warrant.
I’ve seen nothing akin to the indigenous boarding schools ran by the U.S. and Canada in actual campaigns to destroy a people’s collective identity.
Classic hexbear whataboutism response. Like I’m going to sit here and defend the horrendous crimes that happened in those boarding schools. Both things are wrong. You can be critical of Russia my man, you don’t need to defend it so aggressively.
International law is a joke. If you knew anything about it you wouldn’t be screeching “whataboutism!” at even the most obvious of comparisons, because you’d know that a cornerstone of what passes as International law is looking at practices of other countries.
But let’s see what your article says:
Kherson was liberated in November after eight months of occupation, but is pounded every day and night by Russian artillery… A report last October by Yale University Human Rights Lab, citing a vast range of open sources in Russia and Ukraine, traces many reasons for their abduction: including so-called “evacuation” from state institutions such as that at Kherson
This article documents that (when it was written) Kherson was still an active war zone, but nevertheless adds scare quotes to “evacuation,” as if there is no need to evacuate children from a war zone and this is all a Russian pretense. So early on we can see that no Russian explanation will be deemed credible, even when the explanation Russia gives (e.g., evacuation) is documented by the author himself.
“Staff hoped for three months that our army would somehow evacuate them,” Sagaydak continues, “but when it became apparent this would not happen, we made arrangements for those with living relatives
Even Ukranians recognize the need for evacuating children, but nope, it’s an evil plot when Russia does it! Note also that the immediate evidence we have here – an in-person interview with a Ukranian working with kids, not a second- or third-hand story – mentions exactly what I said: kids orphaned by the war who need to go somewhere, not Russians snatching kids from their parents.
“Another woman here, aged only 30, took five, which could not possibly have been hers, so we made up a legend that she was helping her pregnant sister while she gave birth. We had to invent all the medical records, and worried when a driver turned up who was not the one we had planned. But when they were stopped, and the untrustworthy driver even told the true story, the kids managed to outwit the occupying soldiers.”
What is more believable: Russians are trying to snatch any kid they can lay their hands on, for some reason the Ukrainians subjected to this believe fake medical records will prevent this, a driver tells them “hey here’s five kids with fake documents,” and the kids outwit a bunch of soldiers with some unexplained cunning? Or is it more likely that Russians consider kids in a war zone basically a nuisance, and aren’t particularly invested if someone is trying to evacuate them?
But then, on 15 July, the Russians returned, with 15 more children to be cared for
So the Russians are stealing children by… taking them to a Ukranian orphanage?
Your linked articles makes literally no fact-claims outside of what my comrade there said. It just ignored whatever reasons Russia have and assumed the worst or let you imagine/fill in the gaps. Edit: added “no” because it was missing
So be fucking outraged then that Russia started and is continuing this war
its so weird that the day the tanks rolled over the border of Ukraine history magically just began, there was no material reality prior to this event, or any geopolitical events of consequence we could connect to this outcome, certainly none that had to do with openly threatening to expand a hostile military alliance with supersonic and nuclear missiles 5 minutes from the capital city of Moscow
i wonder if the US has ever done the exact same thing in the name of national security and what the NATO heads said about it then
every pro NATO take is certified baby brain shit that demonstrates nothing but a lack of understanding of material reality, history, geopolitics, on top of an absolute disregard for human life, gross hypocrisy and a level of false outrage that is always directly proportional to how loudly they’re calling to escalate bloodshed
Russia is committing genocide.
“So do the humanitarian thing and send depleted uranium shells to this warzone. Slava Ukraini!!!”
RUSSIA BEST!!! RUSSIA THE PEACEKEEPERS!!! THE HUMANITARIANS! DEFEND RUSSIA AT ALL COSTS! SPREAD ALL THE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA!! RUSSIA CAN DO NO WRONG! POOR POOR RUSSIA HAD NO CHOICE!!
No. You’re not doing it right. You’re supposed to learn what the fuck you’re talking about first. And you didn’t so now you’re having a childish tantrum at people talking back to you.
You think they told you to log off for their benefit and not your own? That’s twice you’ve said something stupid because you didn’t know what was going on around you.
Russia turned the other cheek for eight years as Ukraine continued breaking treaty after treaty and committing genocide on Russia’s border while at the same time threatening to host NATO nuclear weapons and invade their territory. They were dragged into this war by necessity. If I had any doubt in your typical American ignorance of foreign affairs, I would call you the warmonger. But I just call you an idiot.
Learn what the fuck you’re talking about. Stop using words for their impact alone.
Gaddafi’s troops are committing rape to children en masse, they have issued viagra to mass rape people since the start. this is where your anger and energy need to be. Imagine being outraged at the nation defending itself from mass rape, and those countries that are sending the tools that they’re being asked for to help defend themselves.
Libya today is a haven for islamic terrorism and slaver markets. Regardless of the “legality” of the NATO (mostly french and US led) intervention, it threw the entire region in outright chaos, and was enormously damaging to the working class of Lybia, but also of the entire fucking Sahel.
Similar thing happened across the border, in Ukraine, with a pacifist being accused of “justifying the war”, as reported by Democracy Now!
Russian pacifists want Russia to stop invading Ukraine.
Lemmygrad / Hexbear pacifists want Ukraine to appease Russia and give up territory.
They are not the same.
Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.
But an important consideration should be whether one’s actions actually contribute to Russia withdrawing sooner, or if they instead help justify further, equally self-interested NATO involvement in the war.
Unless you are Russian, it’s most likely the latter.
There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn’t matter which one of them technically started it.
I’m sorry, but when it involves one imperialist bloc invading a smaller country, then it does matter.
Do you have the same position regarding the Vietnam war, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Or do you only support whichever side is not aligned with the US?
The Vietnam War? You mean the one where a rebel faction backed by Russia rose up against a smaller, recently established pro-Western government, and the US came to the defense of that government, because if they lost the enemy would surely keep expanding more and more across the entire region, and all the peace advocates were dismissed as supporting appeasement? That Vietnam war?
Yes, we take a similar position on that as we do to this, do you?
No, we want Ukraine to stop trying to ethnically cleanse the Donbas and give the people there self determination. And we want the Ukrainian government to stop forcibly conscripting people to go die needlessly on the front in a clearly losing war. We want NATO to stop enabling all of that (it literally wouldn’t be happening if they weren’t demanding that it continue). That’s what it is to be a peace activist. And I’m fairly sure I can speak for all of us, we are not pacifists, lol. But we are advocates for peace and the end to the horrible and needless loss of life.
Nice try to completely twist reality, and completely misrepresent us, as you war mongering dronies always do.
Edit: We actually give a shit about all the Ukrainian people being thrown into a fucking meat grinder. We care about their lives. The people who just say “more weapons to Ukraine!” do not give a shit about the lives of the people there. They’re happy to just let the war keep dragging on until the last capable Ukrainian is dead. An example of how WE feel about the tragedy of the situation: https://hexbear.net/post/503747 (hexbear link to a lemmygrad news post)
So be fucking outraged then that Russia started, and is continuing this war. They’re the ones killing Ukrainians in their homeland.
A comment from that link:
Russia is committing genocide. They’ve been raping and killing civilians since the start, this is where your anger and energy needs to be. Imagine being outraged at the nation defending itself from genocide, and those countries that are sending the tools that they’re being asked for to help defend themselves.
You know this is not genocide, right?
You are describing war crimes. War crimes are horrible. Two rapes are two rapes too many. Every side in every war does them, which is a major reason war is so horrific. Genocide is much more than a series of war crimes, though. To believe otherwise is to declare all sides in all wars genocidal, rendering the word meaningless.
They’re kidnapping Ukrainian children and trying to “re-educate” them, and given Russian soldiers have had specific orders to “kill everyone” from commanders, and video evidence of random civilians being targeted and killed, I can’t really think what else is could be? Seems like they’re trying to eradicate the Ukrainian people and their culture.
Let’s start with a source for this one. I’ve seen nothing akin to the indigenous boarding schools ran by the U.S. and Canada in actual campaigns to destroy a people’s collective identity. What I have seen are reports of children whose parents are not available/alive to take care of them (a fact of any war) and Russia putting them in school and/or up for adoption (something any state would do).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/18/how-ukraine-kidnapped-children-led-to-vladimir-putins-arrest-warrant-russia
I mean it’s a pretty well known enough to trigger an international arrest warrant.
Classic hexbear whataboutism response. Like I’m going to sit here and defend the horrendous crimes that happened in those boarding schools. Both things are wrong. You can be critical of Russia my man, you don’t need to defend it so aggressively.
International law is a joke. If you knew anything about it you wouldn’t be screeching “whataboutism!” at even the most obvious of comparisons, because you’d know that a cornerstone of what passes as International law is looking at practices of other countries.
But let’s see what your article says:
This article documents that (when it was written) Kherson was still an active war zone, but nevertheless adds scare quotes to “evacuation,” as if there is no need to evacuate children from a war zone and this is all a Russian pretense. So early on we can see that no Russian explanation will be deemed credible, even when the explanation Russia gives (e.g., evacuation) is documented by the author himself.
Even Ukranians recognize the need for evacuating children, but nope, it’s an evil plot when Russia does it! Note also that the immediate evidence we have here – an in-person interview with a Ukranian working with kids, not a second- or third-hand story – mentions exactly what I said: kids orphaned by the war who need to go somewhere, not Russians snatching kids from their parents.
What is more believable: Russians are trying to snatch any kid they can lay their hands on, for some reason the Ukrainians subjected to this believe fake medical records will prevent this, a driver tells them “hey here’s five kids with fake documents,” and the kids outwit a bunch of soldiers with some unexplained cunning? Or is it more likely that Russians consider kids in a war zone basically a nuisance, and aren’t particularly invested if someone is trying to evacuate them?
So the Russians are stealing children by… taking them to a Ukranian orphanage?
Your linked articles makes literally no fact-claims outside of what my comrade there said. It just ignored whatever reasons Russia have and assumed the worst or let you imagine/fill in the gaps. Edit: added “no” because it was missing
its so weird that the day the tanks rolled over the border of Ukraine history magically just began, there was no material reality prior to this event, or any geopolitical events of consequence we could connect to this outcome, certainly none that had to do with openly threatening to expand a hostile military alliance with supersonic and nuclear missiles 5 minutes from the capital city of Moscow
i wonder if the US has ever done the exact same thing in the name of national security and what the NATO heads said about it then
every pro NATO take is certified baby brain shit that demonstrates nothing but a lack of understanding of material reality, history, geopolitics, on top of an absolute disregard for human life, gross hypocrisy and a level of false outrage that is always directly proportional to how loudly they’re calling to escalate bloodshed
log off dude
No :)
RUSSIA BEST!!! RUSSIA THE PEACEKEEPERS!!! THE HUMANITARIANS! DEFEND RUSSIA AT ALL COSTS! SPREAD ALL THE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA!! RUSSIA CAN DO NO WRONG! POOR POOR RUSSIA HAD NO CHOICE!!
Am I doing it right?
No. You’re not doing it right. You’re supposed to learn what the fuck you’re talking about first. And you didn’t so now you’re having a childish tantrum at people talking back to you.
You think they told you to log off for their benefit and not your own? That’s twice you’ve said something stupid because you didn’t know what was going on around you.
They’re defending the imperialistic warmongering Russian state who are shelling and bombing civilians and who are literally creating the bloodbath.
I’m not the one that needs to log off. But go ahead and keep shilling for Russia.
Death to America
spoiler
Edit and
Russia turned the other cheek for eight years as Ukraine continued breaking treaty after treaty and committing genocide on Russia’s border while at the same time threatening to host NATO nuclear weapons and invade their territory. They were dragged into this war by necessity. If I had any doubt in your typical American ignorance of foreign affairs, I would call you the warmonger. But I just call you an idiot.
Learn what the fuck you’re talking about. Stop using words for their impact alone.
Gaddafi’s troops are committing rape to children en masse, they have issued viagra to mass rape people since the start. this is where your anger and energy need to be. Imagine being outraged at the nation defending itself from mass rape, and those countries that are sending the tools that they’re being asked for to help defend themselves.
Here is the UN mandate to intervene in Lybia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1973 a resolution drafted by Tunisia and supported by the African Union, the Arab League and allowed by all of the UNSC.
Where is russia’s UN mandate to annex Crimea and to later bomb Kiev? Did they even try?
Libya today is a haven for islamic terrorism and slaver markets. Regardless of the “legality” of the NATO (mostly french and US led) intervention, it threw the entire region in outright chaos, and was enormously damaging to the working class of Lybia, but also of the entire fucking Sahel.