On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine with a small force of around 142,000 troops. Not enough to conquer Ukraine, the invading force was sufficient to persuade Ukraine to the negotiating table. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that was the original goal of the military operation: “[t]he troops were…
I don’t think there’s much point in continuing this discussion. To a lot of the things you say I have no response other than “that is simply not true” and if we can’t agree on basic facts of reality then I don’t think any agreement is possible. To summarize my position: Russian allegations of genocide by Ukraine are baseless justification for revanchism about the fall of the USSR. Russian escalation of violence during the war has been wildly disproportionate to anything Ukraine has done. A lot of the specific accusations you list against Ukraine are simply false DARVO, with the potential exception of the inadvisable fighting positions around hospitals thing (Amnesty International published a very critical report on the subject, which I assumed you were aware of and thus I included three links from them in the hopes that you would take their opinions on Russian war crimes more seriously). I also don’t know what to say about the statement that Hamas is a moral military force other than to reiterate that it’s clear we’re not going to agree on this. Basically, I feel that you are reciting a lot of Russian propaganda and I fully expect that your response will be that I am reciting a lot of Western propaganda and I don’t see a reasonable way to reconcile these positions.