The years before the russian attack on Ukraine

Humanity probably has many disorders which affects moral judgment. Maybe short quarrels can be positive, but in the long term it probably leads to negative results.

The people in power should probably move around in different parts of their own country to learn the hardships in their own country first hand. A visit is not good enough, they need to live in different environments for about 4 years. If they cannot do that, then maybe they should not remain in power longer than about 4 years.

The leaders need to know when they should step aside, and never return in that seat. They did their part for that period of time and it's time for new horizons. Nobody is perfect, so the negative will remain until they leave the seat. Hopefully the next in office will not just follow through and cause the same negative effects.

@Tenakel said in #60:
> You are to be envied! Be thankful to live in a free country!
>
> I'm constantly in contact with friends from Germany and also from Russia who practically live in two different universes.
>
> In Germany, you can find out about the war in Ukraine from a wide variety of sources every day. For example, from countless different national and just as many international newspapers that report independently and freely. There are discussion programs on television that are worthy of the name. Critical arguments are exchanged. Harsh criticism of the behavior of one's own government is voiced without fear, without having to fear consequences for the words chosen.
>
> On the other hand, what kind of media is there in Russia, I ask you?
> Many - no, all - independent newspapers critical of the government have been banned and their editors imprisoned. Since there is no longer any freedom of the press there, newspapers and television are brought into line. The Internet is controlled, countless channels have been blocked there. Everything is geared towards the Kremlin regime. Every day the same propaganda by the state media. The Russian people are being brainwashed. Critical discussions questioning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war there do not exist and should not exist. And anyone who dares to criticize Putin will be arrested or liquidated on the same day, and their families will face reprisals from this terrorist state. A system of fear was set up.
>
> This will not change because Putin is a dictator for life in Russia. - I wish him a short life, which hopefully ends tomorrow!

As I stated I do not live in a free country. Where I currently live our Press is regulated and paid for by the government. Opposing views are banned. The West is hardly free anymore. Only the illusion thereof. Just look at the US. A major train and humanitarian and environmental disaster occurred. MSM crickets.... Simply silence. Imagine if it happened under that last president! They would be blaming him and demanding a better reaction. Or look at Nordstream. A major act of war against an ally, an environmental disaster. And hardly a word. If Russia had done it, you would not hear an end to it. I could go on. Are things perfect in Russia? Nope. But we are the society that is imploding. Where is the questioning of the Wests policies in major media outlets?? Oh and I have relatives in Austria, friends from Ukraine and Russia who still have family there and visit there.

@pretzelattack1 said in #47:
> yeah this is not true either. they aren't "made up stories".

You simply assert that without any evidence. I claimed in #46 that Russian propaganda stories about the Russian language no longer being taught in Ukraine are made up. If you want to debunk my claim, address it directly and be ready to post supporting evidence. Weird, you aren't exactly doing that.
I however am happy to supply you with evidence for my claim:

novamova.net/russian-schools/kiev (For profit Russian language school in Kiev still operating in 2023)
www.languageinternational.com/russian-schools-kiev-65332 (language website comparing different Russian language programs in Kiev still operating in 2023)
http://www.univ.kiev.ua/en/inter-stud/pre-university-study (You can learn Ukrainian, Russian and English as part of your pre university study at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv)

And the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv even has a dedicated "Department of Ukrainian and Russian as Foreign Languages" (Department 21) as part of its Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology:
http://www.univ.kiev.ua/en/departments/philology/

Keep in mind Kiev is the city Russian propaganda would have you believe is ruled by spontaneously russophobic neo-Nazis who allegedly suppress the Russian speaking population (sometimes Russian propaganda even goes as far as claiming a genocide of which there is no evidence whatsoever) and outlaw the Russian language to be spoken or taught.
When in reality, the Russian language was and still in part is a (not necessarily the only) "lingua franca" of the city of Kiev and is in fact being taught to this very day, even at the National University of Kiev. They even have a dedicated Department that teaches Russian.

So my claim in #46 is entirely correct and the best you have shown yourself to be capable of is going: "Nuh-uh!"

> and it is less of a war of aggression than any number of US wars, including the war against Cuba and the USSR when the USSR responded to US aggression in placing missiles in Turkey by placing missiles in Cuba.

Whataboutism. This is a thread about "the russian attack on Ukraine". Not about Cold War US intelligence agency operations.
But since your claim is beyond asinine, I'll address it:

It was not a war: Kennedy carefully (albeit narrowly) avoided escalating it to a full-scale war, discarding his military advisor's attempts to sway him into openly bombing and invading Cuba, even terming his naval blockade (technically an act of war) aimed at stopping more Soviet missiles arriving in Cuba a "naval quarantine" in order to avoid the implication that the US was at war with Cuba.

Indeed, the US (who, surprise, wasn't the good guy in the Cold War, neither was the Soviet Union, both superpowers risked the future of the human species in their quarrel for supremacy) had stationed missiles in both Turkey and Italy in 1961. This prompted the USSR to station their missiles in Cuba and led to the Cuban missile crisis.
In January 1959 there had been a communist revolution in Cuba and Castro had taken over. Castro nationalised (confiscated) American businesses on the island and thus severed the prior good relations with the US and sought close relations with the USSR instead.
The US under Eisenhower – still under the influence of McCarthyism, the recent Second Red Scare and both Truman and Eisenhower Doctrine – subsequently sought to topple Fidel Castro. In March 1960 Eisenhower approved of CIA plans to stage an invasion of Cuba in order to overthrow Castro. The CIA then trained and supplied Cuban exiles (who had fled the country due to the communist revolution in 1959) with weapons: The CIA sponsored the counter-revolutionary "Brigada Asalto 2506" consisting of 1,511 men, some (former) US military personnel, but mostly Cuban exiles.

In what can only be described as a totally bodged intelligence agency operation, the CIA launched the Bay of Pigs Invasion with newly elected Kennedy's approval (to his predecessor's plans) on 17 April 1961. 1500 ground forces, 16 bombers and 5 tanks faced off against 25,000 Cuban army forces, 200,000 militia forces 13 bombers/fighter jets and more than 100 Soviet produced tanks. The invasion failed pathetically within three days, not least because after a day or so Kennedy withheld US air and naval support (that had been factored in by the Eisenhower administration and the CIA in their plans) in order to avoid international attention uncovering the CIA's shady plot. And in order to avoid a full scale war with Cuba and presumably their new ally, the USSR.
I don't condone the actions of Cold War USA.

But to compare this to the current full scale war of aggression Russia is waging on their peaceful neighbour Ukraine? That's ridiculous.

You're out of your mind. It's not even comparable in scale to the 2014 illegal (1994 Budapest Memorandum) annexation of Crimea, in which 20,000-30,000 Russian forces ("Little green men" in unmarked green army uniforms) occupied an unprepared Crimea without significant resistance. With Putin claiming repeatedly that "Russia has no intention to invade Ukraine nor annex Crimea" only to both immediately invade Ukraine and annex Crimea. He's engaging in double speak, deny everything and do it anyways.

Let alone to the illegal full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine), in which Russia massed 169,000–190,000 troops at the borders of Ukraine, mobilised an additional 500,000 troops (as of February 2023) and 50,000 mercenaries, strategically bombed electricity generation and transmission infrastructure in order to freeze civilians to death (lowering morale), maternity wards, theatres with children inside and committed countless other atrocities.
Here too Putin claimed not to be planning an invasion or annexations, and when he did invade (of course he did) he claimed it to be a "special military operation" and in autumn he did illegally annex several Ukrainian oblasts under the laughable pretext of supposed "referenda" at gunpoint.

It's always the same playbook. It's not hard to recognise. But you just don't want to recognise it, do you?

> Ukrainian students have been heavily propagandized by the current Ukraine government, installed by the US in 2014, [...]

You conveniently forget to mention the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and their heavy and obvious involvement in the 2014–2022 war in Donbas. Also, the US did not install the current Ukrainian government (let alone in 2014). It was democratically elected in a fair and free election in 2019: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election

It was internationally recognised as such, for instance by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE.

The rest of your post is just "yada yada yada, US schools teach creationism". Which they don't. There are some religious extremists who would like that, but they didn't succeed. Either way, the separation of church and state in the US is totally besides the point in a thread about the atrocious Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Your shameless attempts to derail the conversation are pitiful.

@Thalassokrator said in #46:
> Such alleged problems are just a means for Putin and Russian propaganda to justify their illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. These made up stories of Russian no longer being taught in Ukrainian schools

Your ideas about propaganda do not bother me at all, however, I do not like that you are distorting the essence of the problem.
And the problem, as I understand it, is not in studying the Russian language in Ukrainian schools, but in teaching in Russian, i.e. About Russian -speaking schools.
In 2019, the law was adopted in Ukraine, according to which all Russian schools were supposed to be transferred to the Ukrainian language of training by 2020.

In the days of President Yanukovych, a law was adopted introducing the concept of the regional language. Thanks to this law, in the Donbass, people could continue to live and work with the Russian language, including all paperwork and courts. In 2014, after the coup, the Ukrainian parliament immediately voted for the abolition of this law, and this was one of the reasons for the indignation of people in the Donbass.

@PTX187

Thanks for your input and context. I appreciate a civil contribution to the conversation!

You said in #64:
> Your ideas about propaganda do not bother me at all, however, I do not like that you are distorting the essence of the problem.
> And the problem, as I understand it, is not in studying the Russian language in Ukrainian schools, but in teaching in Russian, i.e. About Russian -speaking schools.
> In 2019, the law was adopted in Ukraine, according to which all Russian schools were supposed to be transferred to the Ukrainian language of training by 2020.

I don't know about the 2020 deadline, but it appears you are (at least partially) correct:
From Wikipedia:
"Members of national minorities have the right to receive only preschool and primary education in their own language. As for secondary education, they have the right to study their own language as a subject, while one or more other subjects may be taught in English or one of the official languages of the European Union."

So yes, among many other provisions, the 2019 law forbids entirely Russian speaking secondary schools, while it doesn't prohibit entirely Russian speaking primary schools and preschools. And it allows native Russian speakers to continue studying Russian as a subject in secondary school.

It's a far-reaching law aimed at promoting the use of Ukrainian as the official language of Ukraine (TV programming, radio, print media, advertisements, scientific literature, road signs, publicly funded events, bureaucracy etc. all are supposed to be in Ukrainian [or at least include a Ukrainian translation in equal size and format if they are not in Ukrainian] and every citizen is supposed to attain fluency in Ukrainian. Even health care is supposed to be in Ukrainian but has to be provided in other languages as well at the request of the patient). It doesn't make provisions on private communications.

However, the law lacks effective protection for the rights of minorities and is thus rightfully condemned by several international organisations:
"The Venice Commission and Human Rights Watch expressed concern about the 2019 law's failure to protect the language rights of Ukrainian minorities."

While I don't agree with the law and think it should be repealed (for the sake of all minorities in Ukraine, including Russian speakers), I can see how it came about. It's a product of Russia's increasingly aggressive behaviour towards Ukraine from the Annexation of Crimea in 2014 onwards. Conditions like these (constant external threat) foster patriotic views and facilitate attempts to underscore your own national identity as much as possible. As a means of differentiating the in-group from the out-group and forming a close bond and identity in the face of external adversity. Human beings are like that.

And while I don't agree with the law, it clearly doesn't justify outside military intervention (let alone a full-scale war of aggression).

I didn't mean to deny that there have been tensions between Russia and Ukraine and by extension Ukrainians of Russian heritage and those of Ukrainian heritage within Ukraine prior to 2022. It's obvious that there have been tensions.

I just meant to point out that the Russian propaganda version of these issues is extremely distorted, to the point of being totally made up. But of course good propaganda better be based of some true facts (to sow at least the teeniest bit of doubt in the minds of those not immediately convinced) that are subsequently blown out of proportions or presented without context:

"Ukraine promotes its own language instead of Russian in reaction to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Russian backed War in Donbas" becomes: "Ukraine humiliates Russians, outlaws the Russian language entirely and commits genocide against Russians." in Putins speeches and propaganda (which is his version of the well-known "Big lie" propaganda technique: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie).

Putin is trying to justify his war. And when reality isn't enough to justify it, he makes up an alternative reality and demonises all Ukrainians. Because all he seems to want is that war, all he wants is to fulfil his irredentist phantasies, to restore the Russian Federation to its former glorious extent, the extent he, a former KGB agent, saw crumble as the USSR collapsed. And apparently he stops at nothing to achieve this.
He's been at it for decades, with the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, and the nine years of chipping away at Ukraine now.

My heart aches for the Ukrainian people and for the Russian people who do not want or need this war. I hate neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian people.

@kanYE24 said in #52:
> The Ukraine people are the most brainwashed and low information out of any group in the Russian defensive war.
>
> The non-christian Terrorist Ukraine Regime has banned all media and politicians that oppose their lunatic war against Russia.
>
> It's a shame, I'm sure they would side with Russia too If they had the facts.

I can't argue with psychopathy...

@kanYE24 said in #35:
> Gay is abomination in Christianity, Russia which is christian ban gay, so all the gay in nato want to destroy russia and make it gay, this is why russia is defending itself.
You can be gay aswell, free yourself :D

Christ teaches about love and forgiveness, so murdering and killing gays is against Christianity. It is considered a sin, yes, but Christ tells us to conversate and wait peacefully, not to kill or be violent, which is anti-christian. Putin is a communist, and Marx preaches the abolition of Christianity.

Now, silence.

@Thalassokrator He demanded ever since a new security structure for the whole of Europe and a solution of existing problems in the Ukraine concerning the russian minorities in the eastern parts of the country.

this is the statement you replied to. you will note that it does not specify the language no longer being taught in eastern parts of the country. it talks about a new security structure, so that Russia does not have a nuclear armed NATO country on its border, and the existing problems concerning the Russian minority in the eastern parts of the country relate to murder and torture of people there. I don't know why you focus on language as the first problem. The US instigated a coup in Ukraine in 2014, with the result that a government hostile to Russia took over, and this crossed a red line Putin had warned against many times before. Experts including Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Cohen and George Kennan had warned against the likely result of NATO expansion since the late 1990's. nevertheless it happened. thousands of people have been killed in the eastern republics 2014-2022, and Russia finally responded. look up videos by those people on the subject. the presence of neonazis in the Ukraine military and government was particularly objectionable to Russia, since the people these Banderites collaborated with slaughtered well over a million Russians, mostly Jews. The people lying to you now about the causes of the Ukraine war are in many cases the same people who lied to you about Iraqi wmd's. you don't have to fall for it again.

and when I say the same people I'm talking about John Bolton, Victoria Nuland and the rest of the Kagan family, Liz Cheney and her father, Joe Biden, as well as the same media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News and MSNBC.
The same people who lied about Russiagate, which should have been interred in the propaganda graveyard with Iraqi Wmd's but is still widely believed. the same people who pretended that the scandal revolving around Hunter Biden's computer was Russian disinformation, which would be the CIA and the FBI.