As opposed to the Soviet Russians who perpetrated genocide against ethnic Ukrainians both before and after the war?? Actual, real, and quite nasty genocide?
What’s your point? Ukrainians siding with the Nazis and enthusiastically participating in the Holocaust doesn’t rise to your definition of genocide? Like Americans, Russians are much better at remembering the sins of their adversaries than they are at remembering their own.
Nearly 4 million Ukrainians were killed or starved to death in the 30’s, so it’s not that surprising that there was a backlash. My point is that there has been a hell of a lot more ethnic cleansing and genocide against ethnic Ukrainians by ethnic Russians than there was the other way around. This doesn’t justify what Ukrainian Nationalists did or didn’t do, of course, but it does put it in a different light which you didn’t seem to be doing. Yes, people generally recall the wrongs done to them and not the wrongs they do. We should remember and put both into context…as we should do for our own myriad wrongs our own countries and countrymen/women have done as well.
I think you completely ignored the first five words of my post: “It plays well in Russia…”
Murdering a million Ukrainian Jews is a weird way to lash back at Russians.
No, I focused on the last part. Of COURSE it plays well in Russia and with ethnic Russians. That’s because they don’t dwell on the difference in numbers or timeframes. As I said, it’s real, actual genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced recolonization over decades verse ethnic cleansing on a much lower scale during a very compressed timeframe…that didn’t last past the war and that there was plenty of backlash both during and after the war.
Anyway, sorry for lashing out. It’s a bit of a sore subject with me, and I apologize. Hopefully, I won’t get another mod spanking.
True, though what I was getting at is that Ukrainian nationalists who joined with the NAZI were often reacting to anti-Soviet forces in their own communities. But it doesn’t excuse it, no…nothing does. And Ukrainians allying with Germany NAZI is definitely bad any way you look at it.
ETA: And I was actually thinking more of the genocide against ethnic Russians, not really factoring in the Jewish Genocide which I mainly associated with the NAZI with some ethnic Ukrainian support. I know that a lot of the anger by ethnic Russians wrt genocide in Ukraine is more about what they did to Russians, not Jews.
No problem. I’m probably a little triggered myself by a documentary I just watched about the Einsatzgruppen. Ukraine was one place where the Germans barely needed to lift a finger to wipe out its entire Jewish population…except to film it for posterity.
I can see that, though remember that when the Red Army came back into Ukraine, and despite all of the really nasty stuff the ethnic Russians had done to ethnic Ukrainians, over 4 million Ukrainians jumped to join the Red Army…so, we aren’t talking about even a majority of ethnic Ukrainians. Also, remember that it was still Germans in charge of Ukraine, and still German soldiers who were there as well. This doesn’t excuse those nationalistic Ukrainians who joined with Hitler…far from it. But just put it all into context.
Anway, I’ll leave it there. Thank you for accepting my apology for getting tense on this and I definitely see where you are coming from.
OK, how about taking out their Black Sea oil terminals? Or will that demand a nuclear response as well?
I don’t see why it would. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone to drag nukes of any sort into the battlefield.
Well, the thing about that is, I don’t think Ukraine wants to do anything that would make them seem like they are the aggressor. Additionally, I can’t see Ukraine doing anything that would waste their small air force in an afternoon unless they thought they were actually in an existential struggle, and the action would do something to avert that.
So they should keep their planes on the ground to be destroyed without a fight? Inconceivable.
US government is saying that Russia is still growing the number of forces at the border:
Now, to be fair, it could be that there were troops already on the way who needed to get there and resupply before they could go back and most of the troops already there are still busy packing up so in theory… in theory, Russia could have given the draw down order and still have net positive troop movement towards Ukraine.
I’m not really an expert in how long it takes a large military force to get up and move, when they had no expectation of doing so anytime soon.
Yeah, Russia may be doing a sleight of hand where they add 15,000 troops but withdraw 7,000, and try to get the media to focus only on the “withdrew 7,000” part.
I’ll admit, I have a somewhat morbid historical fascination if the situation goes hot. It would be the closest thing we’d ever seen to as if the 1950s-1980s Cold War had gone hot.
No. But I have started wondering if things might be reaching a point where Ukraine might benefit from having an air base in a NATO country to keep their air forces out of the way of Russian attacks while they are on the ground.
If Ukraine moves their air force to a neutral country, that country must then intern the air crew until the end of hostilities.
Either way, their air forces would be of no further use to them while the conflict was going on.
If the neutral country allowed the air force to operate from a base in their country, that would be considered an act of war.
Iran did Iraq that “favor”. I don’t think Iraq ever got their planes back, though.
Well, it seems you’re excluding a lot of options. If I was in charge of their air force, I’d prefer to concentrate it on blunting what we saw as the main invasion force, even if that was their last act. It seems that would be a better use than some symbolic attack.
Why is that better? Doolittle’s raid was symbolic, and provided a powerful inspiration to those fighting Japan. If Russia goes all in, Ukranian citizens will be plunged into an asymmetrical insurgency for a long time, perhaps symbolism is the best use of a small air force.