Google To Be Banned in Ukraine's Occupied Donetsk and Luhansk Regions (theguardian.com) 114
Google's search engine is to be banned in the occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk after pro-Russian authorities there accused the US tech giant of promoting "terrorism and violence against all Russians." From a report: In a statement posted to the social messaging service Telegram, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), said: "The inhuman propaganda of Ukraine and the west has long crossed all boundaries. There is a real persecution of Russians, the imposition of lies and disinformation." He accused Google's search engine of being at the forefront of this effort, saying it "openly, on the orders of its curators from the US government, promotes terrorism and violence against all Russians, and especially the population of Donbas."
Serious Question (Score:4, Interesting)
How long can an unfragmented internet last, in conditions of active cyber war between highly motivated, highly advanced nation-scale adversaries?
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How long can an unfragmented internet last, in conditions of active cyber war between highly motivated, highly advanced nation-scale adversaries?
Define fragmentation. Blocking something doesn't make the internet fragmented providing you can get around the block. And given the only people actually engaging in blocking are dictators another question is: do we care?
It's not uncommon for websites to already IP block Russia and China sourced addresses. It's not uncommon for Russian or Chinese businesses who deal with the west to have western hosted customer facing presences. I will wager you've never actually visited an actual Chinese or Russian website.
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Define fragmentation.
Probably something like an overlay network that requires cryptographic authentication to route traffic on, where entites are all specifically known and can be excluded based on identity or location.
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How long can an unfragmented internet last, in conditions of active cyber war between highly motivated, highly advanced nation-scale adversaries?
About a decade ago, I had a girlfriend who was born and raised in China and had lived in a very large city most of her life. She worked for a bank, but I don't honestly remember exactly what her job was. I know it was some kind of office job. She was college educated and a fluent English speaker. Anyway, the point of all this is that she wasn't an IT person. She knew ways to get around government censorship and "the Great Firewall". Again, not an IT person and she knew this stuff. The Chinese
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I want to take it away from China this, Russia, that, and The Donald this and Glorious Leader that, into just the more abstract "game theory"-ish question.
As I see the internet developing, there seems to be almost no incentive for certain nations to maintain network connectivity to each other, and significant downside risk. Imagine having a door to your house that basically only lets in flies? Who wants that?
A real persecution of Russians (Score:4, Insightful)
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The strategy is the same as in Afghanistan: Bleed the Russian economy dry by forcing it to pump more and more resources into the war.
Back in Afghanistan, it eventually fell the Soviet Union. Wonder what's gonna happen this time.
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The Russian economy isn't the problem, it's the people. Russia has started to prosecute Russians trying to leave Russia. There have been more than a few Russian hockey players that are effectively trapped in Russia - despite working for NHL teams. They only returned to Russia to visi
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Ukraine is pressed for time though -- it needs a major win before the midterms to convince the US it is worth supporting them. That is, assuming the GOP retakes the House.
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The US policy is to keep Russia thinking that they can win the war.
If the US had the ability to make Russia think anything, this wouldn't be it. Russia makes up its own mind.
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Ah, I see your point.
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They control almost all of the Donbass already, which was their goal.
Must be easy having such "flexible goals".
Tripped over, rolled down a hill and ended up with your dick in a beehive. You meant to do that right. It was your goal all along.
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Russia came to the west and asked to be included in their economic planning, to look at the short term, last 25 years. Russia is considered a European nation and was asked to join the EU first. Europe has a long history of independent statehood and always had a goal of all European nations under one federation. And any objections by the US political circles on the matter of Russia not being part of this strategy are being nullified as we speak.
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Russia is considered a European nation and was asked to join the EU first.
What?
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Russia was one of the countries who demanded to be formally asked to join the EU before anyone else. They were asked informally but their formal invitation was down the list a few spots. which was a reason given for the refusal. The other country who demanded the same, the UK who complained their informal and formal invitations was not the first priority of the EU body. Funny how one is threatening to invade western Europe while the other has left the EU...at the same time.
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This was during the charter negotiations, before the EU was ratified. There was about a week or two of general council like gatherings where formal signed requests were submitted and read. But before that the criteria for full membership were to be satisfied. If you didn't meet the full requirements you were given time to go back to your government and ask if it were possible. If it took more time and most who did not meet the requirements needed much more time, something like an intent to join was given. I
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Re: A real persecution of Russians (Score:2)
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If real persecution of Russians were actually a problem, every single Russian/Soviet government would have to be guillotined.
The Soviet Union does not exist anymore. Russia has become a strange hybrid of a kleptocracy and a fascist dictatorship. Please upgrade your FUD because rambling on about the Soviet Union just makes you look like a senile Cold War boomer.
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His comment includes past behaviour, and is therefore accurate in referring to the Soviet Union. Are you too stupid to understand this, or are you an actual Russian troll?
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His comment includes past behaviour, and is therefore accurate in referring to the Soviet Union. Are you too stupid to understand this, or are you an actual Russian troll?
It's been almost half a century since the USSR was tossed onto the garbage heap of history. Get some new FUD or are you too dumb to buy a ticket to a Trump rally?
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So they're almost as bad as Ukraine? That would take some doing.
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... Soviet ...
Please learn to read before arguing with people on the internet, it's actually kinda important.
Go exercise your awesome reading skills here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] The Soviet Union went the way of the dinosaurs. Anybody who still plays the 'Soviet' card either became an early onset Alzheimer patent back in the early 80s or just woke up from a 50 year coma.
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When someone says "Russian/Soviet", the "/" is read as "and/or". So, when someone refers to "every single Russian/Soviet government", they are referring to every government that matches either of those adjectives. You see, the current Russian Federation has had, for all intents and purposes, two different governments, since Medvedev's time as President was really just a legal fiction. Prior to the current Russian Federation, and maybe you aren't picking up on this, Russ
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They'll also just exist as long as they're backed by Putin.
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The Russian government is worried about Russophobia. What reason is there that someone would be afraid of Russia? Can you think of anything?
Incidentally, "protecting people speaking our language" is the exact same excuse Germany used to invade France.
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You can add:
3) Russia invades its neighbors, annexes them, and kills people there.
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Incidentally, "protecting people speaking our language" is the exact same excuse Germany used to invade France.
And Czechoslovakia. And Poland. And everywhere else.
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I didn't hear that excuse when they invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia.
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If hate were a diamond, Russia would be a crown. (Score:1)
I hope Ukraine has a path to victory. They will survive no matter what, that much is clear.
Re:If hate were a diamond, Russia would be a crown (Score:5, Interesting)
They do. Give them the weapons they ask for and it will become reality.
Igor Gurkin recently made comments that the Russian army is losing more people to desertions and KIA than they are able to scrounge up as replacements. Even with replacements, those they're getting are barely able to fire a rifle. They're given a week of training [yahoo.com] before being sent to the front as cannon fodder.
Expect to see some massive changes in the next 30 days. Sorry, can't say more for now, but you'll see the results.
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Nonsense, Russia doesn't care about losses at all, "we have blood to spare".
Ukraine is losing, and these less than medium range weapons won't make a difference, money down the toilet. USA and allies were and are too cowardly to give the weapons that really would make a difference; for that matter too cowardly to do the things that would have kept Russia from ever starting an invasion.
You're just aping the media that are propaganda pieces for U.S. government. Strange kind of virtual signalling.
In a month y
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If a single nuke is being used in this war, future stories about Moscow begin with "There once was a city..."
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Worse is if the nuke is launched but doesn't work.
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Considering what we've seen so far concerning the state of readiness of the Russian army, this is a quite possible scenario...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You seem to think that the use of a nuclear weapon wouldn't immediately result in absolute isolation from the rest of the world, regardless of economic damage to the rest of the world.
Even China would turn their back, because the last thing they want is mushroom clouds rising in Russia, and blowing fallout over the border into China.
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You're just aping the media that are propaganda pieces for U.S. government.
He's aping the media propaganda by quoting Igor Girkin? That seems unlikely. The Strelkov warrior is correct in pointing out that Russia is running out of people in their army.
The solution he proposes is to declare war, allowing the entire country to be mobilized. If that happens, then Russia's manpower problem is solved. But that would be unpopular in Russia, so it might not happen except as a last resort.
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Nope, most of Russian army still intact, arithmetic isn't hard . Most the Russian army never went into Ukraine at all.
LOL.
And how many of those are available to enter Ukraine? Not the conscripts. Not the sailors. If you can't answer that question, please don't respond acting like you do.
Igor Girkin knows what he's talking about. He knows how many soldiers are available to enter Ukraine. He knows what it would take to win. And he knows what kind of man-power problems Russia is facing in Ukraine, and how to solve them.
You don't know.
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so you are being spoon fed by your hero a member of successor of KGB. Maybe you should read his words closer as on this subject he agrees with me since he's saying with general mobilization Russia will do fine in Ukraine.
Obvious you know nothing about the subject, Girkin fanboi. the training times I gave were accurate.
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You don't have facts, so you insult. I see how you are. Come back when you have facts.
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I did give facts about time to recruit to soldier ready for war.
You are the one who has nothing but ignorance. Your hopes and dreams aren't going to save Ukraine, fanboi. They were stupid, Europe was stupid, Biden was cowardly and stupid, and now east Ukraine and maybe more will be Russia's.
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You made up facts about recruiting soldiers ready for war. You have no clear idea of how many troops Russia actually has available. When people gave you the facts, you tried to ignore them.
You are caught in a cognitive bias, friend.
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You can look up the size of Russia's armed forces by IISS, 1.027 million. You can look up size of reserves, 2.035 million. You can look up size of Army, 280K active
CIA said two days ago 15K Russian troops killed. How is that a big chunk of the pie? Answer, it isn't. Facts are our friends, bleating like yours is not.
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ok, now we're getting somewhere. Good job.
You can look up size of reserves, 2.035 million.
Do you understand why the reserves can't be sent into Ukraine? It has been explained to you in this thread.
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Oh, you missed the news, Russia is in fact mobilizing reserves to go into Ukraine. They will go into Ukraine.
Your ignorance is not a point of view.
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Oh, you missed the news, Russia is in fact mobilizing reserves to go into Ukraine. They will go into Ukraine.
Your ignorance is not a point of view.
all that aside ill ask this. do you believe russia can win a conventional conflict against nato? this may never happen directly but it is a concern...
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A conflict with NATO wouldn't stay conventional and both sides would be in sorry ass state regardless of who dumped the most functioning megatonage on other side. If only one in five of the several hundred to couple thousands of Russian thermonukes worked we'd still be in medieval world for a looong time.
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Nope, most of Russian army still intact, arithmetic isn't hard . Most the Russian army never went into Ukraine at all.
85% of the Russian army has been in Ukraine. Sorry about the choice of propaganda outlets.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/... [foxnews.com]
It isn't pretty and they've lost a couple to few ten thousand, but as I said Russia doesn't care.
Dead are just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have been injured or killed. Russia might not care about its people yet short of general mobilization which is political suicide they have been unable to generate enough men to replace what is being lost. This isn't WWII era USSR throwing tens of millions of bodies at German invaders. Whatever brainwashing is
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Fox News? You might try referencing a media source that hasn't declared in court that their programming should be considered "entertainment", so they couldn't be sued for lying.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians have been injured or killed.
Seriously? Hundreds of thousands? And yet civilian deaths in Ukraine are under 6,000 according to the UN.
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bahahaha Fox News
Yeah let's listen to Gutfield for some good laughs; don't know how much "news" we'll get there otherwise
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Nonsense, Russia doesn't care about losses at all, "we have blood to spare".
Putler might not give a flying fuck but Russians sure do. They have no incentive to go die in Ukraine.
Putler is too chicken shit for general mobilization. He knows full well going there will place his legitimacy at extreme risk.
Ukraine is losing, and these less than medium range weapons won't make a difference, money down the toilet. USA and allies were and are too cowardly to give the weapons that really would make a difference; for that matter too cowardly to do the things that would have kept Russia from ever starting an invasion.
Russia might have had a chance if they didn't royally fuck up their initial invasion. Now they are truly fucked. Much of their good shit has already been destroyed and they now have to beg for weapons and pull WWII vintage kit from storage while tricking their own people into goi
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So... should I buy iodine pills or what?
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Protect my thyroid. If Russia loses a war against their next door neighbor because the USA gave them weapons, I'm worried they might consider that to be an existential threat.
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You do realize that Moscow is not the only source of propaganda, don't you? The Ukrainian parliament just had to fire one of their spokespeople. She'd been creating 'atrocity propaganda' since before the invasion, but her claim that Russian soldiers were raping babies was so unbelievable that not even the NY Times would reprint it.
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As they lose they become more erratic.
One one hand, they start lobbing missiles to city centers. Obviously trying to hit civilians, since there is no military establishment near any of their recent attacks.
On the other hand, they ask for "ceasefire" and "stop operations as goodwill gesture", both of them are clear signs of them losing (they have no concept of a goodwill).
It will only get worse for Russia. My only hope is, they lose quickly without too much civilian causalities.
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Cool, but I think if you want to talk about USA you should submit a top level article about it instead of hijacking this one.
Re:If hate were a diamond, Russia would be a crown (Score:5, Insightful)
Saturation artillery fire/saturation bombing against cities hasn't been a thing for the US military in half a century. So no, not "all through" the 20th century. Everything since then has been about precision artillery/individually-targeted buildings. MLRS multiple fire is sometimes used but only against open areas/bases.
The Russians tried that at first in February, but when it didn't get a quick victory they gave up and went back to their tactics of leveling everything, just like they did in Chechnya.
The US fights wars very, VERY differently now. The most buildings destroyed by the US recently was in Fallujah, but every shot was called in by a spotter of some sort. The reason so much was destroyed there was because so many buildings were occupied by combatants.
In the 21st century, the US has bombed only one active hospital (Kunduz). While the initial response from the military was unacceptable, it was also a huge scandal in the American media, and the US wound up formally apologizing and payed millions in restitution to the victims. (The US bombed a hospital in Mosul at the request of the Iraqi government, but it was inactive at the time -- imagery clearly shows ISIS tanks there, and there was active heavy weapons fire from the building.)
The US has bombed one other active hospital post-Vietnam, in Belgrade in 1999. While the US has yet to apologize for it, the bombing was widely reported in western media and condemned openly.
When Russia bombs a hospital it is not a scandal on Russian media -- it is only denials, if it's mentioned at all, and it never gets addressed.
And, by far the most ridiculous thing, the Russian state-controlled media talks near-constantly about how they are going nuke the western world in a first strike situation. No western country does anything like this. Not even China does. This is North Korea-level behavior.
So yeah, I would much prefer to be on the receiving end of an attack from the US instead of Russia. As a civilian, I'd stand a much better chance of survival.
And on the attacking side I'd ALSO much rather be in the US than Russia. During the Iraq War I marched against the war along with a million other people across the country, and the police didn't round us up for protesting (or even calling it a war).
So when the US does do bad things, we're free to condemn it. Our NATO allies are free to condemn it. When a war crime committed by US troops is discovered, it is the leading story in the US media. The leaker might be punished, but the information itself is not suppressed.
But ultimately that's still whataboutism and not really relevant to opposing what Russia is doing right now on its own merits.
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and nobody armed the vietcong the khmer rouge, and russia actually did not go to the un and declare themselves the protectors of Syria, suddenly abandon them, blamed western sanctions, then began attacking syrian government targets. if, if you look closely enough you will see the common thread(s).
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Perhaps the rank and file didn't know what Agent Orange was, but the leadership certainly did, as did the manufacturer. The same as the grunt in the trenches didn't know that the nuclear bombs being tested nearby would very likely cause their early death, but the generals in charge absolutely did.
Psychopathy seems to be necessary to get to the upper echelons of large organizations, be they the military, the political scene, religion, or the corporate world. It doesn't seem to matter if the organization is
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Does the US still use chemical weapons in war zones, or borderline chemical weapons as "defoliants" as Agent Orange was? No.
Does the US still carpet bomb cities, as they did in Operation Linebacker in 1972 and 1973? No.
Does the US still indiscriminately drop high explosives into civilian areas and not give a single shit? No. Basically every piece of ordinance is spotted and targeted.
So maybe policies can change for the better, even in a disgusting business like conducting operations in a war zone? And
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Funny also you cry "wantaboutism" when someone points out you are virtue signalling from a country that does worse.
Either you don't know what either of those things are, or you are kind of stupid. Then again, it isn't necessarily an either/or situation.
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You're funny, so you cherry pick a date range starting exactly one year after USA was using agent orange in viet nam.
The Vietnam war (Vietnam is one word) was almost 50 years ago. It ended in 1975 and even that was a limited war. The US hasn't been in a total war since 1945... And that is a good thing.
If you want to look at a country that is not just supporting despotic regimes who bomb hospitals and schools, but is actually bombing hospitals and schools themselves, look no further than Russia.
Whilst the US is no saint (as an Australian who lives in the UK, I have my own criticisms of their foreign policies) but the
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Dude. What the fuck are you doing bringing facts to a knee-jerk emotional whataboutism argument?
Do you really think someone who is so intellectually dishonest as to bring a whataboutism argument to begin with, will be convinced that their stance is wrong by any legit argument that can be presented? You'll just get more equivocation, cherry picking, deck stacking, false equivalence, goalpost moving, red herrings, and calls of "fake news" regardless of how true the counter-claim is. Or perhaps just some gl
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Saturation artillery fire/saturation bombing against cities hasn't been a thing for the US military in half a century.
Fallujah would like a word with you . . .
Re:If hate were a diamond, Russia would be a crown (Score:5, Interesting)
No one is buying what you are selling. Russian trolls really did think they were influencing things with their bullshit trolling. Must be quite a shock to find out people were just humoring you, and now they aren't paying any attention to you at all.
How does it feel to be absolutely powerless, living in a powerless country with a powerless leader, just watching everything you've worked for your whole life fall into shit? Well, at least Russians are used to that. "And then, it got worse," is the national motto of Russia, after all.
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and are in the process of unlinking their economies from the east. what us nato commanders suggested but they decided to have 150000 us troops leave europe instead.
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Offtopic, but I have to give mad props to rsilvergun. I mean, I disagree with 95% of everything he says, but, damn, the number of trolls who've adopted his name is seriously impressive. I can't think of another slashdotter who's had a similar impact on the site. If I were him, I'd see every new silvergun troll account as an homage.
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You are delusional. Again, I ask, why do you bother? Everyone outside of Russia sees what is happening and how poorly this third world nation is handling every aspect of governance, politics, and war. You must be stuck in that hell hole, with no other news than the lies Putin allows you to see.
Are the lies you write making you feel better, at least? I know, it must be hard to see your country and your people made into a laughingstock on the world stage. But your bitter proclamations aren't fooling anyone. W
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the minsk accord that nobody signed? that was put forward as a solution to russia invading the same nations asked to join, again so nobody signed. in fact many of those nations have declared their intent to join the EU and/or NATO since then. something most of them agreed they did not want to do...
If they are living it, what would Google matter? (Score:2)
What I am reading is that even Donbass residents are sick and tired of this shitshow and they need more undiluted propaganda about what would have happened had they not been "liberated" to stay on topic.
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Russia walked in to Georgia, left when it was certain a guerilla war was beginning to take shape there, tried the same with Lithuania and left again. Drove armor to the Polish border, shots fired. Flew into Norway's airspace, patrolled for "terrorists" within their borders, planes disappeared people too. Drove into Serbia was "asked" to leave. Bosnia, the same. Invaded Chechnya, who asked for advanced NATO weapons, got the first truckload then surrendered "unconditionally" their only success so far and it w
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What I am reading is that even Donbass residents are sick and tired of this shitshow
The people in Donbas wanted to join Russia and leave Ukraine because they hoped in doing so they would avoid war in their homes. Unfortunately, Russia didn't do a good job defending them, and then assassinated their leaders [wikipedia.org]. People in the Donbas region now feel betrayed by Ukraine and Russia both.
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There was an election right after Ukraine counter-attacked, and it showed heavily in the favor of joining Russia (or being independent).
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It's a valid question, so I did some research to ensure that my memory was correct.
There were some international polls done, which we can presume were reliable. At the beginning of April, the people in the region were opposed to breaking away from Ukraine. But by May, when the Ukraine army had attacked the Donbas, the people favored breaking away by ~60%. Wikipedia has more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This also matches the informal anecdotal video I've seen. The people there (understandably) want
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What I am reading is that even Donbass residents are sick and tired of this shitshow
The people in Donbas wanted to join Russia and leave Ukraine because they hoped in doing so they would avoid war in their homes. Unfortunately, Russia didn't do a good job defending them, and then assassinated their leaders [wikipedia.org]. People in the Donbas region now feel betrayed by Ukraine and Russia both.
The people in Donbas wanted to not be murdered. Pre-2014 they probably were pro-Russian, but when "volunteers" from the Russian military invaded and put local gangsters in charge their political beliefs were irrelevant. Instead they did what most people would do in the same situation, kept their heads down and tried not to be murdered for not being pro-Russian enough.
Right now Russia is forcibly conscripting them and using them as cannon fodder, which of course will make their eventual re-integration into U
No Loss... (Score:1)
Every result was "Is Potato" anyway...
They are independent republics now. (Score:1)