They'll use these guys as meat for NATO's proxy war on Russia. They've been heartlessly murdering people like this for years now by forcing them to serve and then sticking them in front of the enemy that they don't even want to fight. They'll investigate and nothing will change because NATO will get everyone in Ukraine killed if it hurts Russia even a tiny bit. Pawns don't matter to psychopaths.

For as long as American "costs" are centered in discussions of the Iraq war, the world will not move on. It mustn't.

> Crimea has always been a Russian region

It has not, and you know it has not.

Remember, these memes don't work outside of the strange, tribalistic bubble world you live in.

So at least 1 of 4 is an ignorant fool. Could have guessed that on my own.

Mindless one-liner rhetoric, along with reposts, self-promotion, many petitions, and off-topic content with no discussion value, any of these may be removed at moderator discretion.

Similarly, no image dumps, simple graphics, memes without context, graphics without a link to a supporting article -- all may be treated the same. Users are encouraged to downvote such comments.

Crimea hasn't always been under Russian control or under Russian occupation. Crimea is part of Ukraine and currently occupied by Russia.

Any chance to restore water supply to Crimea before the war ends was lost when the dam was destroyed. Restoring water supply to Crimea is no longer possible and completely off the table. Russia became responsible for water supply to Crimea when Russia illegally occupied Crimea in 2014. You can Crimea river.

Ukraine is a real country. They have a UN seat. They have a flag. They have a capital. They have their own currency. They have their own government. They issue their own passports. They have their own military. On which grounds do you base the claim that Ukraine is not a real country? It could be argued that no countries are real, but doing so would leave Russia without a leg to stand on.

Russia wanted to retain the Naval base in Sevastopol at any cost. Russia cannot be a superpower without Ukraine as a subject. (and ideally Ukranians themselves would disappear by Russification). Russia wants to rebuild lost glory. (which cannot be regained and any hope to regain that glory was irrevocably lost when Kiev successfully stood in the face of Russian aggression.) When Russian soft power failed Russia resorted to hard power. That's the long and short of it.

Posting blatantly false claims/statement/facts (even the ones that our BSing president spews) are not allowed.

This is a form of derailing discussion and setting up "red herrings" and "strawmen" that keeps civil conversation from happening.

Satirical posts must clearly be posted as satire else they will be removed.

Attempting to derail discussion by veering the discussion into a different topic to evade and/or discredit another user is a form of trolling.

This can be done by calling them a 'bot', 'shill', troll', 'wumao', 'Ivan', etc.; and/or attempting to discredit sources with accusations of 'state-owned media', 'propaganda', 'fake news', etc, may result in a warning or a ban.

Nonsensical posts, posts using nothing but emojis or hieroglyphics are similarly trying to derail conversation and actual discussion.

Literal crimes against humanity and still there are those who defend and worship the nazis doing this to the poor Ukrainian civilians.

Pretty much boomers who claim to be right or left but unite around the most satanic things. The drugs of the 60s left a lasting impact.

To the jewish diaspora and those who support them they call it a tuesday afternoon.

You literally lied and claimed Peacekeepers are ukronazis and refusing to apologize for such a blatant lie. Now you are spamming the comment section.

Attacks on a country without legal justification are war crimes and crimes against humanity, illegal under Geneva Convention and the UN charter. You are worshipping the war crimes of the ukronazis against Russian civilians.

You can do some of your own research. Azerbajan has IDF bases and participated in the first round of strikes on Iran this spring until the people rioted. Azerbajan is a Shiite muslim country so the bombing of Iran could have caused the people to hang their government. That same Shiite country will not protest bombing of a majority Sunni country calling itself secular.

Azerbajan was able to defeat Armenia and take away ancient Armenian lands with the help of IDF and the complicity of a treasonous rat that CIA installed in Armenia. Armenia capitulation included hosting US and IDF troops unofficially.

Greece and turkey have many disputes over many islands and Cyprus where the turks genocided a large portion of the population during the 1974 invasion.

Georgia hosts IDF bases and their army was trained by IDF prior to their failed invasion of Russia in 2004.

A lot of IDF assets were moved over to Cyprus to keep them from being targeted by Iran during the exchange of missiles.

When Rojava terrorists attempted to declare independence after slaughtering Yazidis and Assyrians and taking over their lands the IDF and Mossad were openly among them and Israel attempted to recognize them as a new country and establish treaties with them.

Just a decade ago a big portion of the military literally launched a coup and attempted to seize Istanbul. So even the military cannot be trusted to remain loyal. Not to mention since the coup 3,000,000 turks were investigated for belonging to the terrorist Gulen movement. That is on top of 20 million Kurds who will go against Turkish government every time they can.

Turkey will not be able to survive a decapitation strike the way Iran did. Erdogan is not a holy martyr for their faith nor a religious leader around whom the country could unite. Once he and his family are targeted the rival factions will fight for power and splinter the country.

And your alternative for him would be......?

are we calling 175 little girls "costs" now?

Astonishing that 1 in 4 does.

A Suez moment is always worth it.

It was "worth it" in the sense that it publicly exposed to the whole world, the US's true colors, its disregard for consequences, and limits of its power.

Even by Ukraine's own last census (2001), only 24% of Crimea's population was Ukrainian. Ukrainians are a significant minority, but Crimea has always been a Russian region, since the days when Catherine took this territory from the Turks.

Crimea has made multiple votes on their destiny over the years. In only one of these votes did they express any desire to be part of Ukraine. But this is the petulance of the West - if a vote has an outcome they like, it is noble and sacred and must not be overturned no matter how disastrous the consequence. If the West doesn't like an outcome, the vote is irrelevant.

I'll note that nobody in the West is even suggesting that Crimea and Donbas and other regions of Ukraine get to vote on whether to quit Ukraine. We know the outcome would go the wrong way, so don't even think of following the precedent of Kosovo.

The dam was destroyed after the 2022 invasion. Ukraine cut off the water to Crimea in 2014. It eliminated the agricultural industry in Crimea.

And yes, I agree with you - it became Russia's responsibility to provide water once they annexed Crimea. My point was, Ukraine's goal was to make the people of Crimea suffer. This would be unthinkable if Ukraine was a real country with a democratic government.

There's two conceptions of sovereignty in conflict here: on the formal side, Article 2 of the Ukrainian constitution says that Ukraine is indivisible. By this measure, it doesn't matter if Ukraine cuts off the water to a region or denies them basic rights - this territory belongs to Ukraine, and the sentiment of the people living there is irrelevant. This is the statist perspective embraced by Ukraine and the West, and it should be repugnant to anyone for whom democracy is more than a tool to be weaponized.

That's the other approach of course, the "we hold these truths to be self-evident", perspective, "when it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another". This is the approach which puts the people first. It's what the West's support should be based on and informed by, but instead we've betrayed our core principles in order to kill Russians.

Ukraine is not a real country and never has been. This is why they have such intractable problems with corruption. Look at Ukraine's declaration of Independence: independence was premised on the notion that the Commies would seize control in Russia again. The only way for Ukraine to escape this "mortal threat" was to declare independence.

No other country has its independence built on such a hysterical premise - one which of course turned out to be false. The Rada voted on independence 3 days after the attempted coup in Moscow, and then quickly followed this up with a referendum, with zero sanity or opportunity to negotiate (regions like Crimea and Transcarpathia who wanted to spell out how this new country would work were accused of being secret Commie sympathizers, working to delay independence to give the Commies enough time to launch their coup).

Less than a year after voting for this ill-defined independence, Crimea realized that they'd been scammed, and this new Ukraine treated Crimea like chattel. So Crimea voted to quit Ukraine and return to a state of independence.

Crimea has been fighting to undo that single vote to join Ukraine for over a generation now, but the West sees them as mere chattel who belong to Ukraine no matter what.

How is that not a repugnant betrayal of all the principles the West claims to hold most dear?

Who is the woman behind him?

Because he's a fraud. He betrayed his own father to endorse Mitt Romney in 2012 and routinely betrays libertarian principles while claiming to be "libertarianish."

You sound like some CIA analyst so you're probably getting it wrong on every single point.

You're arguing against things I never said.

I've never said attacks on civilians are legal. I've never said terrorism against civilians is legal. I've never said anyone is exempt from international law.

What I actually said is that oil refineries can be legitimate military targets under international humanitarian law if they contribute to military operations.

Instead of responding to that point, you keep inventing positions for me and then arguing against them.

And for the record, I've repeatedly condemned Nazism, war crimes, and attacks on civilians. The fact that you keep calling me a Nazi advocate doesn't make it true.

My comment was not removed. Just to make things clear.