Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 243 of 1104
Quote:You haven't answered my question, which BTW, was NOT rhetorical.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:I'm calling you a better liar than SECOND.
Originally posted by K2PO:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yeah, if you only poll Ukrainians on the Kiev side of the front ... which is what happened...
Plenty of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in these parts of Ukraine (isn't that the basis of this illegal ongoing war?). Anyway, the polling shows they are more and more strongly anti-Russia. From the Reuters article: "The poll showed that 57% of Ukraine's ethnic Russians and 85% of Russian-speaking ethnic Ukrainians opposed making territorial concessions to Moscow."Quote:
and skew your polling to focus on people who agree with you, especially since Kiev has canceled all political opposition
Now you're getting desperate. Kyiv cancelled pro-Russian parties in response to the invasion, yes. That doesn't stop ordinary people being surveyed about their feelings on Russia, which is what forms this poll.
By the way, here's a good graph that shows clearly what I'm talking about, and the opposite of what you're talking about re: Ukraine's "polarisation":
https://www.kiis.com.ua/materials/pr/20220801_y/e01.JPG
https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1127&page
=1&t=3Quote:
Now I happen to remember that election, and one of the things that Zelenskiy ran AND WON ON was that he was Russian-speaking from central Ukraine, and promised peace and unity with Russian-speaking Ukraine.
This is well known. Poroshenko, the previous president, was also the "peace and diplomacy with Russia" candidate, before getting elected. Have you considered that a Russian president who rejects Ukraine's nationhood and wants to absorb it into Russia might be the problem here?Quote:
You're just a paid political propagandist. Unlike THUGR, who mindlessly and enthusiastically supports whatever he's told to support, and SECOND, who spews incoherently, YOU are vey carful with insinuations and words. A real paid operative if there ever was one.
I will take the compliment, and ignore the febrile conspiracising that it's wrapped in. Much obliged, Sig.
You think that's a compliment?
That says something about you, doesn't it?
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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What If the U.S. Hadn’t Helped Ukraine?
Ukrainian resistance and American support prevented a wide range of horrors.
By Anne Applebaum
December 22, 2022, 8:35 AM ET
On the shortest day of the year, after 10 months of war, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, finally left his country and came to Washington to thank Americans for their support. He went to the White House, where he appeared at a press conference. He went to Congress, where he handed a Ukrainian flag, signed by the defenders of Bakhmut, to the vice president and House speaker. He congratulated all of us on our first, joint American-Ukrainian victory: “We defeated Russia in the battle for minds of the world.”
Nothing about this trip—not the applause, not the flag, not the speech—was inevitable. Zelensky’s very survival was not inevitable. Ukraine’s continued existence as a sovereign state was not inevitable either. Back in February, many considered these things to be improbable.
On the eve of the invasion, some American experts advised against offering military aid to Ukraine, on the grounds that the war was going to be over too quickly. Other Americans repeated Russian propaganda, questioning whether Ukraine deserved to exist or whether it deserved to be defended. Some American politicians echoed those views and indeed continue to do so. What if they had prevailed? What if a different president had been in the White House? What if a different president had been elected in Ukraine? Let’s imagine, just for a moment, a world without Ukrainian courage, or American and European weapons, or the unity and support of democracies around the world.
Had the Russian plan been carried out as it was written, Kyiv would have been conquered in just a few days. Zelensky, his wife, and his children would have been murdered by one of the hit squads that roamed the capital city. The Ukrainian state would have been taken over by the collaborators who had already chosen their Kyiv apartments. Then, city by city, region by region, the Russian army would have fought the remnants of the Ukrainian army until it finally conquered the entire country. Originally, the Russian general staff imagined that this victory would require six weeks.
Had all of that happened as planned, Ukraine would now be pockmarked with the concentration camps, torture chambers, and makeshift prisons that have been discovered in Bucha, Izyum, Kherson, and all the other territories temporarily occupied by Russia and liberated by the Ukrainian army. A generation of Ukrainian writers, artists, politicians, journalists, and civic leaders would already be buried in mass graves. Ukrainian books would have been removed from schools and libraries. The Ukrainian language would have been suppressed in all public spaces. Hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian children would have been kidnapped and transported to Russia or trafficked farther around the world.
Russian soldiers, strengthened by their stunning victory, would already be on the borders of Poland, setting up new command posts, digging new trenches. NATO would be in chaos; the entire alliance would be forced to spend billions to prepare for the inevitable invasion of Warsaw, Vilnius, or Berlin. Millions of Ukrainian refugees would be living in camps all across Europe, with no prospect of ever returning home; the tide of sympathy that originally greeted them would have ebbed long ago, the money would be running out, the backlash under way. The Moldovan economy would have collapsed entirely; a pro-Russian government in Moldova would perhaps already be planning to incorporate that country into the emerging Russian-Belarusian-Ukrainian federation that one Russian propagandist hailed, too early, on February 26.
This disaster would not have been confined to Europe. On the other side of the world, Chinese plans to invade Taiwan would be well under way, because Beijing would assume that an America unwilling to defend a European ally, and now totally bogged down in a long-term battle against an emboldened Russia, would
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Fuck Ukraine. #Rootin4Putin
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:Hubby thinks you're cool.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Fuck Ukraine. #Rootin4Putin
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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For the heroism of its people, and for standing up to a bully
Picking The Economist’s country of the year is hard in normal times. Our writers and editors usually begin with a freewheeling debate in which they spar over the rival claims of half a dozen shortlisted nations. But this year, for the first time since we started naming countries of the year in 2013, the choice is obvious. It can only be Ukraine.
The honour normally goes to the country which, in our view, has improved the most in the previous 12 months. So Ukraine is in one sense an unusual choice, in that life for most Ukrainians has grown spectacularly worse since Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of their country in February. Multitudes have died. Cities have been smashed and charred. Millions have fled their homes. Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by about a third. Because of Russian attacks, many Ukrainians are shivering in the dark without electricity.
Yet Ukrainians have proved themselves this year. Four of their qualities stand out. The first is heroism. When the invasion began, most people thought Ukraine would be crushed by its much larger neighbour. Many would have understood if Ukraine’s defenders had run away. Mr Putin clearly expected the Ukrainian army to fold: his troops arrived with their dress uniforms ready for a victory parade but without nearly enough food.
The Ukrainians stood and fought. President Volodymyr Zelensky, spurning Western offers to spirit him out of Kyiv, supposedly snapped that he needed “ammunition, not a ride”. Ordinary Ukrainians showed similar mettle. Professors, plumbers and pop stars flocked to enlist, swapping comfortable beds for frosty foxholes and the risk of agonising death. In battle after battle they routed the Russians. In defending themselves against an aggressor who disputed their country’s right to exist as an independent state, they found a new sense of nationhood.
They showed ingenuity, too. They spotted their enemies’ weaknesses, blew up their fuel and ammunition supplies, and quickly learned how to use new Western-supplied weapons. They devolved decision-making to officers in the field, making their units more nimble and adaptable than the plodding, hierarchical Russians. They made deft use of help from friendly intelligence services, especially America’s, while their enemies fought half-blind, and sometimes gave away their own positions by making phone calls on open lines.
Ukrainians have also demonstrated resilience. When there is no tap water at home, they melt snow. When there is no electricity, they find heat and light in cafés with diesel generators, or sleep in the offices where they work, many of which now have bomb shelters and bottled water. The horrors Mr Putin keeps inflicting on them do not seem to have dented their morale.
And with a few exceptions, they have not answered war crimes with war crimes. Russian forces have routinely bombed civilians, tortured captives and plundered villages. By contrast, Russians are startled at how well they are treated as prisoners of war. This is largely because Ukraine is a democracy where human lives matter. It has its flaws, notably corruption, but its government and people had rejected Putinism even before the war, and now they reject it more strenuously.
By standing up to Russia’s despot, Ukrainians have protected their neighbours. Had he conquered Ukraine, he might have attacked Moldova or Georgia next, or menaced the Baltic states. Ukraine has shown that underdogs can stand up to bullies, even enormous ones. Underdog heroes and heroines do not merely surmount obstacles or defeat adversaries. The best and most moving beat a whole rotten system. They hold out hope that might — or reputation, power and influence — will not always prevail; that even if the rules are rigged, the game can still be won. They suggest life is not predetermined. They make their own fate.
It has thus been an inspiration not only to places with predatory neighbours, such as Taiwan, but also to oppressed people every
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Picking The Economist’s country of the year is hard in normal times. Our writers and editors usually begin with a freewheeling debate in which they spar over the rival claims of half a dozen shortlisted nations. But this year, for the first time since we started naming countries of the year in 2013, the choice is obvious. It can only be Ukraine.
Ukraine is the Economist's Country of the Year.
You couldn't even understand how funny that is to a guy who lived off of $7,200 in 2022.
Seriously, Second... Thanks for starting my Christmas off with a belly laugh and a smile.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Merry Xmas and slava Ukraini everyone!
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Merry Christmas! Fuck Ukraine.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:Each year The Economist picks a “country of the year”. The award goes not to the biggest, the richest or the happiest, but to the one that improved the most that year. Past winners have included Uzbekistan (for abolishing slavery), Colombia (for making peace) and Tunisia (for embracing democracy).
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Ukraine is the Economist's Country of the Year.
You couldn't even understand how funny that is to a guy who lived off of $7,200 in 2022.
Seriously, Second... Thanks for starting my Christmas off with a belly laugh and a smile.
In 2021, some of the contestants for “country of the year” were:
Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe. It had long been a sink of Russian money-laundering. But in late 2020 it elected the graft-busting Maia Sandu as president and in 2021 it gave her party control of parliament.
Zambia reclaimed its democracy in 2021. In August its rulers tried to rig an election, but Zambians voted for Hakainde Hichilema, a liberal businessman, by such a wide margin that the rigging failed.
Lithuania stood up to authoritarian regimes in 2021. It gave sanctuary to dissidents from next-door Belarus and Russia, including the woman who probably won Belarus’s most recent election, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The despot who stole that poll, Alexander Lukashenko -- who was visited by Putin 6 days ago -- tried to take revenge by forcing crowds of refugees across the Lithuanian border. Similarly, China is determined to bully Lithuania into submission. A Chinese newspaper mocked its size, likening it with great originality to “a mouse, or even a flea” because it defied the government in Beijing by letting Taiwan open a representative office in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211231090852/https://www.economist.com/l
eaders/2021/12/18/which-is-the-economists-country-of-the-year-for-2021
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Each year The Economist picks a “country of the year”. The award goes not to the biggest, the richest or the happiest, but to the one that improved the most that year.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Ukraine is the Economist's Country of the Year.
You couldn't even understand how funny that is to a guy who lived off of $7,200 in 2022.
Seriously, Second... Thanks for starting my Christmas off with a belly laugh and a smile.
I would certainly hope that they improved.
They've now gotten $113 Billion in gifts from US Taxpayers in 2022 alone. And this last $45 Billion gift comes at the cost of 19 Million Americans losing Medicaid in April of 2023.
It would be like giving Rookie of the Year status to a guy who was shot up with horse steroids all year by his coach while the media turned a blind eye to that and the corked bat that Sammy Sosa gave him, all while the stadium they played in crumbled around them and they couldn't afford to repair it because his salary ate up all the revenue.
Fuck Ukraine.
#Rootin4Putin
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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