OBJECTION!

MY rotting corpse just has some stiff joints, that’s all.

That doesn’t give people license to lie about him.

I guess most the 400.000 - 800.000 Euromaidan protestors were CIA agents in Russias view then?

No, obviously, in the same way it would be ridiculous to claim that every single person who supports separatism is a secret agent for Russia. The claim in both cases is that the movement received foreign support, allowing it to convince more ordinary people to support it than they would have otherwise.

It’s well known that many people in Eastern European countries don’t trust Russia one bit after their experiences in the USSR.

Russia is not the USSR. And most people experienced a decline in quality of life, across every objective metric, following its collapse.

It’s also well known that many people in eastern Ukraine have ethnic, cultural, and family ties to Russia, so it wouldn’t be surprising if a lot of them wanted to have more favorable relations with them. This goes back to when the Soviets transferred the territory to Ukraine in the first place.

Before the war, people weren’t really aware of the situation in Ukraine and there were 100 other problems that seemed more urgent

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Americans don’t actually care about Ukrainians, most people barely knew they existed and couldn’t find the country on the map. The only reason people started caring is because they started being relevant to state interests.

Ultimately this has to be decided by the Ukrainian people.

No it won’t. The Ukrainian people do not have the option to vote on whether or not to accept territorial concessions, because they don’t have a democracy, and even what pretense of democracy they used to have has been suspended due to the war. The Ukrainian state may get to decide that, but that is not the same as the Ukrainian people. You don’t seem to be separating the state’s interests from the people’s interests at all.

“Stuttered”

I’m literally right here interacting on that exact topic right now. I’ve seen plenty of discussions from the people mentioned about the topic and newsflash, they don’t say that. Y’all just would much prefer to pass around rumors and dismissive charicatures rather than investigating what we actually believe.

Thank you. We can either have a good faith discussion based on facts and evidence and what was actually said, or we can have this cable news-tier bullshit of putting words into mouths and bad faith mischaracterization. I’d prefer the former.

Now, your claim is that Russia started the civil war as a pretext to invade and that the separatists are just Russian proxies. On the other hand, the Russian narrative would claim the same thing about the Euromaidan coup. I treat both of those claims with roughly equal skepticism. I don’t doubt that both movements have some degree of organic support, or that both have received foreign funding and support. I’ll also note that, for example, the American revolution had support from the French, so I don’t consider either movement accepting foreign support automatically disqualifying.

Regardless, the question is what the best scenario is going forward. I don’t see either side as being particularly concerned with the well-being of the people living there, or in actual democratic representation or anything like that. As far as I can see, it’s just about US/Ukrainian state interests vs Russian state interests, and I don’t really have a dog in that fight. The interests of states are generally disconnected from those of the people.

In my opinion, if people really cared so much about the Ukrainian people, then we should’ve been providing them with foreign aid for domestic development, long before any of this started. And if that had happened, the people would be happy and comfortable and loyal to whoever provided it. Instead, conditions declined, people became resentful and felt that there was nothing to lose, and now we have this conflict and people are being forced into a meat grinder against their will. It would be a better use of funds to accept territorial concessions and divert the resources used for war towards rebuilding. Likewise, Russia could’ve used the funds they’re using now to relocate the people loyal to them into Russia. This was is wasteful and destructive and benefits no one but the people in power on both sides.

I used precisely one adjective in that comment to describe Russia’s government, could you tell me what it was?

Answer the question, please. It’s not hard.

Surely you’ll have no trouble producing the receipts for what you said then, right? Since you didn’t make it up, can you link to where you saw it?

The great thing about never interacting with a group of people is that you can just make up whatever you want about them.

I used precisely one adjective in that comment to describe Russia’s government, could you tell me what it was?

No response tells me you can’t read.

Such as?

Yeah, I don’t fully agree with their decision to intervene in the Ukrainian civil war, just as I don’t agree with Ukraine’s shelling of Donbass in violation of Minsk II, or with the coup and banning of opposition parties that led the disputed territories to declare independence.

The best case scenario, as has been the case since the start, is for a peace agreement to be reached as soon as possible to prevent further loss of life. Which reactionary government controls the disputed territories isn’t worth people dying over.

Russia is terrible on LGBT rights.

Being a tankie doesn’t mean that you agree with everything any non-Western state does, it just means that you’re critical of war and are willing to consider internationalist perspectives.

he’s only giving you things you say with your friends inside of your living room, the only difference is he’s got the balls to say it in front of you all and don’t have to sugar coat it at all.

Things like what, exactly? We must be hanging out in different living rooms.

Nothing he revealed was a shock, I was joking with my friends about them listening in on 2009 if not earlier.

Yeah, but you didn’t have proof.

The real world impact of the leak was a net negative for Americans.

Absolutely ridiculous. You just can’t distinguish between the state’s interests and the people’s interests. So what if the US’s global image is damaged? That doesn’t affect me. If anything, I’m glad, when the US’s global image was better it meant it could get away with getting involved in stupid imperialist wars that made life worse for everyone but the ruling class. Their interests are directly opposed to mine and hurting them helps me.

Had he been willing to go to jail for it the issue would have stayed in the for front and people would have put a lot of effort into getting him released, and I would have been a supporter of that initiative.

Again, this is literally the only reason you’ve given for why he should’ve done that, that you personally would’ve liked him more, which I don’t believe for a second. Nobody gives a shit what you think, certainly not enough to do something stupid and self-destructive. Snowden would’ve been an idiot not to protect himself.

I could respect him if he was willing to pay the price to do what he thought was right

That’s stupid. There is literally no rational reason to do that. You haven’t given a single reason why he should have, other than that you personally would respect him more, which I don’t believe for a second. You’d just find some other excuse to hate him if he had. His real crime was expose you to a glimpse of reality.

There is nothing inherently gay about sucking dick.

Oh, excuse me.

Haha yeah imagine sucking dick like some kind of WOMAN.

Snowden is a traitor, nothing heroic about him

The traitors are the people in government brazenly violating the law and persecuting the heroes who reveal their crimes to the people. Real treason is treason against the people, treason against a government that is oppressing the people is heroism.

All this blacksite bullshit is a strawman. It’s far more likely he’s a Russian agent than it is he would have been disappeared and or killed.

Lol.

Unlike you, Snowden was actually intelligent enough to know what would happen to him if he didn’t make arrangements for his freedom. I have no idea how it’s possible to be as naive as you, but I guess when you’re completely focused on licking the boot, you don’t have much awareness of anything other than that. In fact, your main problem with Snowden is that he made you aware of uncomfortable truths, you’d rather remain in comfortable ignorance so you don’t have to worry about the fact that you no longer have civil liberties. Just don’t move and you’ll never notice the chains, right? You’re too cowardly to face the truth.

Haha yeah imagine sucking dick like some kind of GAY.

Snowden is one of the bravest and most heroic Americans alive today, and he is alive because he was smart enough to take precautions instead of letting himself get Epstein’d in some blacksite, like you want. What kinda idiot gets himself killed or imprisoned when he could be free? What the fuck kind of logic is it that says you have to submit to the judgement of a brazenly unjust and oppressive regime? Fuck that shit.

It’s thanks to him that we’re at least aware of the movements of the enemy of the public that is the US state. Braver than any troop. Die mad about it.

Fulgencio. The dictator who was in power before the Cuban revolution, with connections to organized crime, under whom Cuba’s economy was mostly casinos, drugs, and brothels while the people were poor and illiterate. Plundered the country bad enough to spark the revolution that drove him out and brought literacy and education and economic development.

Stop trying to make Trump look cool. If anything, he’s more like Batista.