"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

I thought about engaging on this topic, but decided it was pointless. If someone sees pictures of dead Ukrainian civilians massacred by Russian troops and their first response is "yeah, but America bad too," it's pretty obvious they're only interested in repeating their masturbatory anti-Western talking points for the thousandth time.

I'm surprised the same people aren't in the Will Smith thread reminding everyone that Western troops did more than just slap Iraqis and why aren't we talking about that?

Russian barbarism, for all the world to see. These people are animals, and I do not have it in my heart to forgive.

Nope, by contrast it's horrifying to me because it makes it all the more plausible that Russia is actually doing these things.

I've seen people I know react to war crimes allegations against Australian troops saying things like:

• "You can't judge them for things done on the battlefield"
• "They're all on the same side, the civilians aren't innocent"
• "Even if they did, they're our troops and it's not anyone else's place to judge them"

That's in a modern, multicultural, first world democracy. I can only imagine how much easier those sort of sentiments could take hold in a more insular and controlled country like Russia.

(Just a rambling thought...)

There has always been barbarism in war, and there probably always will be. It's inevitable when thousands of young men are subjected to mortal danger and expected to unleash ferocity in an instant.

Not even the best-behaved and disciplined forces are immune: prisoners humiliated, suspects tortured, civilians killed indiscriminately.

For dictatorial regimes this has historically been of little concern: who's going to publicly accuse the leadership?

Even in free, democratic societies, the public has usually learned of these things long after the fact, often only because the incident is big enough to gain national attention from the media or Congress. But the events themselves were always seen from a comfortable distance: a few lines in an article or an official report. In a few instances, photos or videos brought the reality closer, but there was still a filter: the public seldom saw the worst of it.

Today, that comfortable distance is erased. We're seeing these things pretty much as they happen, with no filter. Every person in the warzone with a phone is a proxy for our own eyes and ears. We're going to witness all the ugly shit.

I don't know if Russia or Putin can be made to pay a suitable price for what we've seen occurring, but at least we've seen them as they are.

"Infinity War sure is a great movie, but while we discuss Thanos attacking Wakanda let's not forget about the western countries that also invaded African nations looking for precious gems."

This is what you sound like.

Propaganda exists, and is especially easy to spread during times of chaos. There have been numerous tweets, videos, and pictures posted in this thread that are almost certainly false or intentionally misleading.

So it makes sense to critically analyse as much as possible, and unless we have Russian posters here on WF that I'm not aware of, the only real way we can judge what sort of messaging the Russian public might be accepting is to look at our own countries and human behaviour we are familiar with for reference.

Sorry for disrespecting the conversation though, I'll withdraw and allow you to return to much more respectful conversation like comparing genocide to a fucking Marvel movie.

The folks doing the international monitoring have said that their ability to monitor the site remotely has been cut (at least shortly after the Russian troops had arrived, I don't know if they've since been restored). They don't have any readings from onsite and have had to rely on the levels they can detect in areas outside of Ukraine, and those have shown an increase.

Chernobyl workers have access to protective gear (they work at a nuclear reactor and a highly radioactive site, it's sort of a necessity). They've stated that the Russian troops who showed up had no such gear, and that the Russian forces had no idea that Chernobyl was a nuclear site or that there had been a disaster there. Whilst this might seem shocking to us, there's reason to believe it's true.

Okay, but that doesn't explain why the Ukrainian government would say that the Russians were victims of radiation poisoning. @steve2^4 claims the troops suffering from radiation sickness is Russian propaganda designed to imply that the Ukrainians are incapable of safely handling the site (despite their ability to do so since the early 90s), why would the Ukrainian government choose to amplify that and not simply say that the Russian forces were such cowards that when they figured out what Chernobyl was?

Link?

No, idiot. A link to the Ukraine govt saying Russians suffered radiation sickness occupying Chernobyl.

You really don't know what you're talking about.

And that is how we make war obsolete. Humans have the tendency to obscure the bad moments in our pasts, but if we have massive amounts of video/photographs/first-hand accounts of how shitty war is, then it is somewhat less likely to happen. None of this, "It'll make a man out of you" bullshit. Just the stark, naked horror of what it entails.

No, your links don't state that. Why don't you try quoting them.

Hasn't worked in Russia. Doubt it has here.

This was an interesting post from another larger board I'm active on:

A lot of the hope around the current sanctions is that the Russian population will blame their government/Putin for the restrictions, however many of them truly believe they are fighting on the right side. No idea how this doesn't get worse in the next few years. We could end up either reducing sanctions with many Russians truly believing they did nothing wrong and Putins power actually being strengthened in their eyes, or hold them at arms length for the next couple of decades and end up with a repeat of Germany 1919-1939.

Why do you Tweet these things when you have 3 followers and zero likes and retweets. What’s the point?