No "protests"?
Kyiv protesters demand more spending on Ukraine’s war effort and less on local projects-Dec 14, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kyiv-protest-corruption-2b5520cd8b5112f4faa7d87105cf752e
Posted on 01/22/2024 5:52:18 AM PST by MNDude
I just got back from Ukraine, where I was visiting some friends.
Everything we have heard about what’s happening in Ukraine is a lie.
The reality is darker, bleaker, and unequivocally hopeless. There is no such thing as Ukraine "winning" this war.
- By their estimates, they have lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone. - Even in the Southwest, where the anti-Russian sentiment is long-standing, citizens are reluctant or straight-up scared to publicly criticize Zelensky; they will go to jail. - In every village and town, the streets, shops, and restaurants are mostly absent of men. - The few men who remain are terrified of leaving their homes for fear of being kidnapped into conscription. Some have resorted to begging friends to break their legs to avoid service. - Army search parties take place early in the morning, when men leave their homes to go to work. They ambush and kidnap them off the streets and within 3-4 hours they get listed in the army and taken away straight to the front lines with minimal or no training at all; it is "a death sentence." - It's getting worse every day. Where I was staying, a dentist had just been taken by security forces on his way to work, leaving behind two small children. Every day, 3-5 dead bodies keep arriving from the front lines. - Mothers and wives fight tooth and nail with the armed forces, beg and plead not to have their men taken away. They try bribing, which sometimes works, but most of the time they are met with physical violence and death threats. - The territory celebrated as having been "won back" from Russia has been reduced to rubble and is uninhabitable. Regardless, there is no one left to live there and displaced families will likely never return. - They see the way the war has been reported, at home and abroad. It's a "joke" and "propaganda." They say: “Look around: is this winning?”. - Worse, some have been hoaxed into believing that once Ukrainians forces are exhausted, American soldiers will come in to replace them and “win the war”.
There is no ambiguity in these people. The war was for nothing - a travesty. The outcome always was, and is, clear. The people are hopeless, utterly destroyed, and living in an unending nightmare.
They are pleading for an end, any end - most likely the same "peace" that could have been achieved two years ago. In their minds, they have already lost, for their sons, fathers and husbands are gone, and their country has been destroyed. There is no "victory" that can change that.
Make no mistake, they are angry with Putin. But they are also angry with Zelensky and the West. They have lost everything, worst of all, hope and faith, and cannot comprehend why Zelenky wishes to continue the current trajectory, the one of human devastation.
I didn't witness the war; but what I saw was absolutely heart-breaking.
Shame on the people, regardless of their intentions, who have supported this war. And shame on the media for continuing to lie about it.
LOL, sure lets listen to Maria Mateiciuc @MariaMateiciuc a "Global citizen | World traveler | Eclectic spirit | Believer in goodness and fairytales from Manhattan, NY"
The Deep State and military industrial complex is prepared to fight to the last Ukraine citizen.
Then they will move on to their next victim.
That’s grim news. Obviously one would hope that he’s just hiding out, preferably with his wife and kids in some other places like Poland or Krautland or say... Norway or anywhere but Ukraine.
But we don’t know. It’s a bad feeling that a guy whose talent we enjoyed is missing in a war zone. In reality, the odds are against a good outcome. This must be what Stalin meant when he said something like “one is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”
War is hell. In this case, Putin is an asshole and the Russian military appears to have close to the same disregard for life that they had 80 years ago. BUT it was the good ol’ USA who lit a match to it instead of making peace. In My Opinion.
You have no evjdence of this coming from Moscow. It has the ring of truth, tho the one million estimate is too high. Ukranian men ARE dying daily in numbers; they ARE being forced to the front lines with little training; Zelensky is jailing all political oposition amf massively censoring speechamd destroying civil liberties.
Noone in their right mind thinks that is “propaganda”. It has been wodely reported. Not by the mainstream Western media perhaps but that is true propaganda. The war will never be won, stalemate at best. This is becoming a consensus even in the West.
I could say the same to you, stop with the Ukrainian—Zelenskyy propaganda.
What are you going to call this 2014 article by the international Human Rights Watch group nonsense?
Ukrainian and Ukrainian Insirgent forces targeting Russian civilian separatists towns with GRAD multiple rocket launchers. Crime against humanity.
July 24, 2014
human Watch Rights group is based in NYC by the way.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/24/ukraine-unguided-rockets-killing-civilians
A whois query and "Russia Matters" own information:
Domain: russiamatters.orgIt is informative to look a little deeper into sources, to ascertain who is speaking, as well as what they are saying. It this case, the source is Harvard with the assistance of the Carnegie Corporation and Stanton.
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registered On: 2013-06-18Organization info hidden: Domains By Proxy, LLC
State: Arizona
Country: USRussia Matters Harvard Kennedy School -- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Russia Matters is a project launched in 2016 by Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and made possible with support from Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Stanton Foundation.
"The project’s main aim is to improve the understanding of Russia and the U.S.-Russian relationship among America’s policymakers and concerned public. It does so by showcasing the best expertise on Russia and its relationships with the rest of the world by providing serious analysis, relevant factual data and related digests of news and analysis. Initially, the project’s contributors and institutional partners will be primarily U.S.-based and its main platform for pursuing its goals will be this website."
As a footnote, it is amusing that the domain ( registered 3 years before Harvard says it began the work ) is "privacy protected" and yet announces its info on other pages in the web site.
Discussions on these Russian-Ukraine threads prove the old adage.
“First casualty in war is the truth”.
In the Bloggers & Personal forum, on a thread titled Blogger who just visited Ukraine:Everything we have heard about what’s happening in Ukraine is a lie., Pete Dovgan wrote: “lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone”
So much propaganda from this war. Yet, virtually every source agrees that the Russians are losing 6-8:1 Ukrainian.
False. Russia is winning in every respect, and has been for some time.
That means the Russians have lost 6 million to 8 million people in this conflict!
False.
What a death toll. Who knows, maybe the Russian people will start to notice and protest. Can you imagine Russian mothers and women noticing the death toll for Putin’s war of aggression and profit?
They would already 'notice' if their sons and husbands had been killed, had the claims of 6 million dead been true. There are Ukrainians who track funerals in Russia, comb through publications for notifications etc. They've never come close to counting 6 to 8 million dead.the numbers I've seen are often close to 400,000.
Or maybe...FreeRepublic will just continue to be a place that people post propaganda, like bots....
The Long standing Denys Davydov (Ukraine Propaganda) thread on FR has finally ended, after numerous complaints.
I would like there just to be peace. It’s a stupid war with stupid prizes. Russians back to Russia, somebody get rid of Zielinski, and everybody get back to families and farms.
I believe Z's days are numbered. He's supposedly vying with his military leader for the top spot now. Because Z/NATO pushed the war far past the point where the Ukraine could win, it meant Russia had to invest heavily in soldiers and materials to continue to fight for no real chance of Ukrainian gain (actually, I've read that Biden admin pressed the Ukraine to continue fighting when they wanted to negotiate peace). Because of the pointless extension of the war, it's likely Russia and the Ukraine's other neighbors will divide the land and the Ukraine will be no more.
It's NATO's stupid war - NATO can end it. Or they can just wait for Trump to take office.... ;D
Her next comment mentioned her attacks by those who called her post propaganda. There will probably be some losers here that say the same.
~~~
So X has bots on it.
Does that mean the people on FR who don’t believe everything they read (for any side) are automatically losers?
Losers and bots.
Sounds like propaganda to me.
Which one am I?
We get wildly conflicting stories from BOTH sides from supporters and detractors in this war. The first victim in war is truth, to put it clearly. The one thing I’d like to comment about is that even if this story is half right, why was Zelenskyy off at the WEF Davos elitist bacchanalia fest during this?
Money isn’t going to solve UKR’s problem, and the closer and closer we get to Election 2024 here in the US, the closer UKR comes to being abandoned by Biden just like he abandoned Afghanistan so abruptly. Biden won’t need UKR as a distraction from his incompetency and mishandling of the economy, southern border and woke victim pandering.
The Russian Federation is on the list of people and entities that will never be forgiven for the demise of the USSR.
With a lying media, how do you know what is really happening? Who do you trust? Washington? I am not being flippant, but you seem clear that you know something. Do you? If so, where do you find it? What I see is Washington pushing us into another war. Having participated in the Vietnam ‘Conflict’, I can say without equivocation that the Washinton ruling class lies its asses off, especially about war. And our young soldiers die, and their families suffer. That I know from personal experience. What I don’t know is how to distinguish between Russian propaganda, Ukrainian Propaganda, and US Propaganda.
Global citizen | World traveler | Eclectic spirit | Believer in goodness and fairytales
I read it on the internet so it must be true. /s
Protests are the regular way of life. It happens in every country. FRANCE is past week 270 of Yellow Vest discontent, Berlin had throngs of farmers and tractors choke the city in protest over impending subsidy decreases, the US has them every day (mostly sponsored by Xiden’s Regime) and so on.
Perhaps a reason why no ‘protests’ are seen in UKR (or reported) is that some people/organizations or even churches could/would/are actually banned or otherwise there.
LOL, this BS story has been pedaled by pro-russian propagandists forever, but is false.
14,000 is the number of the total number of casualties the war in Donbass, killed by both parties between 2014 and 2021. 10,900 of them were soldiers.
On January 27, 2022, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released its most recent estimate of the victims of the Donbass conflict from 2014 to December 31, 2021
According to the U.N., 10,900 victims were soldiers, of which 4,400 were Ukrainians and 6,500 pro-Russian combatants of or on behalf of the separatist pseudo-republics. Civilian victims were between 3,400 and 3,500.
https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf
The eastern Ukraine is not majority Russian or pro-Russian. Russian speakers are not ethnic Russians. Zelensky himself grew up a Russian speaker. My wife is from Alchevsk in the Lugansk Oblast and her family and friends there are patriotic Ukrainians. Of course, Moscow has a history of killing Ukrainians there both in Stalin’s time and in the present day. You seem to want to reward Russia’s long history of genocide by going along with their criminal land grab. Shame on you for buying-in to Moscow lies.
No "protests"?
Kyiv protesters demand more spending on Ukraine’s war effort and less on local projects-Dec 14, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kyiv-protest-corruption-2b5520cd8b5112f4faa7d87105cf752e
Ukrainian and Ukrainian Insirgent forces targeting Russian civilian separatists towns with GRAD multiple rocket launchers. Crime against humanity. July 24, 2014
Did you even read the article past the headline? If had you would have seen that the civilians were killed because the Grad rockets are inaccurate, not because the civilians were deliberately targeted. Also, the article indicates that both sides were using the Grad rockets:
“Grad rockets are notoriously imprecise weapons that shouldn’t be used in populated areas,” said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “If insurgent and Ukrainian government forces are serious about limiting harm to civilians, they should both immediately stop using these weapons in populated areas.” …Also, the number reported is 16, not thousands. Finally, this report is about 2014. As I said, the vast majority of civilian casualties were in the first two years of the conflict and had fallen off drastically in the following years prior to Russia's 2022 invasion. So I stand by my statement, there was no deliberate targeting of ethnic Russia civilians.Both Ukrainian government and insurgent forces have recently used Grad rockets.
One last point, the number of civilian casualties (on both sides) prior to Russia's 2022 invasion pale in comparison to the massive civilian casualties and leveling of whole cities caused by the Russians since then. Where is your outrage at what the Russians have been doing?
Street protests in Ukraine were rare after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, which brought regular bombardment of the capital. Recently, though, demonstrations have gathered momentum, and Thursday’s protest was the largest so far over municipal spending.
Hundreds of 20s/30s protestors in Kyiv......Zelenskyy astroturfing? Or just very concerned potential 'draftees' who are looking for a solution to their own immediate draft problem?
I haven’t either. I don’t trust sources on either side, but there really has been too much needless death and destruction.
I’m with Trump on this. It’s past time for both parties to go to the negotiating table. It’s time for all of the dying to stop.
And let’s stop the money laundering while we’re at it.
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