Woman wearing Ukrainian Flag escorted out of Cincinnati Tennis Open.

Cincinnati Enquirer

[Robert DeLong]

If that is what the chair said, then they are just reporting what was said.

[Karl Spooner]

Like all other Ukraine sympathizers, you omit what they did in the previous 8 years. A better analogy would be if we ceded Texas back to Mexico (for whatever reason). Then at some point in time Mexico decreed that former Americans there could no longer speak english anywhere public.

Then when the former Americans protested the Mexicans started shelling them in their homes as harassment.

Then as the problem raised world attention, peace talks began and a peace agreement was reached (The Minsk Agreements).

Then Mexico violated the Minsk agreements and started shelling the former Americans again amid public comments that Americans in the Texas regions (Donbass) should be exterminated.

I ask you would you want the United States to intervene in the former Texas republic under those circumstances? We are talking about 14,000 dead Texans at this point in time now. Or would you want Mexico to continue?

Here was the latest Ukrainian intensification before the Russian intervention as noted on the graph.

[dforest]

To be honest, I didn’t know what to call the judge or boss in tennis because I don’t particularly like tennis. Is that person a referee or an umpire or what? The article says they are “the Chair”. So be it.

[canuck_conservative]

There’s a lot you left out in your screed

you don’t mention the fact that Russia was actually trying to subvert the eastern Ukraine by supplying & funding various Russian separatists there ... if Mexico did that in the US, would you put up with it?

Russia had elected Russian politicians there deliberately try to sabotage the democratic process with delays, legal games, etc. - THAT’S why ONLY those Russian stooge parties (not all parties) were banned ... would the US tolerate that kind of electoral interference?

stop telling just half the story

[Karl Spooner]

I should have linked this at the extermination point in my comments, but this should suffice. Disregard the Biolab text comment that I added in this gif..

.

[dforest]

How come the US border is violated daily? We don’t even fight the invaders.

We no longer have a sovereign nation because we have no borders.

All of the US belongs to the US. But not for long.

[libertylover]

I agree, but I’m guessing a Palestinian flag shirt would be OK though.

[dforest]

That is why I think no political theater at events like this.

Root for you player or team and shut up the political drama.

[EEGator]

You’re an idiot.

[Hypo2]

I like the girls that hold Brazil flags more…my opinion

[MalPearce]

“Like all other Ukraine sympathizers, you omit what they did in the previous 8 years”

Ah, yes. The Russian Separatist narrative, supported and embellished by Russian propaganda.

“We are talking about 14,000 dead Texans at this point in time now. Or would you want Mexico to continue?”

Well, only if you count the militants and combatants on both sides, mercs, war profiteers AND the civilians. The 14000 figure is the OVERALL death toll over 8 years of conflict and the majority of that number includes the brutal first two years. Don’t forget also, this figure is trotted out without any breakdowns - what percentage of the casualties were on the Russian separatist side? Or the Ukrainian side? This gets conveniently airbrushed out of many a discussion.

The empirical truth* is, EuroMaidan 2014-15 was as close as it got to civil war. But by 2018 the civilian death toll (total on all sides) was 3-15 a week depending on whose figures you go by. A proportion of these figures includes indirect deaths - mines from 2014-15 going off years after they’d been laid, for example.

If we actually did use your Texas analogy, the reality would be, there actually would’ve been more deaths in Texas from diarrhoeal disease than there would’ve been civilian casualties deliberately killed OR caught in crossfires OR blown up by mines OR accidentally run over by militants.

In other words, far more innocent civilians would’ve died every week from explosive pooping in Texas than would’ve died from the fighting. Holy shit, indeed.

But anyway.

In 2019 an armistice was signed. Yes it took several months to stick (because pockets of separatists AND pockets of Azov kept violating the ceasefire by shooting at each other) but barring a few exceptions here and there, it did stick right up to February 2022.

The UN puts the TOTAL civilian death toll for the last three years (Jan 2019 to Jan 2022) at less than 30 a year - i.e. not even 1 a week in an area with 6.25 million people in it. The Donbas separatist administrator’s own ombudsman disputed these numbers and said it was more like 75 a year in 2021. In fact the DPR’s ombudsman’s own report (the one they send annually to both the UN and the Kremlin, and which is now in the public domain on their own website - hosted by Russia!) notes that the casualty rate due to the conflict dropped by 90% since 2015.

“A better analogy would be if we ceded Texas back to Mexico (for whatever reason).”

No, that’s a really bogus analogy because the USA is a FEDERAL union. Ukraine is a UNITARY nation state. Unlike the USA, whose borders are based on approved additions of states over time, Ukraine’s external border is fixed to the early 1990s definition. That wasn’t just fixed by Ukraine itself; it was codified in MULTIPLE international agreements including trilateral ones between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. These agreements are all filed at the UN, and ratified in Ukrainian referenda, along with the multiple undertakings the three parties gave to each other to stick to those borders and respect each other’s independence.

Having said that, one aspect of Ukraine is like the USA - any fundamental alteration of the Ukrainian external border (accession OR secession) has to be ratified by a majority of states representatives in their capital city. That big a change cannot be imposed on Ukraine by unilateral action by a state. It cannot be allowed to happen by external interference either. That’s the point of the Budapest Memorandum.

What if Mexico flooded Texas with militants purely to stir up Texan secession, some Texans fought back, and the secessionists put out a wall of propaganda to the effect that the fighting was entirely the fault of white supremacist militias attacking Latinos for no good reason?

Don’t bring up Minsk 1. The problem with Minsk 1 is the Germans and French pushed Ukraine into signing a really bad deal because they just wanted the problem to go away. In your analogy, this’d be like Canada offering to broker a peace deal between Mexico and the USA, and Canada telling Washington to take all the guns away from all the Texans because Texans with guns is “poking the Beano Bear”.

* Empirical truth: where official observers on ALL sides of the conflict have scrutinised the evidence, written up reports, and put those reports into the public domain. Nobody yet who contests these facts has managed to answer the most basic of questions as to which REPUTABLE source the contrary account comes from.

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

“Sports events are for civilized countrie”

You are TOTALLY correct!

[higgmeister]

LOL   and you had to call the troops for moral support.

Ukraine is such old news. /yawn

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

“Ah, yes. The Russian Separatist narrative, supported and embellished by Russian propaganda.”

I greatly appreciate your logical, well-reasoned response.
Thank you

[canuck_conservative]

It’s an important point, and FR is a forum for discussion

you’re free to support the thug states if you want