“Russia is already one of the largest geographic countries in the world.. why do they need MORE land? the cities have been destroyed and the people have been killed or fled. What is the point? more land? None of this makes any sense.”
65% of Russia is in permafrost, no one lives there. Russia says stopping the years-long shelling of Russian speaking people is one excuse, a land buffer between Russia and NATO is another. I guess we’ll know Russia has enough land when they are stopped from taking more or stop taking more on their own. For now, Russia is expanding the land it controls.
How many times is this Russian lie going to be repeated?
This war is a competition for the resources of the Ukraine (its grain and its industries) between the nascent Fourth Reich and the resurgent Russian Empire. Both want what the Ukraine has. Both want it bad enough to kill for it.
143 million people live there. It's the biggest nation in the world as far in square miles. And, there are plenty of warm places like Sochi in it.
No one? One of the coldest cities on earth.
"n Yakutsk, temperatures regularly fall below -58F/-50C in January for prolonged periods of time. The coldest temperature ever recorded outside Antarctica, of -90F/-68C, was recorded in the same region of Siberia as Yakutsk.
The current metro area population of Yakutsk in 2024 is 342,000, a 0.88% increase from 2023."
The 2020 report that Right_Wing_Madman references but either didn't read or is incapable of understanding, says
From 1 to 31 March 2020, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 19 conflict-related civilian casualties: two killed (one man and one woman) and 17 injured (eight women, six men, two girls and one boy), a 280 per cent increase compared with February 2020 (one killed and four injured).
Let me spell it out why that ain't genocide and that ain't a causus belli for war. Five civilians died in one month, 19 in another month, it's 280% increase on an already statistically insignificant number. And where were those civilians who were getting shelled? OH. Well blow me down... they were in the Ukrainian controlled WEST. So they were being hit by, anyone, anyone, Bueller? Yup, missiles from the EAST. In other words, it's the DNR separatists who were lobbing the shells that were killing civilians.
The majority of civilian casualties resulting from shelling and SALW fire were recorded in three areas: Horlivka and Zaitseve; the western parts of Donetsk and settlements to the west (Krasnohorivka, Marinka, Oleksandrivka, Staromykhailivka and Syhnalne); and Dokuchaievsk.
OK, the immediate reaction to facts from the Putin lobby is a bit like Dracula's reaction to garlic mayo, so immediately they get dismissed as Western sources. You'd think the West woul airbrush the numbers down with Russia's version being way way higher, to justify their SMO. Well... Funnily enough, that hasn't happened. Because Russia has its own far more detailed reports that merit far more attention than Lavrov's bitching or Putin's distant history recitals, and here's the one from the FSB office of the Putin-approved DNR Ombudsman, in Donetsk. Dec 2020 monthly report | ombudsman-dnr.ru
Within the period between 1 January and 25 December 2020, in the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic, 105 persons sustained injuries and traumas of varying severities... 70 servicemen of the Republic and 35 civilians Within the period between 1 January and 25 December 2020, in the territory of the DPR, 47 servicemen of the Republic and 5 civilians died as a result of armed aggression by Ukraine.
The 2021 equivalent report is Dec 2021 monthly report | ombudsman-dnr.ru
Within the period between 1 January and 30 December 2021, in the territory of the DPR, 129 people sustained injuries ... 97 servicemen of the Republic and 32 civilians. Within the period between 1 January and 30 December 2021, in the territory of the DPR, 7 civilians and 70 servicemen of the Republic died ...
Example 2: Jan 2022 monthly report | ombudsman-dnr.ru
CASES OF INJURIES AND TRAUMAS OF VARYING SEVERITY AS A RESULT OF ARMED AGGRESSION BY UKRAINE IN THE TERRITORY OF THE DPR FROM JANUARY 01, 2022 TO JANUARY 28, 2022 CIVILIANS: 0 SERVICEMEN OF THE REPUBLIC: 2 IN TOTAL: 2 DEATH TOLL AS A RESULT OF ARMED AGGRESSION BY UKRAINE IN THE TERRITORY OF THE DPR FROM JANUARY 01, 2022 TO JANUARY 21, 2022 CIVILIANS: 0 SERVICEMEN: 1
There's no equivalent data summarised in the Feb 2022 monthly report because the DNR didn't want to advertise the difference between the single digit deaths in that month pre-invasion and the multi-digit numbers after it. Doing so would've conclusively proved to the entire world that Denis Pushilin's "prevent a genocide" plea to Moscow was a staged false flag.
No matter how many times the pro-Putin trolls dredge up this allegation, the FSB's own monitors, and the records of Putin's conversations with Zelenskyy (which are published on the Kremlin website) actually show that Russia's "peacekeeping" argument for military intervention in Ukraine was strongest in 2014-2016, weakened between then and July 2019, and ceased to have any validity after Christmas 2019.