Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Nice rant but I am not sure what you are trying to say. All my points are valid, Putin is a criminal to the world but above else, his people.
I was agreeing with you. We are all saying the same thing, Only a total psycho or a Putin agent can have a different opinion here.
 
I do not condone blanket sanctions to any country, be it yemen, north korea, etc.

It's inhumane to make people suffer. There are people that need medication, food etc and unable to do so due to the crippling sanction.

By all means take them to war, kill and fight but leave the civilians alone.
Putin is fully in control of when their suffering ends.
 
I do not condone blanket sanctions to any country, be it yemen, north korea, etc.

It's inhumane to make people suffer. There are people that need medication, food etc and unable to do so due to the crippling sanction.

By all means take them to war, kill and fight but leave the civilians alone.

If you do that though you can create far worse conditions in the future. Sanctions that affect the public are often very important in bringing about regime change so you have to use them sometimes. Especially as the alternatives are do nothing or go to war.
 
I do not condone blanket sanctions to any country, be it yemen, north korea, etc.

It's inhumane to make people suffer. There are people that need medication, food etc and unable to do so due to the crippling sanction.

By all means take them to war, kill and fight but leave the civilians alone.

Idealistic opinion not grounded in the unfortunately harsh reality of what is required here. The alternatives are do nothing, or go to war. Sanctions are the best bet from the limited number of shitty options. Doing nothing can result in greater loss of life and further invasions from Russia, and going to war would produce a disastrous and even potentially cataclysmic death toll.

It’s fine taking a contrarian opinion, but it carries weight only if you have a viably effective alternative. Rather than just an ideological objection. Do you?
 
Idealistic opinion not grounded in the unfortunately harsh reality of what is required here. The alternatives are do nothing, or go to war. Sanctions are the best bet from the limited number of shitty options. Doing nothing can result in greater loss of life and further invasions from Russia, and going to war would produce a disastrous and even potentially cataclysmic death toll.

It’s fine taking a contrarian opinion, but it carries weight only if you have a viably effective alternative. Rather than just an ideological objection. Do you?

So you agree the sanction on Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Cuba?

Or only if it aligns with your country's view?

where... or "Who" draws the line?
 


Not surprising when you know that the Soviet Union invaded those islands AFTER Japan announced its surrender. In other words and by definition, the land was annexed illegally after a ceasefire and then Japanese citizens were forced out of the land. No wonder why there is no formal peace agreeement between Japan and the Soviet/Russians since.

This is very old news in the region. But take another look at that map. If you are South Korea or Japan, you'd think a very strong alliance with the western democracies would be bottom line essential. And Japan is usually in line with more hawkish US defense and security thinking. But the current South Korean ruling party, which could be removed next week, has yet to get the message (although belatedly joining a few sanctions). It's just spent 4 years lickspittling China and NK. Their presidential candidate even blamed the Russian invasion on Zelenskyy's political immaturity and he could yet win. It's such prevarications and splitting that gives Russia hope. India, Israel, most of the middle east, etc see the invasion as irritating or an opportunity for learning objective lessons or a strategic opportunity. But apart from Japan, Australia and a couple of others, it could be that most of this world is at least in spirit party to the idea of seeing a pushback war against the west succeed.

I almost forgot about the South Korean presidential election. We will see how this will pan out.
 
So you agree the sanction on Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Cuba?

Or only if it aligns with your country's view?

where... or "Who" draws the line?

Are you asking me if I agree with every case of sanctions ever brought? You may as well ask me if I agree with every case of military action, or every vote in parliament. My understanding was that we were taking about the war in Ukraine, and the sanctions on Russia. Which yes, I absolutely agree with. But because there are other cases of sanctions I may not agree with, does not mean I disagree with sanctions being used. It’s dependent on the circumstances and absolutely has to be judged case by case. I am lost as to the point you are trying to make.

Sanctions have been applied properly and improperly in the past in my view, and in this case I believe properly.
 
Are you asking me if I agree with every case of sanctions ever brought? You may as well ask me if I agree with every case of military action, or every vote in parliament. My understanding was that we were taking about the war in Ukraine, and the sanctions on Russia. Which yes, I absolutely agree with. But because there are other cases of sanctions I may not agree with, does not mean I disagree with sanctions being used. It’s dependent on the circumstances and absolutely has to be judged case by case. I am lost as to the point you are trying to make.

Sanctions have been applied properly and improperly in the past in my view, and in this case I believe properly.

My point is that, if "specifically targeting civilians" is wrong, it doesn't matter which country did it, or against which country. Wrong is wrong.

You can't claim "oh it's wrong, but in this case it's against Putin so it's a-ok"

This is a very slippery slope.
 
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27931&LangID=E



GENEVA (8 December 2021) - Unilateral sanctions hurt all and are particularly harmful to the human rights of women, children and other vulnerable groups within the populations of countries targeted by the sanctions, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said today.

“We already know that unilateral sanctions prevent the populations of targeted countries from fully enjoying their human rights; and that the impact is especially severe for vulnerable groups,” said Alena Douhan, the Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.

“Besides women and children, these groups include indigenous people, people with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced persons, migrants, people living in poverty, the elderly, people affected by severe diseases and others who confront particular challenges in society,” she said.

Vulnerable groups are often those who rely and depend the most on social or humanitarian aid, but the aid very often can’t be supplied because of sanctions, despite existing exemptions. “The complexity of sanctions regulations, combined with extraterritorial enforcement and heavy penalties, have led to widespread over-compliance with unilateral sanctions by entities out of fear of the consequences of inadvertent violations breaches,” Douhan said.

“Because of this, banks are reticent to finance aid or process transactions for humanitarian purchases, and transport companies refuse to handle shipments of humanitarian goods. Humanitarian NGOs have sometimes stopped operating in sanctioned countries because of these difficulties.”

The Special Rapporteur notes that sanctions often include fuel embargoes and prevent targeted countries from getting parts to maintain essential life-supporting infrastructure, such as the food, water, sanitation, health and electricity supply systems. “This is the case when a country can’t obtain fuel, medicines and medical equipment can’t be delivered and people can’t reach hospitals for medical care, including for tests and control in the course of pregnancies, for delivering babies, for vaccination of children and getting medical aid.

“Besides impeding the transport of people and goods like food, the lack of fuel and the inability to get spare parts hurts electric power generation, preventing electric pumps from supplying water for drinking and sanitation,” she said.

“Women in particular are impacted heavily. They are the ones that often have to go to obtain clean water for their families, and when sanctions cause economic activity to decline they are typically the first to lose their jobs and be targeted by traffickers for sexual exploitation.”

She further noted that this can cause a country targeted by unilateral sanctions to slide backward on the development scale, and warned that sanctions may be a major threat preventing targeted countries from achieving the universal Sustainable Development Goals that are meant to improve the lives of everyone, and especially the lives of women, girls, elderly, people with severe or chronic diseases.

“I reiterate my call, from a human rights point of view, to the United Nations, NGOs and other humanitarian actors to focus attention actively on vulnerable groups in sanctioned countries through ongoing monitoring and assessments of their human rights consequences,” Douhan said. “I urge them to intensify their engagement through collaborating where possible and developing greater solidarity to ensure that the necessary humanitarian support gets through.

“Last but not least, I call on States and Governments that impose unilateral sanctions to lift or minimize them as required by international law; to take all measures necessary to avoid the adverse effect on human rights of unilateral sanctions; to take all necessary measures to avoid over compliance with sanctions regimes; to provide broader exemptions, simpler procedures, and to facilitate, in spite of sanction regimes, the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
 
I do not condone blanket sanctions to any country, be it yemen, north korea, etc.

It's inhumane to make people suffer. There are people that need medication, food etc and unable to do so due to the crippling sanction.

By all means take them to war, kill and fight but leave the civilians alone.

The countries you are talking about all have some sort of mandatory conscription during emergencies.

This means that by going full war you are killing civilians that are forced to be soldiers.

Basically, you cannot wage war, economic or military, without the civilian population suffering severely. It is a nice ideal but not possible.
 
My point is that, if "specifically targeting civilians" is wrong, it doesn't matter which country did it, or against which country. Wrong is wrong.

You can't claim "oh it's wrong, but in this case it's against Putin so it's a-ok"

This is a very slippery slope.

When you decontextualise any action from the situation it occurs in, it is extremely easy to make ideological dogmatic statements like “wrong is wrong”. Unfortunately, all actions occur within a context, so statements like yours aren’t even worth the paper they are written on, or the eye movement required to read them.

It’s either intentionally dogmatic, or unintentionally simple minded.
 
So out of interest now that Russia are banned from SWIFT but joining whatever the alternative is, what will that mean? Is their economy actually in danger or that all bluster and they'll be okay? They have oil n things, can't be that bad
 
War does all of this but worse by a factor of 1000.

I was about to say the same. Do those people even realize that we are in a situation where sanctions is the better choice compared to waging war? I can hold a sign that says "I'm with stupid", and the UN would appropriately deserve being pointed at after reports like that.
 
So out of interest now that Russia are banned from SWIFT but joining whatever the alternative is, what will that mean? Is their economy actually in danger or that all bluster and they'll be okay? They have oil n things, can't be that bad

They need SWIFT to fund things like trade and the alternatives won't go anywhere near filling the void from what I read.
 
When you decontextualise any action from the situation it occurs in, it is extremely easy to make ideological dogmatic statements like “wrong is wrong”. Unfortunately, all actions occur within a context, so statements like yours aren’t even worth the paper they are written on, or the eye movement required to read them.

It’s either intentionally dogmatic, or unintentionally simple minded.

What if the 3 years old with cancer is Russian? Her meds are sanctioned so she can't get it?

Oh, it's ok. It's Russia

It's not whataboutism, for me civilian is civilian, russian, Korean, Yemeni, American, Iraqis, civilian are civilian.
 
I think you misunderstood me, I wasn't saying China has the strongest economy. I was mentioning how China may think twice about wanting to put a toll on the current economy by joining forces with Russia seeing as it's the country that has had the most growth in the same economy.
Your use of the word economy is very confusing.
 
Germany will send another 2700 anti air missiles named „Strela“ to aid Ukraine, some old ground to air defense system, but I guess the more the better. Those are of DDR stocks and seem to do their job in the whole world till today, so nothing highly sophisticated yet easy to work with, which seems reasonable. Funny thing is, it‘s of sovjet production.
 
Well done Germany. Well bloody done. Am sure the cnut is feeling the heat. Hope he never makes it out of his bunker and lets the world live in peace.
 
I get that war is expensive, but can’t Putin just seize whatever he wants (food, oil, war supply etc) from his home based companies and claim it’s for the greater good?
 
I get that war is expensive, but can’t Putin just seize whatever he wants (food, oil, war supply etc) from his home based companies and claim it’s for the greater good?

if he wants to accelerate his economy crashing and then flatlining for much longer than after the fall of the sovjet Union, he can

and cause civil unrest etc.
 
What if the 3 years old with cancer is Russian? Her meds are sanctioned so she can't get it?

Oh, it's ok. It's Russia

It's not whataboutism, for me civilian is civilian, russian, Korean, Yemeni, American, Iraqis, civilian are civilian.
Sanctions are a non lethal way of waging war.
Yes, The Russian people will suffer, but to a much lesser degree than of bombs were dropped.
There's a far smaller chance of anyone losing their life through these sanctions than of bombs were dropped.

What would be the alternative to these sanctions? What would be a way to keep every citizen safe in both Russia and Ukraine?
 
What if the 3 years old with cancer is Russian? Her meds are sanctioned so she can't get it?

Oh, it's ok. It's Russia

It's not whataboutism, for me civilian is civilian, russian, Korean, Yemeni, American, Iraqis, civilian are civilian.
Even though sanctions are in place on Russia it doesn’t include medicine and food so they will be fine. Ukraine are the ones who will be struggling soon to get supplies as I am assuming one of Putin tactics will be to control what goes into the major cities and slowly cut off their supplies.
 
It seems like there are a lot of people joining up for fighting the russians in Ukraines foreign legion if these posts are any indication:



 
The civilians from both Ukraine and Russia are the ones suffering. Do you really think Putin and his Oligarch will eat less due to the sanctions or have their internet , water, heat or power cut off? I really sympathize with the everyday Russian people and to some extend those kids that they sent to war. Everyone is suffering due to the choice of one mad dictator. It is alarming to see that in this day and age, there are no effective safety checks for one mad dictator with nukes planning to invade another country.
 
Makes me want to sing “Ukraine Foreign Legion” to this tune:


Yeah it's great news especially since Russia will definitely think "oh look at that brave civilians from Nato countries armed with Nato weapons who are definitely casual brave civilians and not trained Nato solders". This will definitely deescalate the crisis.

And before someone says to me Sweden is not a Nato member, I know that but those Foreign Legion solders comes from all Europe including Britain for which Johnson said that they will arm every man who volunteers to fight in those legions.