The Anti-Corruption Foundation, which criticizes Putin and is reputed to be the best independent pollster in Russia, just did a poll in Germany & France. It asked: who's responsible for starting the Ukraine war?
Here's Germany's result:
Here are the polling numbers from France:
It appears that both in Germany and France, more people believe that the US is responsible for starting the war in Ukraine than believe that Putin is responsible.
Leonid Volkov of the Anti-Corruption Foundation claims that these numbers show how effective Putin's propaganda is in Germany & France.
This is a laughable explanation of the numbers given that populations of Germany and France are exposed to US propaganda to a far greater degree than they are exposed to Russian propaganda. In fact, much of Russian media is even banned in EU at this point.
One can only imagine what these numbers would look like if the populations of Germany and France were not being bombarded with US government propaganda about the origins of the Ukraine war.
Why are we pretending that the Ukrainian government isn't complicit too? The people they put in power after the coup aren't mindless slaves.
Funny how you complain about "punishing Ukraine" for these things but you suggest that Russia should have just let Ukraine genocide the Russian minority, annex the DPR and LPR and just continue with even more escalations, you know, the things that were stopped by invading Ukraine in 2022.
if someone accused you of trying to 'annex' your own arm and leg and then tried to dismember you with an axe in order to prevent you from genociding your own cells, i'd probably side against the axe-wielding psycho too.
DPR and LPR have literally physically always been part of ukraine for as long as ukraine even existed
i'm open to hearing about exactly how and when any 'genocide' was happening against the people who lived there, though - except the bit where russia showed up and started killiing people, of course, because that ObViOuSLy dOeSn'T cOuNt, RiGhT???
Liberals are obsessed with these horrible analogies. It's not "their own arm and leg" to begin with, they were supposed to go through a constitutional reform and grant more autonomy to Donetsk and Lugansk:
"11. Conducting constitutional reform in Ukraine, with the new constitution coming into force by the end of 2015, providing for decentralization as a key element (taking into account the characteristics of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with representatives of these areas), as well as the adoption of the permanent legislation on the special status of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in accordance with the measures specified in Note [1], until the end of 2015. (See Notes)"
They did not do that, they did not go through a constitutional reform to grant Donetsk and Lugansk what was agreed to, instead they kept violating the ceasefire, encroaching on their territory and continued to escalate tensions with the help of NATO, so DPR and LPR are completely in the right to declare independence and join the Russian Federation in my view.
Watch the 2016 film "Donbass" by Anne-Laure Bonnel, to see the things people are referring to about the violence there over the past several years. Warning that if you look into what was going on in Donbass during those years, you are going to see a lot of footage of people dead/dying in the street with their limbs blown off. This film shows a bit less of that than others do.
Also here is a clip from the documentary, with footage of the 2014 burning of the trade union building in Odessa, where Ukranian nationalists burned the building down and beat and shot the people who jumped out of the windows to avoid burning. The people in the building were Russian speakers who were protesting a ban on Russian language, and took refuge in the trade union building when the right-wing nationalists showed up. The person being interviewed is a former Ukranian soldier from Donestk, who left the military because he didn't want to join in the violence enacted on the region. Warning that you will briefly see bodies of people who burned to death.
You know, in these conversations I frequently find myself needing g to remind the other person that countries aren't people, but this takes it to the next level. This analogy is completely disconnected from the real world and the independent humanity of the people involved.
National borders mean you can genocide freely inside.
You heard it here folks
What a complete stupid reason "DPR AND LRP hAvE BeEn PaRT oF UKraInE fOR aS LoNG aS uKraIne eVen ExIstEd" This sentence is complete absurdity and stupidity, these regions have always had russian speaking people before ukraine even existed as you state, so in fact they actually have a legitimate claim to secede from ukraine from an historical analysis. Otherwise you're spouting revanchist shite which you liberals so often accuse russians of doing. Seriously what does ukraine have that can connect it to these russian speaking areas? Because owning land in the past ≠ legitimate claim to these lands.
Ukraine has no legitimate reason for attacking a democratic process of these 2 regions from seceding, not one. And everything that ukraine is currently doing is in complete violation against the basic UN laws of freedom to self-determination.
It's exactly as invalid as any of Russia's "claims" that it's their "blood and soil". Except with even less historical precedent.