There have been several videos posed online by people who generally have been on the Right that show Ukrainian soldiers torturing and executing Russian POWs.
There has been a subset of the Right that has reflexively decided to come out against Ukraine simply because the Left has gone ball to the wall in support of Ukraine.
These videos are not going to make me feel bad for the Russians.
Here is the thing, and I need to make this perfectly crystal fucking clear:
I do not give a single solitary, tiniest iota of a fuck what Ukrainian soldiers do to Russian soldiers.
Go read your history of the Holodomor, and the Russian Revolution, and the Decembrist Revolution, and the Crimean War before that.
Go read about the Gulags and Highway of Bones.
Go read about how German women were raped en masse by the Red Army as they defeated the Nazis on the eastern front.
The Russians have always engaged in inhumane tactics and atrocities.
The Russian army is currently shooting women and children.
The idea of law abiding gentlemanly combat is really something that only exists in the modern Anglosphere.
So the Ukrainians are committing atrocities against the Russians who committed atrocities against them since Stalin invaded in 1919 all the way through 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Okay, so there are no good guys in this war. Neither side is as pure and clean as the driven snow.
That’s still not a justification for Russia to invade Ukraine or for Ukrainians not to want to repel invaders.
So what that a Ukrainian soldier kneecaps a Russian POW with an AK. That Russian was probably the great grandson of the Russian soldier that shot the Ukrainian soldier’s great grandmother’s siblings and raped her because they were picking kernels of wheat off the dirt after the Red Army took their entire crop yield.
This is me not giving a fuck.
This is why I say I don’t want to put boots on the ground there.
When armies that commit war crimes have war crimes committed against them, I’m just going to sit back with some popcorn and watch from a safe distance.
Americans have somehow gotten the idea that war is like some sort of sporting event with rules, cheerleaders, and people running the concession stands. This is exactly why the left thinks that they can use the US military to impose their will upon the rest of the world, and especially against American citizens who don’t or won’t obey their ridiculous diktats.
The reality is that war is ugly. Especially when the two sides live next door to each other. Families become legitimate targets. Women, children, it won’t matter. Nothing is off limits.
It all comes back around, doesn’t it? Whenever the big one kicks off here, I have a sinking feeling it’s going to be like the first battle of Manassas/Bull Run – people cheering and picnicking expecting a quick, easy victory only to bear witness to horror and bloodshed
Assuming it happened at all.
Let’s not pretend Russia doesn’t have a long history of false-flag attacks and hidden atrocities.
(Not on Ukraine’s side on this. Not on Russia’s side either. ‘I am not on anyone’s side, because no one is really on my side.’)
Toast, is that a Treebeard reference? Nice.
If the Bloods and the Crips get in to a gang war, I’m not picking a side.
If the media and the government start urging me to support the Crips, me pointing out that the Crips are bad people does not automatically make me a supporter of the Bloods.
Until 4 months ago, every single story from Western media about Ukraine revolved around Azov Battalion being full of Nazis and the Ukrainian Government being the most corrupt government in the region.
The shopping mall that got bombed the other day was where a rocket artillery vehicle went after launching a barrage at Russian positions. The Russians followed it with a drone and then lit the building up. There are also pictures of military vehicles being stored in the garage at the mall. It was a legitimate military target but the news stories were “Russians bombed a suburban mall!”
It is my understanding that it’s against the Geneva Convention to hide your military amongst civilians. It’s not okay when Hamas does it and it’s not okay when the Ukrainians do it.
None of that excuses Russia. I just don’t care.
Somehow I strongly doubt a shopping mall in the combat zone is open for business. By that standard, it would be illegal to defend or attack any town or even farmhouse.
My dad fought in WWII. He said they would come across Russians that would be saying the Russian word for friend to the GIs while holding weapons ready to go behind their backs.
Word got around to NOT TRUST THE RUSSIANS when they were obviously up to no good, (like raping a woman in a basement,) as the Russians had been opening fire at American GIs without warning.
Dad said it got to the point if they ran across Russians in similar situations, they would all hold aim at them, and if they even TWITCHED wrong, they’d open fire and kill the lot.
Yeah, no sympathy from me either…
The Ukrainians have discovered the propaganda value of treating POWs well – it encourages the next bunch to surrender – and of encouraging them to call their mommies – it promotes discontent on the home front.
I’m suspecting this is Russian counterpropaganda, but only kinda suspecting. (Given Putin’s record with things like “terrorist” bombings of apartment buildings, one might have a strong suspicion here. On the other hand, it’s a safe bet that the Ukrainian forces include some barbarians who might not care that there’s a camera running.)
I care only so far as to worry one side or the other will cross some arbitrary, unstated line and the cabal running our country will jump in to this crap with both feet
Yeah.. no.
That is a very, very, very stupid take.
You don’t give war crimes a pass simply because someone committed war crimes in the past.
As an American, that stance can bite you in the ass sooner than later. Because you don’t have to look for someones grandfather to find a torturer and do you want to be held responsible for the shit Obama pulled in the middle east?
Well, feel free to go enforce it. Don’t expect the rest of us to help you, though. Given that we don’t know for sure that it’s actually Ukrainians in those Ukrainian uniforms, and how barbaric the Russians have been there and elsewhere, I don’t really give much much of a fuck, either. It’s not as if we held any Russians to account after WWII for their many atrocities and war crimes.
Why should you enforce it? The last thing I want is for the US to enforce “anything” outside it’s borders – the world can only take so much “nation building” 😀
Just saying that it is stupid to dismiss such things because “muh soviets”. That ain’t your granddaddies enemies anymore.
The only thing that matters is what you can do about it. Gnashing your teeth and complaining does nothing.
The only war crime is losing.
I consider atrocities to be a form of mutually assured destruction.
I.e., “you don’t commit atrocities against us and we won’t commit atrocities against you.”
Otherwise an enemy can do anything they want to us an we will always stay our hand.
The Japanese tortured our POWs and we burned women and children when we set Tokio on fire and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Viet Cong used punji sticks on us, we melted their skin off with defoliants and napalm.
I’m happy to start with laws of war but if you break them first I’ll smite your bloodlines from this planet with fire.
One thing I can say for certain – what we see on TV and what is being reported is NOT the reality on the ground. The truth is buried in propaganda on both sides. The American public is fed info through the liberal media, who from what I can tell, are doing everything they can to get involved. They are stoking the sympathy for Ukraine trying to get people to want to intervene. And if we do get involved, and the conflict spreads/and or intensifies, the suffering will grow exponentially. Good intentions do not equate to good outcomes. I agree we have very little interest in this fight. And I agree with J.Kb – I really don’t care what Ukrainians do the Russians. Invaders don’t get the luxury of receiving quarter.
A couple of notes about convenient photos and/or video of war crimes….
There’s the obvious question of who the cameraman was, and why he lived to publish his work.
And then, there’s this memory percolating up from maybe 2004-ish. High-quality photographic evidence of U.S. war crimes was circulating! It was a bunch of photographs of U.S. soldiers raping a local woman!
Except that the “soldiers” weren’t wearing the actual uniforms of any army; they were wearing generic soldier costumes. The backdrop looked wrong for either Iraq or Afghanistan. And then cynics started pointing out signs that it was a porn shoot and not real life at all.
I think someone even managed to find a match for the images in a porn collection from several years earlier.
Also, both sides in this war are surely well acquainted with Pallywood. Expect large amounts of Narrativium.
Judicious use of tineye.com may uncover information reference pictures that purport to be one thing, but are actually another…
War Crimes are a very good way to throw away any moral high ground the Ukrainians have or had.
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These are the 21st Century Russians, not the 20th Century Soviets.
Unless YOU BELIEVE in the doctrine of Corruption of Blood? Are you guilty of the sins of your ancestors? Am I? Are the Jews going to be judged guilty for the Death of Our Savior Jesus Christ in perpetuity? That anti-Semitic lie that was used to justify so many pogroms and killings? Because that is where Corruption of Blood leads. No where good for any body ever.
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I want there Russians to lose. But I will be happy if the Ukrainians and Russians achieve a cease fire and the killing stops. Maybe the Russians taking Mariupol and destroying the neo-nazi AZAOV Battalion will give them an excuse to claim “DE-Nazification” has been successful, and negotiate an end to this war.
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Casual brutality like shooting the legs or kneecaps of bound POWs is sick, sadistic, and very counterproductive. You want your enemy to surrender. You want them to be willing to give up. You also want your soldiers to be treated well if they are captured. This all resembles the worst atrocities of the Nazis and the Soviets in WW2.
Quoting rd because it’s true: Casual brutality like shooting the legs or kneecaps of bound POWs is sick, sadistic, and very counterproductive. You want your enemy to surrender. You want them to be willing to give up. You also want your soldiers to be treated well if they are captured. But I will ad that no Russian not invading Ukraine is getting kneecapped.