and 7. While not using a gas chamber Putin looks to wipe out the indigenous Ukrainians with missiles, striking non military targets (housing, energy sources, food supply etc...) without a thought.
Unfortunately, if you review your post, you will see that most of your points can be countered by a similar one regarding Zelensky. Who as an actor has charisma, but let's not over-egg the pudding regarding the other qualities you mention.
The only specific point above I'm going to comment on is no. 1, which is sort of repeated in your last sentence. Because the last time I looked, big Z had made a substantial part of the opposition illegal; some democrat he is. Your other points are so general that every politician in difficulty uses one or more of them to distract public opinion from his problems. For instance, Fianna Fáil politicians used to be really, really worried about the Nationalist minority in the north whenever they got themselves into difficulties.
What made Hitler different from say, Mussolini, is the way he waged a no holds barred war against the Soviet Union (20 million dead in the USSR; along with 10 million of Hitler's own people) and how he marked various population groups for extermination (Jews, Gypsies etc). Without these actions Hitler would have been no more than a particularly nasty dictator like Franco, Napoleon or Pinochet. So no, your comparison is not a valid one and you do yourself no favours by making it.
The purpose of this is to try and force Ukraine to negotiate, Putin isn’t trying to wipe out all indigenous Ukrainians. Like a lot of the ideas the Russians have had in this conflict it’s mostly counter productive.
Why would send Jews or UKranians to the gas chambers. Are you out of your mind ? Do you not realise the international outcry if he went down that road. Have you any idea of the cost of building a gas chamber ? And if he did build would it be a step too far for the locals and they might rise up and bring him down.
Putin is achieving the same outcome by landing a missile, a missile there, a bomb here, a bomb there, destroy infrastructure to freeze people to death , etc, etc, etc, etc. he has said that A Ukr is of a lesser species than a Russian.
the gas chamber strategy is ‘a kind of a mass production system’ - done in bulk to keep down costs ‘ per head’
Comparing the above to his preferred system of genocide - by stealth, taking out small numbers at a time, laying mines here and there, trickle effect of actions taken, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. He will get rid of the same number if not more using this approach. He also does not have to round up anybody also. He just kills the ‘subhumans’ in situ
There is also no smell/stench in the air with his present strategy. And he does not have to do anything re getting rid of the bodies or what remains of them . He leaves that for the living relatives/UKranians to do.
Hitler saw Jews etc as inferior and wanted them wiped out. He had a goal and so does Putin, his goal is the taking of Ukraine and to reach that goal he will kill as many civilians as he can, he makes no effort to spare their lives, in fact he goes out of his way to kill them. In my book there is no difference, it's the slaughter of innocent people to get one's way.
Killing innocent people is an idiots way to get a negotiation, history has shown that will only strengthen Ukrainians resolve. The master strategist strikes again.
"What made Hitler different from say, Mussolini, is the way he waged a no holds barred war against the Soviet Union (20 million dead in the USSR; along with 10 million of Hitler's own people) and how he marked various population groups for extermination (Jews, Gypsies etc). Without these actions Hitler would have been no more than a particularly nasty dictator like Franco, Napoleon or Pinochet. So no, your comparison is not a valid one and you do yourself no favours by making it."
10 million of Hitler's own people needs a reference. Have you got it? German casualties in the entire war are estimated to be below 8 million total, about 5 million military
And, you're missing the whole 'WWII' part - France invaded, Czechoslovakia annexed, low countries invaded, the Blitz, ... Franco and Pinochet didn't do that. Mussolini's army couldn't defeat the Ethiopians.
Hitler did more than mark people for extermination. He drove it's implementation by making it palatable for his countryment to accept it. He gets full blame.
First, it was Hitler who sent the Jews to gas chambers. I merely said that the comparison between Putin and Hitler was not a valid one.
You are repeating propaganda. Putin is a b*ll*x, but he has said over and over that the Ukrainians are the same people as the Russians. His war has killed many, but he is not in Hitler's league. He's not in Saudi Arabia's league (in Yemen) or in Israel's league (in Palestine). The US has also killed many many more than he has in Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places. I am concerned about all of these places, whether the aggressor is Russia, the US or anyone else.
But regarding the Ukraine, I'd like to try to avoid the propaganda and find out what is actually happening. This is very difficult to do with so much disinformation emanating from both sides.
Regarding the comparison between Putin & Hitler, didn't the later's military forces, kidnap "Aryan" looking children from occupied territories & attempt to bring them up as Germans.
Wikipedia says over 200,000 children were removed by the Nazi's, so very similar to Putins forces kidnapping Ukrainian children during the 2022 invasion. .
Another addition to the long list of war crimes committed by Russia.
Just waiting now for the denials & or excuses from the usual suspects, the far left & hard right apologists, whatabouters & Putin bots to arrive back on the thread.
"In this case, I'm happy to be on neither side."
So basically, your stance is that as long as it doesn't affect you too much, you don't really care.
If you have conviction, then you would either view Putin as correct is his anti NATO rhetoric and his historic view of Russian lands or you would view Ukraine correct in defending it's territory.
To be neither is to be useless and please don't just say I'm neither because I don't like war. That only gets you so far until the bully comes along and smashes you in the gut.
I doubt Russia will be in a possible to 'smash' us, unless of course WW3 actually starts. Then all bets are off.
"You are repeating propaganda. Putin is a b*ll*x, but he has said over and over that the Ukrainians are the same people as the Russians."
No, he's said over and over again, there is no Ukraine, it's just Russia. So, if you thought of yourself as a Ukrainian, you wouldn't have a place in Putler's world. He doesn't allow for a Ukraine to exist. Only glorious Soviet Union type hegemony is valid, with Putler at the top of it.
Didn’t take long to fall off the fence!
All that has been discussed here. The opposition wanted to hand Ukraine over to Putin. Sure Putin had a puppet as leader for quite a few years. Ukraine wanted to stay independent and so it has been rightly being ridding itself of Russian influence.
It’s also possible (likely) they’ve mobilised and liquidated all of the technical people like electricians, gas plumbers, engineers etc by sending them to the front line and others will have fled the country to avoid that fate so they’re left with an increasingly small number of qualified and technically competent people and probably have a lot of people chancing their arm, trying to carry out repairs on often shoddy infrastructure.
The result will be things failing, fires, explosions and other collapses.
Russia already had a shortage of people - this has made it a thousand times worse.
Then add that you can’t get support from suppliers, spare components, replacement parts, so you do some kludge of a repair…
This is the kind of thing that happens when you’re led by a deranged authoritarian government headed by a dictator.
You’re watching a country morph from semi normality last year into some kind of giant version of North Korea.
Was it George Bush II who told the world they were either with him or against him when he invaded Iraq on the basis of the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" lie? It's easy to say, easy to take sides.
No need to look for the uncomfortable truths when you do because you have God on your side.
What about this? What about that? A standard fall back for supporters/approvers of peadophile Russians.
Nah. That was Afghanistan. Harboring those that had supported the WTC attacks.
Do get a better source for your propaganda now.
(8) Murders and persecutes his political opposition.
Whatever it takes-
Apparently we have all been deceived. It is the Poles who are attacking and pretending it is the Russians-
...
Yes, they stayed 20 years, and if the Afghans had their way, the would be welcome to stay 20 more. The rebuilt Afghanistan, and all its institutions, and fully prepared Afghans to take over when they left. They couldn't have done more. The fact that Afghans themselves failed is not the fault of the US. But of course, its always the fault of Big Bad America .
The 9/11 suspects were mostly Saudis... let that sink in
A good discussion for elsewhere. This thread's about RuZZias actions in the Ukraine.
They shouldn't have wasted a single $ on the worthless black hole that is Afghanistan.
2 person killed, 7 wounded as result of Russian shelling in Kherson
The Holocaust was an industrialized mass murder campaign with the specific purpose of wiping out Jews completely (and various other groups). Putin is bombing Ukraine because he thinks it will force them to negotiate. He isn't trying to eradicate them from existence. He's wrong about it, but that's the purpose of this bombing. Yes it's true he doesn't care how many civilians he kills, but that doesn't mean he's trying to kill them all. This was a botched attempt at a land grab that's gone badly wrong, not some type of ethnic cleansing.
This is nonsense. At the rate Ukrainian civilians are dying it would take many decades for Putin to achieve this goal, he's 70 he won't be around that long. Around 6 millions Jews died in the Holocaust do you really think 6 million Ukrainian civilians will have died by the time this is over?
What I don't understand is why he wanted Ukraine in the first place. What has it got that Russia doesn't?
..
What do Rashist troops actually do with all the toilets and bathtubs?
As to why Putin wanted Ukraine , I'd say it's probably a long list of things all combined ..
Probably high on that list is because he thought he could get away with it ..
Some of it was strategic , strenght in depth , ( there's speculation that he was likely to annex east of the dniper river ,and set up a puppet state to the west ,possibly with Russia holding all the coast,
It's a good way to then exert pressure on Moldova,
It further secures Crimea, and guarentees it's water supply for irrigation...
Stops Ukraine exploiting energy reserves to supply into Europe, (largely accomplished in 2014) ,but this completes the Donbass invaison,
Legacy , Putin got to reestablish novarossia, maybe gets to go down in the history books as a great - like his heros Peter the great and Catherine the great ,