Maduro also did not cancel elections, right?

I am unfortunately not well informed on the current and recent state of Venezuela, so I’m not going to try to pretend I can form a well informed opinion on what he’s done. I’ve heard some bad things recently, of course, but the timing makes it feel like justification for what was planned, so it’s definitely a tinted view at best. All I can really say on Maduro is that it was most likely a bad idea for Trump to take him like that. I’m open to learning more, but I unfortunately can’t keep up with everything.

That is under Zelensky, right?

If so, then claims against Putin and Maduro also are wrong, as they also have council-equivalents, ministries of defense, agencies etc.

Hmmm that’s actually a fair question, but I’m not entirely sure they’re equivalent. While the state as a whole certainly takes blame for actions of any of its agents, for individuals, it depends on what they have control over, and while the head of state’s powers are generally extensive in any state, they are generally not complete. For an example from the jurisdiction I’m most familiar from, I wouldn’t blame the US president for a law passed by Congress with a strong enough majority to override a veto because they effectively have no power there.

Speaking more directly on the individuals you mentioned, I’m going to pass on Maduro for the reasons I stated earlier. As for Putin, I think he takes a larger portion of blame than many other heads of state as he has accumulated a significantly larger portion of the state’s power. He has managed, for example, to have the constitution amended so he can retain power well beyond the limits when he first came into power, and the fact that Russia isn’t exactly known for election integrity suggests a wide capacity to corrupt even aspects of the government that should be well outside his control. He may get some blame for things genuinely out of his control, but his corruption does obscure the exact extent of his power.

As for Zelenskyy, this did warrant some more research into who in the government made the call and the hierarchies they operate under. I found this article, which goes into some of the details.

On March 18, 2022, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine decided to suspend, for the duration of martial law, the activities of certain political parties with ties to the Russian Federation. Zelenskyy signed a decree the next day. A week later, the Verkhovna Rada introduced a draft law to amend the existing legislation on political parties, specifically to add a restriction on “justification, recognition as legitimate, [or] denial of armed aggression against Ukraine,” as well as “glorification, justification of actions and/or inaction of persons who carried out or are carrying out armed aggression against Ukraine.” The law was unanimously adopted on May 3rd.

The activities of 11 political parties were affected, all with ties to Russia or in violation of the law. Five other parties were charged with the crime of “helping the occupier.” Per the legislation, lawsuits were filed by the Ministry of Justice in order to obtain judicial bans and forced dissolution. As of June 2023, “the Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal upheld the claims of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine to ban the activities of 18 political parties.” According to the Rule of Law Research Center, “after the execution of the court decision on the ban, the political party loses all its members and all its structural formations, that is, it completely ceases to exist as an association of citizens.”

Okay, so I had to look a bit deeper, and it seems the council serves under the president, but he’s required to include certain people, mainly various ministers of assorted ministries. Looking deeper again, though, most if not all of those ministers do seem to be appointed by the president, even if they do need to be approved by a legislature. Plus, he signed the decree, even if at their suggestion and even if the legislature reinforced it with codified law later. Given that, I admit you are correct that he must share at least some of the blame for the suspension of those parties, and I was incorrect to try to absolve him of all blame.

That said, I don’t disagree with the move. Not only are they under active attack, Russia has a known very recent history of attempting to interfere with and corrupt foreign parties and elections. Combined with their lack of election integrity at home, there is every reason to assume they would attempt to corrupt Ukrainian political parties and use them to amplify Russian propaganda and sway critical votes towards Russia’s goals and away from the will of the people, and there is no reason at all to assume they wouldn’t try. If Russia wants the political allies to be trusted in an emergency, maybe they should try not making allies through corruption and not being the reason their neighbors are having emergencies.

Regarding other claims, I did not see them here.

Well I exclusively pulled out of my own recent comment history, as in within the last month or so.

My understanding was that NATO expanded which baited Russia.

My understanding is that Ukraine is not in NATO and therefore does not deserve to have their sovereignty violated to satisfy Russia’s desire for safety guarantees. It is also my understanding that many of those NATO expansions happened as a direct result of Russian interference with or aggression towards neighbors, e.g. Finland and Sweden joined as a direct response to the invasion of Ukraine, so if Russia wants their neighbors to stop joining alliances to bolster defense against them, maybe they should stop terrorizing neighbors and making them feel unsafe. Whining about NATO expansion is crybully behavior, whining that your future victims saw it coming and teamed up to prevent it.

And there was growing Ukrainian supremacism with Russian speaking regions like Donbass being affected. Have read that their 2019 language law had exceptions for English and European Union’s official languages, while Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish languages did not have any. So, Russian speaking regions of Ukraine having issue is understandable there.

I’m unfamiliar with this topic and would be open to learning more if you have any good sources. From my understanding, Ukraine on the whole was moving away from Russia, so I could see that causing some tensions with the Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians. I usually see far more extreme claims about what’s being done to the eastern Ukrainians, but they can never seem to come up with evidence for the more extreme claims, and this feels grounded enough to be possible, so yeah, if you have sources, I’m open to being convinced.

The Nazi symbols on some Ukrainian soldiers too.

I’ve heard a lot of claims of Ukrainian Nazis, but I’m increasingly convinced it’s a grossly exaggerated issue. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen pictures around here of a couple small groups, but the grand total was like 50 people around some flags or wearing symbols, and whole 50 Nazis is certainly 50 too many, it’s far from the systemic issue people try to claim. I’ve asked for evidence many times now, and at this point, I think I’m more likely to be verbally abused for asking for evidence than to receive even a really shitty piece of “evidence” that doesn’t actually prove anything. The animosity towards an open willingness to consider fresh evidence makes it feel more like Russian propaganda than truth. That said, I’m still open to being proven wrong. Just don’t expect me to assume the whole nation is swarming with them because of something like a picture of a dozen dudes around a flag.

My understanding is that Western imperialist powers wants to isolate Russia, setup NATO bases around them and squeeze them, for not falling in line as a vassal.

My understanding is that many of the more recent states to join NATO did because they saw how Russia treats their neighbors, like Sweden and Finland as mentioned above. It looks an awful lot like Russia bullied their neighbors and then got really upset about it when some of the other neighbors started banding together so they wouldn’t be next. If Russia wants neighbors to stop joining NATO, they should probably stop making their neighbors feel like they’d be safer in NATO.

NATO was getting closer to Ukraine, arranged regime change in 2014 etc.

My understanding is that the general public was moving towards the EU while state officials moved towards Russia, resulting in regime change. I’ve seen poll data from shortly before the 2014 invasion of Crimea that showed there was even a trend in eastern Ukraine of moving away from Russia, which is part of why the referendum to join Russia was seen as so suspicious, not only were they trending away, but then 95.5% voted to join Russia? Combined with the fact that the referendum was held after Russia invaded and gained control of the region and Russia’s lack of election integrity, a vote of 95.5% in Russia’s favor when recent polling data showed they probably wouldn’t even pull a majority just looks like a “fuck you, what are you going to do about it?” vote count.

I’ll try to check out the video later, but I’ve already spent more time than I really had available researching and writing this up.

because your deeply buried post on a week old thread didn’t get any replies

You’re not very good at making assumptions since that’s not it. I’ve only replied asking for evidence to active threads, and I’ve repeatedly gotten responses “attempting” to provide proof. It’s just shit tier proof every single time.

Oh okay. It’s because the military rules the country. That’s why it’s okay to not have democracy anymore.

The military would probably freely give back control if Russia would fuck off back to where they belong. Either way, how exactly do you propose they run the election so that the parts actively being contested by Russia get to vote AND guarantee that Russia, who isn’t even known for election integrity at home, won’t meddle in a foreign election that might get them a submissive leader elected? I’d love to see them have routine elections, and maybe I just haven’t thought it all the way through, but I don’t see how this turns into anything other than either A. An opportunity for Russia to stuff the ballot boxes and force victory by submissive leadership, or B. Disenfranchisement of eastern Ukrainians to protect ballot integrity. I don’t like either option, and I’m guessing you’re extra not fond of option B. Probably pretty keen to let Russia stuff those ballots, though.

And in order to keep the country Ukrainian we need to prevent the people who live there from having any say in what “Ukraine” is.

Almost. To keep it Ukrainian, they need to make sure the active invader with a bad reputation for election integrity doesn’t get a chance to violate the integrity of their election. Since you care so much about their democratic rights, I would think you’d want to be extra sure there wasn’t interference.

Are you so fucking stupid that you’re bringing up your deliberate bad faith as a POSITIVE???

Okay, let me rephrase this on the off chance you’re misunderstanding me. I’m not asking for a super high bar to be cleared. The bar is a tripping hazard in hell, and here you are still trying to limbo dance with the devil. All I want is some evidence that doesn’t show me a tiny fraction and try to make me assume I can extrapolate it to a nation. You know, actual fucking evidence, not a pile of blurry photos with a grand total of 50 people in them, nor a map where none of the fucking points are in Ukraine. I want to see evidence that there are more than 50 Nazis in Ukraine. 50 may still be a lot of Nazis, but it’s not enough to cause the systemic problems people in here like to claim. I am willing to entertain anything you may consider evidence so long as it actually shows a systemic issue. You can decide how to prove that however you want so long as you actually show a systemic issue, not just a handful of raging assholes with a camera and a flag. A few pictures of small groups of Nazis in Ukraine only proves that they are unfortunately not extinct, not that they are the widespread issue you claim they are.

Meanwhile, as I try repeatedly to engage in the topic in good faith, despite your claims to the contrary, you do nothing but belittle and insult me. Rather than turning me to your side, it only further convinces me not only that you are utterly without proof, but that you know the claims you are making cannot be backed by proof. You insult me not because it’s genuinely deserved, but because you’re desperately trying to steer the topic away from the fact that we both know you’re 100% full of shit, at least on the topic of Ukrainian Nazis being the systemic, pervasive issue you claim.

You could have just as easily latched onto my mentioning the ethnic cleansing.

I mean, that’s a key trait of the Nazis. I figured it kinda came together, but alright, I could have been a little more specific and brought it up sooner, but I was really hoping today would be the day someone can actually find the Nazi evidence. Besides, if Nazis are the ones doing the ethnic cleansing, it should be trivial to prove there are Nazis, right?

You could have just as easily latched onto the illegal western coup that stole democracy from Ukraine in the first place.

Tried to go down that road with people several times. Never seems to go anywhere. Everybody likes to call it a coup, but nobody can prove it’s anything other than butthurt that Ukraine moved towards the West.

You could have just as easily stayed on the original topic of conversation and responded to the actual fucking point about how the nazi government you love so much took away the mere trappings of democracy in that country.

You mean how elections are suspended because they’re under martial law? As far as I’m concerned, that’s Russia’s fault. Ukraine is already bound by their constitution, and it would be extremely difficult to change in the middle of war. Ukraine’s choice was to either enact martial law and fight back, losing elections temporarily, or submit to Russia and lose Ukrainian elections permanently. If you want them to be able to vote, get pissed at Russia. They’re free to fuck off back to their own land any time they’d like.

That would be too honest and in good faith for trash like you to engage in.

Oh fucking please, your arrogant ass is just trying to cover up the fact you can’t prove a god damn thing. You’re raging over there like a child that refuses to accept their bedtime because you got called on your slop, and since there’s no real defense of it, you gotta go on the offensive on me directly.

You latched onto the existence of the nazi regime because you have practiced being obstinate and intransigent on this subject. You made it absolutely clear that you wouldn’t even engage in this tangent of yours in good faith by bragging about how no one could possibly convince you and refusing to allow a condition up front that would satisfy your requirements for proof.

My guy, you know what evidence people have managed to bring me? A map of monuments in Europe, of which almost none were in Ukraine. A photo of one dude with a blurry patch next to Zelenskyy that they swear is Nazi symbolism if you squint hard enough. A photo of like two dozen dudes in military-ish gear around a flag that, while certainly concerning, is in no way indicative of a systemic problem. A couple more photos of even smaller groups. I’m not being unreasonable for not calling that definitive proof.

I’m not denying there are Nazis in Ukraine entirely, I’m sure there’s at least some just as there are basically everywhere even if the exact flavor if Nazi varies slightly.

Hell, I didn’t even set conditions on proof. I just said nobody can ever find anything that actually proves shit. They wanna show me some of the bullshit I mentioned early that proves nothing other than that Ukrainian Nazis aren’t entirely extinct. Which, for the record, is a shame, they should be.

You’re an intellectual coward. And that’s exactly how a nazi argues by the way.

You wanna talk intellectual cowardice? Let’s look at your personal attacks. Let’s look at how you came unglued on me the instant I actually requested evidence of your assertion of Nazis in complete good faith, I was ready to learn something. Let’s look at how, in spite of all that, in spite of all your rage over these alleged Nazis, you still won’t even try to find a single shred of genuine evidence

And then, because I won’t buy your story at the very first mention of it, because I won’t take the flimsiest of evidence and run with it, I’m an intellectual coward and a Nazi? I’d say you’re a fucking clown, but frankly, that’d be an insult to clowns. You’re full of shit, I know it, you know it, but you just can’t admit it, especially in public. Do yourself a favor and stop replying. You just embarrass yourself acting like a petulant child.

No, it’s not. It’s a malicious goal with good branding. It’s not about protecting the children. It’s about massively invading our privacy, identifying verifiably human data, and laying the groundwork to tie all our online activity to our real identities.

I wouldn’t be surprised if support comes from a plugin rather than Vim itself. Plugins can do a LOT in Vim.

Of course, Vim also has a crazy base feature set, so I guess I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it did have base support.

Do you think it’s been so long that I don’t remember my own post?

I dunno what your deal is, but yeah, you seem to be struggling to keep up with your own bullshit. Two out of three paragraphs were about Ukrainian Nazis, and the third was questioning how I could be cool with that.

Honestly, this just feels like a pathetic attempt to dodge the fact that I was willing to consider proof. It was all fine and dandy to talk about Ukrainian Nazis, but as soon as the topic of proving Ukrainian Nazis are a systemic problem came up, you can’t fathom how we got onto this topic, and clearly I’m just distracting from the real topic somehow by expressing an interest in having your claims verified. You know god damn well it’s a lie, so as soon as evidence comes up, you vehemently disengage from the topic and try to paint me as an idiot and a Nazi apologist. Where my Nazi apologia was just to say that I’d be totally open to looking at evidence they’re a real problem if only someone could actually provide it.

Fucking hilarious you want to call me a Nazi apologist for having the audacity to question an imperialist aggressor’s narrative. It’s obvious your fragile little ego can’t handle getting called out for the shit you spew, so you result to personal attacks like a child.

My guy, your entire fucking post was about Ukrainian Nazis. So I responded and discussed Ukrainian Nazis. What the fuck do you want to talk about if it’s not Ukrainian Nazis, and why didn’t you just say that in the first place? If it’s such a tangent, it’s one you went down and I followed, but now it’s my fault we’re here somehow. And once again, there’s still no evidence of the Nazis being widespread, so this just feels like trying to dodge the fact that someone actually called for evidence.

Tangent? Your post was about Ukrainian Nazis. Let’s look back at it.

If you cared about the will of the people you wouldn’t have violently overthrown their government and installed a regime of literal nazis to murder and suppress the population you pretend to weep for.

I apparently don’t care about them because I’m not resisting this Nazi regime that nobody can prove is anywhere NEAR extensive enough to qualify as an actual regime.

But then again if you cared about the people of Ukraine AT ALL you wouldn’t be okay with them living under a nazi regime LET ALONE happily giving those nazis absolute power to decide when and if they ever give up absolute power.

Again, I’m allegedly terrible for not caring about the alleged Nazis.

So like all right wingers, I have to wonder. Where are you on the evil/stupid continuum? Do you espouse your views because you are fully self aware as a devoted nazi partisan? Or are you tied for the dumbest person to have ever lived?

Basically a bunch of questioning if my tolerance of the Nazis is stupidity or evil.

So… You ranted about Ukrainian Nazis. That was the central focus of your post. I then claimed that while I have repeatedly tried to be open to the possibility, nobody can ever seem to muster evidence that it’s anything more than a few relatively small groups, at least on a nation scale, being grossly exaggerated.

And then you act confused and treat me like I’m going off on a tangent to dodge some greater point, you absolute clown.

Which is the obvious ‘Russian propaganda’ shared here that you mention? Do list some.

• Zelenskyy canceled elections. He didn’t, they’re constitutionally forbidden under martial law, and he’s bound to the constitution. If you want Ukrainians to have elections again, get Putin to fuck off. They either had to enact martial law and lose elections temporarily or be conquered and lose Ukrainian elections permanently.

• Zelenskyy banned the opposition parties. He didn’t, that was a national defense council. Specifically, parties with active ties to Russia, the country actively invading them, were temporarily suspended only while under martial law, so they’ll be back once treasonous aid to the invader is off the table.

• Russia invaded because they were being attacked by people coming over the border from Ukraine. This was a wild claim because I can’t even find evidence that Russia claimed this, and when asked, they provided a bunch of articles about the 2014 “coup” that didn’t mention the alleged attacks.

• The vote to join Russia from… I think Crimea happened before the invasion. Might be mixing up events here, but I don’t have time to dig more up right now. But it didn’t. It didn’t happen until Russia had already seized the region, which is relevant because we cannot trust Russia to run fair elections, especially for a vote like that.

This is just what I found by glancing through my recent comment history to find recent claims made in Lemmy.ml posts. These are ones I actually had to verify myself, and all of them were trivially easy to prove are incorrect. All of these claims are extremely easily verifiable lies in favor of Russian goals. I’m not saying the people I heard it from are intentionally spreading propaganda. At least some portion are undoubtedly just people who have fallen for sweet sounding lies about perceived enemies they already hate, basically falling for confirmation bias.

You’re the one who made the claim the Ukrainians are living under a Nazi regime. I basically said I’ve seen evidence that there are Ukrainian Nazis in existence, but nobody can ever muster evidence that it’s systemic or anything other than a few groups that, while disturbingly large, are nowhere near big enough to represent the majority. I’ve tried to invite proof several times, but I’m increasingly convinced it’s bullshit.

I’ve seen a lot of claims of Nazis in Ukraine, and to be totally fair, there have been pictures of disturbing large groups around symbols, but nobody ever seems able to muster any genuine evidence there’s a systemic problem. Everything anyone has ever been able to show me has attempted to make big leaps to stretch scant evidence into more than it is. I’m open to being proven wrong, but the last several times I offered the chance, I got the same load of half assed bullshit. I’ve tried several times to give the claim a chance, but it increasingly sounds like a tiny grain of truth blown up into a mountain of Russian butthurt.

I’ll try to dig it back up later, having a bit of trouble finding it again because modern search is shit and heavily favors tangential at best recent events even with clear requests.

As for the vote and in Crimea, as I’ve been saying, there’s extremely reasonable doubt of authenticity given the vote was held after Russia seized the area. Russia held an election in which the result was what Russia wanted by margins in gross excess of what recent polling suggested the people actually wanted.

About Donbass, I don’t really remember the specifics at this moment, but I recall getting into it with someone about that topic a few weeks ago. If you wanna look back in my comment history probably 2-4 weeks, I found sources for the poll, various issues with the Crimean referendum, and some stuff on Donbass I don’t recall at the moment.

Where is imperialism lauded?

Russia in Ukraine is a great example. The amount if very easily disproven Russian propaganda I see spread in here is insane, and it gets eaten up because it gives people a chance to rail against The West. And I’m not saying the railing is undeserved. I’m just saying that people lap up very obvious bullshit to get an opportunity to participate.

some people do think that Russia was baited into acting.

If you think Russia acted out of anything other than selfish interest, I have a bridge to sell you.

“it wasn’t close therefore it is fake”

No, it was fake because polling data that was relatively recent to the election was in gross conflict with the results. Imagine you lived somewhere with a large expat American population. Imagine that polling specifically in the region full of American expats showed that the clear majority did NOT want to join the US and that the trend over time is for the sentiment to get STRONGER, not weaker. Now imagine the US invades, a referendum on secession and annexation by the US is held almost immediately, and the vote is exactly what the US wants, the people increasingly did NOT want, and they claimed the vote was 95% in their favor. You’d never buy that load of bullshit, but if Russia does it, and it’s perceived to be against The West…

I mean… If the election has a really high chance of not genuinely reflecting the will of the people because an outside force is guaranteed to attempt to interfere with the election… Yeah, it’s kinda not the time because you’re going to choose based on the will of the invader, not the will of the people.

You said nothing for me to really refute, other than a round about way of saying you think in generally full of shit. I made an actual claim, you made a vague dodge that doesn’t actually address it, I pointed that out.

Oh, please, if you think Russia isn’t interested in conquering and expanding, I’d say I have a bridge to sell you, but you probably already got cleaned out.

Translation: I call you on your shit too directly, gonna disengage to save face.

Ah, yes, the chess playing pigeon strategy. Strut confidently, knock pieces around, shit on the board, declare victory.

Every article you shared is about the coup. I’m asking about the part where you said people were attacking Russia from Ukraine. A coup is an internal thing for a state, not an attack on a foreign state. Maybe that will help you find something relevant, you illiterate dipshit.

lmao okay