Obviously there never is a "clean" war where only military is being hit with surgical strikes. Armies always promise that (like the US did in its invasions), but usually don't deliver.
I also don't won't to take sides here, I merely point out that the information is rather one-sided.
I personally also can not verify for example of that children's hospital had military stuff going on or not.
The Ukrainian MoD does release estimates of Russian losses, and they're probably fluffed 2-3x but not more than that. I think part of their strategy of appearing like a modern Western country involves actually seeming truthful unlike Russia/China.
While technically true, it is evident that people in the west have some mental barriers on visiting RUnet.
> widely reported on in the west
That doesn't seem to be the case. Quite a lot gets omitted or even blatantly misrepresented. People even have trouble verifying sources, because they are afraid of "Russian propaganda", despite the fact that their news medium has just referenced this particular piece of "propaganda".
It also could be a general feature of war or people quarrelling that both parties have different versions of events. They could even both be right in a sense, even if from afar their positions seem to contradict each other.
Kurosawa's movie Rashomon comes to mind.
Among unbiased observers with a grasp of the situation it is clear that Russia could be doing much more damage to Ukrainian cities, and we can only speculate as to why that is. They could be trying to save munitions, they could be doing it for public relations purposes, they could be doing it because they want relatively intact cities if they eventually succeed in taking over Ukraine, or any number of other reasons.
The one thing you can be sure about, is that anyone who claims to know with certainty what is happening in the war zone, or what the "true" motivation of Russia is at the current time, can be safely disregarded as someone who is either confused or pushing an agenda.
There aren't "actors" nor "both sides" in that war. There is Russian Fascist regime which is conducting genocidal war in Ukraine to erase Ukrainian ethnic and national identity. And there is Ukrainian people fighting for their survival. The propaganda comes only from Russia, as compare to Russian propaganda (say publishing 10-20x smaller Russian losses than they really are among other obvious lies) the inconsistencies in Ukrainian information (say publishing 1.5x larger Russian losses than they really are) are just that - inconsistencies natural for a country being invaded and bombed by overwhelming military force.
>This is just objective reality and the nature of war
That is your reality. The reality of Russian propaganda. "We lie and they must be lying too". A reality of the people who couldn't understand how normal civilized people think and behave.
>Among unbiased observers with a grasp of the situation it is clear that Russia could be doing much more damage to Ukrainian cities
nice. I see that new propaganda spin getting peddled by several pro-Russian "propagandons" like you. Whole world - "You, Russians, are committing grievous war crimes by the indiscriminate bombing of civilians". And the new Russian response - "Russia could be doing much more damage to Ukrainian cities. Be grateful that it isn't", and that is a lie too as Russia seems to be running at the maximum of the available hardware.
Stringing together lists of bad words like fascism, genocide is not an argument. Neither is calling people propagandists. If this is the level of discussion you want r/worldnews is the place to be nowadays.
Current Russian regime is fascist according to the definition, and this is how it called everyday in Ukraine and Baltic countries.
>Neither is calling people propagandists.
Low moral peddling of pure Russian propaganda makes a person not just propagandist, it makes that person a "propagandon" - used in Russian combination of "propagandist" and an offensive for "condom". The guy has no shame with his "we could be bombing civilians more". The people like him is the base of Russian public support of that genocide, and thus they are actually willing participants in it. There is no "level of discussion" here. They are killing people right now. If anything HN should probably like the rest of the world block Russia.
>If this is the level of discussion you want r/worldnews is the place to be nowadays.
try it yourself as your post contains mostly empty incorrect charges without any factual/references/etc support.
This is a place for having genuine discussions. If you don’t want that… the rest of the internet is currently a Russian bash-fest. So you’re welcome to partake, but remember that those that splash around in mud get dirty.
600 civilians and 1200 soldiers killed doesn’t satisfy anybody’s definition of genocide. Especially since the average HN user doesn’t know under which conditions those deaths happened. This might yet turn into a genocide, but that seems unlikely.
Finally, Russia is an authoritarian state. It is not totalitarian, although it could become so as a consequence of this war.
you'd be right if it were a typical "culture war". Unfortunately a "culture war" stops being just a "culture" one and the discussion doesn't exist anymore when one side starts to actually kill people based on their ideological viewpoint they had expressed in the "culture war". Since the moment killing starts advancing the supporting viewpoint is materially supporting the killing.
>600 civilians and 1200 soldiers killed doesn’t satisfy anybody’s definition of genocide.
Only in Mariupol 2200 people have already been killed.
Anyway, I already shown that the situation satisfies UN definition of genocide https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678544 . As well as other people shown it too, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30645290 .
As you insist on your personal number based definition - i'll repeat the request, just for argument sake, for you to please state the numbers required according to your definition.
No. Those are just confirmed. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says:
> OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, especially in Government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Izium (Kharkiv region), and Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region) where there are allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.
https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/ukraine-civilian-casual...
All signs so far indicate that it’s a war of conquest with the aim on putting space between Russia and NATO and potentially controlling additional natural resources.
You seem to have failed to check the genocide definition https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml . Let me copy it here :
" Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; "
Putin explicitly announced that the main goal of that war is his final solution to "Ukrainian question" - anybody not displaced is either to be converted/subjugated by stripping off their ethical and national identity or to be killed for resistance. That is exactly by the book of the Hitler's solution for Slavic people on USSR territories back then.
Flinging accusation of being "pro-Russian" at people who acknowledge the fog of war and the indisputable fact that there is propaganda coming out from all sides of this war doesn't bolster your position.
>The propaganda comes only from Russia
The Ghost of Kiev begs to differ.
It is you who are creating additional fog of war by raising unfounded doubts about reasonable sources of information and by attempting thus to decrease the doubt about the sources of total disinformation like the official Russian propaganda. It isn't an academical debate. That fog of war is one of the tools employed by Russia in their genocidal war in Ukraine and by building it up you're directly participating in it.
>The Ghost of Kiev begs to differ.
That is all you could come up with ?! Looks to me like a profound lack of compassion and lack of basic humanity on your side. Somehow you're able to suggest that it is 2 comparable things:
- outright denying of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and thus providing material support for, committing of the war crimes of the massive bombing of cities
- people being bombed in their city inventing a legend that it is the same plane with the same pilot who saves them again and again by shooting down the bombing planes.
On Feb 24 Putin started a new war, not related to the Donbass war. The main goal of the new war was explicitly proclaimed by Putin as "Ukraine doesn't exist. Ukrainians don't exist. Anybody resisting to that is to be killed."
The theory of "genozide on Ukrainians" sounds very implausible to me, given that there are several possible real motives for the war.
Mind you, I am not saying it is justified, I don't know enough about it. Personally I would guess more is going on than just "Ukraine becoming Democratic is a threat" or "Putin has become crazy".