In order to make brutality towards civilians the exception, rather than the rule, it takes training, leadership and discipline. Failure to provide those would make the commanders criminally responsible.
However, this smells of orders from on high. Internal security orders against traitors of the state, rather than against foreign civilians.
Hm. I’d think that alleged expectation of a welcoming populace tends to work in Putin’s favor, giving the impression that his “special op” was initiated with only the best intentions, an interpretation that Putin would love to drive deep into the psyche of the Russians back home. Does anyone know how the story was verified — if at all?
Yup. Similarly, a valknut by itself is not an issue; I know some Nordic pagan types, for example, who wear it, and they are entirely nice, unbigoted people.
But paired with Totenkopf? Yeah, no question. Nazis.
Very concise summary of that “denazification” op-ed:
Recently, as someone born in Belarus who has lived in Russia, I have often been asked the same question: why did Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, nations so closely related to each other, develop in such different ways? My answer is very simple: this closeness has been greatly exaggerated by Moscow, and in fact we are all quite different.
I am the last Soviet first-former. My parents took me to school on 1 September 1991, just a few days after the empire essentially disappeared. My mum is Russian; my father, Ukrainian. I have Russian, Belarusian and Tartar roots, and my surname is Ukrainian. I am a product of the Soviet Union and of the 20th century.
But I’ve never queried my own identity: I’ve always known I am Belarusian. If someone told me I was Russian because I wrote in Russian, I would be perplexed. I firmly believe that the Russian language is not Russia’s property; for me it’s merely a means of communication. Speaking French in Geneva doesn’t make you French, speaking German in Zurich doesn’t make you German – you remain Swiss, just as I, while speaking Russian, remain Belarusian.
It’s laying out the Final Solution to the Ukrainian Question.
Source apparently a Wall Street Journal reporter. So take with a box of salt that these are the only opinions.
The matter-of-fact justifications for this homicidal campaign are chilling.
Years from now, when historians study the Putin regime’s attempt at genocide, one question they won’t have to wonder about is “how could ordinary Russians go along with this?” I doubt that a citizenry’s swift final descent into fascism has ever been so well documented in the process of its happening.
Sure, once the cockroaches have learned to read.
Fucking hell. That photo absolutely broke me. Something about the delicacy of her shoulder blades and the memory of the way my own daughter felt in my arms at that age.
Worser and worser…
This sounds about right. It’s a similar situation in AC airplanes. Small ones are mostly just cute toys but the real deal are practically aircraft in miniature and equally a pain in the ass to fly in my experience with my dad and his electric one that he had me try (note: this one was meant to be flown leisurely and it still was a pain to keep aloft for me).
I’m a mom.
I hear you.
