InappropriateEmote

For real. I have to say also that it was fascinating watching the frontman for Pop Will Eat Itself, (a band that in the 90s made an Antifa song* a hit in Gammon Isle) go on to become arguably one of the greatest contemporary film score composers.

*Ich Bin Ein Auslander

They're nice and stationary where they've always been. You don't seem to know where the field is.

None of what you said matters with respect to my initial comment. I said what I did because it is what happened and provides context. Your altering of that context (by making up falsehoods) still didn't change the point of my comment. And just a tip: it doesn't help your credibility to ask the people you're disagreeing with to walk you through the basics of how discussions work.

Even if what you said is true, which it is not (see Formerlyfarman's comment), whether or not Ukraine was trying to ethnically cleanse the Donbas prior to the SMO (which it was), and regardless of the virtues or crimes of the people's militias, none of that matters as far as what I was saying. None of that has any bearing on the asymmetry of war crimes perpetrated by Ukraine vs the lack of them committed by Russia.

There is no benefit for the Ukrainians to do this.

The benefit is to harm Russia at any and all cost and if they can achieve that, they see it as well worth it. Ukraine was never in a winning position yet they have been the ones committing war crime upon war crime upon war crime literally from the very start of this conflict (and depending on when you define it "beginning," they have been doing it from before the start and this is largely what necessitated Russia's intervention in the first place). Meanwhile, Russia has been highly, even shockingly restrained when it comes to taking actions with high potential to cause civilian harm. When you honestly compare how Russia has waged this war in terms of risk to civilian life to what the west (including Ukraine) has done in military operations and wars in the past handful of decades, Russia comes out as almost kind, looking like the benevolent "peacekeepers" that NATO always tried to paint themselves to their own respective domestic populaces. (This isn't to say warcrimes haven't been committed by Russian forces, particularly before Wagner was dismantled, but they are not systemic and are not at the scale of, for example, wiping out civilian infrastructure).

This isn't just a "Russia good and Ukraine bad" thing (though we shouldn't forget that current Ukraine is literally a Nazi-led project) but there are very obvious material reasons why this is the case. Like TreadOnMe pointed out, Russia came to the aid of what were essentially militias formed from Ukrainian civilians who were fighting in resistance of their own ethnic cleansing by the Ukrainian government. Russia knows that the territories it has been fighting over will be its responsibility to maintain and rebuild so destroying the infrastructure there and making enemies of the people who live there are not at all in Russia's best interests. This is a major stumbling block for the libs who constantly want to believe Russia is just a bunch of orcs hellbent on domination and conquest: material reality does not fit the idealist narrative they need to believe in.

Just because Ukraine commits war crimes repeatedly (as they have) and even as a normal order of operation, that does not mean that Russia will then be compelled to do the same as a tit-for-tat. There are certain lines that when crossed, Russia does have to respond to, but that doesn't mean they have to respond with commensurate cruelty to civilians. And they haven't.

I'm assuming, maybe incorrectly, that he immigrated to a country in the west. If that's the case, when did that happen and why? These are questions I also assume you, OP can answer for us without having to further question him.

UPDATE

Damn, I had been looking forward to answers to a bunch of the great questions that were posed. I'm really curious what specifically made him mad, though. Like,

one of the questions I gave him threw him off and kinda put him in a bad mood

Which question was it? And when he said “who would ask such stupidity?” was it about that particular question or the things you were asking him in general?

I don’t really know what he was expecting but he seems to think the questions weren’t good enough.

I'm sure it will be apparent when you post the 5 detailed answers he did give, but I think it would have been good if we had known beforehand what kind of general sentiment he has about the USSR. I would ask different questions of someone I knew looked back on the USSR fondly with nostalgia versus someone who saw it mostly as an impediment to the way they wanted to live. I realize it's probably too late now, but if you get the chance and it doesn't seem inappropriate, I want to know what kind of questions he wanted us to ask. Since he agreed to do it in the first place, even if he didn't quite understand the situation, I would think there must have been something he did want to share - but what was it?

I just got banned from /c/tankiejerk@lemmy.dbzer0.com for being a Hexbear. Modlog reason: "Hexbear user in tankiejerk, waddaya expect?"

Meanwhile, there's like 20 of y'all in this thread and are left untouched. I guess that makes me the one true leftist, the only one who isn't a liberal.

Here is the evil authoritarian statement I made that got me banned:

But that is not what makes an addiction

What does?

"All the people who try to explain to me the places where I am obviously wrong, they're all just robots yeah, that's it. So I don't need to try to address that nagging sense of cognitive dissonance I get when I read them, I'll just call them 'borg' and block them! Phew, that feels better."

What was that you were calling others in the thread, was it coward?