The said meme, which I also I hear way too often hear, is that Ukraine has been shelling civilians in the occupied areas "for years" (variant: "for 8 years"), which is incredibly annoying, because so many people who don't know anything about this war and haven't been watching it just go and believe such a blatant lie for some reason. I first wrote as a reply but I thought I should actually make it a post so here it is in a much longer form.
It's directed to the naive and guilible who just believed it without checking for what is the reality.
So, look at just any video here: https://youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Donetsk+military+parade Most of uploaders are explicitly pro-Russian, so you can't possibly think anything here is somehow not real.
It's the many videos of various military parades held by Russian forces in Donetsk city over all these years. It's military parades, but they're also attended by crowds of specifically pro-Russia civilians - and even by all the "separatist" leaders (military and otherwise). You seem to think they would surely go and shell then, right?
(Or, for example, you may check the funerals of slain Russian commanders with large processions in the streets, practically also military parades with lots of civilians and the leaders.)
Well, you see, Ukrainian forces have held the suburbs like Piski and Avdiivka a few kilometers away (the area of Piski being especially just across Donetsk Airport), all that time. In fact, they still do!
This is the current (17 August 2022) frontlines in the Donetsk regions and you can see the distance between Donetsk city and the cities just west of it: https://www.criticalthreats.org/wp-content/uploads/Donetsk-Battle-Map-Draft-August-172022.png As I said, basically nothing there has changed since January 2015. This date was the fall of Donetsk Airport after over half year of non-stop Russian attack, and it was left completely devastated (just totally smashed), as were the immediately adjoing areas to the east (a few apartment blocks from which the Russians were firing, a monastery that was also a Russian firing position, also a looted supermarket, a large area of car garages, and an overpass bridge that collapsed on tanks). But not the city beyond the actual battle area, even as the Russian claim as always was that they need to attack the airport, even after the Minsk ceasefire, because Ukraine is "shelling the city" from it and yet you won't see destroyed/abandoned artillery pieces in the videos of the aftermath (you will see a lot of trucks and armored vehicles from the fighting and from Ukrainian supply/reinforcement/evacuation runs) because it was also only a blatant lie. It's their standard lie, used just always, and currently used for the attack on the city of Avdiivka that is now going on for over half year too (and you can Avdiivka has suffered extensive damage from Russian shelling, and is a ghost city having been evacuated).
Now, after you watched any number of any videos from all of these Donetsk parades, ask yourself the following questions:
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Could you even imagine a more juicy target than any of these parades that if someone wanted to hit just any remotely civilian target (along with massed military forces in the open, and even the most high-value individuals) on purpose?
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So why are they never being shelled?
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Why are they not at all even afraid of being shelled? Or therwise attacked, such as hit with a ballistic missile, or any sort of drone for that matter, or even placed explosives or whatever really. (For example the famous Russian fommander Motorola was in fact killed by such placed explosives, but in the way only he and his bodyguard were harmed - they bombed them in an elevator of his base, and his comrade Givi was also surgically eliminated with a rocket flamethrower fired right into his office window when he was alone. Even when they killed one of the heads of the two "people's republics" they only blew up the military cafe he was in with his bodyguards, the cafe was named "Separ" for "Separatist" and was closed from the normal people.)
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And why none of the buildings (cars, streets, trees) ever bear any damage from shelling on any other date?
If you need a visual reference, this is how a city in Ukraine (Mariupol) looks like after just few weeks (not "years") of shelling: https://youtu.be/MDVLmOVDaOY
You can also compare with the life in Kharkiv or in the capital itself while within Russian artillery range. With the population sheltering in the metro down below, instead of holding parades and other public events.
And further check out effects of prolonged (weeks or months long) shelling by a Soviet style (like Ukraine's was until 2022) military force in the videos of Grozny and other locations in Chechnya under and after Russian sieges.
All of this should be extremely obvious, but as I said people are just being ignorant and irrational, to say it mildly. (u/AntonioOfVenice is a special victim, because usually he's not retarded.)
I can also show you further videos for every claim I made, if you want some evidence. And I mean Russia's own videos, usually (like let's say of the already mentioned Motorola personally firing from these apartment blocks on the airport, and later the large public funeral of him in central Donetsk, which was not disturbed by Ukraine in any way as always and you can see just no traces of any imaginary "shelling" anywhere on the streets also as always).
A related common lie is that Ukrainian "shelling" killed 14,000 "civilians". This was the UN estimate of all people who died in 2014-2022 (but mostly 2014-2015), including more than 4,000 Ukrainian troops, and Mr. Motorola (a very goblin-looking manlet fellow from Russia) and all of his deceased comrades were included in this number too (their side's losses were much larger). The actual count of civilians, killed by both sides, was more than 3,000, almost all of them 2014-2015. Among them the 300 mostly Dutch people killed by Russia on one day in 2014, which was by far the worst incident of civilian casualties all these years until the Russian rampages north of Kyiv (but not the Mariupol theater / "CHILDREN" bombing that killed merely dozens and not hundreds as initially feared, the underground nuclear shelter where most people were actually withstood the attack and so only many of those above and in the aid distribution/evacuation center just next to it got killed, also the place was already way less crowded than it used to be due to the mentioned evacuation).
No part of Moldova and Georgia has been 'annexed'. For Ukraine, only Crimea, which was severed from the RSFSR in 1956 by Khrushchev and given to the Ukrainian constituent republic.
No idea what that even is. Is it worse than inciting a 10-year civil war that utterly destroyed the country?
Look, get it right, I'm not condemning the country as a whole, or Americans. Only the government, which hates you, and which does all sorts of horrible things around the world.
But what were the consequences of those bombs on "a few places"? The whole country was thrown into chaos. Same as in Iraq, where it wasn't the fighting by the Americans that caused most of the problems, but the chaos that they created by the invasion.
What of all the other countries, those outside the American sphere of influence? Is Mexico afraid of Russia? How come Brazil is afraid of Russia and South Korea, Denmark, Finland aren't?
Compare like with like. You had outlets like Radio Moscow before the war. In the US, there is no war comparable to the one Russia is engaged in.
Transnistria(Moldova) is part of Russia. Just as northern parts of Georgia. Russia sees it as theirs, albeit almost no other country sees it.
The west didn't incite it. But did try to capitalize on it, just like Russia is doing. What you saw there are Russians "working" on Syria.
Yes, it was, mostly because of the culture of the place. They bombed far less, enough to stop Ghadaffi from levelling an entire city. The rest was the people in there.
Denmark, Finland, and South Korea are not into the BRICS. Which is where Russia has the biggest influence.
There is literally no independent media left in Russia anymore. All of them are owned by the government in some capacity.
It really isn't. It's a petty statelet that just has Russian 'peacekeepers', like Donetsk and Lugansk. Annex means that you're actually part of the country, which none of these are.
Also not. In fact, Russia has - allegedly - repeatedly vetoed attempts by South Ossetia to hold a referendum to join.
The West may not have 'incited' it, but the West caused it. They bombed Qadhafi after he gave up his WMDs. So it's an own goal on the part of these freaks.
As for Syria. Russia backed the murderous Assad regime, which still was a good deal better than the murderous Islamists and Al Qaeda forces backed by the West. Also the fact that the West was training people to wage civil war and destroy the country utterly, as they did.
Literally moved from "save people in Benghazi" to "REGIME CHANGE". So yeah, the West is 100% responsible for what happened there. They just wreck one country after another with no remorse, and then tell us Putin is bad.
None of the countries outside BRICs sanctioned Russia. American influence is far more obvious than Russian influence: it's the American empire that sanctioned Russia and no one else.
Can you imagine a country where 95%+ of media are pushing the government/elite line? Actually, I can!
But I'm talking about before the war. Radio Moscow existed, same as Breitbart or whatever in the US. If the US started a war with Mexico, I assume restrictions would be tightened as well.
Yet it is controlled by Russia and maintained by them.
The arab spring happened in Tunisia first, which spread to Egypt next.
Finland is currently controlling the amount of Russian visas, and has applied to join NATO. Denmark is part of the EU, which is currently sanctioning Russia as a block.
The example would work if all the media, from CNN to Breitbart were owned by the American government.
Even if true, that is not the same as 'annexed'. Annexed means it's part of Russia proper.
Yes?
How does that exculpate Western governments from destroying Libya?
OK, and?
Radio Moscow was not owned by the government. Also, as far as I know, most of the media are not 'owned' by the government, just pro-government.
Same as the American media!