but I distinctly remember that when Russia started to lose early in the war, and switched to terror artillery bombardment of civilian areas, your attitude towards that was to defend it, and argue that the blood is on Zelensky's (and the West's) hands for continuing to resist, that the best way to save lives was to capitulate.

As you also distinctly remember, I supported making peace on terms that you thought amounted to a defeat for Russia. Which then was foiled because the puppet non-country was ordered to not make peace, as Bennett recounted.

So yeah, the West and its puppet are 100% responsible for any casualties in the normal course of the war. They caused the war, they provoked it. Russia is only responsible for casualties that could have been avoided by Russia, say Bucha if Russia was indeed responsible for that, or Mariupol if you are correct that Russia decided to shell Russian speakers for literally no reason.

Azov controlled one part of Mariupol around Azovstal, and there were numerous other units in Mariupol resisting.

So they were using Mariupol as a human shield, like Hamas does in Gaza. Good to know.

That said, morality aside, I have questioned the judgment of shelling Russian speakers in the east. Folks who should be more inclined to be on Russia's side, and whom Russia wants to rule. Seems like a really stupid thing to do.

Russia massively magnified the Azov Regiment's significance because a handful of its rank and file had wehraboo tattoos (as did many Russian soldiers, btw, it turns out love for SS iconography isn't a uniquely Ukrainian thing).

Any time this is pointed out, the 'Ukraine' apologists produce the same photo. So not exactly.

There were tons of dead bodies littering the streets in Bucha, and in some cases video evidence of the Russian soldiers gunning them down for no reason. You speak of "rhyme or reason"? Soldiers murder civilians because they've been ordered to, or because they've been keyed up through propaganda, or because they're simply angry and out for revenge and a civilian is an easy defenseless target.

The last part, all true. That is why war is hell. No strategic, operational or even tactical objective was achieved by gunning down those people. On the other hand, that petty non-country had plenty to gain by faking it. However, I've not looked into it closely, so I don't see how they could have faked it - despite pro-Russia generally claiming that it is.

I have seen 'Ukraine' soldiers allegedly saying that they were firing on those wearing white armbands. But who knows if that was just a fake translation? See, I care about the truth, which you in many cases don't - you just want to say RUSSIA BAD.

How many other Buchas have there been, which we simply don't have the same degree of video evidence of? There is no reason to believe that the Russians acted uniquely in Bucha.

So you have no evidence? Considering that you're still talking about Bucha months afterwards, despite Ukraine having a compliant media, I'd say none.

The US absolutely targets power infrastructure in wars, and it's ordinarily a legitimate military target. The big difference here is that Russia ignored those targets for a loooooong time, clearly indicating that Russia didn't consider them targets.

Allegedly, that was the transition to full war. Clearly, trying to reason with that so called country hadn't worked, so tougher measures had to be used.

And we know that shutting down the power has no effect on Ukrainian military units since they all have generators.

I don't know about that. You 'know' a lot of stuff that you were told by the MSM, which you dismiss when it writes a hitpiece on your beloved GOP, but then believe unconditionally when it says something that you like...

No, it's genuine. Your attitude on this is Russian projection.

Sure thing. The people who allow tens of thousands of young girls to be raped by Pakistanis, the people who'll allow millions of Americans to get addicted to opiates to increase a pharma company's profit, REALLY CARE about another country's population when they don't even care about their own.

The West takes pains to avoid hitting civilian targets, and once in a while, mistakes are made.

You even used a passive voice! Who made those 'mistakes' in your wars of aggression?

There are countless videos of muslims combatants in iraq and afghanistan running full speed for the nearest mosque once they came under fire. IMO if your enemy is going to hide behind women and children or run into mosques, you hit the target anyway and blame the enemy for the result.

And you are correct about that, at least if it's proportional. Throwing a MOAB into a crowd of 10,000 people because one Muslim combatant fled into it is not proportional.

Serbia violated the "rules-based international order".

Yes, the one where the rules are made by corrupt American bureaucrats, and the orders are given by Raytheon stooges.

I'm not aware of any country destroyed by the West. Example?

Serbia, Libya, Syria, Iraq. I'm leaving out Afghanistan because the war there was justified.

Ukraine doesn't engage in area shelling of civilian areas. The one time I heard of a Ukrainian commander doing it a little bit, he was reassigned and punished.

You heard of it one time, so it must have happened only one time? They've been shelling civilian areas of Donetsk since the beginning of this war. Of course, you don't hear about that, just like you didn't hear that they were shelling a nuclear power plant because it was held by the Russians.

Russia invades to engage in wars of conquest and empire building. The US only invades to protect the West and preserve the West's norms of order.

LOL! Dude, you go from sounding like a hard-nosed realist to a 15-year-old coomer addicted to Disney movies. WE'RE THE GOOD GUYS! YAY!

You know full well that this is not how things work, so cut it out.

Yep. The west did absolutely nothing to stop Azerbaijan, because Armenia is a client state of Russia and it was Russia's job to protect it.

And not only that, it funded its wars of aggression, no sanctions, which proves their hypocrisy.

The degree of attention focused on a thing warps the perception of that thing. This warped perception then gets recycled into "common knowledge".

Yes, that is a major problem. If you have a political lobby, you can get attention focused on your pet non-issues even if you are 0.3% of the population and you want to groom kids.