People who are pro-Russia have alleged “human rights abuses” supposedly committed by Ukraine towards Russians or Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. Something I find interesting though is that the ICJ, the UN’s court, said this:

the Court is not in possession of evidence substantiating the allegation of the Russian Federation that genocide has been committed on Ukrainian territory

Maybe Russia should prove their allegations. I don’t think you’re interested in the truth though. I think you’re interested in a fascist conquest of Ukraine’s land.

I agree with you that Ukrainians are suffering. Russians are too, under Putin’s regime. But some other points you mentioned, I’m not sure how true they are:

my government supported the overthrow of the previous government

It’s my understanding that Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych in 2014. Does this count as an “overthrow”? If the US Congress were to vote to remove Trump from power, which I believe is legally possible in the US, would that be an “overthrow”?

helped bring in a new government that was unwilling to have free and fair elections

TLDR of the following paragraph is that Ukraine has had two presidential elections since Yanukovych was removed from power, and both of those elections seem to have been more democratic than Russian “elections”. Here goes: A new presidential election was held in 2014, which Poroshenko won, and then another was held in 2019, which Zelenskyy won. The OSCE, an organisation of the US, Canada, and European countries (including Russia) stated that the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election “was competitive, voters had a broad choice and turned out in high numbers. In the pre-electoral period the law was often not implemented in good faith by many stakeholders, which negatively impacted the trust in the election administration, enforcement of campaign finance rules, and the effectiveness of election dispute resolution. Fundamental freedoms were generally respected”, etc. Maybe not a perfect election, but probably better than in Russia. In a Russian “election” in recent years, “Mr Putin’s biggest critics were barred from running, and there were reports of ballot stuffing and forced voting”. Here is an article from Reuters talking about ballot stuffing in Russia.

If they had stayed out of the war, then the people of eastern Ukraine would, at the very least, be shut out of any democratic process

I think pro-Russia people could participate in Ukraine’s democracy though. Before 2014 there was the popular pro-Russia party the Party of Regions, and after 2014 there was the pro-Russia Opposition Bloc.

TLDR: I hope the war in Ukraine ends so that no more people die. I think Ukraine should be left alone to make their own democratic decisions though, without Russia invading them. The evidence that I’ve seen (news I’ve read) suggests that Ukraine, while not a perfect democracy, was relatively democratic up until Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Right now they’re not having elections because of the war. Perhaps Ukrainians should be able to decide in the near future whether they want to continue the war or not.

You can be angry about your own government and that’s completely fine. I am not a Trump fan myself. Regarding Saudi Arabia, yes there are reasons to be wary of their leadership, especially after Jamal Khashoggi’s death.

Anyway, in my original question in this thread, I just asked if a person would condemn imperialism if it was done by Russia or China, in addition to condemning similar behaviour from the US or other western countries. If the US invades a country and kills civilians there then I definitely think that’s wrong - civilians should be able to live in peace. Likewise I think it’s wrong if Russia invades Ukraine and kills civilians there. With China, they may take over Taiwan by force in the near future. Likewise if the US were to take over a territory by force (perhaps the Philippines again), I would think that’s wrong.

My view is that Ukrainians and Russians should be able to live in peace in their respective countries. So that would mean that Ukraine should not be invaded, Russia should not be invaded, and no other country should be invaded.

But unfortunately Putin and his colleagues decided to invade Ukraine and murder people there. I definitely don’t blame average Russians for that. Not in any way. Many Russians clearly don’t support Putin, but if they are brave enough to voice this view, they can be put in prison for many years, or in fact the Russian state may poison them.

You can pretend to be moral all you like, but if you support Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine (which seems to be true), then you are immoral.

You were the one who raised the fact that Putin supposedly has a high approval rating. You literally brought that point up yourself.

Whatever. You love sucking vatnik cock, so whatever. Go ahead and do that.

the US literally dominates the world by force, assassinating if not full-scale invading anybody they don’t like

China seems to aspire to this same modus operandi. They seem to want to invade Taiwan in the near future.

You might say that NYC is, functionally, a one-party city. Of course, meaningful ideological differences can exist within that party, with competitive races between them. But I suppose the fact that the Republican party technically also exists there is the thing that determines whether NYC has democratic elections or not.

It’s not that long ago that Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani were Republican mayors of NYC, but I think the last non-communist leader of China was decades ago. Before the PRC was established I would guess.

It’s very clear that you haven’t actually investigated or thought about how the Chinese system works and are just repeating lines you’ve heard.

To be honest I do trust sources like BBC News and other western sources. I know some people might say they’re pro-western biased sources. From my experience though, the BBC has been truthful and accurate. If they report on a multi-party election in China then I’ll read about it. Instead though I found this on their website:

The Chinese Constitution states that “The system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China will continue and develop long into the future”.

So the leadership of a single party is in their constitution. I don’t think that’s true in the US, or other western democracies.

Anyway, I’m not trying to say any particular country is bad. Countries just have differences I suppose.

Ukraine has been in a civil war

Apparently Putin denied for a long time that any Russian forces were fighting in eastern Ukraine, trying to split eastern Ukraine from the rest of Ukraine, but then in 2015 Putin admitted that some Russians were in eastern Ukraine “dealing with certain tasks, including in the military sphere”. This was after two members of Russian special forces were captured in eastern Ukraine.

Remember of course that Russia has a history of doing covert things and denying those things. They poisoned Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, they poisoned Sergei Skripal in 2018, they poisoned Alexei Navalny in 2020, yet they denied doing all those things. What I’m getting at is that Russia is probably doing lots of things that we’re not even aware of. They were probably employing every underhanded tactic they could in order to split the Donbas from Ukraine.

But Putin undoubtedly has reaped the rewards of a political landscape tilted dramatically in his favor

Of course the political landscape is tilted in his favour. Alexei Navalny was a prominent opposition politician and look what happened - the Russian state poisoned him in 2020. Boris Nadezhdin tried to be an opposition candidate in last year’s Russian presidential election, and he wanted Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine. Surprise surprise, reasons were found to disqualify Boris from standing in the election.

The Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, consistently reports Putin’s approval rating at over 80%

Not surprising in any way, given that expressing political dissent in Russia will get you arrested, or poisoned, or killed (Navalny was poisoned, Litvinenko was killed). There are probably many Russians who would like a different president to Putin, but they know that if they express their views, they may well be punished.

spin a globe, put your finger on a random country you’ve never heard of, and look into that country’s history. You’ll almost always find the US doing something nefarious. You simply can’t say that about China.

I googled “chinese hacking” because I’ve seen articles about this before, and I came across some examples. So I think China is doing nefarious things.

Do you pay attention to mayoral races in China? Or do you just assume that they must be undemocratic and that all the candidates are bad without a second thought?

Sources like CNN and Wikipedia refer to China as a one-party state. I guess I’ll accept that this description is probably accurate, until I see news of China having national elections involving at least two competitive parties.

I think I’ll look at some assessments of democracy in Ukraine and Russia which are a bit more objective:

Ukraine:

The 31 March 2019 presidential election in Ukraine was competitive, voters had a broad choice… Fundamental freedoms were generally respected

Russia:

The 18 March presidential election took place in an overly controlled legal and political environment marked by continued pressure on critical voices… restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression, as well as on candidate registration, have limited the space for political engagement and resulted in a lack of genuine competition

vast majority of people in Donbas… support Russia

The only way we can find that out would be with a free and fair referendum. You instead believe in Russia’s imperialist invasion of the region, because you’re a far-right fascist. I’m not even joking. It’s crazy that you say the exact same things that a far-right Russian nationalist says.

You might be right about short-sightedness. I read this article a couple days ago which talks about short-sighted cuts to the F-35 programme, which then add costs in the long run. For example:

A cost-saving move to delay by six years building infrastructure for the naval squadron that operates the F-35 jets means the cost for that construction will almost treble to £154m from £56m.

I think the US is a democracy, just a flawed one. The electoral college is a big flaw because it gives rural states a disproportionate amount of power. But there is still a democratic process in the US. Look at how Zohran Mamdani has become the Democrat candidate to become NYC’s mayor, despite the fact that many leading Democrats didn’t want him to be the candidate. The primary voters made their voices heard.

A lot of the training received in the reeducation centers was vocational training that modernized the labor force of Uyghurs in Xinjiang enabling them to get better jobs than they used to have

If the USA forcibly put Muslims into camps and tried to justify it by saying “we’re giving them vocational training to modernise the labour force and enable these Muslims to get better jobs”, would that be okay? Anyway we’re obviously not going to agree on this topic so maybe there is no point in pursuing it further.

Your logic reminds me of the logic employed by far-right Israelis. They point out that Hamas is fighting Israel, and then they assume that all Gazan civilians support Hamas. They use this to say it’s okay for Israel to drop bombs on Gazan civilians. Likewise you assume that all Donbas civilians support pro-Russia militants.

Anyone with an actual brain would realise that the only way you can truly measure opinion in the Donbas would be with a fair and free referendum.

We can argue about the merits and flaws of China and Russia, but neither of them represent an existential threat to me as an American. Pretty much the only thing that does present an existential threat, imo, is the rise of fascism domestically.

Fair point. Here in Europe though, Russia is probably a bit more worrying. E.g. I’m not surprised that Poland wants to take a firm stance of supporting Ukraine, because Poles are probably worrying that their land might be invaded if Ukraine is taken over by Russia.

As for China, maybe we would disagree, but I think they really want to expand their power, even if that means stamping on people’s rights… for one thing it might be good if China had political freedom and democracy. China will obviously do what it wants for the time being, but I think I will remain a bit wary of what seems to be expansionist ambitions.

I think it’s credible that China has been detaining Uyghurs en masse and I think it’s credible that many rapes have taken place. Maybe we will just have different views.

If you cared about what people of Ukraine want then you’d support the right of the people living in these regions to self determination.

I do. If they want to leave Ukraine and join Russia then they should make that clear to the Ukrainian government through voting and other democratic means. I don’t trust the Russian-backed referendums since Russia has a history of rigging votes.

Interesting, I googled for reports of Arab emissaries going to Xinjiang and I found this from Time magazine, published in 2022:

Arab states are not only lending rhetorical support to China, they are also actively assisting Beijing in its global campaign of abuse and reprisals against Uighurs. At least six governments in the Arab world—Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE—have detained or extradited Uighurs at China’s behest. According to our dataset at the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, around 292 Uighurs have been detained or deported from Arab states at China’s behest since 2002.

Also you mention “multiple western* countries” as if western countries are automatically wrong. I don’t think that’s true. I think there are certainly biased media outlets in the West, but I think there are genuine and reliable media outlets too. I think the BBC is reliable. If someone proves their reporting to be plain wrong then I will re-evaluate them, but I haven’t yet seen that happen.

I’m not in favour of any proxy war against Russia, I just think Russia shouldn’t try to annex foreign territory by force. As I said before: “I want the Ukrainian people to be able to do what they want, within international law”. Same for the people of any other country.

I don’t know why you’re posting pictures of far-right people in Ukraine. There are far-right people in essentially every country.

You support far-right imperialism. I don’t, so I guess we just have different views and we’re not going to be on the same page.