Ukraine won't exist in 48 hours; the fact that the Azov battalion exists should ...

freeflight · on Feb 24, 2022

Not sure why the existence of a volunteer militia indicates a general unwillingness to fight for the government?

The US also has plenty of volunteer militias, yet I doubt that could be seen as an indicator for Americans unwillingness to fight for their country.

0a3feeb · on Feb 24, 2022

The Ukrainian government deputized ideological extremists to retake/hold territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

I'll concede to your comparison to a US militia when some state like Florida leaves the union and the US has to arm some QAnon loons to take it back.

qwertox · on Feb 24, 2022

Hmmm, I was wondering what RT (German version) [0] meant by Putin wanting to denazify the Ukraine ("Putin launches special military operation to protect Donbass and denazify Ukraine"). Since they (Azov) are headquartered in Donetsk Oblast, is it them who Putin wants to permanently remove right now, and is this his purpose for starting this war?

[0] https://de.rt.com/europa/132333-putin-verkundet-militarische...

astrange · on Feb 24, 2022

“Nazi” in Russia means “someone who attacks Russia”. The president of Ukraine is Jewish.

Loudergood · on Feb 24, 2022

It has the same meaning in Ukraine and Finland I'd suspect.

astrange · on Feb 27, 2022

What I mean is, Putin wasn't even making a propaganda claim about Ukraine being anti-Semites. The Russians he was talking to barely know that was the Nazi ideology, and that's assuming they'd disagree with it. He was just claiming they were going to attack Russians.

He also said he'd "show Ukraine real decommunization" the day before. Not sure if that was propaganda or a threat…

0a3feeb · on Feb 24, 2022

Azov are ideological extremists but I wouldn't read much into it being a motivator for Putin. It's a combination of imperialism, a significant population of ethnic Russian separatists being in Ukraine, and NATO concerns.