I see that the Russians are reverting to type:
RUSSIAN soldiers are reportedly using rape as an “instrument of war” in Ukraine, a prosecutor has warned.
Putin’s savages are also believed to be executing civilians in cold blood amid the evil invasion which entered its 28th day today.
Shades of Berlin 1945, for us students of history.
It’s just Pentagon disinformation, Kim.
probably not. It’s been standard practice for the Red Army since 1917 to act like that.
And indeed for most armies throughout history.
All armies rape to a certain extent. The Red Army in 1945 (and more or less all Islamic forces) do it as a matter of policy. Notice I said 1945 as the Red Army didn’t go batshit about this until they crossed the German border. It was explicitly an act of revenge for German atrocities in the Soviet Union. There wasn’t that much rape when the Red Army was operating on Soviet soil, including in the Ukraine. Ilya Ehrenburg’s very effective propaganda encouraged this very strongly. It is worth noting that he was born in Kiev. Reading the accounts of the mass rapes, it appears that much of it was done by rear echelon troops whom while Soviet were not especially Russian. Rather they were largely troops from Central Asia. (See above comment about Islamic forces.) Again, reading accounts of the invasion of Germany, it has been described (behind the mechanized spearheads) as looking a lot like the Mongol invasion except with rifles instead of bows.
Just History Rhyming.
A bit off-topic, but I hope you find it interesting, combat related stuff. Nicholas Moran cautions us that there is a lot we don’t know related to the video coming out of Ukraine:
Be careful drawing conclusions from the Ukraine videos.
Yea, same as the above comments. Disinformation at best, blatant propaganda at worst. I look at every single iota of news about Ukraine as enemy propaganda first, second and last. And by enemy, I mean pro-Ukraine is propaganda to draw us into a war we don’t need, and pro-Russia is propaganda to, well, hurt Trump I guess? In any event, war is hell. I’d prefer my kids don’t get drafted to go protect the Biden corruption machine. No matter how many Ukrainians are killed, raped, whatever. We gave up being the world’s policeman several decades back.
Yep – If it’s from a Ukrainian source, it’s probably bs.
I don’t have much more confidence in anything I hear from Capo di Capo Tutti, Vlad “the Impaler”* Putin, either.
*It’s natural for mafia types to have an nickname, Joey Bananas, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, “Scarface” Al Capone, so Vladimir Putin needs one, too. Vlad “the Impaler” Putin might be too obvious, so perhaps “Angel of Vengeance”?
It is actually difficult to hear any propaganda from Russia. I am sure they are doing it but the MSM/tech oligarch blackout makes it difficult to find and it surely doesn’t pop up in search results.
Most of the Russian Propaganda was over the last decade trying to make Putin look good while he was overseeing war crimes in Chechnya, ordering tanks into Georgia and the Crimea, and generally raping Russia’s industrial base.
Since the censorship happened there’s been some people on the non-left who’ve been defending Putin, and repeating his talking points. Mostly because they oppose whatever the American Left is doing.
First casualty of war…
Sure, Russians will be Russians. It has also been reported that the Russians are leading with their lesser troops with the better ones held back in case NATO does something stupid.
On the original topic, what do we make of the Ukrainians tying/taping folks to light poles and pantsing/whipping them? Or painting Russian speakers green with chemicals? We won’t even mention the behavior of the AZOD battalions in the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. True or not, it’s all propaganda at this point. There’s plenty of actual barbarity going around, I am sure. The fact that the entire political/media establishment seems to think Ukraine are the good guys gives one pause.
The longer this goes on the more it reminds me of Iran and Iraq. Can both sides lose?
I’m sure Ukraine is utterly corrupt throughout its government and business culture. They put Hunter Biden on the board of a petroleum company with no experience and paid him a ridiculous amount of money. Then Biden got the investigator removed from his position through extortion. It’s on tape for crying out loud! It’s undeniable. Putin is certainly no angel either.
JQ
The Biden bribe was a business decision.
Remember Ukraine is a former Soviet mafia country sitting right next to the second biggest mafia country in the world, which has already broken into the shop before over “protection,” and has been yammering about returning ever since.
It makes sense to hire a useless son of another mafia Don under those circumstances as a buffer, especially when that second mafia family is too far away to properly invade. Even more so if the “employer” is so recently divorced from the closer mafia family as Ukraine is from Russia.
“No good guys in the fight” therefore must also include the US.
After all, Ukraine thought they had bought and paid for our protection against Russia.
Not arguing we should go to war; far from it. America is NOT the Biden crime family, and we have zero obligation to fulfill their contracts.
But “no good guys” is misleading at best.
Nothing new. South Vietnam thought they bought and paid for protection from the big member of SEATO (the South East Asia Treaty Organization), until the big member cut and ran, and ignored the US President’s pleas to at least send some ammo and other materiel for fighting.
And by some remarkable coincidence, said useful war fighting materiel isn’t forthcoming from the same party that refused then. And now it’s figure-headed by a plagiarizing doofus who was present for that debacle.
Hands covered in shit is not the moral equivalent of hands covered in blood. You’d think that here of all places people would understand this.
Even hands covered in blood can be compared to others also covered in blood. Why ally with Joe Stalin against Adolf Hitler, then?
Because Joseph Stalin was a ruthless sociopath but at least a rational actor while Adolph Hitler was a complete psychopath who wasn’t.
Stalin? Rational? In what world?
Man was a paranoid psychopath that had numerous people killed for daring to disagree, because anyone who wasn’t too terrified to speak up was therefore a threat.
In this world. The task of cracking open a history book (Wikipedia doesn’t count) is left for the reader.
1. Because Hitler’s army occupied everything on Europe’s Atlantic coast from France to Norway, while Stalin’s USSR was never more than one or two hundred miles over the post-WWI borders – which had been re-drawn by the French and English to punish the Bolsheviks for dropping out of their WWI alliance, and for being Bolsheviks. Even after splitting Poland with Hitler and moving the borders of Finland back in the Winter War, the USSR was still nowhere near the pre-WWI borders of Tsarist Russia.
The USSR just wasn’t a military great power until Hitler’s invasion forced it to become one.
2. (For Americans only) Because HITLER DECLARED WAR ON US. If he’d kept his head after Pearl Harbor and remembered that no treaty required him to join with Japan in a war that Japan started (just like Japan refused to join the war Hitler started with Russia), it wouldn’t have mattered that FDR wanted to beat Germany before Japan. Congress could overrule him. They only declared war on Japan, and most of the Republicans and at least half of the Democrats would have directed that our military efforts go only towards Japan.
But then Hitler picked up a mic at a radio station, ranted and raved like a paranoid schizophrenic who found out that “they” _really_ were coming to get him, and declared war on the USA.
Are they raping Belgian nuns yet?
Is the Russian Army raping civilians? I’m sure, if they can pull the Ukrainian Army off them before the civilians are dead.