Deuteronomy 20:10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

Their holy book literally commands them to kill all these people on this specific land

That was widely expected to die soon of natural causes anyway

They’re wrong with regularity

Well Russia will say that as a pretext regardless of whether it’s true or not.

Removed by mod

Fuck Trump and Fuck anyone who didn’t refuse orders to attack Venezuela without provocation

There’s been alot of online speculation that either he was betrayed or cut himself a deal and willingly went

I imagine he’s gotten pretty good at staying hidden

Latvians don’t want to be Russia’s Sudetenland, especially since the previous conquest of their country in WW2 led to wide scale deportations of Latvians and migration of Russians. It’s not a good solution but like many colonized areas they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

We were talking about Europe so I apparently wasn’t specific enough. Most countries in NATO let any capacity they had for large scale land wars wither after the cold war ended since they only saw conflict in small “police actions” in far away lands as being in their future. Things like Kosovo. And, to be fair, even the Russians (Putin aside) were confident that Europe was past large land wars too.

Some of us don’t “US bad, Russia good”. We look at each individual scenario, analyze it, and come to conclusions.

Ask Qaddafi’s victims how peaceful Qaddafi was

The main problem is the three big Empires on Earth: the US, Russia, and China.

Russian escalation came because Putin was feeling the pressure from Navalny’s anti-corruption campaign and other domestic problems. His popularity was suffering and successful military operations had always improved his popularity in the past (as they do for most national leaders). Coupled that with his Imperialist ambitions and invading Ukraine seemed like a win/win to him. Domestic concerns influence Geopolitics more than geopolitical concerns do.

An Alliance so aggressive that decades of peace lulled it into such deep complacency that they let their military capabilities atrophy? You’re being a try-hard

NATO encroaching

*Free Nations previously invaded and/or dominated by Russia desperate to join the Don’t be Invaded by Russia Alliance

Utterly unimportant. I could spend all day coming up with better reasons.

The immediate issue is Russian Imperialism. US hegemony is only at play here in so far as it prevents Russian hegemony. That 2 Empires are having a pissing match should surprise no one.

You say that like there was a serious risk of nuclear war. But the issue wasn’t Ukraine, it was the rules based internation order that the US set up and benefitted from (despite also frequently breaking the rules)