sycasey said:
chazzed said:
Cal88 said:
sycasey said:
Cal88 said:
If I'm Zelensky, and I truly cared about the people I am supposed to lead, I would make sure not to start a war that I am certain to lose, a war that would destroy my country and kill hundreds of thousands of my countrymen, especially when agreements had been set in the first place to avoid said war.
He didn't start it.
It started out with the ATO, "Anti-Terrorist Operation", in 2014, by Zelensky's predecessors against the Donbass rebellion.
It was stopped by the Minsk Agreements.
It was restarted by the violation of these agreements, which culminated with the assembly of a large, well-trained, well-equipped (by NATO) Ukrainian army that was set to crush the Donbass rebellion and reconquer Crimea.
This was a war of choice for Zelensky and NATO. It still is right now, Biden can stop the carnage with one phone call.
Cal88, you must have missed sycasey's reply in which he noted that you left out Russia's invasion of Crimea. Did you omit it intentionally or forgetfully?
Don't worry, I know his answer: Russia just HAD to do it because NATO performed a coup that threw out Ukraine's old president who was very Russia-friendly. The part where Ukraine then held another election and elected Zelenskyy, who is also not very Russia-friendly? Never mind!
Zelensky run on a pro-Russian, pro-peace platform, then did a 180 degree, as the neo-nazis militias effectively took over. He initially got a lot of votes from Russophones, because he also is a Russophone.
Russia did not invade Crimea, the Ukrainian army contingent that was stationed there, made up from locals, defected in 2014 alongside the people of Crimea, who overwhelmingly identified as Russian, and wanted nothing to do with the Kiev government who was (is) virulently anti-Russian. This is confirmed by the Crimean referendum as well as a series of polls conducted by several independent western polling agencies, all of whom had 85%-90% of Crimeans supporting Russian reunification for Crimea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#PollingAfter Crimeans voted to join Russia, the Kyev regime cut off their water supply out of pure spite for Crimeans for 7 years, diverting their potable water into the Black Sea, before their access to that water got restored by the Russian invasion of Kherson. How do you think Crimeans feel about this??
Crimea has been thriving as part of the Russian Federation, their economy tourism, agriculture and logistics booming, with Russia having made multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects there. Before that, it was a rusty former Soviet wasteland, like the rest of Ukraine, the poorest, most corrupt country in Europe.