You won't see me claiming that. War is hell and there are no good guys.
However there is a difference between the way Russia wages war vs Ukraine.
Russia usually hits civilan targets by accident aka their missiles get intercepted and they fall down on kindergartens.
Ukraine wages war like a terrorist state. The intentionally target civilian infrastructure and then blame it on the Russians. They've been doing this since 2014 when they were shelling the residential areas of Donetsk and then blaming it on the Russians.
Yes, they literally claimed that the Russians bombed the civilian areas to turn them against Ukraine. The latest attack is just in line with that.
I guess that depends on which side's propaganda you believe. Frankly both sides are guilty of targeting civilian areas - not by accident or intercepted fragments. Both sides claim to be targeting military infrastructure alone. Both are not telling the truth. However, I have seen enough evidence that Ukraine lately has been targeting more remote military infrastructure and oil refinery targets. Yes, there is always the risk of collateral damage. But what I have seen by the Ukrainians has been at a minimum. The damage left by the strikes bears that out.
Russia is a large country and pretty spread out, so as of late, the civilian targeting rhetoric by Russia is not holding water. Russia however, has been primarily hitting civilian areas just because of where they are hitting. Especially in the dead of winter. The energy infrastructure was deliberately targeted to force the Ukrainian people to leave those areas or freeze to death. That was plain civilian terrorism. Honestly, it appeared to me that Russia didn't really care what they hit. Some of the Russian missiles don't have the targeting accuracy they are claimed to have. Like many tofu dreg Chinese military equipment, the reality doesn't live up to the hype.
Russia also froze its own people out in the eastern part of the country this last year by cutting off their energy supplies to keep it flowing to the front and the major Russian cities in the West. The Russian economy is staggering and the Kremlin has been forced to make choices in order to keep the war effort going. Stuff like that was what Russia did under the Czar. That was pretty ruthless. I still have not found out how those people in those more eastern Russian remote areas survived the winter - which are bitterly cold. That is fact. This was also after Putin stripped these areas of their more non Russian ethnic young men in the war effort. These remote regions are where resources are often extracted. Russia has had to start transporting workers into these areas to keep extracting resources simply because the young men that normally worked those jobs are no longer coming home.
Many more ethnic areas of the country were stripped of their young men leaving those areas in complete demographic crisis. That is never mentioned in the Russian propaganda. Russians have always had their own form of bigotry against non ethnically Russian people. That has not changed even through the Soviet era to the more recent Federation days - despite Putin's rhetoric to the countrary. Check out what the Kremlin has done to Transnistria and Moldova this last couple of years. Their energy was also cut off this last winter. 1500 Russian soldiers were left stranded in Transnistria with no reinforcements or supplies. The Kremlin will do nothing to help them. They have simply been left behind. It's the Russian way of doing business.
The face of what things were at the beginning of this BS war have changed over time. I thought like you do when this conflict started. I have since changed my mind simply based on what I have seen as this horror has drug on. Russia has treated its own soldiers cruelly not to mention some of their own citizens. The loses over this last winter and spring are horrible - many Russian soldiers froze to death this last winter simply because they didn't have adequate winter gear. It was stolen by their own command officers and sold to the highest bidder. Something Ukrainian solders on the front can relate to. The Russian military has always had severe corruption issues even back to Czarist Russia. So Ukraine does not have sole ownership of that title. My own family had to deal with the cruelty of Russians back in the day. They were not ethnic Russians and had to flee to save their lives from being thrown into the senseless Russian war meat grinder or face starvation. Modern Russia has not changed in those regards.
Both sides are corrupt as hell. That is something they both have in common. It's in their DNA. So I don't believe either side's propaganda. War is always a propaganda war at the same time as the kinetic war. The actual truth is always buried somewhere on the battlefield and in the lives of civilians forced to live through it. The sooner this horror show is brought to a conclusion, the better it will be for the citizens and the average soldiers of both countries.
You won't see me claiming that. War is hell and there are no good guys.
However there is a difference between the way Russia wages war vs Ukraine.
Russia usually hits civilan targets by accident aka their missiles get intercepted and they fall down on kindergartens.
Ukraine wages war like a terrorist state. The intentionally target civilian infrastructure and then blame it on the Russians. They've been doing this since 2014 when they were shelling the residential areas of Donetsk and then blaming it on the Russians.
Yes, they literally claimed that the Russians bombed the civilian areas to turn them against Ukraine. The latest attack is just in line with that.
I guess that depends on which side's propaganda you believe. Frankly both sides are guilty of targeting civilian areas - not by accident or intercepted fragments. Both sides claim to be targeting military infrastructure alone. Both are not telling the truth. However, I have seen enough evidence that Ukraine lately has been targeting more remote military infrastructure and oil refinery targets. Yes, there is always the risk of collateral damage. But what I have seen by the Ukrainians has been at a minimum. The damage left by the strikes bears that out.
Russia is a large country and pretty spread out, so as of late, the civilian targeting rhetoric by Russia is not holding water. Russia however, has been primarily hitting civilian areas just because of where they are hitting. Especially in the dead of winter. The energy infrastructure was deliberately targeted to force the Ukrainian people to leave those areas or freeze to death. That was plain civilian terrorism. Honestly, it appeared to me that Russia didn't really care what they hit. Some of the Russian missiles don't have the targeting accuracy they are claimed to have. Like many tofu dreg Chinese military equipment, the reality doesn't live up to the hype.
Russia also froze its own people out in the eastern part of the country this last year by cutting off their energy supplies to keep it flowing to the front and the major Russian cities in the West. The Russian economy is staggering and the Kremlin has been forced to make choices in order to keep the war effort going. Stuff like that was what Russia did under the Czar. That was pretty ruthless. I still have not found out how those people in those more eastern Russian remote areas survived the winter - which are bitterly cold. That is fact. This was also after Putin stripped these areas of their more non Russian ethnic young men in the war effort. These remote regions are where resources are often extracted. Russia has had to start transporting workers into these areas to keep extracting resources simply because the young men that normally worked those jobs are no longer coming home.
Many more ethnic areas of the country were stripped of their young men leaving those areas in complete demographic crisis. That is never mentioned in the Russian propaganda. Russians have always had their own form of bigotry against non ethnically Russian people. That has not changed even through the Soviet era to the more recent Federation days - despite Putin's rhetoric to the countrary. Check out what the Kremlin has done to Transnistria and Moldova this last couple of years. Their energy was also cut off this last winter. 1500 Russian soldiers were left stranded in Transnistria with no reinforcements or supplies. The Kremlin will do nothing to help them. They have simply been left behind. It's the Russian way of doing business.
The face of what things were at the beginning of this BS war have changed over time. I thought like you do when this conflict started. I have since changed my mind simply based on what I have seen as this horror has drug on. Russia has treated its own soldiers cruelly not to mention some of their own citizens. The loses over this last winter and spring are horrible - many Russian soldiers froze to death this last winter simply because they didn't have adequate winter gear. It was stolen by their own command officers and sold to the highest bidder. Something Ukrainian solders on the front can relate to. The Russian military has always had severe corruption issues even back to Czarist Russia. So Ukraine does not have sole ownership of that title. My own family had to deal with the cruelty of Russians back in the day. They were not ethnic Russians and had to flee to save their lives from being thrown into the senseless Russian war meat grinder or face starvation. Modern Russia has not changed in those regards.
Both sides are corrupt as hell. That is something they both have in common. It's in their DNA. So I don't believe either side's propaganda. War is always a propaganda war at the same time as the kinetic war. The actual truth is always buried somewhere on the battlefield and in the lives of civilians forced to live through it. The sooner this horror show is brought to a conclusion, the better it will be for the citizens and the average soldiers of both countries.