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comment by rrrrr
rrrrr  ·  3734 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ukraine: The Ugly Truth

Yes, that is fair. I submitted it really because I think we hear a lot of propaganda leaning the other way about Ukraine, and in the absence of any neutral objective sources (I have trouble finding anything that seems so) a bit of the pro-Russian view can serve as a counterbalance. They have been complaining a lot recently about the casualties of Ukrainian attacks, and yet we hear little of this in Western media (and not because there are no casualties, they are just not mentioned much).





coffeesp00ns  ·  3733 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I get where you're coming from. I still don't entirely agree, but that's fine, we don't need to.

Unfortunately, just like any war, the people in the middle come out the worst off. If you leave your house, you will lose everything. if you stay, your life is in danger every day. If you flee to the West and the pro-Russian separatists win, you may never see your family in the east again. If you flee to the east and the Ukraine wins back its control over the Russian border, you spend the rest of your life waiting for the other shoe to drop and Russia to bring its own bombers in the night.

These people are stuck, and what's worse, they are used by either side as an image of "the atrocities of the Maidan government", or "Proof that the separatists are losing ground". They're pawns, media opportunities, Photo-ops and tools to appeal for more funding to the war effort.

I understand that V for Vendetta is a problematic book, and that as a piece of fiction it must be taken with a grain of salt and a consideration for the Author's message. However, when situations like this come up - where dead civilians are used as a photo opportunity in war to rouse one side or the other I can only think of the line "if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror." ( I think this actually come from the movie, not the book, but I couldn't do my due diligence on it this evening)

People do this, governments do this, Fox, Russian Times, and MSNBC do this because it WORKS. We allow them to do it. We allow them to appeal to our emotions and get us angry, because when we're angry we don't think.