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An 8-panel Phoebe Teaching Joey meme.
The first panel is Phoebe from Friends saying "Russia".
The second panel is Joey from the same show replying with "Russia".
The third panel is Phoebe saying "has invaded".
The fourth panel is Joey repeating back "has invaded".
The fifth panel is Phoebe saying "Ukraine".
The sixth panel is Joey repeating back "Ukraine".
The seventh panel is Phoebe saying the completed phrase "Russia has invaded Ukraine".
The final panel shows Joey proudly proclaiming "NATO just started a proxy war".
Aside from the word “started” both are obviously true. We certainly did not start the war in Ukraine, but we are for sure using it to fight a proxy war.
It is fascinating that Zelenskyy has become the sole major voice of Ukraine to the west. Clearly Ukrainians hate Russians and many will die fighting to avoid the kind of oppression and genocide that would happen if Russia took control, but the idea that there is zero dissent and nobody just wants to surrender to stop the casualties does not pass the sniff test. Feels very political like the propaganda wars of the first and second world wars.
You know what makes a population really unlikely to want to surrender? An invading military that's perpetrating war crimes all over their country and has a propensity for conscripting civilians from occupied regions.
83% of Ukrainians want to join NATO.
Providing arms and aid to a small country that is fighting for its own sovereignty is not a "proxy war". It's providing aid to an ally.
It's the second largest country in Europe after Russia (even when only taking Russia's European territory into account which is larger than India. Russia is humongous, colonial empires do tend to be. Roughly the size of China+USA combined).
Turkey is larger in case you're counting them in, France larger when you're counting overseas territories. About twice as big as Italy.
You're talking about land, I meant population and GDP. They're in 8th place in population and way down in 23rd place by GDP. Having a country with a lot of land means almost nothing as a factor for winning a war.
Land mass can factor into victory in a war. It can help to spread an attacker forces for example, imagone trying to occupy say California, Alaska, or Texas.
Either that or it is a proxy war, but not the bad kind.
Who is saying nobody wants to surrender? I'm sure people wanted to surrender in WWII also. If the majority wanted to, though ... they would.
That’s the point of propaganda. It became illegal in the US to work against the war effort and that included protesting the war. Those in power actively fought any majority consensus that would end the war.
I suppose that’s fine in WWII because we had such a clear bad guy, maybe it’s fine in Ukraine, but there are plenty of instances where the opposite was true and a long terrible war was carried on by a state against the wishes of its people. E.g. there were a bunch of reports early on saying a majority of Russians were in support of the war from their side. Clearly, there is a large chunk of Russian citizens who would rather not be involved in this war who get more coverage now, but their voice is still suppressed by Russian state media. .
Not saying it’s happening in Ukraine, but the way we are hearing about it basically eschews us hearing a perspective other than the pro NATO Majority.