So...if you've been following the news, you'll know that Russia has pulled back from Kyiv and other areas in the north and west of the country because they were failing to capture the area, and instead they're trying to double down on the south and the east, notably the Donbas region which is supposed to be the reason Russia engaged in this war.
And as they pull back, Ukrainian forces are recapturing areas around Kyiv, only to find a grisly sight. In one town named Bucha, they found tons of Ukrainian civilians executed. I won't go into details as it's extremely graphic, but apparently they rounded up all of the men that they could and killed them off. And they also raped and tortured many others as well. This kind of behavior is barbaric, and if not for Russia having nukes, I would be advocating for regime change in Russia at this point. Really, I thought we left this kind of crap behind in 1945.
But apparently not, and this is how Russia conducts itself in the 21st century. But, all in all, I want to discuss WHY Russia is doing this. There's two major reasons I can think of. First of all, Russia can't win a conventional war against Ukraine so they have to go for the below the belt shot and target civilians instead. They're struggling against Ukraine's army and taking insane casualties, so instead they're trying to target infrastructure and civilians instead. This is a desperation move intended to destroy Ukrainian morale and get them to surrender and give up without actually beating them. If Russia can make the war as costly to the Ukrainian civilian population, they might be able to bully the government to accept their terms.
But the second reason is even darker. It really is a genocide. Russia's major arguments for Ukraine come down to demographics. For example, in the Donbas region, they argue that the area is majority Russian speaking and they want to join Russia. They are Russian people stuck in a foreign country in which they don't belong. So the land should really be Russia's, and not Ukraine's. This is the argument they've been pushing in the Donbas region and is a major pretext of this entire war. So, what does Russia want to do to be able to occupy and take over all of Ukraine? Well, you need to get rid of the population that's there. So how are they doing it? by killing as many as they can. The same thing goes for the so called "humanitarian corridor" Russia offered to the residents of Mariupol a few weeks ago. Apparently the corridor went to Russia. So what's the game plan there? Remove the Ukrainians from Ukraine, so they can ship their own people in after the war.
That's how Russia plans to take over Ukraine. If they can kill and remove the Ukrainian population from Ukraine, once they take various regions over they can start bringing their own people in. And then, boom, it's part of Russia, and full of Russian citizens.
But let's call that what it is. It's an attempted genocide. When your goal is demographic change via death and forced relocation for the purpose to resettle an area with your own people, I don't see what else we can call it. They're basically trying to commit genocide. This isn't how civilized countries in the 21st centuries act. This is reminiscent of what the Nazis did in Europe during WWII, or alternatively, what we (Americans) did to the native population on our continent. Remove the people that once lived on it, replace them with the people the group in question wants there.
It's sickening, this shouldn't be freaking happening in 2022. Putin is this century's Hitler it seems, and sadly, we can't touch the guy because he's a nuclear armed power. So all we can do is sit back, watch with horror, help the Ukrainian military in ways we can, and cheer them on and hope they win. It seems like they've won a lot of the battles so far, but with this refocus from attacking the whole country to focusing on certain regions they think they can take, it's unclear how the war will end. I think I've seen it said this might end like the Korean war, with the country split in two. One having a modern western style democratic government, and the other being run by a despotic ally of the Kremlin, if not the Kremlin itself. Sadly, that might be the case. While Ukraine will be able to halt advances of the entire country, if Russia focuses its invasion on specific areas and doubles down, they might save face for themselves and still acquire some territory. Which is far from the ideal outcome (total loss for Russia), but better than the whole country being taken over.
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