@pretzelattack1 said in #47:
> yeah this is not true either. they aren't "made up stories".
You simply assert that without any evidence. I claimed in #46 that Russian propaganda stories about the Russian language no longer being taught in Ukraine are made up. If you want to debunk my claim, address it directly and be ready to post supporting evidence. Weird, you aren't exactly doing that.
I however am happy to supply you with evidence for my claim:
novamova.net/russian-schools/kiev (For profit Russian language school in Kiev still operating in 2023)
www.languageinternational.com/russian-schools-kiev-65332 (language website comparing different Russian language programs in Kiev still operating in 2023)
http://www.univ.kiev.ua/en/inter-stud/pre-university-study (You can learn Ukrainian, Russian and English as part of your pre university study at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv)
And the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv even has a dedicated "Department of Ukrainian and Russian as Foreign Languages" (Department 21) as part of its Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology:
http://www.univ.kiev.ua/en/departments/philology/Keep in mind Kiev is the city Russian propaganda would have you believe is ruled by spontaneously russophobic neo-Nazis who allegedly suppress the Russian speaking population (sometimes Russian propaganda even goes as far as claiming a genocide of which there is no evidence whatsoever) and outlaw the Russian language to be spoken or taught.
When in reality, the Russian language was and still in part is a (not necessarily the only) "lingua franca" of the city of Kiev and is in fact being taught to this very day, even at the National University of Kiev. They even have a dedicated Department that teaches Russian.
So my claim in #46 is entirely correct and the best you have shown yourself to be capable of is going: "Nuh-uh!"
> and it is less of a war of aggression than any number of US wars, including the war against Cuba and the USSR when the USSR responded to US aggression in placing missiles in Turkey by placing missiles in Cuba.
Whataboutism. This is a thread about "the russian attack on Ukraine". Not about Cold War US intelligence agency operations.
But since your claim is beyond asinine, I'll address it:
It was not a war: Kennedy carefully (albeit narrowly) avoided escalating it to a full-scale war, discarding his military advisor's attempts to sway him into openly bombing and invading Cuba, even terming his naval blockade (technically an act of war) aimed at stopping more Soviet missiles arriving in Cuba a "naval quarantine" in order to avoid the implication that the US was at war with Cuba.
Indeed, the US (who, surprise, wasn't the good guy in the Cold War, neither was the Soviet Union, both superpowers risked the future of the human species in their quarrel for supremacy) had stationed missiles in both Turkey and Italy in 1961. This prompted the USSR to station their missiles in Cuba and led to the Cuban missile crisis.
In January 1959 there had been a communist revolution in Cuba and Castro had taken over. Castro nationalised (confiscated) American businesses on the island and thus severed the prior good relations with the US and sought close relations with the USSR instead.
The US under Eisenhower – still under the influence of McCarthyism, the recent Second Red Scare and both Truman and Eisenhower Doctrine – subsequently sought to topple Fidel Castro. In March 1960 Eisenhower approved of CIA plans to stage an invasion of Cuba in order to overthrow Castro. The CIA then trained and supplied Cuban exiles (who had fled the country due to the communist revolution in 1959) with weapons: The CIA sponsored the counter-revolutionary "Brigada Asalto 2506" consisting of 1,511 men, some (former) US military personnel, but mostly Cuban exiles.
In what can only be described as a totally bodged intelligence agency operation, the CIA launched the Bay of Pigs Invasion with newly elected Kennedy's approval (to his predecessor's plans) on 17 April 1961. 1500 ground forces, 16 bombers and 5 tanks faced off against 25,000 Cuban army forces, 200,000 militia forces 13 bombers/fighter jets and more than 100 Soviet produced tanks. The invasion failed pathetically within three days, not least because after a day or so Kennedy withheld US air and naval support (that had been factored in by the Eisenhower administration and the CIA in their plans) in order to avoid international attention uncovering the CIA's shady plot. And in order to avoid a full scale war with Cuba and presumably their new ally, the USSR.
I don't condone the actions of Cold War USA.
But to compare this to the current full scale war of aggression Russia is waging on their peaceful neighbour Ukraine? That's ridiculous.
You're out of your mind. It's not even comparable in scale to the 2014 illegal (1994 Budapest Memorandum) annexation of Crimea, in which 20,000-30,000 Russian forces ("Little green men" in unmarked green army uniforms) occupied an unprepared Crimea without significant resistance. With Putin claiming repeatedly that "Russia has no intention to invade Ukraine nor annex Crimea" only to both immediately invade Ukraine and annex Crimea. He's engaging in double speak, deny everything and do it anyways.
Let alone to the illegal full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine), in which Russia massed 169,000–190,000 troops at the borders of Ukraine, mobilised an additional 500,000 troops (as of February 2023) and 50,000 mercenaries, strategically bombed electricity generation and transmission infrastructure in order to freeze civilians to death (lowering morale), maternity wards, theatres with children inside and committed countless other atrocities.
Here too Putin claimed not to be planning an invasion or annexations, and when he did invade (of course he did) he claimed it to be a "special military operation" and in autumn he did illegally annex several Ukrainian oblasts under the laughable pretext of supposed "referenda" at gunpoint.
It's always the same playbook. It's not hard to recognise. But you just don't want to recognise it, do you?
> Ukrainian students have been heavily propagandized by the current Ukraine government, installed by the US in 2014, [...]
You conveniently forget to mention the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and their heavy and obvious involvement in the 2014–2022 war in Donbas. Also, the US did not install the current Ukrainian government (let alone in 2014). It was democratically elected in a fair and free election in 2019:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_electionIt was internationally recognised as such, for instance by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE.
The rest of your post is just "yada yada yada, US schools teach creationism". Which they don't. There are some religious extremists who would like that, but they didn't succeed. Either way, the separation of church and state in the US is totally besides the point in a thread about the atrocious Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Your shameless attempts to derail the conversation are pitiful.