#(also it's a very Polish perspective - I believe the place you're coming from influences the perspective too)

[thunderboltfire]

In relation to the current political climate - nothing makes me as furious as random people on the internet playing philosopher and geopolitics expert, claiming that ‘we don’t know the truth bc everybody lies’ and playing the whataboutism game, sometimes even trying to justify the invasion, claiming that actually, Russia and Putin didn’t started it - that he was provoked. Usually, people making these comments are from the Western Europe or America, but that’s not a rule.

“But NATO wanted to put missiles on the very border of Russia!” Russia has nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad, on the very border of Poland and expected everyone to be alright with that, yet I remember that when Poland negotiated with USA to install the anti-missile system the main problem was whether or not we’ll anger Putin by allowing NATO country, with whom we’re allied with to install a defense system in our country. The majority of what is going on in sovereign states should be nobody else’s business - especially if we’re talking about things like alliances and equipment of the armed forces, not clear human rights violations etc. Ukraine is not Russian colony - it doesn’t matter that Putin states otherwise. Russia already borders with several NATO countries and repeatedly violates their airspace, captures their vessels on neutral waters, and the Russian fighter jets even made a low-pass, similar to a simulated attack on an American warship, which was caught on camera. And that was years before the invasion.

No one would feel the need to defend against Russia, if they didn’t keep everyone on their toes. On purpose. And that’s why Ukraine also wanted to join NATO - because Russia has made moves suggesting that they won’t stop at Donetsk and Lugansk, or that they’re going to tear their territory apart, piece by piece.

I’ve even seen people stating that Putin only wants Ukraine to de-nazify its military and government (claiming that the current government is neo-nazi or something).

Apart from the falseness of the statement - what do You think he’ll do then? Respectfully retreat and apologise for incursion? Maybe even pay the war reparations?

Are there horrible people with far-right sentiments in Ukraine? Of course. So they are in practically every country. It’s still a half-true (in case of the government even fully false) bullshit used as an excuse to invade a neighboring country, kill civilians, shoot the refugees and bomb the shelters. And in case I was in doubt whether the tales of Russian bombing the refugee columns are true, a young Ukrainian boy who’s come to the model kit workshop said that as they were running there was a plane dropping bombs all around, but their [Ukrainian] plane appeared and shot it down. So yeah. It’s happening. Huge thanks to the pilot who had enough reflex and skill to save them, I hope he’s still alive.The 6, maybe 8 year old children here can tell you things they definitely shouldn’t witness.

And it outrages me, to see people who’s never lived next to Russia saying that “Putin needs to protect his country’s interests, and NATO is encroaching on Russia”. He’s been doing whatever he pleases outside of his borders - Georgia, Crimea, now Ukraine - because he thought that people will be too scared to intervene. And he’s been lying and lying all this time and people either didn’t hear about it or don’t even care.

Putins’ propagandists are hard at work, recently on the Russian TV show their “experts” said, that my country’s politics is hateful and criminal, and if we’ll act “too brave” our capital will be gone in 30 seconds. They threaten us day-to-day now, people who don’t live near the Eastern Flank of NATO don’t understand that every engagement that we do on a government level sending help to Ukraine is not because of USA, or because of some false sense of moral superiority - it’s because we’re next. Putin does make it clear that he deems Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and other countries Russia’s zone of influence. His rhetorics is so abhorrent, that I can’t believe anyone who has any different source of information even believes him. Murderer of civilians and children paints his own war as some sort of moral crusade against the “rotten” west.

Our president recently responded to the threats implying that Putin shouldn’t make that much effort to threaten us, or he’ll shit his pants. It seems irrational or silly, but it’s already known by everyone here that Russia’s leaders don’t really care whether we try to appease them or not - they’ve already decided that we’re their enemy. They won’t stop on our Eastern border, for sure not indefinitely. They will try to move further to the west, unless they lose in Ukraine, for which I still hope.

Anyway, thanks for reading this. And for all the Russians suffering because of the sanctions - I feel for You. I know many of You are not in the position in which You just can risk being arrested for opposing the regime. But truth be told, this is probably the least lethal way to stop this madness and I won’t stop supporting the sanctions until Putin doesn’t have any more pocket money to play war criminal among his neighbors.