#of the defenders of ukraine

[dontforgetukraine]

Today Ukraine commemorates the fallen defenders who fought for Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, & territorial integrity. This day of remembrance was established in 2019 to mark the Ilovaisk tragedy. 10 years ago Russia violated an agreement and ambushed Ukrainian soldiers that were leaving through the "green corridor" near Ilovaisk.

366 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, 429 Ukrainian soldiers were wounded, 158 missing, 300 captured.

Photo credit: Arsen Petrov Sources: Euromaidan Press, Gyunduz Mamedov,

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

ManChildTrump is a wannabe mobster, and a Russian asset!

[panimoonchild]

“I tried to explain that I was a musician but it didn’t work. You say you are a musician and it irritates them so much they beat you more, and accuse you of lying,” said Merkotan

While international organizations inspect and have access to our prisons where Russian prisoners are held, they turn a blind eye and do not fight for proper conditions for Ukrainian prisoners.

Another thing that outrages me is the way "Putin's prison" is used. It was not Putin who tortured him and others, but russians. This is not Putin's war, but Russia's. These are not the decisions and crimes of one person. After 10 years of war, the Russians are still being singled out and absolved of responsibility. That's impossible levels of stupidity and cowardice.

[folklorespring]

"During the first 24 hours [after the airstrike] there's still a chance of finding alive people under the rubble. There's still hope. There's always hope". Ukrainian rescuers rest on the grass near the institute that was bombed by russia.

[democratthatlovesguns]

The Substance of the 2nd Amendment

A human being has a natural right to learn skills allowing him or her (they/them) to defend against attacks from others. By extension, a person has the natural right to acquire/possess weapons that allows one to repel attacks from others - especially in cases in which the offender(s) is physically stronger than the person (people) being victimized.

Case in point, this is the reason we (as democrats) feel compelled to provide Ukraine weapons and training, so that a smaller nation of free people can defend itself against a greater/stronger nation.

BELIEVE US: WE UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

IN AN IDEAL WORLD, no government would ever attempt to limit a person's right to possess ANY weapon they wish, as long as they had the resources to acquire it. IN AN IDEAL WORLD, no person would be obligated to register any weapon with any government.

IN AN IDEAL WORLD, the life, liberty, and natural right to pursue happiness of any person would be respected by every other person in the world. IN AN IDEAL WORLD, no item would have ever been developed or thought of as a weapon for one human being to harm another.

Have you ever heard the quote from Tibullus (c. 55BC): "Who was the first that forged the deadly blade? Of rugged steel his savage soul was made."

Modern day translation: Who was the first to make a weapon to harm another human being? That guy was a fucking asshole.

And that is precisely what gun control laws do: they keep weapons of unprecedented deadliness from assholes.

Gun control laws require that a person needs to possess an understanding of how dangerous guns can be before they can owe a gun. They also disallow people convicted of certain crimes from possessing guns until they demonstrate fitness to own guns again. A more comprehensive control would allow people to surrender their weapons when they feel they might do something stupid and would allow them to regain possession when they feel fit again - NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

Hell, we could even have public gun clubs for a day of fun with the family. Go out, check out new weapons, shoot some stuff, good times.

But we need to come up with a practical/workable solution together; when our children, educators and caregivers, don't feel safe in their respective learning environments throughout the day, there is no clearer sign that the status quo is not working!

[anastasiamaru]

A Pole, a Chechen and a Ukrainian fighting against the russian agression

[odinsblog]

This is the deeply homophobic + transphobic autocracy that tankies worship so much 😒

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The Russian Justice Ministry on Friday said it has filed a lawsuit with the nation’s Supreme Court to outlaw the LGBTQ+ “international public movement” as extremist, the latest crippling blow against the already beleaguered LGBTQ+ community in the increasingly conservative country.

The crackdown, which began a decade ago, slowly but surely chipped away at LGBTQ+ rights. In 2013, the Kremlin adopted the first legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law, banning any non-critical public depiction of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, Putin pushed through a constitutional reform to extend his rule by two more terms that also outlawed same-sex marriage.

In 2022, after sending troops into Ukraine, the Kremlin ramped up its rhetoric about protecting “traditional values” from what it called the West’s “degrading” influence, in what rights advocates saw as an attempt to legitimize the war in Ukraine. That same year, the authorities adopted a law banning propaganda of “nontraditional sexual relations” among adults, too, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ people.

Another law passed this year prohibited gender transitioning procedures and gender-affirming care for trans people. The legislation prohibited any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records. It also amended Russia’s Family Code by listing gender change as a reason to annul a marriage and adding those “who had changed gender” to a list of people who can’t become foster or adoptive parents.

“Do we really want to have here, in our country, in Russia, ‘Parent No. 1, No. 2, No. 3’ instead of ‘mom’ and ‘dad?’” Putin said in September 2022 at a ceremony to formalize Moscow’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions. “Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed in our schools from the primary grades?”

(continue reading)

[eretzyisrael]

by Daniel Greenfield

The Biden-Harris administration and the European Union believe that Ukraine has the right to win while Israel only has the right to defend itself. That is the fundamental difference between the treatment of Ukraine and Israel, and the treatment of their two wars.

Ukraine’s demands for bigger and deadlier weapons systems, including tanks and jets, were swiftly met even while the Biden-Harris administration cut off or “slow walked” more basic weapons deliveries to Israel to force it to slow down offensive operations, including in Rafah. Those pressure campaigns allowed Hamas to hold on to and murder captured hostages.

That’s what the “right to win” looks like as opposed to the paltry “right to defend itself.”

Every time Ukraine pushed further or opened a new front in the war, including going into Russia, there was applause, rather than warnings about “escalation.” But every phase of Israel’s military campaign, including the push into Rafah where the hostages and tunnels were, was marked by pressure campaigns and warnings about the danger of “escalation” in the Middle East.

Ukraine attacking a nuclear world power isn’t “escalation,” Israel taking out a Hamas leader is.

The political establishment believes that Ukraine has the right to do more than just throw back invading armies, but believes that Israel’s rights are limited to defending and maintaining its 1948 borders, that it must surrender of all its Six-Day War borders, including half of Jerusalem, to Islamic terrorists and then promise them everything else they ask for to end the fighting.

And when the terrorists attack anyway, Israel will have the “right to defend itself” for a week or two. Then it’ll be time for another “ceasefire,” more negotiations and more surrenders.

Kamala and the political establishment are wrong. Israel does not have a “right to defend itself,” it has a right and a duty to go on the offensive and win. It has a right and a duty to utterly defeat and destroy every single Islamic terrorist organization at war with it. It has a right and a duty to secure whatever territory the terrorists were using for their operations, including the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border, through which massive amounts of weapons were delivered to Hamas.

That’s the least of what winning means.

In 1948, 1967 and 1973, Israel undertook to win. In those first three decades, it won and emerged stronger for it. In the next terrible four decades, it lost land, ambition and safety in a failed search for a peace that could never come on any terms other than its own strength.

Defense was traded for offense. Conflicts were to be managed. A weakening deterrence would reduce the scope of any individual exchange of fire. The United States and the Europeans would offer “guarantees” in exchange for a perpetual process of peace negotiations and war.

That was Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

On Oct. 7, Israel hit bottom. The cost of peace at any price was no longer just the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza, rockets falling on major cities or a worldwide campaign of demonization by its “peace partners,” but a new invasion of Israel. Out of that horror rises a single fundamental question: Will Israel remain on the defensive or will it fight to win.

The right to defend itself is Israel’s slow suicide. Survival rests on the right to win.

[afro-elf]

yeah the biden quote about japan/korea IS pulled out of context but the context doesn't make it much better in my opinion ksdgjslkjglskjg

[dontforgetukraine]

On this day of remembrance for Ukraine's defenders, French reporter Emmanuelle Chaze reminds us of the human toll due to the West enabling Russia.

---

On the Field of Mars in Lviv, more graves appear each day. They are tended to daily & deep into the night by grieving families. None of that had to happen to Ukraine, had Ru not been enabled by the West.

On one of the most recent graves,@/sasha_weirdsley told me a woman came every day to mourn her son. She comes with a mat to spend time with him. In the sand, she wrote "любимо", "we love (you)".

Her son's name is Pavlo-Nikita Skachkov, he was born in 1997 and died on July 31st, 2024, defending Ukraine with the 24th mechanized brigade named after King Danylo. He will forever be 27.

Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died defending their country, our democracies, Europe. They were someone's child, someone's sibling, someone's lover. They were loved and their loss is irreplaceable.

Those thousands of Fallen sacrificed their lives for an interest they placed above their own. They will never get to see Ukraine freed of Ru agression. If you are asking yourself what you would have done during World War II, you are exactly doing it right now.

---

Sources: Emmanuelle Chaze

[varyathevillain]

did not want to negatively interact with the OP from whom I got this image, but this threw me into a fit of such incandescent fury that I had to talk about it, and I do not want to make others feel like they're at fault about something AJN said, about the implication (or outright possibility) of them being used for clout, or my own reaction to this. and I also will say, this is not an objective opinion. this is me, tired of this bullshit that keeps appearing in my life despite me repeatedly trying to move on.

what a fucking horrifying quote. this does not read as someone awkwardly relating to their audience to me. this is a rehearsed, researched 'funny guy' moment, scripted specifically to pander to people who would quote and reshare this moment, and it doesn't have the care or emotional attachment to the audience that many would ascribe it. this is a marketing strategy.

Alexander James Newall and his podcasting company have repeatedly in the past worked with companies like, for example, BetterHelp. in their case, Rusty Quill have been keeping the partnership and advertising it even after the FTC officially forced said company into paying settlement for breaking privacy agreements and selling customer data to third party services (such as pharmaceutical companies and other interest groups like Facebook/Meta), then the reveal of overcharging patients for subpar service, and repeated ethical violations within the company. you cannot say that this is an uninformed choice, since as a creative interacting with their fanbase via internet, especially as a multimedia practice (podcasting, youtube video creating, streaming etc), you simply cannot not learn about the scumminess and the actual legal issues of such a company. and it's not even 'oh, they did it only once' - people repeatedly complained about getting ads from AI training software companies, other 'mental health' help companies that turned out to also have AI training software, and on some notable occasions, a Noom app ad read, which is a weight loss app that 1) had also been in court reaching a settlement for tricking its customers, but for 'free trial' payments instead of selling their data, 2) had repeatedly been in hot water with health professionals about their diet practices.

and this is the company the face of which AJN presents. he is not a quirky fellow creative struggling for podcast space; he's a businessman running a company that is manipulating its audience with relatability, and it is working. he is not with you against the rich; he is the rich. and from what I am hearing and seeing, currently producing the main running show, the successor of The Magnus Archives, of a show that got critical acclaim and over 700 thousand pounds in kickstarter money to produce the 'sequel', only for that show to barely ever appear on anyone's radar outside of former TMA fans, to be quietly discussed as not being quite as coherent as its predecessor, and even outright criticised for the voice acting and issues with audio, where even interesting conversations turn into mumbled, inconsistent messes people can't really listen to without transcripts.

We Care What We Put Name To, in-fuckin-deed.

[panimoonchild]

Fight for them as they fought for you

Mykyta Tatyanko "Zhyvchyk", a soldier of the 501st separate marine battalion, is still in captivity. He hit the front pages of all the world's media because he was simply helping the wounded during the shelling of the Mariupol maternity hospital. Because he just wanted to save someone.

In Mariupol, Zhyvchyk provided moral support to the locals. Ksenia, a resident of the city, met the soldier when a residential area was shelled. That day, March 12, her family was injured and slaughtered - her 16-year-old son and her sister's husband were killed instantly. "I was in a state of shock: I wanted to commit suicide because half of my family was killed in front of me, and the other half was not sure if they would survive," Ksenia said. The young defender helped the woman to keep her morale up. Mykyta convinced her that she shouldn't do anything to herself because many people around her needed help. "You are needed here, let's go help," Ksenia recalls. Ksenia told Mykyta's mother, Larysa, everything in detail, and told her that she had become the heroine of a movie about Mariupol. She also talked a lot about Mykyta in the movie, but she didn't give them any details. They are still in touch. Once she said: "Maybe you will be offended by me, but now Mykyta will be my adopted son." And Larysa was very happy about that, because now they both pray for him sincerely. Larysa was also contacted by one of the guys who was in the TRO and headed the security of the hospital in the city center. In a conversation with the soldier's mother, the defender said that in Mariupol, her son shared his food and medicine with the residents. Mykyta gave away almost everything he had.

❗In these pictures, he is 19 years old. At the age of 18, he voluntarily chose the path of the military, which even before the full-scale war, he was in the east part of Ukraine. Mykyta has been in captivity for almost 2 years, so he is now 21.

Please, share stories of our defenders in captivity. Many of them, including Mykyta have been there more than 2 years. You can only imagine what Russians do and tell them. Russians entertain themselves by breaking people, especially Ukrainians. They fiercely hate people who protect and fight for freedom. I hope our people find even more power in themselves to live through the hell of russian captivity. And when defenders all come back to their homeland, they will be themselves, in a healthy state like body and mind. There so many people are waiting for them. They deserve only good things after all of that.

The gorgeous Frank with important message in Kyiv.

[dzthenerd490]

News Post

Palestine

Dying in ‘Hell’: The fate of Palestinian medics jailed by Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

UK counter-terrorism police arrest 10 Palestine Action activists (newarab.com)

Israeli Attacks Kill 14 in Gaza; Bezalel Smotrich Calls for Palestinian Population to Be Halved  | Democracy Now!

Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza | AP News

Ukraine

Ukraine says Russian attack sets a new record for the number of drones used | AP News

Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south  (economist.com)

Russian deserter reveals war secrets of guarding nuclear base (bbc.com)

‘Worst-case scenario’: Ukraine awaits Trump’s presidency with trepidation | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Sudan

Sudan in danger of becoming a failed state, Jan Egeland warns (bbc.com)

Sudan's Burhan allows UN to use three airports for aid delivery - Sudan Tribune

Major aid scale up by WFP in Sudan as country faces famine (yahoo.com)

U.N. humanitarian chief attends event in Sudan to raise awareness about violence against women | Africanews

Lebanon

LIVE: Israel bombs Lebanon’s Beirut; cabinet discusses possible truce | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Israel cabinet meeting to discuss Lebanon deal postponed: CNN (newarab.com)

Live updates: Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal, war in Lebanon and Gaza | CNN

Syria

(74) Updates LIVE: Israel bombs Lebanon’s Beirut; cabinet discusses possible truce (aljazeera.com)

Can Israeli strikes in Syria undermine Iran-backed militias? (voanews.com)

Surprise Attack On U.S. Base In Syria, Rockets Hit Army Facility During Training Session | Watch (indiatimes.com)

[vita-min-ze]

I feel like you don’t actually need to know all the intricacies of the history and relationship between Ukraine and Russia to assess who is right and who is wrong when it comes to the current war (I certainly don’t). A basic set of principles that should apply to every country:

invading another country is evil

raping/torturing/executing people (including children!!!) is evil

deporting children to your own country is evil

considering other cultures inferior and trying to erase them is evil

threatening a country (and its entire continent) with nuclear attacks is evil

Russia is doing exactly that. And it shouldn’t matter whether you like Tchaikovsky and Russian ballet, have Russian friends or never even heard of Ukraine before the war, your morals should not depend on how much you know about a country or identify with its people.

You cannot claim to oppose imperialism and ignore Central Asians and Eastern Europeans when they talk about their experinces with Russian imperialism. You cannot claim to support indigenous people but ignore the suffering of the indigenous people of Russia. You cannot claim to support refugees and victims of occupation and/or civil war and ignore Syrians, Georgians, Sudanese, Malians and more. And let’s be real, it cannot be just anti-Russian propaganda if so many people keep complaining at the same time, not just now but for decades and even centuries!

Btw, here are things that cannot always be described as “good” but are absolutely justified as a matter of self defense:

using weapons to defend your people against your invaders (and yes, that often includes the killing of soldiers)

feeling frustration and hatred towards your invaders and imagining a world where they get a reckoning

complaining about your invaders’ war crimes

demanding justice (not bloody revenge)

Oh no, Ukrainians are so mean ;( How dare they not want to be friends with those that hurt them. Unbelievable. And seeking prosperity and security through EU and NATO membership is russophobic too. [Sarcasm obviously]

Ukraine must win and Russia must lose, it’s that simple.

[anastasiamaru]

🥳 Welcome Home 🥳

🥹The commanding officers who defended Mariupol in Ukraine now

Glory to the Heroes of Ukraine

[odinsblog]

“America first” indeed.

Bad when America does it, ❤️ when Russia does it.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had to do a quick double take to see if it was a tankie or a rightwing Republican talking. If you examine it and listen closely, it’s really amazing how much their rhetoric overlaps. Sometimes the Venn diagram is just a big ole circle, which isn’t surprising because both parties care about the suffering of others ONLY if they like the people being harmed. Otherwise it’s cool indifference or worse, because they’re good with authoritarianism, imperialism and colonialism, because “communism” ☭ or some such bullshit. Completely morally and intellectually inconsistent with the beliefs they espouse.

Indistinguishable from conservative rhetoric.