friedturkey

It's the same as acknowledging that the Taliban wouldn't exist without American and Russian interference in the region.

Azov and the Taliban are bad, yeah. But they appeared because of foreign threats. None of this would happen if Russia didn't repeatedly murder people in neighboring countries then backpedal and retroactively justify their invasion by saying radical defense forces are defending themselves from Russia.

Don't want your country to be attacked by extremists? Don't invade and push people to radical groups. Your paycheck signer deserves the blame for Azov 100%.

The very first paragraph of Wikipedia even says Azov formed as a consequence of something.

That reason? To push Russian forces out of their country.

If Russia weren't terrorizing the region, Azov would not exist. Russia pays to astroturf the claim that Azov is some thing that appeared out of nowhere when it's a group that formed directly to keep Russia and its violent militias out.

America has a large portion of English speakers. It historically had a large portion of people with direct ties to the UK. Haiti had plenty of people with ties to France and still has French speakers. Taiwan has Chinese speakers and people with family in China.

There's a clear pattern here. But Russia pays people to pretend that Russian speakers means it's their land to stabilize. When in reality, it's a completely irrelevant statement.

Do you think Russia's funding of terrorist groups in the eastern portions of Ukraine known for atrocities against civilians could've influenced that decision?

Or maybe going back farther Russia's sudden seizure of Crimea with a fraudulent vote with 97% in support could've been what made Ukraine nervous that they'd be invaded and seek support from other countries?

Or maybe going back a little farther to the USSR's atrocities against Ukraine, including Holodomor--the outright genocide of the Ukrainian people--might've been the thing that makes Ukraine want to ally with literally any country but Russia?

The idea that Ukraine should want to associate with Russia is the most bizarre political claim there ever was. Their history is nothing but being ravaged and literally raped by Russia, so them considering joining NATO is nothing but a big "no shit". Putin deserves to be surrounded for his actions. All he's done is shown that the Russia's intentions to destroy the Ukrainian people haven't changed in 100 years.

I don't think Ukraine was even being seriously considered for NATO until Russia decided to surround the country with its military recently.

It's like punching someone, some guy passing by tells you to stop, then you justify your reason for punching that person because you were worried that the person who told you to stop was going to attack you.

Nobody was going to do anything to say anything to you if you hadn't gone out of your way to attack someone.

"Expansion" makes it sound like something that happened to Eastern Europe against their will--not that those countries actively wanted to join.

Those countries actively bid to join NATO because they feared Russia expanding into Eastern Europe. Turns out their fears were justified.

I remember seeing broken down cars pretty often as a kid. Just driving 30 minutes to the grocery store on weekends and seeing (or being) one wasn’t that uncommon.

I noticed at one point that I stopped seeing broken down cars. Sure, I’ll see accidents sometimes, but I cannot remember the last time I saw someone pulled over with an overheated car, something smoking, or just not running for whatever reason.

7/11 prepares their sandwiches in centralized factories. They’ll deep fry things in store, but anything chilled is shipped as-is from hours away.

Yeah. I always grab them from behind so I can immediately tell whether or not they’re completely empty bread.

Most of the time they are.

There’s no magic. They’re just sandwiches that look pretty because they push everything to the very edge.

Protein intake that low is just insane if you’re doing exercise that much. Your body will accumulate injuries fast, unless you’re defining exercise as lifting 1kg “dumbbells”.

Cutting carbs that much would mean you’re getting virtually all your calories from fat. Most natural sources of fats (nuts, meat, milk) also pack in protein, and you’d quickly be over 0.5g/kg. The only other option is chugging grease.

Not sure how a high exercise, no protein, frequent fasting diet is going to work. It sounds worse than a North Korean laborer’s lifestyle.

Plenty of people eat tomatoes and pasta quite often so it’s also not an unreasonable test case.

I once walked down a street that had hundreds of them. Being bored and interested in spiders, I picked up a twig to provoke them a bit and see how they responded.

Some of them would furiously try to bite the stick and I could feel their fangs scraping on it. So I can’t quite say whether they’re strong enough to break the skin, but they’re strong enough to send vibrations down a 2 foot long stick.

Russia is also a known hotbed for neonazis. So is Alabama. Just because a region has small factions of race extremists it doesn’t mean they’re blowing up nuclear reactors.

But Russia’s history of false flag operations and whataboutism are so well-documented that it’s literally a textbook example. They’ve invaded Georgia and Ukraine before using the same exact lies. Putin’s history in Chechnya is also horrific. So you should trust Russia saying they’re coming to liberate someone as much as you should trust a certain other country coming to liberate someone: you shouldn’t.