realsmittysmith

Burning people alive isn't cool no matter what. Burning traitors alive is a different issue, although no less humane.

sigh The Bandera argument. I lived in East Ukraine for several years and they're not all hoo rah rah about Bandera at all, so I don't buy the "all Ukrainians worship Bandera THEREFORE they're all Nazis" argument. It's lazy, frankly.

Bandera also spent most of WWII in prison, by the way.

The Israel Times "article" is a poorly researched blurb, not an article. It also says that Ukraine started an armed conflict with Russia in 2014, which is a very Putin-esque take on what the rest of the world sees as an unlawful annexation of sovereign Ukrainian territory.

Was Bandera a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist? Yeah. Remember that Wikipedia article you're citing to me?:

"Ukrainian nationalism did not historically include antisemitism as a core aspect of its program and saw Russians as well as Poles as the chief enemy with Jews playing a secondary role."

Does that mean people in WWII were angels? No. Is history much more nuanced than you're making it out to be? Yes.

Also, not sure where you're getting that 50,000 number from at all.

If you had ever spent 0.002 seconds in Ukraine you would know Bandera is not on a pedestal throughout the entire country. Paradoxically, he's more favored in the West despite the atrocities his UPA committed against the Poles, but Bandera's a whole other can of worms that can't be broadstroked across all of Ukraine.

I mean, "doesn't give a crap" is kind of a hard sell, although I understand the uselessness of rhetoric when it comes to horrible sh*t like chemical weapons in Syria, ISIS publicly beheading people, etc. What war crimes in South America has the West been complicit in recently, by the way?

Be on the lookout for the unholy trinity of Russian troll tactics: 1) bUt thE UsA cOmMiTtEd wAr cRiMes In tHe MiDdlE EaSt! 2) UkRaIne StaGed iT! 3) uKrAinE iS a nAzI sTaTe!

Responses are simple. 1) How's that relevant at all right now? 2) ...in areas that were under Russian occupation for weeks and only recently liberated, okay. Also, why stage atrocities when Russia isn't even hiding the fact that it's committing constant atrocities? 3) Unconvincing and unverified. Nazis are everywhere. Russia has an FSB commander with the SS bars tatted on his neck and their whole playbook in this war is Fascism 101. Ukraine's 6 biggest uber-far-right factions came together in the last election and got a whopping <2% of the vote. Whoop-de-f*#king doo. Tell that to folks with active KKK movements in their states.