I get it, it’s easy to get dragged down into the mud in a dirty fight (mud being killing civilians indiscriminately) and it would damage the “good guy” image that Ukraine has developed.

But I don’t believe the restraint Ukraine has shown until now is purely for show, to maintain a public image. The kind of restraint they show every day is a mark of a society willing to suffer just to be the better person. And I definitely don’t think that bombing empty government buildings at night with minimal collateral damage is a show of them willing to get dirty after a year and a half of taking shit from Russia in the face.

And I mean piles and piles of shit from Russia, where probably less than 10% of missiles/drones yeeted at Ukraine had actual military targets, and all the rest happily hit residential buildings to the applause of the Russian public.

Lastly, I do find it ironic that countries like the US to “demand” minimal collateral damage from Ukraine to Russian civilians after the literal hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afgani civilians they have killed in the last couple of decades.

So fuck the US for that, fuck Russia for what they’re doing now, and deep admiration to Ukraine for actually sticking to the values that we (west) say we represent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's your source for the US killing hundreds of thousands of civilians? Seems way too high unless you're including indirect deaths, like from loss of critical infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Fair enough:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

(Check the surveys in the article for details, ranges from low 100.000 to highs of a million+)

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathToll

(This one is a bit lower at 200-250.000 for Iraq and Afghanistan)

Bear in mind that I’m not in any way justifying Russia’s attitude, my reference to these number was more to illustrate the fact that we’re holding Ukraine to higher standards than anyone else, even if agree with those standards. And Ukraine is delivering, which is impressive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you. Even all these years later it's confusing and uncertain.

Per Brown, 200-250k number total civilian deaths from violence in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to Lancet 31% of deaths due to violence were due to coalition forces, in Iraq. So, about 67k total in both wars if these numbers are combined. But with a huge number of violent deaths unexplained, maybe coalition forces directly killed over 100k total. Including indirect deaths it's probably accurate to say "hundreds of thousands"

Shame on the US for invading Iraq, and shame on Russia for invading Ukraine.