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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28709 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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To offer a contrary opinion. We have seen what a Russian war of annihilation looks like in Chechnya. They leveled cities. It looked apocalyptic. Russia's most heavy-handed tactics in Ukraine hardly resemble this. I would assume, then, that they want the country and its people largely intact.

This point is flatly wrong. Bakhmut absolutely ended up looking like Grozny when all was said and done. Same with Mariupol. I'm sure it's happened in several other smaller towns as well.

Bakhmut is similar to Grozny, Mariupol, Fallujah, Raqqa and Mosul for the simple reason that there is no way to storm a city that is actively defended without total destruction of the infrastructure of this city.Trying to draw any conclusions about the motives of the storming on the basis of the destruction in the stormed city is just a pointless waste of time.

They aren’t leveling cities, and if they are, you deserved it?

I’m not saying it wasn’t strategically justified, because it really is hard to do that. But it is definitely a counter example against people claiming the combatants don’t really mean it.

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