Putin said one of his primary motivations for the invasion for the genocide of Russians in Donbass. Well, what we do know is that Ukraine kept firing rockets into that region, and those people were completely disenfranchised. I don’t think it was a genocide. I also do not think it is a genocide what Russia is doing in Ukraine now. If it was a genocide, then why did less civilians die than Russian soldiers? If Russia wanted to simply kill and exterminate Ukrainian civilians for being Ukrainian — which is what real genocide is about, such as Armenian genocide and especially the Holocaust - then obviously they would go about it very differently.

Everyone claims genocide in order to justify military action. To justify our invasion of Libya, we claimed there was a genocide there. In that case I can excuse the UN for thinking so, the security council unanimously authorized the intervention and it was rather international, which is why I blame Obama and USA far less for invading Libya. We all were under the impression at the time that genocide was taking place. But anyway, as you can clearly see, such an intervention created a failed state, which is rules by warlords and gangs now. The international community needs to have more cooperation and prevention of wars, its current methods are like bloodletting and leeches were for health interventions until we wised up and got scientific !

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/23/gaddafi-libya-...

The word genocide and concentration camps has been co-opted and cheapened to the point where Ocasio Cortez used it to refer to migrants held in detention on the border. Yes those are basically internment camps but not full blown concentration camps.

I will definitely press Chomsky on the Balkans next time we speak because it is one of the examples of NATO aggression, bombing civilians for regime change. The difference between that, with Ukraine war (as well as with Russo-Georgian war for instance) is that those wars ended quickly, otherwise MORE civilians would have died.

You go on and on about how “capitulation by Ukraine” is the only possible alternative and it’s going to lead to more Russian aggression. But that is plainly ridiculous fearmongering. Georgia is better off, Serbia is better off, than if they had continued to fight for a decade like Afghanistan. In fact, Zelensky already agreed on the main demands, including non membership in NATO, before Boris Johnson visit. If Ukrainian negotiators — whom I spoke to personally — took the negotiations seriously and spent more than 2 hours a day discussing one topic and ignoring others, we could have stopped the war by now.

You should listen to my vimeo video to see what Chomsky says about genocide in Balkans. I will press him on the timeline further. But I would like to ask you… what was so bad about Minsk II agreements? Why couldn’t Ukraine and Russia simply agree instead of both sides insisting “you go first, no you go first”. Don’t you see it is the incompetence of the politicians that causes the civilians to pay a heavy price, while the politicians sit in their safe spots and give interviews and make $$$… or even escape abroad. Same with Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas for example. You have to wake up and see that it is less about Country A vs Country B and more about the system screwing over the civilians.

All this could also be avoided tomorrow if the people (Catalonians, Kurds, Basques, Donbass, Crimeans) could hold referendums regularly that the international community would agree to oversee and respect. Demographics change over time and regions like Kosovo should be choosing the country to serve them, not the other way around.