Where do the Members of SDF stand on the issue of the War in the Ukraine?

Bill Blazo said:

Blazo is on Team Ukraine. Russia agreed in the Budapest Memorandum to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, then it reneged on that commitment after the 2014 coup

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Did the Western signatories not renege on their own commitment in 2013 when they violated Ukraine independence by planning the impeding 2014 coup?

1. Respect Belarusian, Kazakh and Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.
   
   
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Russian intelligence intercepted and leaked to the international media a Nuland telephone call in which she and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt discussed in detail their preferences for specific personnel in a post‐Yanukovych government. During the telephone call, Nuland stated enthusiastically that “Yats is the guy” who would do the best job. Nuland and Pyatt were engaged in such planning at a time when Yanukovych was still Ukraine’s lawful president

Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs. Nuland noted in a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation on December 13, 2013, that she had traveled to Ukraine three times in the weeks following the start of the demonstrations. Visiting the Maidan on December 5, she handed out cookies to demonstrators and expressed support for their cause.

(Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call)
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McCain dined with opposition leaders, including members of the ultra right‐wing Svoboda Party, and later appeared on stage in Maidan Square during a mass rally. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Svoboda leader Oleg Tyagnibok.

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Bill Blazo said:

Instead Putin went for it all and is now suffering the consequences of a failing war effort that has caused unimaginable levels of destruction.

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For a failing war effort, Western stockpile of weapons are rapidly depleting and Ukraine is making ever more request for more additional materials and heavy equipment.

The problem with this topic is the lack of any real information in the Donbas region. However, the Ukrainian frontline commanders are not optimistic.

“The situation is very bad, [Russian forces] are using scorched- earth tactics,” the 31-year-old married father of two said via text. “They simply destroy everything with artillery, shelling day and night,” he said via text.

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Which more or less falls in line with Russian military doctrine. From the US gov funded RAND Corportion in 2017.

8. At the operational and tactical levels, Russia will likely focus on disrupting, degrading, or destroying adversary command and control and enemy power projection capabilities through the use of kinetic fires, cyber/electronic warfare, and direct action by maneuver forces.

10. On the ground, Russian tactics will likely reflect a heavy emphasis on massed indirect fires (particularly long-range fires), with the effects of these fires exploited by highly mobile vehicles with substantial direct fire capability.

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I will just add this. Much is said about the Budapest Memorandum and other treaties. But once the US started financing coups in Ukraine, starting with the one in 2004 aka the Orange Revolution, they broke those treaties. And the 2014 coup was just the pinnacle of that. They no longer accepted a negotiated deal with the government and went full bore with violent overthrow and banning the opposition. Like you said they did not respect Ukraine's sovereignty at all.

General commentary:
People have gotten so much used to US hegemony that they have forgotten how countries interacted with other countries pre-US Hegemony era.

Not only people on this forum, national leaders, presidents, prime ministers have also forgotten. National leaders should deeply study history, diplomatic strategies, geopolitical realities, power politics, bloc politics and take appropriate decisions for the betterment and safety of their country.

Ukrainian leadership unfortunately (for the Ukrainian people) weren't good students, and it shows. As for sovereignty, treaties, UN, right, wrong etc, its all crap. The world is transitioning away from the era of the US Hegemony and towards a multipolar world which is going to be far more dangerous for countries which lack competent leaders and diplomatic finesse.

So my advice, sit down and study history. The world's history didn't start with US Hegemony. Whatever was happening before that, it is going to increasingly happen now until a new world order is established (the old/current one is already collapsing).

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Regarding the matter of the poll, I am happy to see a third option added. All questions/poll should have a neutral option. As for where I stand on this war: I am eating melons, that's it.

I think the choice of black and white binary options for the pole is rather clever and fitting and very deliberate because that’s the pretty much extent of western and Russian (if you can even see official Russian news channels in your resident country anymore) main stream news coverage and official government position on this conflict.

The Ukraine thread provided a far more balanced and nuanced take on the conflict than pretty much anywhere else on the web.

Unfortunately I think the Ukraine war is just a little too close to home for too many people on this thread, mods included. Whereby from the get-go it was treated as ‘special’, where the invaders are extra ‘evil’ while the Ukrainians are extra ‘deserving’ of compassion and unquestioning support to the point that normal impartial and cold analytics are considered ‘pro-Russian’ because it doesn’t automatically blame Russia for everything and dares to question whether the Zelensky regime is quiet as unimpeachably heroic and noble as the western media insist despite clear evidence to the contrary. Worse, members’ ethics and characters are being judged and questioned based on their lack of ‘appropriate’ responses and daring to question the party line narratives being pumped out of Kiev, and I cannot help but notice that the ban hammer has fallen more frequently and readily on those who express a neutral or pro-Russian standpoints as opposed to those who are rabidly pro-Ukrainian. Larpin is a clear case in point. Rarely is an off topic troll account more obvious and self evident, yet amazingly it’s still alive and well while several long time members are banned for arguing against that accounts spam posts.

Personally I think it’s an embarrassment that this is trying to pretend such a massively consequential and on-going event isn’t happening.

Unfortunately we have seen more than our fair share of wars and invasions in the last couple of decades or so. We have managed to have reasonable, mature and impartial debate and discussion on all of them with the rules and tools in place just fine. The Ukrainian war is only special because people insist on making it special and get extra sensitive and offended when the same impartial analysis is applied to it compared to all the other wars and invasions from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and more.

I dare say the Ukraine thread would not have been derailed so had the rules been applied equally and consistently irrespective of the poster’s expressed belief as we had managed with those previous wars.

Janiz said:

If you're living in Canada then you should know that you won't be prosecuted for going up against your countries interests writing it over the Internet forums so don't even attempt to create this atmosphere of fear for voicing your thoughts in the first place because it seems like you're clearly pro-western in heart!

You would feel pressure writing like that from a city like Rostov-on-Don (whre you could get 15 years in jail for that for real) so skip your messianism-like posture and come to terms with yourself!

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You are of course entitled to your opinion, I was just trying to express why I voted and why I am uncomfortable with the mainstream opinion in Canada. I don't claim to lead anyone.

I would also just clarify that if you read my post again, I was not expressing fear of prosecution, but for my professional reputation and my career. As in I might not be jailed but fired, which is a different kind of bad.

In Latvia and the Czech Republic you can even be arrested. They already arrested a Russian speaking Latvian Youtuber.

In Russia you can even be arrested.

Russia is an active participant of the military conflict. A conflict which is right on their border. I can't say the same about the Czech Republic that's for sure. Or at least it didn't use to be until they sent weapons to Ukraine.

Intrepid said:

In Russia you can even be arrested.

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Russia is now your role model?

AssassinsMace said:

Personally I can't say I'm for Putin but because the West is trying make Ukraine about China, I can't say I'm for Ukraine. Personally I'm against war but I look at it like nuclear weapons. I'm for a total ban of nuclear weapons but because the US is against it because they want to keep their nukes, I'm okay with any country getting them just as long as they understand the consequences. Both I see things that are problematic for China's concern. What business was it for Ukrainian Nazis to go help protest in Hong Kong? A larger narrative has to be going on over there to see them do that. They do lean Western but unlike the total sycophants like you see in China's neighbors, I don't see Ukrainians doing everything the US/West tells them to do just to stay in their good graces. What I admire about Russians is they don't care what people think about them. I wish Beijing had that attitude. They wasted a lot of time with the delusion that the West would eventually accept them as equals. But when Putin's gone and a pro-West government can take its place, will they antagonize China for the West? That's why you see Republicans wanting to cozy up with Russia so easily before the war. It's like how the West acts like they care for Muslim human rights... only if China is violating them with its only sole purpose is to have Islamic extremists target China with terrorism instead of the West. I've read stories about racists attacking Vietnamese in Russia. I don't know if they do that to Chinese in Russia. They also take advantage of other countries' nationalism against China to sell military weapons. Did Russia have a plan and have contingencies for the very consequences happening to them now. I guess time will only tell.

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They did. For a few years around 2010, many Chinese merchants were treated very badly in Russia, with local gov looking the other way. Did you see, in one Summer Olympics Games, some Russian female gymnastics athletes were so mean to the Chinese athletes? Some of those photos really pissed me off. Well, I guess they are a little mellower nowadays.