Russia-Ukraine War

There was No US backed Coup in Feb 2014 – it was merely popular and there was no US input at all. Nothing. Zilch. Not even a whisper in anyone's ear. No playbook. No planning. Just an interest in Liberty & Democracy & Human Rights & Freedom. No Great game a la the 1800s. Nothing.

A common thread in Russian thinking and in many the "West" too(and conspiracy gobshítes of course) is that the CIA etc are that capable and powerful. It's (understandably)fostered by the Americans and their adversaries for different reasons. However the historical facts show they're pretty crap at things like regime change. Look at their history in South America for example, or South East Asia. They tried and failed multiple times. About the only successes they had were when they found some bribable right winger with existing power(usually from the military), threw wads of cash at him and hoped it stuck. Even if it did stick it usually didn't stick for long. Hell, the US had to physically invade Panama because "their boy" Noriega went rogue. Cuba stuck in their craw after the Cubans effed them out and they spent decades, including a failed invasion, to try and "force regime change" on an island off their coast. And yet Castro, avoiding exploding cigar plots, died in his bed. South East Asia also kicked them out in no uncertain terms.

(Oh yes it was, the snipers in Maidan have since been proven to be pro-coup snipers)

According to the Kremlin. And like their "biolabs/dirty bombs/weaponised pigeons" with eff all evidence to back it. They just throw shíte and hope it sticks with their support base and the gullible.

No US/UK politicians photographed in Kiev. No Burisma. No carrot & stick foreign bribery.

See above re regime change. It pretty much never happens unless you send in the tanks or the threat of sending in the tanks is in play. QV how the Soviets and US did it in the Cold War. Why? Simply because you can't get that many in a population to bend to where you want them to bend without force. What the Russian spin tends to ignore is the subsequent elections in Ukraine which had leaders and parties ebb and flow. Unlike in authoritarian states like Russia, Belarus et all where soft force is applied, not least with the utter dearth(and death) of opposition.

no banning of the Russian language in 2014 (it was banned)

More Kremlin spin. The law in question actually dated to 2012 where Russian was given the status of a "regional language". Oh and there was much debate about that change and quite the bit of opposition, including internationally BTW. What happened in 2014 was this law was abolished and that's when the Kremlin started spinning like a top. However, the joke is neither the new Ukrainian president, nor the guy who replaced him in the next set of elections signed that abolition, so it never happened. It was in 2018 that a new set of regs came along after the 2012 law was deemed unconstitutional. Note how the Kremlin misses that part… What the new laws meant in reality was not unlike the laws around Irish used to be here(only a lot more people as a percentage speak Ukrainian and Russian). Ukrainian became the official state language. IE people in the public service, state bodies etc have to speak it, more media should be in it(which until this "SMO" didn't really take), but the laws had zero power over personal communication, religious rites, so feck all actual impact for your average Ukrainian. Still internationally it was seen as not doing enough for minority languages, IE Russian and they had to change it again in 2019, not least to get up to speed with EU regs on languages.

It was a separatist war (12,000 ethnic Russians slaughtered- it was an insane over-reaction to the reaction that those in Donbass to the extremely threatening situation Feb-May 2014 and they were right to be fearful given the subsequent 12,000 deaths mostly from shelling of residential areas- similar to Gaza )

Russians came into Donbass- this happened after the above had happened/begun. People don’t like being murdered by Nazis for some reason, I don’t know why.

Again the oul Kremlin spin leaves out a few points. The 12,000(sometimes it's 15,000) victims were split approx 60/40 Russian seperatists/Ukrainians. Oh and here's the kicker and a question for you: How many died in the Donbass war between 2018 and 2022? I'll save you the keystrokes. The vast majority of casualties Russian and Ukrainian happened between 2014-16. In 2021 there were under fifty killed(mostly by unexploded ordinance). A personal tragedy to be sure, but answer me this; how many have died since Putin's invasion, Ukrainian and Russian? How many died just this week? It's a helluva lot more than 50. There's likely 50 dead just today because of this invasion. Fantastic Russian logic there alright.

no acknowledgment of the virtual 50/50 election split in leaning East Vs leaning west (the wedge the US exploited for its coup)

Because it's bollocks.

As shown above, Imperial US/UK/F/CIA fans on this thread genuinely think the USSR was in league with Hitler in WWII and that in 1941 the Soviets were ‘surprised’ by Barbarossa and felt double-crossed, the implication being they couldn’t read Hitlers books & speeches from 1925 onwards or never thought of reading them. Imagine believing such stupid tripe
about a major event 85 years later.

Most nations were caught napping by Hitler and thought treaties and appeasement would, well appease him. However the Soviets helped the Germans pre Hitler to spin up their war machine in tank and pilot schools in the Soviet Union out of sight of the Versailles treaty and during Hitler agreed to carve up parts of Eastern and Central Europe between them. Poland the most obvious one where the Germans invaded from the west and the Soviets invaded from the east a fortnight later "to protect the Polish/Russian people" and met up at an agreed point of their carve up. Even had a wee parade and photo op. Hell Stalin invited Ribbentrop to view the red army parades in Red Square mere months before the Germans invaded. Nearly two years after WW2 in Europe had kicked off BTW. During which Stalin supplied oil and steel to the German war machine. Blitzkrieg was partially fueled by Soviet oil and running on Soviet steel tracks.

Tbh I don't buy either the Russian or Ukrainian numbers. I personally don't believe anything like half a million Russian dead. Imho you'd have to be smoking the funny ciggies to buy into that. Of course I don't believe the Kremlin numbers either, of what is it now; 6000 dead? That's funny ciggies with a blotter acid chaser.

I read an article a few weeks ago(I'll try to find it again) where different researchers tried to get a handle on the real numbers involved. It was easier for Ukraine it being far more open than Russia to do such research, but they got clever with trying to peek behind the Russian curtain. Iirc they looked at things like Russian probate applications, names added to town memorials etc.

Anyhoo, the gist was that these different researchers reckoned they could comfortably speculate a "low end" figure for Ukraine of around 50-60k dead, for Russia around 80-90k dead. They saw spikes in deaths around campaigns like Bakhmut and such spikes were much more biased towards Russian deaths. Interestingly they noted Ukrainian deaths were higher and Russian lower in the early days of the invasion than supposed or spun, but spikes in Russian deaths increased over time and mass deaths have steadily increased. So it seems Russia's "throw meat at the problem" tactics are having the obvious results.

Again personally and very speculatively of course I'd reckon the truer figures of combatants taken out of the equation, dead and injured, would be more like 150,000 Ukrainian and 250,000 Russian.