Quote from: DaRude on Today at 07:49:16 AM

Quote from: TwitchySeal on Today at 12:13:28 AM

Quote from: DaRude on March 09, 2022, 06:02:17 PM

- Putin is shelling civil targets. Please, someone out there deny this, I am eager for an excuse to post 50 photos here.
Technically true, but misleading at best. Deception comes from engaging opposing forces located inside of civilian buildings, vs just blindly carpet bombing whole cities, which is clearly not the case here. There are plenty of video proofs of Ukrainian soldiers engaging from top/inside of buildings. These are fare game under the law of war. Can you come up with ANY previous "operation"/war by any nation where civilian targets weren't targeted?

Please don't contribute to disseminating fakes

Wait so this is your proof that all the reports from independent journalists on the ground, global intelligence officials, and actual civilians that were shelled are lying?

Quote

There are plenty of video proofs of Ukrainian soldiers engaging from top/inside of buildings.

Have you considered that Putin could be targeting civilians in one area, and also, at the same time, but in a totally different area, Ukrainians could be fighting from top/inside buildings? And when Russian state media says Ukraine is using civilians as human shields, they're just putin lies in your head?

Sure, i consider that all the time, I don't trust Putin's claims any more than you do, and no one should, but the thing is I don't trust the other side's claims either. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that civilians are not being shelled. In fact, we know for a fact that they are, and innocent people ARE dying every single day. War is hell, its never good. I'm just underlining the hypocrisy in coverage, pointing out how everyone is being activated under a hive mind, mass hysteria is being triggered to a point where people are ready to risk all human life on this blue marble. But facts just don't support the narrative of Putin as a blood thirsty monster trying to kill as many Ukrainians as possible. Every war is bad and has collateral damage, when we compare the numbers to other operations/wars there is nothing special about this one, if anything so far civilian casualties are lower when compared to other similar conflicts.

Food for thought,

The largest Ukrainian diaspora is in Russia.
Since 2014, beginning of the conflict, number of Ukrainians in Russia only increased
Since the start of this "operation"/war 24 February 2022, despite checkpoints and Martial Law, 99,300 Ukrainian refugees somehow managed to flee to the aggressor Russia
48,000 Ukrainians had been evacuated from cities (but not from Mariupol)

With that in mind, ask yourself why innocent civilians are not being evacuated from Mariupol, the only besieged city with starving people. I could only come up with two options (do correct me if you can think of more)

Option 1 - Putin and his army generals have gone mad, going against all commons sense and military strategies, they fake 5 cease fires and delay the siege all just to continue keeping 400.000 innocent civilians inside the city before attacking it.
Option 2 - Army does what armies have done numerous times throughout the history when defending against a much larger force, they just don't want to die.

Yeah, but in response to "Putin is shelling civil targets." you said "Technically true, but misleading at best."

It's not misleading. Either Russian forces are intentionally shelling civilian targets or there's a very big conspiracy among all the sources I mentioned.

Quote from: DaRude on Today at 07:49:16 AM

With that in mind, ask yourself why innocent civilians are not being evacuated from Mariupol, the only besieged city with starving people. I could only come up with two options (do correct me if you can think of more)

Option 1 - Putin and his army generals have gone mad, going against all commons sense and military strategies, they fake 5 cease fires and delay the siege all just to continue keeping 400.000 innocent civilians inside the city before attacking it.
Option 2 - Army does what armies have done numerous times throughout the history when defending against a much larger force, they just don't want to die.

I think Putin is using a very evil, but not crazy strategy of simply trying to scare the shit out of everyone. Like you and everyone else that has to give the disclaimer "I'm not pro war" before defending Russias actions, Putin doesn't want a war. He just want's Ukraine to surrender so he can claim victory.