this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Westerners: Are we the baddies?
All global superpowers are led by evil war criminals.
In recent history the West has had more global super powers so that's a lot of evil Western war criminals.
Considering the entire East is supporting Russia's genocide in Ukraine, I'm going to say "we're not the only ones".
China and North Korea are the entire East?
Where do Japan and South Korea stand?
India's purchase of oil from Russia amounts to less than all the trade that the EU does with Russia and a lot of that isn't even for a vital resource. It's also purchased within a price cap framework set by the West and economists globally agree that someone needs to buy Russian oil or oil prices will skyrocket due to reduced supply.
I wouldn't see this as supporting the war unless you feel that the EU also supports Russia.
I don't think this can be painted as a simple West vs East issue.
And if we're going to talk about genocide I can think of one that most genocide scholars agree upon that happens to be heavily (if not solely) funded by the West.
Putin can freely set foot in the US, China, Orban's Hungary and... you guess: the good friend India.
Anywhere in the EU; he would been arrested and investigated for crime against humanity thanks to ICC agreement. But it's not all fine in the EU: fascist governments like Orban and Meloni are fighting back the ICC because they want to be free to "friendly host" criminals exactly like US, China and India are doing.
Who else would be jailed up and investigated for war crimes by ICC?
Netanyahu.
That's a wonderful sentiment but maybe they need to put their money where their mouth is and cease all trade with Russia if they're serious about it.
What's happening in the Ukraine is evil and fucked up but it's war, not genocide.
This isn't to cheapen the damage Russia has done nor excuse their actions but genocide has a distinct meaning.
Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of five 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'.[14][15] The acts in question include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. [14] Genocide is a crime of special intent (dolus specialis); it is carried out deliberately, with victims targeted based on real or perceived membership in a protected group.[15] The genocides recognised under the 1948 legal definition that led to trials in international criminal tribunals are the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Srebrenica massacre.[11]
Given that Ukrainian children are being captured and indoctrinated, and it's hard to see Putin being happy with the existence of the nation itself as anything but a suzerainty, it feels like we're ticking enough boxes not to clutch any pearls about applying the word "genocide".
It sucks to know that there are multiple concurrent genocides, some more intense than others, that are being treated way differently because of racism and money in politics. But it doesn't diminish the crimes of, e.g., Israel to call Russia's aggression also genocide.
Your definition isn't wrong. That's also why what Russia is doing isn't genocide.
That things have been done, or as you're saying MAY be done may apply to aspects of what is in actuality a horribly misguided war, does not mean it satisfies the criteria for fenocide.
Like. You understand that when you bold things that the stuff that you did not bold is still there right?
The war is horribly misguided, evil, and appalling but it is a war. War crimes have certainly been committed but not on the scale necessary to classify it as genocide, nor with the demonstrable intent to eliminate the Ukrainian people entirely.
Your cherry picking of the definition would mean that all war is genocide. Which, if you believe that, fine, but don't be intellectually dishonest about it.
You might have missed the bit where genocide is any of the five things? It says it right there.
It doesn't matter. It shouldn't be happening and we can't stop it by bickering.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukrainians_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
https://icj-cij.org/case/182
https://unric.org/en/international-court-of-justice-ukraine-v-russia/
Both sides have baddies. Strong baddies on the israeli side. Weaker baddies on the palestinian side. Both have puppets and puppet masters playing them against another to further their agendas.
Then you have the poor sods in the middle who want nothing to do with the conflict, desperately trying not to be involved.
I think we can say that Israel is worse than Hamas since Hamas has never committed a genocide on the scale that Israel is currently and the West is at best complicit and at worst actively funding it.
Yes Israel is worse due to the power imbalance.
What would Hamas do if they had the power of Israel. I doubt many can argue they would be better.
And if my grandma had wheels she would have been a bike. What difference does it make what they would do in a hypothetical scenario?