1MB: I had the same thought. I drove a used Chevy II during the Viet Nam period. It cost me $600, all the money I could save up over a summer. Can't believe my parents let me drive that rusty jalopy. Also, can't believe I drove dates in it.
"his fellow citizens were fighting and dying for his freedom?"
1. The Ukrainians (and the Rooskies) are fighting over land and where lines on a map are drawn. The citizens in Ukraine are nott living in "freedom" to much if any degree moreso than the Russians. Zelenskii's term ended in 2024 and he and his buddies cancelled the election slated from Spring 2024. As for a free press:
"Ukraine was in 96th place[1] out of 180 countries listed in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, having returned to top 100 of this list for the first time since 2009, but dropped down one spot to 97th place in 2021, being characterized as being in a "difficult situation".
Note that the USA did nott cancel elections during WW1, WW2, The Korean Police Action, The Veetnam CONflict of Northern Aggression, Golf War 1 and 2, or the Afghanistan Tribal Leader Bribery Event (wherein hunnerts of billion$ remain unaccounted for).
Ukraine is arguably nott even a democracy since 2024.
2. Ukraine is nott markedly less corrupt than Russia. Government corruption is extensive in both regimes.
"Ukraine's corruption ranking in the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index is 105 out of 180 countries, with a score of 35 out of 100, indicating a significant level of perceived public sector corruption."
Russia is 154 of 180. Both are more corrupt that China (#76) or Cuba (#82), two countries that are rarely associated with the term "freedom".
3. The Russo-Ukraine War of Special Military Operations w/Drones is about where lines are drawn on maps, it is nott about freedom. Freedom is a card that is nott in the hand of cards held by either combatant. If NATO applied the same standard that it used to strip Kosovo from Serbia, then the Russian-speaking population majority in the Donbas, specifically Donetsk and Luhansk at minimum ought to have been allowed to vote itself either independence or the right to have Russia annex those lands holding a majority-Russian population. The Kosovo example, wherein NATO essentially redrew national boundaries and asserted that a majority Muslim region of Serbia composed of immigrants from Albania should be its own entity and grabbed the land from Serbia. So the refrain that Russia is stealing real estate from a sovereign nation is a harmonic of what NATO did to Serbia.
4. Unlike the Eastern Front in WW2, which was a war of extermination, the Russo-Ukraine WSMOD is about which group of corrupt regime oligarchs getts to exploit the populace - nott exterminate them. It is essentially a gang war between two very corrupt regimes fighting over turf - like street gangs in LA, Chicago, Houston, or the Talyun Mafia fambly squabbles over territory.
5. Freedom is nott in the tables stakes of this game; neither combatant is offering freedom. All that is on offer is which corrupt regime one getts to be ruled by depending upon which side of an artifactual border one resides. As usual in Europe, it's a fight over line drawing and that's purty much all it really is at base. It is nott a war of extermination as WW2 Japan and Germany were engaged in. A gang turf war to determine which criminal gang getts to collect protection munny from the people who reside on a certain side of the then-current line.
6. And it is hypocritical for the UK, Canuckistan, and USA to rail against Russia for a war of aggression. Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Virgin Islands (both US and British), North American Indian tribes, and each other ("54°40' or fight!") would have a few words to jostle the memory on that topic.
7. In re: Civilian Deaths: see Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Cologne, My Lai, No Gun Ri, etc.
8. Animal Mother has his mind right on this subject:
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