well the russians view themselves as the third roman empire. putin is on justinian's mad quest to reclaim his empire's ancient capital. putin wants to be czar, but one of the aspects of being czar going back to ~800 years ago is holding the home of the Kievan Rus: Kyiv. just as the romans would not stop their outward expansion until confronted with the force to stop them, neither will the russians.

NATO has basically been on the same path since its conception (check the Nazis that ended up in NATO high command!), but of course, two wrongs don't make a right.

Who has NATO invaded?

Yugoslavia

The russians are getting worried, you can clearly see this by their recent uprise in bot activity

"3 day special operation".

They never specified how long these days were gonna be!

While technically true, would you put that on the same level as Russia invading Ukraine?

Kinda. Both are imperialist actions. Both try to jpstify their imperialism with "defending" someone.

Did NATO not bomb Yugoslavia to stop an ethnic cleansing? The bombing campaign lasted 2.5 months, and as far as I'm aware, Yugoslavia was not occupied during or after this time.

Russia, on the other hand, is attacking and invading Ukraine (again), occupying and looting parts of the country, targeting and murdering civilians. The current "special operation" has gone on for almost 3 years, with no end in sight.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could find those two scenarios comparable.

Russia claims that it's stopping a genocide. Not claiming that they are correct. just that in every invasion in the history of the world the agressor had a justification ready of defending themselves or some weak ally.

I don't see how the length of a war has anything to do with the justifications of the invasion. Russia didn't have the military force to reach their goals against Ukraine which received aide from the west. Yugoslavia was in a significantly worse position against NATO without any allies that could help them significantly. How does that justify the invasion of NATO?

You asked for a comparable scenario and received an answer. Now you're trying to no-true-schotsman yourself out of your premise. Just stop.

Not really, I'm just still waiting for a comparable example.

Ok, moving the goalposts, then.

The point isn't to make dead people. The point is to be a target too dangerous for a potential enemy to want to attack. It's to keep people alive, because if an enemy were to look at you they'd see you're ready to fight them and decide not to; at least, that's the idea. Some enemies are too stupid or careless that they'd do it anyway.

Yeah we kinda need an actual ceasefire before enforcing any kinda of peacekeeping operation. Also this isn't two waring African nation, if a German peacekeeping force engages with the Russian army that should probably trigger a NATO response.

No, the whole point of this conversation, and my original comment, was to point out that Russia and NATO are not even in the same league as far as imperialistic tendencies. NATO has intervened to actually protect civilians. Russia just claims to be doing that while in reality murdering innocent men, women, and children by the thousands.

But not Palestine I bet. Thanks for showing us who you are, Germany.

Your point of this conversation is to make a moralistic argument of how evil Russia is. Moralistic arguments don't really work when you're trying to understand politics.

I agree that Russia is committing atrocities. You failed to give a reason why this is happening, other than "they are evil".

russians are running a bot network on very niche nerd site lemmy

If I had dollar for every time I read about how "Russian propaganda doesn't exist btw (also reality has a well known Russian propaganda bias)" or something along those lines, I'd be a rich man.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-covert-russian-government-sponsored-foreign-malign-influence

If you're a bad actor, ofc you're gonna gravitate towards platforms without a centralised authority who could stop you from spreading your bullshit.

But you already know this. ;>