There are many — painted on doors, adorning the walls and chalked onto the blackboards of this former school, now temporary headquarters for the Azov troops.
Mr Tilling, who was until recently a member of the Nazi group Right Wing Resistance, had spent the Australian spring in the bitter cold of Eastern Ukraine firing Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and grenades at Russian-backed separatists.
The 23-year-old former soldier from Brisbane is one of two Australian ex-Defence Force personnel identified by the ABC who have joined thousands of ultranationalists flocking from across the world to take up arms in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared the Ukraine invasion to the fight against Nazi Germany in a speech to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the battle of Stalingrad, as he again repeated unfounded claims of Nazism.
Putin alleges and of course CL parrots that Nazis are at the heart of both the Ukraine government and the army.
A socalled battalion is not an army. At the last election far right wingers got an asterisk in votes.
Let us see who murders unarmed civilians and dumps them in mass graves. Russians
Who kills anybody not supporting the current government by poisoning and people falling of apartments. russians
Who regularly indulges in war crimes by targeting hospitals, schools, schools and apartment buildings. Russians
Seems it is russians who are successfully imitating nazis just as CL is unsuccessfully imitating goebbels.
I am sure Russians will commit atrocities. They are Russians.
That would never justify giving give actual real nazis a free pass, NT. Do not shame yourself. And Amazon are nit far right or any kind of right at all. They are a socialist workers party, collectivists that seek a powerful state to rule over the rights of the individual, with them in charge of course.
Baddies vs baddies.
Amazon should be Azoz.
Non Mentis
Tolerating the Azov Battalion (and others of the same ilk) was an indication of an official attitude. Their ABC recognised that in 2015, but was happy to brush it under the carpet when the leftard “narrative” changed.
Ukraine vs Wussia always was, always will be, “baddies vs baddies”. Being a pre-school failure, you are too uneducated to recognise that.
It’s nowadays difficult, if not impossible, to rationally discuss national interest as it applies to war and peace on this scale. People like Trampo are not entirely responsible for having been immunised against dispassionate logic of the kind necessary to make sound, unemotional decisions. In his case, of course, there is also an overlay of mindless pom-pom waving for his ‘side.’ If Donald Trump was running this war, Trampo would by now have a Putin tattoo.
Nations are not morally obliged to accept – and will not accept – encroachments on their borders by hostile foreign powers and intelligence agencies. Nor will they ignore ethnic cleansing, cultural baiting, language suppression, US-funded coups and threats of “regime change” from the White House. The United States wouldn’t tolerate anything of the sort in Mexico. Australia panics about more than one Chinamen being seen in the South Pacific. Russia is no different.
That’s all this is about. Classic, logical, unremarkable national interest.
If Donald Trump were president during this war (IMO there would no war if he was), unlike the current situation I believe that there would be mass protests in the U.S. against the war and Trump would be blamed for it.
CL parrots the … ABC, Trampis you are a twisted piece of work. What happened to the left, they used to be so sceptical about the machinations that lead to war. Now they run interference for cretins like Biden.
Buccaneer: it is simply a fact that the Nazi meme is Putin’s. This is easy to verify. What is often done by Carlson and people here is the assert that all Ukrainians are Nazi. Including the Jewish president. The purpose is to deflect from the truth. Which is that Putin invaded Ukraine and is pursuing a murderous assault on civilians for no reason that can be legitimated. His is a dictators agenda. Restating sputum is not leftism. It’s a simple defence of people whose lives are violated by a brutish criminal.
Nix
Are you denying the veracity of the ABC reports of 2015 and 2018?
No, the Nazi meme predates the invasion of Ukraine, it’s the basis of calling everyone you don’t agree with a right wing extremist.
You are the one perpetrating ‘sputum’ every time you ignore people’s arguments here that provoking Russia and emboldening them by approving the nord stream pipeline and refusing to rule out entry of Ukraine to nato weren’t significant precursors to the Ukrainian conflict.
No one here thinks Putin is some kind of bastion of goodness. We expect more from our leaders, you just want to keep them unaccountable.
Instead he/she wants to keep Tucker Carlson accountable, not Joe Biden and the Democrats.
BJ/Buccaneer: you are perfectly happy promoting the Putin line which includes the Nazi angle and is reliant on the same specious logic about Nato (do Poland and Finland get the treatment next?) You say Ukraine invasion is justified. I rest my case.
For the record, Nix.
It was not an invasion.
Rather, and in simple terms:
The Russians in the Donbas region of Ukraine were under attack by the Ukranian Azov.
The Azov attacks were in contravention of the Minsk Agreement which was meant to stop the fighting while simultaneously amending the constitution to allow for varying levels of self-government in the Donbas region. The attacks and fighting continued and Donbas autonomy was denied by Kyiv. Russia was cheated, as were the Russians in the Donbas.
Now, in addition to breaching the Minsk agreement, the Ukraine government wanted to join NATO, with US as the main player having nuclear weapons on Russia’s borders. A bit like Khrushchev trying it on in Cuba.
That Russia therefore went on the two-pronged defensive – ie, protecting its Russian population in the Donbas who had been shafted by Minsk, and protecting its borders from the nuclear capabilities of NATO – makes it that Russia did not invade but made the political decision that its army would protect Russians and Russian interests.
Clearly a decision leading to death and destruction, yet the primary cause and provocation was bad faith, trickery, political ill-will and stupendous folly on the part of both the EU and NATO. (Consider eg why the West would destroy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.)
You could of course continue with the tedious and commonplace ‘invasion’ line, yet you cannot avoid knowing that you have been shown otherwise.
Nix, you’re an imbecile who only has abuse and verballing people. I’ve stated on this blog previously that there is no justification for armed conflict for Russia. You keep deliberately misrepresenting people here because it’s inconvenient for you to admit that we expect more from our leaders than a rank dictator like Putin. We expect them not to unnecessarily risk nuclear conflict with unstable world leaders. Constantly, tools like you told us how Trump would lead us to nuclear conflict, now that Biden has actually made that more likely, your only response is to constantly misrepresent the arguments of others by pretending they support the dictator. Go away, you add no entertainment, no intellect and no originality
Nix
You did not answer my question. Are you denying the accuracy and veracity of those ABC reports? Are you an ABC denialist?
As for the rest of your drivel, if you want to continue to repeat unfounded accusations, that is up to you, but don’t expect any answers from me.
The socialist Nazis are lining up with the socialist Nazis.
Against communists.
If they weren’t wearing different uniforms where do they differ?
A corrupt mess.
It has nothing to do with the western world, and yet everything to do with it.
This is theatre to wage war against you and me and the west.
Our politicians claiming we are the free west are the very same ones who took over in a coup and imprisoned their western populations by the point of a gun.
To think that these people are our “leaders” and are the good guys, is to put the desire for it to be so, above all logic.
That people can buy into the narrative they’re pushing is testament to the tribalism and the need to believe in being on the side of righteousness in the basic….very basic…human animal.
Everything old is new again.
If you are on the WEF/UN/ Nato side, you are on the side of global socialism.
Tyrannical global socialism / communism.
Just like the Brave Italian soldiers in WW2, their hearts weren’t in fighting for Fascism.
They surrendered as soon as they could.
F..ck dying for Mussolini.
Who could really fight against Russia and truly say they are fighting on the side of righteousness?
Nice of you to lay it out honestly Franx. Unlike others who dissemble. Clearly I think it an invasion with no justification and the various Nazi and NATO angles are at best fig leaf justifications.
At one level, Nix, the fig leaf is an act of self-consciousness in the event of coming to terms with feeble humanity. If you dismiss the figurative fig leaf as symbolic of Russian rationale, you are then also dismissing that same rationale as an act of self-consciousness on the part of Russia coming to terms with a dire situation involving feeble humanity in the form of bad-faith geopolitics. A fig leaf is maybe the next best thing to innocence.