The two-year war in northern Ethiopia resulted in approximately 100,200 deaths before an African Union-brokered ceasefire was reached in November 2021, a new report reveals. In comparison, the Ukraine-Russia war that began in February led to 81,500 deaths, the same source added.
The war in Ukraine, has much more consequences for Europe and America, if Putin captures Ukraine then he won't stop there. The war in Ethiopia, while truly heartbreaking was a petty feud between a really small ethnic group (Tigray) and the Ethiopian government, so it barely had any implications outside the horn of Africa. I'm Ethiopian and I'm saddened by the lack of coverage that war received and the lives lost but I understand to a certain degree, but I do also know that major media companies and their consumers just don't care about what's happening in Africa.
Yeah, it's a mix of factors which lead to this neglect. The Ukraine war is obviously extremely important, it's just a pity it sucks all the oxygen from the room when it comes to humanitarian responses.
I think Tigray got a lot more coverage from a) organizations interested in preventing genocide,
And b) organizations in countries with geopolitical strategic interests in the GERD issues.
Because of history: Hitler started in the same way attacking Poland, and also Stalin did the same from the East (started with Poland too, and then proceeded to try to take Finland).
I recommend you to review your sources: before the start of the WWII, Stalin and Hitler signed an agreement so each could invade their own countries without interfering each other (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). Both sides were doing the same thing from each their side until Hitler broke the Pact by trying to invade Russia. Only then Stalin begun fighting the nazis as you claim.
USSR was asking for an alliance with western powers against the nazis, and all the western powers ignored that and made peace pacts with the nazis instead. US companies even continued to do business with the nazis well into the war. The IBM famously enabled the holocaust.
1: The United States Bourgeoisie bankrolled the rise of fascism in Europe.
2: The bourgeois leaders of England, France, Poland, Finland and other Western European nations either ignored, enabled, or appeased Hitler's worst behavior in the buildup to WW2.
3: The bourgeois leaders of these countries, England in particular, pushed for disastrous bilateral security arrangements which created a domino effect leading to war, while ignoring the USSR's suggestion of collective, anti-fascist security arrangements.
4: The bourgeois leaders of these countries pursued a policy not of containing fascist aggression, but of diplomatically isolating the USSR, in the hopes that Hitler would go East and carry out an anti-communist genocide on their behalf.
5: The bourgeois leaders of these countries, having ignored or stalled collective security proposals from the USSR, actively made bilateral non-aggression pacts with Hitler before Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed, making the USSR the last in a long line of nations to sign non-aggression pacts with Hitler, after the USSR's collective security proposals fell through.
6: The USSR only signed Molotov-Ribbentrop to buy time. The USSR only invaded East Poland to prevent a German front from forming right at the Soviet border. This is because attempts to make mutual security arrangements with Poland fell through. The Soviets only moved into the region after the existing government had literally fled the country, leaving it ungoverned. 2 million jews in eastern poland were saved from the nazis by this action.
7: The USSR tried to purchase a strategic corridor of land from Finland that the nazis could easily use to invade the USSR. The USSR not only wanted to legally purchase this land from Finland, but to trade Finland more acres of land in exchange. i.e. an asymmetrical trade that would have ultimately benefited Finland. Finland refused because the fascist leadership of Finland wanted to see Germany invade the USSR through this strategic corridor. This led directly to the Winter War. The Finnish lost the winter war but used their intelligence that they gathered during it to collaborate with the nazis.
8: When the North Atlantic allies finally teamed up with USSR after their strategy of appeasing Hitler backfired, they immediately attempted to make asymmetrical security arrangements that would have obligated the USSR to commit far more troops and resources to the war than any other ally, essentially using the USSR as a shield against the very fascist powers they had spent the better part of a decade appeasing. The British in particular kept stalling on arrangements and pretending to be confused.
9: When the war was over the North Atlantic allies, led by the USA, who came out of the war richer than any other country on Earth, immediately committed to rehabilitating nazis, blaming the USSR, who was decimated by the war, for causing the war, and created NATO to begin encircling the USSR, 6 years before the creation of the Warsaw pact.
10: The North Atlantic allies immediately set to using the Marshall plan to rebuild the fascist German, Italian, and Japanese economies, indebting them to the United States, and orienting them towards anti-communist policy.
11: The North Atlantic allies to tried to use the Marshall plan as a proto-IMF to privatize and deregulate the economy of the war-torn USSR, and open it up to foreign capital. That the USSR rejected this was framed as aggression and used as a justification for beginning the cold war.
But hey, don't just take my word for it, or this rough outline of what is contained in well regarded books (I implore you to read some). How about we read Albert Einstein's words spoken at the time these events actually occurred?
A lot to unpack in this speech but the basics of what Einstein says are:
The USSR made all efforts to stop the war happening.
The western powers(UK, France, US, etc) shut the USSR out of European discussions and betrayed Czechoslovakia.
Molotov-Ribbentrop was an unhappy last resort that they were driven to, that the western powers were attempting to drive the nazis into attacking the USSR and that's why they would not help the USSR stop them.
The USSR supported everyone while the other powers (UK, France, US, etc) strengthened the nazis and Japanese.
The appointment of Hitler as Germany’s chancellor general, as well as the rising threat from Japan, led to important changes in Soviet foreign policy. Oriented toward Germany since the treaty of Locarno (1925) and the treaty of Special Relations with Berlin (1926), the Kremlin now moved in the opposite direction by trying to establish closer ties with France and Britain to isolate the growing Nazi threat. This policy became known as “collective security” and was associated with Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet foreign minister at the time. The pursuit of collective security lasted approximately as long as he held that position. Japan’s war with China took some pressure off of Russia by allowing it to focus its diplomatic efforts on relations with Europe.
But anyway, what some other states did nearly a hundred years ago has no bearing on today's. There's different motivations and actors involved for different reasons.
Russia has no interest in invading anywhere else. Remember Russia spent 8 years trying to negotiate peace with the west who had no interest in peace? (See Hollande and Merkel's admissions). Even after the invasion Russia was still offering peace and their demand was independence for the breakaways, not annexation. Boris Johnson ordered Ukraine to reject the offer.
Of course the USSR lost millions fighting the nazis by the end of the WWII, I know and I’m not negating that, what I’m pointing out it that Stalin did the same as Hitler at the start of the war: invade Poland and tried to invade Finland (two points you and your friends at Lemmygrad carefully avoided to mention).
And sorry to say, but, what other states did 100 years ago is totally relevant. My grandparents suffered the Spanish civil war, my parents were raised in a dictatorship, I live now in Norway, another country invaded by nazis, I’ve friends from Finland who really hate Russians because what they did not so long ago. I’ve friends from Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine. Do you want to hear what all agree on? Russian are crazy dangerous people (not the street people, but their leaders).
I despise any imperialistic, paranoid egomaniac where their ideals are more important than human lives. Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Trump, all are the same bullshit and as dangerous as the others. Any country trying to invade another is bad, no matter what.
If you read the communications between Molotov and Ribbentrop, its clear the USSR didn't want to occupy their part of Poland (which btw were soviet lands stolen by Poland during the Civil War), but keep a rump Polish state there as a buffer state. However, what happened is the polish government escaped to Romania, and from there to the UK. The problem is that Romania was neutral, and thus, it couldn't allow the polish government, which was at war with Nazi Germany, to stay or pass through their country without them declaring war on Germany too. So the only way they could let the poles in their country was by interning them, meaning that they weren't a government anymore. Thus, legally speaking, the Polish State had ceased to exist. And since the Secret Protocol of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact referred to Poland as "the Polish State", not "the Polish lands", this part of the pact was now invalid. And so the USSR had no choice but to occupy eastern Poland, since the alternative was to just let Nazi Germany occupy it and march right up to the Soviet border, which they could legally do without breaking the pact.nnThe whole thing was a legal mess, caused by the polish government cowardly fleeing and leaving their troops and people behind. If you want to read more on this I recommend the book "Blood Lies" by Grover Furr, which debunks many anti-Stalin myths including the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact.
And sorry to say, but, what other states did 100 years ago is totally relevant.
No I'm sorry, it's totally irrelevant. I have friends all over the world who hate the USA and its war in Ukraine. You takes on Russian people being crazy are immature and bigoted.
I despise any imperialistic, paranoid egomaniac where their ideals are more important than human lives. Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Trump, all are the same bullshit and as dangerous as the others. Any country trying to invade another is bad, no matter what.
Not a very nuanced take. I note that you don't have any American presidents in there or even, more relevantly to you, Stoltenberg.
This is US/NATO's war. They overthrew Ukraine's democracy and destroyed the country to try to "weaken Russia". They failed and Ukraine paid the price.