So tw war I guess, but I feel like this had to be said.
It's crazy to me that I've seen Americans on the internet go on about how "GAS PRICES ARE RISING! 6 DOLLARS A GALLON THE APOCALYPTIC INFLATION IS UPON US!1!1!1!".
I get it, your country is a capitalist hellscape and it's difficult enough to live any decent life even without the prices going up. But this is not about the US. Stop making it about the US.
This is about Ukrainians being killed, everything in Ukraine; houses, schools, hospitals, vital infrastructure, lives, being destroyed, it's f-ing war and war is hell. Most Americans have no experience with living in a country that has been occupied at some point in the last century. Now if you're curious about what that's like: they're still finding WW2 bombs in the Netherlands and all countries that were occupied or bombed between 1939-1945.
I repeat: More than 75 years after peace has been signed, there's still active explosives in the ground. War is not over when the peace treaty is signed. Even if a treaty was signed tomorrow and the Russian troops would withdraw the same day, the cleanup is gonna take years, if not generations to complete. And at this point we're not even talking about the traumas people already have.
War doesn't end. It just keeps echoing for generations. Inter-generational trauma is a pain in the ass. My grandpa still has food insecurity from the Dutch Winter Famine he survived, my grandmother (rip) survived a bombardment on the very neighborhood I live in now, multiple family members were almost executed.
And that was during WW2 which was certainly not fun, but now the weapons are worse, the desinformation and propaganda is worse and the trauma is fresh and not nearly over. And the atrocities at Bucha clearly show that Russian troops are not merciful by any metric. There'll be more death, more violence, more destruction and yet people in the US (and let's be honest, many in Europe too) get soooo upset by their car fuel costing a bit more.
Tldr: check ur privilege, living in a country that has not been attacked/besieged/occupied by foreign forces the last 100 years IS privilege.
Also if anyone tells you that no war crimes are committed or that Ukrainians deserve this, report, block, spread accurate information. Bellingcat is an excellent source if you want suggestions.
This is not aimed at any particular ppl btw
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround