I'll try to dig it back up later, having a bit of trouble finding it again because modern search is shit and heavily favors tangential at best recent events even with clear requests.

As for the vote and in Crimea, as I've been saying, there's extremely reasonable doubt of authenticity given the vote was held after Russia seized the area. Russia held an election in which the result was what Russia wanted by margins in gross excess of what recent polling suggested the people actually wanted.

About Donbass, I don't really remember the specifics at this moment, but I recall getting into it with someone about that topic a few weeks ago. If you wanna look back in my comment history probably 2-4 weeks, I found sources for the poll, various issues with the Crimean referendum, and some stuff on Donbass I don't recall at the moment.

I'm making fun of you. You got brushed off. You squeezed your pseudo intellectual brain and 'thought terminating cliche' oozed out this time instead of 'strawman'

Maduro also did not cancel elections, right?

I am unfortunately not well informed on the current and recent state of Venezuela, so I'm not going to try to pretend I can form a well informed opinion on what he's done. I've heard some bad things recently, of course, but the timing makes it feel like justification for what was planned, so it's definitely a tinted view at best. All I can really say on Maduro is that it was most likely a bad idea for Trump to take him like that. I'm open to learning more, but I unfortunately can't keep up with everything.

That is under Zelensky, right?

If so, then claims against Putin and Maduro also are wrong, as they also have council-equivalents, ministries of defense, agencies etc.

Hmmm that's actually a fair question, but I'm not entirely sure they're equivalent. While the state as a whole certainly takes blame for actions of any of its agents, for individuals, it depends on what they have control over, and while the head of state's powers are generally extensive in any state, they are generally not complete. For an example from the jurisdiction I'm most familiar from, I wouldn't blame the US president for a law passed by Congress with a strong enough majority to override a veto because they effectively have no power there.

Speaking more directly on the individuals you mentioned, I'm going to pass on Maduro for the reasons I stated earlier. As for Putin, I think he takes a larger portion of blame than many other heads of state as he has accumulated a significantly larger portion of the state's power. He has managed, for example, to have the constitution amended so he can retain power well beyond the limits when he first came into power, and the fact that Russia isn't exactly known for election integrity suggests a wide capacity to corrupt even aspects of the government that should be well outside his control. He may get some blame for things genuinely out of his control, but his corruption does obscure the exact extent of his power.

As for Zelenskyy, this did warrant some more research into who in the government made the call and the hierarchies they operate under. I found this article, which goes into some of the details.

On March 18, 2022, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine decided to suspend, for the duration of martial law, the activities of certain political parties with ties to the Russian Federation. Zelenskyy signed a decree the next day. A week later, the Verkhovna Rada introduced a draft law to amend the existing legislation on political parties, specifically to add a restriction on “justification, recognition as legitimate, [or] denial of armed aggression against Ukraine,” as well as “glorification, justification of actions and/or inaction of persons who carried out or are carrying out armed aggression against Ukraine.” The law was unanimously adopted on May 3rd.

The activities of 11 political parties were affected, all with ties to Russia or in violation of the law. Five other parties were charged with the crime of “helping the occupier.” Per the legislation, lawsuits were filed by the Ministry of Justice in order to obtain judicial bans and forced dissolution. As of June 2023, “the Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal upheld the claims of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine to ban the activities of 18 political parties.” According to the Rule of Law Research Center, “after the execution of the court decision on the ban, the political party loses all its members and all its structural formations, that is, it completely ceases to exist as an association of citizens.”

Okay, so I had to look a bit deeper, and it seems the council serves under the president, but he's required to include certain people, mainly various ministers of assorted ministries. Looking deeper again, though, most if not all of those ministers do seem to be appointed by the president, even if they do need to be approved by a legislature. Plus, he signed the decree, even if at their suggestion and even if the legislature reinforced it with codified law later. Given that, I admit you are correct that he must share at least some of the blame for the suspension of those parties, and I was incorrect to try to absolve him of all blame.

That said, I don't disagree with the move. Not only are they under active attack, Russia has a known very recent history of attempting to interfere with and corrupt foreign parties and elections. Combined with their lack of election integrity at home, there is every reason to assume they would attempt to corrupt Ukrainian political parties and use them to amplify Russian propaganda and sway critical votes towards Russia's goals and away from the will of the people, and there is no reason at all to assume they wouldn't try. If Russia wants the political allies to be trusted in an emergency, maybe they should try not making allies through corruption and not being the reason their neighbors are having emergencies.

Regarding other claims, I did not see them here.

Well I exclusively pulled out of my own recent comment history, as in within the last month or so.

My understanding was that NATO expanded which baited Russia.

My understanding is that Ukraine is not in NATO and therefore does not deserve to have their sovereignty violated to satisfy Russia's desire for safety guarantees. It is also my understanding that many of those NATO expansions happened as a direct result of Russian interference with or aggression towards neighbors, e.g. Finland and Sweden joined as a direct response to the invasion of Ukraine, so if Russia wants their neighbors to stop joining alliances to bolster defense against them, maybe they should stop terrorizing neighbors and making them feel unsafe. Whining about NATO expansion is crybully behavior, whining that your future victims saw it coming and teamed up to prevent it.

And there was growing Ukrainian supremacism with Russian speaking regions like Donbass being affected. Have read that their 2019 language law had exceptions for English and European Union's official languages, while Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish languages did not have any. So, Russian speaking regions of Ukraine having issue is understandable there.

I'm unfamiliar with this topic and would be open to learning more if you have any good sources. From my understanding, Ukraine on the whole was moving away from Russia, so I could see that causing some tensions with the Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians. I usually see far more extreme claims about what's being done to the eastern Ukrainians, but they can never seem to come up with evidence for the more extreme claims, and this feels grounded enough to be possible, so yeah, if you have sources, I'm open to being convinced.

The Nazi symbols on some Ukrainian soldiers too.

I've heard a lot of claims of Ukrainian Nazis, but I'm increasingly convinced it's a grossly exaggerated issue. Don't get me wrong, I've seen pictures around here of a couple small groups, but the grand total was like 50 people around some flags or wearing symbols, and whole 50 Nazis is certainly 50 too many, it's far from the systemic issue people try to claim. I've asked for evidence many times now, and at this point, I think I'm more likely to be verbally abused for asking for evidence than to receive even a really shitty piece of "evidence" that doesn't actually prove anything. The animosity towards an open willingness to consider fresh evidence makes it feel more like Russian propaganda than truth. That said, I'm still open to being proven wrong. Just don't expect me to assume the whole nation is swarming with them because of something like a picture of a dozen dudes around a flag.

My understanding is that Western imperialist powers wants to isolate Russia, setup NATO bases around them and squeeze them, for not falling in line as a vassal.

My understanding is that many of the more recent states to join NATO did because they saw how Russia treats their neighbors, like Sweden and Finland as mentioned above. It looks an awful lot like Russia bullied their neighbors and then got really upset about it when some of the other neighbors started banding together so they wouldn't be next. If Russia wants neighbors to stop joining NATO, they should probably stop making their neighbors feel like they'd be safer in NATO.

NATO was getting closer to Ukraine, arranged regime change in 2014 etc.

My understanding is that the general public was moving towards the EU while state officials moved towards Russia, resulting in regime change. I've seen poll data from shortly before the 2014 invasion of Crimea that showed there was even a trend in eastern Ukraine of moving away from Russia, which is part of why the referendum to join Russia was seen as so suspicious, not only were they trending away, but then 95.5% voted to join Russia? Combined with the fact that the referendum was held after Russia invaded and gained control of the region and Russia's lack of election integrity, a vote of 95.5% in Russia's favor when recent polling data showed they probably wouldn't even pull a majority just looks like a "fuck you, what are you going to do about it?" vote count.

I'll try to check out the video later, but I've already spent more time than I really had available researching and writing this up.