Russians recived such a welcome that they decided to set up a network of 26 torture centers in and around Kherson. International investigators are still working on putting together details of what happened there and locating all the people who went missing:
Enough to stage a grand welcome. Where is it? Where are the kids dancing, grannies crying with joy, people waving flags and kissing soldiers? Like when Ukraine liberated Kherson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I6abh9C5Fg
(If you pay attention, you'll see a dog similar to Blondi for a brief moment in the video. A great opportunity to pull another batch of Nazi associations out of the thinnest air.)
By that bizarre standard, Russians "welcomed" the German invaders in 1941 when they failed to destroy many important bridges, and the French similarly "welcomed" the German invaders when they failed to blow up the Meuse River crossings in time.
I don't think you'll find many subscribers to this argument, as it is nothing more than contrarianism for contrarianism's sake; a childish refusal to accept reality. Go home.
"In November 2023, Gilbert W. Merkx, a professor at Duke University, along with the United States' Marine Corps University, published an article in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies placed on the Project Muse database, that stated Russia had captured Kherson with "little resistance". <...>
There were questions concerning how Kherson was captured so easily. Orysia Lutsevych, a member of the Chatham House, a British-based think tank stated that "Russia had its agents infiltrated into the Ukrainian security forces". On 1 April 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the head of the Security Service of Ukraine's Kherson regional branch and a general as traitors. Zelenskyy described their actions as that of "anti-heroes", and that he "...had trouble determining where their Fatherland is". An aide to a general was arrested for handing over maps of minefields to Russian forces and helping coordinate Russian airstrikes in the region." [0]
> There were questions concerning how Kherson was captured so easily.
There are also questions how Germans advanced so quickly in 1941. In a few months, they had advanced 600+ km in all three major directions, and captured over 3 million Russians as prisoners of war. And likewise, top Russian officers were reprimanded for their failures and many were executed.
Here's a prominent example:
Dmitry Grigoryevich Pavlov (Russian: Дми́трий Григо́рьевич Па́влов; 4 November [O.S. 23 October] 1897 – 22 July 1941) was a Soviet general who commanded the key Soviet Western Front during the initial stage of the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) in June 1941. After his forces were heavily defeated within the first few days of the campaign, he was relieved of his command, arrested, charged with military incompetence, and executed.
Death penalties were also passed down for other commanders of the Western Front, including the Chief of Staff, Major General Vladimir Klimovskikh; the chief of the communications corps, Major General A. T. Grigoriev; the Chief of Artillery, Lieutenant General of Artillery A. Klich; and Air Force Deputy Chief of the Western Front (who, after the suicide of Major General Aviation I.I. Kopets, was, nominally at least, Chief of the Air Force of the Western Front), Major General Aviation A. I. Tayursky. Also, the commander of the 14th Mechanized Corps, Major General Stepan Oborin, was arrested on 8 July and shot. The commander of the 4th Army, Major General Aleksandr Korobkov, was dismissed on 8 July, arrested the next day, and shot on 22 July.
"Україна понад усе" ("Ukraine above all" in English or "Ukraine über alles" in German)
Except it doesn't have the connotation of the latter among Ukrainians at all. It's more like their version of Vive la France. It has its own history, and the similarity in phrasing is entirely coincidental.
Except the corresponding article[0] in Ukrainian Wikipedia as the proof that it is a "Ukrainian patriotic slogan" gives the link to the news page that shows a photo of a mob with torches and lists slogans like "Ukraine above all", "Glory to nation, death to enemies", "Bandera, Shukhevich -- heroes of Ukraine"[1].
What's genuinely dishonest is your (obviously intentional) insinuation that a single anecdote about how some local yahoos used the slogan is reflective of how the broader society uses and interprets the slogan. As if the pervasive use of traditional Russian patriotic symbols (such as its coat of arms, or the black-yellow-white flag) by the country's various neo-Nazi and ultranationalist groups should be seen as indicative of how the Russian populace as a whole sees those symbols.
The implication you're making here is simply false, and you know it.
Welcomed with "Go home!" chants, to be precise, and were shot at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrf0yLxViRo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=886GLfYIvpA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDJ-y_bw7Uk
Russians recived such a welcome that they decided to set up a network of 26 torture centers in and around Kherson. International investigators are still working on putting together details of what happened there and locating all the people who went missing:
https://news.sky.com/story/torture-24-hours-a-day-survivors-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/kherson-tortur...