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Notes -
The term "war" generally means having many soldiers from both sides shooting at each other. Since there aren't NATO troops directly shooting at the Russians, the term "war" is indeed misleading. You could qualify it by calling it a "proxy war" which reasonable people could disagree on, but just referring to it as "Nato's war with Russia" is wrong.
The term "mercenary" refers to soldiers who fight for money. If they aren't paid, they'll refuse to fight. It was clear shortly after the onset of the conflict that the Ukrainian nation was going to fight regardless of whether the West gave them money. Sure, the money helped stabilize the economy and buy more arms, but Ukraine isn't fighting as part of a get-rich-quick scheme, it's fighting to survive.
You are mangling definitions to use the noncentral fallacy to try to inappropriately attach negative moral valence to political causes you disagree with. There's almost no practical difference between what you're doing here, and, say, wokists redefining the term "racism" as "power + privilege" to ensure that only white people can ever be "racist". Words have meanings, and we should all avoid abusing the dictionary to suit our political purposes.
What terms would you use in their stead?
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Im using those terms because the anti war people will use those terms and I just want to admit to what they say so they can’t use those things as an argument. The Ukranians are still fighting for NATO interest with NATO pay and NATO weapons. It’s just they have their own interest too.
Sure proxy-war and proxy-mercenaries.
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