putin literally said in his speech at the beginning that the goal is to overthrow "drug addict government". How could they do it without taking over country?
They don't have to occupy the whole of Ukraine to do that, they only have to defeat Ukraine's military and destroy NATO's materiel on the battlefield. If they intended to occupy the entire country they would need several million troops as well as legions of administrators ready to go, which would be visible.
They most likely only plan to long-term occupy the parts of Ukraine where the majority of the population still living there supports them. The last thing that Russia wants is fighting a never ending insurgency in Lviv oblast.
The column that was rushing towards Kyiv consisted in large part of the Russian National Guard units - those are the guys whose primary purpose is to beat up people in opposition protests. And they had the anti-riot gear packed, as Ukrainians have found out when going through the wrecks. So, yes, they were absolutely planning to suppress civilian opposition to the occupation.
I don't find it particularly convincing that you dismiss int_19h's evidence as mere propaganda, without further elaboration.
I think it is easy to say now, after a year of war, that Russia could not have occupied Ukraine, but I think it is important to understand the prelude to war, 200.000 troops is not enough to occupy a country the size of Ukraine that will fight back, but it is more than enough for a country that would not, Ukraine had almost no army in 2014, and it still seems like yesterday, Russia under Putin has always won military conflicts: Chechnya, Georgia, and the fact that it took Crimea without hardly firing a shot, also the attitude that Russians have toward Ukrainians as sort of stupid cousins who need to be brought home, and after that the fact that Russia has a high level of corruption and Putin chooses his men well, the people he surrounds himself with have survived endless purges and power plays, so I would hardly see them responding (one of the reasons why I think democracies are stronger than public opinion seems to think). These are the reasons why it is clear to me that Russia tried to occupy Kiev and overthrow the government, the plan was not to get to the suburbs and then simply withdraw forces from the area, this is not how you "demilitarize and denazify" a country, the capital also is not far from the Belarusian border, then there is the evidence of int_19h.
Russia's generals are the people who are repeatedly ordering tanks to attack without infantry support with predictable results, the most recent of which we've seen under Vuhledar recently. Their incompetence is not a theory at this point, it's an empirically tested fact.
And it's not just the West saying that - I'm following many of the separatist outlets on Telegram and such, and while they broadly support the war, they're dismayed at how it is being waged. Strelkov is perhaps most notable of the critics, which is rather telling giving his role in 2014, but there are many others.
In any case, do you have other theories as to why Russia would send their National Guard with riot gear towards Kyiv during the first day of the war, if they didn't expect massive civilian resistance after toppling the government?
Putin's stated intentions, which were, and I quote "And for this we will strive for the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine". So even though they were stated clearly, they made little sense if you assume they aren't trying to take over Ukraine.
He's also been really clear on considering Ukraine to be a mistaken creation of the Soviet Union whose sovereignty is only possible if shared with Russia, and on formally integrating partially conquered regions into Russia, so I think we can probably disregard him being really clear about not wanting to occupy the country his armies are currently occupying large parts of and only acting in self defence...
> Yes, not Ukraine, only the occupied territories.
The “occupied territories” are, more fully, Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. Which clearly shows that, under the usual meanings of words, Putin’s claim of no intent to occupy “Ukrainian territory” was a lie.
Now, obviously, under a definition where any territory Russia occupies is, ipso facto, not “Ukrainian”, Putin’s claim is tautologically true, but also devoid of all meaning. Putin’s statements, therefore, provide no actual guidance on his intentions, since his actual actions demonstrate that, to the extent that they have any meaning at all rather than being stated just for emotional impact at the time they are uttered, it has nothing to do with the usual meanings of the actual words used and can only be reconstructed retrospectively after observing the actions he actually takes and trying to fit what meaning the words could have around that.
Which, it should go without saying, is the polar opposite of being “clear”.
> Calling out one obvious lie: “It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.”
I mean, it is not a “lie” once you accept Putin’s…rather, shall we say, slippery…concept of “Ukrainian territory”.
IF it was part of the DPR/LPR (like Crimea, earlier) Russia didn’t consider it “Ukrainian territory”…or vaguely claimed by them despite never having been controlled by them, or just somewhere Russia felt like occupying, for that matter.
Yes they absolutely did. There were quite a few surprises. The resistance of the Ukrainian people, especially the leadership. The effectiveness of small shoulder mounted weapons in taking out armoured vehicles. The incredibly poor logistical capability of the Russian forces who thought they could just drive into Kiev without infantry support, or even bringing enough fuel.
The way the Russian forces conducted themselves initially has led to the belief that they believed they'd have local support. Purge of their security people supports this idea too. Putin thought he'd paid for insurgency in Ukraine and instead had some uncommonly wealthy spies.
Not many predicted that Ukraine would hold out so long, especially the Kremlin itself which believed that the most reasonable course of action at the time was to start the invasion even with such a small number of men.
Well I remember Liz Truss saying British civilians would not be prosecuted if they went over there and fought. This is standard textbook SAS/SBS protocol, resign your commission for deniable ops, go off to conflict zone and fight. They also dont like tattoos for this reason, so if you are military and want to earn more money, dont get a tattoo, you might just as well get useful idiot tattooed on your forehead!
The fact that NATO have been loading up the Ukrainian people with debt via forced if not compulsory purchases in all but name of military equipment tells me both sides will be winning out of this at the expense of the useful idiots going out to fight and the Ukrainian people. The businesses already sizing up their contracts when rebuilding Ukraine, the poorest country in the EU, starts in earnest, is going to be lucrative to say the least. You know that Putin is in on it by the seemingly random buildings being destroyed, I see demolition for new shopping centres, car parks and other civil amenities taking place when its reported and spun in the news.
Didnt anyone learn anything from the Iraq war? Govt's especially the US spunking money everywhere like there was no tomorrow? How do you stimulate an economy? Got to war, and force change on people.
uh yeah, it's going to work out well for the Russian economy.
> The businesses already sizing up their contracts when rebuilding Ukraine, the poorest country in the EU, starts in earnest, is going to be lucrative to say the least.
Yes I'm sure that's true. The war has happened, the rebuild is going to happen.
> You know that Putin is in on it by the seemingly random buildings being destroyed
Business Insider says 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine.[1]
That leaves the central Russian government very vulnerable to its own internal separatist movements, of which there are rather a lot.[2]. Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Estonia, and the Gulf of Finland. An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe. Something to think about.
There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip to trade for Ukraine's own territory. There's nothing but farmland and mountains. Which is why this war is so stuck.
The Russians have shown that they don't care about holding territory in the short term, see Kherson withdrawal, etc. They are only focused on attrition and minimizing their own casualties. If Ukraine goes into Transnistria it will not force Russia to capitulate.
An investigation via open sources by the BBC and Meduza (an anti-Putin media outlet based in Latvia) has confirmed the deaths of about 15k Russian soldiers since the start of the war, and estimates the true number to be up to 60% higher.
What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?
The sources I'm seeing that say 200k include injuries. Combined with your source on actual deaths, that puts injuries:deaths at around 10:1, which sounds right.
> An investigation via open sources by the BBC and Meduza (an anti-Putin media outlet based in Latvia) has confirmed the deaths of about 15k Russian soldiers since the start of the war, and estimates the true number to be up to 60% higher.
Where do you get the estimate of the true number? Your cited source only has the count of the named individuals identified, not anything corresponding to your claimed total KIA estimate. (Also, the investigation was published, as you linked, by Meduza, but conducted by the BBC and Mediazona, not the BBC and Meduza.)
> What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?
Who else (besides sources with opposite biases, like official Russian sources – who haven’t provided casualty estimates since September) would have the kind of information necessary to make a meaningful estimate? (Also, the most commonly cited figure, which is sourced to the UK Ministry of Defense, is “up to” 200,000 casualties, with 40,000-60,000 KIA, not 200K+ KIA.)
But even if we go by that confirmed-by-name count as the full count of KIA, it roughly matches the Soviet KIA in Afghanistan, which was instrumental in the collapse of the USSR, so, going quite badly.
> If Ukraine goes into Transnistria it will not force Russia to capitulate.
A Ukraine invasion of Moldova would result in Ukraine being forced to capitulate by the sudden collapse of all outside support.
I suppose Ukraine supporting a Moldovan effort to push Russia out of Transnistria might be a thing that could happen without that consequence, but it doesn’t seem like something likely to happen while Ukraine is busy fighting Russia over Ukraine.
Isn't Transnistria legally part of Moldova? Russia can't trade that away against Moldova's wishes, and even if it was to try , it would be against the international law that made the invasion of Ukraine and annexing its territory illegal in the first place.
Don't really see Transnistria as remotely useful as a bargaining chip. Sure it's propped up by Russia and would eventually be integrated into Russia under Putin's wildest imperial fantasies, but it's not Russia, its people mostly aren't Russian and I'm not sure it's all that valuable either.
All a Ukrainian invasion of Transnistria would do is give Putin's claims about Ukrainian aggression some veneer of legitimacy and annoy Moldova, which doesn't want to see something which is constitutionally part of their territory fought over and then bargained back to Russian control...
I'm from around that region so I'm quite familiar.
Just because Putin says those people are Russians so he can claim some clay, doesn't make it a fact.
Sure some are ethnically Russian, but that doesn't make them Russian citizens of the Federal Russian Republic.
They are Moldovan citizens. Transnistria is a rouge separatist nation that's not internationally recognized and only exists on paper because Russia is a nuclear power which has troops and weapons there and Moldova is too weak to do anything about it.
If France were to give french passports to a lot of Germans in a particular region of Germany, that region doesn't magically become a French asset/territory.
But Transnistria has between 360k - 475k ppl (from Wikipedia). Plus everybody want Romanian passport (which is not that hard to get if you are Moldovan) - due to UE free movement ...
And Ukraine obviously supports the Moldovan government’s opposition to that condition, but Ukraine isn’t going to unilaterally invade Moldova to fight Russians while its got plenty of Russians in Ukraine to deal with.
Why are you so certain? Have you heard of the Cobasna ammo depot? It would be mutually beneficial to Ukraine and Moldova if Ukraine were to gain control of that depot and then cede back to Moldova.
Cobasna is a huge problem in waiting but it's not an urgent problem.
The real solution is for Russia (as the Soviet Union's biggest successor state) to handle the cleanup and reparations when the region is handed back to Moldova.
I think the west is using Ukraine as a way to whittle down Russian military forces at the expense of Ukrainians and "Allied" military equipment (instead of some theoretical war where the US send their soldiers _and_ equipment on the field, and the resulting PR nightmares, etc. that would cause) - essentially weakening Russia's military to a point so that Russia can't respond as aggressively to western expansionism or continue to meddle in western affairs as strongly as they have been.
I wish the west would stay out of conflicts it doesn't have a stake in, and I wish Russia would stop attacking Ukraine. Unfortunately mentioning the former makes you a "putin-apologist" even though there's more than enough things to attend to in the west instead of sending trillions of dollars overseas and continuing to fund the industrial military complex - almost like it's a convenient excuse to help distract people how much they're getting screwed over at home - but that's getting into conspiracy theorist territory, which I'd rather not go down.
The fastest way out of the war is negotiation unfortunately. It's only going to get bloodier as both sides get more desperate to win...
The Ukraine is in Europe, it is on the borders of the EU. And there are other former members of the Soviet Union that are now part of NATO and the EU. This is absolutely a conflict we have an enormous stake in.
Do you think we should not help Ukraine, and not supply them with weapons and leave them to fend for themselves?
> Russia wants no negotiation that doesn't result in them stealing territory from Ukraine. You can't negotiate with that.
You can negotiate with that, people were and are doing this all the time. The problem is that it very likely would result in just a pause and further (probably worse) conflict later.
> I think there's a solid human rights reason to be involved in the way we are.
The US is literally prolonging the conflict by shoveling guns, “advisors” and intelligence into the fight. It’s nothing but a proxy war, using the Ukrainians as pawns. And the longer it goes on, the more territory Russia will expect/need to keep.
> I wish the west would stay out of conflicts it doesn't have a stake in, and I wish Russia would stop attacking Ukraine.
Unfortunately, since the latter has happened, there's no moral high ground to be gained by "staying out" of the conflict. Russia started this war. Russia could end it, today, by leaving.
The West have their own interests surely but this war is fought by Ukrainians on their own collective volition. Negotiation is therefore also should happen on their own volition. Even with the slowly trickling and insufficient Western military aid, Ukrainians still prefer to take a chance to preserve their land, statehood and culture.
People hate the Western MIC for a reason but in the end desire to avoid a genocide has to be stronger than hate for the MIC.
"I think the west is using Ukraine as a way to whittle down Russian military forces" Of course they are. These weapon systems were built to defeat Russia and now they are being used for just that with the bonus of 0 risk to US lives.
With that said the US is not making Ukraine fight, Ukraine wants to fight and is begging for the weapons that the West is providing and more of them. The Ukrainians are not puppets, we don't get to take away their agency. They are a free people fighting to remain that way while an insane person tries to bury them in the bodies of his soldiers.
"I wish the west would stay out of conflicts it doesn't have a stake in" I would argue that everyone has a stake in preventing big countries from using force to just take chunks of weaker countries.
"almost like it's a convenient excuse to help distract people how much they're getting screwed over at home" People are not stupid, they are more than capable of holding multiple ideas and foci in their heads at the same time.
The war could end tomorrow, Putin just has to pack up and leave. In the mean time he is decimating a generation of young men and the myth of Russia as a super power.
He is also stealing tens of thousands of children.
The US (and their Neonazi Azov Allies) is absolutely making Ukraine fight. They have undermined diplomatic solutions at multiple points that were satisfactory even to Zelensky. Ukrainians are being used to advance US hegemonic and LNG interests, and it’s disgusting.
Interesting, can you show me the video of Zelensky saying the terms are acceptable but the US won't let him accept and are forcing everyone to fight to the death? Or are you just making this up?
Also your focus on the political orientation of a battalion that pretty much fought to the death to stop the Russian invasion is pretty telling. Should Ukraine have told them not to fight? Sorry we would rather lose the war, have our daughters raped, get tortured to death and let Russia keep stealing our kids because our potential allies are racist?
Russia is pardoning rapists and murdererers if they agree to fight for them. But partnering with Racists is worse right?
What the us is doing is more disgusting than the invading Russians, about the same, less?
That “battalion” is literally the #2 reason Russia invaded. And if you want to read about the peace deals that were undermined look them up. You can start with the most prominent one where the US sent its British errand boy Boris Johnson to handle it.
PS: I really love the minimization of NAZIS as just a “political orientation”.
lol, Dmitry Utkin is one of the military founders of the Wagner group and is covered in nazi tattoos. Russians invaded Ukraine to stop the nazis and brought along their own? There are many examples of Nazis fighting for Russia. Come on man, I refuse to believe that you think Russia invaded Ukraine because of Nazis. No way you would fall to that sort of propaganda. Right...?
Again, can you show me the videos of Zelensky saying he wants peace and is willing to accept surrendering Ukrainian soil to get it but the US stopped him and are forcing him to fight. This is your claim, so you should be able to provide the videos. Telling me to "look them up" is not a strong argument in your favor.
Are there a few bad apples in the Wagner group? Probably, any mercenary group is bad news. But that’s not their organizing principle, and they weren’t incorporated into the official Russian military as the Azov Nazis were, nor do they exert major control over the central government.
You kinda left out the other very minor issue from the article that prevented a deal
"According to Ukrainska Pravda, the other factor that scuttled peace talks was the discovery of massacred civilians in Bucha and other areas near Kyiv that Russia withdrew from around the time negotiations were being held."
But the Russians are the good guys fighting to liberate Ukraine from the Nazis led by their Jewish president. Looks like they did a great job liberating the civilians in Bucha.
Appeasing the aggressors by giving up territories is not going to stop the war long term until there is nothing to give up. Not only history shows it again and again, but the basic psychology behind this is clear after a first encounter with a bully which many people do as soon as kindergarten.
The only outcome of this faux pacifism is the destruction of Ukrainian state with the following butchering of Ukrainian culture AND with the following wars further West. Even though many Americans decided all of a sudden to support Russia in their conquests, Russians did not stop seeing themselves as waging war against the US and the West. And why would they ever stop, if the West keeps giving them what they want.
No appeasement has been the reason for fighting wars since WW2. This shows a misunderstanding of the wars. In Vietnam, it was called the domino theory, except Vietnam was a war of independence. The war on terror - invade Iraq so the terrorist don't come here. The Russians are not going to invade NATO countries.
If anything your examples show that aggressors don't care about diplomatic compromises as long as they believe in their total military victory.
> The Russians are not going to invade NATO countries.
Depending on how US elections go, NATO can be no longer a meaningful project anyway. So yes, they are absolutely going to invade if encouraged to do so. Eastern Europeans clearly understand that.
Europeans thought it could be avoided because they still had naive beliefs about the nature and motivations of the US security state. The invasion was quite predictable. So predictable that the RAND Corp recommended virtually all of the steps that the US took in order to facilitate the invasion.
> The invasion was quite predictable. So predictable that the RAND Corp recommended virtually all of the steps that the US took in order to facilitate the invasion.
Your link appears to contradict your conclusion that the US took steps to facilitate the invasion. Specifically, key findings from the link are below, and appear to advise against facilitating the invasion (geopolitical and ideological measures) and instead focusing on economics.
> Key Findings
> Russia's weaknesses lie in the economic domains
> The most promising measures to stress Russia are in the realms of energy production and international pressure
> Geopolitical measures to bait Russia into overextending itself are likely impractical, or they risk second-order consequences
> Ideological measures to undermine the regime's stability carry significant risks of counter escalation
Ukraine is a sovereign actor here, it is defending itself against aggression. Of course they accept and demand weapons from the West, because surrendering or losing this war means a lot of death, suffering and loss of freedom.
At the very latest after Bucha it is clear that leaving Ukrainian population under Russian control will cause terrible suffering. So what should they negotiate about, what do you think Ukraine should give up to the aggressor?
Last time I checked there was more than 1 million in internal forces (militia, rosgvardia, troops, probably some others). They are armed, trained specifically to suppress and loyal. I (looking from the inside) highly doubt that they will change sides unless they stop receiving paycheck. Of course, some regions are a bit special in this respect but they are not in the central Russia.
Zero war support across friends/colleagues but maybe up to 30% support on the streets (taxi drivers, cashiers, mechanics, neighbors, ...). In small cities there shall be more supporters (less Internet, more TV).
I really doubt it's "zero". I've quizzed many many people I had connections with and literally all of them support the war up to some extent. The most common opinion is "we shouldn't have started this but we should win this war and take over Ukraine and Poland". It would be really strange to count such opinions as "anti-war".
Well, I may speak for hours about my observations.
Essentially they are sure that noone would vouch for Poland (also for Baltic countries). I've been shocked that well educated people, like software engineers, scientists, etc easily repeat the narrative of various propagandists and, moreover, they say that these are their own conclusions.
> I really doubt that this shit is still functional.
Ohh how I wish I could believe that. Once you have the fissile material together my understanding is that it's not that hard to actually build a bomb. The success rate of countries that have decided to start a nuclear program is pretty damn high, and through all those years of nuclear testing, there weren't a whole lot of duds that I know of.
There are a lot of designs that are a lot trickier to set off. Do we know how many of each design Russia has in service? It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the simpler ones had been replaced by higher yield but more fragile ones.
Ed: rockets, targeting, etc are also tricky failure points.
Anyway, I agree it's not a great cause for optimism. It would only take a couple of them going off to give the world a bad time. If nothing else they're dirty bombs.
Did Poland think through the implications of hosting an AEGIS missile system (thanks to the US unilaterally withdrawing from an arms control treaty)? I’m sure the Kremlin was going to believe that was to protect Europe from “Iranian and North Korean” missiles. What a joke.
1) I'm an asperger and my ability to build social links is severely impaired
2) I'm not in touch with these people anymore though I've tried to reach everyone I was able to and get their opinions. My conclusion is: the propaganda is extremely effective. People there easily pronounce self-contradictive statements and easily turn to aggression.
Agree, propaganda makes wonders. But the people from "my circle" just don't watch TV (and that's not surprising given that ~40% of people in Moscow or Saint-Pete don't watch TV). I completely acknowledge that "my circle" does not represent general population and I wrote it in the original post.
Some people have questioned the legitimacy of that request and of the breakaway governments, but a Washington Post poll in 2021 found that over half of the respondents from those breakaway republics wanted to join Russia and only 12% wanted to rejoin Ukraine:
The separatists are under Russian control. The Russian army has been fighting alongside them since 2014, when they invaded Donbas.
In the 1991 referendum, voters in Dontesk and Luhansk overwhelmingly voted against being part of Russia. Per your source, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas, 75% want to be part of Ukraine. In the Russian-controlled part of Donbas, 57% want to be part of Russia.
First point, why such stark difference? I think it's because Russia is very good at propaganda and they exercise it heavily in areas under their control.
Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil. They don't care about the people in the separatist republics, that's just a marketing spin that almost everyone can see through. It's about imperialism, revenge, power. Putin has been planing to absorb at least Belarus and Ukraine since a very long time.
After all, Russia invaded the non-Russian controlled parts of Ukraine, which, per your source, are heavily against joining Russia.
Even if some parts of Ukraine wanted to join Russia, it wouldn't give Russia the right to annex the territory.
I'm curious why you have this view, what's your background - nationality, ethnicity, feelings about the West? (I'm from the Czech Republic.)
I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice.
> In the 1991 referendum...
A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?
> First point, why such stark difference?
An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.
> Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil.
If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.
> I'm curious why you have this view
I'm from the US. We are, first of all, a nation founded by "separatists", who also fought against other separatists to remain a single nation. I think each separatist cause needs to be evaluated on its merits, but in general (when something like slavery isn't involved) I think the people of a smaller region should be free to leave a larger nation if they wish. If I didn't believe that, I'd have to apply for British citizenship.
And the US is also a nation that's done exactly what Russia is doing, many times. We nearly started a war because Russian weapons were too close to the US (in Cuba), just as Russia demands that Western weapons stay out of Ukraine. And we've invaded many nations on pretexts weaker than Russia's in this war. If we accepted those actions as precedents, they would justify Russia's actions in this war. Everything I hear seems to be tinged by a bit of an "it's only OK when we do it" attitude, so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia.
And perhaps also for Ukraine. Ukraine has even demanded the return of Crimea, where even in 1991, only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia. After all that's happened, do you think Crimea really wants to return to Ukraine?
My ideal solution would be a fair and binding vote on separation for all the regions in question, but I know no party would accept that.
> I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice.
Does not dehumanize at all. Ukraine fell into political turmoil similar to January 6 riots in the US, and Russia used intelligence operatives to instigate further violent riots, quickly invaded parts of Ukraine taking advantage of the confusion, and established a military occupation. The so-called separatists were directly funded and supported by Russia in the earliest days, and then under the full control of the military admin after tanks rolled in.
As I've told before, the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed the same when they were investigating whether Russia is responsible for MH17 shootdown, which happened on occupied territories. Since Russia had full control, ECHR found them responsible.
Locals have had as much freedom to choose their future as Parisians in 1940.
You've conflated two different issues. The ECHR has ruled (and I think they're right) that Russia is in control of the region.
That tells us nothing about whether the people of the region want to be part of Russia.
For that, we have to look to polls, like the one I cited, which tell us that the people living in the region do support Russia.
Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.
The so-called separatists don't represent the people no matter how you approach them. In the earliest days, they consisted of local thugs, the kind of people who come out just to destroy something at protests. Then intelligence operatives like Igor Girkin were quickly installed to direct the violence against Ukraine and its institutions in a controlled way to achieve Russian goals, and then regular armed forces took over. At no point did it have anything to do with people and their will.
Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions where people can get murdered for publicly supporting some of the answers. I wonder what Parisians in 1940 would've answered if they got a phone call asking if they wanted to be a part of Germany - while people were disappearing.
> Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.
Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament. It's as if Congress had voted Trump out of the office after January 6th riots, Trump fled abroad and some unhappy Trumpers stormed further goverment buildings, and then Mexican army rolled in to support "separatists" and occupied Arizona and Texas, and then Mexican intelligence operatives cosplaying as independent freedom fighters asked Mexico to annex Arizona and Texas into Mexico.
> Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions...
That's a fair point - polling is difficult and unreliable in a contested region - but what other evidence can we look to?
Perhaps this: "an occupation against a hostile local population requires far more soldiers than a peaceful occupation of territory" as we've seen recently when Russia occupied regions not controlled by the separatists.[1]
And the Russian forces in the separatist regions before 2022 were far from sufficient to hold the regions if the local population had been hostile, especially with Ukrainian forces also fighting them.
> Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament
This isn't accurate. "On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych ...left the capital for Kharkiv, saying his car was shot at as he left Kyiv, and travelling next to Crimea, and eventually to exile in Russia."[2]
Then, because he had fled, "the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him from his post...on the grounds that he...effectively resigned."[2] He was not impeached.
It's more accurate to say that he was driven out of office by the riots, a fact that Parliament merely recognized.
(Also, your analogy to Jan 6th makes no sense, because in any such analogy, the rioters have to end up with the President they want, just as they did in Ukraine.)
The same kind of resistance as described happening in Kherson in the linked article happened in LNR and DNR too. Eventually Russian forces abandoned Kherson not because of local resistance, but because of military factors. Kherson garrison was too close to the frontline and couldn't be protected from HIMARS strikes. If you are trying to use the fact that Russian forces were not driven out of LNR and DNR by local civilian population as an evidence of their views, then I don't find that convincing, because driving Russians out has required grueling coordinated military action even in those regions of Ukraine where the support for Ukrainian independence is universal without any doubt.
The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism, seizing the oppurtunity that internal turmoil offers. The specifics of that turmoil are largely irrelevant.
> The same kind of resistance as described happening in Kherson in the linked article happened in LNR and DNR too.
Do you have sources for that? It's the first I've heard of it and I'd like to learn more.
> The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism
Ok. Then to use an analogy that actually happened, perhaps the US invading Cuba under the "pretext" of separatism from Spain?
Or the US sending the navy to Panama to support its independence from Columbia (in exchange for the canal zone)?
Perhaps the best analogy is the Mexican-American war, in which the US took Texas (already de facto separate from Mexico but still claimed by them) and other territory from Mexico.
The video was posted on social media with the following message:
> This was done with the goal to draw attention to the inhumane torture in the basements of the MGB. Cruel treatment and tying wires with electric current to peoples’ extremities in the “people’s” republics has become the norm. The people of the Donbas must protest against torture, or the fascist republic will remain unconnected.
The very effective use of long-range weapons against targets deep inside occupied territories has also been attributed to intelligence provided by locals.
Like with Kherson, we can expect detailed stories after LNR and DNR are liberated and it's safe to reveal what went on and how it was accomplished.
> Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?
The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with separatism. Whatever seeds of that may have existed in the first days, they were hijacked by Russian intelligence services and armed forces very early to prepare the stage for military invasion and occupation. The treatment of representatives of occupied territories as independent leaders even as late as of February 2022 (when they supposedly called Russia for help) is unsupported by facts. You can stage such "separatism" anywhere in favorable conditions when police and armed forces are overwhelmed and won't react fast enough.
No. I said they were under Russian control. Not that they're not human. The invading army is under Putin's control, that doesn't imply they're not human (although they regularly commit inhuman acts).
> A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?
The poll is heavily skewed by Russian propaganda in areas under their control.
> An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.
First, area of control is primarily determined by military, not civilians. Second, why would there be such a stark difference in opinion within Donbas? Doesn't make any sense.
> If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.
I don't mean that, it depends on the specific situation. But the separatists are just a distraction, it's not what this war is about. Russia invaded the area which was against joining Russia, simply because Putin wanted to subdue Ukraine. He couldn't care less about the separatists, they're just a tool. In fact, he brutally crushes actual organic separatist movements (Chechnya).
> so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia
You feel wrong then. What Russia is doing is bordering genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr...). The US is doing everything to help them. If Ukraine succeeds and becomes a prosperous liberal democracy, it would make the alliance of liberal democracies stronger and the US would benefit from that. That doesn't change that it's mostly right to help Ukraine.
Russia is effectively a dictatorship run by a psychopath who kills his opponents and uses mass torture to achieve his goals. The US is a democracy whose current leadership has a normal level of empathy.
> only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia
That's a majority... In any case, the annexation by Russia was wrong and should be reversed. After that, there may be talks about independence and a proper referendum.
> A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?
What 2021 poll is that? I am aware of the ones in 2014 and the one in 2022, both of which could be described as meaningless Russian shams, and totally irrelevant .
I picked this one because it's one of the few I've seen that seems the least bit trustworthy. If you know of a better one, I'd be happy to read it too.
I don't really understand how such a poll can be considered legitimate or humane. From the news articles I've read since the 2014 separatist movement happened, the majority of people in that region left. So how can you have a poll where you say everyone agrees with you when you've driven out all the people who disagree?
It's the hypothesis that ascribes the least idiocy to Russian military command, compared to, say, deliberately wading into a multi-year attritional struggle. As much we may think they're fools, they're probably not that stupid.
> deliberately wading into a multi-year attritional struggle
I don't understand how people expect anything different here. Even the US with all it's superpower fanciness spent years in Iraq and decades in Afghan. I am also skeptical over that whole "my opponent is more stupid than me" attitude. We can already see how people made fools of themselves spelling Russia's haste economic demise, while Russia is expecting an economic growth now according to the World Bank.
Idiocy would be setting unrealistic expectations and treating this like a computer game, when a well-fortified Ukrainian army at the Donetsk border (that Zelensky was inspecting a few times in 2021) would somehow de-spawn or vanish in case Russia would hastily take Kyiv.
Actually there's more than just that one way of being an idiot and having unrealistic expectations. Wishful thinking springs eternal, on both sides clearly.
Would it surprise to learn that among the worlds nations the US ranks 76th in the number of military personel per capita? North Korea is #1 with 306 military personel per 1000 citizens. The US is 6.3/1000. The US is sandwiched between Namibia (#75) and Belize (#77).
I would be more worried about the Caucasus's. Chechnya is run by a dictator with Putin's backing. I have a feeling that Ramzan Kadyrov will have the be very careful moving forward. I can't imagine he's well liked in Chechnya.
> vulnerable to its own internal separatist movements
Frankly, you have no idea about what's actually happening there. All these "movements" are nothing and the only potential sources of real separatism are the regional governments. Though there are multiple measurements in place to make that impossible.
> Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Estonia, and the Gulf of Finland. An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe.
Most successful independence movements are based on some kind of distinct ethnic/national/cultural/religious/linguistic identity. “Ingria” is a historical term, coming from a time several hundred years ago when the area was ruled by Sweden and populated mainly by Finnic and Baltic peoples. However, the vast majority of its current population is ethnic Russian, and the Finns and Balts are now only small, highly assimilated minorities. The vast majority of its population don’t identify as “Ingrian”. That does not seem like a successful basis for an independence movement.
I think the most likely place for renewed separatism is Chechnya. Not right now while Kadyrov and Putin are so close, but if something happened to one (or both) of them, or if they had a falling out, it could easily start again. And spread to Dagestan, Ingushetia too, maybe even the entirety of Russia’s North Caucus region-in most of which ethnic Russians are a minority. An Islamic separatist movement is likely to find international support and funding from the Islamic world.
Well, it’s a lot more plausible than “Ingria”, given it has a distinctive language/culture/religion. On the other hand (1) it is some way from an international border, making successful separatism less plausible (unless, of course, the border were to somehow move closer); (2) ethnically, it is over 50% Tatar, with a Russian minority of about 40%. Assumably the Russian minority would oppose separatism, with great potential for inter-ethnic violence, genocide, partition, etc. By contrast, Chechnya is over 95% ethnic Chechen.
It wasn't a "temporary downturn". If you look at the graph of casualties in Donbas before 2022, the first 2 years of fighting in 2014-2015 see the vast majority of casualties, and then it goes down sharply from there.
By 2021, this much lower rate was a well-established status quo, and this was reflected even in official government briefings from separatist republics and Russia itself. For example, DNR published (https://regnum.ru/news/polit/3467017.html) its own stats claiming a grand total of 70 military casualties and 7 civilians for the entirety of 2021 - a proportion, by the way, that tells you volumes about where that fire was aimed.
The point is that it is an extremely silly justification to start a war which resulted in these numbers spiking ~100x for the civilian population in the affected areas.
I don't think Donbas is the entire justification is it? Also, we probably had even less justification to invade Iraq yet we stayed for 20 years. Makes it really hard to take any of the moralizing from the US & NATO seriously.
It's hard to say what the "entire justification" even is in this case, since the goalposts have been moved so rapidly since the beginning of the invasion that it's basically all blurry. Remember back when they said it's totally not about taking any land from Ukraine?
But, anyway, Donbas is the primary justification for the population of Russia. The other one - that this is all a pre-emptive strike to forestall some kind of NATO invasion against Russia proper - is significantly harder to believe in and thus doesn't have as many adherents.
> It's hard to say what the "entire justification" even is in this case, since the goalposts have been moved so rapidly since the beginning of the invasion that it's basically all blurry.
Is this referring to Russia in Ukraine, or the US in Iraq?
The problem is, the US has invaded more countries in the last 50 years than the rest of the world combined and it's always based on lies and/or ulterior motives. So we have zero credibility on this.
At this point, if you don't instinctively assume our CIA/State Dept are actively working to undermine other nations then you haven't been paying attention. Why should we ever trust anything they say or do? Because Putin is a dick? Sorry, that's not quite enough to undo decades of lies I've had to listen to these turds shovel down our throats.
As it happens, I am still a Russian citizen, so you might consider that your perspective about "why do we ever trust those guys when they always lied to us" is equally applicable from the other end. I don't need to listen to Biden to tell me that Putin is a dick; I lived under him for a decade, and still have family and friends who do.
As far as comparisons go, US did a lot of shitty things internationally in the past 50 years, but I don't recall a war to directly annex parts of another country being one of them. And yes, it is far worse than "regime changes" (which are also bad, to be clear) just because of how inherently destructive such a thing is.
Yes, you did. And while it's not a positive influence on the world, it's far better than physical occupation. There are countries that had a chance to compare the two, and you might note that most of them are currently in NATO - because their population wanted it.
But if you want to seek redemption, helping a nation pushing back against another, even more brutal empire trying to bomb it into submission seems like a perfect chance, no?
We did that too. We invaded and occupied Iraq for 20 years and just recently left. Same for Afghanistan. We're still in northern Syria, illegally. So the point stands - we have no credibility on this issue.
If you ask Americans how long the war in Ukraine has been going on, they'll almost all say “about a year”, whereas Ukrainians would say “about nine years”.
And so? Most Americans barely pay attention to the news, or just pay attention to a very narrow selection of news outlets. I don't think you can judge whether or not something is being reported based on what most Americans know.
The invasion in 2014 was generally limited to Crimea. After that, Russia held its ground, allowing some level of peace and stability.
The current war, that includes active invasion of the entire country, started in 2022. The conflict began much earlier, but semantically, "war" is generally inferred to mean the current conflict specifically.
He mostly does history education through the lens of pop culture. He's a bit outside his expertise on this subject, but uses it as a launching off point for educational content rather than trying to be a "military strategist". He even says as much at the outset.
> keeping in mind that I am largely reliant here on the expertise of others and so am operating from my ‘professional thing explainer’ role, rather than as the expert
The guy is a military historian, so armchair military strategizing is literally a part of the job. Unlike the rest of us, though, he actually studied for it.
Pretty close though, realistically. Continuity of doctrine and a fair number of people AFAIK. I'm not an expert but I still think I would have heard about it if Russia reconstituted its entire military from scratch after the USSR's collapse.
FWIW the sheer concentration of artillery firepower at hot spots in Ukraine exceeds anything seen in Stalingrad. Mariupol was one prominent example, and the ongoing battle for Bakhmut is another.
In fact Putin is completely correct in his attempt to retrieve Ukraine for Mother Russia and it is the West that is the aggressor.
Now, if you just had a visceral (negative) response to this, I am with you.
The point I am trying to make is that the Russian people seem to be equally incredulous to the idea that Russia itself is the aggressor. How is it that the Russian media has such a hold over them - in this day of the internet and other forms of communication?
And if Russia can have such a hold, why couldn't OUR government have such an equal hold over US. I want the war to end as much as anyone but I believe that only by informing the Russian people of this can there be real hope for peace and resolution. (And please forgive my naivety.)
Easy to forget, but an objective and great educational system (which doesn't optimize only for getting people to be able to do certain jobs, but to truly educate people about life), along with free speech is equally important as free elections in order for democracy to work.
> The point I am trying to make is that the Russian people seem to be equally incredulous to the idea that Russia itself is the aggressor.
You may want to point this crowd to some sources about that incredulity being widespread in Russia.
> How is it that the Russian media has such a hold over them - in this day of the internet and other forms of communication?
There is a language barrier at play here - Russian natives may not be able to avail English-media content, and I do wonder about how much russian language counter-programming is widely available to the average Russian.
> And if Russia can have such a hold, why couldn't OUR government have such an equal hold over US.
Russia is practically a dictatorship, while the US is a functioning democracy. That said, within the last 2 decades we have seen the US invade Iraq for no good reason, with significant support from the population resulting in Bush's re-election. Granted, the US people finally threw those responsible out of power for a couple of cycles (albeit for a mix of reasons, including poor economic performance). Meanwhile the Russian people do not appear to have that luxury of being able to peacefully remove Putin from power for any reason.
The brainwash level of russians is indeed incredible. The whole propaganda is just sick shit: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/medvedev-says-russia-is... I am really curious how it is achieved. Everybody there had/has some relatives that fled to USA or Europe after Cold War and the information should circulate. At least in my theory. But no, satan, drug addicts and NATO forces.
Only people whose knowledge of history begins with WW II think everything is Munich, and that analogy applies to everything.
There was 6,000 years of recorded history before Munich. It's not always correct to think that "if we appease them here, they'll be in our bedrooms next."
Sometimes in history, the two sides cut a deal, and peace was maintained for a few generations, which was all anyone expected anyway.
I agree with this sentiment but in this particular case, with the personality that Putin projects to the world, it seems like appeasement would just encouragement him to try to take more.
> There was 6,000 years of recorded history before Munich.
Yeah, “Dane-geld” was written long before Munich, and references experiences much longer before Munich. The observation that accommodating aggression encourages more aggression was not first made in regards to Munich, Munich is just one notable example of that time-worn lesson being forgotten at great cost.
It’s hard to know exactly how heavy Ukrainian losses in the first phase and this second phase were; I suspect we’ll find out that they were quite a bit heavier than media coverage would lead us to believe.
Actually, if you read Western mainstream media front line reports, past the headlines and between the lines, a picture of very heavy losses emerges. Units completely depleted or rebuilt several times. Territorial Defense volunteers sent into the trenches with hardly any preparation [0]. And so on. But somehow such reports never manage to shatter the Conventional Wisdom.
> Bret Devereaux, "About the Pedant", "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", "PhD", "ancient and military historian", "intersections of the Roman economy and the Roman military" https://acoup.blog/about-the-pedant/
> “I am not going to pretend to be neutral here. I am on the side of the nascent democracy which was ruthlessly and lawlessly attacked without provocation by a larger and more powerful foreign power.”
I'm not going to quote anything else or what is missing, but overall:
Deep substance, neutral style or “pedantry” is not found in this article.
But there is one sided ideology propaganda, vilification and demonization, black and white thinking, omitting of crucial events, facts, and parties involved not just for duration since 2008 but just in 2022.
Strongly recommend avoiding this article and this author, unless you already wholly agree with him and want to reinforce your information bubble.
I guess OP thinks that Ukraine "asked for it", that "it's a brother nation that must be one with ruzzia", "Kyiv is ruzzia, thus Ukraine does not exist", "Крымнаш", etc.
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[ 18.9 ms ] story [ 3803 ms ] threadThey are several times bigger, larger military, etc.
They initially claimed they weren’t going into Ukraine.
They most likely only plan to long-term occupy the parts of Ukraine where the majority of the population still living there supports them. The last thing that Russia wants is fighting a never ending insurgency in Lviv oblast.
And it's not just the West saying that - I'm following many of the separatist outlets on Telegram and such, and while they broadly support the war, they're dismayed at how it is being waged. Strelkov is perhaps most notable of the critics, which is rather telling giving his role in 2014, but there are many others.
In any case, do you have other theories as to why Russia would send their National Guard with riot gear towards Kyiv during the first day of the war, if they didn't expect massive civilian resistance after toppling the government?
[1]: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843
I can say the words "Dog Cat Microwave Book" and they would be clear, and make about as much sense as the idea of "denazifying" Ukraine.
Calling out one obvious lie: "It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force."
In September Russia "held" a "referendum" in occupied territories and immediately adjusted the Constitution to include the occupied territories.
Isn't that true for any politician?
> Calling out one obvious lie: "It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force."
Obvious lie? That's fortunate for your opinion.
>In September Russia "held" a "referendum" in occupied territories and immediately adjusted the Constitution to include the occupied territories.
Yes, not Ukraine, only the occupied territories.
The fact that my original comment was flagged shows just how deep the U.S. has fallen for its own propaganda.
The “occupied territories” are, more fully, Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. Which clearly shows that, under the usual meanings of words, Putin’s claim of no intent to occupy “Ukrainian territory” was a lie.
Now, obviously, under a definition where any territory Russia occupies is, ipso facto, not “Ukrainian”, Putin’s claim is tautologically true, but also devoid of all meaning. Putin’s statements, therefore, provide no actual guidance on his intentions, since his actual actions demonstrate that, to the extent that they have any meaning at all rather than being stated just for emotional impact at the time they are uttered, it has nothing to do with the usual meanings of the actual words used and can only be reconstructed retrospectively after observing the actions he actually takes and trying to fit what meaning the words could have around that.
Which, it should go without saying, is the polar opposite of being “clear”.
I mean, it is not a “lie” once you accept Putin’s…rather, shall we say, slippery…concept of “Ukrainian territory”.
IF it was part of the DPR/LPR (like Crimea, earlier) Russia didn’t consider it “Ukrainian territory”…or vaguely claimed by them despite never having been controlled by them, or just somewhere Russia felt like occupying, for that matter.
The way the Russian forces conducted themselves initially has led to the belief that they believed they'd have local support. Purge of their security people supports this idea too. Putin thought he'd paid for insurgency in Ukraine and instead had some uncommonly wealthy spies.
The fact that NATO have been loading up the Ukrainian people with debt via forced if not compulsory purchases in all but name of military equipment tells me both sides will be winning out of this at the expense of the useful idiots going out to fight and the Ukrainian people. The businesses already sizing up their contracts when rebuilding Ukraine, the poorest country in the EU, starts in earnest, is going to be lucrative to say the least. You know that Putin is in on it by the seemingly random buildings being destroyed, I see demolition for new shopping centres, car parks and other civil amenities taking place when its reported and spun in the news.
Didnt anyone learn anything from the Iraq war? Govt's especially the US spunking money everywhere like there was no tomorrow? How do you stimulate an economy? Got to war, and force change on people.
> The businesses already sizing up their contracts when rebuilding Ukraine, the poorest country in the EU, starts in earnest, is going to be lucrative to say the least.
Yes I'm sure that's true. The war has happened, the rebuild is going to happen.
> You know that Putin is in on it by the seemingly random buildings being destroyed
No. lol
There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip to trade for Ukraine's own territory. There's nothing but farmland and mountains. Which is why this war is so stuck.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/97-of-russia-army-in-ukraine...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatism_in_Russia
The UK defense minister said this. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-64634760
No, it's a toy movement.
> There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip
Transnistria could play precisely that role.
???
That’s errr... going poorly.
An investigation via open sources by the BBC and Meduza (an anti-Putin media outlet based in Latvia) has confirmed the deaths of about 15k Russian soldiers since the start of the war, and estimates the true number to be up to 60% higher.
What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?
Where do you get the estimate of the true number? Your cited source only has the count of the named individuals identified, not anything corresponding to your claimed total KIA estimate. (Also, the investigation was published, as you linked, by Meduza, but conducted by the BBC and Mediazona, not the BBC and Meduza.)
> What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?
Who else (besides sources with opposite biases, like official Russian sources – who haven’t provided casualty estimates since September) would have the kind of information necessary to make a meaningful estimate? (Also, the most commonly cited figure, which is sourced to the UK Ministry of Defense, is “up to” 200,000 casualties, with 40,000-60,000 KIA, not 200K+ KIA.)
But even if we go by that confirmed-by-name count as the full count of KIA, it roughly matches the Soviet KIA in Afghanistan, which was instrumental in the collapse of the USSR, so, going quite badly.
The former, yes. The latter, no.
A Ukraine invasion of Moldova would result in Ukraine being forced to capitulate by the sudden collapse of all outside support.
I suppose Ukraine supporting a Moldovan effort to push Russia out of Transnistria might be a thing that could happen without that consequence, but it doesn’t seem like something likely to happen while Ukraine is busy fighting Russia over Ukraine.
All a Ukrainian invasion of Transnistria would do is give Putin's claims about Ukrainian aggression some veneer of legitimacy and annoy Moldova, which doesn't want to see something which is constitutionally part of their territory fought over and then bargained back to Russian control...
They basically are. They speak Russian and act like Russians. I doubt they'd mind being annexed.
They don't have russian passorts. How can they be russians?
You clearly are not familiar with how things work in Transnistria.
Just because Putin says those people are Russians so he can claim some clay, doesn't make it a fact.
Sure some are ethnically Russian, but that doesn't make them Russian citizens of the Federal Russian Republic.
They are Moldovan citizens. Transnistria is a rouge separatist nation that's not internationally recognized and only exists on paper because Russia is a nuclear power which has troops and weapons there and Moldova is too weak to do anything about it.
Not sufficiently familiar then.
"It is estimated that about 250,000 out of 500,000 people living in Transnistria hold Russian citizenship."
That's as of 2020, "passportization" has continued since then.
https://warsawinstitute.org/russia-hands-passports-diaspora/
Case in point, no other UN nation recognizes Transnistria or Transnistrean passports. Transnistrean citizens travel with Moldovan passports.
Transnistria isn’t part of Russia and Ukraine isn’t going to take it from Moldova.
It is controlled by Russia.
> Ukraine isn’t going to take it from Moldova.
What is that based on?
And Ukraine obviously supports the Moldovan government’s opposition to that condition, but Ukraine isn’t going to unilaterally invade Moldova to fight Russians while its got plenty of Russians in Ukraine to deal with.
https://www.arnika.org/en/hotspots/moldova/the-largest-illeg...
Cobasna is a huge problem in waiting but it's not an urgent problem.
The real solution is for Russia (as the Soviet Union's biggest successor state) to handle the cleanup and reparations when the region is handed back to Moldova.
I think the west is using Ukraine as a way to whittle down Russian military forces at the expense of Ukrainians and "Allied" military equipment (instead of some theoretical war where the US send their soldiers _and_ equipment on the field, and the resulting PR nightmares, etc. that would cause) - essentially weakening Russia's military to a point so that Russia can't respond as aggressively to western expansionism or continue to meddle in western affairs as strongly as they have been.
I wish the west would stay out of conflicts it doesn't have a stake in, and I wish Russia would stop attacking Ukraine. Unfortunately mentioning the former makes you a "putin-apologist" even though there's more than enough things to attend to in the west instead of sending trillions of dollars overseas and continuing to fund the industrial military complex - almost like it's a convenient excuse to help distract people how much they're getting screwed over at home - but that's getting into conspiracy theorist territory, which I'd rather not go down.
The fastest way out of the war is negotiation unfortunately. It's only going to get bloodier as both sides get more desperate to win...
Do you think we should not help Ukraine, and not supply them with weapons and leave them to fend for themselves?
I think there's a solid human rights reason to be involved in the way we are. But even ignoring that, I also think we do have a stake in this.
> The fastest way out of the war is negotiation unfortunately
Russia wants no negotiation that doesn't result in them stealing territory from Ukraine. You can't negotiate with that.
You can negotiate with that, people were and are doing this all the time. The problem is that it very likely would result in just a pause and further (probably worse) conflict later.
The US is literally prolonging the conflict by shoveling guns, “advisors” and intelligence into the fight. It’s nothing but a proxy war, using the Ukrainians as pawns. And the longer it goes on, the more territory Russia will expect/need to keep.
Unfortunately, since the latter has happened, there's no moral high ground to be gained by "staying out" of the conflict. Russia started this war. Russia could end it, today, by leaving.
People hate the Western MIC for a reason but in the end desire to avoid a genocide has to be stronger than hate for the MIC.
Pretty sure you just revealed your agenda there.
With that said the US is not making Ukraine fight, Ukraine wants to fight and is begging for the weapons that the West is providing and more of them. The Ukrainians are not puppets, we don't get to take away their agency. They are a free people fighting to remain that way while an insane person tries to bury them in the bodies of his soldiers.
"I wish the west would stay out of conflicts it doesn't have a stake in" I would argue that everyone has a stake in preventing big countries from using force to just take chunks of weaker countries.
"almost like it's a convenient excuse to help distract people how much they're getting screwed over at home" People are not stupid, they are more than capable of holding multiple ideas and foci in their heads at the same time.
The war could end tomorrow, Putin just has to pack up and leave. In the mean time he is decimating a generation of young men and the myth of Russia as a super power.
He is also stealing tens of thousands of children.
Also your focus on the political orientation of a battalion that pretty much fought to the death to stop the Russian invasion is pretty telling. Should Ukraine have told them not to fight? Sorry we would rather lose the war, have our daughters raped, get tortured to death and let Russia keep stealing our kids because our potential allies are racist?
Russia is pardoning rapists and murdererers if they agree to fight for them. But partnering with Racists is worse right?
What the us is doing is more disgusting than the invading Russians, about the same, less?
PS: I really love the minimization of NAZIS as just a “political orientation”.
Again, can you show me the videos of Zelensky saying he wants peace and is willing to accept surrendering Ukrainian soil to get it but the US stopped him and are forcing him to fight. This is your claim, so you should be able to provide the videos. Telling me to "look them up" is not a strong argument in your favor.
Here’s just one example of peace deals acceptable to Zelensky being undermined by the West: https://scheerpost.com/2022/09/01/report-russia-ukraine-tent...
"According to Ukrainska Pravda, the other factor that scuttled peace talks was the discovery of massacred civilians in Bucha and other areas near Kyiv that Russia withdrew from around the time negotiations were being held."
But the Russians are the good guys fighting to liberate Ukraine from the Nazis led by their Jewish president. Looks like they did a great job liberating the civilians in Bucha.
The only outcome of this faux pacifism is the destruction of Ukrainian state with the following butchering of Ukrainian culture AND with the following wars further West. Even though many Americans decided all of a sudden to support Russia in their conquests, Russians did not stop seeing themselves as waging war against the US and the West. And why would they ever stop, if the West keeps giving them what they want.
> The Russians are not going to invade NATO countries.
Depending on how US elections go, NATO can be no longer a meaningful project anyway. So yes, they are absolutely going to invade if encouraged to do so. Eastern Europeans clearly understand that.
Do you have any evidence for this statement?
> The Russians are not going to invade NATO countries.
Isn't this what everyone, including Russia, minus the US Administration, was saying about Ukraine prior to Feb 24, 2022? [1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-putin-invasion-a...
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
Your link appears to contradict your conclusion that the US took steps to facilitate the invasion. Specifically, key findings from the link are below, and appear to advise against facilitating the invasion (geopolitical and ideological measures) and instead focusing on economics.
> Key Findings
> Russia's weaknesses lie in the economic domains
> The most promising measures to stress Russia are in the realms of energy production and international pressure
> Geopolitical measures to bait Russia into overextending itself are likely impractical, or they risk second-order consequences
> Ideological measures to undermine the regime's stability carry significant risks of counter escalation
At the very latest after Bucha it is clear that leaving Ukrainian population under Russian control will cause terrible suffering. So what should they negotiate about, what do you think Ukraine should give up to the aggressor?
Not really.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/09/12/ukraine-the-cias...
Essentially they are sure that noone would vouch for Poland (also for Baltic countries). I've been shocked that well educated people, like software engineers, scientists, etc easily repeat the narrative of various propagandists and, moreover, they say that these are their own conclusions.
The people are convinced that NATO won't hold up to its promises.
Re nuclear weapons. I really doubt that this shit is still functional.
Ohh how I wish I could believe that. Once you have the fissile material together my understanding is that it's not that hard to actually build a bomb. The success rate of countries that have decided to start a nuclear program is pretty damn high, and through all those years of nuclear testing, there weren't a whole lot of duds that I know of.
Ed: rockets, targeting, etc are also tricky failure points.
Anyway, I agree it's not a great cause for optimism. It would only take a couple of them going off to give the world a bad time. If nothing else they're dirty bombs.
I would have reconsidered my approach to making connections if that happened to me :)
2) I'm not in touch with these people anymore though I've tried to reach everyone I was able to and get their opinions. My conclusion is: the propaganda is extremely effective. People there easily pronounce self-contradictive statements and easily turn to aggression.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-allies-step-up-sanct...
Some people have questioned the legitimacy of that request and of the breakaway governments, but a Washington Post poll in 2021 found that over half of the respondents from those breakaway republics wanted to join Russia and only 12% wanted to rejoin Ukraine:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/12/new-surve...
The separatists are under Russian control. The Russian army has been fighting alongside them since 2014, when they invaded Donbas.
In the 1991 referendum, voters in Dontesk and Luhansk overwhelmingly voted against being part of Russia. Per your source, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas, 75% want to be part of Ukraine. In the Russian-controlled part of Donbas, 57% want to be part of Russia.
First point, why such stark difference? I think it's because Russia is very good at propaganda and they exercise it heavily in areas under their control.
Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil. They don't care about the people in the separatist republics, that's just a marketing spin that almost everyone can see through. It's about imperialism, revenge, power. Putin has been planing to absorb at least Belarus and Ukraine since a very long time.
After all, Russia invaded the non-Russian controlled parts of Ukraine, which, per your source, are heavily against joining Russia.
Even if some parts of Ukraine wanted to join Russia, it wouldn't give Russia the right to annex the territory.
I'm curious why you have this view, what's your background - nationality, ethnicity, feelings about the West? (I'm from the Czech Republic.)
I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice.
> In the 1991 referendum...
A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?
> First point, why such stark difference?
An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.
> Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil.
If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.
> I'm curious why you have this view
I'm from the US. We are, first of all, a nation founded by "separatists", who also fought against other separatists to remain a single nation. I think each separatist cause needs to be evaluated on its merits, but in general (when something like slavery isn't involved) I think the people of a smaller region should be free to leave a larger nation if they wish. If I didn't believe that, I'd have to apply for British citizenship.
And the US is also a nation that's done exactly what Russia is doing, many times. We nearly started a war because Russian weapons were too close to the US (in Cuba), just as Russia demands that Western weapons stay out of Ukraine. And we've invaded many nations on pretexts weaker than Russia's in this war. If we accepted those actions as precedents, they would justify Russia's actions in this war. Everything I hear seems to be tinged by a bit of an "it's only OK when we do it" attitude, so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia.
And perhaps also for Ukraine. Ukraine has even demanded the return of Crimea, where even in 1991, only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia. After all that's happened, do you think Crimea really wants to return to Ukraine?
My ideal solution would be a fair and binding vote on separation for all the regions in question, but I know no party would accept that.
Does not dehumanize at all. Ukraine fell into political turmoil similar to January 6 riots in the US, and Russia used intelligence operatives to instigate further violent riots, quickly invaded parts of Ukraine taking advantage of the confusion, and established a military occupation. The so-called separatists were directly funded and supported by Russia in the earliest days, and then under the full control of the military admin after tanks rolled in.
As I've told before, the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed the same when they were investigating whether Russia is responsible for MH17 shootdown, which happened on occupied territories. Since Russia had full control, ECHR found them responsible.
Locals have had as much freedom to choose their future as Parisians in 1940.
That tells us nothing about whether the people of the region want to be part of Russia.
For that, we have to look to polls, like the one I cited, which tell us that the people living in the region do support Russia.
Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.
Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions where people can get murdered for publicly supporting some of the answers. I wonder what Parisians in 1940 would've answered if they got a phone call asking if they wanted to be a part of Germany - while people were disappearing.
> Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.
Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament. It's as if Congress had voted Trump out of the office after January 6th riots, Trump fled abroad and some unhappy Trumpers stormed further goverment buildings, and then Mexican army rolled in to support "separatists" and occupied Arizona and Texas, and then Mexican intelligence operatives cosplaying as independent freedom fighters asked Mexico to annex Arizona and Texas into Mexico.
That's a fair point - polling is difficult and unreliable in a contested region - but what other evidence can we look to?
Perhaps this: "an occupation against a hostile local population requires far more soldiers than a peaceful occupation of territory" as we've seen recently when Russia occupied regions not controlled by the separatists.[1]
And the Russian forces in the separatist regions before 2022 were far from sufficient to hold the regions if the local population had been hostile, especially with Ukrainian forces also fighting them.
> Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament
This isn't accurate. "On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych ...left the capital for Kharkiv, saying his car was shot at as he left Kyiv, and travelling next to Crimea, and eventually to exile in Russia."[2]
Then, because he had fled, "the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him from his post...on the grounds that he...effectively resigned."[2] He was not impeached.
It's more accurate to say that he was driven out of office by the riots, a fact that Parliament merely recognized.
(Also, your analogy to Jan 6th makes no sense, because in any such analogy, the rioters have to end up with the President they want, just as they did in Ukraine.)
1: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/01/politics/ukraine-assassinatio...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych
The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism, seizing the oppurtunity that internal turmoil offers. The specifics of that turmoil are largely irrelevant.
Do you have sources for that? It's the first I've heard of it and I'd like to learn more.
> The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism
Ok. Then to use an analogy that actually happened, perhaps the US invading Cuba under the "pretext" of separatism from Spain?
Or the US sending the navy to Panama to support its independence from Columbia (in exchange for the canal zone)?
Perhaps the best analogy is the Mexican-American war, in which the US took Texas (already de facto separate from Mexico but still claimed by them) and other territory from Mexico.
Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?
* Arsen Pavlov, bomb in elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsen_Pavlov
* Alexander Zakharchenko, bomb in cafe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Zakharchenko
* Mikhail Tolstykh, rocket lauched at his office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tolstykh
* Aleksey Mozgovoy, car bomb and ambush with machine guns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksey_Mozgovoy
Resistance mostly takes the form of hit-and-run attacks and sabotage against infrastructure. Here's a 2019 video of DNR communications facility being blown up: https://medium.com/dfrlab/blast-highlights-mgb-detentions-in...
The video was posted on social media with the following message:
> This was done with the goal to draw attention to the inhumane torture in the basements of the MGB. Cruel treatment and tying wires with electric current to peoples’ extremities in the “people’s” republics has become the norm. The people of the Donbas must protest against torture, or the fascist republic will remain unconnected.
The very effective use of long-range weapons against targets deep inside occupied territories has also been attributed to intelligence provided by locals.
Like with Kherson, we can expect detailed stories after LNR and DNR are liberated and it's safe to reveal what went on and how it was accomplished.
> Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?
The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with separatism. Whatever seeds of that may have existed in the first days, they were hijacked by Russian intelligence services and armed forces very early to prepare the stage for military invasion and occupation. The treatment of representatives of occupied territories as independent leaders even as late as of February 2022 (when they supposedly called Russia for help) is unsupported by facts. You can stage such "separatism" anywhere in favorable conditions when police and armed forces are overwhelmed and won't react fast enough.
No. I said they were under Russian control. Not that they're not human. The invading army is under Putin's control, that doesn't imply they're not human (although they regularly commit inhuman acts).
> A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?
The poll is heavily skewed by Russian propaganda in areas under their control.
> An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.
First, area of control is primarily determined by military, not civilians. Second, why would there be such a stark difference in opinion within Donbas? Doesn't make any sense.
> If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.
I don't mean that, it depends on the specific situation. But the separatists are just a distraction, it's not what this war is about. Russia invaded the area which was against joining Russia, simply because Putin wanted to subdue Ukraine. He couldn't care less about the separatists, they're just a tool. In fact, he brutally crushes actual organic separatist movements (Chechnya).
> so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia
You feel wrong then. What Russia is doing is bordering genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr...). The US is doing everything to help them. If Ukraine succeeds and becomes a prosperous liberal democracy, it would make the alliance of liberal democracies stronger and the US would benefit from that. That doesn't change that it's mostly right to help Ukraine.
Russia is effectively a dictatorship run by a psychopath who kills his opponents and uses mass torture to achieve his goals. The US is a democracy whose current leadership has a normal level of empathy.
> only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia
That's a majority... In any case, the annexation by Russia was wrong and should be reversed. After that, there may be talks about independence and a proper referendum.
What are the regions in question?
Should the about 25k of civilians murdered by Russia in Mariupol be automatically counted as votes against joining Russia?
What 2021 poll is that? I am aware of the ones in 2014 and the one in 2022, both of which could be described as meaningless Russian shams, and totally irrelevant .
2014 sham: https://www.thebulwark.com/what-really-happened-in-ukraine-i...
2022 sham: https://www.voanews.com/a/voting-ending-in-sham-annexation-p...
Paywalled, described as a "survey" in the headline, so not actually a poll. Why pick that specific one?
I picked this one because it's one of the few I've seen that seems the least bit trustworthy. If you know of a better one, I'd be happy to read it too.
And internal separatist movements are so tiny you can handle them with 1/1000 of the force they have.
I don't understand how people expect anything different here. Even the US with all it's superpower fanciness spent years in Iraq and decades in Afghan. I am also skeptical over that whole "my opponent is more stupid than me" attitude. We can already see how people made fools of themselves spelling Russia's haste economic demise, while Russia is expecting an economic growth now according to the World Bank.
Idiocy would be setting unrealistic expectations and treating this like a computer game, when a well-fortified Ukrainian army at the Donetsk border (that Zelensky was inspecting a few times in 2021) would somehow de-spawn or vanish in case Russia would hastily take Kyiv.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
Its also #22 in military spending as a percentage of GDP. However the US is #3 in per capita military spending.
Frankly, you have no idea about what's actually happening there. All these "movements" are nothing and the only potential sources of real separatism are the regional governments. Though there are multiple measurements in place to make that impossible.
Most successful independence movements are based on some kind of distinct ethnic/national/cultural/religious/linguistic identity. “Ingria” is a historical term, coming from a time several hundred years ago when the area was ruled by Sweden and populated mainly by Finnic and Baltic peoples. However, the vast majority of its current population is ethnic Russian, and the Finns and Balts are now only small, highly assimilated minorities. The vast majority of its population don’t identify as “Ingrian”. That does not seem like a successful basis for an independence movement.
I think the most likely place for renewed separatism is Chechnya. Not right now while Kadyrov and Putin are so close, but if something happened to one (or both) of them, or if they had a falling out, it could easily start again. And spread to Dagestan, Ingushetia too, maybe even the entirety of Russia’s North Caucus region-in most of which ethnic Russians are a minority. An Islamic separatist movement is likely to find international support and funding from the Islamic world.
I was happy to read that since it is constantly ignored by American media.
By 2021, this much lower rate was a well-established status quo, and this was reflected even in official government briefings from separatist republics and Russia itself. For example, DNR published (https://regnum.ru/news/polit/3467017.html) its own stats claiming a grand total of 70 military casualties and 7 civilians for the entirety of 2021 - a proportion, by the way, that tells you volumes about where that fire was aimed.
But, anyway, Donbas is the primary justification for the population of Russia. The other one - that this is all a pre-emptive strike to forestall some kind of NATO invasion against Russia proper - is significantly harder to believe in and thus doesn't have as many adherents.
At this point, if you don't instinctively assume our CIA/State Dept are actively working to undermine other nations then you haven't been paying attention. Why should we ever trust anything they say or do? Because Putin is a dick? Sorry, that's not quite enough to undo decades of lies I've had to listen to these turds shovel down our throats.
As far as comparisons go, US did a lot of shitty things internationally in the past 50 years, but I don't recall a war to directly annex parts of another country being one of them. And yes, it is far worse than "regime changes" (which are also bad, to be clear) just because of how inherently destructive such a thing is.
But if you want to seek redemption, helping a nation pushing back against another, even more brutal empire trying to bomb it into submission seems like a perfect chance, no?
It is? It seems to be talked about a fair bit for being ignored.
The invasion in 2014 was generally limited to Crimea. After that, Russia held its ground, allowing some level of peace and stability.
The current war, that includes active invasion of the entire country, started in 2022. The conflict began much earlier, but semantically, "war" is generally inferred to mean the current conflict specifically.
> keeping in mind that I am largely reliant here on the expertise of others and so am operating from my ‘professional thing explainer’ role, rather than as the expert
Ahem,
Stalingrad
Cough, splutter, gurgling blood..
> Ahem,
> Stalingrad
Ahem,
“Russian Federation”.
Not the same thing as the USSR.
Now, if you just had a visceral (negative) response to this, I am with you.
The point I am trying to make is that the Russian people seem to be equally incredulous to the idea that Russia itself is the aggressor. How is it that the Russian media has such a hold over them - in this day of the internet and other forms of communication?
And if Russia can have such a hold, why couldn't OUR government have such an equal hold over US. I want the war to end as much as anyone but I believe that only by informing the Russian people of this can there be real hope for peace and resolution. (And please forgive my naivety.)
You may want to point this crowd to some sources about that incredulity being widespread in Russia.
> How is it that the Russian media has such a hold over them - in this day of the internet and other forms of communication?
There is a language barrier at play here - Russian natives may not be able to avail English-media content, and I do wonder about how much russian language counter-programming is widely available to the average Russian.
> And if Russia can have such a hold, why couldn't OUR government have such an equal hold over US.
Russia is practically a dictatorship, while the US is a functioning democracy. That said, within the last 2 decades we have seen the US invade Iraq for no good reason, with significant support from the population resulting in Bush's re-election. Granted, the US people finally threw those responsible out of power for a couple of cycles (albeit for a mix of reasons, including poor economic performance). Meanwhile the Russian people do not appear to have that luxury of being able to peacefully remove Putin from power for any reason.
There was 6,000 years of recorded history before Munich. It's not always correct to think that "if we appease them here, they'll be in our bedrooms next."
Sometimes in history, the two sides cut a deal, and peace was maintained for a few generations, which was all anyone expected anyway.
Yeah, “Dane-geld” was written long before Munich, and references experiences much longer before Munich. The observation that accommodating aggression encourages more aggression was not first made in regards to Munich, Munich is just one notable example of that time-worn lesson being forgotten at great cost.
Actually, if you read Western mainstream media front line reports, past the headlines and between the lines, a picture of very heavy losses emerges. Units completely depleted or rebuilt several times. Territorial Defense volunteers sent into the trenches with hardly any preparation [0]. And so on. But somehow such reports never manage to shatter the Conventional Wisdom.
[0]: Just one recent example: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/world/asia/ukraine-russia...
You don’t even have to read “past the headlines and between the lines”.
The most common estimates I’ve seen are around 120K killed+wounded for Ukraine, which are very heavily casualties.
Not as heavy as the 200K the same sources are estimating for Russia, but still very high. This is a meatgrinder of a war. This is very clear.
Based on…what? Intuition?
> “I am not going to pretend to be neutral here. I am on the side of the nascent democracy which was ruthlessly and lawlessly attacked without provocation by a larger and more powerful foreign power.”
I'm not going to quote anything else or what is missing, but overall:
Deep substance, neutral style or “pedantry” is not found in this article.
But there is one sided ideology propaganda, vilification and demonization, black and white thinking, omitting of crucial events, facts, and parties involved not just for duration since 2008 but just in 2022.
Strongly recommend avoiding this article and this author, unless you already wholly agree with him and want to reinforce your information bubble.
> about: Dmitry Wolf, Moscow, Russia
I guess OP thinks that Ukraine "asked for it", that "it's a brother nation that must be one with ruzzia", "Kyiv is ruzzia, thus Ukraine does not exist", "Крымнаш", etc.