How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[LongLeftFlank]

19 minutes ago, acrashb said:

I think the modern way to approach this is to look back at the Westphalian accords.  

Places to store pickled herring are very important!

[Huba]

4 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Places to store pickled herring are very important!

You mean Luxembourg? 

 

[NamEndedAllen]

2 hours ago, sburke said:

so much for Elvis recovery this week - Phillies are going to the series.  Seems Steve will have to manage the timeout button for a while longer.

THIS! 

YES! My grandparents are smiling from up On High.The Phillies are going to the World Serious.

Signs and portents for the lowest underdog to win. (Trying to make this at least a tiny bit relevant. Working?
https://www.espn.com/mlb/recap/_/gameId/401467588

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, acrashb said:

You noted "Foundation", where this was very well described - as I recall the late-era Imperial atomic 'technicians' formed something of a religious cult around maintenance of the star ship engines.  But the word I think we are searching for is ancient, defined by the Greeks: barbarian.  

True. However- forgive for small ancient intrusion- original Greek notion of barbaroi was people who couldn't temper their emotions and desires. There were two markedly different types of barbarians, representing two dangers of society falling: crude, cruel and anarchistic "wild, hairy Northemen" and "decadent Easterners" (Persians) that were subjected to their own lust, were womanish, soft cowards and lacked moral fibre. It is paradoxial, but while we may entirely correctly use first meaning describing Russians, Putin's propaganda is painting something very similar to second picture to define the West. Grumbling about LGBT, satanism, social experiments, liberal hollowness, adapting strange customs (like wearing trouses instead of tunics like real men) etc. would speak very well to many ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle.

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

agree that Cargo Cult isn't spot on, but in some respects it's pretty close.  I think a better analogy is out of science fiction stories about the decline of complex high tech societies that worship/idolize what their predecessors built, but haven't much of a clue how to care and maintain them.  As things become harder to fix and impossible to replace, capabilities atrophy and the situation gets progressively worse.  This is the premise behind such classics as Ringworld and Foundation, but also evident in lots of other books (books 2 and 3 of the Deathworld trilogy are my favorites!).

The Moskva is a great example of this.  Apparently they didn't know how to use their radar or perform damage control.  They got hit and sunk because of missing knowledge and properly functioning systems.

Russian ability to join complicated technical equipment into complex network is indeed very interesting topic. Whole political system Putin use almost blocks (if not forbids) open flow of information and innitiative that are probably already necessary to manage modern battlefields of XXI century. One need culture that is appropriate to technical sophistication, and Russians at almost any level show they did not changed theit patterns of thinking from Red Army times. So like it was very difficult to Persians to copy hoplites or for steppe peoples to field decent close-combat infantry, so is for Russians to change their entire mode of thinking about war. It is curious if they would be at all able to do this, even with more normal NCO's, competent offcier cadre and those PDF manuals Steve descibed.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Beleg85

[NamEndedAllen]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I agree that Cargo Cult isn't spot on, but in some respects it's pretty close.  I think a better analogy is out of science fiction stories about the decline of complex high tech societies that worship/idolize what their predecessors built, but haven't much of a clue how to care and maintain them.  As things become harder to fix and impossible to replace, capabilities atrophy and the situation gets progressively worse.  This is the premise behind such classics as Ringworld and Foundation, but also evident in lots of other books (books 2 and 3 of the Deathworld trilogy are my favorites!).

The Moskva is a great example of this.  Apparently they didn't know how to use their radar or perform damage control.  They got hit and sunk because of missing knowledge and properly functioning systems.

Ah, but this is a bad analogy.  Nobody has figured out how to fight and win a deep rooted resistance movement embedded in a culture that, by and large, doesn't want any of the benefits that the occupiers have to offer.  Nobody, so it's not analogous to this war because much of is going on has been solved for in the past, if not in practice but at least in theory.  Cripes, the numbnuts in the Kremlin could just download the US military PDFs on theory, practice, lessons learned, etc. and probably improve their knowledge of how to fight Ukraine by a factor of 10 and take steps to implement things in a logical, prioritized manner that is consistent with Russia's capabilities.  Which begs the question... have they ALREADY done that and this is the best they can do?  I'm thinking that's more right than wrong.  Personally, I think they half assed figuring out what went wrong and are half assing the corrective measures.

This is where the Cargo Cult thing has a bit more legs.  The Russians have been obsessed with looking to be a modern military without understanding what makes a military modern.  Unlike the Pacific islanders, who had to make do with what they had locally, Russia went to the West and purchased things to look cool for the cameras.  Guys running around with NVGs on WW2 era steel helmets and body armor made of fiberglass with tanks produced 40 years ago using tactical doctrine from before NGVs were individualized does not a modern army make!

Steve

Excellent post and points, Steve. Nice to see Foundation and Ringworld namechecked. About Cargo Cults. I did my graduate work on Cargo Cults and their relevance to Contemporary Policy Making. Will add just two comments to the discussion. The indigenous islanders believed the vast amount of cargo arriving was intended for them, and that the gods must be making a mistake, or that the people were not making the proper ceremonies. Watching how the new arrivals behaved must be why the gods were ignoring the locals. In every case I know of, a charismatic person arose who convinced the locals that if they went down to the docks and assumed the appearance and activities of the Japanese or Americans, the gods would realize the cargo wasn’t getting to the “right” people and fix it. 

So a necessary part of cargo cults is the emergence of a new charismatic leader whose impact is such that everyone stops doing the necessities - no tilling the fields, no vital daily work. But the other necessity was the overnight transformation of the entire social structure all the way from Big Man down to the “trash man”. When the foreign militaries arrived, EVERYONE became trash men! Each society was utterly demoralized in the face of such wealth. And waste. Which is why so many of the locals dropped everything and followed the new Leader who promised that THEIR ship should now come in. 
 

if Russia really were to become a Cargo Cult, watch for the demoralization of much of the society followed by the emergence of a charismatic leader who rallies the masses to follow his (imaginary) path to wealth and power.

Also note the more general millennial cults, of which cargo was one. A tragic example is the Ghost Dance Society that arose as the Native Americans/Indians were losing everything to the hordes of Horse Soldiers invading from the east. They believed the Ghost Dance etc would make them invulnerable to the bullets of the white soldiers. Of course it didn’t work. 

Edited October 24, 2022 by NamEndedAllen

[Battlefront.com]

11 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Very telling...

 

 

In many ways the Russians have embraced Western consumerism in its pure form.  At least most of us in the West attempt to balance it out with the finer things, like Humanity and family.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Missed this from a couple of days ago.  Russian soldier gets captured by Ukraine and exchanged back to Russia, came back to Ukraine to fight, and got sent back to Russia as Cargo-200.

And it seems the US is "signaling" again:

And another one for the  @sburke list?  I didn't notice him posted here yet and a search didn't turn up anybody with the same name:

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Another problem for Mobiks which I've now seen reported, by them, several times now... large scale cold related illnesses due to poor conditions of their barracks and/or field positions.  A different report said some so sick they had to be hospitalized.

Steve

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

True. However- forgive for small ancient intrusion- original Greek notion of barbaroi was people who couldn't temper their emotions and desires. There were two markedly different types of barbarians, representing two dangers of society falling: crude, cruel and anarchistic "wild, hairy Northemen" and "decadent Easterners" (Persians) that were subjected to their own lust, were womanish, soft cowards and lacked moral fibre. It is paradoxial, but while we may entirely correctly use first meaning describing Russians, Putin's propaganda is painting something very similar to second picture to define the West. Grumbling about LGBT, satanism, social experiments, liberal hollowness, adapting strange customs (like wearing trouses instead of tunics like real men) etc. would speak very well to many ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle.

Russian ability to join complicated technical equipment into complex network is indeed very interesting topic. Whole political system Putin use almost blocks (if not forbids) open flow of information and innitiative that are probably already necessary to manage modern battlefields of XXI century. One need culture that is appropriate to technical sophistication, and Russians at almost any level show they did not changed theit patterns of thinking from Red Army times. So like it was very difficult to Persians to copy hoplites or for steppe peoples to field decent close-combat infantry, so is for Russians to change their entire mode of thinking about war. It is curious if they would be at all able to do this, even with more normal NCO's, competent offcier cadre and those PDF manuals Steve descibed.

Dang, that feller sound edgeekated fer sher.  I prefer to get knowledge from Facebook U, of course.  Seriously though, that is a very interesting look at the ways Russia is spinning things, and what lies work for that culture.

 

1 hour ago, NamEndedAllen said:

YES! My grandparents are smiling from up On High.The Phillies are going to the World Seriou

Definitely.  Houston Astros are a push-over.  I like underdogs, so hopefully the Phillies will do it.  My team tied for third worst in baseball.  Quite an achievement, I suppose.

Steve mentioned Mobiks being sick due to lack of proper facilities (shelter/food/clothing/heat I guess).  The weather in Ukraine hasn't even turned bad yet.  Kherson & Kharkiv forecasts still have lows above freezing for the coming week.  What's it gonna look like when they are basically abandoned in trenches over the next month or so?

Also, there was some talk about why doesn't UKR recruit more men above the ~500k currently active?  I'd say that beyond the gear and training issues there's also the economic issues.  Dragging huge number of prime age workers out of the economy has a lot of knock-on effects. 

RU mobilization, while a small % of it's male population, is bigger than that economically, with hundreds of thousands fleeing the country or going into hiding on top of the many thousands of educated, skilled people that fled over that previous 6 months.  It's got to be having an impact.

[Battlefront.com]

54 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Excellent post and points, Steve. Nice to see Foundation and Ringworld namechecked.

I do love me some classic sci-fi.  Despite the flaws in the authors' imagination about technological advances, they had an excellent grasp of how societies work, including failure points.

54 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

About Cargo Cults. I did my graduate work on Cargo Cults and their relevance to Contemporary Policy Making.

Damn!  That sounds like a really fun topic.  Funny how our group here continues to chime in with relevant knowledge, even if it's just in response to a debate point.

54 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

So a necessary part of cargo cults is the emergence of a new charismatic leader whose impact is such that everyone stops doing the necessities -

I had forgotten about that aspect of the Cargo Cults.  Unbalanced belief systems tend to produce unbalanced results.

54 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

if Russia really were to become a Cargo Cult, watch for the demoralization of much of the society followed by the emergence of a charismatic leader who rallies the masses to follow his (imaginary) path to wealth and power.

Er... Putin?  Seriously, there's some truth in that.  Putin has certainly stalled out Russian progress, reversing it in many ways, while at the same time promising the people a shortcut to greatness.  The reality, of course, is very different.  Yet even large numbers of educated Russians seem to buy into it to some extent.

54 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Also note the more general millennial cults, of which cargo was one. A tragic example is the Ghost Dance Society that arose as the Native Americans/Indians were losing everything to the hordes of Horse Soldiers invading from the east. They believed the Ghost Dance etc would make them invulnerable to the bullets of the white soldiers. Of course it didn’t work. 

Cripes man!  I forgot all about that one.  Sometimes I think I've forgotten more of what I've learned over the years than retained.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Also, there was some talk about why doesn't UKR recruit more men above the ~500k currently active?  I'd say that beyond the gear and training issues there's also the economic issues.  Dragging huge number of prime age workers out of the economy has a lot of knock-on effects. 

It would if the economy were in a healthy state, but it was already shaky before the war started and it's declined significantly since.  I've seen estimates of GDP decline by the end of the year being somewhere between 25% to 45%.  Ouch.  That means there's a lot of manpower going into the military that might otherwise be sitting at home unemployed.

As for the figure of Ukraine having 500,000 military personnel active, I'm sure that figure includes the very large (40%?) tied up in non-combat duties, TD units far from the front, Navy, Airforce, and of course units that are still in training.

Steve

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

True. However- forgive for small ancient intrusion- original Greek notion of barbaroi was people who couldn't temper their emotions and desires. There were two markedly different types of barbarians, representing two dangers of society falling: crude, cruel and anarchistic "wild, hairy Northemen" and "decadent Easterners" (Persians) that were subjected to their own lust, were womanish, soft cowards and lacked moral fibre. It is paradoxial, but while we may entirely correctly use first meaning describing Russians, Putin's propaganda is painting something very similar to second picture to define the West. Grumbling about LGBT, satanism, social experiments, liberal hollowness, adapting strange customs (like wearing trouses instead of tunics like real men) etc. would speak very well to many ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle.

Russian ability to join complicated technical equipment into complex network is indeed very interesting topic. Whole political system Putin use almost blocks (if not forbids) open flow of information and innitiative that are probably already necessary to manage modern battlefields of XXI century. One need culture that is appropriate to technical sophistication, and Russians at almost any level show they did not changed theit patterns of thinking from Red Army times. So like it was very difficult to Persians to copy hoplites or for steppe peoples to field decent close-combat infantry, so is for Russians to change their entire mode of thinking about war. It is curious if they would be at all able to do this, even with more normal NCO's, competent offcier cadre and those PDF manuals Steve descibed.

Nicely put Beleg

[chrisl]

Disclosing an Ohio class sub in the Arabian Sea is probably to distract from a few of its siblings in the Barents and a few in the Baltic.

Plus unknown locations of attack subs that can cruise submerged for months.

Edited October 24, 2022 by chrisl
typo

[Battlefront.com]

21 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Disclosing an Ohio class sub in the Arabian Sea is probably to distract from a few of its siblings in the Barents and a few in the Baltic.

Plus unknown locations of attack subs that can cruise submerged for months.

Someone in the comments said, basically, that this was the US Navy reminding Russia that the US has really nasty subs too, and a lot more of them than the Russians do.

Steve

[Kinophile]

 

In Belgorod,  where the Shadows lie... 

[chrisl]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Someone in the comments said, basically, that this was the US Navy reminding Russia that the US has really nasty subs too, and a lot more of them than the Russians do.

Steve

I just went and read the comments.  There's a long one that could be summarized as "this is as close as there is to a 'smite' button on a keyboard"

[chrisl]

7 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

 

In Belgorod,  where the Shadows lie... 

When I see these, I get reminded of the cone meme from r/Portland (I sometimes lurk there because I spend ~1/3 of my time in PDX) 

[sburke]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Missed this from a couple of days ago.  Russian soldier gets captured by Ukraine and exchanged back to Russia, came back to Ukraine to fight, and got sent back to Russia as Cargo-200.

And it seems the US is "signaling" again:

And another one for the  @sburke list?  I didn't notice him posted here yet and a search didn't turn up anybody with the same name:

Steve

burke list... heh you know burke is a verb?

burke verb
burked; burking

1: to suppress quietly or indirectly
burke an inquiry

 

[dan/california]

Two requests to anyone who might have this at their fingertips. 

1) The L/DPR order of battle on 2/24 and where those units went initially

2) The article on L/DPR forces training the Russian regular army in how to do drone adjusted artillery fire with quadcopters.

The recent developments with Iranian drones have made the earlier stuff about the L/DPR impossible to google my way back too easily.

Many thanks in advance if someone had the sense to save either one.

Edited October 24, 2022 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

NY Times article on Ukraine's fight to keep its skies clear of Russian/Iranian drones:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/world/europe/ukraine-russia-drones-iran.html

Quote

Currently, it consists of three layers of protection: fighter jets that patrol around the clock; ground-fired antiaircraft missiles; and teams of soldiers with machine guns who try to shoot the drones down as they fly past.

The hardest part is simply finding the drones, Juice [Ukrainian fighter pilot] said. On radar, the small, plodding drones can be confused with migrating birds or trucks on a highway. Ground controllers identify potential targets and direct jets to intercept them, but often the pilots come up empty.

Despite the hurdles, the Ukrainian military is now routinely shooting down more than 70 percent of the Shahed-136 drones Russia purchased from Iran in August, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian minister of defense, said in an interview.

Ukraine shot down the first such drone in the country’s east on Sept. 13 and has since downed at least 237, the Ukrainian military said in a statement last week. “We are trying to quickly adapt to the new reality,” Mr. Sak said.

And something that every single person in the West who questions the benefit of aiding Ukraine should read and, if they don't understand it, have it read to them as slowly as it takes to get them to understand just ONE reason why this is so important for purely selfish reasons:

Quote

Exploding drones are a rapidly emerging class of weapons that are proliferating around the world and likely to become a staple of modern armed conflicts, military analysts say. That is a point that Ukrainian officials have been making in seeking air defense assistance from their allies. If Ukraine can learn to shoot the drones down with its three-pronged effort, allied countries’ militaries could reap the benefits of this hard-won experience, Mr. Sak said.

Would the isolationists in the West prefer to have their governments be better at defending against drones, or do they want to be the ones experimenting with them?  The fiscal conservative types would rather spend blindly on stuff that might not work, or wisely on things known to work?  The people spouting off anti-aid rhetoric should understand that their likely preferred answer is only possible if we aid Ukraine.

Steve

[CAZmaj]

I was born and grew up in former Yugoslavia (not Serbian) which does make me quite partial to Ukrainians. I checked with my former coworkers of Ukranian origins and they fully endorse the following:

https://www.patreon.com/uaexplainers

21 HOURS AGO
9 things people still don’t get about Ukraine

Thoughts from a bunch of stubborn Ukrainians after eight months of the invasion. Feel free to share this with people who still find it hard to understand why Ukrainians think or act in certain ways.

1. Ukraine will never surrender.
This is an existential war for Ukrainians. If we stop fighting, our homes will be turned into rubble, our children will be taken away, and our people will face mass terror. Every place that experienced Russian occupation in Ukraine has a similar story to tell: a story of mass graves, torture chambers, filtration camps, and forced deportations.

All that means that Ukrainians are prepared to fight no matter how long it takes – because they are fighting for survival. Nobody “makes” Ukrainians fight – not the government and most certainly not the Western arms. With or without military or political support from the democratic world, Ukraine will keep on resisting – because we are fighting for our right to exist.

For us, the reality of perpetual military resistance is more acceptable than the reality of the Russian occupation.

2. None of us is okay – even if we say we are.
In the first weeks following the February 24 invasion, Ukrainians were in a state of shock and terror. The shock passed, but the collective trauma never started to heal. Every day people across Ukraine keep dying from Russian shelling. Every week new stories of horror of Russia’s genocidal campaign emerge. Each week brings a new little catastrophe – and every week a little part of us quietly dies inside.

This has become the new norm Ukrainians are learning to navigate. So, when you ask a Ukrainian friend or colleague whether they’re okay, keep in mind that this question has lost its meaning to most of us. We are not okay and we don’t know if we’ll ever be okay again.

But we keep holding on. In a way, trying to be okay as Ukrainians is the final act of resistance against Russia’s attempt to wipe out everything that is Ukraine.

3. Ukraine is fighting against Russian colonialism, not just Putin.
Putin may have pulled the trigger, but the root of the invasion lies deeper than the current regime in Russia. For centuries, Russia has led colonial conquests from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Far East. It conquered and assimilated multiple indigenous peoples – and exterminated those who resisted.

Russian colonialism remained largely under the radar this whole time, and its crimes are much less studied. As a result, the Russian imperial worldview has remained unchecked and unchallenged – and has expressed itself in multiple invasions since 1991: Transnistria, Ichkeria, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria.

The war might be paused when Putin’s regime implodes, but Ukrainians know all too well that a lasting peace is only possible with a decolonized and disarmed Russia that rethinks its past and future.

Until then, the untamed beast of Russian colonialism will seek to continue its imperial conquest in Ukraine and elsewhere.

4. Russian-speaking Ukrainians are not “more Russian.”
Yes, most Ukrainians are bilingual. Yes, 26% of Ukrainians are Russian-first speakers and 27% speak an equal amount of Russian and Ukrainian in their daily lives. But do you know why?

While some foreigners still believe that it has mostly to do with ethnicity and political ideology, the widespread use of the Russian language in Ukraine is mostly the result of centuries-old Russification policy.

Since the 19th century, Ukrainians were deliberately banned from using their language in education, labor, and public spheres of life. The Russification process prevailed throughout Soviet rule. As a result, millions of Ukrainians switched to Russian and deliberately hid their Ukrainian traces. And Ukraine learned to exist successfully as a nation of bilinguals.

So, if you meet Ukrainians who speak Russian in their daily lives, do not assume they are “more Russian” than any other Ukrainian or that they support Russia in any way. They probably have a more interesting story to tell about language and identity – just ask them.

5. Ukraine never had a Nazi problem.
Not only Nazis in Ukraine had nothing to do with Russia’s invasion, but the entire notion of Ukraine being run by the far-right is and always has been ridiculous.

The story of a “dangerous Nazi regime in Kyiv” has always been nothing more than a Russian propaganda myth. The idea of “Banderites” running amok was first voiced on Russian state TV when Ukrainians went to the streets to protest against a corrupt dictatorship in 2013. As Russia invaded and destabilized parts of Ukraine in 2014, it kept weaponizing and feeding the Nazi myth thus justifying its involvement and legitimizing the occupation.

Ukraine’s far-right movements have always been marginal and never had more than 5% of public support combined. Unlike many European states that do have a problem with far-right populism or Russia – a country running on aggressive fascist ethnonationalism for decades – Ukraine never really had a Nazi problem.

There is nothing humane or intellectual in trying to justify a brutal genocidal campaign by parroting propaganda claims crafted by the Kremlin. At this point, anyone trying to counterbalance Russian war crimes by appealing to the “Nazis in Ukraine” narrative is either a paid Russian shill or just a useful idiot. There is no point talking to these people anymore – we just need to stop providing them with a platform for spreading fascist propaganda.

6. Ukraine is a democracy. Zelensky acts as our representative.
Ukraine is not perfect. The issues with social trust, corruption, and poor state management have persisted for decades and hurt our country in various ways. But Ukrainians always fought back whenever authoritarianism loomed over: they protested in 2004 after a rigged election, and overthrew a corrupt wannabe dictator in 2014.

And yes, Ukraine still has a lot to improve – which would have been a lot easier if we didn’t have to constantly defend ourselves from Russia’s territorial aggression since 2014. But despite an external threat, Ukraine remained devoted to democratic values and reforms.

Not many people understand that Zelensky – a President who received 73% of the public’s vote in 2019 – always speaks and acts on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Following the full-scale invasion, Zelensky’s actions received praise and support from 91% of Ukrainians.

There has never been such a clear connection between the President and the people in Ukraine – and there are probably not a lot of examples of such political unity in modern-day democracies. All notions of Zelensky forcing anything onto Ukrainians are completely out of touch with reality.

7. We will not shut up. Not anymore.
For too long, the Ukrainian perspectives were silenced by Russia and pro-Russian sentiments around the globe. Like many other nations colonized by Russia, Ukraine had to shut up and, at best, politely debate whatever Russians had to say.

This colonial legacy has stayed long after 1991. Ukrainians were consistently denied agency: their pro-EU and pro-NATO choices were explained through conspiracies about the “US and NATO aggressive expansion.” Discussions about Ukraine often happened without Ukrainians themselves but with well-established carriers of the Russian colonial views on Ukraine.

All of this must remain in the past. We will not shut up and listen to another round of Russian imperial bull****, casual tone-deaf Westsplaining, or another Russian state-sponsored gaslighting campaign.

As the genocide against our people continues, we will remain unapologetically Ukrainian – and we will make sure our voices are loud and clear from now on.

8. Yes, we think all Russians are responsible for the war.
Ukrainians do not blame just Putin or the elites for the war – we blame the entire Russian nation. Putin and his cronies do not personally launch high-precision missiles at residential buildings. They don’t torture and mutilate civilians living under occupation. They don’t take away Ukrainian children and don’t try to “re-educate” them. They don’t loot, rape, and murder us. They don’t attack Ukrainians abroad or online. Ordinary Russians do all those things. All while the rest of them are silently and passively going along with the genocide for 8 months – or running away from their country and responsibility.

Those who fight against Putin’s regime carry the burden of responsibility as well. Even if they tried to make it right – they failed, and that’s just a fact. They failed as a state, as a society, and now millions of Ukrainians are suffering from genocide because of this ongoing collective failure.

Until Russians recognize and own this political responsibility, there is nothing for us to talk about. Ukrainians have the right to a safe space without Russians – without their point of view, narratives, or offers to help. And there’s nothing hateful about that. It’s a matter of personal safety and healing trauma.

Keep in mind that, unlike most people around the world, Ukrainians have lived close to Russians for centuries. We speak and understand their language – and we can follow their conversations on social media and in real life. We know how xenophobic, chauvinistic, and cynical the average Russians are. And we perfectly realize how their imperial attitudes have made this war possible in the first place.

9. Ukrainians are afraid of what comes next. But we won’t surrender to our fears.
Some people think that Ukraine’s stubbornness may lead to a full-blown world war or a nuclear catastrophe. What these people fail to understand is that Ukrainians want peace more than anyone in the world. It’s our homes getting pillaged. It’s our children being murdered.

The only country that tries to occupy a sovereign state all while blackmailing the rest of the world with nuclear catastrophe is Russia. Like it or not, the genie is out of the box – Russia is already a fascist dictatorship on nukes that invades its neighbors. It is already a threat to global security – and this has nothing to do with the way Ukraine resists. The entire notion that Ukraine can “escalate” the war by defending itself from an invasion within its internationally recognized borders is just absurd victim-blaming.

Ukrainians are afraid every night as we go to sleep and every morning while reading news of more death and destruction. But if we let our fears consume us, Russia will most likely win, and its illegal invasion, genocide, and nuclear blackmail will be rewarded. And this outcome is exactly what leads to another world war.

As Dmytro Kuleba recently said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, “It’s absolutely normal not to have fear, yet to be afraid.” And that is exactly how it feels to be Ukrainian these eight months.

Edited October 24, 2022 by CAZmaj
Underlined the second sentence.

[kraze]

17 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:

I was born and grew up in former Yugoslavia (not Serbian) which does make me quite partial to Ukrainians. I checked with my former coworkers of Ukranian origins and they fully endorse the following:

https://www.patreon.com/uaexplainers

21 HOURS AGO
9 things people still don’t get about Ukraine

Thoughts from a bunch of stubborn Ukrainians after eight months of the invasion. Feel free to share this with people who still find it hard to understand why Ukrainians think or act in certain ways.

1. Ukraine will never surrender.
This is an existential war for Ukrainians. If we stop fighting, our homes will be turned into rubble, our children will be taken away, and our people will face mass terror. Every place that experienced Russian occupation in Ukraine has a similar story to tell: a story of mass graves, torture chambers, filtration camps, and forced deportations.

All that means that Ukrainians are prepared to fight no matter how long it takes – because they are fighting for survival. Nobody “makes” Ukrainians fight – not the government and most certainly not the Western arms. With or without military or political support from the democratic world, Ukraine will keep on resisting – because we are fighting for our right to exist.

For us, the reality of perpetual military resistance is more acceptable than the reality of the Russian occupation.

2. None of us is okay – even if we say we are.
In the first weeks following the February 24 invasion, Ukrainians were in a state of shock and terror. The shock passed, but the collective trauma never started to heal. Every day people across Ukraine keep dying from Russian shelling. Every week new stories of horror of Russia’s genocidal campaign emerge. Each week brings a new little catastrophe – and every week a little part of us quietly dies inside.

This has become the new norm Ukrainians are learning to navigate. So, when you ask a Ukrainian friend or colleague whether they’re okay, keep in mind that this question has lost its meaning to most of us. We are not okay and we don’t know if we’ll ever be okay again.

But we keep holding on. In a way, trying to be okay as Ukrainians is the final act of resistance against Russia’s attempt to wipe out everything that is Ukraine.

3. Ukraine is fighting against Russian colonialism, not just Putin.
Putin may have pulled the trigger, but the root of the invasion lies deeper than the current regime in Russia. For centuries, Russia has led colonial conquests from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Far East. It conquered and assimilated multiple indigenous peoples – and exterminated those who resisted.

Russian colonialism remained largely under the radar this whole time, and its crimes are much less studied. As a result, the Russian imperial worldview has remained unchecked and unchallenged – and has expressed itself in multiple invasions since 1991: Transnistria, Ichkeria, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria.

The war might be paused when Putin’s regime implodes, but Ukrainians know all too well that a lasting peace is only possible with a decolonized and disarmed Russia that rethinks its past and future.

Until then, the untamed beast of Russian colonialism will seek to continue its imperial conquest in Ukraine and elsewhere.

4. Russian-speaking Ukrainians are not “more Russian.”
Yes, most Ukrainians are bilingual. Yes, 26% of Ukrainians are Russian-first speakers and 27% speak an equal amount of Russian and Ukrainian in their daily lives. But do you know why?

While some foreigners still believe that it has mostly to do with ethnicity and political ideology, the widespread use of the Russian language in Ukraine is mostly the result of centuries-old Russification policy.

Since the 19th century, Ukrainians were deliberately banned from using their language in education, labor, and public spheres of life. The Russification process prevailed throughout Soviet rule. As a result, millions of Ukrainians switched to Russian and deliberately hid their Ukrainian traces. And Ukraine learned to exist successfully as a nation of bilinguals.

So, if you meet Ukrainians who speak Russian in their daily lives, do not assume they are “more Russian” than any other Ukrainian or that they support Russia in any way. They probably have a more interesting story to tell about language and identity – just ask them.

5. Ukraine never had a Nazi problem.
Not only Nazis in Ukraine had nothing to do with Russia’s invasion, but the entire notion of Ukraine being run by the far-right is and always has been ridiculous.

The story of a “dangerous Nazi regime in Kyiv” has always been nothing more than a Russian propaganda myth. The idea of “Banderites” running amok was first voiced on Russian state TV when Ukrainians went to the streets to protest against a corrupt dictatorship in 2013. As Russia invaded and destabilized parts of Ukraine in 2014, it kept weaponizing and feeding the Nazi myth thus justifying its involvement and legitimizing the occupation.

Ukraine’s far-right movements have always been marginal and never had more than 5% of public support combined. Unlike many European states that do have a problem with far-right populism or Russia – a country running on aggressive fascist ethnonationalism for decades – Ukraine never really had a Nazi problem.

There is nothing humane or intellectual in trying to justify a brutal genocidal campaign by parroting propaganda claims crafted by the Kremlin. At this point, anyone trying to counterbalance Russian war crimes by appealing to the “Nazis in Ukraine” narrative is either a paid Russian shill or just a useful idiot. There is no point talking to these people anymore – we just need to stop providing them with a platform for spreading fascist propaganda.

6. Ukraine is a democracy. Zelensky acts as our representative.
Ukraine is not perfect. The issues with social trust, corruption, and poor state management have persisted for decades and hurt our country in various ways. But Ukrainians always fought back whenever authoritarianism loomed over: they protested in 2004 after a rigged election, and overthrew a corrupt wannabe dictator in 2014.

And yes, Ukraine still has a lot to improve – which would have been a lot easier if we didn’t have to constantly defend ourselves from Russia’s territorial aggression since 2014. But despite an external threat, Ukraine remained devoted to democratic values and reforms.

Not many people understand that Zelensky – a President who received 73% of the public’s vote in 2019 – always speaks and acts on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Following the full-scale invasion, Zelensky’s actions received praise and support from 91% of Ukrainians.

There has never been such a clear connection between the President and the people in Ukraine – and there are probably not a lot of examples of such political unity in modern-day democracies. All notions of Zelensky forcing anything onto Ukrainians are completely out of touch with reality.

7. We will not shut up. Not anymore.
For too long, the Ukrainian perspectives were silenced by Russia and pro-Russian sentiments around the globe. Like many other nations colonized by Russia, Ukraine had to shut up and, at best, politely debate whatever Russians had to say.

This colonial legacy has stayed long after 1991. Ukrainians were consistently denied agency: their pro-EU and pro-NATO choices were explained through conspiracies about the “US and NATO aggressive expansion.” Discussions about Ukraine often happened without Ukrainians themselves but with well-established carriers of the Russian colonial views on Ukraine.

All of this must remain in the past. We will not shut up and listen to another round of Russian imperial bull****, casual tone-deaf Westsplaining, or another Russian state-sponsored gaslighting campaign.

As the genocide against our people continues, we will remain unapologetically Ukrainian – and we will make sure our voices are loud and clear from now on.

8. Yes, we think all Russians are responsible for the war.
Ukrainians do not blame just Putin or the elites for the war – we blame the entire Russian nation. Putin and his cronies do not personally launch high-precision missiles at residential buildings. They don’t torture and mutilate civilians living under occupation. They don’t take away Ukrainian children and don’t try to “re-educate” them. They don’t loot, rape, and murder us. They don’t attack Ukrainians abroad or online. Ordinary Russians do all those things. All while the rest of them are silently and passively going along with the genocide for 8 months – or running away from their country and responsibility.

Those who fight against Putin’s regime carry the burden of responsibility as well. Even if they tried to make it right – they failed, and that’s just a fact. They failed as a state, as a society, and now millions of Ukrainians are suffering from genocide because of this ongoing collective failure.

Until Russians recognize and own this political responsibility, there is nothing for us to talk about. Ukrainians have the right to a safe space without Russians – without their point of view, narratives, or offers to help. And there’s nothing hateful about that. It’s a matter of personal safety and healing trauma.

Keep in mind that, unlike most people around the world, Ukrainians have lived close to Russians for centuries. We speak and understand their language – and we can follow their conversations on social media and in real life. We know how xenophobic, chauvinistic, and cynical the average Russians are. And we perfectly realize how their imperial attitudes have made this war possible in the first place.

9. Ukrainians are afraid of what comes next. But we won’t surrender to our fears.
Some people think that Ukraine’s stubbornness may lead to a full-blown world war or a nuclear catastrophe. What these people fail to understand is that Ukrainians want peace more than anyone in the world. It’s our homes getting pillaged. It’s our children being murdered.

The only country that tries to occupy a sovereign state all while blackmailing the rest of the world with nuclear catastrophe is Russia. Like it or not, the genie is out of the box – Russia is already a fascist dictatorship on nukes that invades its neighbors. It is already a threat to global security – and this has nothing to do with the way Ukraine resists. The entire notion that Ukraine can “escalate” the war by defending itself from an invasion within its internationally recognized borders is just absurd victim-blaming.

Ukrainians are afraid every night as we go to sleep and every morning while reading news of more death and destruction. But if we let our fears consume us, Russia will most likely win, and its illegal invasion, genocide, and nuclear blackmail will be rewarded. And this outcome is exactly what leads to another world war.

As Dmytro Kuleba recently said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, “It’s absolutely normal not to have fear, yet to be afraid.” And that is exactly how it feels to be Ukrainian these eight months.

Yes, it's all correct.

[Kinophile]

29 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:

I was born and grew up in former Yugoslavia (not Serbian) which does make me quite partial to Ukrainians. I checked with my former coworkers of Ukranian origins and they fully endorse the following:

https://www.patreon.com/uaexplainers

21 HOURS AGO
9 things people still don’t get about Ukraine

Thoughts from a bunch of stubborn Ukrainians after eight months of the invasion. Feel free to share this with people who still find it hard to understand why Ukrainians think or act in certain ways.

1. Ukraine will never surrender.
This is an existential war for Ukrainians. If we stop fighting, our homes will be turned into rubble, our children will be taken away, and our people will face mass terror. Every place that experienced Russian occupation in Ukraine has a similar story to tell: a story of mass graves, torture chambers, filtration camps, and forced deportations.

All that means that Ukrainians are prepared to fight no matter how long it takes – because they are fighting for survival. Nobody “makes” Ukrainians fight – not the government and most certainly not the Western arms. With or without military or political support from the democratic world, Ukraine will keep on resisting – because we are fighting for our right to exist.

For us, the reality of perpetual military resistance is more acceptable than the reality of the Russian occupation.

2. None of us is okay – even if we say we are.
In the first weeks following the February 24 invasion, Ukrainians were in a state of shock and terror. The shock passed, but the collective trauma never started to heal. Every day people across Ukraine keep dying from Russian shelling. Every week new stories of horror of Russia’s genocidal campaign emerge. Each week brings a new little catastrophe – and every week a little part of us quietly dies inside.

This has become the new norm Ukrainians are learning to navigate. So, when you ask a Ukrainian friend or colleague whether they’re okay, keep in mind that this question has lost its meaning to most of us. We are not okay and we don’t know if we’ll ever be okay again.

But we keep holding on. In a way, trying to be okay as Ukrainians is the final act of resistance against Russia’s attempt to wipe out everything that is Ukraine.

3. Ukraine is fighting against Russian colonialism, not just Putin.
Putin may have pulled the trigger, but the root of the invasion lies deeper than the current regime in Russia. For centuries, Russia has led colonial conquests from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Far East. It conquered and assimilated multiple indigenous peoples – and exterminated those who resisted.

Russian colonialism remained largely under the radar this whole time, and its crimes are much less studied. As a result, the Russian imperial worldview has remained unchecked and unchallenged – and has expressed itself in multiple invasions since 1991: Transnistria, Ichkeria, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria.

The war might be paused when Putin’s regime implodes, but Ukrainians know all too well that a lasting peace is only possible with a decolonized and disarmed Russia that rethinks its past and future.

Until then, the untamed beast of Russian colonialism will seek to continue its imperial conquest in Ukraine and elsewhere.

4. Russian-speaking Ukrainians are not “more Russian.”
Yes, most Ukrainians are bilingual. Yes, 26% of Ukrainians are Russian-first speakers and 27% speak an equal amount of Russian and Ukrainian in their daily lives. But do you know why?

While some foreigners still believe that it has mostly to do with ethnicity and political ideology, the widespread use of the Russian language in Ukraine is mostly the result of centuries-old Russification policy.

Since the 19th century, Ukrainians were deliberately banned from using their language in education, labor, and public spheres of life. The Russification process prevailed throughout Soviet rule. As a result, millions of Ukrainians switched to Russian and deliberately hid their Ukrainian traces. And Ukraine learned to exist successfully as a nation of bilinguals.

So, if you meet Ukrainians who speak Russian in their daily lives, do not assume they are “more Russian” than any other Ukrainian or that they support Russia in any way. They probably have a more interesting story to tell about language and identity – just ask them.

5. Ukraine never had a Nazi problem.
Not only Nazis in Ukraine had nothing to do with Russia’s invasion, but the entire notion of Ukraine being run by the far-right is and always has been ridiculous.

The story of a “dangerous Nazi regime in Kyiv” has always been nothing more than a Russian propaganda myth. The idea of “Banderites” running amok was first voiced on Russian state TV when Ukrainians went to the streets to protest against a corrupt dictatorship in 2013. As Russia invaded and destabilized parts of Ukraine in 2014, it kept weaponizing and feeding the Nazi myth thus justifying its involvement and legitimizing the occupation.

Ukraine’s far-right movements have always been marginal and never had more than 5% of public support combined. Unlike many European states that do have a problem with far-right populism or Russia – a country running on aggressive fascist ethnonationalism for decades – Ukraine never really had a Nazi problem.

There is nothing humane or intellectual in trying to justify a brutal genocidal campaign by parroting propaganda claims crafted by the Kremlin. At this point, anyone trying to counterbalance Russian war crimes by appealing to the “Nazis in Ukraine” narrative is either a paid Russian shill or just a useful idiot. There is no point talking to these people anymore – we just need to stop providing them with a platform for spreading fascist propaganda.

6. Ukraine is a democracy. Zelensky acts as our representative.
Ukraine is not perfect. The issues with social trust, corruption, and poor state management have persisted for decades and hurt our country in various ways. But Ukrainians always fought back whenever authoritarianism loomed over: they protested in 2004 after a rigged election, and overthrew a corrupt wannabe dictator in 2014.

And yes, Ukraine still has a lot to improve – which would have been a lot easier if we didn’t have to constantly defend ourselves from Russia’s territorial aggression since 2014. But despite an external threat, Ukraine remained devoted to democratic values and reforms.

Not many people understand that Zelensky – a President who received 73% of the public’s vote in 2019 – always speaks and acts on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Following the full-scale invasion, Zelensky’s actions received praise and support from 91% of Ukrainians.

There has never been such a clear connection between the President and the people in Ukraine – and there are probably not a lot of examples of such political unity in modern-day democracies. All notions of Zelensky forcing anything onto Ukrainians are completely out of touch with reality.

7. We will not shut up. Not anymore.
For too long, the Ukrainian perspectives were silenced by Russia and pro-Russian sentiments around the globe. Like many other nations colonized by Russia, Ukraine had to shut up and, at best, politely debate whatever Russians had to say.

This colonial legacy has stayed long after 1991. Ukrainians were consistently denied agency: their pro-EU and pro-NATO choices were explained through conspiracies about the “US and NATO aggressive expansion.” Discussions about Ukraine often happened without Ukrainians themselves but with well-established carriers of the Russian colonial views on Ukraine.

All of this must remain in the past. We will not shut up and listen to another round of Russian imperial bull****, casual tone-deaf Westsplaining, or another Russian state-sponsored gaslighting campaign.

As the genocide against our people continues, we will remain unapologetically Ukrainian – and we will make sure our voices are loud and clear from now on.

8. Yes, we think all Russians are responsible for the war.
Ukrainians do not blame just Putin or the elites for the war – we blame the entire Russian nation. Putin and his cronies do not personally launch high-precision missiles at residential buildings. They don’t torture and mutilate civilians living under occupation. They don’t take away Ukrainian children and don’t try to “re-educate” them. They don’t loot, rape, and murder us. They don’t attack Ukrainians abroad or online. Ordinary Russians do all those things. All while the rest of them are silently and passively going along with the genocide for 8 months – or running away from their country and responsibility.

Those who fight against Putin’s regime carry the burden of responsibility as well. Even if they tried to make it right – they failed, and that’s just a fact. They failed as a state, as a society, and now millions of Ukrainians are suffering from genocide because of this ongoing collective failure.

Until Russians recognize and own this political responsibility, there is nothing for us to talk about. Ukrainians have the right to a safe space without Russians – without their point of view, narratives, or offers to help. And there’s nothing hateful about that. It’s a matter of personal safety and healing trauma.

Keep in mind that, unlike most people around the world, Ukrainians have lived close to Russians for centuries. We speak and understand their language – and we can follow their conversations on social media and in real life. We know how xenophobic, chauvinistic, and cynical the average Russians are. And we perfectly realize how their imperial attitudes have made this war possible in the first place.

9. Ukrainians are afraid of what comes next. But we won’t surrender to our fears.
Some people think that Ukraine’s stubbornness may lead to a full-blown world war or a nuclear catastrophe. What these people fail to understand is that Ukrainians want peace more than anyone in the world. It’s our homes getting pillaged. It’s our children being murdered.

The only country that tries to occupy a sovereign state all while blackmailing the rest of the world with nuclear catastrophe is Russia. Like it or not, the genie is out of the box – Russia is already a fascist dictatorship on nukes that invades its neighbors. It is already a threat to global security – and this has nothing to do with the way Ukraine resists. The entire notion that Ukraine can “escalate” the war by defending itself from an invasion within its internationally recognized borders is just absurd victim-blaming.

Ukrainians are afraid every night as we go to sleep and every morning while reading news of more death and destruction. But if we let our fears consume us, Russia will most likely win, and its illegal invasion, genocide, and nuclear blackmail will be rewarded. And this outcome is exactly what leads to another world war.

As Dmytro Kuleba recently said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, “It’s absolutely normal not to have fear, yet to be afraid.” And that is exactly how it feels to be Ukrainian these eight months.

Excellent. 

[CAZmaj]

42 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:

I was born and grew up in former Yugoslavia (not Serbian) which does make me quite partial to Ukrainians. I checked with my former coworkers of Ukranian origins and they fully endorse the following:

https://www.patreon.com/uaexplainers

21 HOURS AGO
9 things people still don’t get about Ukraine

Thoughts from a bunch of stubborn Ukrainians after eight months of the invasion. Feel free to share this with people who still find it hard to understand why Ukrainians think or act in certain ways.

1. Ukraine will never surrender.
This is an existential war for Ukrainians. If we stop fighting, our homes will be turned into rubble, our children will be taken away, and our people will face mass terror. Every place that experienced Russian occupation in Ukraine has a similar story to tell: a story of mass graves, torture chambers, filtration camps, and forced deportations.

All that means that Ukrainians are prepared to fight no matter how long it takes – because they are fighting for survival. Nobody “makes” Ukrainians fight – not the government and most certainly not the Western arms. With or without military or political support from the democratic world, Ukraine will keep on resisting – because we are fighting for our right to exist.

For us, the reality of perpetual military resistance is more acceptable than the reality of the Russian occupation.

2. None of us is okay – even if we say we are.
In the first weeks following the February 24 invasion, Ukrainians were in a state of shock and terror. The shock passed, but the collective trauma never started to heal. Every day people across Ukraine keep dying from Russian shelling. Every week new stories of horror of Russia’s genocidal campaign emerge. Each week brings a new little catastrophe – and every week a little part of us quietly dies inside.

This has become the new norm Ukrainians are learning to navigate. So, when you ask a Ukrainian friend or colleague whether they’re okay, keep in mind that this question has lost its meaning to most of us. We are not okay and we don’t know if we’ll ever be okay again.

But we keep holding on. In a way, trying to be okay as Ukrainians is the final act of resistance against Russia’s attempt to wipe out everything that is Ukraine.

3. Ukraine is fighting against Russian colonialism, not just Putin.
Putin may have pulled the trigger, but the root of the invasion lies deeper than the current regime in Russia. For centuries, Russia has led colonial conquests from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Far East. It conquered and assimilated multiple indigenous peoples – and exterminated those who resisted.

Russian colonialism remained largely under the radar this whole time, and its crimes are much less studied. As a result, the Russian imperial worldview has remained unchecked and unchallenged – and has expressed itself in multiple invasions since 1991: Transnistria, Ichkeria, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria.

The war might be paused when Putin’s regime implodes, but Ukrainians know all too well that a lasting peace is only possible with a decolonized and disarmed Russia that rethinks its past and future.

Until then, the untamed beast of Russian colonialism will seek to continue its imperial conquest in Ukraine and elsewhere.

4. Russian-speaking Ukrainians are not “more Russian.”
Yes, most Ukrainians are bilingual. Yes, 26% of Ukrainians are Russian-first speakers and 27% speak an equal amount of Russian and Ukrainian in their daily lives. But do you know why?

While some foreigners still believe that it has mostly to do with ethnicity and political ideology, the widespread use of the Russian language in Ukraine is mostly the result of centuries-old Russification policy.

Since the 19th century, Ukrainians were deliberately banned from using their language in education, labor, and public spheres of life. The Russification process prevailed throughout Soviet rule. As a result, millions of Ukrainians switched to Russian and deliberately hid their Ukrainian traces. And Ukraine learned to exist successfully as a nation of bilinguals.

So, if you meet Ukrainians who speak Russian in their daily lives, do not assume they are “more Russian” than any other Ukrainian or that they support Russia in any way. They probably have a more interesting story to tell about language and identity – just ask them.

5. Ukraine never had a Nazi problem.
Not only Nazis in Ukraine had nothing to do with Russia’s invasion, but the entire notion of Ukraine being run by the far-right is and always has been ridiculous.

The story of a “dangerous Nazi regime in Kyiv” has always been nothing more than a Russian propaganda myth. The idea of “Banderites” running amok was first voiced on Russian state TV when Ukrainians went to the streets to protest against a corrupt dictatorship in 2013. As Russia invaded and destabilized parts of Ukraine in 2014, it kept weaponizing and feeding the Nazi myth thus justifying its involvement and legitimizing the occupation.

Ukraine’s far-right movements have always been marginal and never had more than 5% of public support combined. Unlike many European states that do have a problem with far-right populism or Russia – a country running on aggressive fascist ethnonationalism for decades – Ukraine never really had a Nazi problem.

There is nothing humane or intellectual in trying to justify a brutal genocidal campaign by parroting propaganda claims crafted by the Kremlin. At this point, anyone trying to counterbalance Russian war crimes by appealing to the “Nazis in Ukraine” narrative is either a paid Russian shill or just a useful idiot. There is no point talking to these people anymore – we just need to stop providing them with a platform for spreading fascist propaganda.

6. Ukraine is a democracy. Zelensky acts as our representative.
Ukraine is not perfect. The issues with social trust, corruption, and poor state management have persisted for decades and hurt our country in various ways. But Ukrainians always fought back whenever authoritarianism loomed over: they protested in 2004 after a rigged election, and overthrew a corrupt wannabe dictator in 2014.

And yes, Ukraine still has a lot to improve – which would have been a lot easier if we didn’t have to constantly defend ourselves from Russia’s territorial aggression since 2014. But despite an external threat, Ukraine remained devoted to democratic values and reforms.

Not many people understand that Zelensky – a President who received 73% of the public’s vote in 2019 – always speaks and acts on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Following the full-scale invasion, Zelensky’s actions received praise and support from 91% of Ukrainians.

There has never been such a clear connection between the President and the people in Ukraine – and there are probably not a lot of examples of such political unity in modern-day democracies. All notions of Zelensky forcing anything onto Ukrainians are completely out of touch with reality.

7. We will not shut up. Not anymore.
For too long, the Ukrainian perspectives were silenced by Russia and pro-Russian sentiments around the globe. Like many other nations colonized by Russia, Ukraine had to shut up and, at best, politely debate whatever Russians had to say.

This colonial legacy has stayed long after 1991. Ukrainians were consistently denied agency: their pro-EU and pro-NATO choices were explained through conspiracies about the “US and NATO aggressive expansion.” Discussions about Ukraine often happened without Ukrainians themselves but with well-established carriers of the Russian colonial views on Ukraine.

All of this must remain in the past. We will not shut up and listen to another round of Russian imperial bull****, casual tone-deaf Westsplaining, or another Russian state-sponsored gaslighting campaign.

As the genocide against our people continues, we will remain unapologetically Ukrainian – and we will make sure our voices are loud and clear from now on.

8. Yes, we think all Russians are responsible for the war.
Ukrainians do not blame just Putin or the elites for the war – we blame the entire Russian nation. Putin and his cronies do not personally launch high-precision missiles at residential buildings. They don’t torture and mutilate civilians living under occupation. They don’t take away Ukrainian children and don’t try to “re-educate” them. They don’t loot, rape, and murder us. They don’t attack Ukrainians abroad or online. Ordinary Russians do all those things. All while the rest of them are silently and passively going along with the genocide for 8 months – or running away from their country and responsibility.

Those who fight against Putin’s regime carry the burden of responsibility as well. Even if they tried to make it right – they failed, and that’s just a fact. They failed as a state, as a society, and now millions of Ukrainians are suffering from genocide because of this ongoing collective failure.

Until Russians recognize and own this political responsibility, there is nothing for us to talk about. Ukrainians have the right to a safe space without Russians – without their point of view, narratives, or offers to help. And there’s nothing hateful about that. It’s a matter of personal safety and healing trauma.

Keep in mind that, unlike most people around the world, Ukrainians have lived close to Russians for centuries. We speak and understand their language – and we can follow their conversations on social media and in real life. We know how xenophobic, chauvinistic, and cynical the average Russians are. And we perfectly realize how their imperial attitudes have made this war possible in the first place.

9. Ukrainians are afraid of what comes next. But we won’t surrender to our fears.
Some people think that Ukraine’s stubbornness may lead to a full-blown world war or a nuclear catastrophe. What these people fail to understand is that Ukrainians want peace more than anyone in the world. It’s our homes getting pillaged. It’s our children being murdered.

The only country that tries to occupy a sovereign state all while blackmailing the rest of the world with nuclear catastrophe is Russia. Like it or not, the genie is out of the box – Russia is already a fascist dictatorship on nukes that invades its neighbors. It is already a threat to global security – and this has nothing to do with the way Ukraine resists. The entire notion that Ukraine can “escalate” the war by defending itself from an invasion within its internationally recognized borders is just absurd victim-blaming.

Ukrainians are afraid every night as we go to sleep and every morning while reading news of more death and destruction. But if we let our fears consume us, Russia will most likely win, and its illegal invasion, genocide, and nuclear blackmail will be rewarded. And this outcome is exactly what leads to another world war.

As Dmytro Kuleba recently said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, “It’s absolutely normal not to have fear, yet to be afraid.” And that is exactly how it feels to be Ukrainian these eight months.

Also:

09-30-22

SEPTEMBER 30 AT 12:48 AM
We need to talk about the anti-mobilization unrest in Russia

Why the Russians running from mobilization are not refugees, not Ukraine’s allies, and not anti-war

What happened?
On September 21, Putin declared “partial mobilization” in Russia, planning to conscript from 300,000 to 1,200,000 Russians to strengthen the Russian positions in Ukraine.

This sparked panic and unrest among many Russians as the government had repeatedly told for months that there was no need for mobilization and that the situation in Ukraine was “under control”.

Protests, sabotage, and mass exodus came in the first week of the decision. More than 260,000 (mostly male) Russians fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, and other countries. Multiple arsons were reported at military enlistment offices, and many local protests emerged as well.

Mixed signals followed
The Baltic states and Poland quickly reacted by saying they will not grant asylums to Russians fleeing mobilization because "A refusal to fulfill one’s civic duty in Russia or a desire to do so does not constitute sufficient grounds for being granted asylum in another country" – as Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu commented.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, however, claimed that they would welcome Russians because "Anyone who courageously opposes Putin's regime and thereby falls into great danger, can file for asylum on grounds of political persecution."

There seems to be disunity in the question of how should the democratic world view the fleeing Russians. So let’s unpack the situation.

Anti-mobilization, not anti-war
Probably the most important takeaway that everybody should keep in mind: Russians fleeing mobilization are not anti-war. Some of them might be, but the vast majority are simply running away because they are scared to be drafted and sent to the battlefield.

These people were not protesting or opposing the war (sabotaging the military actions, voicing their political positions, doing anything meaningful in response to the war) for 7 months – even after the mass massacres in Bucha and Mariupol. They were fine with their country committing genocide as long as it didn’t affect them personally.

Also, no policy in Russia targets these people for who they are and what they think. The only people truly targeted are the colonized indigenous people. Mind that out of all mobilized people in occupied Crimea, around 80-90% are Crimean Tatars – people who have already experienced numerous attempts from Russia to wipe them out throughout the last two centuries. So no, ethnic Russian urbanites are not targeted by Putin’s regime. They are simply afraid of what might come next as they agree to fulfill their civic duty.

Now that more Russians will try to run away and ask for asylum in different countries, it’s important to keep in mind that they are not politically repressed members of an anti-war movement – they are men afraid that their comfortable, peaceful lives are about to be seriously disrupted. They are men who have nothing else to do in response to their government’s outrageous actions apart from running away.

Not (war) refugees
Look, I’m not even going to go into details about why it’s morally wrong to compare Russians running away from mobilization to Ukrainians running away from shelling and genocide. Even though Czech President Milos Zeman said that the country “should grant visas to these people in the same way as to Ukrainian refugees,” it seems obvious to me that these two categories of people are experiencing incomparable levels of injustice. They cannot and should not be viewed as the alike victims of Putin or war.

Because the people running away are not running from war – they are running from conscription. Remember, there is no war in Russia: their towns are not getting shelled, and their residents are not hiding in bomb shelters. There is only war waged by Russia, outside of Russia.

Mixing up Russian anti-war activists, Ukrainian refugees, and Russians running away from mobilization fails to distinguish the aggressor and the victim. It’s tone-deaf and, frankly, immoral.

Not allies of Ukraine
Okay, so if Russians fleeing mobilization are not politically repressed activists or war refugees, then who are they? Aren’t they at least on Ukraine’s side in a way that they don’t want to take part in Russia’s war?

Ukrainians remember how silent practically all Russians were after Bucha and Mariupol. We know that if the same people are told to murder civilians by their command, they will do that – all while saying how Putin is responsible for all of this. We’ve been there.

Ukrainians are also too weary of countless “good Russians” who claim to be our allies but then reveal their toxic imperialistic xenophobia as soon as topics like Crimea, Chechnya, or Georgia are mentioned.

The best Ukraine can offer to Russians who get mobilized against their will is that it is happy to take in those who surrender or desert on the battlefield. As Zelensky’s Head of Office Andriy Yermak recently tweeted: “The mobilized Russians who will surrender will save their lives. As to the rest, their odds will betray them.”

Should we support Russians fleeing mobilization?
Isn’t supporting the Russian runaways good for the end goal – making Russia lose the war and break Putin’s regime?

Well, not really. The runaways’ lives would not be in danger because there’s a war on their land or because the regime is threatening their lives. Paradoxically, they are running away to not be rightfully killed by Ukrainians defending their land.

Praising the current exodus as an act of “courageous opposition” and encouraging it fails to see what Russians are really trying to escape from – responsibility. Responsibility to stand up and fight against the oppressive regime – if not in an act of solidarity with Ukrainians, then at least as a way to save their own lives. It’s time for Russians to own what their state is doing – and stop running away.

More disruption in Russia is a good thing
But the more Russians run away, the fewer of them will be sent to kill Ukrainians, right?

Well, no. First of all, Russia will not run out of human cannon fodder any time soon – and that’s exactly how the conscripts are planned to be used on the frontline. Even if millions flee, millions more will be conscripted instead of them – most probably from the colonized indigenous populations of non-European Russian lands.

The exodus will not weaken Putin’s regime in any significant way. In fact, it might even be a good thing for the stability of the regime. Until Russians feel the discomfort of war in their daily lives, they will remain silent supporters of the war. The more discomfort is brought by the war, the more their financial stability and the daily lives of their loved ones are affected – the more damage is done to the social pact between the regime and the (urban) people.

I’m talking about the social pact of “you keep out of politics and we make sure war doesn’t affect your lives” pact that is still very much alive. Russians running away from mobilization means there will be fewer distressed families and communities, thus more of the same passiveness and obedience that we’ve seen for the past 7 months.

More urban Russian men staying in Russia, on the other hand, will increase the distress and discomfort, which could potentially build up into serious social unrest. The good sign is that, with the arsons and the shooting of a conscription officer, the unrest is already building up.

Just like the #visaban movement, the restrained approach toward the anti-mobilization of Russians may appear irrelevant to the war in Ukraine, but it is actually an important step in breaking the social pact that made the genocidal invasion possible in the first place.

AND

SEPTEMBER 24 AT 4:03 AM
#21 Is Ukraine the real Rus’?

Explaining Ukraine’s search for its name and identity, Russia’s imperial appropriation of history, and the complicated legacy of Kyivan Rus’.

A couple of important disclaimers:

The terms “Ukraine” and “Ukrainians” became widely used only in the 19 century. Whenever I refer to “Ukrainians” and “Ukraine” in the context earlier than the 19 century, I actually mean “the people who lived in what is now Ukraine” and “lands that are now Ukraine” respectively.

The same logic applies to the words “Russia” and “Russians.”

Finally, I ask you not to draw mental links between the words “Rus’” and “Russia” from the beginning. Let’s view them completely separately and make connections only as the article progresses. Only by completely deconstructing the modern meanings we can understand how they came to be.

Okay, let’s dig into it.

What does Rus’ even mean?
The background of the word Rus’ is still murky. The most viable hypothesis claims that Rus’ was the name of the Nordic people coming to Constantinople for trade and to serve as mercenaries somewhere around 8 century AD. These tribes had a route “from Varangians to Greeks” going from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea through a system of rivers – and the Dnipro river was their key route.

These Scandinavians called themselves “Rhos,” meaning “rowers” in old Swedish – because that was their profession. This name consistently reappeared in Arabic and Byzantine accounts referring to Scandinavians.

Note: For more info about the connection between the Norse and the Rus’, check out this lecture about the origins of the term Rus’ and the history of Kyivan Rus by Jackson Crawford and Vicki Grove.

As these trade routes were growing, the Scandinavians took control over many city-states along them and established the Rurik dynasty that ruled over the feudal system of duchies spreading from the Baltics to modern-day central and western Ukraine. That’s how Kyiv became a powerful medieval city at the time: as a major trade hub between Constantinople and Northern Europe.

Who were the Rus’ people then?
It’s unclear when and how the name of the Scandinavian rowers transitioned into the proto-ethnic identity of the Slavic tribes. It was probably a result of two processes: the Scandinavian rulers assimilated into Slavic culture, and, in turn, their political power influenced how Slavic tribes identified themselves. The former process is evident in the names of the ruling Rurik dynasty members: typical Scandinavian names like Helgi, Ingvar, and Helga gradually shifted into Slavic names like Svyatoslav, Volodymyr, and Yaroslav throughout the 9-10 centuries. By the end of the 10th century – when Orthodox Christianity was established on a state level – Rus’ became the main pre-modern identity marker widely used across the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and Western parts of Russia.

Rus’ was a very vague identity: it encompassed religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political meanings. For instance, the Orthodox Christians of Poland and Lithuania were widely referred to as the people of the “Rus’ faith” (“Rus’ka vira”).

At the same time, Rus’ identity had nothing to do with the modern term “Russia” – because Russian identity was not yet formed then. The modern “Russian” identity came later in the 18-19 centuries when the legacy of Rus’ was monopolized and appropriated to form the basis for the imperial narrative of Russia.

Still, many people living across the entire North-East Europe who spoke Slavic languages and were of Christian Orthodox faith would consider themselves Rus’ folk up until the 19th century, referring to their religion, language, or culture.

What is the Kyivan Rus’ then?
The “Kyivan Rus’” is a pretty recent term – it was first used by the Russian historians of the 19th century to distinguish the Kyiv-led Rus’ of the 9-13 centuries from the rest of what they called “Russia” (I’ll talk about the appropriation of this later in the text). In reality, nobody ever called that medieval state “Kyivan Rus’” – it was just Rus’, and Kyiv was its capital.

Kyivan Rus’ was a feudal political structure consisting of multiple principalities and spreading from the Baltic Sea coast to the Black Sea in its heyday in the 10-12 centuries. Rus’ was a dominant force on the medieval stage, as it controlled the trade between North-Central Europe and the Byzantine Empire. In the 11-12 centuries, Kyiv was a city of more than 100,000 people, one of the biggest and wealthiest European capitals of the time.

Kyiv’s decline started in the 13 century because of a brutal internal power struggle between princes from all across Rus’ and was complete with the invasion of Mongols that destroyed the city entirely in 1240.

(The oldest surviving map of Kyiv is from the 1638 book Teraturgimy by Kyiv-based monk Atanasiy Kalnofoyskyi)

From Rus’ to Maloros: How did Ukrainians self-identify after Kyivan Rus?
In pre-modern times, multiple ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities existed simultaneously and could be shared by essentially the same folk. That’s exactly what was happening in the scattered lands of ex-Kyivan-Rus’. Everybody knew they were Rus’, but as time went on and political powers shifted, so did the names and meanings.

Still, the name Rus’ and its derivatives dominated for centuries, diverging into multiple local identities and names depending on regions and specific recollections: Chorna Rus’ (Black Rus’), Chervona Rus’ (Red Rus’), Bela Rus’ (White Rus’), and more. The vague and diverse Rus’ identity was still prevalent across the Orthodox Eastern European people: it was the most basic identity marker across Ukraine and Belarus up to the 18 century – up until these lands were colonized by the Russian Empire and their names were established in subordination to the Moscow-centered version of Rus’.

In modern-day Ukraine, another important name shaped up by the 14 century – Mala Rus’ (Lesser Rus’, Little Rus’). As Brian Boeck describes it, “The term Little Russia (Malaia Rossiia, later Malorossiia) originated in Byzantine ecclesiastical circles in the fourteenth century to describe the metropolitanate of Halych (Western Ukraine) and was revived in the early seventeenth century to refer to the Orthodox Kyiv metropolitanate.”

The Mala Rus’ term had no diminishing connotation until the 18 century (quite the opposite – it meant “the core” of the Rus’ land) and was often used by Ukrainians themselves to distinguish them from the rest of the Rus’ki people. However, it was later used by the Russian Empire to emphasize the empire-colony relationships between the hegemon and the subordinate nation. That’s how the Great and Little Russian terminology was established and with time turned into a colonial slur.

How the legacy of Rus’ was appropriated and monopolized by the Russian Empire
To build the imperial myth and feed the narrative of the ancient greatness of Russia, Moscow proclaimed itself the successor of the Byzantine Empire and the Kyivan Rus in the 16-18 centuries. Russian intellectuals of the time presented Kyiv as the “cradle” of three “Russian” peoples: Velykorossy (“Great Russians” – modern-day Russians), Belarusy (“White Russians”), and Malorosy (“Little Russians”). According to this view, when Kyiv fell to the Mongols in 1240 and gradually lost the status of a metropolis, Moscow took over and led the Russian people into greatness.

Consider the case of the Monomakh cap – a monarch’s regalia worn by Russian Tzars between the 14 and 17 centuries and now exhibited in Kremlin. According to the Russian chronicle dating back to the 16 century, the cap is from the 12 century: it was a gift from the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus to Kyiv’s grand prince Volodymyr Monomakh. It was then transferred to Moscow at some point, symbolizing the historic continuity from Constantinople to Kyiv to Moscow.

Except that this is a completely fabricated story. Not only Constantine and Volodymyr lived 50 years apart, but the Monomakh cap itself was actually a Tatar female wedding headdress and was most probably a 14-century gift from the Golden Horde, the overlords of Moscow at the time.

Stories like these, of course, reflect the imperial desires of Russia more than the historic truth. In reality, Kyivan Rus’ disintegrated into many small feudal duchies that never associated themselves with Moscow – from the Galicia-Volhynia Kingdom in Western Ukraine to the ancient Novgorod Republic in the North of modern Russia (burnt into inexistence by Moscow in 1478). When Moscow rose to power and expanded in the 14-16 centuries, it was a completely different political entity living in a different reality. This, however, didn’t stop the Russian Empire from trying to monopolize its claim on the entire legacy of Rus’ – in written and material forms.

Since the 17 century, Russia has stolen numerous archeological, historical, and religious artifacts from Ukraine. Russian Orthodox Church also took away Kyiv’s church autonomy in 1685-1722, turning it into a subordinate structure to Moscow (and not directly to Constantinople) for the first time ever since Rus’ was baptized in Kyiv in 988.

In the end, Ukrainians were cut off from their past, legacy, and name.

Where did “Ukraine” come from?
Simultaneously with the Rus’ identity, a separate name for Ukrainian lands under the Polish crown emerged: Ukraine. The word “Ukraine” first appeared in 1187 referring to a borderland region in the center of modern-day Ukraine. According to Boeck, the term was later revived as “a borderland or frontier used by Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles, the term ukraïna came to encompass the Cossack lands of the Dnieper River basin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

Because Ukraine was torn between bigger empires, both Maloros and Ukrainian identities coexisted together without the real agency of Ukrainian people who would largely self-identify as Rus’ or Ruthenian up until the 19 century.

However, throughout the 19 century – in the times when many modern European nations were establishing their national identities – Ukrainian intellectuals gradually and consciously moved away from the Maloros identity and revived and established the idea of the Ukrainian identity that united various people across the Russian and Habsburg Empires.

(“A general plan of the wild fields, or Ukraine” was the first detailed map of what is now Ukraine made in 1648 by French-Polish cartographer Guillaume de Beauplan. Note that the name Ukraine was already used to describe this area of land – although without any ethnic or linguistic connotations.)

Why Ukraine, not Malorossiia or Rus’?
Ukraine had to transform and rethink its name to separate itself from the imperial idea of Russia and from the Polish and Habsburg influence in the western regions.

You see, by the 19 century, Russia had already built its imperial identity by monopolizing the succession rights to Rus’, appropriating the Kyiv statehood’s history, and rewriting their own history altogether. This deeply colonial worldview already had a prescribed place for the ruling “Great Russian” nation, for the non-Slavic colonized people, and for the “younger brothers”: White Russians (Belarusians) and Little Russians (Ukrainians).

That’s why trying to revive the Rus’ identity and compete for it against Moscow was impossible at the time: Russia controlled most of Ukraine and imprisoned anybody who spread such “dangerous” ideas. To continue with the Maloros identity would mean to accept the Russian discourse and accept Ukraine’s place in the larger imperial narrative of Russia.

Moreover, since western Ukraine was a part of the Habsburg Empire up until 1918, the “Maloros” identity would fail to include that part of the population – despite the fact that it shared language, culture, and history with the Russia-colonized lands of Ukraine.

Finally, although only local intelligentsia proudly identified as “Ukrainians” in the middle of the 19 century, they saw the unifying nature of the term “Ukraine”. This was not just an ethnic marker – it was a political term. According to the 19-century Ukrainian intellectual Mykola Kostomarov, “Ukrainian” was “not used in the meaning of a people, it only means the resident of a periphery, it makes no difference whether he is a Pole or Jew, he is an ukrainets if he lives in Ukraine.”

Of course, the word “Ukraine” has gained a lot of new meanings in the last two centuries, but it still carries the civic meaning up to this day – you can be Ukrainian no matter what your ethnic or religious background is.

So, who owns the legacy of Kyivan Rus’?
In a way, the answer to this question is being decided on the battlefield right now.

Since the 18 century, Russia has pushed the narrative of Rus’ as the cradle of three “brotherly nations” with Moscow taking succession from Kyiv as the center of the “Russian World.” While it may sound quite egalitarian and nice on the outside, this view basically says that Russia has the sovereign claim over the Kyivan legacy and that Ukraine and Belarus are forever tied to Russia through these “brotherly” bonds. This view is a cover for a deeply imperialistic worldview, a justification for colonizing and controlling the people of two sovereign countries. And Russia still uses it: Putin refers to the “brotherly nations” narrative and to the idea of Kyiv being the “mother of all Russia cities” in his de-facto declaration of Russia’s territorial aggression against Ukraine.

Ukraine’s idea of Kyivan Rus’ is different. For centuries, the people of Ukraine were cut off from any association with the Kyivan Rus’ – partly because they lacked sovereign political elites and partly because the Russian Empire had already appropriated all of Rus’ history into its own imperial narrative. But at the turn of the 19 and 20 centuries, things began to change.

In 1898, Ukrainian historian and politician Mykhailo Hrushevsky wrote a long and impressive book called The History of Ukraine-Rus’ – establishing the continuity of the nation’s history from Kyivan Rus’ to modern-day Ukrainians (Note how he used both terms Ukraine and Rus’ to link these identities). With more and more history getting uncovered and reviewed, the idea of continuity between the Kyivan Rus’ and the modern Ukrainian state became the new norm.

These days, Ukraine claims that, yes, the Kyivan Rus’ encompasses the histories of multiple nations – but only Ukraine carries the statehood legacy with the center in Kyiv. Russia and Belarus have their part in that story, but their part is similar to that of France or England in Roman history – it’s the part of the different people living under the hegemony of a metropolis. As Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak put it, the Rus’ and Ukraine are like “a caterpillar and a butterfly: they are not identical (caterpillar can’t fly), but there’s a direct link between them.” With that view of Rus’, Ukraine decolonizes its history and challenges the imperial myth of Russia.

This view, of course, infuriates Russia – that is why it is so keen to keep its claim on Kyivan Rus’ alive. Take a bizarre incident when Russia installed an 18-meter-high monument to Volodymyr the Great in the center of Moscow in 2016 – a monument to the Grand Prince of Kyiv who had lived 200 earlier than Moscow was established.

Rus’ and the Russia-Ukraine war
Ukraine’s claim on political sovereignty from Russia – which is the main reason for Putin’s neocolonial invasion of 2022 – includes the claim on Ukraine’s history.

Since the end of the 17 century, Ukrainians have struggled with Moscow’s colonial rule. We’ve been robbed of our chronicles, archives, art, and historical artifacts – Russia has literally drained material history from Ukraine into Moscow and St Petersburg.

Unlike Russia, Ukraine doesn’t want to return to some mythical glory of the past – it looks into the future. However, like any colonized nation, we feel the importance of connecting to the history and identity that was deliberately stolen from us and appropriated by our colonizers.

The victory of Ukraine in this war will make a crucial point: Ukraine is a sovereign nation with its own past and independent future. We are not a chapter in a story of the Russian Empire – we deserve our own story.

Answering the question in the name of this article: “Is Ukraine the real Rus’?” – no, Ukraine is not the real Rus’, because nobody is. Rus’, with its people and language, is long gone, and there's no point in trying to revive it. Ukrainians don't want to start calling ourselves Rus’ and compete for the word “Russia” with Russia (except maybe a couple of weirdos). But we deserve to finally claim the history of our land – by decolonizing our past and defending our future on the battlefield.

AND

SEPTEMBER 15 AT 4:44 AM
#20 Lessons from Ukraine’s counteroffensive (so far)

How the war could end, what Ukrainians are fighting for, and how fragile Russia really is

A summary of Ukrainian’s counteroffensive
Before going through the lessons, let’s run through the basics of what’s happened so far.

Since late August, Ukraine has led the counteroffensive operation on the southern and northeastern frontlines. The initial hype was focused on the Kherson direction, but then last week, Ukraine unexpectedly made an impressive push in the Kharkiv region.

As of September 15, at least 4000 square kilometers have been fully liberated, and 4000 more are being stabilized by Ukrainians right now. Russians have largely fled in panic and left a lot of equipment and people behind them. As a result, Ukraine liberated Kupiansk and Izium, towns crucial for Russia’s military logistics.

Russia’s official statements claim they decided to regroup from the Kharkiv direction to strengthen their Donbas frontline. However, even the top propagandists don’t seem to believe this version of the story.

The counteroffensive is still ongoing, so our ability to draw conclusions is limited.

Still, what are the lessons we can learn from the surprising course of the counteroffensive so far?

It’s not about the land – it’s about the people
As Ukrainians are liberating towns that have lived for months under Russian occupation, we’ve seen tonnes of heartwarming videos with locals welcoming them. That’s what real liberation looks like.

As a Ukrainian, I get flooded with immense joy when I’m watching these videos. I’m happy that these people are alive, that they have survived whatever Russians had been doing there, and that they can now be safe and return to (relative) normalcy and safety.

All these happy moments prove once again what has become clear for Ukrainians, foreign observers, and even Russian propagandists: people across all of Ukraine despise Russians and wait to be liberated by Ukrainians. And it’s Ukraine’s duty to save these people from Russia and the totalitarianism, torture, and genocide it brings to every village it occupies. Every town and village that the Russians reached had torture chambers and mass graves: Ukraine officials have already documented over 1,000 dead civilians in recently liberated Izuym, a town of 50,000.

For Ukraine, this is not a war for land – this is a war for the people and for their lives. Every Ukrainian trapped under Russian occupation deserves to be rescued.

Ukraine can win on the battlefield
Ukraine is still very far from victory. And by victory, I mean the liberation of all Russia-occupied lands since 2014, including the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as Crimea. Add to this the fact that Zelensky and other key government officials have numerously stated that the Ukrainian victory would also include reparations from Russia and an international tribunal for war criminals. Yes, there’s a long road ahead of Ukraine, but the counteroffensive has busted another myth about this war: the myth that Ukraine can’t win on the battlefield.

In spring, Ukraine proved wrong most experts and analysts who had said Ukraine would fall within one week of the invasion. Now, Ukraine has proved wrong skeptics claiming that Ukraine cannot execute a successful offensive operation. The skeptics’ logic was that Ukraine showed it could defend itself – but it had no experience and capacity to re-take the Russia-occupied land. Well, they were wrong. Again.

All of that leads to a clear conclusion: with the help of its allies, Ukraine is capable of beating Russia on the battlefield. Russia is not invincible. In fact, Russia seems to be a systemically overrated military power – and we have yet to discover how fragile it is as the war brings more pressure on Putin’s regime.

Russia only speaks the language of force
Russia will use negotiations to regroup and break any peace deal as soon as it feels powerful enough – the Minsk agreements have shown that. Russia will use land concessions as an invitation to invade further – the West’s initial blind eye on the occupation of Crimea has demonstrated that as well.

The only way Russia can accept the existence of a free and democratic Ukraine is if it’s forced to accept it. And Ukraine’s counteroffensive has proved that, unfortunately, brute force is the only way to liberate millions of people from Russian occupation and make Russia stay away.

Take it from Zelensky himself: “When Russia decided to invade Ukraine, the world didn’t punch them in their mugs, and so Russians went further, and further, and further. Well, we are punching them in their mugs now.”

I understand that this streetfight logic could feel shocking for people living in peaceful democracies. But that’s the reality of Russia that we all have to face. And all those liberated Ukrainians in the Kharkiv region would still be living under Russian occupation if it wasn’t for Ukraine’s army.

Arming Ukraine works
Even before the counteroffensive, it was already clear that the concerns about sending weapons to Ukraine were misplaced. Those who claimed there was no point in arming Ukraine before and after February 24 turned out to be outrageously wrong. Arming Ukraine is the only step that saved millions of Ukrainians from occupation, deportation, arrests, torture, rape, and other horrors of Russia’s genocidal campaign. Nothing else has saved more lives than military help to Ukraine.

But the counteroffensive proved yet more skeptics wrong. For months, we’ve heard occasional conspiracy-style rants claiming that the weapons sent to Ukraine will turn up on the black market and that Ukrainians are a corrupt society that can’t be trusted. The skepticism came from all sides of the political spectrum – from a ****hole of an investigation by CBS to Fox News’ far-right host Tucker Carlson. With the masterful counteroffensive, Ukrainians showed that the West’s military is put to good use.

Paul Massaro, a foreign policy expert and a big friend of Ukraine recently tweeted: “Ukraine is among the most responsible and effective recipients of US security assistance in history. They deserve MUCH more. Every dollar makes the world safer.”

Russians fear humiliation the most
One of the surprising outcomes of the Russian exodus from the Kharkiv region was the reaction it got in Russia. Of course, Russia’s warmongering Telegram channels are outraged by the poor performance of their military and have already got armed with insane conspiracies about thousands of English-speaking NATO soldiers fighting in the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

But even the most institutionalized propagandists and deeply pro-Putin figures like Chechen leader Kadyrov have expressed disappointment and concerns with how the “special military operation” is going.

As Portuguese political consultant Bruno Maçaes put it, it seems like Russia has suddenly synchronized and united – not because their country committed the worst genocide in the 21 century, but at the prospect of getting humiliated. The myth of Russia’s military dominance and, subsequently, the fear of battlefield humiliation seem to be at the core of Russian imperial identity.

Ukraine’s ultimate victory is the collapse of Putin
The further into this war, the clearer it becomes that independent, sovereign Ukraine and Putin’s neocolonial Russia can no longer coexist. The genie is out of the box – and Ukraine will not be safe with Putin’s regime in place. Putin, in turn, cannot sustain his grip over Russia with a humiliating defeat in Ukraine. Something must go. And it’s Ukraine’s and the rest of the democratic world’s duty to make sure Putin’s regime falls.

It may be a new and scary thought, but this idea has been circulating in Ukraine since February 24 – as soon as everybody realized that Putin decided to higher the stakes. Once he did that, there was no going back to the previous status quo. Taras Chmut, the head of the Come Back Alive foundation, recently tweeted: “Ukraine’s ultimate victory is not the return to our 1991 borders. It is also the disintegration of Russia into dozens of independent republics stripped off nuclear status.” Because, at this point, this is the only way Ukraine and many other nations can live safely.

And the recent counteroffensive showed how Putin’s collapse might not be as unrealistic as many experts believe. What’s even more surprising is that the most potent opposition to Putin might emerge from even more fascist and pro-militaristic groups.

But instead of fearing “destabilization,” the rest of the world should prepare for the fall of the Russian fascist regime. As Anne Applebaum recently wrote, “now is the time to ask about the stability of Russia itself and to factor that question into our plans. Russian soldiers are running away, ditching their equipment, asking to surrender. How long do we have to wait until the men in Putin’s inner circle do the same?”

Ukraine will need more help to defend itself
Ukraine’s success is a sign that the current strategy of supporting Ukraine works. But it’s not a sign of Ukraine’s inevitable victory. I’d love for that to be true, but it’s not. The counteroffensive brings us one step closer to victory, but there’s too much yet to be won: from Kherson to Luhansk, from Donetsk to Crimea.

Another dangerously wrong conclusion from the counteroffensive is that the world can slow down on military and political support because, apparently, Ukraine can take it from here. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s capacity to lead the war of attrition is completely dependent on the support coming from outside.

If the counteroffensive carries any conclusion about military support, it’s this: if Europe and the US had been less afraid to arm Ukraine since 2014, the full-scale invasion would have probably not happened. If the Western leaders had sent weapons in the first days of the invasion, tens of thousands of civilian deaths could have been averted. The counteroffensive has shown that the world should continue supporting Ukraine to prevent more human suffering.

Let’s wait until the counteroffensive ends
The counteroffensive is still happening. Yes, it has slowed down, but it is not over yet. It’s too soon to draw definite conclusions about the successes and failures at this point.

I know there are a lot of discussions right now about the counteroffensive being a “potential turning point of this war.” Well, it could be a turning point – or it could not. Wars are nonlinear and poorly predictable.

I think it’s crucial for all of us to stay put and wait for more updates. Until then, let’s just enjoy the feel-good videos of happy folk getting liberated and wish them well.

AND

SEPTEMBER 6 AT 12:00 AM
#19 Why Ukraine was never really that polarized

The story of Ukrainian identity, Russian propaganda, and a troubled Western perspective, or why everybody thought Ukraine was a divided nation

Ukraine’s unity following February 24, 2022
When Russia broke the months-long suspense and invaded Ukraine, Ukrainians held firmly to their ground.

For many international observers, the united resistance of Ukrainians was as surprising as Russia’s back-to-1939 style of invasion. After all, Ukraine had always been described as a troubled, polarized society with pressing linguistic and ethnic divisions and a critically low level of trust in government.

How could such a divided society create a nationwide volunteer resistance overnight? How can it keep resisting for six months with no visible signs of division? I mean, after all the horrors of war and personal tragedies, 90% of Ukrainians believe in victory over Russia.

To answer these questions, we need to step back and review the entire notion of Ukraine being a polarized society.

The fundamental values of Ukrainians
The point here is this: Ukraine is not nearly as polarized as it had often been portrayed.

Mainstream media outlets usually mention Ukraine in times of crisis, unrest, and political turmoil. But despite being consistently depicted as a divided nation, Ukrainians’ fundamental views and attitudes are quite consistent across all regions.

Here’s a brief description of Ukrainians’ values map by Kyiv-based sociologist Tymofii Brik (this Twitter thread of his is an absolute goldmine!):

“Low trust to gov, high trust to family and friends, moderate openness and Self-Enhancement. High Conservation and Self-transcendence, lower "openness to new experience" but caring for others (WVS).”

Ukrainians “care about their closest and value safety & survival before hedonism, trying new, innovations.”

Those are universal features for people from the Carpathians to Donbas – there aren’t “two Ukraines” when it comes to some of the most fundamental values. Even the electorate of Zelensky and Poroshenko scored pretty closely on these indicators during the 2019 elections – showing that political divisions in Ukraine are not different sets of values colliding – and more about personalities and trust. But we’ll get there later.

Languages and ethnicity in Ukraine
No other topics have suffered more from manipulations than the languages and ethnicities of Ukraine. So let’s just run through some of the loudest myths and facts.

Yes, Ukraine is a deeply bilingual country. Practically all people know both Ukrainian and Russian languages, and most speak both languages all the time, depending on the context. In 2021, 46% of the population mainly spoke Ukrainian in their daily lives, 26% spoke mostly Russian, and 27% spoke both languages. So 27% of people use both languages every day of their lives – it is a huge number of totally bilingual people.

No, the language you speak says nothing about your ethnicity or political views in Ukraine. With 26% Russian speakers nationwide and 27% bilinguals, there were just ~15% of ethnic Russians in Ukraine in 2011. Also, the largest pro-Russian political party had only 9.5% of public support in February 2022 (and yes, this party was assembled from the ruins of the infamous Party of Regions – the one that was led by Victor Yanukovych).

On a personal level, I get furious when someone mixes up language and ethnicity. I am a bilingual Ukrainian raised in a Russian-speaking family – and our family has always identified as Ukrainian and never felt Russian in any way. Linking Russian speakers to the “Russian world” is an old colonial trick used by Moscow to justify its territorial claims. Russia, however, shouldn’t have a monopoly on the Russian language.

Note: If you want to know more about how Russian-speaking Ukrainians appeared – I told a detailed story of how my family of Ukrainian-speaking farmers turned into Russian-speaking Kyivites over the last 100 years in this Twitter thread.

No, there is no Russian-speaking East and Ukrainian-speaking West. The truth is more nuanced. Western Ukraine is predominantly Ukrainian-speaking, the center is mostly Ukrainian-speaking with many bilinguals, and southern and eastern are mostly bilingual with many Russian speakers.

In regions with high bilingualism and Russian-speaking rates, another distinct pattern emerges: cities are significantly more Russian-speaking than rural areas. Russian was the language of education, career, and public use – it was imposed as the language of the elites for centuries under the empire and for decades under the Soviets. Although the Ukrainian language has made tremendous progress in cities in the last 20 years, the echoes of the old colonial legacy are still there.

And no, Russian is not spoken across Ukraine because of intertwined ethnicities and histories – it is the direct result of Russia’s centuries-long assimilation policies that tried to destroy Ukrainian identity.

Ukraine is a mix of different folk with large communities of Russians, Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Poles, Bulgarians, Jews, Greeks, and other ethnicities. Still, 82% of the population identified as Ukrainian back in 2011 (unfortunately, we don’t have more recent reliable data that would include Crimea and all parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions). Because of all the mixing up and shared colonized past, the Ukrainian national identity is more civic in nature than that of many other European nations.

Locality and trust in Ukrainian society
The idea that the West and the East of Ukraine are dramatically different is a brutal simplification. There are no “two Ukraines” – because there are many of them. All across our country, multiple regional identities flourish all while viewing themselves as parts of a larger Ukrainian nation. Locality does not mean division.

This locality could be explained by our colonized history: because Ukrainians have been in the middle of larger powers for the last 500 years, we have learned to never trust anyone in power – and to always identify with and rely on the people nearby. Because people in power always wanted to profit off of us, and only locally elected leaders could be trusted.

That locality also explains why Ukraine has always had such a low rate of trust in government. Paradoxically for many foreigners, Ukrainians have always valued their right to choose their representatives and be suspicious of them the second the new government is voted into office.

That has enabled Ukraine to quickly react to any politician's attempts to usurp power (wink-wink, mister Yanukovych), but it has also been a huge obstacle to creating sustainable trust between the people and the state.

Unfortunately, Ukraine’s local diversity has often been weaponized to seed more suspicion toward nationwide politicians of any sort.

Ukraine’s polarized geopolitics and how Russia fixed that
Probably the only aspect where Ukraine became truly polarized by the early 2010s was the question of geopolitics. Should we integrate into the European Union, or are we better off with Russia? For many Ukrainians in the southern and eastern regions – because of the deeper history of colonialism there and intertwined family ties – this was a tough choice before 2014. Western Ukraine, falling under Moscow rule only after 1945, had more ties with the neighboring Eastern European states.

And for years, Ukraine has been at a crossroads – always declaring its European ambitions but also always stressing the need to keep the “brotherly friendship” with Russia. Of course, all politicians tried to manipulate this divide to their electoral advantage – and demonized the other side of the argument.

In 2011, 52% of Ukrainians supported joining the EU, and only 24% supported NATO membership. But then Yanukovych's authoritarian ambitions and Russia’s direct aggression fixed this debate. Support for Ukraine joining the EU has grown from 49% in 2014 to 91% in 2022. Support for joining NATO has grown from just 34% in 2014 to 68% in 2022.

Ironically, Putin has consolidated all Ukrainians the way nobody had ever done before.

So why was Ukraine believed to be deeply polarized?
As I have outlined, Ukraine is a diverse, complicated nation. And where there is complexity, there is manipulation. Especially if there’s a giant neocolonial power planning to destroy you. The myth of Ukraine’s polarization was propelled by two forces: Russia and the Western ignorance of Ukraine.

Russia has long weaponized the questions of history and identity to reinforce division and fear in the colonized societies. It has continuously done so in Ukraine, the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia, and many other states.

Ukraine itself never suspected it was polarized until way into the mid-2000s. But around the time of the Orange Revolution, the Party of Regions and other pro-Russian forces started putting up billboards and TV ads spreading fears that the “Westerners” want to ban the Russian language and cancel everything Soviet, especially the great WWII victory of “our grandfathers.” Political talk shows – huge in Ukraine in the 2000s – began to talk about the East and the West, focusing on scandalous, fearmongering topics. As the 2010 elections approached, people in Kyiv were worried that the “Donetsk people” would raid Kyiv once Donbas-born Yanukovych was in power.

The peak polarization was probably in 2010 when Tymoshenko and Yanukovych went for a tight presidential race, winning majority votes in the North-West and South-East, respectively. Yanukovych won by a fine margin: 49 to 46 percent. We all know how his term ended.

We now know that Yanukovych’s Party of Regions was practically a Russian force penetrating Ukrainian politics. Russia pushed Yanukovych to suddenly turn away from signing an agreement with the EU in the autumn of 2013 and then directly assisted in evacuating Yanukovych to Russia on February 21, 2014 – when the police turned the months-long Maidan protest into a bloodbath.

Through control over Ukraine’s politicians, oligarchs (remember: up until recently, Medvechuk, one of Ukraine’s most powerful oligarchs and media tycoons was literally a godfather of Putin’s daughter), and oligarch-owned media outlets, Russia attempted to create culture wars and moral panics, thus stagnating Ukraine’s progress into a European democracy, and keeping it a subordinate state. Look no further than Lukashenko’s Belarus for a perfect reference of what Putin wanted Ukraine to be.

And until February 24, 2022, Russia pretty much succeeded in spreading the “divided Ukraine” narrative.

Western (mis)understanding of Ukraine
Russian propaganda is only part of the problem.

Another part boils down to this: Western experts failed to see Ukraine as a political subject rather than Russia’s long-term satellite state. Without attributing agency to the Ukrainian people, it’s pretty easy to ignore the complexity of Ukraine’s past and present, and to keep telling a simplified story about a country being ripped apart by the West and the East, by Ukrainian and Russian speakers (or maybe those are ethnic Russians? Who knows? Let’s ask our Moscow-based correspondent).

In that sense, the Russia-centered studies of Eastern Europe have dramatically failed to see Ukraine as an independent society deciding its path and to recognize Russia for what it has become – a fascist autocracy.

That’s why Ukraine’s pro-European advancements were often seen as a result of the geopolitical influence of the West and not as a genuine desire for a free and sovereign nation. That’s also why Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism was so hard to crack without getting stuck in the narratives created and promoted by the USSR and then Russia.

The only good news here is that, finally, Russian colonialism and the agency of Eastern European nations are slowly being reconsidered. For instance, we finally see toxic and deeply biased reports on Ukraine get absolutely smashed by Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians. Yes, I’m talking about Amnesty International’s now infamous “But Ukrainian soldiers are endangering ordinary people by resisting Russian occupation” piece.

What fills me with optimism is the new sense of solidarity and agency that has emerged across all nations that experienced Russian colonialism at some point in their histories. I do hope that this inherently anti-colonial force will shape the West’s future policy and ideology regarding Russia.

How Russia used the polarization myth to invade Ukraine
In 2022, it’s easy to forget how long Russia denied any involvement in other countries’ businesses and staged internal crises to legitimize its concerns and, in the case of Georgia, direct military involvement. Ukraine has suffered from these tactics since 2014.

Russia first faked a referendum in Crimea in 2014 to “legitimately” break it away from Ukraine and “apply” for becoming a part of Russia. All this was done to create an image of divided people seeking sovereignty and self-determination – all while Russian special forces occupied all administrative buildings in Crimea and gave direct orders to local authorities.

In Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Russia played the polarization card to first deny its involvement (“it’s the locals rebelling against the Kyiv tyranny!”), and then to justify it (“we had to stabilize the situation and defend the Russian-speaking population of Donbas”).

Time and again, Russia managed to trick a large portion of the world into “bothsidesism” and “West vs East” narratives when describing what was clearly an act of territorial aggression.

To understand what I’m talking about, take a look at this BBC “deep dive” into the Donbas war from 2015. Notice how much focus is dedicated to the “rebels” and “pro-Russian activists” and how Russia is portrayed as almost a mere observer of these events?

How Ukrainians felt unity following February 24
Ukrainians – after living through two revolutions and an invasion in the last 20 years – like to describe themselves this way:

Ukrainians can’t agree on anything in their everyday life but almost automatically unite on all levels once they face a serious crisis.

I think there’s some truth in that. Ukrainian identities are diverse, highly localized, and equally don’t trust any authority – but all these identities are united by a universal will to decide for themselves how to live on their land.

Once there was a force willing to wipe out everything we had built and take away our right to choose our fate, Ukrainians united against this force.

There’s still a lot of work to be done to foster trust in Ukraine. And I hope that Ukrainians will find a way to trust our representatives and institutions – and our politicians will also raise their standards as a result of this war. I also hope that the Russian invasion will once and for all put an end to the myth of the divided Ukrainian nation.

Stas

 

 

[TheVulture]

14 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

So like it was very difficult to Persians to copy hoplites or for steppe peoples to field decent close-combat infantry, so is for Russians to change their entire mode of thinking about war.

That's something Dan Carlin (historical podcaster) had mentioned several times: other people may have copied the concept of the Greek hoplite or the Roman legion, but without the whole apparatus of the culture, mindset and society that created them, you don't actually have a hoplite or legion and it doesn't function the same way. You just have something that looks similar on the surface.

And likewise the western military system is something that the west evolved as an effective way for people from western cultures to fight. It isn't automatically going to work the same way if you just copy it and plug in people with different culture, social norms and attitudes.

Edited October 24, 2022 by TheVulture