Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

[antaeus]

If I had a dollar for every genocidal or sociopathic national hero. We've all got them. We all struggle with their legacy. Ukraine having them doesn't negate Ukraine as a country. Loyt evidences the same conflict that occurs within the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa, etc etc etc. the important part is that the national conversation includes the bad with the good. Time will deal with the rest.

Now as far as this red herring conversation goes...

[Kyriakos]

Legend has it that as the Arimaspoi were fighting the Griffons, in the epic of Arimaspea (which takes place just north of Ukraine, more or less), they had managed to push the Griffons back with the help of a new ally from the hyperborea. So they turned down any calls for peace, expecting to push their enemy out. Then the northern ally had to tend to his own business, and the result was that the Arimaspeans died.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Cool story broseph, but doesn’t really fit. If Ukraine surrenders it will face genocide. Some parts of it might be allowed to exist as a reichsprotektorat for a few years, but then a totally legit and democratic referendum will take place at gunpoint with a turnout of 99% with 99.8% in favour of Russian annexation and that will be followed by, you guessed it, genocide.

When surrender means death, surrender is not an option.

[Septentrionalis]

that will be followed by, you guessed it, genocide.

When surrender means death, surrender is not an option.

Are you referring to a physical genocide? Sounds quite rough even for Russia. Cultural genocide, on the other hand, has already been promised by Putin.

[Septentrionalis]

Don't get me wrong, but that statement reveals some naivety.Ask that question to the US, extremely respectful of the sovereignty of dozens of countries around the world, which was even prepared to invade a founding member of NATO in 1974, if the political choices made then were not to America's liking.

You and anyone are welcome to point it out if you think I am being naïve. I should not take offense but try to improve. However, I cannot really equate a plan to interfere with Portugal back then in the middle of a civilizational struggle between communism and what I would call the free world with the actual war of destruction against civilians going on now in Ukraine. I cannot equate any other involvement the US has had around the world with that either.

[Laser101]

"Always". That's an interesting word to use here. Do you often use "Always" to define time periods shorter than 180 years? Historically speaking it's an insignificant amount of time. The Iberian union was a third of an always, so I guess Spain should re-annex Portugal.
The only reason Russians even became a plurality/majority of the population there is the genocides they committed.

To be fair, such acts are the main reason why most populations are the way they are.

Honestly, I don't think historical arguments have any relevance here. There is a case that the annexation may reflect the self-determination of the Crimean population and the demographic factors have been such since Ukraine became independent. Although, given their own ethnic issues, is this really a can of worms the Russians should be opening? (The converse argument could of course be made regarding Ukrainian support for ethnic separatism in Russia undermining their own position vis-a-vis Crimea).

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Are you referring to a physical genocide? Sounds quite rough even for Russia. Cultural genocide, on the other hand, has already been promised by Putin.

Both. The horrific scenes we’ve seen whenever Russia retreats are not isolated cases, they’re state policy. Those who do not resist or show signs of Ukrainian patriotism will be assimilated by force, those who do will be tortured and murdered, their children sent off to some remote locations spread out all over Russia where they will be brainwashed into thinking that they’re Russians. The destruction of the Ukrainian identity is their goal, by any means necessary.

[Coughdrop addict]

Political jokes almost always result from a lack of arguments.

And cheering on aggressive invaders engaged in all the worst aspects of colonialism results from something far worse.

What exactly IS your vision for the new Russian-led world?

Once Putin rules from Lisbon to Vladivostok...then what?

Do you imagine your life will be more free with packs of stormtroopers marching down your street?

Do you think you will somehow be exempted from the strict social conservatism he will implement?

Do you believe that when the local Putin-appointed oligarch shakes you down you will go to the police?

Do you suppose you will be allowed to voice disagreement with Putin and not spend the rest of your life in prison or a gulag?

[nhytgbvfeco2]

And cheering on aggressive invaders engaged in all the worst aspects of colonialism results from something far worse.

What exactly IS your vision for the new Russian-led world?

Once Putin rules from Lisbon to Vladivostok...then what?

Do you imagine your life will be more free with packs of stormtroopers marching down your street?

Do you think you will somehow be exempted from the strict social conservatism he will implement?

Do you believe that when the local Putin-appointed oligarch shakes you down you will go to the police?

Do you suppose you will be allowed to voice disagreement with Putin and not spend the rest of your life in prison or a gulag?

He doesn't think the fascist dictator will do fascist dictator things. He thinks America bad, so anything bad for America is good.

[mishkin]

He doesn't think the fascist dictator will do fascist dictator things. He thinks America bad, so anything bad for America is good.

unfortunately this thought is quite common in the left of the old guard; Cuban resistance against Yankee imperialism is heroic (ignoring all the negative aspects of the Cuban dictatorship) and there must be a counterpower to NATO/United States (it doesn't matter if this counterpower comes from a fascist). I remember as a child in the eighties having attended demonstrations in which the slogan was "Gaddafi, friend, the people is with you". The enemy of my enemy is my friend leads to saying real nonsense.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

unfortunately this thought is quite common in the left of the old guard; Cuban resistance against Yankee imperialism is heroic (ignoring all the negative aspects of the Cuban dictatorship) and there must be a counterpower to NATO/United States (it doesn't matter if this counterpower comes from a fascist). I remember as a child in the eighties having attended demonstrations in which the slogan was "Gaddafi, friend, the people is with you". The enemy of my enemy is my friend leads to saying real nonsense.

This kind of people are mostly as i call them salon socialists, which never get dirty hands in a fabric in their whole life and never ever come out of their acedemic and very bourgeoise ivory tower.

[Kyriakos]

Cool story broseph, but doesn’t really fit. If Ukraine surrenders it will face genocide. Some parts of it might be allowed to exist as a reichsprotektorat for a few years, but then a totally legit and democratic referendum will take place at gunpoint with a turnout of 99% with 99.8% in favour of Russian annexation and that will be followed by, you guessed it, genocide.

When surrender means death, surrender is not an option.

Just trying to inject some civilization (Greek culture) into the thread
Imo it's better than endlessly posting attacks, and there is a shortage of meaningful developments in the war currently.

[Peresvet]

Are you referring to a physical genocide? Sounds quite rough even for Russia. Cultural genocide, on the other hand, has already been promised by Putin.

And how else to call the complete destruction of Mariupol by putin, the destruction of the city and the murder of civilians, dooming them to hunger and life without water, heating. People in the West, alas, cannot understand that if they do not help the Ukrainians now to stop this monster, it will go to Europe. I am Russian and I consider putin my main enemy, both personal and my country. He uses his people as cannon fodder.

[Laser101]

And how else to call the complete destruction of Mariupol by putin, the destruction of the city and the murder of civilians, dooming them to hunger and life without water, heating. People in the West, alas, cannot understand that if they do not help the Ukrainians now to stop this monster, it will go to Europe. I am Russian and I consider putin my main enemy, both personal and my country. He uses his people as cannon fodder.

I've never understood this line of reasoning. It seems pretty clear that Putin invaded Ukraine under the impression that he would win easily, given the balance of forces on paper (a belief shared by a lot of Western observers). Clearly, this impression was false, but the reasons why were not immediately obvious a year ago. A direct confrontation with NATO is a different story; that would require Putin to be willing to start a fight in which is own forces are rather clearly outclassed in pretty much every metric.

[Peresvet]

I've never understood this line of reasoning. It seems pretty clear that Putin invaded Ukraine under the impression that he would win easily, given the balance of forces on paper (a belief shared by a lot of Western observers). Clearly, this impression was false, but the reasons why were not immediately obvious a year ago. A direct confrontation with NATO is a different story; that would require Putin to be willing to start a fight in which is own forces are rather clearly outclassed in pretty much every metric.

putin is already instilling the thesis into the zombified residents of Russia that the war in Ukraine is being waged against NATO, and not just against the Ukrainians. To do this, he established a Nazi regime in Russia, in which for my posts here, with the victims of russian aggression, they will put me in prison for 10 years. Although this is actually NATO helping Ukraine, but in a very limited way and mainly with defensive weapons. And the Ukrainians should be given offensive weapons and long-range missiles, Abrams and Leopard tanks and much more, but Western countries are afraid of this, because they have a fear of a nuclear strike from putin. And they are afraid of even the complete defeat of putin and his overthrow, since after him a much worse bandit, for example, Prigogine, can come to power.

[Ludicus]

This kind of people are mostly as i call them salon socialists, which never get dirty hands in a fabric in their whole life and never ever come out of their acedemic and very bourgeoise ivory tower.

I remember as a child in the eighties having attended demonstrations in which the slogan was "Gaddafi, friend, the people is with you". The enemy of my enemy is my friend leads to saying real nonsense.

. He thinks America bad, so anything bad for America is good.

I don't think comments like this should be allowed, but it depends on the moderation. For my part, I'm not going to waste time responding to these kinds of insulting comments.Of course, there are some who do not subscribe to the idea of a multilateral world; these are the ones who divide the globe between the good guys and the bad guys. There are no evil empires.
I have shown this poll before. For 21 years Ukraine-"so friendly" to ethnic diversity- failed to convince Crimean Russians to feel Ukrainian and pro-Western.

2013 poll, Public Opinion Survey Residents of the Autonomous Republic

MOOD OF THE AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA
Regardless of your passport, what do you consider yourself?
Russian: 40%
Ukrainian: 24%
Crimean-Tatar 15%
Other: 5%
DK/NA :1%

If Ukraine was able to enter only one international economic union, which entity should it be with?

Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan: 53%

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Foes of our rebirth: Ukrainian nationalist discussions about Jews, 1929-1947

Abstract

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, came into being in 1929 as an “integral nationalist” movement that set itself the goal of driving Polish landowners and officials out of eastern Galicia and Volhynia, joining hands with Ukrainians in other countries, and establishing an independent state. The OUN defined Jews, along with Russians and Poles, as aliens and enemies. There was no need, wrote an OUN ideologist in 1929, to list all the injuries that Jews caused Ukrainians. “In addition to a number of external enemies Ukraine also has an internal enemy … Jewry and its negative consequences for our liberation cause can be liquidated only by an organized collective effort”. The article examines archival documents, publications by OUN members, and recent scholarly literature to trace the evolution of OUN thinking about Jews from 1929 through the war years, when the German occupation of Ukraine gave the OUN an opportunity to stage pogroms and persecute Jews, and the prime minister of the state that the OUN proclaimed wrote that he supported “the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine”.

Modern Intellectual History , Volume 11 , Issue 03 , November 2014, pp 519 – 548
doi: 10.1017/S1479244314000171 – Published Online on 10th October 2014
During the 1920s, Ukrainian publicist Dmytro Dontsov (1883–1973) created “active nationalism,” a political doctrine that later became the ideology of the radical right-wing Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army…Anticipating a world conflict that would favor the Germans and dismantle the Russian Empire, Dontsov advocated a pro-“Western,” anti-“Muscovite” orientation for Ukrainians, and in 1913 spearheaded a controversial program for Ukraine's separation from Russia and integration into “Europe.”

Since there are always skillful ways to spin the issue, the Ukrainian government argues that Ukraine became a mono-ethnic state against its own will because of the Russian invasion. But that is not what history teaches. With exemplary pedagogical clarity,
Ukrainian Nationalism - Global History Dialogues
Launched in 2019, History Dialogues seeks to expand the range of voices that research and write global history. As part of the Global History Lab at Princeton University, History Dialogues works with a network of partner institutions to create a truly global classroom. The Global History Lab, founded by Jeremy Adelman in 2012, offers online courses to students at Princeton and partner institutions around the world. History Dialogues was created out of, and supported by, the Lab’s collaborative by Marcia Schenck, Professor of Global History at the University of Potsdam. The GHL is supported by the Open Society University Network and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

However, I cannot really equate a plan to interfere with Portugal back then in the middle of a civilizational struggle between communism and what I would call the free world

Know that I fought to prevent that from happening. But if it were a democratic choice, it would have to be so.It didn't happen because the coup that was being prepared was aborted at the last moment by Mário Soares, whom a Kissinger once called Kerensky. In fact, it was Frank Carlucci, the US Ambassador to Portugal, the only American who knew what was going on, and who influenced Kissinger to change his plans to invade the country, which would be very badly received by everyone, democrats and communists alike.
When I hear comments like "salon socialists", it makes me say, God forgive them, because they don't know what they are saying.

Edit: Samuel Huntington wrote, wrote more than 20 years ago "Mário Soares and his colleagues, however, proved Kissinger wrong. In Portugal, the Kerenskys won, democracy was consolidated, and Mário Soares went on to be prime minister and later president. The third wave of democratization that Portugal initiated literally created the age of democracy, in which for the first time in history more than half the countries in the world have some form of democratic government.

As for Cuba, which was mentioned here as being part of the "Evil Empire", it is good to remember that all the countries of the world have been condemning the American sanctions for many years.There is only one exception, Israel, that takes advantage of the fact that attention is focused on the war in Ukraine to destroy Palestine, but nobody talks about it.

[PointOfViewGun]

2013 poll, Public Opinion Survey Residents of the Autonomous Republic

MOOD OF THE AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEARegardless of your passport, what do you consider yourself?
Russian: 40%
Ukrainian: 24%
Crimean-Tatar 15%
Other: 5%
DK/NA :1%

This actually shows contrary to what you try to show. If you go deeper into that file it shows that only 63% of ethnic Russians considers themselves to be Russian. Given that this poll considers all living there and not just Ukrainian citizens its quite damning for the idea that Crimea is Russian.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Since you're doing polls Ludi, how about this one from December showing that 85% of Ukranians are opposed to *any* territorial concessions to Russia, even at the risk of a possible loss of independence.



As for "there are no evil empires", yeah, there are. They're not evil in every single aspect of their existence, but overall they exist. And yes, Russia is one.

[Ludicus]

only 63% of ethnic Russians considers themselves to be Russian.

63 % is a very representative choice, if you take into account that 29% consider themselves to be Crimean. Only 3% of ethnic Russians consider themselves to be Ukrainians, so the civic identification with Ukraine was extremely low.

And the answer to "If Ukraine was able to enter only one international economic union, which entity should it be with?" seems to be sufficiently informative.
Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan: 53%, considering all ethnic groups.
The choice for the EU gets only 17% of the votes.
Regarding the answer to the question "How would you evaluate your attitude to the following entities?
Warm: Russia 68%; EU: only 14%

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To conclude what I was saying before.
The Communists here have been losing voters for the last 20 years. The younger generation has a childish, almost irrational, hatred of the Communist Party, which a few years ago was part of a coalition government with the Socialist Party, a government that was well received in Europe.
But none of the senior members of the Socialist Party really hates the Communists, because they know that they played an essential role in the overthrow of the fascist regime. They know that it was not the right that overthrew Salazar. They know that the big economic groups, allied with Salazar, owned the country. In other words, they were fought ideologically, but at the same time they are respected. This is a unique case in European democracies. And if you ask António Costa, who now has an absolute majority (and with aspirations for a high position in the EU when he leaves office) which party he respects the most, for being coherent in the parliamentary initiatives, with the measures the party proposes, and which are sometimes approved, the answer would be: the Communist Party.

Do I understand one of the reasons that led to the invasion of Ukraine? Yes, NATO's expansion, that's my opinon. Do I like Putin? Nyet. Do I like the Ukrainian nazistoid regime? Not at all. Does western Ukraine, have the right to independence? Yes. Should they be neutral, choosing neither the Western alliance nor the Russian alliance? That's the sensible thing to do, that's my opinion. Is Crimea Russian? I think so. When it is stated that Russia wants to entirely dominate the entirety of Ukraine, I don't think that is true. We can say the same of the Western alliance, in its eternal struggle for world hegemony. We live in a multipolar world, and only the achievement of this balance will lead to world peace, not a constant, permanent war between NATO and the non-existent evil empires.




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[Cyclops]

Im in favour if arming Ukraine sufficiently to end the war. If that means giving them weapons to strike Vladivostok then so be it. Russian aggression in this case is wrong, as wrong as if Spain invaded Portugal, or Italy invaded Libya.