Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[K Graham]

Well beyond outraged was meant in the sense as "much worse than outraged." Hence, dead.

[Jersey Girl]

From Al Jazeera. Approximately 500 Russians per day are getting out of Dodge and traveling to Helsinki.

Thousands take train from Russia to Finland to escape sanctions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydtQBn2XVes

[Gunnar]

Putin has really misread Ukraine

This analysis by Volodymyr Yermolenko that appeared in Al Jazeera is the most compelling summary of the reality and tragedy I have yet read of how badly Putin misread and/or lied about Ukraine and his real motives for invading it.

All of this the Kremlin is trying to justify with cynical propaganda, dehumanising and degrading Ukrainians. Its general narrative during the past years has been that Ukrainians are not a nation; that Ukrainian identity was invented by “Nazis” and therefore Russia needs to “denazify” the country.

During the first days of the war, Moscow may have been surprised to learn, however, that the majority of Ukrainians hate the idea of becoming Russians and hate Russian authoritarianism with Vladimir Putin at its helm.

Contrary to what the Russian president says and is constantly repeated by the Russian media, Ukrainians have a strong national identity and know who they are as a people. As Ukrainian sovereignty is in imminent danger, it is important to emphasise that Ukraine has had a distinct centuries-old history and the idea of Ukrainian statehood did not emerge with the creation of the Soviet Union.

On the territory of modern-day Ukraine, various ancient polities have left their mark, including Greek colonies, Scythian tribes and the Khazar state. Its capital, Kyiv, was the centre of a powerful medieval state, Kyivan Rus’, which connected Eastern Slavic lands with the Varangian north and Byzantine south. In the 17th century, the Cossacks, a Slavic warrior community based on the territory of today’s Ukraine, established an autonomous political entity, which was under the cultural influence of Western Europe, Eastern Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

This distinct history has also produced a unique Ukrainian political culture that is anti-tyrannical in its nature. For example, Kyivan Rus’ existed as a pluralistic polity for several centuries. Early modern Cossack statehood was deeply influenced by Catholic education, German law and Polish contractual politics. In 19th-century Ukraine, which existed within the borders of the Russian and Habsburg empires, Ukrainian intellectuals were defending decentralised and democratic politics, including poet Taras Shevchenko, historian Mykola Kostomarov, and philosopher Mykhailo Drahomanov.

This pluralist political identity explains why today Ukraine is not governed by one person and why Ukrainians have been rebelling whenever there have been attempts to establish authoritarian rule. Domestic authoritarianism in Ukraine is difficult to achieve and it has always been imported.

This is the real reason Putin is so anxious to eliminate Ukraine as an independent, democratic nation.

Russia, with its authoritarian traditions, sees the Ukrainian freedom-seeking political model as dangerous. That is why it is suspicious about any Ukrainian political revival, which Putin has called “coloured revolutions” and turned into a domestic scarecrow.

Putin is also egregiously wrong about the Russian-speaking citizens necessarily being in favor of assimilation by Russia, or being persecuted or threatened with "genocide" by their Ukrainian-speaking fellow citizens, or forbidden to speak their native Russian.

But Ukrainian linguistic identity is not linear; language does not divide people into groups, and language identity is much more fluid than many outsiders assume. For example, a programme on Ukrainian TV can host a Ukrainian speaker and a Russian speaker who would communicate in their respective languages and understand each other without a problem. One can also hear conversations in the streets in which people start a phrase in Ukrainian and finish it in Russian, or vice versa. Multiple slangs mix the two languages and many people do not actually speak literary Ukrainian or literary Russian but something in-between.

Furthermore, language does not reflect political identity. One can also easily find a Russian speaking journalist or blogger who would stress the distinctiveness of the Ukrainian identity and discuss how to safeguard it from Russian propaganda. One can easily find a Russian-speaking Ukrainian who defended the country against the Russian invasion in 2014 and is doing so now, in 2022.

The fierce resistance against the Russian invaders in cities like Kharkiv and Kherson, which are majority Russian-speaking or have significant Russian-speaking population, is the final indisputable proof that the Kremlin’s propaganda is simply absurd.

Putin also hoped to intimidate Ukraine into distancing itself from the EU and NATO. This massively backfired on him.

In the lead-up to the war, support for membership in the European Union grew to 68 percent and NATO to 54 percent – up from 14 percent in 2012, and it skyrocketed after the invasion, to 86 percent for EU membership and 76 percent for NATO accession.

According to another poll, 80 percent of Ukrainian citizens say they are ready to defend their country from a Russian invasion by taking up arms.

This means that by attacking Ukraine in 2014 and by invading it again in 2022, Russia has achieved the opposite of what it wants. It is not only failing to bring Ukraine back into its sphere of influence, but it is also inspiring even more resistance to its aggression and consolidating further the Ukrainian national identity. With its actions, Moscow is creating an infernal image of itself in the eyes of Ukrainians and strengthening their conviction that their future should not be tied to this horrible authoritarian state.

[Moksha]

When Ukraine needed U.S. backing, all they got was Donald Trump's corruption.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-c8Biqwy4E

[MeDotOrg]

When Hitler invaded Russia, his troops were cut off at Stalingrad in one of the most brutal sieges of the war. German troops were slowly starving. Hitler was impervious. As a show of solidarity, one of his generals started existing on the daily rations of a soldier in Stalingrad. When he started visibly losing weight, Hitler curtly ordered him to start eating again.

Hitler's grand strategy for a 1,000 year Reich was an omelet worth a few broken eggs. Sympathy for the suffering of his troops was not part of the equation.

The parallels with Putin will become more apparent over the next weeks and months. During the war Hitler became increasingly isolated, spending time at his Wolf's Lair retreat. Putin has led an isolated existence since the onslaught of Covid: increasingly morose, paranoid and cut off from the rest of the world. The walls closing in on him.

If it would help speed things along, I'd like to send him a pistol and a dog named Blondi.

[Gunnar]

Putin seems to also be coming closer and closer to emulating his hero, Stalin.

ETA: Except Putin, is not really a Marxist like Stalin was.

[Moksha]

Putin, is not really a Marxist like Stalin was.

Putin is as Trumpesque as Trump is Putinesque.

[Father Francis]

Putin seems to also be coming closer and closer to emulating his hero, Stalin.

ETA: Except Putin, is not really a Marxist like Stalin was.

Stalin and Putin are similar, but Marx believed in the workers controlling the means of production. Marx's system would be a true democracy, not the continuation of the systems we already had masking themselves as something better.

For example, upward mobility is a lie. People born poor are likely to die poor. People born rich are likely to die rich. The good news is that downward mobility is slightly more likely. That means rich kids are at a slightly higher risk of sliding down the social ladder than poor kids have a chance of climbing up... MURICKA!!!!

[Gunnar]

Stalin and Putin are similar, but Marx believed in the workers controlling the means of production. Marx's system would be a true democracy, not the continuation of the systems we already had masking themselves as something better.

For example, upward mobility is a lie. People born poor are likely to die poor. People born rich are likely to die rich. The good news is that downward mobility is slightly more likely. That means rich kids are at a slightly higher risk of sliding down the social ladder than poor kids have a chance of climbing up... MURICKA!!!!

I think you're right. Though Stalin claimed to be a Marxist, I think that no one would have been more appalled by Stalin's brutal reign than Karl Marx himself. Putin, on the other hand, doesn't even claim to be Marxist, as far as I understand him. On the contrary, his approach to governance embodies the very worst aspects of totally unbridled, selfish and avaricious capitalism and opportunism. Nothing really matters to him more than what's in it for him, no matter whom he has to hurt to get it. In that respect, he resembles Donald J. Trump even more he resembles Stalin. That is why Trump admires and emulates him. More than anything else, Trump aspires to achieving the same unrestricted power and wealth that Putin has managed to achieve.

[Gunnar]

Interesting take on the relationship between Russia and China vis a vis the invasion of Ukraine.

China Will ATTACK Russia... if they fail in Ukraine

According to Jake Broe, Putin really has inherently more to fear from China than from the Western powers and alliances. China is a rising power, while Russia, by most measures, is a declining power. China has about 10 times the population and economic strength as Russia. Putin had to get China's permission to attack Ukraine, or at least a commitment from China that they would not raise objections to it. Otherwise, Putin would not have dared to move to Ukraine much of the strong military forces guarding Russian-held territories bordering China in the Far East, which for centuries (if not millennia) in the past once belonged to China, and to which China (if anything) has a stronger claim than Russia has to Ukraine.

The longer the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to go badly for Russia, and the more notorious the atrocities committed by them become in world opinion, the weaker and more villainous Russia will be perceived to be, and the greater will become the temptation and opportunity for China to try to strengthen its prestige and power in the world by becoming perceived as "the good guy" by intervening to help pressure Putin to pull out of Ukraine and end this fiasco and humanitarian catastrophe. This could additionally embolden China to claim the moral right to reacquire at least some of disputed Russian held territory that historically were once part of China.