The Russian commander of the “Vostok” Battalion fighting in southern Ukraine said on Thursday that Ukraine will not be defeated and suggested that Russia freeze the war along current frontlines.
Alexander Khodakovsky made the candid concession yesterday on his Telegram channel after Russian forces, including his own troops, were devastatingly defeated by Ukrainian marines earlier this week at Urozhaine in the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk regional border area.
“Can we bring down Ukraine militarily? Now and in the near future, no,” Khodakovsky, a former official of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said yesterday.
“When I talk to myself about our destiny in this war, I mean that we will not crawl forward, like the [Ukrainians], turning everything into [destroyed] Bakhmuts in our path. And, I do not foresee the easy occupation of cities,” he said.
Muscovites? Is every Russian soldier from Moscow? What?
It's some stupid historical revisionism Ukrainian nationalists are trying to do. The medieval Rus was centered around Kiev, and both Ukraine and Russia share that tradition, but Ukrainian nationalist hate the thought of sharing history with Russians. So they have created this new history where Russian Empire was actually just a creation of "violent Muscovite conquest," often alongside the racist implication that "the Moscovites" (including modern day citizens of the Russian Federation) were unable to shake off their "asiatic/Mongolian" influence and that's what makes them uniquely savage and evil etc etc... While the wholesome Ukrainians are of course enlightened and western
That medieval argument is utter nonsense, Moscow was one of the just few significant Russian culture centers which wasn't conquered, just vassalized... and Kiev wasn't even among them. It was burned down by Mongols so hard that the center of Kievan Rus was moved to Halych and even the orthodox metropolitan bishop moved from Kiev first to Vladimir and then to Moscow. Then it was conquered by Lithuania and after the Union of Lublin passed down to Poland from which it was partitioned between Austria and Russia.
So if Moscow, which was vassal of Golden Horde for 200 years is a "Mongol Horde" then what is a Ukraine which was part of GH, Lithuania, Poland, Austria, Russia, USSR for over 700 years? Are they "Mongol-Lithuanian-Polish-Austrian-Russian-Soviet Horde" or what?
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I think it just means people from Moscow and references Muscovy.
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Outside of the historical context of pre-Russia Grand Duchy of Moscow (and the "Muscovy" itself is a latin exonym), it's the dogwhistle for the "asiatic hordes" nazi slogan. Think about the contexts when it's used in current times and it checks out nearly every time.
Nah, they have some bizarre choose your own adventure version of history. Don't worry about it, it's really stupid.
The language means "those aligned with the Moscow regime"I think
No, it's a race thing.
The Russian Empire started with Muscovy. They have age-old traditions such as forcing people they conquered to conquer more territory for them so, no, generally speaking Russian soldiers are from anywhere but Moscow.
You're describing every empire that has ever existed. This is not a special thing "they" and they alone do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)
Yeah but at least in Europe we generally stopped doing that shit. Serbia had a bit of a go at it but generally it's been quiet since WWII... with the exception of Muscovy.
Imperialism didn't stop with WWII, I was a bit imprecise, see e.g. Algeria. Also ask Estonians and Poles and... a ton of others how much imperialism had stopped before the dissolution of the USSR.
imperialism isn't "when a country goes into another country", it's a specific relationship of domination and resource extraction and impoverishment of the people living in that country in order to exploit it for the benefit of the imperial core (more often, its bourgeoisie).
it's really disgusting to see people using the language of the left to describe the USSR abolishing homelessness and poverty in their constituent states, and building schools and homes and providing jobs and extremely low costs of living, as if this is even remotely comparable to the horrors that the Europeans and United States have wrought in developing countries around the world, including sweatshop and plantation slavery, forced starvations, and genocides.
"but they did those good things authoritarianly!" a) literally who gives a shit, and b) every government does everything authoritarianly, it's the definition of authoritarian. ripping away resources from the rich landowners and distributing them to the poor is extremely authoritarian and I definitely support doing that
Imperialism is when USSR tells the GDR to send over cars in "fair exchange" for canned fish the GDR has no interest in. End of story. And yes that trade happened.
I'm not sure why you think that's damning, there's some proportional amount of canned fish which is worth as much as a car, right?
A global system of exploitation exists that starves millions every year and disposses even more.
"But I had to buy fish once in my industrialized country with a high quality of life".
You don't know what imperialism is even though it was just explained to you.