I've been watching the Ukrainian conflict off and on since 2014, you are fucking delusional. Fuck man, even people like Mearsheimer have been talking about this stuff for half a decade now. Fine, live in your bubble, it doesn't fucking matter what your or my opinion is, it's not like any of these processes are democratic in the slightest. Enjoy the show, war-piggie.
Don't you love when the shelling of civilians is ok since it is the "russian narrative" thank god this person told me those children getting torn apart by artillery the past 8 years don't count as humans. Otherwise one might have to give a shit beyond their immediate news cycle
Don't you understand, they were breaking the Minsk agreement by fighting back! As if they were independent political entities that weren't recognized on the international stage or something.
I think the weirdest part of watching this thing is people not understanding how pissed people in Russia were that Russia wasn't giving full military backing to the DNR and LNR. And I don't mean 'oh the government was trying to drum up support for the eventual war'. No, I mean, they were cracking down on 'pro-war' and ultra-nationalists both IRL and online to the degree they could get away with it, people who were calling for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that very year.
This was when the Russian government was literally hosting the Winter Olympics, they were trying to make nice and play the larger political game even after the 'Revolution of Dignity' and the subsequent annexation of Crimea. I think the problem is that we are now at a point where those elements that seek negotiation in Russian society are completely out-weighed by those that want the confrontation, the war, and I completely misjudged how large those elements in Russia were because of the language barrier and Russian censorship. They are still there, in the Russian banking and finance sectors, but the Western attitude and negotiation towards Russia has been cutting their feet out from under them for years. It is always one-step forward, two-steps back diplomacy, never any trust on either side. It was bound to erupt at some point, but I thought it would be preceded by another crisis (which I guess, COVID was?).
Yeah as far as I can tell the opinion is Russia was more overwhelmingly that it was abandoning the Donbas peoples than the opinion of the ROI on their government during the Troubles. The separation is so recent for one, and a lot of Russians still view populations like those in Donbas as part of the Federation, or at least a sort of informal commonwealth
All of these areas were considered to be 'up for negotiation' after the dissolution of the USSR. It was part of the whole 'exercise of freedom' that areas could democratically negotiate where they ended up. Except those negotiations never actually happened for most of the oblasts, nor were there ways for them to do that after the constitutions were established in the 90's (which bang up fucking job they did on those, it's almost like it's just a scrap of paper).
In a classic case of 'freedom' and it's consequences, instead we are stuck with this complete clusterfuck, because this whole idea 'regions democratically negotiating for their own place in the world' doesn't and has never fucking worked once. Idk why we even bother entertaining it politically as an idea of a thing that can actually happen, it never actually works. The best case scenario is something like the annexation of Crimea, where there is already a large military base present and a very pro-military populace far away from the original nations military, but most of them always just end up like Catalonia, where any chance to even have a fair election is fucked by nationalists beating people in the streets. And even then, it's not like Crimea was unopposed, the Majirs still boycotted the referendum (for good reason they were already occupied by that point). We may as well just say "Alright everybody stay where you are. These arbitrary lines are God-Given and we have no right to fuck with them. If you do, we are obligated to kill you on sight."
I really recommend that you just watch most of Patrick Lancaster's reporting from before the war even started. He covered most of this stuff in detail, most of which never reached official press on either side. It depends on if you trust his translation and if he is getting honest interviews (which imo he is and he is, as even now most people generally have mixed feelings on both the Ukrainian and Russian military, and mostly want tbe fighting to stop, with their only real difference being that when Russia comes in they usually bring food and water, but most universally condemn the neo-Nazi groups that were there previously). It's a lot of shit, no one article, which is why it is difficult to convey.
As far as I can tell the 'ethnic cleansing' hadn't actually started in earnest, mostly due to the efforts of the DLR and DPR. What had happened at that point was the outlawing of teaching Russian language in schools (a direct violation of the minority rights that had been formally guaranteed by the Constitution), the killing of open leftist political members who demonstrated, and roving gangs of neo-Nazis outside of places like Mariupol who were known to beat, rape, or murder people after dark regardless of ethnicity.
That being said, large sections of these neo-nazi and none neo-nazi groups definitely talked about 'cleaning' the Donbas on a regular basis, though what exactly they meant by that was always cagey. However, from what we can see from towns that have been 'liberated' from Russian control, this basically means killing or jailing anyone suspected of being Russian collaborators, which would have meant most of the DNR and LNR, basically every military aged male.
I've been watching the Ukrainian conflict off and on since 2014, you are fucking delusional. Fuck man, even people like Mearsheimer have been talking about this stuff for half a decade now. Fine, live in your bubble, it doesn't fucking matter what your or my opinion is, it's not like any of these processes are democratic in the slightest. Enjoy the show, war-piggie.
Don't you love when the shelling of civilians is ok since it is the "russian narrative" thank god this person told me those children getting torn apart by artillery the past 8 years don't count as humans. Otherwise one might have to give a shit beyond their immediate news cycle
Don't you understand, they were breaking the Minsk agreement by fighting back! As if they were independent political entities that weren't recognized on the international stage or something.
I think the weirdest part of watching this thing is people not understanding how pissed people in Russia were that Russia wasn't giving full military backing to the DNR and LNR. And I don't mean 'oh the government was trying to drum up support for the eventual war'. No, I mean, they were cracking down on 'pro-war' and ultra-nationalists both IRL and online to the degree they could get away with it, people who were calling for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that very year.
This was when the Russian government was literally hosting the Winter Olympics, they were trying to make nice and play the larger political game even after the 'Revolution of Dignity' and the subsequent annexation of Crimea. I think the problem is that we are now at a point where those elements that seek negotiation in Russian society are completely out-weighed by those that want the confrontation, the war, and I completely misjudged how large those elements in Russia were because of the language barrier and Russian censorship. They are still there, in the Russian banking and finance sectors, but the Western attitude and negotiation towards Russia has been cutting their feet out from under them for years. It is always one-step forward, two-steps back diplomacy, never any trust on either side. It was bound to erupt at some point, but I thought it would be preceded by another crisis (which I guess, COVID was?).
Yeah as far as I can tell the opinion is Russia was more overwhelmingly that it was abandoning the Donbas peoples than the opinion of the ROI on their government during the Troubles. The separation is so recent for one, and a lot of Russians still view populations like those in Donbas as part of the Federation, or at least a sort of informal commonwealth
All of these areas were considered to be 'up for negotiation' after the dissolution of the USSR. It was part of the whole 'exercise of freedom' that areas could democratically negotiate where they ended up. Except those negotiations never actually happened for most of the oblasts, nor were there ways for them to do that after the constitutions were established in the 90's (which bang up fucking job they did on those, it's almost like it's just a scrap of paper).
In a classic case of 'freedom' and it's consequences, instead we are stuck with this complete clusterfuck, because this whole idea 'regions democratically negotiating for their own place in the world' doesn't and has never fucking worked once. Idk why we even bother entertaining it politically as an idea of a thing that can actually happen, it never actually works. The best case scenario is something like the annexation of Crimea, where there is already a large military base present and a very pro-military populace far away from the original nations military, but most of them always just end up like Catalonia, where any chance to even have a fair election is fucked by nationalists beating people in the streets. And even then, it's not like Crimea was unopposed, the Majirs still boycotted the referendum (for good reason they were already occupied by that point). We may as well just say "Alright everybody stay where you are. These arbitrary lines are God-Given and we have no right to fuck with them. If you do, we are obligated to kill you on sight."
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I really recommend that you just watch most of Patrick Lancaster's reporting from before the war even started. He covered most of this stuff in detail, most of which never reached official press on either side. It depends on if you trust his translation and if he is getting honest interviews (which imo he is and he is, as even now most people generally have mixed feelings on both the Ukrainian and Russian military, and mostly want tbe fighting to stop, with their only real difference being that when Russia comes in they usually bring food and water, but most universally condemn the neo-Nazi groups that were there previously). It's a lot of shit, no one article, which is why it is difficult to convey.
As far as I can tell the 'ethnic cleansing' hadn't actually started in earnest, mostly due to the efforts of the DLR and DPR. What had happened at that point was the outlawing of teaching Russian language in schools (a direct violation of the minority rights that had been formally guaranteed by the Constitution), the killing of open leftist political members who demonstrated, and roving gangs of neo-Nazis outside of places like Mariupol who were known to beat, rape, or murder people after dark regardless of ethnicity.
That being said, large sections of these neo-nazi and none neo-nazi groups definitely talked about 'cleaning' the Donbas on a regular basis, though what exactly they meant by that was always cagey. However, from what we can see from towns that have been 'liberated' from Russian control, this basically means killing or jailing anyone suspected of being Russian collaborators, which would have meant most of the DNR and LNR, basically every military aged male.
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A lot of his civilian stuff focuses on that, and I think you can find some articles on it, somewhere. It's pretty well documented at this point.
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