It’s a very messy situation there in Ukraine, and my support goes to whatever will stop it. I have no sides in this game, my close ones are on both sides of the actual conflict and this is terrifying. Stop fighting, and then make talks.
That’s a disclaimer.
Now one correction on the post: what happens is not ethnic cleansing, and we should not call it that way, for it shows incompetence and may hurt us when talking about real ethnic cleansings, like Myanmar and whatnot. No one pushes Ukrainians away from their land or seeks to genocide the population (even though, as in any war, civilians get hurt dramatically). The proper wording would be forceful reintegration, which, I gotta stress, is super bad, but it is not cleansing.
Ukrainans do have an identity of their own, an identity that doesn’t go anywhere, including in those migrated to Russia long ago. Sure, Putin’s plan is to reinstate the idea of a brotherly nation, one we shared our core history with throughout almost entire timeline, but even if you look from the position of “turning Ukrainians into Russians” (which is still not how ethnic cleansing is defined), this is simply not possible. Again, I’m speaking this as Ukrainian AND Russian by bloodline, I know what I’m talking about.
What really happens is an invasion, an occupation of the country in order to reinstate a puppet state which has been there, partially, before 2014. It is more akin to USSR driving tanks through Eastern Europe than anything else. Essentially making “friendly” puppet regimes as a form of political control. Very sad Putin didn’t learn from past mistakes, doomed to repeat them through a never-before-seen massacre - the one my people, on each side, struggle with.
Russians steal Ukrainian children, they’ve multiple times been caught mass executing civilians too… Their side iterates that Ukraine doesn’t exist, like Putin implied.
Putin wants to eradicate the Ukrainian national identity.
The official narrative is that Ukrainian government is illegitimate and ruled by Nazis, abd the country needs to be “liberated” from their rule. It doesn’t strongly assume destruction of Ukraine the state, but clearly indicates that Russia or its puppets should be in charge.
And even then, there are many stateless nations, and I don’t think Ukrainian identity is the one that is easy to erase.
Absolutely, it doesn’t justify any actions of Russia in Ukraine, and I never said so.
I just say the Putin’s endgame doesn’t necessarily include Ukraine losing statehood (but it would certainly become a puppet state with all the negative consequences).
Could you please send said essay? Genuine request.
I answered on “deportation of children” in another thread. Long story short - those are kids from orphanages in Donbass, and I’d rather have them moved to safety (which both Russia and Ukraine do) than left to die in a warzone. Don’t see how it constitutes ethnic cleansing.
But even it mentions those things mostly through Ukrainian-sided official statements, which include things like “million Crimean kids deported to Moscow since 2014” (sorry, what?), which destroys a lot of trust in the content of the statement.
Still, some children are taken to Russia, this is true, and a lot can be done differently. I support the idea to take kids from orphanages situated in a literal warzone (don’t you?), but I don’t like the idea of teaching them all things Russian, although it should be noted they are taken from the Donbass region which has always been heavily dominated by Russian, not Ukrainian, culture and language. Those people are and were already closer to Russia than to Ukraine, they have strong ties to Russia, which is why the separatist movements emerged there in the first place after 2014.
Same are the reasons Crimea has got into Russian occupation with absolute majority of locals cheering and welcoming this (this is true, I’ve been on the ground at the time) - the region is dominated by ethnic Russians, and they never really had strong cultural ties to Ukraine in the first place.
Again, delivering those kids a more balanced picture would absolutely be amazing. But it is not literal conversion from Ukrainian culture to a Russian one.
Man you can fuck off pretending to “have no side in this game”. You are a blatantly obvious Russian apologist, and everyone knows it. Go back to your lemmygrad account and stay there.
Could y’all please stop assuming the worst intentions and also sending me to Lemmygrad, the place I was banned from for having my own head?
I step heavily against the war in Ukraine, and I’ve been part of the anti-war protests that broke out in 2022. My relatives live in a city shelled by Russian army, they often live without electricity (got a battery pack for astronomical money, those are hot in Ukraine rn for obvious reasons), and at the same time some of the family’s men are hiding from Ukrainian drafts that are carried out literally on the streets. I don’t want them to die, in their homes or on the battlefield. Neither do they.
And at the same time, I don’t think saying “Russia bad boo-hoo not gonna listen to anything” is gonna help anything at all if your goal is to save people’s lives. I add important context (here: orphans are taken from warzones of Donbass to safety, by both sides of the conflict) that might be helpful at looking on some of the things from a different perspective.
I’m gonna clash and I do clash with both Ukraine-saint mob and actual Russian apologists (this gets no less violent), and I’m gonna do this again and again, because angry mob is the enemy of the truth. And when we don’t do what is actually best, when we fanatically embrace a position (which most of Lemmy appears to do) - we make people suffer way more than they should. On this particular matter, it’s kids that suffer.
You can call me Russian apologist. They can call me a Western bootlicker. At the end of the day, I do what I think is right - and if you have something to counter my words with, I’m ready to listen.
Fuck off. The only way this ends is for Russians to learn to stop murdering their neighbors. There is one belligerent and one defendant. The belligerent must cease belligerent behavior.
In an ideal world, revenge always finds a way, but this time the war can literally drag on till the last Ukrainian soldier, and who will stand to benefit from that?
Without international troops stepping in (which would be a hugely consequential escalation against a nuclear nation), Ukraine just really can’t turn the tides of the war, which was clearly demonstrated by failure of the counter-offensive.
My point is, as much as I’d like Putin to respond for everything and borders set back to where they should be and reparations paid, this is not feasible. This is not gonna happen magically. And while people daydream of that outcome, thousands of others - my close ones among them - get killed, again and again, in a stupid stalemate that benefits no one and hurts everybody.
No one was there to stop US when they invaded half the world. No one is there to truly stop Russia. Because superpowers do that, and, as terrible as it is (and my sincere hope goes it can be solved in the future), your sheer determination to crash them and make them stop bullying their neughbors isn’t enough.
We need to protect human’s lives, we need to stop the bloodshed and negotiate real security guarantees for Ukraine - not from Russia, but from EU & US, so that attacking Ukraine ever again would be a military and political suicide.
Stop your revenge lust and think of actual people, right there, forced to both sides of the frontline. They die. They die for nothing. They don’t turn the tides.
The bloodline argument only goes for insider knowledge of how those two nations interact and assimilate (I have a lot of russian Ukrainians as friends and family, and am mixed blood myself), plus it highlights again that I have close ones on both sides and I’m neither pro-Russia nor pro-Ukraine.
Sure, this doesn’t make me a political expert in the slightest, though if you have exact counterpoints - feel welcome to voice them.
Also, for the record, I’ve been banned on Lemmygrad, and if you can’t reason and only go crowd downvoting, you’re not defender of the truth but an angry mob.
If anyone can tell me why they downvoted this additional explanation, I’d be supper happy. But it’s easier to not read, push arrow down and claim me Nazi.
Did you honestly read the last paragraph, for example? The one where I talked about similarities between current situation and what USSR has done in the past and denouncing both?
Or did you skim the text and went straight into anger posting?
It’s a very messy situation there in Ukraine, and my support goes to whatever will stop it. I have no sides in this game, my close ones are on both sides of the actual conflict and this is terrifying. Stop fighting, and then make talks.
That’s a disclaimer.
Now one correction on the post: what happens is not ethnic cleansing, and we should not call it that way, for it shows incompetence and may hurt us when talking about real ethnic cleansings, like Myanmar and whatnot. No one pushes Ukrainians away from their land or seeks to genocide the population (even though, as in any war, civilians get hurt dramatically). The proper wording would be forceful reintegration, which, I gotta stress, is super bad, but it is not cleansing.
Ukrainans do have an identity of their own, an identity that doesn’t go anywhere, including in those migrated to Russia long ago. Sure, Putin’s plan is to reinstate the idea of a brotherly nation, one we shared our core history with throughout almost entire timeline, but even if you look from the position of “turning Ukrainians into Russians” (which is still not how ethnic cleansing is defined), this is simply not possible. Again, I’m speaking this as Ukrainian AND Russian by bloodline, I know what I’m talking about.
What really happens is an invasion, an occupation of the country in order to reinstate a puppet state which has been there, partially, before 2014. It is more akin to USSR driving tanks through Eastern Europe than anything else. Essentially making “friendly” puppet regimes as a form of political control. Very sad Putin didn’t learn from past mistakes, doomed to repeat them through a never-before-seen massacre - the one my people, on each side, struggle with.
Russians steal Ukrainian children, they’ve multiple times been caught mass executing civilians too… Their side iterates that Ukraine doesn’t exist, like Putin implied.
Putin wants to eradicate the Ukrainian national identity.
The official narrative is that Ukrainian government is illegitimate and ruled by Nazis, abd the country needs to be “liberated” from their rule. It doesn’t strongly assume destruction of Ukraine the state, but clearly indicates that Russia or its puppets should be in charge.
And even then, there are many stateless nations, and I don’t think Ukrainian identity is the one that is easy to erase.
Okay but we, over here on the good side of the sanity line, know that’s not true, right? It justifies nothing.
Absolutely, it doesn’t justify any actions of Russia in Ukraine, and I never said so.
I just say the Putin’s endgame doesn’t necessarily include Ukraine losing statehood (but it would certainly become a puppet state with all the negative consequences).
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Could you please send said essay? Genuine request.
I answered on “deportation of children” in another thread. Long story short - those are kids from orphanages in Donbass, and I’d rather have them moved to safety (which both Russia and Ukraine do) than left to die in a warzone. Don’t see how it constitutes ethnic cleansing.
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Thank you! Will give a read.
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Fucking what.
For starters, US press releases should not be your go-to source of factual information. Ever. It’s like going to the site of Moscow Kremlin.
Here’s a press release from the United Nations still confirming your point of view, but which is way more credible: https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15395.doc.htm
But even it mentions those things mostly through Ukrainian-sided official statements, which include things like “million Crimean kids deported to Moscow since 2014” (sorry, what?), which destroys a lot of trust in the content of the statement.
Still, some children are taken to Russia, this is true, and a lot can be done differently. I support the idea to take kids from orphanages situated in a literal warzone (don’t you?), but I don’t like the idea of teaching them all things Russian, although it should be noted they are taken from the Donbass region which has always been heavily dominated by Russian, not Ukrainian, culture and language. Those people are and were already closer to Russia than to Ukraine, they have strong ties to Russia, which is why the separatist movements emerged there in the first place after 2014.
Same are the reasons Crimea has got into Russian occupation with absolute majority of locals cheering and welcoming this (this is true, I’ve been on the ground at the time) - the region is dominated by ethnic Russians, and they never really had strong cultural ties to Ukraine in the first place.
Again, delivering those kids a more balanced picture would absolutely be amazing. But it is not literal conversion from Ukrainian culture to a Russian one.
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Man you can fuck off pretending to “have no side in this game”. You are a blatantly obvious Russian apologist, and everyone knows it. Go back to your lemmygrad account and stay there.
Could y’all please stop assuming the worst intentions and also sending me to Lemmygrad, the place I was banned from for having my own head?
I step heavily against the war in Ukraine, and I’ve been part of the anti-war protests that broke out in 2022. My relatives live in a city shelled by Russian army, they often live without electricity (got a battery pack for astronomical money, those are hot in Ukraine rn for obvious reasons), and at the same time some of the family’s men are hiding from Ukrainian drafts that are carried out literally on the streets. I don’t want them to die, in their homes or on the battlefield. Neither do they.
And at the same time, I don’t think saying “Russia bad boo-hoo not gonna listen to anything” is gonna help anything at all if your goal is to save people’s lives. I add important context (here: orphans are taken from warzones of Donbass to safety, by both sides of the conflict) that might be helpful at looking on some of the things from a different perspective.
I’m gonna clash and I do clash with both Ukraine-saint mob and actual Russian apologists (this gets no less violent), and I’m gonna do this again and again, because angry mob is the enemy of the truth. And when we don’t do what is actually best, when we fanatically embrace a position (which most of Lemmy appears to do) - we make people suffer way more than they should. On this particular matter, it’s kids that suffer.
You can call me Russian apologist. They can call me a Western bootlicker. At the end of the day, I do what I think is right - and if you have something to counter my words with, I’m ready to listen.
Fuck off. The only way this ends is for Russians to learn to stop murdering their neighbors. There is one belligerent and one defendant. The belligerent must cease belligerent behavior.
I knew I’d get some knee-jerk hate here.
In an ideal world, revenge always finds a way, but this time the war can literally drag on till the last Ukrainian soldier, and who will stand to benefit from that?
Without international troops stepping in (which would be a hugely consequential escalation against a nuclear nation), Ukraine just really can’t turn the tides of the war, which was clearly demonstrated by failure of the counter-offensive.
My point is, as much as I’d like Putin to respond for everything and borders set back to where they should be and reparations paid, this is not feasible. This is not gonna happen magically. And while people daydream of that outcome, thousands of others - my close ones among them - get killed, again and again, in a stupid stalemate that benefits no one and hurts everybody.
No one was there to stop US when they invaded half the world. No one is there to truly stop Russia. Because superpowers do that, and, as terrible as it is (and my sincere hope goes it can be solved in the future), your sheer determination to crash them and make them stop bullying their neughbors isn’t enough.
We need to protect human’s lives, we need to stop the bloodshed and negotiate real security guarantees for Ukraine - not from Russia, but from EU & US, so that attacking Ukraine ever again would be a military and political suicide.
Stop your revenge lust and think of actual people, right there, forced to both sides of the frontline. They die. They die for nothing. They don’t turn the tides.
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Regardless of your bloodline- you’re ENTIRELY wrong on this.
The bloodline argument only goes for insider knowledge of how those two nations interact and assimilate (I have a lot of russian Ukrainians as friends and family, and am mixed blood myself), plus it highlights again that I have close ones on both sides and I’m neither pro-Russia nor pro-Ukraine.
Sure, this doesn’t make me a political expert in the slightest, though if you have exact counterpoints - feel welcome to voice them.
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pick one
Also, for the record, I’ve been banned on Lemmygrad, and if you can’t reason and only go crowd downvoting, you’re not defender of the truth but an angry mob.
If anyone can tell me why they downvoted this additional explanation, I’d be supper happy. But it’s easier to not read, push arrow down and claim me Nazi.
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Did you honestly read the last paragraph, for example? The one where I talked about similarities between current situation and what USSR has done in the past and denouncing both?
Or did you skim the text and went straight into anger posting?