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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31212 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Russian demands currently include destroying Ukrainian nation

I'm pretty sure if Ukraine willingly gave the rest of the donbass, made public statements about becoming neutral towards the russian culture and interests, including allowing russian to be taught again in schools, russia would make peace.

The issue with the dehumanization of the orcs and with the tribal manicheanization of russian interests that the western media and people parrot is that despite having some elements of truths, overall obviously leads to a criminal utilitarian disaster of continued intense human lives and economic attrition.

russia would make peace

Today yes. Tomorrow maybe. A few short years later no.

Giving in to salami tactics is choosing to lose one slice at a time. Russia now shows a pattern of invading Ukraine and the most recent invasion included an attempted decapitation of the Ukrainian government. It would be madness to start trading territories for extremely temporary peace now. Russia would merely grow hungrier by the eating.

So is it your belief that all Ukrainian territories pre-2014 can be recaptured through force?

I'm pretty sure if Ukraine willingly gave the rest of the donbass, made public statements about becoming neutral towards the russian culture and interests, including allowing russian to be taught again in schools, russia would make peace.

No they wouldn't. Why would they if they can take the whole thing in three days (as they were sure at the start)?

Also, guess what, Ukraine did all that. Almost all.

Donbass was occupied by Russia since 2014 (so were Crimea, which somehow the Russian propagandists always ignore) and Ukraine de-facto accepted this situation, due to inability of changing it. It obviously was just a stepping stone for Russians which only encouraged their appetites and showed them Ukraine is weak and the West is indifferent, so why not finish the job?

Ukraine has never been any threat to Russian culture - majority of Ukrainians speak Russian at least as the second language, for majority in large cities, especially in the East and the South, it is the primary language at home, huge number of Ukrainians worked in Russia, etc. Before Russia started its war with Ukraine in 2014, Russian was taught in schools freely and there was no restrictions - they came after 3 years of war, in 2017.

As for "interests", given that the official position of Russia is that Ukraine should not exist as a nation and should be owned by Russia instead, since "we are the same people" and Ukraine is "an artifact of Western meddling", it is impossible for Ukraine to both exist and "become neutral towards Russian interests" - you can not be neutral in the question of your own existence.

The issue with the dehumanization of the orcs and with the tribal manicheanization of russian interests that the western media and people parrot is that despite having some elements of truths

Like 100% of those elements. When somebody fires a stream of rockets each containing a ton of explosives into a densely populated city, pretending they do it because they don't teach enough Russian in the same city, and not allow 80% of the population that speaks Russian there to speak Russian more freely, and that's why they all have to be murdered by Russian rockets - I have no trouble figuring out which side is evil here. And no fancy words like "manicheanization" will change that. Whoever fired the rockets dehumanized themselves by their own actions.

russia would make peace.

Yeah, and sign peace promising respecting remaining part of Ukraine. Maybe it should be signed in Budapest and called Budapest Memorandum II ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum )

So is your position that no peace should ever be signed with Russia at all?

I am well aware of this broken promise but should we be consistent and take into account other broken promises?

The Ukrainian people voted in vast majority to stay in the USSR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum

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