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I've banged this drum for a while, so excuse me for repeating myself, but...
What are the Ukrainian people afraid of, being conquered by Russia? I mean I understand the process of being conquered is violent and deadly, but post surrender, what are they afraid of? Their government is already among the most corrupt governments in the world, and their "Democracy" was already a proxy battle between Russian and USA color revolutions for most of their lifetimes. If they stuck with Western Europe their Jewish President will just adopt a program of flooding them with 3rd worlders as "Replacement Migration" and they'd be ethnically cleansed inside 50 years anyways. The only hope the Ukrainian people have of surviving as a people as opposed to a label on a map is with Russia.
It, frankly, blows my damned mind that European leaders will let virtually every nation on Earth walk all over them, colonize their lands, commit mass rapes, murders, terrorism and ethnic cleansing, but somehow Russia's action are a step too far. There are nearly less English left in London than their are Ukrainians left in Kiev. What's been the greater crime?
What if world leaders just put on blinders, and let Russian people drive all the way to Kiev without firing a shot? What if they told fictions about how they are just immigrants looking for a better life? How dare you accuse them of having dual loyalties? They're perfectly capable of it. It's what they've been doing the last 50 years.
Being dead, some of them. Being subject to the same treatment as inhabitants of medieval city would be after being conquered by a foreign army (pillage, rape, all that stuff). Of course, we're in civilized time, so most pillage would not be in the form of literally Russian soldiers going door to door and taking all valuable stuff. I mean, that happened too, many times, but there's just too many doors. The main pillage would be that Russians would own everything and you would have to pay them for being their bitch. And Russia has a flourishing prison culture - in fact, most of Russian culture by now is quasi-prison-culture or heavily influenced by it - so they know very well how to make somebody their bitch and how to extract maximum value from that. If you read the history of the 90s in Russia, it happened all over - until Putin took over. In fact, one of the reasons why it was so easy for Putin to take over was because the shit that's was going on was so bad, people were thinking anything that is going to stop it would be better. So, that's what would happen to Ukraine - and since its the conquered land, it won't stop for a long while. Plus, of course, anybody who has any genuinely Ukrainian nationalist sentiment, would be ruthlessly eliminated.
There's no chance of Ukrainians surviving as "people" - collectively - as opposed to just collection of humans with no common identity, if Russia wins this war (by wins I mean full victory, capturing Kiev, overthrowing the government, etc). The whole premise of the war is that there's no such thing as Ukrainian people - it's just some Russians that are stupid enough to speak in weird broken Russian and sell out to the West, and it's time to put a stop to it. And if Russians win, they definitely will put a full stop to it. I mean, they won't murder everyone, it's not Africa, and they may allow people to call themselves "Ukrainians" if they behave, but no idea of having anything like a nation with independent identity would not be tolerated. Some Ukrainians find it unacceptable. If you want to understand why Ukrainians fight, you need to understand them, as they are, and not some weird caricature existing only in your mind.
That's complete nonsense. I mean, if you know only about problems in a handful of Western European countries, you could conclude every country is like that, but it's not. Ukraine has completely different problems and Zelensky has no intention and no inclination to do any of that, neither did any Ukrainian politicians. I realize how you want to present it as another case of evil Joos doing evil Joo stuff, but that's just ignorant nonsense, not discussing real facts on the ground.
At this specific level, there simply isn't that much difference between the two countries. "Until Putin took over" the trajectories of them were quite similar.
Well, yes and no. You need to look at it in dynamics, not at one moment, but over the time. In early 90s, yes, things were pretty similar, except more money in Russia, but Ukraine had its share too. Then the paths diverged. Russia essentially rejected the "Western" way - in part because people implementing it were also grotesquely corrupt, though Putin's gang (which weren't strictly speaking his yet, just the one he belonged to) were about as corrupt, but not obviously so. There were also other factors, including the Chechen war, terrorism, etc. - and, of course, the conscious choice by Putin to set up Russia in opposition to the West.
Ukraine, while being close beside in corruption, has had also strong independence/nationalist vibes - which at times had been anti-Russian but not necessarily so. There had been a lot of fractions, and most of them were for at least keeping decent relations with Russia, while staying independent. Ukraine leaned towards integrating with Europe (remember, the explosive wokification by that time hadn't happen yet and "Europe" didn't mean "import Syrians, introduce censorship and trans your kids" yet). That said, for a while they hadn't been that far apart - in fact, at one time the most popular politician, among all alive, in Ukraine had been none other but Vladimir Putin. Putin overplayed his hand though, and helped to install Yanukovich, who had proven too much even for Ukrainians that were used to corruption.
And when it went sour, instead of taking a step back and trying to play the same long game he played before - after all, there were a lot of corrupt politicians in Ukraine, and Putin probably could choose another one to puppet and keep manipulating Ukraine while seemingly staying out of the fray openly - he decided to put the boot down. In Russia, putting the boot down worked spectacularly well - billions of dollars invested in Russian opposition led to it having absolutely zero power very soon and Putin eliminating any trace of dissent. Not only that, but the "moral power" that the dissidents held in the USSR, is mostly gone too - except for rare personalities like Nemtsov or Navalny, who Putin just openly murdered with nobody being able to object, there's not ever any influential opposition figures. In Ukraine, however, it did not work at all. That's about where the trajectories, previously following if not the same then adjacent paths, split drastically. Putin chose to build his new Russian Empire, Ukraine preferred to stay out of it.
So yes, the genesis is common, and a lot of common themes, but there are very important differences.
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