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Notes -
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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.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was as much a nationalist move as it was a failure of the political and social situation in the USSR at the time.
Ukraine is, like many European countries, strongly nationalist. European countries, generally speaking, are very nationalist, even if their elected leaders and the decisionmakers in Brussels aren't - half the anger over the immigration fiasco is that the largesse given to immigrants from North Africa is seen as selling out the country to invaders, so naturally political parties with a stronger nationalist bent are gaining all over Europe.
More importantly, Eastern Europe has felt the touch of Russian control before, and they strongly dislike it. They are going to pick up rifles. Whether the fight was futile, they're being used or gaslit by western intelligence agencies, they still decided to fight when it was largely considered a foregone conclusion that Russia would steamroll them. The fight is not about winning, same as it has since the beginning, but about hurting the enemy and making the Russians pay in blood for every inch.
The older Ukrainians remember life under Russia. They'd rather die than go back to that. The war, and subsequent resistance, caught the limp-wristed bureaucrats by surprise, because they have no idea or concept of what nationalism means anymore, other than a bunch of dimly-remembered, mealy-mouthed paeans about how it was this great evil that was responsible for two world wars.
Further west, the hand-wringing from European leaders is more practical; they worry about Russia's expansionist tendencies not stopping at Ukraine, and America not footing the bill for their defense.
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