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Comment by tlear | Hacker News Reader

Who won and lost is not clear. West always writes Russian's off too early. They did subjugate Chechnya. In fact they were so effective that now their shock troops in Ukraine are Chechens.

On other hand every nation is born in blood and this is Ukraine's real birth. Likely the country will be smaller, lots of people will die, but this is the time it becomes a real nation(well it started in 2014). It is time to prepare for insurgency in the west Ukraine. It took Stalin 6 years to finish off UPA. But they were surrounded and without any help, plus they faced NKVD. Ukranian insurgency in the west with arms flowing through Carpathy will make Russian regret they were ever born. There will be nothing pretty about it.. but there will be no victory for the tsar this time.

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> They did subjugate Chechnya. In fact they were so effective that now their shock troops in Ukraine are Chechens

They leveled Chechnya and finally had to cut a deal with Ramzan Kadyrov and his father to get him to switch sides in exchange for putting him in charge. I don't see a Kadyrov like figure popping up in Ukraine.

> this is Ukraine's real birth

Nestor Makhno would have probably disagreed with you.

Bogdan Chelmnitsky, Ivan Mazepa, and diverse other Hetmans would probably disagree with Makhno. As would Askold, Dir and Prince Oleg...

But, hey, TIL: Makhno invented the Technical. Cool, thanks!

I think you could even argue that the 2nd Hetman constituted a Ukrainian state with some sense of a separate Ukrainian identity (Russian officer corps aside). I'm not really making any statement here about the situation prior to WWI, as I'm way less familiar. I'm only pointing out that there existed the idea of a Ukranian state made of Ukranian people prior to the dissolution of the USSR.

Yeah, Makhno was a really interesting guy.

Any victory Putin has will be entirely phyrric. The west are determined to inflict severe economic damage on Russia. Which considering they represent about 50% of global GDP they are well capable of doing. Putin's reached the point of desperation where's he's hinting at using Nuclear weapons. That of course will never happen, the generals will put a bullet in him before they let him destroy their country.It almost feels like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, they roused a sleeping giant in the form of the USA which went on to crush them. This time round the sleeping giant is the EU and they're going to flatten Russia economically.

In the long run present day nominal GDP doesn't matter. For example, after world war I Germany had a very bad economic situation. Land, natural resources and culture matter. Russia is the largest country on Earth. China is the largest population and largest economy. India is a close second. The fact is Eurasia does not need the North Atlantic Empire.

Time will tell but much of the vaunted "Western" prosperity is a fading high from the now 70 year old post war era. It is not inevitable that America leads forever.

I wouldn't be too cocksure.

Also, things like population trends or nominal GDP are very changeable over the course of short decades. What matters is resources, land and will and unity of purpose.

> It is not inevitable that America leads forever.

I agree. At the same time, it seems fairly fundamental to me that people in a free functioning democratic society will always be more productive and able to outcompete those suffering under a dictatorship.

> Any victory Putin has will be entirely phyrric

His victory is pyrric from a western, democratic point of view. From his point of view, it's a win - Russia is an authoritarian regime; the population (up to an extent) doesn't matter. People actually started to be jailed due to protesting already.

I don't think it's realistic that an insurrection will happen, but it'd be interesting to read opinions from Russian people.

>In fact they were so effective that now their shock troops in Ukraine are Chechens.

afaik they were the first to burn in bombed convoy.

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