Essentially they are sure that noone would vouch for Poland (also for Baltic countries). I've been shocked that well educated people, like software engineers, scientists, etc easily repeat the narrative of various propagandists and, moreover, they say that these are their own conclusions.
The people are convinced that NATO won't hold up to its promises.
Re nuclear weapons. I really doubt that this shit is still functional.
Ohh how I wish I could believe that. Once you have the fissile material together my understanding is that it's not that hard to actually build a bomb. The success rate of countries that have decided to start a nuclear program is pretty damn high, and through all those years of nuclear testing, there weren't a whole lot of duds that I know of.
Ed: rockets, targeting, etc are also tricky failure points.
Anyway, I agree it's not a great cause for optimism. It would only take a couple of them going off to give the world a bad time. If nothing else they're dirty bombs.
I would have reconsidered my approach to making connections if that happened to me :)
2) I'm not in touch with these people anymore though I've tried to reach everyone I was able to and get their opinions. My conclusion is: the propaganda is extremely effective. People there easily pronounce self-contradictive statements and easily turn to aggression.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-allies-step-up-sanct...
Some people have questioned the legitimacy of that request and of the breakaway governments, but a Washington Post poll in 2021 found that over half of the respondents from those breakaway republics wanted to join Russia and only 12% wanted to rejoin Ukraine:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/12/new-surve...
The separatists are under Russian control. The Russian army has been fighting alongside them since 2014, when they invaded Donbas.
In the 1991 referendum, voters in Dontesk and Luhansk overwhelmingly voted against being part of Russia. Per your source, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas, 75% want to be part of Ukraine. In the Russian-controlled part of Donbas, 57% want to be part of Russia.
First point, why such stark difference? I think it's because Russia is very good at propaganda and they exercise it heavily in areas under their control.
Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil. They don't care about the people in the separatist republics, that's just a marketing spin that almost everyone can see through. It's about imperialism, revenge, power. Putin has been planing to absorb at least Belarus and Ukraine since a very long time.
After all, Russia invaded the non-Russian controlled parts of Ukraine, which, per your source, are heavily against joining Russia.
Even if some parts of Ukraine wanted to join Russia, it wouldn't give Russia the right to annex the territory.
I'm curious why you have this view, what's your background - nationality, ethnicity, feelings about the West? (I'm from the Czech Republic.)
I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice.
> In the 1991 referendum...
A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?
> First point, why such stark difference?
An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.
> Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil.
If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.
> I'm curious why you have this view
I'm from the US. We are, first of all, a nation founded by "separatists", who also fought against other separatists to remain a single nation. I think each separatist cause needs to be evaluated on its merits, but in general (when something like slavery isn't involved) I think the people of a smaller region should be free to leave a larger nation if they wish. If I didn't believe that, I'd have to apply for British citizenship.
And the US is also a nation that's done exactly what Russia is doing, many times. We nearly started a war because Russian weapons were too close to the US (in Cuba), just as Russia demands that Western weapons stay out of Ukraine. And we've invaded many nations on pretexts weaker than Russia's in this war. If we accepted those actions as precedents, they would justify Russia's actions in this war. Everything I hear seems to be tinged by a bit of an "it's only OK when we do it" attitude, so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia.
And perhaps also for Ukraine. Ukraine has even demanded the return of Crimea, where even in 1991, only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia. After all that's happened, do you think Crimea really wants to return to Ukraine?
My ideal solution would be a fair and binding vote on separation for all the regions in question, but I know no party would accept that.
Does not dehumanize at all. Ukraine fell into political turmoil similar to January 6 riots in the US, and Russia used intelligence operatives to instigate further violent riots, quickly invaded parts of Ukraine taking advantage of the confusion, and established a military occupation. The so-called separatists were directly funded and supported by Russia in the earliest days, and then under the full control of the military admin after tanks rolled in.
As I've told before, the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed the same when they were investigating whether Russia is responsible for MH17 shootdown, which happened on occupied territories. Since Russia had full control, ECHR found them responsible.
Locals have had as much freedom to choose their future as Parisians in 1940.
That tells us nothing about whether the people of the region want to be part of Russia.
For that, we have to look to polls, like the one I cited, which tell us that the people living in the region do support Russia.
Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.
Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions where people can get murdered for publicly supporting some of the answers. I wonder what Parisians in 1940 would've answered if they got a phone call asking if they wanted to be a part of Germany - while people were disappearing.
> Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.
Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament. It's as if Congress had voted Trump out of the office after January 6th riots, Trump fled abroad and some unhappy Trumpers stormed further goverment buildings, and then Mexican army rolled in to support "separatists" and occupied Arizona and Texas, and then Mexican intelligence operatives cosplaying as independent freedom fighters asked Mexico to annex Arizona and Texas into Mexico.
That's a fair point - polling is difficult and unreliable in a contested region - but what other evidence can we look to?
Perhaps this: "an occupation against a hostile local population requires far more soldiers than a peaceful occupation of territory" as we've seen recently when Russia occupied regions not controlled by the separatists.[1]
And the Russian forces in the separatist regions before 2022 were far from sufficient to hold the regions if the local population had been hostile, especially with Ukrainian forces also fighting them.
> Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament
This isn't accurate. "On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych ...left the capital for Kharkiv, saying his car was shot at as he left Kyiv, and travelling next to Crimea, and eventually to exile in Russia."[2]
Then, because he had fled, "the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him from his post...on the grounds that he...effectively resigned."[2] He was not impeached.
It's more accurate to say that he was driven out of office by the riots, a fact that Parliament merely recognized.
(Also, your analogy to Jan 6th makes no sense, because in any such analogy, the rioters have to end up with the President they want, just as they did in Ukraine.)
1: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/01/politics/ukraine-assassinatio...
The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism, seizing the oppurtunity that internal turmoil offers. The specifics of that turmoil are largely irrelevant.
Do you have sources for that? It's the first I've heard of it and I'd like to learn more.
> The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism
Ok. Then to use an analogy that actually happened, perhaps the US invading Cuba under the "pretext" of separatism from Spain?
Or the US sending the navy to Panama to support its independence from Columbia (in exchange for the canal zone)?
Perhaps the best analogy is the Mexican-American war, in which the US took Texas (already de facto separate from Mexico but still claimed by them) and other territory from Mexico.
Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?
* Arsen Pavlov, bomb in elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsen_Pavlov
* Alexander Zakharchenko, bomb in cafe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Zakharchenko
* Mikhail Tolstykh, rocket lauched at his office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tolstykh
* Aleksey Mozgovoy, car bomb and ambush with machine guns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksey_Mozgovoy
Resistance mostly takes the form of hit-and-run attacks and sabotage against infrastructure. Here's a 2019 video of DNR communications facility being blown up: https://medium.com/dfrlab/blast-highlights-mgb-detentions-in...
The video was posted on social media with the following message:
> This was done with the goal to draw attention to the inhumane torture in the basements of the MGB. Cruel treatment and tying wires with electric current to peoples’ extremities in the “people’s” republics has become the norm. The people of the Donbas must protest against torture, or the fascist republic will remain unconnected.
The very effective use of long-range weapons against targets deep inside occupied territories has also been attributed to intelligence provided by locals.
Like with Kherson, we can expect detailed stories after LNR and DNR are liberated and it's safe to reveal what went on and how it was accomplished.
> Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?
The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with separatism. Whatever seeds of that may have existed in the first days, they were hijacked by Russian intelligence services and armed forces very early to prepare the stage for military invasion and occupation. The treatment of representatives of occupied territories as independent leaders even as late as of February 2022 (when they supposedly called Russia for help) is unsupported by facts. You can stage such "separatism" anywhere in favorable conditions when police and armed forces are overwhelmed and won't react fast enough.
No. I said they were under Russian control. Not that they're not human. The invading army is under Putin's control, that doesn't imply they're not human (although they regularly commit inhuman acts).
> A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?
The poll is heavily skewed by Russian propaganda in areas under their control.
> An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.
First, area of control is primarily determined by military, not civilians. Second, why would there be such a stark difference in opinion within Donbas? Doesn't make any sense.
> If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.
I don't mean that, it depends on the specific situation. But the separatists are just a distraction, it's not what this war is about. Russia invaded the area which was against joining Russia, simply because Putin wanted to subdue Ukraine. He couldn't care less about the separatists, they're just a tool. In fact, he brutally crushes actual organic separatist movements (Chechnya).
> so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia
You feel wrong then. What Russia is doing is bordering genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr...). The US is doing everything to help them. If Ukraine succeeds and becomes a prosperous liberal democracy, it would make the alliance of liberal democracies stronger and the US would benefit from that. That doesn't change that it's mostly right to help Ukraine.
Russia is effectively a dictatorship run by a psychopath who kills his opponents and uses mass torture to achieve his goals. The US is a democracy whose current leadership has a normal level of empathy.
> only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia
That's a majority... In any case, the annexation by Russia was wrong and should be reversed. After that, there may be talks about independence and a proper referendum.
What are the regions in question?
Should the about 25k of civilians murdered by Russia in Mariupol be automatically counted as votes against joining Russia?
What 2021 poll is that? I am aware of the ones in 2014 and the one in 2022, both of which could be described as meaningless Russian shams, and totally irrelevant .
2014 sham: https://www.thebulwark.com/what-really-happened-in-ukraine-i...
2022 sham: https://www.voanews.com/a/voting-ending-in-sham-annexation-p...
Paywalled, described as a "survey" in the headline, so not actually a poll. Why pick that specific one?
I picked this one because it's one of the few I've seen that seems the least bit trustworthy. If you know of a better one, I'd be happy to read it too.