I'm not an apologist, I think Russia is currently [insert long list of bad things here], I'm just impressed at the speed we went from indifference towards Russians, or tacit approval (oligarchs in London), to sanctioned hatred.
You don't care very much for most people by default. Even if you think they're not very good people, because caring takes effort. But once they punch you or a friend in the face? now you have a reason to care.
Everyone just thought that Russia was sabre rattling and that they weren't actually going to do it. Once they did it, that caused a lot of people to re-assess their views.
Yes, it's normal human behaviour, but it's normal human behaviour with a propaganda pump behind it (IMO). Of course, I can't prove this. Maybe it was all just completely organic and I've just watched one too many Adam Curtis documentaries.
> Why this one?
This one because it was a full blown invasion of the 2nd largest country by landmass in the European continent, it's a huge difference in level and degree... That's the simple why.
Of course the propaganda pump went full on when that happened, it was a major development compared to the annexation of Crimea or helping some militias on breakaway regions, a country tried to take over another country's capital in Europe. It doesn't mean no one would've cared if the propaganda machine didn't start turning but that was just to drum support, not to change completely the public's opinion.
Because Crimea is in a weird political situation where it sorta arguably belonged to Russia before Khruschev did a bizarre stunt with reassigning it to Ukraine, in a time when that didn't matter, which suddenly started to matter post USSR. That plus it having a huge Russian population.
All of that muddled the waters enough to make it very unclear who was in the right there, and that leaves the easy default of not caring.
Meanwhile, the current war was extremely unambiguous.
> Why don't a dozen other wars around the world get the same reaction? Why not the Uyghur genocide? Why this one?
Because it's physically closer, and because Ukraine is a lot more culturally closer to us. Uyghurs are Muslim, while Ukraininans are Christians and generally a decent cultural fit with the west.
And because Ukraine had been moving towards a more democratic government.
And I think Zelensky can take a lot of credit for being a great communicator at exactly the right time.
I'll definitely give you that one. Ukraine's social media game was... well, they could have taught Wendy's a thing or two.
And the rest of it sounds reasonable, but how do we prove it's not just a post hoc justification? This is why I'd hate to be a sociologist...
I don't think any of it is particularly controversial?
Crimea's situation is well documented, and you can easily search online for posts before the current war. It belonged to Russia since 1783, and Khruschev reassigned it to Ukraine in 1954, which I understand at the time was nigh practically meaningless and a sort of PR stunt more than something that was intended to actually do something.
It's also been a very common vacation spot for Russians, and has a huge Russian population, and it's arguable that if Russia did rig the referendum, they probably didn't need to.
So it's an already messy matter even if you're close to the issue. It's very hard to foreigners to clearly pick a "right side" in this conflict, and it's not hard to argue that Khruschev's action wasn't intended to actually do anything, and therefore should be disregarded.
All I'm saying (and it's not a particularly useful statement tbh) is that it's damn hard to tease out cause and effect here.
Lets not forget that there is more than enough reason for that hatred. As a European:
Russia regularly kills people on our soil. We do not kill people in Russia.
Russia supports extremist political groups in Europe with the sole aim to do damage.
Russia runs media organizations like RT that also have no ideological orientation but will always report the take that will do the most damage to society.
Russia used gas as a weapon to blackmail Europe. Already in summer 21 Gazprom reduced its supply to the spot market to increase the gas price and keep storage low. Later Gazprom rented storage facilities but kept them empty.....
Russia buys politicians like Orban to weaken and disintegrate EU and NATO.
There are many millions people in the EU who lived under and still remember the repressions of the SU and Warshaw Pact states....
Putins Russia had declared itself as an enemy of the western way of life and political order.
Also, Crimea voted 54% to stay with Ukraine in 1991 referendum.
It’s only when Russia started protecting its GDP by eliminating its only meaningful competition for selling shale gas to the west did it become geopolitically critical to turn public opinion against it.
Russia’s GDP eventually collapses if Ukraine remains intact, as the west will buy gas from them instead. There are no meaningful quantities of petrochemicals in Georgia.
The 2014 invasion was just that, but was dressed up as something else and didn't include massive Russian army deployments in the build-up. It also didn't look like something that could happen to Romania, Poland, the Baltics or Finland.
All of which have more in common with Ukraine than they do with say Afghanistan. So 2014 wasn't 'meh' for those that are more politically informed but it wasn't something that registered as a threat to the bulk of the EU and didn't include actual threats not to get involved on punishment of nuclear bombardment by the belligerent.
But even today there are a lot of idiots here who are still in 'meh' mode and who couldn't care less about what happens to Ukraine and who would rather think about this in financial terms than in loss of life or what it means for the future.