Ukraine 22: Anyone else holding their breath?

[mormont]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

WRT Crimea, I suppose the issue is would Ukraine wish to rule a population that loathes them.

Do they though?

[Heartofice]

I think it still up for debate what people in Crimea think of Ukraine right now. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions that they want to be part of Russia, no matter what bribes / ethnic cleansing has been going on there.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

48 minutes ago, mormont said:

Do they though?

Good question. Maybe they did once, but no longer after 8 years of Russian rule. Maybe they don't afte rwatching Russia being humiliated on the international stage. No one likes being on the losing side. 

[butterweedstrover]

32 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I think it still up for debate what people in Crimea think of Ukraine right now. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions that they want to be part of Russia, no matter what bribes / ethnic cleansing has been going on there.

People in Donbas also supported Russia but they were ignored. Ukrainian nationalists said all those people were from Russia and denied their existence. 

But you can see them for yourself in the Vice documentaries from 2014. They weren’t secessionists, they wanted to be part of Ukraine. They were just against the revolution and had voted for Yanuchovych. 

Crimea, I don’t know if you went there before 2014, had Russian flags and Russian military even outside their base in Sevastopol. It’s not so much that people there would support a wider war against Ukraine, but more so that Ukrainian identity was never that strong to begin with. 

And it’s funny when Zelensky talks about tatars being treated as second class citizens as Ukraine did the same thing to Hungarians and Poles in lands ostensibly under their political control but were original part of Hungary and Poland respectively.  

What people misunderstand is that Putin didn’t want the lands, it would be costly and the Donbas especially would have dumped a bunch of communist supporters in his own country vs. United Russia (his pet project). 

Crimea was 100% about Sevastopol (their only warm water base). Donbas was about Minsk 2.0. They idea was that if this special pro-Russian micro state existed within Ukraine it could veto any advances towards the EU and keep Ukraine in their orbit (and hopefully part of the EEU). 

The war was suppose to be quick, but seeing as the post-Maidan government is not leaving, he stole a bunch of land as a consolation prize and also hopefully to keep this Ukrainian economically impotent.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Good question. Maybe they did once, but no longer after 8 years of Russian rule. Maybe they don't afte rwatching Russia being humiliated on the international stage. No one likes being on the losing side. 

Obviously no fully reliable polling has been possible since the war started, but certainly in Donbas there was a trend of people being in favour of being part of a federated arrangement with Ukraine. Being part of Russia proper was not massively popular outside the elite who thought they would prosper from it (many of whom have since been killed or jailed and replaced by Russians, so not so much).

The situation in Crimea may be somewhat different.

[williamjm]

11 hours ago, SeanF said:

WRT Crimea, I suppose the issue is would Ukraine wish to rule a population that loathes them.

World history suggests that countries rarely have a problem with ruling populations that don't like them.

[Arakasi]

So what’s a good place to get up to date info on Ukraine without going into the shit show that is Twitter? I have a couple YouTube vids and such I can follow but what I do like about twitter is the long form tweets going over a single topic or battle.

[SeanF]

21 minutes ago, williamjm said:

World history suggests that countries rarely have a problem with ruling populations that don't like them.

However, it may be unwise.  Pre- 1948, ethnic cleansing , which was the accepted solution, did not contravene international law, but now it does.

Crimea is 67% Russian.  They would be a problem.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

So what’s a good place to get up to date info on Ukraine without going into the shit show that is Twitter? I have a couple YouTube vids and such I can follow but what I do like about twitter is the long form tweets going over a single topic or battle.

The palpitations over Twitter have been annoying, as there's a lot of excellent analysis on there, some of which isn't duplicated on other websites. War on the Rocks is one exception, but they tend to be very pessimistic about Ukraine and are constantly blindsided by their successes, so they're not necessarily reliable. Institute for the Study of the War has very good maps and both big-picture and local views, but they are a tad conservative and tend to be 1-2 days behind the curve on what's going on on the ground, although that does filter out a lot of nonsense rumours.

[Werthead]

This gets pretty wild. Putin staged a meeting with soldiers' mothers, except most or all of them seem to be regular attendees of various gatherings at the Kremlin and PR events with Putin around.

It gets even wilder when someone down the thread points out that the back of Putin's neck keeps disappearing weirdly, possibly a sign that he wasn't even there and the video and photographs were deepfaked, which makes sense given he's not 3 miles up an empty table from them.

 

[JGP]

If true, not the first time. I'm not tuned in to what's happening on the ground in Russia, but recall reading recently that Russia has gone from 40th in the world in VPN usage to like, 4th or something now. The situation at home can't be good if you're creating bullshit like this to look good. 

 

[Gorn]

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

However, it may be unwise.  Pre- 1948, ethnic cleansing , which was the accepted solution, did not contravene international law, but now it does.

Crimea is 67% Russian.  They would be a problem.

Truly hardcore ones will move to Russia of their own free will. The less hardcore ones will form a local political party that will win a few parliament seats and some mayorships, but otherwise be irrelevant.

[Werthead]

I haven't done the maths myself, but I did see one person on Twitter mapping the war who now thinks that Ukraine's recent gains means that just over 50% of Russia's territorial gains since February 23rd have been reversed. Not including pre-2022 gains like Crimea and the parts of Donbas annexed before then, of course.

[Loge]

According Chuck Pfarrer, the Ukrainians are pushing eastwards south of the Dnipro estuary from Kinburn peninsula.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Loge said:

According Chuck Pfarrer, the Ukrainians are pushing eastwards south of the Dnipro estuary from Kinburn peninsula.

 

I’ve seen that too but it is unconfirmed by anyone else.

[illrede]

The ability to judge or predict intra-Slavic harmony turns out to have been a surprisingly important skill in the history of the human race. I can say with confidence that we do not possess it. (Folding in Bulgarians, Greeks, and Romanians, here).

[A True Kaniggit]

20 minutes ago, illrede said:

The ability to judge or predict intra-Slavic harmony turns out to have been a surprisingly important skill in the history of the human race. I can say with confidence that we do not possess it. (Folding in Bulgarians, Greeks, and Romanians, here).

This is why we need a soft alien invasion. 
 

Humanity unite!

[Toth]

11 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

This is why we need a soft alien invasion. 
 

Humanity unite!

By now I'm convinced it'll end more like the Scrin invasion in C&C Tiberium Wars. With the Alien invaders being completely baffled that these nutty stubborn fools keep fighting each other even as they are blasting Earth capitals.

[A True Kaniggit]

33 minutes ago, Toth said:

By now I'm convinced it'll end more like the Scrin invasion in C&C Tiberium Wars. With the Alien invaders being completely baffled that these nutty stubborn fools keep fighting each other even as they are blasting Earth capitals.

Ha. At least for my country its capital Washington is an administrative center, with not much industrial capacity. 

[felice]

23 hours ago, SeanF said:

Crimea is 67% Russian.  They would be a problem.

Being Russian doesn't mean they automatically like the Russian government and want to remain under its authority...