4 ms·

> All reasonable people that could stay the fuck away from Donbas did so. That's about two million people, just to give you the scale of things. Did all the pe

> All reasonable people that could stay the fuck away from Donbas did so. That's about two million people, just to give you the scale of things. Did all the people in different villages just leave leaving their farms etc? I was seeing travel vlogs of "Bald and Bankrupt" and I see elderly people in former Soviet Union countries living alone in extremely remote places. Most of the places are sparsely populated with supplies coming once in a week or so. In these conflicts do they harm the village population or is the fight limited between the armies in the region? What would they gain by harming elderly people?

romwell 7y ago
The battles happened where they happened; nobody was specifically targeting small towns, but nobody took much care to avoid them either. There aren't any really remote places in Donbass, it's not that big of a territory - and most people live in the cities or large towns. A lot of elderly people did stay. Ukraine does pay the pensions (which they absolutely rely on), but one needs to travel outside of DNR-controlled areas to get them. DNR also pays pensions, and some people, apparently, get two pensions; both DNR and the Ukrainian government are not happy with that, and so that won't last long. Russia is being more active now with giving the people there Russian citizenship, but one would need to go to Russia to get the pension. All in all, it's a complicated mess, and the weakest get the worst of it; those people who live alone in villages are screwed. Nobody gains anything by harming the elderly, but they are a liability that nobody really wants to take on. For Ukraine, it's dumping money into territory occupied by the enemy. It's a burden for Russia, which their citizens aren't too happy about either. DNR has little need for the elderly, but has to pay up if they are playing the "we are an independent state" game. There is a mounting pressure to resolve this situation, but the whole point of this mess was to make it complicated (Russia didn't play a Crimea scenario in Donbass so that it remains a long-term unresolved slow conflict, like Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia in Geogia).

romwell 7y ago

The battles happened where they happened; nobody was specifically targeting small towns, but nobody took much care to avoid them either. There aren't any really remote places in Donbass, it's not that big of a territory - and most people live in the cities or large towns. A lot of elderly people did stay. Ukraine does pay the pensions (which they absolutely rely on), but one needs to travel outside of DNR-controlled areas to get them. DNR also pays pensions, and some people, apparently, get two pensions; both DNR and the Ukrainian government are not happy with that, and so that won't last long. Russia is being more active now with giving the people there Russian citizenship, but one would need to go to Russia to get the pension. All in all, it's a complicated mess, and the weakest get the worst of it; those people who live alone in villages are screwed. Nobody gains anything by harming the elderly, but they are a liability that nobody really wants to take on. For Ukraine, it's dumping money into territory occupied by the enemy. It's a burden for Russia, which their citizens aren't too happy about either. DNR has little need for the elderly, but has to pay up if they are playing the "we are an independent state" game. There is a mounting pressure to resolve this situation, but the whole point of this mess was to make it complicated (Russia didn't play a Crimea scenario in Donbass so that it remains a long-term unresolved slow conflict, like Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia in Geogia).