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If you're a westerner who wants to understand the cultural context of the war, I can't but recommend Kamil Galeev mega-threads [1], and this one especially: War

• rendall 4y ago
  I really love reading Kamil Galeev's analyses. Glad to read that he has the endorsement of a Ukrainian.
  • divan 4y ago
    In the first days of invasion, when the shock and uncertainty was at its highest, I was reading everything I could to get some sense of what's truly going on and what are the odds. Kamil's threads struck me by the depth of undestanding of russia's internals. I mean, many things are no surprise to me, and are well known for Ukrainians, and yet that was another level. In a way, reading his analyses and explainers helped me psychologically at that moment – even empowered in a way. I can only compare it with being diagnosed with cancer, and reading Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer-winning book "The Emperor of All Maladies". It doesn't fix your problem, but empowers with knowledge and more intimate understanding of the enemy, which can dramatically shift your internal assesment of risks and danger.
    • rendall 4y ago
      Yes. For me as a foreign (USA) resident of Finland (which has its own fraught history with Russia, under the serious question When are they coming for us?), I found his analyses so immensely comforting that I only cautiously trusted them. But the extensive notes and predictive power wins over all other pundits.
• thriftwy 4y ago
  The second thread is quite good, but I wonder if its author understands that he just described why all his buddies' efforts towards building the "non-imperialistic benign Russia without the color of the war" are doomed since the beginning.
• rstuart4133 4y ago
  As someone from the west who has near zero understanding of Russian or Ukrainian culture and history, I preferred to take a step back and try to find stuff I do have in common with them. To me, the west sponsoring the war in Vietnam comes close. The ideological basis for that war was the "domino theory", which postulated Asian countries would fall the communism like domino's. It's not too different from the way Galeev paints Russian's motivation for invading the Ukraine today. The west wanted to expand it's western way of doing things. The domino theory postulated the reverse was happening - western style culture would be snuffed out in Asia by communism. So the west decided to sponsor a horrific war to force the issue. The west lost that war emphatically in the end. Amazingly, that loss didn't stop the US and it's allies trying to pull the same stunt again and again in subsequent years, most recently in Afghanistan. And unless it's some tiny nation as happened with Russia and Georgia, the outcome has always been the same - humiliating loss. It always costs enormous sums, inflicts huge human suffering, lasts for years, brings down governments, and yet we in the west do it over and over again. It just boggles the mind. Russia's foray into Ukraine looks very similar to me. Ukraine was moving from a Russian style culture to a more a western style. Russia loathes and fears the displacement of their way of doing things just as much as the west loathes any drift from capitalism and individualism to communism and cooperatives. Russia's attempt at fixing this by installing a puppet government in Ukraine failed. So they decided to fix it with a war. It's amazing two cultures believe they are so different they are willing kill each other over it, are nonetheless near identical in their instinctive approach to solving those differences. The outcome will be no different - Russia will lose this war, just as they lost in Afghanistan and the west lost most of their similar wars. And it will have no effect on the outcome in the end. The west lost the Vietnam war, so we got to see the domino theory pan out. Turned out it was a crock of shit, little more than a mass paranoid delusion. Asian countries (including China) has been moving from communism to their own unique style of capitalism ever since. Unfortunately I doubt it will work out that way for Russia. Unlike the domino theory, its fears are well justified. Rule by law and well managed markets work better than a kleptocracy. It means you get to have nice things. In raw numbers, Russia's economy is about the size of Australia's - a nation with 1/5 the population. Another number: Australian GDP per capita: USD$50k, Canada GDP per capita: $40k, Russia GDP per capita: $10k. All are resource rich nations. Young Ukrainians compared what they saw in the west and the east - and made the rational decision. You can only see so far in either direction, so in the east of Ukraine where their view of the west is obscured, they are still endorse the Russian way. But if you look at poll results on joining NATO there is a line dividing east and west. People on the western side voted to become more like NATO, on the east to remain with Russia. That line has been moving steadily eastwards over time. Russia decided to wage a war to stop the advance of that line. It makes about as much sense as trying to stop jelly sliding down a wall with nails. Insane. I wish I could say our politicians in the west were better, but history demonstrates otherwise. That's something else Russian's and westerners have in common.