3 ms·

The EU. France and Germany used to be deadly enemies. No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon. Same with US states. Texas etc keep muttering

The EU. France and Germany used to be deadly enemies. No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon. Same with US states. Texas etc keep muttering about secession, but the economic complications make it an insane idea. It's not inherently a bad strategy, but it tends to fail when you're dealing with huge would-be hegemons - which certainly applies to China and Russia.

vogre 3y ago
>No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon. Ukraine and Russia were same country like almost forever. No one sane was expecting a war between them. Don't underestimate ability of polititians to screw things up.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Ukraine was under Russian dominion like almost forever, but that didn't make it a part of Russia. If it had been then Russians would not distinguish between 'Russians' and 'little Russians' and other (far worse) terms.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    not to forget that at one point muscovy was under ukraininian (Rus-ian) dominion.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Germans do distinguish between Prussian Germans and Bavarian Germans. Nevertheless it's the same country. Various types of Germans also did have a large number of wars agains one another. Russian position is indeed that Ukrainian claims on the statehood in 1991 or even 2014 borders are absolutely bogus. Personally, I also find it hard to respect the immutability of international borders that are younger than I am.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      But they don't see the other half of Germany as untermenschen. Which is roughly how the Russians view the denizens of all of the conquered land in their empire that isn't Russia proper.
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century. Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it. Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters. Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc. I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
        mlindner 3y ago
        Ukrainian isn’t a dialect continuum with Russian. That’s a myth commonly pushed by Russia and Russian nationalists. It’s a separate language with roots diverging from a rather early point with different history. It actually shares more similarity with Polish or Bulgarian than it does with Russian. Here’s a good video on the languages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI (Note: It was published before the war so the statistics of where what languages are commonly used have changed dramatically.)
        thriftwy 3y ago
        Surzhik spoken everywhere east of Dnieper, in Kiev and and Odessa certainly is a dialect continuum with Russian. Most often it's simply Russian with a Swadesh list of 100 words replaced by their Ukrainian counterpairs, whenever possible. The rest being left as is. Nobody really cares what these far western ukrainians are up to. Russians don't really want them. Maybe with the exception for one dude from Vinnitsa.
- attentive 3y ago
  no, they weren't. It was occupied by russia/soviet empire.

vogre 3y ago

>No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon. Ukraine and Russia were same country like almost forever. No one sane was expecting a war between them. Don't underestimate ability of polititians to screw things up.

jacquesm 3y ago
Ukraine was under Russian dominion like almost forever, but that didn't make it a part of Russia. If it had been then Russians would not distinguish between 'Russians' and 'little Russians' and other (far worse) terms.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  not to forget that at one point muscovy was under ukraininian (Rus-ian) dominion.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Germans do distinguish between Prussian Germans and Bavarian Germans. Nevertheless it's the same country. Various types of Germans also did have a large number of wars agains one another. Russian position is indeed that Ukrainian claims on the statehood in 1991 or even 2014 borders are absolutely bogus. Personally, I also find it hard to respect the immutability of international borders that are younger than I am.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    But they don't see the other half of Germany as untermenschen. Which is roughly how the Russians view the denizens of all of the conquered land in their empire that isn't Russia proper.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century. Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it. Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters. Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc. I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
      - mlindner 3y ago
        Ukrainian isn’t a dialect continuum with Russian. That’s a myth commonly pushed by Russia and Russian nationalists. It’s a separate language with roots diverging from a rather early point with different history. It actually shares more similarity with Polish or Bulgarian than it does with Russian. Here’s a good video on the languages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI (Note: It was published before the war so the statistics of where what languages are commonly used have changed dramatically.)
        thriftwy 3y ago
        Surzhik spoken everywhere east of Dnieper, in Kiev and and Odessa certainly is a dialect continuum with Russian. Most often it's simply Russian with a Swadesh list of 100 words replaced by their Ukrainian counterpairs, whenever possible. The rest being left as is. Nobody really cares what these far western ukrainians are up to. Russians don't really want them. Maybe with the exception for one dude from Vinnitsa.
attentive 3y ago
no, they weren't. It was occupied by russia/soviet empire.