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The author's point about the "western elite" fighting on the secessionist side for free as part of a "culture war" might need some further elaboration. As I und

The author's point about the "western elite" fighting on the secessionist side for free as part of a "culture war" might need some further elaboration. As I understand it the elite seems anti-secessionist.

zdragnar 3y ago
I've got friends on both sides of this (who, for obvious reasons, don't talk to each other about it). On the one hand, a Ukrainian citizen who was displaced by the war and wants nothing more than for it to never have happened. On the other, a friend whose in-laws live in the now-Russian occupied parts, who have Russian identifying heritage, who envied the higher Russian pensions, and who didn't care overmuch about whether Moscow or Kiev took their money (both are corrupt). They prefer the notion of being part of Russia, in part because the social benefits are better, but also over resentment of contributed Western interference in the government of Ukraine. They, too, wish the war was over, and that the change hadn't been brought about by bloodshed, but they don't want to go back to the way things were either. I have a hard time discounting the latter, if only because this guy is among the more level headed people I know and not prone to exaggeration or a war hawk of any sort. What really bothers me is that the West keeps pussyfooting about; sending money and weapons into a war they can't be bothered to right themselves as if anyone in the world is pretending that means they aren't involved. It has needlessly drawn out the conflict and cost many more lives. They ought to have either stayed out, or entered with the purpose of making a definitive end of it at the original border.
- mkesper 3y ago
  This is more or less Putin's version of the story, that the west draws out the conflict. He can end it any moment if he wants to.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    If the West hadn't sent money or arms to Ukraine, they would have lost a long time ago. The fact that it has dragged on as long as it has being due to Western interference is incontrovertible. You're also right that either Putin or Ukraine could give up at any point. That's rather orthogonal to his point, though.
    - boo-ga-ga 3y ago
      If Ukraine gives up, people will be genocided. If Putin gives up, he just can announce that the goals of his special military operation have been reached and continue living as it's now.
      - throw310822 3y ago
        > If Ukraine gives up, people will be genocided This sounds a lot like propaganda. Also, "giving up" doesn't mean giving up unconditionally. An agreement can be made that provides guarantees for the safety of the people.
        boo-ga-ga 3y ago
        I'm Ukrainian who left the village I was in one day before russians entered it. In a short time they were there, they killed 80+ civilians. Lots of similar cases are well documented everywhere. It's not a propaganda, it's fact.
        riehwvfbk 3y ago
        [flagged]
        dralley 3y ago
        Their account is 12 years old... Yours, on the other hand, is barely 5 weeks old. It's the idiot who is claiming that Russians killing Ukrainian civilians is mere "propaganda" whose account is 100 days old.
        riehwvfbk 3y ago
        [flagged]
        boo-ga-ga 3y ago
- apaprocki 3y ago
  > or entered with the purpose of making a definitive end of it at the original border. There is a current argument that the tactic is absolutely necessary because the Russian structure absolutely relies on every level from the bottom to the top to be able to reasonably lie about how things are going. If you do nothing, they obviously win; if you do too much, you actually can lose because it is no longer possible for the lies to work properly to prevent more drastic moves. If you do what seems to be happening right now, the lies keep the machine turning at its current pace and they will drive themselves right off the cliff in no time. It was done economically to the USSR and the same thing appears to be happening right now more directly, militarily. It will seem to be this unstoppable force until the last moment, when it all just spectacularly falls apart in one way or another.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    It's pointless. Russians don't give a fuck about lies being believable - neither the govenernment not the people. They were indoctrinated to be cynical passive conformists for their whole lives, and their parents and grandparents likewise. They will go along with whatever, as long as they don't starve. There's no point counting on them protesting, and there's no point trying "not to provoke them". They just aren't a factor. West needs to ignore all that pussyfooting and send enough resources to make the war materially unsustainable for putin. That's all that matters.
    - apaprocki 3y ago
      It's not about lies to the people -- I didn't say it was about their control on society through media. I agree with you that the people are not the ones that are going to overthrow the government. I'm merely observing that the compounding negative effect of this domestic "lie chain" is a damage multiplier. It's myopically about one's lies to their superior. At each level, the situation is portrayed less seriously by some amount to make it less "bad" for the individual. That continues up the chain so that at each point, it doesn't make sense for some drastic overreaction to happen. By the time it reaches the top, it's very divorced from reality. Case in point, given the events of last evening -- the Black Sea Fleet is practically getting erased with no real change in behavior because it is happening slowly. I'm sure the story as it makes its way up the ranks each time is that the damage was minor, it's being repaired, only a few casualties, etc. Acknowledging how bad the situation is to your superiors is acknowledging how effective naval drones and modern missiles are and how bad your harbor protection and air defense is. Again, they only care about money, not their people. Even in light of clear videos showing air defense being powerless to stop these attacks, they'll deny, deny, deny because they still have paying customers for their technology. Ukraine is taking out their refinery capacity and making those paying weapons customers think twice and change long-term behavior. (See yesterday's story about how India isn't going to get its planned S-400 delivery.)
- stefan_ 3y ago
  "I wish it hadn't taken 12000 tanks and missiles to bring me higher pensions" Yes, these things truly are the same! Just two sides of the same coin.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    I apologize if that equivalence was implied in my statement. I'm imperfectly recalling a conversation I had almost a year ago at this point. I think a better phrasing would be, given the option of who governed where they lived, the social benefits were a stronger draw than any sort of patriotic or nationalistic feeling they had toward Kiev. I suspect many in Moscow expected this to go like the annexation of Crimea went- probably illegitimate, but small enough that it would be over quickly. After all, how could the tiny country of Ukraine possibly expect to hold a small territory out against the entire Russian military? Clearly, that's not what happened. I don't think anyone living there now is glad it happened like this, let alone the people who aren't alive to voice their opinion on the matter.
- wruza 3y ago
  These social benefits is something they can revoke anytime (with an apology). Remember that few years ago they simply upped pension age to the average life expectancy for men? “You work, then you die, please put money in this box.”
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Even so, the Russian state pension is, on average, 160% more than the Ukrainian. Either way, I didn't mean to imply that was enough for people to want war. Rather, had they been given free choice over which country rules where they lived, that would have been a stronger factor than any nationalist ties they had to the Ukrainian government.
    - ajuc 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      > Rather, had they been given free choice over which country rules where they lived, that would have been a stronger factor than any nationalist ties they had to the Ukrainian government. Worth keeping in mind your sample size is ... 1.
- simonh 3y ago
  I don’t doubt you, but it’s also true that there is no simple ‘ethnic Russian equals pro Russian/Putin’ equation. Take the Azov Battalion. Yes I know, an unpleasant, even despicable bunch of anti-Russian racists. However before 2022 they overwhelmingly consisted of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, recruited in the ethnic Russian regions. Their web site was in Russian, most of their literature in Russian. How come? Being ethnic Russian doesn’t mean you’re a huge fan of the Moscow system, and it doesn’t mean you want to be ruled by Putin. When Donetsk and Luhansk voted in the independence referendum in the 90s both regions voted over 80% for Ukrainian independence. That’s not possible if a majority of ethnic Russians hadn’t been in favour of it. Vast swathes of the east and south of Ukraine, where civilian areas were shelled to rubble by Russia, were populated by a high proportion of ethnic Russians. Look at the drone footage of the rows of apartment blocks shelled out in Mariupol, a city 50% ethnic Russian and overwhelmingly Russian speaking. The Narative of ethnic Russian liberation is far from simple.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Independence referendum of 1991 was about whether UkrSSR will admit the dissolution of already defunct USSR or if it will continue its quasi-state existence. Even then they didn't get everybody on board. It was not a referendum on "independence from Russia" because UkrSSR and RSFSR were distinct entites for 60 years already. Then again, people could change their mind about being a part of the state of Ukraine.
    - simonh 3y ago
      The (translated) referendum question was “Do you support the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?”. People can change their minds, but there’s no evidence that significantly happened, or that over 30% of the populations of those regions did so.
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        Independence from who? The evidence that it has significantly happened is the 2014 LDNR referendums and the following harsh resistance of Donbas militias against Ukrainian forces (absolute majority of the soldiets being locals since how would you convince a large number of Russians to go and risk their lives in an unrecognized state). Donbas population is basically miners bearing automatic weapons. Not too easy to control if they oppose you on a fundamental level.
- neonsunset 3y ago
  The reality of occupied territories are filtration camps and torture rooms. There is no equivalence. Given the content and phrasing of your other posts - I know what you are, hence will proceed and welcome others to downvote them.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  You're assuming the West's goal is ending the conflict. Their behavior is consistent with only one goal: a grinding down of Russia. Regardless of the final war outcome, Russia will emerge as a tertiary power: its male population diminished and its military shown as a paper tiger.
  - dralley 3y ago
    I hope some day we can grow beyond the childish notion that something as broad as "the West" can have a single goal or perfectly consistent behavior in the first place. Estonia and Poland and Czechia have different goals and motivations than Germany, Germany has a different goals and motivations than France, who has different goals and motivations than the US, and within each of those entities are dozens of other entities with their own goals. Jake Sullivan has different goals and motivations than the General Staff, Congress has different goals and motivations than either. Macron has different goals and motivations than the French Parliament, SPD has different goals than the CDU and Greens, etc. etc. etc. It's just silly. Of course the lowest common denominator is "weaken Russia" but that doesn't mean there are not substantial factions in favor of ending the conflict with victory.
apaprocki 3y ago
I read that to mean generally supporting self-determination and helping give a voice to the "underdog", when oppressed. If a movement is not oppressed, it's generally harder to justify why their desires can not be expressed in a voting booth. Just by stating unsupported "alternative facts", bad actors know there will be a non-zero amount of people, regardless of political ideology, that will pick up and side with their narrative for a variety of reasons. Like most of the nonsense spewed on social media, it's quite literally free for them to throw out a few nonsense sentences in a variety of ways. Anything that "sticks" only helps, so... why not? That is how we arrived where we are today. There is no feedback mechanism or downside to stating falsehoods online. We incorrectly try to apply reputation feedback mechanisms to actors that absolutely do not care about reputation in the eyes of average citizens. They do care about legacy and history books, which conveniently they control in their top-down managed society. https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks16.pdf https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks16.pdf https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/ukraine-russia-new-history-textbook-is-a-blatant-attempt-to-unlawfully-indoctrinate-school-children-in-russia-and-russian-occupied-ukrainian-territories/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/ukraine-russi...

zdragnar 3y ago

I've got friends on both sides of this (who, for obvious reasons, don't talk to each other about it). On the one hand, a Ukrainian citizen who was displaced by the war and wants nothing more than for it to never have happened. On the other, a friend whose in-laws live in the now-Russian occupied parts, who have Russian identifying heritage, who envied the higher Russian pensions, and who didn't care overmuch about whether Moscow or Kiev took their money (both are corrupt). They prefer the notion of being part of Russia, in part because the social benefits are better, but also over resentment of contributed Western interference in the government of Ukraine. They, too, wish the war was over, and that the change hadn't been brought about by bloodshed, but they don't want to go back to the way things were either. I have a hard time discounting the latter, if only because this guy is among the more level headed people I know and not prone to exaggeration or a war hawk of any sort. What really bothers me is that the West keeps pussyfooting about; sending money and weapons into a war they can't be bothered to right themselves as if anyone in the world is pretending that means they aren't involved. It has needlessly drawn out the conflict and cost many more lives. They ought to have either stayed out, or entered with the purpose of making a definitive end of it at the original border.

mkesper 3y ago
This is more or less Putin's version of the story, that the west draws out the conflict. He can end it any moment if he wants to.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  If the West hadn't sent money or arms to Ukraine, they would have lost a long time ago. The fact that it has dragged on as long as it has being due to Western interference is incontrovertible. You're also right that either Putin or Ukraine could give up at any point. That's rather orthogonal to his point, though.
  - boo-ga-ga 3y ago
    If Ukraine gives up, people will be genocided. If Putin gives up, he just can announce that the goals of his special military operation have been reached and continue living as it's now.
    - throw310822 3y ago
      > If Ukraine gives up, people will be genocided This sounds a lot like propaganda. Also, "giving up" doesn't mean giving up unconditionally. An agreement can be made that provides guarantees for the safety of the people.
      - boo-ga-ga 3y ago
        I'm Ukrainian who left the village I was in one day before russians entered it. In a short time they were there, they killed 80+ civilians. Lots of similar cases are well documented everywhere. It's not a propaganda, it's fact.
        riehwvfbk 3y ago
        [flagged]
        dralley 3y ago
        Their account is 12 years old... Yours, on the other hand, is barely 5 weeks old. It's the idiot who is claiming that Russians killing Ukrainian civilians is mere "propaganda" whose account is 100 days old.
        riehwvfbk 3y ago
        [flagged]
        boo-ga-ga 3y ago
apaprocki 3y ago
> or entered with the purpose of making a definitive end of it at the original border. There is a current argument that the tactic is absolutely necessary because the Russian structure absolutely relies on every level from the bottom to the top to be able to reasonably lie about how things are going. If you do nothing, they obviously win; if you do too much, you actually can lose because it is no longer possible for the lies to work properly to prevent more drastic moves. If you do what seems to be happening right now, the lies keep the machine turning at its current pace and they will drive themselves right off the cliff in no time. It was done economically to the USSR and the same thing appears to be happening right now more directly, militarily. It will seem to be this unstoppable force until the last moment, when it all just spectacularly falls apart in one way or another.
- ajuc 3y ago
  It's pointless. Russians don't give a fuck about lies being believable - neither the govenernment not the people. They were indoctrinated to be cynical passive conformists for their whole lives, and their parents and grandparents likewise. They will go along with whatever, as long as they don't starve. There's no point counting on them protesting, and there's no point trying "not to provoke them". They just aren't a factor. West needs to ignore all that pussyfooting and send enough resources to make the war materially unsustainable for putin. That's all that matters.
  - apaprocki 3y ago
    It's not about lies to the people -- I didn't say it was about their control on society through media. I agree with you that the people are not the ones that are going to overthrow the government. I'm merely observing that the compounding negative effect of this domestic "lie chain" is a damage multiplier. It's myopically about one's lies to their superior. At each level, the situation is portrayed less seriously by some amount to make it less "bad" for the individual. That continues up the chain so that at each point, it doesn't make sense for some drastic overreaction to happen. By the time it reaches the top, it's very divorced from reality. Case in point, given the events of last evening -- the Black Sea Fleet is practically getting erased with no real change in behavior because it is happening slowly. I'm sure the story as it makes its way up the ranks each time is that the damage was minor, it's being repaired, only a few casualties, etc. Acknowledging how bad the situation is to your superiors is acknowledging how effective naval drones and modern missiles are and how bad your harbor protection and air defense is. Again, they only care about money, not their people. Even in light of clear videos showing air defense being powerless to stop these attacks, they'll deny, deny, deny because they still have paying customers for their technology. Ukraine is taking out their refinery capacity and making those paying weapons customers think twice and change long-term behavior. (See yesterday's story about how India isn't going to get its planned S-400 delivery.)
stefan_ 3y ago
"I wish it hadn't taken 12000 tanks and missiles to bring me higher pensions" Yes, these things truly are the same! Just two sides of the same coin.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  I apologize if that equivalence was implied in my statement. I'm imperfectly recalling a conversation I had almost a year ago at this point. I think a better phrasing would be, given the option of who governed where they lived, the social benefits were a stronger draw than any sort of patriotic or nationalistic feeling they had toward Kiev. I suspect many in Moscow expected this to go like the annexation of Crimea went- probably illegitimate, but small enough that it would be over quickly. After all, how could the tiny country of Ukraine possibly expect to hold a small territory out against the entire Russian military? Clearly, that's not what happened. I don't think anyone living there now is glad it happened like this, let alone the people who aren't alive to voice their opinion on the matter.
wruza 3y ago
These social benefits is something they can revoke anytime (with an apology). Remember that few years ago they simply upped pension age to the average life expectancy for men? “You work, then you die, please put money in this box.”
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Even so, the Russian state pension is, on average, 160% more than the Ukrainian. Either way, I didn't mean to imply that was enough for people to want war. Rather, had they been given free choice over which country rules where they lived, that would have been a stronger factor than any nationalist ties they had to the Ukrainian government.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    > Rather, had they been given free choice over which country rules where they lived, that would have been a stronger factor than any nationalist ties they had to the Ukrainian government. Worth keeping in mind your sample size is ... 1.
simonh 3y ago
I don’t doubt you, but it’s also true that there is no simple ‘ethnic Russian equals pro Russian/Putin’ equation. Take the Azov Battalion. Yes I know, an unpleasant, even despicable bunch of anti-Russian racists. However before 2022 they overwhelmingly consisted of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, recruited in the ethnic Russian regions. Their web site was in Russian, most of their literature in Russian. How come? Being ethnic Russian doesn’t mean you’re a huge fan of the Moscow system, and it doesn’t mean you want to be ruled by Putin. When Donetsk and Luhansk voted in the independence referendum in the 90s both regions voted over 80% for Ukrainian independence. That’s not possible if a majority of ethnic Russians hadn’t been in favour of it. Vast swathes of the east and south of Ukraine, where civilian areas were shelled to rubble by Russia, were populated by a high proportion of ethnic Russians. Look at the drone footage of the rows of apartment blocks shelled out in Mariupol, a city 50% ethnic Russian and overwhelmingly Russian speaking. The Narative of ethnic Russian liberation is far from simple.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Independence referendum of 1991 was about whether UkrSSR will admit the dissolution of already defunct USSR or if it will continue its quasi-state existence. Even then they didn't get everybody on board. It was not a referendum on "independence from Russia" because UkrSSR and RSFSR were distinct entites for 60 years already. Then again, people could change their mind about being a part of the state of Ukraine.
  - simonh 3y ago
    The (translated) referendum question was “Do you support the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?”. People can change their minds, but there’s no evidence that significantly happened, or that over 30% of the populations of those regions did so.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      Independence from who? The evidence that it has significantly happened is the 2014 LDNR referendums and the following harsh resistance of Donbas militias against Ukrainian forces (absolute majority of the soldiets being locals since how would you convince a large number of Russians to go and risk their lives in an unrecognized state). Donbas population is basically miners bearing automatic weapons. Not too easy to control if they oppose you on a fundamental level.
neonsunset 3y ago
The reality of occupied territories are filtration camps and torture rooms. There is no equivalence. Given the content and phrasing of your other posts - I know what you are, hence will proceed and welcome others to downvote them.
jnwatson 3y ago
You're assuming the West's goal is ending the conflict. Their behavior is consistent with only one goal: a grinding down of Russia. Regardless of the final war outcome, Russia will emerge as a tertiary power: its male population diminished and its military shown as a paper tiger.
- dralley 3y ago
  I hope some day we can grow beyond the childish notion that something as broad as "the West" can have a single goal or perfectly consistent behavior in the first place. Estonia and Poland and Czechia have different goals and motivations than Germany, Germany has a different goals and motivations than France, who has different goals and motivations than the US, and within each of those entities are dozens of other entities with their own goals. Jake Sullivan has different goals and motivations than the General Staff, Congress has different goals and motivations than either. Macron has different goals and motivations than the French Parliament, SPD has different goals than the CDU and Greens, etc. etc. etc. It's just silly. Of course the lowest common denominator is "weaken Russia" but that doesn't mean there are not substantial factions in favor of ending the conflict with victory.

apaprocki 3y ago

I read that to mean generally supporting self-determination and helping give a voice to the "underdog", when oppressed. If a movement is not oppressed, it's generally harder to justify why their desires can not be expressed in a voting booth. Just by stating unsupported "alternative facts", bad actors know there will be a non-zero amount of people, regardless of political ideology, that will pick up and side with their narrative for a variety of reasons. Like most of the nonsense spewed on social media, it's quite literally free for them to throw out a few nonsense sentences in a variety of ways. Anything that "sticks" only helps, so... why not? That is how we arrived where we are today. There is no feedback mechanism or downside to stating falsehoods online. We incorrectly try to apply reputation feedback mechanisms to actors that absolutely do not care about reputation in the eyes of average citizens. They do care about legacy and history books, which conveniently they control in their top-down managed society. https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks16.pdf https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks16.pdf https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/ukraine-russia-new-history-textbook-is-a-blatant-attempt-to-unlawfully-indoctrinate-school-children-in-russia-and-russian-occupied-ukrainian-territories/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/ukraine-russi...