I think that this is going to be a huge issue for the next several years which will be dependent on the immediate (say within the next year or so and assuming a Ukrainian victory which includes the total removal of Russian forces from all of Ukraine) outcome of this war.
If the outcome is such that enough of disbelieving Russian citizenry is forced to spend a few weeks touring destroyed Ukrainian cities, and seeing mass graves and any other relevant evidence, then it might “eventually sink in”. But even that could take a long time and would be contingent upon Putin’s removal.
On the other hand, if there’s an alternate resolution and Russia only ceases to the extent that there’s a lingering, really toxic cold war, for an indefinite period of several decades, they I don’t think that anything will sink in.
Russian leadership is kind of interesting. Of the Soviet leaders, they all seemed to come from outlying areas. Stalin was Georgian, Krushchev was from around Kursk, Breshnev was from Ukraine, Cherneko was from just over the Urals (near-Siberia), Andropov and Gorbachev were from the Stavropol region (Andropov may have been born in Moscow but he grew up down south). Kursk borders on Ukraine and Stavropol borders on Georgia.
Yetsin was from Moscow, Medvedev and Putin from Leningrad, all born in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader born in the Soviet Union rather than the Russian Empire. So, maybe, the next proper reformer in Russia will have to be someone born in the Russian Republic, probably not an urbanite. It may be a while.
This is correct. If, in 2019, Trump had ordered an invasion of Canada because they would not give him free maple syrup for his pancakes, we would have seen 60 million enthusiastic Americans agreeing that Canada was an existential threat, and bombing hospitals in Toronto was an appropriate response.
It’s not quite the same. Currently, Trumpers are still being fed the lies by Fox News, OANN and the like.
Now, imagine if Trump was still President, and he suddenly shut down Fox, et al.? You’d have to be pretty hard-core stupid to not notice that something was up.
Here’s a good article about what Russian troops did in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (gift link). It includes photos:
Apparently undeterred by safety concerns, the Russian forces tramped about the grounds with bulldozers and tanks, digging trenches and bunkers — and exposing themselves to potentially harmful doses of radiation lingering beneath the surface.
The soldiers had apparently camped out for weeks in the radioactive forest. While international nuclear safety experts say they have not confirmed any cases of radiation sickness among the soldiers, the cancers and other potential health problems associated with radiation exposure might not develop until decades later.
In a particularly ill-advised action, a Russian soldier from a chemical, biological and nuclear protection unit picked up a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, exposing himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Mr. Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the man, he said.
I think that is a very good move by Zelensky. You don’t want to leave your country for any reason when you are trying to inspire your countrymen to fight off a foreign invader. If he were to leave, even for a short time for a very good reason, Russia would certainly use that as propaganda (i.e. falsely claiming that he had fled the country).
Bear in mind that the UK is a long way from any border with Russia and it has little dependency on Russian Oil and Gas.
The statement was about “providing support so that Ukraine will never be invaded again”. Well that could mean simply a contribution towards that objective. Whether it would be enough, well that depends on the contributions of all the others in this undefined ‘we’.
Lots of loosely defined terms, plenty of ‘wiggle room’ to interpret it in different ways. Usually politicians are carefully briefed about the wording of such statements. However, Johnson is not very accomplished at diplomat-speak. He was once Foreign Secretary and was very unimpressive in that role, making a series of gaffs much to the dismay of his officials.
