Pre-invasion, and especially if you go back to pre-2014, Ukraine was divided politically. A lot of the population was pro-Russia, especially the Russian speakers, and they viewed Viktor Yanukovych as the legitimate president of Russia. So for the European protestors who are in favour of neutrality and anti-sanctions, their argument is that it’s an old undecided political issue involving Ukraine and Russia, not all of Europe or the rest of the world.
But realistically, the protestors arguing against intervention in Ukraine most likely don’t care about the politics or people of Ukraine. They want cheap energy. I don’t know how they expect their governments to deliver the cheap energy, but since the cause of expensive energy is the Ukraine war, then they want their government to stop supporting Ukraine in the war. That’s my speculation anyway.
The other way of reading the quoted question is, if Russia is successful in its conquest of Ukraine, why would citizens of Russia’s or Ukraine’s other neighbours not be worried about being taken over? They are worried about it and the sentiments towards neutrality among their populace are much lower than in more distant European states.
There has always been a certain percentage of Europeans who are against the European Union. The real question is if there has been an uptick in numbers recently.
Although Ukraine is a factor in inflation it does not account for all of it and I’m suspicious of anyone attributing all of it to this conflict. Inflation is a feature of post-pandemic recovery, for example, along with supply line disruption (also a pandemic/post pandemic thing), shortages, and OPEC playing games with petroleum production and pricing.
Then they are fucking stupid and shortsighted. Because while they might get cheaper energy this winter, they’ll trade that off against Russian aggression against their own countries for a generation. Idiots, the lot of them.
Kid returns from his first hunting trip and shows his dad what he bagged.
The Kadyrovites fighting in Ukraine are notorious for making fake battle videos in which they fire lots of rounds at empty buildings, earning them the moniker “The TikTok Army”, so one can’t be certain that these are actual Ukrainian prisoners and not Chechens hamming it up. It’s still f*cked up on many levels. Kadyrov is like someone from medieval times.
Bakhmut is the only place the Russians have had slight success in the last few days, so the inference would be that Musk is either leaning pro-Russia or that he’s clueless about what’s happening in Ukraine.
The Russians have been bashing their heads on the brick wall of Bakhmut for months. They’ve dumped tons of resources into the assault for almost no gains while losing big chunks of Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts. Elon is a complete tool, but in this case he’s trolling Medvedev.
It doesn’t look a compliment at all. And to suggest he supports Russia doesn’t make sense since he’s thrown hundreds of millions into communication support for Ukraine.
ISW’s October 21, 2022 summary is unusually forceful:
Any claims that Russian forces would not blow the dam due to concerns for the water supply to Crimea are absurd. Crimea survived without access to the canal flowing from the Dnipro since Russia illegally invaded and annexed it in 2014…
I think you are reading this wrongly … BAKHMUT stands for “The Russian Army is trying for 3 months no to take an insignificant village in Ukr. - and can’t” … so I am pretty confident that was a burn.
If it was an attempted burn, it was a failed one. Musk picked the one place in Ukraine that Russia are making progress. In the last week or so they have entered the city.
Compare last month’s map with the most recent one:
More accurately, perhaps, is that there were a fair amount of people who lived in Eastern Ukraine who had Russian sympathies but most of them were immigrants from Russia or first generation. Western Ukraine was always very anti-Russia.
Yes, that is better. During the 30’s Stalin committed genocide vs the Ukrainian people , aka the “holodomor”, killing millions of Ukrainians and then moving in ethnic Russians. Those ethnic Russians are there due to genocide.
