This is what happens when you have an actual working supply chain. Go ahead and throw some more of you limited money at it Vlad! How are those vengeance wonder weapons working for you?
In my experience, they don’t need to apply any political pressure to produce such reports. Many Russian-speaking Ukrainians do express such a longing, sometimes quite openly and fervently. I know because I have personally spoken with many of them! (On the other hand, I’ve spoken with an equal or maybe slightly greater number who are of the opposite opinion.) Fabricating Ukrainian sympathy or consent to the idea of political union is not a problem for the Russian leadership, or at least isn’t a concern at this stage; it’s trivial to demonstrate that such sympathy has always existed to some degree, which was something the Russian leadership needed to justify its occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territory. From the Russian leadership’s point of view, the fact that the level of sympathy may be overinflated is irrelevant to that justification, nor is it all that relevant to the question of continuing the war (since the Russian leadership, to its own mind, has plenty of other justifications for that).
Kyiv has told China that they won’t give up any land in a peace agreement. I wouldn’t trust them not to try and squeeze in some pro-Russian terms, either.
Speaking of other things that people keep forgetting, while Ukraine has certainly over-performed (and good to them!) by pre-invasion estimates, I think the keep part to the sustained nature of resistance and pushback is how completely the West has supported the Ukraine. A large number of Western analysts would probably have put the expected Western support at a far lower level (both material and cash) than has been provided to date.
Is it less than the Ukraine would prefer? Absolutely, but it’s still a staggering amount overall. And if we are sometimes surprised by the support (despite a certain political party’s constant complaints) is it surprising that Russia’s intelligence estimates, which had a vested interest in painting a rosy picture to the corruptor-in-chief, probably predicted with near unity that the West would cave to a faint accompli? Or even if they provided token support, would certainly not continuing the support over a year later.
To be PERFECTLY clear, I am not in any way dismissing the efforts, time, blood and tears Ukraine has not spent defending themselves, but that based on what happened in 2014, Russia had every reason to believe the West would shrug and move on. And if the war had been won quickly, the corruption, training, and logistical issues would never have become obvious. All of which is absolutely due to the dogged Ukrainian efforts to protect themselves.
As a result of the beer brouhaha, I was skimming a Vox article about woke beers, and came across an embedded explainer on the Wagner Group. I don’t know how to link to it, except through the beer article. It’s an 8 minute video and worth the watch, explaining how Wagner operates.
Here is the video.
And keep a bugout bag to hand.
Zelenskiy is currently in Saudia Arabia to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
I wonder if Ukrainian diplomats are traveling with him? He’s in deep waters now with big sharks.
The Guardian blog
Sure, no need to fake a small degree of ethnic Russians longing for political union, if that’s all you need as an excuse to invade.
The problem is, it was pretty clear that Putin was relying on their being a large degree of such longing, so large that Ukraine would put up very little resistance to the invasion. He relied on information from spies that told him most of the leadership had already been suborned, when they hadn’t been. That’s the deception by the intelligence community that was the problem. “They’ll welcome us with open arms!” Well, it was certainly “arms”, for sure, not so sure about the “open” bit.
ETA: Wait, no, even better, “They were supposed to welcome us with ‘open arms’, instead, it was ‘Open fire!’”
Looks like Bloomberg ran an editorial piece taking a less sanguine view of Ukraine’s prospects in dealing with the Russians on defense.
Russia Adapted Arms and Tactics Ahead of Ukraine Offensive (msn.com)
But there is indeed a large degree of such sympathy, at least in the annexed territories, and many parts of them were seized years ago with little or no local resistance. Even the left-wing press in the West admits this much—as recently as yesterday The Guardian reported that only 20% of the residents of Mariupol support the Ukrainian government; the remaining 80% is evenly split between Russian sympathizers and the politically indifferent. If Putin was relying on this amount of support in the annexed territories, then it seems this assumption has served him well.
Is or was Putin relying on a similar amount of support in the territories he hasn’t annexed? I don’t think there’s much evidence either way. I’ve often seen it asserted as fact in the western press, but as far as I can tell it’s only speculation.
Zelensky is working hard to get support for Ukraine.
Yeah, but what was the ratio before something like 70% of the population of the city left?
The article makes clear that that is the situation in Mariupol today, after Russia attacked and semi-destroyed the city. Most of those who did not want to live under Russian occupation will have left, or been killed. The article says it was a 50/50 split in Mariupol between pro-Ukraine and pro-Russia before the war started.
This has been discussed many times before. Pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine was the minority view. It was higher in larger urban areas, as they were centres of industry - the Donbas was a major industrial region - and had attracted immigrants from Russia during the Soviet Union era and before.
Wonder what it is now that the Russian sympathizers got pressganged into military service at gunpoint?
A post was split to a new topic: Assuming the war eventually ends in Ukraine’s favor, with all of Ukraine being back in rightful hands, is there any aspect of international law that would prevent the government from expelling those that are pro-Russian?
Good news. The training will be at locations in Europe.
I think you mean to add “outside Ukraine”. Ukraine is in Europe.