arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Indeed, and it should always be remembered that the only reason there are Russian speakers in Donbas is that the Soviet Union moved them there after all the Ukrainians starved to death.
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Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
Never heard of? It's been mentioned to him a few times.
With that said, given his usual logic, he'd probably claim that clearly, those vicious Ukrainians were being mean to the Russians, therefore they deserved to be genocided by the Russians who wanted to live there. And hey, those that remain (after Russia moved in settlers to replace those they murdered and cowed/silenced dissenters) totally favor Russia (or are afraid/unable to dissent) overall, so it's all good by his logic.
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Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
Sounds a little off. Not *all* the Ukrainians were murdered (just very large numbers of them). Of more relevance is probably the Russian bans on the use of the Ukrainian language. There are predominantly Russian speakers in that area because Russia forced those who lived there to use Russian for a very extended period of time, murdered large numbers of those who would be likely to speak other languages, and moved in Russians to take their place. There's also the less nefarious part where frequent engagement with Russian speakers from neighboring Russia will naturally raise how many speak the language in the area, but that's likely just slowed the rate that use of Russian has decreased since the Ukrainians were able to speak other languages again.
Michel H's repeated attempts to claim that shared language = affinity is superficially true, but as usual for Michel H logic, his actual application of it is riddled with ignoring nigh everything that's actually directly relevant to the situation at hand.
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Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
And then there's this.
Russia: US air defense systems could be targets in Ukraine
I have one question in response. Why was this even an article? Of course they're friggin' legitimate targets.
Russia: US air defense systems could be targets in Ukraine
I have one question in response. Why was this even an article? Of course they're friggin' legitimate targets.
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
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A bit more complicated than that.
The region later named Donbas had been multi-ethnic ever since Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, Jews, Germans and others settled there, mostly as peasants, in addition to native Cossacks.
Lots of Russians moved there in the mid to late 1800s, when coal stated to get exploited at industrial scale, and they dominated the new and growing cities, while the countryside remained more Ukrainian.
Ukrainian peasants also moved to the Donbas cities, where they were a minority and tended to get assimilated, vs the other way round. So that's how Russian language rose to rival Ukrainian.
Holodomor was, in a nutshell, a war of cities against the rural countryside and thus affected Ukrainians disproportionally. (Don't forget that Russia, too, had suffered unspeakably severe famines since WW1; just as an aside)
WW2 and Nazi Germany's deportations and massacers further depopulated the area (as the enire area of Ukraine). This probably affected Russians and Ukrainians roughly in similar prportions
After WW2, the industries of the Donbas were one again repopulated - from all sides, but Russians were probably a majority of new arrivals.
Once again, ethnic Ukrainians would more likely assimilate to Russian language there than vice versa.
So that's how come Russian is spoken more in Donbas than Ukrainian.
And still, half of the Donbas population, at least prior to the ongoing genocide, identified as Ukrainian, a majority was happy to secede from the USSR and, implicitly, Russia.
This will perhaps shock some people, but I believe that, if the Russians were able to take Kiev through a new offensive, perhaps launched from Belarus, this could perhaps lead to a kind of "Pax Russica" (this term means "Russian Peace" in Latin) and greatly improve the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.
This could be a kind of "inverted Holodomor", where the Russians would take good care of the country they are invading, a little bit like the U.S. and its allies did in Germany and Japan after WWII.
You may perhaps remember general Douglas MacArthur asking for food for Japan:
(https://think.iafor.org/american-caesar-general-douglas-macarthurs-administration-of-japan/).
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
https://twitter.com/oxanashevel/status/1603197438084333568
That is Russia's idea of how to "take good care of the country they are invading", Michel. You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself for writing that post.
That is Russia's idea of how to "take good care of the country they are invading", Michel. You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself for writing that post.
It doesn't shock any of us that you believe it - we just disagree fundamentally that the word "humanitarian" and "Russia" could be used in tha same sentance. And a Russian Peace would involve peace for Russians and death and destruction for any and all other nationalitites.
Admiration for the most ruthless person in any confrontation is not a good look
You said:
I am not sure I understand your question very well, unfortunately.
I am just asking and suggesting Ukraine makes very minor territorial concessions to appease Russia. A kind of repeat of the Munich Agreement, but done right this time, without having Western powers declaring war in a careless way.
I don't think Ukraine should give the whole Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to Russia, just the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics as they existed prior to the war (this corresponds to about half of the said oblasts).
I suspect some Russian soldiers did these things because they were angry and frustrated.
They would probably behave differently as victors.
I don't think there were many cases of rape by Soviet soldiers in East Germany after WWII, from what I have read and watched at least.
Like I said to MarkCorrigan above, I don't think Ukraine should give the whole Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to Russia, just the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics as they existed prior to the war (this corresponds to about half of the said oblasts).
I know you think that those concessions are minor, they are not.
They send a very clear message to Russia that they have won this war and that the next time they invade (and there must be a next time to secure that Southern corridor to Crimea) then they can expect to hold some of their gains.
Meanwhile Russia suffers no consequences from their war crimes, their ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide against the Ukrainians.
I don't think Russia deserves some kind of reward for its so-called "special military operation" (which has been painful for Russia too in many ways).
But Russia, like all of us, deserves justice, and I believe Russia has been treated very unfairly by Ukraine and its allies in 2014 after it annexed Crimea, following a mostly honest and serious referendum (many sanctions, brutal cutting-off of fresh water supplies to Crimea and so on).
Those who support the will of the people should always receive respect, and it is most unfortunate that this is not the path that Western countries and Ukraine have chosen.
Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
I suspect that Michel H's reasoning for the betterment of the humanitarian situation boils down to... Russia not overtly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure with missiles, drone, artillery, etc. As for Russia taking good care of Ukraine? Yeah, at this point that's overwhelmingly ridiculous.
Well, not many, eh?
Hundreds of thousands to 2 million is not many, huh?
Ian Osborne
JREF Kid
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Are you serious? You're so far wide of the mark, I suspect you're just trolling here. On the off-chance that you actually believe what you just wrote, read this.
The rape of Berlin – BBC
Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
Russia certainly does deserve justice visited upon it. It's just that justice is pretty much the exact opposite of what you pretend.
Even IF Crimea actually did want to rejoin Russia, Russia was totally in the wrong in how they acted. Russia's choice to invade and hold a sham referendum utterly negated any and all will of the people claims. That includes negating any potential validity from later attempted polling - risking telling any random caller/person that one didn't want the people who just invaded there to be there is dangerous. Especially when it comes to Russians with their culture of lying. Your answers will be supposedly be anonymous? How can the called person be sure of that? Guess wrong and they might be tortured and disappeared, after all.
Russia deserves no respect on that front, then. Russia has a horrendously bad record when it comes to supporting the will of the people.
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According to your quote:
So, there was punishment, it wasn't accepted as "standard policy" (so to speak).
Let's say 200,000 or 300,000 German women were raped by the Soviets. This has to be compared to a German population of 80 million in 1939.
300,000 divided by 40 million, that's about 0.75%.
We know that the Soviet Union has of course suffered enormously because of the very unfair Nazi German invasion, which they started in 1941.
Russia has suffered much less in 2022.
Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
And there it is. Excruciatingly terrible logic and all.
Russian propagandist, you're a mass rape apologist who consistently gets facts utterly wrong, before even touching the steam pile of crap that is your attempted logic. I'd ask if there was no low too low for you, but you've made that plenty clear already.
Steve
Penultimate Amazing
You appear to be claiming that Russian soldiers' rape of children is justified. Perhaps you would care to think again and clarify?
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