I wouldn't call Igor Girkin a NAFO source; he's an FSB colonel, who has bragged in talk shows how he was pivotal in a number of actions in the Donbas and Crimea in 2014.
I don't think he wants anything to do with NAFO tbh.
There are tools like @vidtranslator on Twitter. Summon the twitter bot, and it will translate the video for you. Alternatively, you could download the video through twdown dot com, upload it to youtube yourself, and use youtube's built-in auto-translator.
Incidentally, if the given subtitles were incorrect, you would expect someone to correct the poster. There is no dearth of Russian speakers on Twitter.
Ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea want Crimea to be part of Ukraine.
Only remotely honest people acknowledge the Russians removed the native Crimea Tartars and ethnic Ukrainians from Crimea following WW2. They depopulated the area for chrissakes and moved only ethnic Russians in. There has barely been a full generation of Ukrainian independence so repopulating Crimea with ethnic Ukrainians wasn’t one of their priorities( with all of their other challenges is self governing). Moreover, since a vast amount of their leaders have been kremlin puppets it wouldn’t have been a priority.
Beyond which, Russians were a plurality well before the war, with Ukrainians being 10% of the population in 1926.
But yeah, Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars. By all accounts Russians have been a majority in Crimea the entire post-Soviet Era
Also, once again, why the fuck is nothing the Soviet Union did valid except times they transferred land to Ukraine? Its absolute bullshit hypocrisy to claim that one thing is valid and nothing else is.
Russians have been the majority... according to Russia. They deny starving 7millions Ukrainians to death, and only Russophiles appear to believe Russian propaganda in and around genocide.
The only time the Soviets were honest was in 1991 when they couldn't keep their farce up. Transferring land to Ukraine when the dissolution of the USSR was a transparent event.
If you're looking for a direct answer, that is it, and it's the simplest and most straightforward answer that can be given.
You seem to have the USSR confused with some sort of democracy where the people have power. If you want to be mad at an ethnic group for that I point you again to the Georgians, though also you know as well as anyone that communism simply doesnt work and does cause mass starvation and relies on widespread violence and oppression for power.
Also the 2001 census by the independent state of Ukraine said Crimea was 60% ethnic Russian.
Well written, except it lacks a context of what Ukraine actually wants.
Benjamin Disraeli famously wrote “I must follow the people, am I not their leader”, and Zellensky isn’t making an overture towards EU and NATO unilaterally, he is following the will of the people. The Ukrainians want to align with Europe, not Russia. That isn’t CIA driven propaganda, that is the will of the Ukrainian people:
I often mention the Holodomor, in the context of the long history of the Bolsheviks/USSR mistreatment of the Ukrainian people. Sometimes dismissed as ancient history, these scars are long remembered by Ukraine and its people. The Ukrainians care about this history, and continue to care.
Those wounds may never heal between the Russian government and the Ukrainian people (especially now with the invasion that started in 2014).
As a sovereign country, Ukraine has the right to approach EU and NATO.
But your article is written from the Russian perspective like Russia should care about that or somehow the invasion was a justified reason to intervene, and/or make the decisions for Ukraine. But Ukrainians don’t fucking care what Russia thinks.
"The will of the people" is fake and gay, it means absolutely nothing to any decision-maker excepting its utility to justify one policy prescription or the other. Putting forth this meaningless turn of phrase to any serious analysis of any state action, foreign or domestic, is worse than useless.
I am not an expert on these issues, and very much appreciate your views in the topic.
I would say that the holdomor never happened under imperial Russia, and only happened under the communists, so that is obviously a communist problem, not an ethnic Russian problem.
Apr 16, 2022·edited Apr 16, 2022Liked by Brad Pearce
>Sometimes dismissed as ancient history, these scars are long remembered by Ukraine and its people. The Ukrainians care about this history, and continue to care.
This is in fact the opposite of true. The re-writing of Holodomor as something inflicted by Russians, onto Ukrainians, in order to suppress Ukrainian statehood, is largely an invention of post-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists. These nationalists desired to give Ukraine a "Holocaust-equivalent"--some great past crime inflicted upon their people which justifies their state's existence and justifies any and all actions that state may take going forwards. All three aspects of the Holodomor narrative as presented by Ukrainian nationalists are demonstrably false.
First, that it was done "by Russians." Holodomor policy was enacted by the administrative government of the Ukrainian SSR--which at the time was ~70% Ukrainian, ~20% Jewish, ~10% various Caucasus minorities--Georgian, Armenian, and so on. As in the rest of the USSR, ethnic Russians rarely if ever climbed higher than the middle ranks of the state bureaucracy.
Then there is the myth that Holodomor was inflicted onto Ukrainians, to suppress their national tendencies. The target of Holodomor was any farmer who dared resist the Soviet's brutal, forced reorganization of Russian agriculture into Soviet collective farms--such people were branded counter-revolutionary Kulaks and died a slow death by starvation. Far from being aimed at the people we now call Ukrainians, it was in fact ethnic Russians who were disproportionately affected by this--Eastern Ukraine, inhabited by Russians, is where most of the farms were located, and thus was hardest hit by these policies. Taken in tandem with these policy-makers being largely Lvovite Ukrainians, it's in fact *more* correct (but still wrong) to say Holodomor was done by Ukrainians to Russians, not the other way around.
I've read some of the letters sent by assistants of Stalin, directed the the Ukrainian Soviet. This famine was directed from the centre. One can argue whether or not it was malice or incompetence that lead to the deaths, but two facts stand out:
-the areas that were hit the hardest, were areas with a majority ethnic Ukrainian population. This includes Krasnodar Krai and Rostov oblast, in present day Russia.
-at the same time, the ethnically Kazakh population in Kazakhstan dropped from 3.6 to 2.4 million from starvation, while simultaneously the ethnically Russian population in Kazakhstan went from 1.3 to 2.6 million.
A classic techique used by tyrants to maintain power, see Machiavelli, Discourses, I.26 where hr says of this method, " these are extremely cruel methods and inimicable to every way of life, not only Christian but human, and every man should avoid them and prefer to live life as a private citizen rather than a king with so much damage to other men"
Stalin has absolutely nothing to do with the Russian people, he was a foreign tyrant who ruled them without their say. Its insane to act as if Russians were beneficiaries of that policy when in every other instance it is considered those people having been deported.
Also its pretty fucking weird how Ukrainians blame Russians for Stalin yet love Georgians. Its almost as if they are so blinded by ethnic hatred that they will say anything.
That Ukraine and Russia would have tensions absent continuous maneuverings and pressures from the west is not really the point. And that Ukraine elected a pro-Russian leader prior to his ouster does not paint the picture of a country mandating westernization. I’m not saying, either, that it isn’t split on the issue - much like Britain was similarly split on the EU issue, much like America is broadly split on globalism despite solidarity amongst the ruling class.
Maybe Russia would always have invaded Ukraine eventually, but due to the west’s actions there is no counter factual to know if we didn’t wholly provoke or hasten the action.
Mar 10, 2022·edited Mar 10, 2022Liked by Brad Pearce
the Orange revolution promised a new path in 2004. Unfortunately for Viktor Yushenko (the guy that was poisoned by the Russians), he couldn't deliver on most of his campaign promises. Yushenko, FWIW, was beleaguered by corruption of pro-russian elected officials, and promised the world but couldn't make changes because the other pro-russian elected leaders simply wouldn't work with him.
While it is true that Viktor Yanokovich (whom leaned Pro-Russia for UKR/RUS affairs) was elected and replaced Yushenko, the vote for Yanokovich was more about how underwhelming Yushenko was. To wit, it wasn't the "Pro-Russia" vote per se, it was like the election of Trump in 2016 (ie anti-Hillary) or the election of Biden in 2020 (ie anti-Trump). Yushenko got about 5% of the vote for his re-election campaign, and Yanokovich barely beat Julia Tymsehnko out (who was pro-Ukrainian).
Lastly, it's important when discussing Zelensky and his Pro-Ukrainian platform, and the amount of population that voted for him:
That is a really informative explanation of the Ukrainian nationalist position [I don't mean that dismissively].
But there was obviously a big divide in Ukrainian culture. If a pro-Russia faction can win a national election, even by a razor thin margin, it would demonstrate a lot of people are harmed by anti-Russian language laws etc.
But to be honest, I care very little about the Ukrainians. What I care about are the powers using them as a sacrificial pawn on the imperial chessboard.
You say I give this from a Russian perspective, but how else would you understand Putin's decision making? Russia is acting from Russia's perspective. How Putin sees the situation is the only way to understand why Putin invaded.
Statesmanship is an art of the possible. With whats going on in Ukraine, it is obvious that just agreed upon military neutrality was a great solution to stop literally this exact thing from happening.
also, I have to admit, I have an enormous abstract academic sort of belief in a multipolar world, and thus, the premise that Russia is allowed a sphere or influence means an enormous amount to me. I also see Ukraine as a pawn on the chessboard, but I always argued for neutrality and keeping it out of play.
Kraut recently did a great youtube video, deconstructing 'Realism' in political studies.
The main problem with the spheres of influence idea, is that it carves the world into two: 2-3 superpowers on one side, and billions of people who apparently don't have sovereignty over their own lives on the other side, relegated to being will-less pawns on a chessboard.
It's not surprising the adherents to the 'Realist' school of thought almost exclusively reside in either the US, Russia or China.
"You know as well as I do that "right" is only a question between equals in power while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
This doesn't explain why Russia complains so much about Ukrainians getting equal footing with Russian forces through Western weaponry.
Kraut also addresses how Realism went from a predictive theory, to a theory of 'ought' among certain thinkers. The problem with using Realism as a moral guideline, is that everyone outside of the aforementioned 'superpowers' have exactly zero reason to follow this line of reasoning.
Being unsovereign pawns to be used by others is not in their best interest, and none of the superpowers can achieve anything without cooperation from others anyway. None of the superpowers can fight the whole world, which outnumbers them vastly.
This is the essence of the European project, however much it chagrins the Russians and the Americans: letting go of 1930s style nationalistic supremacy desires, in exchange for something better.
When Ukraine in 2014 firmly said no to becoming a Russian pawn or rook, and opted for integration into Europe, this whole attitude, this whole concept, was unacceptable to some in Moscow it seems. America didn't mind because it meant one game piece less for Moscow, but imho all the more reason for Europe to get its act together.
Small side note on how independent the Crimean referendum was: Igor Girkin has in the past bragged about being the cause of Crimean deputies voting a certain way: https://twitter.com/AlasdairMcc1/status/1586031849603743744
"The Crimean deputies were rounded up by our militias"
Oh from a highly credible NAFO source.
Perhaps they did. No remotely honest person claims that Crimeans want to be part of Ukraine though.
Also its peculiar how every thing the USSR did is illegitimate except when dictators unilaterally transferred parts of Russia to Ukraine
I wouldn't call Igor Girkin a NAFO source; he's an FSB colonel, who has bragged in talk shows how he was pivotal in a number of actions in the Donbas and Crimea in 2014.
I don't think he wants anything to do with NAFO tbh.
right, except I don't speak Russian, so they could be saying literally anything.
There are tools like @vidtranslator on Twitter. Summon the twitter bot, and it will translate the video for you. Alternatively, you could download the video through twdown dot com, upload it to youtube yourself, and use youtube's built-in auto-translator.
The twitter bot is easier though.
Incidentally, if the given subtitles were incorrect, you would expect someone to correct the poster. There is no dearth of Russian speakers on Twitter.
and one of them did say it was a poor translation. Regardless,
1) he says he was directing Crimean militias
2) There seems to be some confusion about what a referendum is. This only refers to the legislature, not the referendum
I'm sure no one wants to hold a new referendum under international supervision because everyone knows exactly what the result would be.
Ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea want Crimea to be part of Ukraine.
Only remotely honest people acknowledge the Russians removed the native Crimea Tartars and ethnic Ukrainians from Crimea following WW2. They depopulated the area for chrissakes and moved only ethnic Russians in. There has barely been a full generation of Ukrainian independence so repopulating Crimea with ethnic Ukrainians wasn’t one of their priorities( with all of their other challenges is self governing). Moreover, since a vast amount of their leaders have been kremlin puppets it wouldn’t have been a priority.
It was actually a Georgian dictator who moved people all over the USSR, and its not really that significant who lived where in 1940.
Beyond which, Russians were a plurality well before the war, with Ukrainians being 10% of the population in 1926.
But yeah, Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars. By all accounts Russians have been a majority in Crimea the entire post-Soviet Era
Also, once again, why the fuck is nothing the Soviet Union did valid except times they transferred land to Ukraine? Its absolute bullshit hypocrisy to claim that one thing is valid and nothing else is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
Russians have been the majority... according to Russia. They deny starving 7millions Ukrainians to death, and only Russophiles appear to believe Russian propaganda in and around genocide.
The only time the Soviets were honest was in 1991 when they couldn't keep their farce up. Transferring land to Ukraine when the dissolution of the USSR was a transparent event.
If you're looking for a direct answer, that is it, and it's the simplest and most straightforward answer that can be given.
You seem to have the USSR confused with some sort of democracy where the people have power. If you want to be mad at an ethnic group for that I point you again to the Georgians, though also you know as well as anyone that communism simply doesnt work and does cause mass starvation and relies on widespread violence and oppression for power.
Also the 2001 census by the independent state of Ukraine said Crimea was 60% ethnic Russian.
if 1940 isn't significant, the 51 years of Soviet rule was. duh.
I hope you realize the idea that Ukraine was not a full, active participant/member of the USSR is revisionist nonsense
Well written, except it lacks a context of what Ukraine actually wants.
Benjamin Disraeli famously wrote “I must follow the people, am I not their leader”, and Zellensky isn’t making an overture towards EU and NATO unilaterally, he is following the will of the people. The Ukrainians want to align with Europe, not Russia. That isn’t CIA driven propaganda, that is the will of the Ukrainian people:
I often mention the Holodomor, in the context of the long history of the Bolsheviks/USSR mistreatment of the Ukrainian people. Sometimes dismissed as ancient history, these scars are long remembered by Ukraine and its people. The Ukrainians care about this history, and continue to care.
Those wounds may never heal between the Russian government and the Ukrainian people (especially now with the invasion that started in 2014).
As a sovereign country, Ukraine has the right to approach EU and NATO.
But your article is written from the Russian perspective like Russia should care about that or somehow the invasion was a justified reason to intervene, and/or make the decisions for Ukraine. But Ukrainians don’t fucking care what Russia thinks.
"The will of the people" is fake and gay, it means absolutely nothing to any decision-maker excepting its utility to justify one policy prescription or the other. Putting forth this meaningless turn of phrase to any serious analysis of any state action, foreign or domestic, is worse than useless.
I am not an expert on these issues, and very much appreciate your views in the topic.
I would say that the holdomor never happened under imperial Russia, and only happened under the communists, so that is obviously a communist problem, not an ethnic Russian problem.
>Sometimes dismissed as ancient history, these scars are long remembered by Ukraine and its people. The Ukrainians care about this history, and continue to care.
This is in fact the opposite of true. The re-writing of Holodomor as something inflicted by Russians, onto Ukrainians, in order to suppress Ukrainian statehood, is largely an invention of post-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists. These nationalists desired to give Ukraine a "Holocaust-equivalent"--some great past crime inflicted upon their people which justifies their state's existence and justifies any and all actions that state may take going forwards. All three aspects of the Holodomor narrative as presented by Ukrainian nationalists are demonstrably false.
First, that it was done "by Russians." Holodomor policy was enacted by the administrative government of the Ukrainian SSR--which at the time was ~70% Ukrainian, ~20% Jewish, ~10% various Caucasus minorities--Georgian, Armenian, and so on. As in the rest of the USSR, ethnic Russians rarely if ever climbed higher than the middle ranks of the state bureaucracy.
Then there is the myth that Holodomor was inflicted onto Ukrainians, to suppress their national tendencies. The target of Holodomor was any farmer who dared resist the Soviet's brutal, forced reorganization of Russian agriculture into Soviet collective farms--such people were branded counter-revolutionary Kulaks and died a slow death by starvation. Far from being aimed at the people we now call Ukrainians, it was in fact ethnic Russians who were disproportionately affected by this--Eastern Ukraine, inhabited by Russians, is where most of the farms were located, and thus was hardest hit by these policies. Taken in tandem with these policy-makers being largely Lvovite Ukrainians, it's in fact *more* correct (but still wrong) to say Holodomor was done by Ukrainians to Russians, not the other way around.
I've read some of the letters sent by assistants of Stalin, directed the the Ukrainian Soviet. This famine was directed from the centre. One can argue whether or not it was malice or incompetence that lead to the deaths, but two facts stand out:
-the areas that were hit the hardest, were areas with a majority ethnic Ukrainian population. This includes Krasnodar Krai and Rostov oblast, in present day Russia.
-at the same time, the ethnically Kazakh population in Kazakhstan dropped from 3.6 to 2.4 million from starvation, while simultaneously the ethnically Russian population in Kazakhstan went from 1.3 to 2.6 million.
A classic techique used by tyrants to maintain power, see Machiavelli, Discourses, I.26 where hr says of this method, " these are extremely cruel methods and inimicable to every way of life, not only Christian but human, and every man should avoid them and prefer to live life as a private citizen rather than a king with so much damage to other men"
Stalin has absolutely nothing to do with the Russian people, he was a foreign tyrant who ruled them without their say. Its insane to act as if Russians were beneficiaries of that policy when in every other instance it is considered those people having been deported.
Also its pretty fucking weird how Ukrainians blame Russians for Stalin yet love Georgians. Its almost as if they are so blinded by ethnic hatred that they will say anything.
lol
That Ukraine and Russia would have tensions absent continuous maneuverings and pressures from the west is not really the point. And that Ukraine elected a pro-Russian leader prior to his ouster does not paint the picture of a country mandating westernization. I’m not saying, either, that it isn’t split on the issue - much like Britain was similarly split on the EU issue, much like America is broadly split on globalism despite solidarity amongst the ruling class.
Maybe Russia would always have invaded Ukraine eventually, but due to the west’s actions there is no counter factual to know if we didn’t wholly provoke or hasten the action.
the Orange revolution promised a new path in 2004. Unfortunately for Viktor Yushenko (the guy that was poisoned by the Russians), he couldn't deliver on most of his campaign promises. Yushenko, FWIW, was beleaguered by corruption of pro-russian elected officials, and promised the world but couldn't make changes because the other pro-russian elected leaders simply wouldn't work with him.
While it is true that Viktor Yanokovich (whom leaned Pro-Russia for UKR/RUS affairs) was elected and replaced Yushenko, the vote for Yanokovich was more about how underwhelming Yushenko was. To wit, it wasn't the "Pro-Russia" vote per se, it was like the election of Trump in 2016 (ie anti-Hillary) or the election of Biden in 2020 (ie anti-Trump). Yushenko got about 5% of the vote for his re-election campaign, and Yanokovich barely beat Julia Tymsehnko out (who was pro-Ukrainian).
Lastly, it's important when discussing Zelensky and his Pro-Ukrainian platform, and the amount of population that voted for him:
Viktor Yushenko elected with 52% of vote
Viktor Yanokovich elected with 48% of vote
Petro Poroshenko elected with 54% of vote
Volodomir Zelensky elected with 73% of vote
That is a really informative explanation of the Ukrainian nationalist position [I don't mean that dismissively].
But there was obviously a big divide in Ukrainian culture. If a pro-Russia faction can win a national election, even by a razor thin margin, it would demonstrate a lot of people are harmed by anti-Russian language laws etc.
But to be honest, I care very little about the Ukrainians. What I care about are the powers using them as a sacrificial pawn on the imperial chessboard.
You say I give this from a Russian perspective, but how else would you understand Putin's decision making? Russia is acting from Russia's perspective. How Putin sees the situation is the only way to understand why Putin invaded.
Statesmanship is an art of the possible. With whats going on in Ukraine, it is obvious that just agreed upon military neutrality was a great solution to stop literally this exact thing from happening.
also, I have to admit, I have an enormous abstract academic sort of belief in a multipolar world, and thus, the premise that Russia is allowed a sphere or influence means an enormous amount to me. I also see Ukraine as a pawn on the chessboard, but I always argued for neutrality and keeping it out of play.
Kraut recently did a great youtube video, deconstructing 'Realism' in political studies.
The main problem with the spheres of influence idea, is that it carves the world into two: 2-3 superpowers on one side, and billions of people who apparently don't have sovereignty over their own lives on the other side, relegated to being will-less pawns on a chessboard.
It's not surprising the adherents to the 'Realist' school of thought almost exclusively reside in either the US, Russia or China.
You know as well as I do that "right" is only a question between equals in power while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
Also if we're being honest, Russia wants to use Ukraine as a rook, not a pawn. It's only a pawn to the West.
"You know as well as I do that "right" is only a question between equals in power while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
This doesn't explain why Russia complains so much about Ukrainians getting equal footing with Russian forces through Western weaponry.
Kraut also addresses how Realism went from a predictive theory, to a theory of 'ought' among certain thinkers. The problem with using Realism as a moral guideline, is that everyone outside of the aforementioned 'superpowers' have exactly zero reason to follow this line of reasoning.
Being unsovereign pawns to be used by others is not in their best interest, and none of the superpowers can achieve anything without cooperation from others anyway. None of the superpowers can fight the whole world, which outnumbers them vastly.
This is the essence of the European project, however much it chagrins the Russians and the Americans: letting go of 1930s style nationalistic supremacy desires, in exchange for something better.
When Ukraine in 2014 firmly said no to becoming a Russian pawn or rook, and opted for integration into Europe, this whole attitude, this whole concept, was unacceptable to some in Moscow it seems. America didn't mind because it meant one game piece less for Moscow, but imho all the more reason for Europe to get its act together.