Mirth there are loads of Ukrainians who never wanted this war, Zelensky ironically being one of them initially both when he was first elected and in 2022 shortly after the war started. There are even people living in Eastern and Southern Ukraine who after 2014 would rather be part of Russia than Ukraine.

There are tens of thousands Ukrainian refugees in my city alone, have friends who work in social services and they say while they spoke to many who have an understandably intense hatred for anything Russian there are just as many who despise Poroshenko and Zelensky and blame them for it.

      jones yes, I completely believe that. From looking at the polling, the war had public support in 2022 but now hovering around the 50% mark as fatigue sets in and also that the sentiment varies by region with the East having more cultural affinity/influence with Russia.

      I don't know if this, as a framework, helps move the dialogue along though given that we're in the middle of a conflict of attrition. There's never been unanimous support for war or independence movements and there's especially never any consensus for what 'victory' looks before the fact. That's driven by results on the battlefield, leadership and a healthy dollop of revisionist history

        Mirth but I do feel like the dialogue here sees Eastern Europe as a bunch of NPCs.

        That's exactly the problem and why it was all wrong from the start. The calculus treated people like sacrificial animals, and geopolitical interests as primary. Life in all of its specificity is worth more than some general notion of being Ukrainian. Dying for Ukraine, or for Russia, is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. I am not totally unsympathetic. The borderlands of empire will always be contested. Ukraine literally means borderland, after all. It's a difficult position to navigate.

        Independence, however, is a failed concept of decolonization. Probably better to build autonomy at the community level within a sprawling empire that barely notices you than to try to seize and control a fundamentally arbitrary part of the world to which you associate your national identity. It just results in more strife.

        This is not least because all national histories are myths that reinvent the past to suit contemporary agendas. That includes Ukrainian national mythologies as well as Russian, Palestinian as well as Israeli, etc. Just garbled stories used for their contemporary political utility that are not worth fighting over.

        As I see it, too many are willing to roar like lions just so others can die like dogs.

            he comes out with this just as trump said in another fox interview they are unlikely to touch the defense budget. DOGE is exactly what I predicted it would be from the day it was announced - a PR campaign to manufacture enough consent to siphon off as much of the public purse as possible. feels like the dog that caught the car if they actually follow through with the medicare/social security stuff

            and this is just jussie smollet levels of bullshitting
            'the ukraine area'. lol

              Coombs Interesting. I suspect you've thought about this more deeply that I have but I find this hard to reconcile. Sure, community autonomy can offer some degree of self-governance but practically speaking it offers no means of safeguarding a distinct culture against the sheer force of a larger empire.

              Empires - in any era - tend to impose dominant cultural norms which gradually erode minority groups. Independence allows a group to control its own cultural institutions and the chance to preserve their traditions, and values. Without this, these elements are at risk of being absorbed by the dominant culture. Just because all national histories contain myth doesn't make them invalid in my opinion. Creating a myth is a fundamental part of group identity from the first tribe onwards.

              While national states themselves can then go ahead and create their own brand of oppression, it's still a better framework due to the implicit assumption of accountability - certainly more than the alternatives.

                  Gurgen Most of your post is factually incorrect

                  Bad faith. You've called me an impractical fantasist prey to Russian propaganda for advocating a peace negotiation. You said as much to me back in 2023. You've jacketed anyone who suggested as much as pro-Putin. Be serious.

                  Our forum posts achieve nothing. But as far as it goes, your posts have accompanied hundreds of thousands of deaths of both Ukrainians and Russians, a lot of them conscripts, that haven't brightened Ukraine's future.

                  Not much else to say here. I hope there is a break in the carnage sooner rather than later.

                    Mirth I'm not in favour of this continuing as the outlines of the end game are clear, particularly with the US placing their thumbs on the scale to suit their whims but I do feel like the dialogue here sees Eastern Europe as a bunch of NPCs.

                    Maybe this wasn't aimed at me, but I don't reckon I treat people in Eastern Europe (not the term I'd use here) much different from Australians or Brits . I've never visited Ukraine, but I've visited six of the nine former Warsaw Pact nations. I've seen more Russia and Poland than the other countries, and I've taught myself a fair bit of Polish and Russian in the past.

                    I think of guys like the Russian soldiers I drank with in Chita 15–20 years ago when I hear of another 100,000 dead. Pure evil in the form of talkative frat boys who like to get very drunk and call each other gay while arm-wrestling, singing and hugging, then try to fix your hangover with a cup of sugary tea.

                    Yeah I'm an Australian, I didn't grow up in the Soviet Bloc so it's true, I can't share the deeper feelings of people who did, but I do recognise and know them, and have had plenty more personal stories firsthand.

                      Mirth Empires - in any era - tend to impose dominant cultural norms which gradually erode minority groups.

                      I'm not sure this is true. I'm no great fan of imperialism, but historical, precolonial empires have often been extremely diverse, multilingual, multiethnic, even multifaith. It seems to me that loose affiliations are, on the whole, much better for community autonomy and cultural preservation than strong national identities built on false histories. Colonial empires combined the worst aspects of imperialism with such national identities associated with the colonial homeland, i.e., white, Christian, etc. These identitarian structures are just about guaranteed to produce fascism, genocide, and systemic violence and discrimination. From my perspective, it seems even those nation-states founded on ostensibly noble principles of independence, self determination, and cultural preservation will fall into this trap.

                      I'm obviously biased, because various independence movements saw my family displaced multiple times over multiple generations due to the strong ethnonationalist tendencies that they inevitably manifest.

                        Gazza M DOGE is exactly what I predicted it would be from the day it was announced - a PR campaign to manufacture enough consent to siphon off as much of the public purse as possible

                        Definitely a backdoor for his many companies. He has had Starlink people call the FAA directly about modernising their satellite systems for tracking planes. I imagine he will have his other tech companies offer support on analytics and data management across the government. Which could be helpful of course, but it’s corruption in the open.

                          Mirth maybe they know something the rest of us don't

                            Sounds like a waste of time for politicians

                            In fairness, reasons to hope in the US are limited right now. Pretty ironic that vote when you think of it

                            I'm sure a lot of people are going to suffer, and die as a direct result of his policies, and I feel sorrow for them/us as a country. But I'm glad that at least the victims will cut across both political parties so even his voters are going to feel the pain their vote has brought them.

                            International Day of Hope, sounds like the type of nonsense that would come out of the UN....

                            Moving in the right direction at least.

                              JazzG I'm not sure that is totally accurate given he said he's in favour of it but it has to deal with the root cause of the war which was massively undefined. Also didn't trump say Russia was ready for peace why haven't they immediately accepted.

                                Like I said moving in the right direction, still miles away from any kind of agreement.

                                "tHe wOKe lEfT iS bLOCkiNG fReE sPeEcH oN cAMpUs"

                                  Burnwinter you know what’s interesting is this isn’t a new idea. I used to hear my conservative friends complain that liberal arts co@@eges blocked their speech. This was twenty years ago.
                                  The feeling was that they weren’t freely able to talk about Christianity, being anti-LGBTQI, gun ownership, small government etc. traditional conservative stuff, not even the current insanity.