Well . . . Damn! Good on you! And them.
Yes, as you helped highlight, their history is complex, and the choices they faced were horrible. Collaborate with Nazis to resist Stalin, or accept Stalin and resist Nazis. This is especially difficult given the Russians’ intentional starvation of Ukrainians in the 1920s and the likelihood of further oppression. Collaboration with Nazis is never good, and I’m glad I’ve never faced such an awful awful decision.
I think his long-term problem is that (as I’ve said) he was never the KGB master spy of PR myth. He was always an internal security snake, and that’s colored his thinking all along.
He sees the post-Soviet countries as regions in revolt. He listens to his internal security agency, rather than those fancy international types, and their institutional attitudes distort the information that he gets. That hasn’t mattered so much in some places that were always trouble spots, their picture still mapped to reality not too badly:
Send in the “paratrooper” bully boys to seize key assets, crack heads, and start “restoring order”. The troops follow to brush aside resistance, establish firm control, and crush any remaining pockets. Easy!
With Ukraine, their picture didn’t map to reality at all. The Crimean “little green men” tactics worked, but internal security didn’t understand the country of Ukraine any more, or the reaction to that grab.
TW: images of dead, nothing gory but definitely dead; report also contains related descriptive words
https://kyivindependent.com/national/how-ukraine-swaps-living-soldiers-for-dead-russians/
Yeah, it’s like a certain, like, itch I get when someone mistakes etymology for entomology. That always bugs me in a way I can’t quite put into words.
If anyone wants to avoid a click:
The Ukrainians are apparently returning the bodies of Russian Soldiers to secure the release of Ukrainian POWs. Seems to be an unofficial policy.
Other details include that Russia may be stripping it’s soldiers of ID before sending them in.
I am a Descriptivist: Words mean what they are understood to mean, and sometimes that changes. “Silly” no longer means “blessed”. “Happy” no longer means “lucky”. That’s just how language works.
I am sometimes reflexively Prescriptionist: when someone “literally decimates” their opponents in a sportsball game, I am unreasonably annoyed. I know what they meant, but a part of my wants to grab them by the collar and scream “That’s not what those words mean!”.
Both things are true. I am complex and full of contradiction.
The legions that had to worry about decimation as a punishment were divided into centuries, which by the end of the Republic each contained 80 men…a lot less time and still the same language as the root word.
Well if you decimate a century twice, and round down, you get 80. Simple mathematics
ITYM you get LXXX.
Wouldn’t you get LXXXI?
It’s not just that. Parts of Stepan Bandera’s ideology aligned well with Nazi ideology.
Bandera’s OUN faction is also known for murdering about 100 000 of Polish civilians, and celebrating Bandera means celebrating that fact.
@anon15383236 Notice that the band doesn’t mention Bandera’s views on “racial purity”, and doesn’t mention genocide comitted by his faction. I’m pretty sure they still hold their despiceable views.
Read part about " Views towards other ethnic groups" on the Wikipedia page Stepan Bandera - Wikipedia
Nothing is excellent in this. Even in their apology they are excusing Bandera’s actions and are not acknowledging the genocide his faction carried out and his disgusting ideology.
Hate speech and celebration of genocide of any ethnic group is despiceable. Celebrating Bandera is essentially hate speech against Polish ethnicity and celebrating antisemitism.
Worth quoting Alexander Gabuev (linked by @anothernewbbaccount the other day):
Another part of the problem involves a paradox: Putin understands China and the Arab world far better than he gets his own neighbors, particularly Ukraine. The reason is that when he is dealing with a Chinese leader, he’ll say, “I don’t understand the language. I don’t understand the culture. I need somebody who is a professional China-watcher to help me understand what the hell is going on there.” Same with the Middle East. But when it comes to the United States and Europe, Putin—who speaks German, remember—will say, “Oh, we are Europeans ourselves, so we know them.” And he won’t rely on real experts, which has led to a lot of misconceptions.
When it comes to Ukraine, it’s even worse. The department of the Russian presidential administration that works on Ukraine stuff has always been the domestic unit. The diplomats have never been involved, and the quality of people working on Ukraine has been really terrible. They have all these misconceptions, because Russians and Ukrainians of Putin’s generation used to be part of the same country. They are very, very similar. They are Soviet people by background, who watched the same movies, tell the same jokes. So when Putin has to deal with Ukraine, he doesn’t turn to professionals and say, “Okay, what’s going on?” And when people in Ukraine start to do strange things like speak Ukrainian or show a strong sense of Ukrainian identity, he says, “I know Ukraine. Ukraine is like us. This is something foreign, something imposed on them.”
That helps explain why the design of the operation was to make a surgical strike that would eliminate Ukraine’s aerial defenses, destroy its command-and-control systems, target weapon depots and concentrations of Ukrainian troops. Putin thought this would make Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky run away to Washington, D.C. on Day One. He thought the Ukrainian army would be demoralized, and that part of the country would greet Russia with flowers and the other part would not resist. That was his theory. And he sought to minimize civilian casualties because he saw Ukrainians as our people and as pro-Russia. And there weren’t enough Russian military officials involved in the planning who could ask, “Okay, what if that’s not what happens? Are we ready to take big cities? Are we ready to occupy the country?” There was no plan B, no plan C.
I wish Norway would use that precautionary system.
Last I heard they hadn’t impounded any yachts because although there is a handful of them around, they wouldn’t move before they were sure the owners are on EU sanctions lists. Which, with the obscured ownership structures takes longer than it takes the yachts to leave Norwegian waters. Why not just prevent them from leaving while they’re being investigated, like Finland and Germany have been doing?
