In Solidarity with Ukraine

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Starting off with the premise that a megalomaniac's demands are in any way legitimate burrows deeply into a confused and incoherent logic loop. Appeasement worked well in the 1930s Ed, right?
 
Larry Cloetta said:
Nick,

Does it really matter if we think NATO is a threat to Russia? It would seem like what would matter in the current situation is if Russia sees it that way. We may comfortably say that NATO is a defensive organization, and it was established to protect against Soviet aggression, or more specifically as a counterweight to the Warsaw Pact countries which banded together to protect against western aggression. The Warsaw Pact is gone, so Russia wonders why NATO, which was formed against them, is still around. Russian suspicions that NATO is not a neutral player were confirmed when NATO rebuffed their overtures for membership decades ago. If NATO just exists as a neutral security force, one for all, and all for one, in a spirit of mutual cooperation, then why can’t we join? Russia understands why, and they understand that NATO isn’t neutral. The Soviet Union is gone, but the entity birthed to fight it militarily is still around.
NATO says it is a “defensive” organization, but it’s both defensive and offensive. Which countries has NATO attacked ? Or, more to the point, which countries who have not attacked a NATO country, been pre emptively attacked by NATO forces? Attacked without any real fear of any real repercussions, after the world became a unipolar world, revolving around one superpower, not two. Russia understands the hubris that comes from knowing there is no one left in the world who can “beat you up.”

The March 2011 US-NATO attack on Libya. . In the opening hours of the attack, American and British war ships and submarines fired scores of cruise missiles which, by 21 March 2011, had wiped out Gaddafi’s entire strategic air defence system along the Libyan coastline. US B-2 spirit bombers destroyed Libya’s largest airport, in the capital Tripoli, while Tornado aircraft launched Storm Shadow missiles at numerous strategic targets. Libya was thrown into civil war as a consequence from which it has never really recovered. Gadaffi may have been a nut, but he posed no real threat to anyone except those who had to sit through his hour long comedy routines at the U.N. every year. The point being, that Libya had not attacked a NATO nation, nor did it seem on the verge of doing so. It was just an attack on a nation that the U.S. thought was dangerous, even though Libya had given up its nuclear weapons program out of fear of such an attack. NATO bombed Gadaffi’s house in a targeted assassination, which is supposedly illegal under international law, and missed.

In 1999, Serbia, which was then part of Yugoslavia was attacked by NATO, again, as a U.S. led operation under Bill Clinton, and again pre-emptively, just because it could, not because Yugoslavia had attacked a NATO country, which it hadn’t.

So no, NATO has proven itself, since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact to not be a defensive organization, but an organization of militaries which will do whatever it justifies itself as doing to whomever it thinks it is justified in attacking, for whatever reason if it thinks it can get away with it. People are free to look up the backstories on those two wars, and decide whether they were moral, or not, but there is a lot of feeling in some quarters that both of those attacks were both unjustified and “illegal”. My point is, regardless of the backstories and ostensible reasons for the attacks, they were not remotely defensive in nature, and NATO can no longer in good faith claim to be a purely defensive organization. Again, Russia is acutely aware of this, even if most Americans are not.


“Putin famously stated that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the biggest tragedy of the 20th century.” Yes, he did state that, and it is now “famously” because it has been burned into the Western consciousness ever since. What is less famous, because his remarks were removed from their context, is what he said following that, which was that “but no one wants to go back to the Soviet Union.” Why don’t Americans know, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” Perhaps, because it conflicts with the narrative. People can look it up; you can find it if you look hard enough.

Putin does want to “restore former glory” you are quite right, but it’s pre-Revolutionary Russia he wants to restore, the Russia of Tolstoy and Pushkin, not the Soviet Union. If he wanted to restore the Soviet Union he wouldn’t be rebuilding and reopening the churches that the Bolsheviks shuttered.
Look, I’ve already been accused of being a shill for Putin, and what I just said won’t quiet that down among those who are so convinced they understand Russia completely, and I’m merely stupid, or a “useful idiot.” I get that.

Well meaning people are always saying that we must look at the world through the eyes of “the other” in order to make a better world, but westerners generally, in my lifetime, have always refused to do that when it comes to Russians, no matter which governing ideology was ruling the Russian people. Like the McCartheyites, we are still finding Russkie stooges under every bed. There are two sides to this. (There are not two sides to whether war is bad, but there are two sides to understanding how the world got here. IMO) And to me, it’s obvious that we got here simply because one side refused to listen to concerns that the other side legitimately had. If people won’t let themselves even contemplate that possibility, well, okay.
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There is so much nonsense in this post - starting from factual inaccuracies and ending up with some pseudo- philosophical conclusions. I will not go through everything, but just want to point out that NATO actions in Serbia was not “pre-emptive”. It was to stop the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. This is well documented and some Serbian leaders serving life sentences for what they did. Putins claims about “genocide in Donbas” is a pure fiction.
Restoration of Pushkin and Tolstoy Russia? Seriously? The big Empire with a lot of oppressed nations? Give Finland, Baltics, Polish nations to Russia, prohibit local languages, instate Moscow Governors everywhere? Because this was Tolstoy and Pushkin Russia.
In Finland we have a legitimate concern about Russias imperial nationalism. We do not feel safe. How is it less legitimate? We want Russia to be disarmed completely, otherwise we reserve the right to nuke Moscow. Seems reasonable? Not to me, but this is exactly what Putin is doing from Russia perspective. How the concern of a big country ir more legitimate than the one of small country?
 
please tell me since when is nato defensive? Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya? wtf people?
plus lets not forget that Ukrainian elected government make statues for Bandera - their wwii collaborationist, they have Azov nazi unit integrated in official army, they never processed anyone for killing and burning 30+ russians in Odessa, they kill people in donbas since 2014 just for being russian, they made Ukrainian only official language even when they have 20% of russian minority. they totally ignored referendums in ukraine same as whole west. west didnt ignore slovenia, croatia, kosovo when they wanted to separate even where there was no constitutional basis for it - but now when someone wanna separate from their friends they all protect sovereignty. its a dirty world and ukraine is very very dirty - not to mention all the business they do with nowadays US president's son. so i dont see why would anyone support nazi country and care about them. it is the way they chose and voted for and now they pay for it same as germany in wwii.
 
valdas said:
There is so much nonsense in this post - starting from factual inaccuracies and ending up with some pseudo- philosophical conclusions. I will not go through everything, but just want to point out that NATO actions in Serbia was not “pre-emptive”. It was to stop the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. This is well documented and some Serbian leaders serving life sentences for what they did. Putins claims about “genocide in Donbas” is a pure fiction.
Restoration of Pushkin and Tolstoy Russia? Seriously? The big Empire with a lot of oppressed nations? Give Finland, Baltics, Polish nations to Russia, prohibit local languages, instate Moscow Governors everywhere? Because this was Tolstoy and Pushkin Russia.
In Finland we have a legitimate concern about Russias imperial nationalism. We do not feel safe. How is it less legitimate? We want Russia to be disarmed completely, otherwise we reserve the right to nuke Moscow. Seems reasonable? Not to me, but this is exactly what Putin is doing from Russia perspective. How the concern of a big country ir more legitimate than the one of small country?
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Agree completely re: Serbia and the fate of nations that were once conquests of the Russian Empire. However, I don't think he was defending Vlad's worldview but trying to fathom how he understands it.

And Libya? I have to agree with the Cleota assessment above in terms of a provocation. The Obama regime seemed hell-bent on riding the 'Arab Spring' wave regardless of where it took them (to the Muslim Brotherhood and more civil war). Qaddafi had turned his nuclear program over to the US and there seemed no coherent end-point to taking him out. Seemed like a 'hit'. The same thoughtlessness appears to be carrying the Obama regime-redux in empowering Iran on the impending nuclear capitulation. More war will follow.
 
valdas said:
There is so much nonsense in this post - starting from factual inaccuracies and ending up with some pseudo- philosophical conclusions. I will not go through everything, but just want to point out that NATO actions in Serbia was not “pre-emptive”. It was to stop the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. This is well documented and some Serbian leaders serving life sentences for what they did. Putins claims about “genocide in Donbas” is a pure fiction.
Restoration of Pushkin and Tolstoy Russia? Seriously? The big Empire with a lot of oppressed nations? Give Finland, Baltics, Polish nations to Russia, prohibit local languages, instate Moscow Governors everywhere? Because this was Tolstoy and Pushkin Russia.
In Finland we have a legitimate concern about Russias imperial nationalism. We do not feel safe. How is it less legitimate? We want Russia to be disarmed completely, otherwise we reserve the right to nuke Moscow. Seems reasonable? Not to me, but this is exactly what Putin is doing from Russia perspective. How the concern of a big country ir more legitimate than the one of small country?
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about srebrenica "genocide" how can genocide happen in one city with only army man killed. it is war crime because they were encircled and tried to surrender but that is not a genocide... also bosnian people now try to attach more victims just to make story more dramatic but when they get interviewed you see that in those burials they add whoever died during war. look this - youngest victim - mother admits dutch soldiers helped her give a birth and that it was stillborn but somehow that baby is considered as victim killed by serbs. you can look for more interviews and you will see that there are random people buried and they all pretend its victiks from that genocide
https://balkaninsight.com/2011/12/09/hunt-for-bodies-dutch-buried-in-srebrenica/

about donbas not being proven
https://covertactionmagazine.com/20...ve-in-lugansk-ukraine-yields-over-200-bodies/
 
james.liam said:
Agree completely re: Serbia and the fate of nations that were once conquests of the Russian Empire. However, I don't think he was defending Vlad's worldview but trying to fathom how he understands it.

And Libya? I have to agree with the Cleota assessment above in terms of a provocation. The Obama regime seemed hell-bent on riding the 'Arab Spring' wave regardless of where it took them (to the Muslim Brotherhood and more civil war). Qaddafi had turned his nuclear program over to the US and there seemed no coherent end-point to taking him out. Seemed like a 'hit'. The same thoughtlessness appears to be carrying the Obama regime-redux in empowering Iran on the impending nuclear capitulation. More war will follow.
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I agree that Libya was a mess (as many other instances). But I don’t see it is relevant as any other “what about” argument. What is being done to Ukraine is wrong and even if we find mistakes made by US or any other country in the past how can this justify this war?
 
valdas said:
I agree that Libya was a mess (as many other instances). But I don’t see it is relevant as any other “what about” argument. What is being done to Ukraine is wrong and even if we find mistakes made by US or any other country in the past how can this justify this war?
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Don't think anyone here would argue your point.
Comments on other conflicts were made in context of NATO and its defensive stance and how Putin/Russia would perceive it. Has bearing on how to move forward together as an alliance and not in comparison. Proverbial apples & oranges.
 
james.liam said:
Don't think anyone here would argue your point.
Comments on other conflicts were made in context of NATO and its defensive stance and how Putin/Russia would perceive it. Has bearing on how to move forward together as an alliance and not in comparison. Proverbial apples & oranges.
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Putin perceptions can be explained, but not justified. But those explanations somehow turn into justification. NATO was involved in various conflicts for good and bad reasons, but I hardly can see how any of the NATO past involvement would extrapolate into the real threat to Russia. Russia was involved in various conflicts on more ocasions than NATO and with the consequences to small nations. All this “we did not listen to Russia” is BS - we listened too much for too long and believed that after eating Crimea Putin would stop. He just keep on harassing everybody and keeps repeating about “security concerns”.
 
valdas said:
Putin perceptions can be explained, but not justified. But those explanations somehow turn into justification. NATO was involved in various conflicts for good and bad reasons, but I hardly can see how any of the NATO past involvement would extrapolate into the real threat to Russia. Russia was involved in various conflicts on more ocasions than NATO and with the consequences to small nations. All this “we did not listen to Russia” is BS - we listened too much for too long and believed that after eating Crimea Putin would stop. He just keep on harassing everybody and keeps repeating about “security concerns”.
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Putin/Russia never had reality-based concerns about NATO moving aggressively. Russians forget their own hegemonic history. But it doesn't matter; after 45 years, their buffer to the West collapsed and Putin had a front-seat view of it as a KGB operative in Berlin. One by one, their former allies took flight and in the Sovietized contorted mind, they were betrayed and left to fend with NATO right at their borders, despite NATO not being a threat. It doesn't matter in the end and in no way justifies his brutally archaic actions, But you must get inside his head; calling him names doesn't work, vilifying Russians won't work; even sanctions; they will harm the average Russian and turn Russia as a dependent of the PRC. Before long, the CCP will decide the time is ripe to pluck Taiwan into the 'fold'; our reaction to this naked act of aggression will determine if or when that might happen.
 
“There is so much nonsense in this post - starting from factual inaccuracies and ending up with some pseudo- philosophical conclusions. I will not go through everything, but just want to point out that NATO actions in Serbia was not “pre-emptive”. It was to stop the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. This is well documented and some Serbian leaders serving life sentences for what they did. Putins claims about “genocide in Donbas” is a pure fiction.
Restoration of Pushkin and Tolstoy Russia? Seriously? The big Empire with a lot of oppressed nations? Give Finland, Baltics, Polish nations to Russia, prohibit local languages, instate Moscow Governors everywhere? Because this was Tolstoy and Pushkin Russia.
In Finland we have a legitimate concern about Russias imperial nationalism. We do not feel safe. How is it less legitimate? We want Russia to be disarmed completely, otherwise we reserve the right to nuke Moscow. Seems reasonable? Not to me, but this is exactly what Putin is doing from Russia perspective. How the concern of a big country ir more legitimate than the one of small country?

Valdas”

I feel an urge to ask ,”which were the factual inaccuracies” as opposed to differences of opinion, though I guess pseudo-intellectual can be added to my ever growing list of qualities, which already include “stupid”, “idiot”, “useful idiot”, “appeaser”, “Putin apologist”, “conspiracy theorist”, and even “QAnon”, though I am not sure that last was aimed at me. That may have just been tossed out there to add some much needed contemporary spice to the heavy breathing.

A military strike aimed at stopping something is, by definition, pre-emptive. So, there’s that. At the time, I thought the NATO attack was an unalloyed good thing; after learning more overall details, that’s become less clear. Again, the discussion of whether NATO actions there or in Libya, or in Afghanistan made the world better or made it worse are tangential to the discussion of whether or not Ukraine should be a NATO member, and the complexities of that question. My point, which I tried to make clear, was, using Libya and Yugoslavia as examples, in response to an assertion that NATO was a defensive organization, and thus not one Russia needed to fear, my point was that NATO is demonstrably not a defensive organization, and goes on the offensive whenever it bloody well pleases.

The assertion that Putin’s claims about genocide in the Donbas are “pure fiction”, isn’t going to stand up to much scrutiny from anyone who bothers to look up the death tolls in those areas and statements from certain paramilitary Ukrainian forces about their reasons for the ceaseless harassment of ethnic Russians there. Though I guess since those forces have been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, they are no longer paramilitary. If you choose not to believe any of that, that’s your prerogative, but perhaps you have never really looked.

One aspect of genocide is the physical elimination of the other based on ethnicity, or culture, and that has happened in the Donbas region by the Azov Battalion and allied groups, based on their beliefs about Russian ethnicity, but that isn’t the only thing that falls under the accepted definition of “genocide”. One of these is the suppression or delegitimizing of a culture’s native language.

In 2016, a New rule came into force requiring Ukraine's radio stations to play a quota of Ukrainian-language songs each day. The law also requires TV and radio broadcasters to ensure at least 60% of programs such as news and analysis are in Ukrainian.[SUP][64][/SUP]
Ukraine's 2017 education law will make Ukrainian the required language of study in state schools from the fifth grade on, even in regions where the native language is Russian and few people speak Ukrainian. In the region of Lviv, a law was passed September 2018 banning the use of cultural products, namely movies, books, songs, etc., in the Russian language in public.
The national language law, passed May, 2019, requires among other things, that any film produced in Ukraine, by anyone, be in Ukrainian, and any foreign language film be dubbed into Ukrainian, with any subtitled foreign language films not allowed to be shown in Ukraine, only dubbed films, so that viewers never hear anything but Ukrainian on the screen, by law.

This gives some insight into what is generally considered by human rights organizations to be a component of genocide: http://www.swans.com/library/art10/gsmith14.html

“Cultural genocide may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate.[SUP][8] [/SUP]
Native American populations have always considered the assault on their various native languages to be forced assimilation, i.e. a form of genocide. People of the dominant culture may profess that this is not anything to get worked up about. Some here may feel this nothing to get worked up about. Those whose language is being actively suppressed for the first time in history may feel differently. The point is that there is nothing fictional about the genocide, by the definitions accepted by Human Rights Watch and others.
There is nothing fictional about these language laws, or the 14,000 dead in the region from shelling since the 2014 “revolution”. Many wars are based on a dislike for “the other”, and the ongoing conflict between Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers in Ukraine can be fairly characterized as one of those.

Finland does have a right to be wary of Russia given its historical consciousness, I will certainly grant you that, but that has nothing to do with whether or not Russia’s proposed security agreements with the West and NATO, from December, were reasonable or unreasonable. And there was nothing in those which arrogated to Russia the right to nuke anyone.

I am sorry if this post is pseudo-intellectual, this is just how I talk.
 
Larry Cloetta said:
“There is so much nonsense in this post - starting from factual inaccuracies and ending up with some pseudo- philosophical conclusions. I will not go through everything, but just want to point out that NATO actions in Serbia was not “pre-emptive”. It was to stop the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. This is well documented and some Serbian leaders serving life sentences for what they did. Putins claims about “genocide in Donbas” is a pure fiction.
Restoration of Pushkin and Tolstoy Russia? Seriously? The big Empire with a lot of oppressed nations? Give Finland, Baltics, Polish nations to Russia, prohibit local languages, instate Moscow Governors everywhere? Because this was Tolstoy and Pushkin Russia.
In Finland we have a legitimate concern about Russias imperial nationalism. We do not feel safe. How is it less legitimate? We want Russia to be disarmed completely, otherwise we reserve the right to nuke Moscow. Seems reasonable? Not to me, but this is exactly what Putin is doing from Russia perspective. How the concern of a big country ir more legitimate than the one of small country?

Valdas”

I feel an urge to ask ,”which were the factual inaccuracies” as opposed to differences of opinion, though I guess pseudo-intellectual can be added to my ever growing list of qualities, which already include “stupid”, “idiot”, “useful idiot”, “appeaser”, “Putin apologist”, “conspiracy theorist”, and even “QAnon”, though I am not sure that last was aimed at me. That may have just been tossed out there to add some much needed contemporary spice to the heavy breathing.

A military strike aimed at stopping something is, by definition, pre-emptive. So, there’s that. At the time, I thought the NATO attack was an unalloyed good thing; after learning more overall details, that’s become less clear. Again, the discussion of whether NATO actions there or in Libya, or in Afghanistan made the world better or made it worse are tangential to the discussion of whether or not Ukraine should be a NATO member, and the complexities of that question. My point, which I tried to make clear, was, using Libya and Yugoslavia as examples, in response to an assertion that NATO was a defensive organization, and thus not one Russia needed to fear, my point was that NATO is demonstrably not a defensive organization, and goes on the offensive whenever it bloody well pleases.

The assertion that Putin’s claims about genocide in the Donbas are “pure fiction”, isn’t going to stand up to much scrutiny from anyone who bothers to look up the death tolls in those areas and statements from certain paramilitary Ukrainian forces about their reasons for the ceaseless harassment of ethnic Russians there. Though I guess since those forces have been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, they are no longer paramilitary. If you choose not to believe any of that, that’s your prerogative, but perhaps you have never really looked.

One aspect of genocide is the physical elimination of the other based on ethnicity, or culture, and that has happened in the Donbas region by the Azov Battalion and allied groups, based on their beliefs about Russian ethnicity, but that isn’t the only thing that falls under the accepted definition of “genocide”. One of these is the suppression or delegitimizing of a culture’s native language.

In 2016, a New rule came into force requiring Ukraine's radio stations to play a quota of Ukrainian-language songs each day. The law also requires TV and radio broadcasters to ensure at least 60% of programs such as news and analysis are in Ukrainian.[SUP][64][/SUP]
Ukraine's 2017 education law will make Ukrainian the required language of study in state schools from the fifth grade on, even in regions where the native language is Russian and few people speak Ukrainian. In the region of Lviv, a law was passed September 2018 banning the use of cultural products, namely movies, books, songs, etc., in the Russian language in public.
The national language law, passed May, 2019, requires among other things, that any film produced in Ukraine, by anyone, be in Ukrainian, and any foreign language film be dubbed into Ukrainian, with any subtitled foreign language films not allowed to be shown in Ukraine, only dubbed films, so that viewers never hear anything but Ukrainian on the screen, by law.

This gives some insight into what is generally considered by human rights organizations to be a component of genocide: http://www.swans.com/library/art10/gsmith14.html

“Cultural genocide may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate.[SUP][8] [/SUP]
Native American populations have always considered the assault on their various native languages to be forced assimilation, i.e. a form of genocide. People of the dominant culture may profess that this is not anything to get worked up about. Some here may feel this nothing to get worked up about. Those whose language is being actively suppressed for the first time in history may feel differently. The point is that there is nothing fictional about the genocide, by the definitions accepted by Human Rights Watch and others.
There is nothing fictional about these language laws, or the 14,000 dead in the region from shelling since the 2014 “revolution”. Many wars are based on a dislike for “the other”, and the ongoing conflict between Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers in Ukraine can be fairly characterized as one of those.

Finland does have a right to be wary of Russia given its historical consciousness, I will certainly grant you that, but that has nothing to do with whether or not Russia’s proposed security agreements with the West and NATO, from December, were reasonable or unreasonable. And there was nothing in those which arrogated to Russia the right to nuke anyone.

I am sorry if this post is pseudo-intellectual, this is just how I talk.
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Many things that you state were happening in Donbas is simply based on a Kremlin propaganda or lies or misinformation. Donbas is occupied by Russia. 14000 dead includes dead on all sides, 1/3 of those victims are Ukrainian soldiers. More than 3000 are civilians, killed by shelling by both sides in the war started by Russia. How is that Ukrainian fault?

on the language law. That is simply wrong. Read the law here: https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/...REF(2019)036-e

So what you write is simply not true.

Have you been to Lviv? I was there, post Crimea occupation, I spoke Russian with locals (my Ukrainian is too poor), and I was fine. I suggest you go and see in person.

Proposed by Russia security agreements between NATO and Russia? Seriously? Restore pre-1997 NATO borders and remove all military and arms from Eastern Europe? So Russia can come whenever they want like they did in Prague in 1968 and Budapest? Seriously?
And I am sorry for my non intellectual style - English is only my fourth foreign language, so I find it difficult to express my ideas in a more fluent and eloquent way.
 
valdas said:
Many things that you state were happening in Donbas is simply based on a Kremlin propaganda or lies or misinformation. Donbas is occupied by Russia. 14000 dead includes dead on all sides, 1/3 of those victims are Ukrainian soldiers. More than 3000 are civilians, killed by shelling by both sides in the war started by Russia. How is that Ukrainian fault?
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The borders as they were drawn after the dissolution of the USSR, were taken from the the lines created by the Soviets as internal administrative ones. As in Khazakstan, Moldova and the Baltics, many Russians moved into the areas or had already been there for centuries, particularly along the fringes. A tough nut to crack and the source of perennial tensions to come. It's become Vlad's "Sudetenland pretext".

on the language law. That is simply wrong. Read the law here: https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/...REF(2019)036-e
And read this: https://www.husj.harvard.edu/news/op...s-of-ukrainian
So what you write is simply not true.
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Hell, Quebec has a 'language law'. In France, a certain % of songs played on the radio have to be French (at least when I was there last 16 years ago).

Proposed by Russia security agreements between NATO and Russia? Seriously? Restore pre-1997 NATO borders and remove all military and arms from Eastern Europe? So Russia can come whenever they want like they did in Prague in 1968 and Budapest? Seriously?
And I am sorry for my non intellectual style - English is only my fourth foreign language, so I find it difficult to express my ideas in a more fluent and eloquent way.
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Agreed, that's silliness. One of Putin's allies in the Duma is now demanding the return of Alaska and Russian settlements in California they sold off in the early 1840's. (They can have California).
 
james.liam said:
The borders as they were drawn after the dissolution of the USSR, were taken from the the lines created by the Soviets as internal administrative ones. As in Khazakstan, Moldova and the Baltics, many Russians moved into the areas or had already been there for centuries, particularly along the fringes. A tough nut to crack and the source of perennial tensions to come. It's become Vlad's "Sudetenland pretext".



Hell, Quebec has a 'language law'. In France, a certain % of songs played on the radio have to be French (at least when I was there last 16 years ago).



Agreed, that's silliness. One of Putin's allies in the Duma is now demanding the return of Alaska and Russian settlements in California they sold off in the early 1840's. (They can have California).
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During USSR times most of Russians were moved on purpose to “other soviet republics” to work in newly build factories, mines etc. One of the reasons (if not the main) was to dilute local national identity. For example, there were very few Russians in Baltics prior to occupation of 1940.

And yes, many counties have “language laws”.
 
james.liam said:
Hell, Quebec has a 'language law'. In France, a certain % of songs played on the radio have to be French (at least when I was there last 16 years ago).
.
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please don't put france as example of democracy abd human rights. guys still have colonies where you live like in hell, and they were killing algerians even in 60s. so yeah that is still racist country as it ever was. so having racist laws just prove it more.
 
valdas said:
During USSR times most of Russians were moved on purpose to “other soviet republics” to work in newly build factories, mines etc. One of the reasons (if not the main) was to dilute local national identity. For example, there were very few Russians in Baltics prior to occupation of 1940.

And yes, many counties have “language laws”.
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Even people who spoke my mother tongue Swedish were affected by deportation. In the coastal area and on the Baltic islands in Estonia, many were Swedish-speaking. During World War II, they were deported to Russia (never seen again!) and replaced by Russians.

This ethnic cleansing seems to be a Russian specialty and is now taking place in Ukraine. There, maternity clinics, schools and homes are bombarded indiscriminately.

Reading nonsense here about "Russia has a need for security" makes me feel bad and gives me a headache. What security do the individual citizens of Ukraine have who have their family members murdered and their homes destroyed by Putin's soldiers?

When we in Sweden send down to Ukraine military equipment and weapons to knock out tanks, our country is threatened with reprisals from the Russians. A Russian bomber with two fighter jets directly violated our airspace. When many in Sweden now want to join NATO in order not to become the next Russian target and victim, we are immediately threatened with "military measures" if we do so.

It is sometimes said that history repeats itself. I think this is starting to look like the beginning of World War II. The outside world then watched as Germany occupied country after country; Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway ...

When will everyone realize what's going on now? How many Ukrainians must be murdered by the Russians and their mercenaries?
 
Borge H said:
Even people who spoke my mother tongue Swedish were affected by deportation. In the coastal area and on the Baltic islands in Estonia, many were Swedish-speaking. During World War II, they were deported to Russia (never seen again!) and replaced by Russians.

This ethnic cleansing seems to be a Russian specialty and is now taking place in Ukraine. There, maternity clinics, schools and homes are bombarded indiscriminately.
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Indeed. My father was a Pole, fled East when the Nazis invaded and was then deported to Central Asia because in the twisted minds of Stalin and his henchmen, any non-Russian was by default, a spy. He would tell me of the myriad of deportées he'd encountered there; Finns, Koreans, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans; the list was long. Many never survived the war and few ever returned home. His personal tales of arrest by the NKVD and chance escapes made clear the depravity of government in Russia but he would always temper the stories with random acts of kindness and mercy by random Russians he'd run into.
 
As a matter of fact, Russia has invaded Ukraine: NATO is not invading any country! People is dying in Ukraine, not in Moscow.
As many other dictators, Putin runs the risk to be hanged...well deserved
 
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