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I bet there are a lot of Ukrainians who grew up listening to stories about what Grandma and Grandpa saw in and did to survive the horrors of the Holodomor.
I suspect a deep, generations long grudge is held against the Russians for that.
I can only imagine if the Russians came back how these people would react.
I wonder what Ukrainian is for “a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
The Russian might be successful but it will cost them dearly.
At that point, it’s pretty much too late. The majority of people wouldn’t be competent with the guns they receive. That’s why you need to encourage firearms ownership *BEFORE* there is an existential threat. And encourage practice with them.
As far as I can tell, Ukraine has a draft, so that helps in terms of familiarity and usage.
As far as operation, AKs are petty simple to figure out.
Yes, if you get to this stage it’s very, very bad. But opening the arsenals at least gives a chance to fight back, if not a guarantee of success.
The Taliban with no training held the Soviets off for years and defeated us.
Never underestimate well motivated people with AKs and the home turf advantage.
Yes, they will take heavy casualties, but they will make the cost of war to the invaders unbearable.
The Taliban had years of actual experience fighting precisely that kind of war before we ever set foot in Afghanistan, and they weren’t winning: We were killing Taliban fighters while not suffering any KIA for 18 months, until Brandon over here shut off the power grid.
Didya notice the word “Soviets” in his comment?
I’ve been saying for a while now that Taiwan also needs that precise policy.
As for “competent”, it would be nice to have a large number of well trained people. But for it to be a useful deterrent and to make the “blade of grass” rule real, all that’s needed is training at the NRA “Basic Marksman” level, i.e., less than a day combining basic firearms safety and a dozen rounds fired at a paper target. With that, a useful fraction of the people could hit a Red Army soldier-sized target often enough to make a difference.
If 3% of the participants take it seriously enough to become proficient like a good hunter or a moderately decent sniper, so much the better.
Taiwan needs nuclear weapons.
The difference between Russia and Ukraine isn’t much more different than difference between, say, North Carolina and South Carolina, or Virginia and West Virginia. Same history, same language (Ukrainian is only spoken on TV, regular people speak Russian among themselves). If you were to parachute into that area, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Majority of people there wouldn’t care either way and many would welcome to be a part of Russia again. The only thing Ukraine has going for it is a warmer climate.
Most of the tension is generated by mass media on both sides of the border. Not unlike what we’re seeing here.
Besides, if our intel is saying it openly, then it’s BS anyways. Info like that is not made public if it’s real.
I’m sure *no one* remembers the Holodomor.
Oh great, KGB trolls have invaded Miguel’s blog.
Wikipedia has a lot of detail about Ukrainian, including this one: “In the 2001 census, 67.5% of the country’s population named Ukrainian as their native language (a 2.8% increase from 1989), while 29.6% named Russian (a 3.2% decrease).”.
Also, my linguistics textbooks clearly describe it as a distinct language. It certainly is a Slavic language and a close relative of Russian, but so what? French is a close relative of Italian, that doesn’t make them the same language. And it certainly doesn’t justify conquest of Ukraine by Russia, any more than the similarity of French and Italian justifies conquest of Italy by France (or vice versa).
Come to think of it, there are plenty of examples of distinct countries having a language in common. Most of central and south America, obviously. Brazil and Portugal (if you consider the differences small enough to view the two versions as dialects, which seems to be the usual view). US, Canada, UK, Ireland. And many more. What does that have to do with, or why does it excuse, Putin’s bonapartist ambitions?
Yea, Yea Wikipedia… ?
Lviv vs. Zaporosze vs. Odessa….
This was my first thought when I read this blog entry.
My ancestors bred indiscriminately, disregarding ethnicity and religion. I have both Ukrainian and Russian blood and relatives. I spoke both languages as a child (Ukrainian badly, though). My RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN beloved relatives, who lived through Holodomor told me stories about it. Russian’s happened to be scarier.
I have relatives, whose ancestors lived in Odessa long before Revolution, Jewish and Russian ones, and never spoke Ukrainian. Odessa was Russian speaking (a rather cute dialect) when tzars were there. Donbass too, always Russian. Hey, even in Bendera West there were towns where they spoke Polish, not Ukrainian.
It is hard for foreigners to understand the relationship between ethnicities in the former Soviet Union. To help, look at Tzars Empire. And try to disengage from American propaganda.
It is not Ethnicity, that matters, it is ideology. And geography. And history.
And as a reminder, Stalin (Georgian)
hated Russians not less than Ukrainians.
The former Soviet Union had hundreds of ethnicities of various religions distributed throughout the territories living together for 100th of years. They mixed, intermarried, warred, brought children together and just lived side by side. They were not homogenous entities.
It was not a melting pot. It was borsch mixed with okroshka with a dash of forshmak wrapped in khachapuri
as a last example, Ukranian orthodox Christian most probably will be much closer to Russians than to Ukranian catholics
P. S. Till I moved to Russia proper, I was sure that forshmak was a traditional Kazakh dish
What prevented a Japanese invasion of these uSA’s West Coast was the Pacific Ocean.
First, yeah, a policy like this makes sense.
A lot of this isn’t really adding up, though. I’m suspicious of media and intel reports, and I don’t see what Putin would really be aiming to get. Ukraine not joining NATO, that much I can understand. Maybe a solidly held route to Sevestapol? I’m just not getting the risk/reward payoff of a massive invasion.
I’m hardly an expert in the region, but some things are evident. Putin didn’t get where he is by being an idiot. I’ve seen a wide variety of reports from average people don’t care to they’re joining militias. Crimea has been pretty expensive to maintain. A full-on invasion of Ukraine would be monumentally expensive and at least result in a hell of a diplomatic mess. A long fight wouldn’t be sustainable. And Russia has historically been highly conscious of a large border with China and potential weakness on that flank. That equation may have changed with Biden and Taiwan included, however.
Meanwhile Biden and pals seem to be itching for another war. Which, frankly, wouldn’t be all that unusual. Bush started 2. Obama started another 3. Gotta keep that money flowing, right? Not to mention getting attention off… well, his entire presidency to date. Inflation, southern border, virus that continues to virus despite continuous scolding. What better way to get the repubs on board, right?