I didn't expect this response and I truly appreciate it.
It is, to some extent, very accurate. There's a thing with made-up nations though: as soon as people start identifying with it, it's no longer fake, it's real - the perception becomes reality almost immediately. Israel learned it the hard way, when we discovered in the late 70s that Arab population of Judea & Samaria are "Palestinians" (nobody heard of any "Palestinians" in the Middle East before this nation was invented by Soviets to legitimize Arafat). However fake it was in the beginning, it's immediately become real.
The nation-defining moment for the present-day Ukraine was 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and started hybrid war in the east. Which is why I keep saying that - regardless whether you love or hate Putin and his agenda - it was an incredibly dumb move.
Just imagine: you're Putin. You want to keep Ukraine in the sphere of your influence. To that end, you install an absolute moron as a president, he eventually pisses off everyone, and ends up being overthrown. In response, you annex one most pro-Russian region and start the war in the other two, effectively excluding them from Ukrainian political process completely. At the same time, the rest of the country goes into full WTF mode. They see what's happened as betrayal. They don't want to have anything in common with eastern neighbors anymore. They _are_ a different nation now. And you made it real by your own actions.
Of course, cultural influence of the Ukrainian language is not even close to Russian. But it doesn't matter. Most of those people, even those who don't speak Ukrainian, don't want anything in common with the Russian national identity.
Bottomline - not everything that State Department supports is necessarily evil. It can occasionally support some good stuff, too.
P.S. Ukrainian nationalists are by no means 'libs'. They're far right hardliners (mistaking them for nazis is not accidental)
P.P.S. (3/12/22) It's been 2 months since this comment was written. It's still too early to tell what the outcome will be, but the way the "invented nation" is tearing to pieces the "2nd army in the world" is remarkable.
Compelling argument about a fake country becoming real. Seems it is easier to spin off a country than to merge. Czechoslovakia didn't take, but Lebanese convinced themselves they weren't Syrians pretty rapidly. One thing I would point out though is that the Ukrainian state has failed to such an astounding degree, that, just maybe, the wounds can be mended if Putin is able to restore the Ukrainian economy, as he more or less restored the Russian economy.
more or less restored the Russian economy” the Russian economy was restored by high oil prices that began to climb as Putin got in office around 2000. Russia is still a poor corrupt dump and not better than Ukraine if you take into account for the difference in natural resources. At least in Ukraine you don’t have Ramzan Kadyrov running around and tracking teenagers that called him a bad name on instagram
Let's not give Yanukovych and Putin more credit than they are due. The Holodomor and Chernobyl Disaster already throughfully alienated the Ukrainians from Moscow's leadership well before Maidan. A lot of attention is needed to make up for about a century of misrule and negligence. Like yourself I doubt the main abuser will now offer a viable solution.
Yet, alternative options are scarse and not very attractive either. It is likely that further integration into Europe will leave Ukraine cheated out of resources and manpower. Much respect for national identity and culture isn't to be expected from this camp either.
Maybe a rebooted Intermarium Allegiance could support the development of Ukraine. Chances are however that such a partnership would fall apart when the going gets rough. Cause in the end all is determined by the pardox that Ukraine isn't taken seriously because it is corrupt and it is corrupt because it isn't taken seriously.
If the Ukraine had oil, it'd have been stolen. Dismissing Putin (and all the men behind him), with "high oil prices" is unfair and a mistake in the analysis. Russia has a sovereign wealth fund for that oil money, it is a work of greatness that Putin et al were able to institute a Norway-tier institution in 2001. All countries have their advantages, Russia has some oil/gas. Russia also has/had a thousand and one disasters in 1999. Putin managed to not squander the one good thing they had going: brief windows of high oil prices circa 2005-2008, and 2011-2014. The man oversaw life going from misery and destitution for the median person, to a pretty OK upper middle income country with an emerging illiberal and Christian official ideology, all while reorganizing and reconstituting an entry level superpower-grade military and intelligence services. I say Putin is the greatest man of our age.
You’re trippin. That sovereign wealth fund wasn’t his project and was is being squandered. Shit Russian army with it’s $150/month contract army is getting wrecked in Ukraine and Botox monkey is unlikely gonna make it out of this one
Just read this piece and Dugin has a similar outlook. Galician ultranationalism exists but their popularity is way overblown and is on the decline politically and culturally (far right parties Pravy Sector and Svoboda have 1 deputy in the parliament). Russian propaganda likes to target galicians due to dumb things like putting a Bandera statue (retard move) in Lviv and naming a street after Washington and Dudaev to trigger the Moskals , and it clearly worked — Dugin is triggered and fantasizes about “kicking them in the jaw”
Supposedly "college educated" Americans (which in these days means squat as far as erudition and knowledge of history goes) would know nothing of the above, in fact they'll know more trivia about BS pop culture topics of the day, than about history and geopolitics. They'll still feel it necessary to have an opinion on the matter, and even support (or the more delluded, demand) "action" based on the shitty State Dep. propaganda they read in the media (which would never get into any real background). Sadly the same goes for many Western Europeans these days...
Not that this was a high effort post from you, but it's a bit ignorant to speak on this topic without talking about the Zaporizhian Host, which was a breakaway state from the Polish, before they had to submit to being a Russian vassal, and lasted until Catherine the Great broke it up. This state is why the Ukrainians all claim Cossack Ancestry, and is the origin of the semi autonomous cossack host system. (I highly doubt the ancestral for many, but I will say that my patrilineal line weren't serfs). After this state, it seemed that Kyiv always consistently had a rogue elite that would try to write in the Ruthenian language, and tried to upkeep a Ruthenian high culture (which is why I suspect it seems today's Ukrainians, or at least their government when advertising to the world seems to focus so much on Ukrainian composers).
But I wouldn't overall say that you're wrong here either.
Though, since rogue elites are something that strikes your interests, I do suggest you look a little further into the topic if it you feel.
OT: Anyone else think "Kyiv" is a wasp's nest of a mouthful to enunciate? Just terrible. In the English speaking world it was always Kiev, the nicer Russian pronunciation, then somehow all the butt-hurt OCD Ukrainians began their campaign of changing something they had no business to do. As if Slavs pronounce Paris or München correctly...
Ruthania was mostly rural, and most bürgers were germans, Jews and poles. Most local petty nobility (Gogol would be an obvious example) knew ruthanian. The nobility in the western regions was tri lingual (ruthanian, russian, polish) Contemporary Ukrainians can easily read 17th century documents like the constitution of Philip Orlyk
Still harsh lol. Speaking as a speaker of English, the dominant and continuing to dominate language saying it's only natural for some languages to die out reeks of the same out of touchness that you accuse our elite of. Cultures and traditions being destroyed is still a sad thing, the world losing true diversity. Get back to the delights of monarchy my friend.
Curtis, I just heard your January appearance on The Pete Quinones Show. You are more informed on the history of Ukraine than the average person, but you're definitely misinformed on the subject of the Ukrainian language, which is far more complex than what you're painting there. Kudos for knowing about the Ruthenians, but you're grossly oversimplifying even their history and situation. Furthermore, *even* if it were true that the Ukrainian language is being foisted upon the population, it doesn't mean that it doesn't work or hasn't already worked. Israel's language is Hebrew, and the Jews who live there now use it, even though their recent ancestors spoke Yiddish, English, Russian, etc. Even in the Soviet era, Ukrainian was at times discouraged and at times encouraged. My father, who lived in the Konotop and Kiev areas in his youth (60s-70s), had to learn Ukrainian in school.
It sounds to me like you were listening to some biased person who's firmly on one side of the issue. I've encountered these people on the Russian, Ukrainian and Ruthenian side who will say equally absurd things, such as, "Ukrainian is not a real language, it's just a bastardized Russian", "Russian is not a real language, it's a language made up by Moscovite Jews", and "Ruthenians are really Russians", etc. Don't believe wholesale anyone making such statements.
Finally, you were wrong just as Putin was in your estimation of the willingness of the Ukrainians to defend this, perhaps new, Ukrainian identity.
Wow, this didn’t age well. It appears that Ukraine is indeed a nation and it’s leader, whether conversant in Ruthenian or not is conversant in cojones, which is the lingua franca of bad asses. I assume you would have equally scoffed at a bunch of goofy colonials in 1774, with their weird-headed disdain of the dominant world power and it’s overwhelming military.
So, claiming Crimea as part of Ukraine is less true than claiming California as part of Mexico. About the same is valid also for Donbas and other Eastern regions where Soviet army shed tons of blood liberating this land from the Nazis during the battle for the Kursk during WWII.
If Ukrainian government abandons its unfounded claims for Russian territory populated mostly with Russians, they will be left on their own. Putin and most of the Russians don't care about this newly-born state except that he would tolerate NATO nuclear weapons stationed there as much as US would tolerate them in Cuba. Cuban crisis anyone? The bad thing is that there is no someone like JFK today. MIC won decades ago.
Pretty much this. But I’d like to stress that nothing, barring lack of political will and vision, prevents the Putin from, say, deporting the majority of Ukranian population to Pluto and then expanding the Black Sea to cover the territories cleared in such a manner.
Given the Biden family's deep connections and experience in Ukraine, could there be a predetermined outcome in the works? Putin takes back the Russian bits to restore the empire's legacy, Ruthenians are liberated from their urban oppressors, and Biden chalks up a much needed diplomatic win in time for midterms. Then let the pipelines flow!
I didn't expect this response and I truly appreciate it.
It is, to some extent, very accurate. There's a thing with made-up nations though: as soon as people start identifying with it, it's no longer fake, it's real - the perception becomes reality almost immediately. Israel learned it the hard way, when we discovered in the late 70s that Arab population of Judea & Samaria are "Palestinians" (nobody heard of any "Palestinians" in the Middle East before this nation was invented by Soviets to legitimize Arafat). However fake it was in the beginning, it's immediately become real.
The nation-defining moment for the present-day Ukraine was 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and started hybrid war in the east. Which is why I keep saying that - regardless whether you love or hate Putin and his agenda - it was an incredibly dumb move.
Just imagine: you're Putin. You want to keep Ukraine in the sphere of your influence. To that end, you install an absolute moron as a president, he eventually pisses off everyone, and ends up being overthrown. In response, you annex one most pro-Russian region and start the war in the other two, effectively excluding them from Ukrainian political process completely. At the same time, the rest of the country goes into full WTF mode. They see what's happened as betrayal. They don't want to have anything in common with eastern neighbors anymore. They _are_ a different nation now. And you made it real by your own actions.
Of course, cultural influence of the Ukrainian language is not even close to Russian. But it doesn't matter. Most of those people, even those who don't speak Ukrainian, don't want anything in common with the Russian national identity.
Bottomline - not everything that State Department supports is necessarily evil. It can occasionally support some good stuff, too.
P.S. Ukrainian nationalists are by no means 'libs'. They're far right hardliners (mistaking them for nazis is not accidental)
P.P.S. (3/12/22) It's been 2 months since this comment was written. It's still too early to tell what the outcome will be, but the way the "invented nation" is tearing to pieces the "2nd army in the world" is remarkable.
Compelling argument about a fake country becoming real. Seems it is easier to spin off a country than to merge. Czechoslovakia didn't take, but Lebanese convinced themselves they weren't Syrians pretty rapidly. One thing I would point out though is that the Ukrainian state has failed to such an astounding degree, that, just maybe, the wounds can be mended if Putin is able to restore the Ukrainian economy, as he more or less restored the Russian economy.
Putin didn't restore the Russian economy - open market and oil prices did.
The idea about "failed Ukrainian state" is heavily pushed by RT and the like, but it's no more failed than any post USSR country (excluding Baltics)
more or less restored the Russian economy” the Russian economy was restored by high oil prices that began to climb as Putin got in office around 2000. Russia is still a poor corrupt dump and not better than Ukraine if you take into account for the difference in natural resources. At least in Ukraine you don’t have Ramzan Kadyrov running around and tracking teenagers that called him a bad name on instagram
https://youtu.be/hv8qYZPANi0
you are trippin'
Let's not give Yanukovych and Putin more credit than they are due. The Holodomor and Chernobyl Disaster already throughfully alienated the Ukrainians from Moscow's leadership well before Maidan. A lot of attention is needed to make up for about a century of misrule and negligence. Like yourself I doubt the main abuser will now offer a viable solution.
Yet, alternative options are scarse and not very attractive either. It is likely that further integration into Europe will leave Ukraine cheated out of resources and manpower. Much respect for national identity and culture isn't to be expected from this camp either.
Maybe a rebooted Intermarium Allegiance could support the development of Ukraine. Chances are however that such a partnership would fall apart when the going gets rough. Cause in the end all is determined by the pardox that Ukraine isn't taken seriously because it is corrupt and it is corrupt because it isn't taken seriously.
If the Ukraine had oil, it'd have been stolen. Dismissing Putin (and all the men behind him), with "high oil prices" is unfair and a mistake in the analysis. Russia has a sovereign wealth fund for that oil money, it is a work of greatness that Putin et al were able to institute a Norway-tier institution in 2001. All countries have their advantages, Russia has some oil/gas. Russia also has/had a thousand and one disasters in 1999. Putin managed to not squander the one good thing they had going: brief windows of high oil prices circa 2005-2008, and 2011-2014. The man oversaw life going from misery and destitution for the median person, to a pretty OK upper middle income country with an emerging illiberal and Christian official ideology, all while reorganizing and reconstituting an entry level superpower-grade military and intelligence services. I say Putin is the greatest man of our age.
Says a lot about our age if a degenerate underclass gopnik who fucked himself and his country is the “greatest man of our age”
You’re trippin. That sovereign wealth fund wasn’t his project and was is being squandered. Shit Russian army with it’s $150/month contract army is getting wrecked in Ukraine and Botox monkey is unlikely gonna make it out of this one
http://www.4pt.su/en/content/ukraine-russia-and-westernia
Just read this piece and Dugin has a similar outlook. Galician ultranationalism exists but their popularity is way overblown and is on the decline politically and culturally (far right parties Pravy Sector and Svoboda have 1 deputy in the parliament). Russian propaganda likes to target galicians due to dumb things like putting a Bandera statue (retard move) in Lviv and naming a street after Washington and Dudaev to trigger the Moskals , and it clearly worked — Dugin is triggered and fantasizes about “kicking them in the jaw”
Supposedly "college educated" Americans (which in these days means squat as far as erudition and knowledge of history goes) would know nothing of the above, in fact they'll know more trivia about BS pop culture topics of the day, than about history and geopolitics. They'll still feel it necessary to have an opinion on the matter, and even support (or the more delluded, demand) "action" based on the shitty State Dep. propaganda they read in the media (which would never get into any real background). Sadly the same goes for many Western Europeans these days...
Not that this was a high effort post from you, but it's a bit ignorant to speak on this topic without talking about the Zaporizhian Host, which was a breakaway state from the Polish, before they had to submit to being a Russian vassal, and lasted until Catherine the Great broke it up. This state is why the Ukrainians all claim Cossack Ancestry, and is the origin of the semi autonomous cossack host system. (I highly doubt the ancestral for many, but I will say that my patrilineal line weren't serfs). After this state, it seemed that Kyiv always consistently had a rogue elite that would try to write in the Ruthenian language, and tried to upkeep a Ruthenian high culture (which is why I suspect it seems today's Ukrainians, or at least their government when advertising to the world seems to focus so much on Ukrainian composers).
But I wouldn't overall say that you're wrong here either.
Though, since rogue elites are something that strikes your interests, I do suggest you look a little further into the topic if it you feel.
OT: Anyone else think "Kyiv" is a wasp's nest of a mouthful to enunciate? Just terrible. In the English speaking world it was always Kiev, the nicer Russian pronunciation, then somehow all the butt-hurt OCD Ukrainians began their campaign of changing something they had no business to do. As if Slavs pronounce Paris or München correctly...
Well, we do say Mumbai and we say Beijing now, not Bombay or Peking. So.
Ruthania was mostly rural, and most bürgers were germans, Jews and poles. Most local petty nobility (Gogol would be an obvious example) knew ruthanian. The nobility in the western regions was tri lingual (ruthanian, russian, polish) Contemporary Ukrainians can easily read 17th century documents like the constitution of Philip Orlyk
Ruthenian, Russian, Polish, and Hungarian. Maybe even Romanian, but yeah, Hungarian was a huge one.
Still harsh lol. Speaking as a speaker of English, the dominant and continuing to dominate language saying it's only natural for some languages to die out reeks of the same out of touchness that you accuse our elite of. Cultures and traditions being destroyed is still a sad thing, the world losing true diversity. Get back to the delights of monarchy my friend.
slav squatter detected
Weird that you found it necessary to apologize for this of all things.
Curtis, I just heard your January appearance on The Pete Quinones Show. You are more informed on the history of Ukraine than the average person, but you're definitely misinformed on the subject of the Ukrainian language, which is far more complex than what you're painting there. Kudos for knowing about the Ruthenians, but you're grossly oversimplifying even their history and situation. Furthermore, *even* if it were true that the Ukrainian language is being foisted upon the population, it doesn't mean that it doesn't work or hasn't already worked. Israel's language is Hebrew, and the Jews who live there now use it, even though their recent ancestors spoke Yiddish, English, Russian, etc. Even in the Soviet era, Ukrainian was at times discouraged and at times encouraged. My father, who lived in the Konotop and Kiev areas in his youth (60s-70s), had to learn Ukrainian in school.
It sounds to me like you were listening to some biased person who's firmly on one side of the issue. I've encountered these people on the Russian, Ukrainian and Ruthenian side who will say equally absurd things, such as, "Ukrainian is not a real language, it's just a bastardized Russian", "Russian is not a real language, it's a language made up by Moscovite Jews", and "Ruthenians are really Russians", etc. Don't believe wholesale anyone making such statements.
Finally, you were wrong just as Putin was in your estimation of the willingness of the Ukrainians to defend this, perhaps new, Ukrainian identity.
Yes. Well. Don't forget that the God of Austrian Economics, Ludwig von Mises, came from Lemberg, in Galicia. After, and before, it was Lvov or Lviv.
And how come a Jew had a "von" in his name? You might well ask. But I couldn't possibly comment.
Then, of course, there is the question of Silesia. Bless its heart.
Shouldn't have capitulated. We don't negotiate with Ukrainians.
It should be clear to anyone who has ever eaten a 15lb loaf of ukrianian "bread" that Ukraine was a mistake.
Go back to eating wonderbread or corn bread you filthy animal
Wow, this didn’t age well. It appears that Ukraine is indeed a nation and it’s leader, whether conversant in Ruthenian or not is conversant in cojones, which is the lingua franca of bad asses. I assume you would have equally scoffed at a bunch of goofy colonials in 1774, with their weird-headed disdain of the dominant world power and it’s overwhelming military.
David Stockman has another great analysis concerning Ukraine and US policy mistakes in https://internationalman.com/articles/david-stockman-on-why-the-us-government-is-enforcing-the-dead-hand-of-the-soviet-presidium-in-crimea/
So, claiming Crimea as part of Ukraine is less true than claiming California as part of Mexico. About the same is valid also for Donbas and other Eastern regions where Soviet army shed tons of blood liberating this land from the Nazis during the battle for the Kursk during WWII.
If Ukrainian government abandons its unfounded claims for Russian territory populated mostly with Russians, they will be left on their own. Putin and most of the Russians don't care about this newly-born state except that he would tolerate NATO nuclear weapons stationed there as much as US would tolerate them in Cuba. Cuban crisis anyone? The bad thing is that there is no someone like JFK today. MIC won decades ago.
Pretty much this. But I’d like to stress that nothing, barring lack of political will and vision, prevents the Putin from, say, deporting the majority of Ukranian population to Pluto and then expanding the Black Sea to cover the territories cleared in such a manner.
Given the Biden family's deep connections and experience in Ukraine, could there be a predetermined outcome in the works? Putin takes back the Russian bits to restore the empire's legacy, Ruthenians are liberated from their urban oppressors, and Biden chalks up a much needed diplomatic win in time for midterms. Then let the pipelines flow!
intersting primer on Ukranian history: https://thesaker.is/ukrainian-nationalism-its-roots-and-nature/
Written from the pro-Russian and Russian Orthodox perspective.
This is cool, an exegesis. It's a nice payoff, after absorbing the poetic absurdism of the original e-pamphlet