Ukrainian troops celebrate a grim Christmas in Kursk
A local paper braves Russian bombs to deliver news on the front line
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... The soldiers seem to believe the counter-invasion was worth it, if only for giving the Russians a dose of their own medicine. “When I stepped foot in Kursk, I understood what they felt when they entered Ukraine,” says Sergeant Mokritsky. “Let them die and rot on their own lands, and the more of them the better.”
i wonder what ukranian and russian relations will be like going into the future and i wonder if the historical ties that they've shared all the way up until the americans started pushing them into nato's fold will keep them together.
i suspect that the animosity is going to manifest itself in strange ways like how armed conflict between the united states and mexico has engendered a culture where mexicans denigrate mexican-americans. however, the ukranians had historically been an economic & technological powerhouse for the soviet bloc; not some of relatively uneducated & poor sea of brown people who had the misfortune of living above exploitable resources and nearby a rich superpower.
also: the author's english is fascinating; it's recognize-able if you're fluent enough in another language besides american english and i wonder if a british person would find some of the word tensing interesting too.
It's important to keep in mind how Ukraine was put together in the first place when USSR was formed. It consists of several different ethnic groups. Eastern Ukraine in particular used to be part of Russia, and it's largely populated by ethnic Russians. My prediction is that Russia will be able to assimilate territories like Odessa, Kharkov, and Dnepropetrovsk with relative ease. This might even extend to central Ukraine and places like Kiev. Most people in Ukraine don't hate Russia, and Zelensky originally campaigned on normalizing relations. It's also becoming clear to Ukrainians that the west used them and now they're going to be discarded.
The thing with wars of attrition is that people who genuinely wanted to fight largely end up dying in the war, and the rest of the population just wants the war to end at that point. I expect that the way GDR war formed after the end of WW2 could be similar to what we'll see happen in Ukraine as well.
My expectation is that Russia will absorb the territories that are either pro Russian or neutral, and then leave parts of western Ukraine that are hostile to Russia to become Europe's problem. It's going to be a dysfunctional rump state that's going to require huge amounts of money to prop up, and if it fails then Europe would be looking at a huge refugee crisis.
You're forgetting everyone who fled and all the kids and relativea of dead soldiers. Those who gave up or lost something that close will require an enemy of evil to make the sacrifice worth it
People who fled are unlikely to come back, and they wouldn't have fled if they actually wanted to fight. There obviously will be people who are resentful, but that was that the case in Germany after WW2 as well. My expectation is that majority of people who have a grudge will just flee to the west.
Sure, but they will still be able to affect the situation, like gusanos in the USA.
Gusanos are little more than a fig leaf for American imperialism. They don’t direct policy, they’re just there for the photo ops and op-eds as needed.
They have a noticeable influence on elections and therefore are forever part of policy calculus.
Do elections have a noticeable influence on policy though?
I think de-escalations are the one area where a rabid electorate would have a policy impact.
