Split Thread: Is Ukraine to blame for Putin's invasion

[bruto]

Originally Posted by dudalb

Stop feeding the troll , folks.

He has a point though. As we speak, I'm organizing a militia to invade Quebec.

[arthwollipot]

Maybe because of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[trustbutverify]

Originally Posted by Michel H

To avoid any misunderstanding, I am no Putin supporter, but I believe the winning strategy for Ukraine and the world, is for Ukraine to surrender Crimea and the two Donbass republics (with no territorial gains for Putin because of his invasion), and to promise that it won't join NATO for at least five years.

I also think that the Ukrainian leadership should work on improving its relation with Russia, however incredibly painful this may be.

Says practically every Putin stooge outside of Russia, Syria and Iran.

[trustbutverify]

Originally Posted by Lukraak_Sisser

They had land Russia wanted
They had a government Russia did not want
They wanted to decide their own foreign policy.

Clearly brought it on themselves.

[trustbutverify]

Originally Posted by LongFuzzy

If Kiev recognizes Donetsk and Lugansk republics as independent, how long before Putin decides they are really part of Russia?

Seven months.

[ZiprHead]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

Zelenkyy should announce that this law will be revoked immediately. Don't let Putin use it as an excuse to call the Ukrainians "Nazis".

It's my understanding that this law was retracted several years ago.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

Its come to my attention that in the years after the Euromaiden Revolution, Ukraine passed various laws discriminating against their large Russian minority.

They passed laws banning the use of Russian language in govt. affairs. They required all Russian publications also have pages translating all the Russian into Ukrainian. Russian businesses had to also use Russia. Several much lesser used language in Ukraine such as Yiddish were exempt from these regulations.

Why would Ukraine do this, and how did they expect Russia and the Russians in Ukraine to react? Did they think they would just sit back and allow themselves to be oppressed? I think this was a MAJOR mistake by Ukraine, and it has helped lead to the current disaster.

Quote:

EZRA KLEIN: Could you spend another moment on the language issue? And from a particular direction, you mentioned earlier that you were glad that I brought up that Putin reads books. And I found there’s been a tendency — not yours, but among others to almost admire the fact that Putin has ideas and stop right there, right, that it’s just interesting, isn’t it, that Vladimir Putin has ideas, that he’s read books, that he has a concept of a history that he’s trying to put forward in lengthy speeches and essays. Without, I think, really offering any critical analysis of the fact that his ideas are bad, that they’ve made predictions about the world that are wrong, and that they don’t really add up.

So one of his big ideas is that Ukraine is full of Russian speakers, which is to say it is full of Russians, in some sense. And that they are oppressed, they’re under forced assimilation, that he is — at some level, they are to liberate the Russians of Ukraine, which you know exist there because there is so much Russian spoken. But obviously at the same time, the president of Ukraine, Zelensky, is a Russian speaker. So there’s something very odd in the way that Putin is using language here and very different from what language is in Ukraine. Can you talk a bit about that?

TIM SNYDER: Yeah, I mean, I think this kind of ethnic nationalism is one of these dumb reductive ideas which we hold even as we say that ideas don’t matter, right? So the American Revolution was English speakers against English speakers, at least as best I can remember, mostly English speakers against mostly English speakers.

And, you know, and I are speaking English. But we would be very surprised to find out that during the taping of this podcast Boris Johnson had said something about how we need to be liberated, that would be strange. Politics and language don’t match up in that way at all, right? It’s a logical fallacy.

And in Ukraine, second point, insofar as there is a drift toward speaking Ukrainian rather than Russian, which there is such a thing. But it’s very, very slow. And it’s chiefly among young people. It’s mostly as a result to Putin. So in the real empirical world after 2014, after the Maidan, people tended to shift their express language preference towards Ukrainian because Russia had just invaded the country.

And one imagines that will happen again because of this invasion. So the very thing that Putin says he wants to preserve, the Russian language, is actually harmed by his own actions. His interpretation of people shifting, the same people saying that they speak more Ukrainian now, is to call that genocide and to imagine that those people somehow disappeared, which is just, it’s plainly untrue. But the paradox is that it’s his own actions which are bringing about this result.

And then this is connected to that kind of the difference between a mystical reality and lived experiential reality that we’re talking about before. Because what Putin is saying is that these people are Russians, but they don’t know it, they don’t know it. And they need to know it.

And so then that raises the question, what kind of violence, what kind of lengthy and terrible occupation would be needed for that, would be needed to transform tens of millions of people who think they are Ukrainians into Russians? And by the way, that’s the kind of thinking that Raphael Lemkin had in mind when he coined the word genocide. Genocide is not just about the mass attempt to murder every member of a group, as, of course, the extreme case of the Jewish Holocaust.

But genocide is the aspiration to try to remove a group that exists from the Earth, right, to take a group and make it no longer exist. When Putin says there’s no Ukrainian nation, there’s no Ukrainian state, when he suggests that the fact that you speak Russian means that you’re really a Russian whether it or not, he’s expressing, you know — and this is very sad, I know — but he’s expressing precisely that kind of aspiration.

Link

[sackett]

I once knew a Ukrainian. He insisted on the uniqueness of their lingo. I finally asked him, "Can you understand Russian?"

He answered, "Yeah!"

I then asked, "Can they understand you?"

Less assertively, "Yeah."

Me: "Then what the **** is it all about?"

"Hey, how bout them Broncos, man? Ya still see em Inna playoffs? I mean, you know."

[gnome]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

That's a lie. That is an intentional falsehood said with motive. That is a wrong statement said while knowing it is a wrong statement. That is a dishonest statement made knowingly.

That was a prevarication, it wasn't true! A fib, a whopper, pants on fire.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by sackett

I once knew a Ukrainian. He insisted on the uniqueness of their lingo. I finally asked him, "Can you understand Russian?"

He answered, "Yeah!"

I then asked, "Can they understand you?"

Less assertively, "Yeah."

Me: "Then what the **** is it all about?"

"Hey, how bout them Broncos, man? Ya still see em Inna playoffs? I mean, you know."

That can be said about a lot of languages.

[angrysoba]

Ireland requires people have certain Irish language ability to enter certain government and public positions.

Presumably this discriminates against the English-speaking majority. In fact, the government of Ireland is made up of parties that have IRA and Nazi origins.

Presumably the United Kingdom is required to invade to stop the genocide.

[Oystein]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Link

Doesn't really address that which you quoted. If people want to switch from Russian to Ukrainian, more power to them. What about those who want to continue speaking Russian? Should they not be allowed to because Putin?

[Oystein]

Originally Posted by Vixen

It is not really an 'anti-Russian' law. Ukraine is a country in its own right and is entitled to use its own language in official documents.

Protecti9n of minority rights, including minority languages, is one of the hallmarks of liberal democracies.

There is no such thing as a country's "own language" when at least two languages are spoken by large percentages of its population.

[Vixen]

Originally Posted by Oystein

Protecti9n of minority rights, including minority languages, is one of the hallmarks of liberal democracies.

There is no such thing as a country's "own language" when at least two languages are spoken by large percentages of its population.

Of course minority rights need to be protected. However, the issue here is 'official language'. Here in Finland, there are two official languages: Finnish and Swedish. Thus, anything official has to be in both languages and both languages are compulsory subjects at school. However, those who speak Saami or Russian still get to have their own TV news service on the state TV channel (YLE) and there is also a 'simplified Finnish' news service for immigrants.

A very large percentage of Finns speak English. However, English is not an official language.

When I relocated here about two and a half years ago, I was trying to sort out car insurance having bought a car and found myself struggling with vague insurance jargon (the type of stuff no-one ever uses in conversation) so I asked the guy if he spoke English and he said, yes but he was not allowed to. So thus, I had to take the trouble to carry on speaking in the official language. I got it. If everything was going to be also in English, then what happens to the Finnish language? It becomes the minor language to the majority world language (you need English as it is the business language). However, I agree that no way should English or Russian be an official language. You want to understand the government websites? Go get Google Translate. Yes, Swedish is an official language even though only 5% of the population have it as a mother tongue and they are mainly in western coastal regions and parts of Helsinki. However, that is to do with history and dates back to when Finland was part of the Swedish empire for 700 years.

In the case of Ukraine, Russian language came about as a result of migration by Russians into the Soviet-occupied region as a result of the Soviet Union and Stalin's forcible relocation of ethnic Russians into the Soviet bloc countries as a means to dilute the native population (a form of ethnic cleansing, if we want to be extreme). Thus, since independence there has been a fear and loathing of Russia as a recently remembered oppressor and an iron fist. It is unsurprising that newly-independent countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania et al have large Russian populations and share a distrust of each other, with the Russian ethnics fearing ostracism (discrimination) and the local populations not wanting Russian hegemony at all. In Estonia, Russian ethnics can choose Russian citizenship, which many have done, rather than taking sole Estonian citizenship, yet fiercely protect their 'Russian rights' despite living in Estonia. This applies throughout the former old Soviet bloc. It is understandable, of course it is, to still want Russian officially recognised. However, the Russian ethnics are the guests when all is said and done and it is they who should conform to the local standards not vice versa IMV.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by Oystein

Protecti9n of minority rights, including minority languages, is one of the hallmarks of liberal democracies.

There is no such thing as a country's "own language" when at least two languages are spoken by large percentages of its population.

Ireland.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Nuance is the first casualty of war.

There's plenty of reason to be concerned that the ethnic Russian minority of Ukraine is in for a rough future. Zelensky's predecessor, Poroshenko, was quite the advocate of "Ukranization" and lead the charge for stripping Russian language of any official status, including a ban on the importation of all books from Russia. Zelensky is notably less of an ideologue on these issues.

Obviously none of this justifies a Russian invasion, but skeptical people should resist the war fever urge to treat all criticism of Ukraine as some form of propaganda smear.

I very much worry that this invasion is going to be a huge boon for nationalist elements in Ukraine, including outright neo-nazi elements who are gaining a lot of credibility as fierce anti-Russia fighters. Many of the heroes of this conflict are going to be outright nazis and will have political futures in Ukraine. Moderates like Zelensky are going to be facing a lot of pressure from the nationalist right for the foreseeable future.

[Hercules56]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

Maybe because of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

The Holodomor does not justify fining people for speaking Russian.

[JoeMorgue]

And in other news the beaten wife did in fact burn the roast.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Of course, one would be remiss not to mention that Russia aggression is a huge factor in why these anti-Russian sentiments are so politically viable in Ukraine. If Putin was really so concerned about the status of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, gobbling up Crimea and backing separatists in the Donbos region, and now the invasion, is a really strange way of showing it.

Russian aggression is the driving influence in any anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine, so any attempts to use this to justify Russian aggression is absurd. The best thing Russia could do to help this situation is get back on their side of the fence and stay there.

[Jack by the hedge]

Originally Posted by theprestige

Ireland.

Ireland has had its own attempts to advance its own language over the language of a previous occupier.

A friend's family were Italian immigrants to Ireland a couple of generations ago. The kids were taught Irish rather than English due to the politics of the time, which was pretty much useless to them, living among English speakers.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

The Holodomor does not justify fining people for speaking Russian.

And fining people for speaking Russian does not justify an invasion.

Again "You aren't perfect yourself ya know" is the absolute most possible psychopathic thing to say to a victim of something and the utter obsession people have with doing it confounds me.

It bugs me how many people on this board if given a time machine would travel back to the allies liberating the concentration camps to remind them that they were perfect.

[theprestige]

I like how Hercules thinks that the President of Ukraine can just repeal any laws he doesn't like whenever he wants. And that getting this law changed right now should be one of Zelensky's top priorities.

The people pretending this law is the reason they have misgivings about supporting Ukraine are scumbags who aren't going to change their mind and start supporting Ukraine if this law were repealed.

It's a red herring, and amounts to blaming the rape victim for what she's wearing, while the rape is still going on. "Hey lady, I know you're in the middle of being sexually assaulted, but have you considered putting on a more modest skirt? Maybe you'll get more sympathy from me and everyone else witnessing this rape in progress if you stop looking quite so sexy."

[Jack by the hedge]

Originally Posted by theprestige

I like how Hercules thinks that the President of Ukraine can just repeal any laws he doesn't like whenever he wants. And that getting this law changed right now should be one of Zelensky's top priorities.
...

Is it even law right now, or has whatever discriminatory law there was actually been repealed already?

[JoeMorgue]

Also it doesn't help that the story isn't consistent.

Which is it Russia? Is it Nazis, it is protecting Russian speaking people, is it Ukraine joining NATO, or is it your "PeFERcTLY ReASOnablE SeCUrITy InteRESTS?" Because it's been all four, and probably some I'm missing, pretty much at random since this started.

If you can't get your story straight it's not a story, it's an excuse.

[BobTheCoward]

Originally Posted by Vixen

Of course minority rights need to be protected. However, the issue here is 'official language'. Here in Finland, there are two official languages: Finnish and Swedish. Thus, anything official has to be in both languages and both languages are compulsory subjects at school. However, those who speak Saami or Russian still get to have their own TV news service on the state TV channel (YLE) and there is also a 'simplified Finnish' news service for immigrants.

A very large percentage of Finns speak English. However, English is not an official language.

When I relocated here about two and a half years ago, I was trying to sort out car insurance having bought a car and found myself struggling with vague insurance jargon (the type of stuff no-one ever uses in conversation) so I asked the guy if he spoke English and he said, yes but he was not allowed to. So thus, I had to take the trouble to carry on speaking in the official language. I got it. If everything was going to be also in English, then what happens to the Finnish language? It becomes the minor language to the majority world language (you need English as it is the business language). However, I agree that no way should English or Russian be an official language. You want to understand the government websites? Go get Google Translate. Yes, Swedish is an official language even though only 5% of the population have it as a mother tongue and they are mainly in western coastal regions and parts of Helsinki. However, that is to do with history and dates back to when Finland was part of the Swedish empire for 700 years.

In the case of Ukraine, Russian language came about as a result of migration by Russians into the Soviet-occupied region as a result of the Soviet Union and Stalin's forcible relocation of ethnic Russians into the Soviet bloc countries as a means to dilute the native population (a form of ethnic cleansing, if we want to be extreme). Thus, since independence there has been a fear and loathing of Russia as a recently remembered oppressor and an iron fist. It is unsurprising that newly-independent countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania et al have large Russian populations and share a distrust of each other, with the Russian ethnics fearing ostracism (discrimination) and the local populations not wanting Russian hegemony at all. In Estonia, Russian ethnics can choose Russian citizenship, which many have done, rather than taking sole Estonian citizenship, yet fiercely protect their 'Russian rights' despite living in Estonia. This applies throughout the former old Soviet bloc. It is understandable, of course it is, to still want Russian officially recognised. However, the Russian ethnics are the guests when all is said and done and it is they who should conform to the local standards not vice versa IMV.

The US does not have an official language.

Is that peak liberal democracy or just an anomaly?

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by Jack by the hedge

Is it even law right now, or has whatever discriminatory law there was actually been repealed already?

Good question! Zelensky better drop whatever he's doing and get to the bottom of this mystery right away. Ukraine's reputation and global support depends on it!

[kookbreaker]

I’m gonna wager that the majority of those using this law to justify Russia’s invasion are the same folks who whine constantly that they have to Press “1” for English.

[ZiprHead]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langua...eal_of_the_law

Quote:

Language policy in Ukraine is based on its Constitution, international obligations, and since 16 July 2019 the Law on Supporting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language

Edited by sarge:

snipped to remove rule 4 violation

More details in the link.

[abaddon]

Originally Posted by theprestige

Ireland.

Wrong.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by abaddon

Wrong.

Right. Ireland has its own language: Irish.

[JoeMorgue]

I mean we've already established "language" is a red herring from every angle. Plenty of countries who speak the same language have gone to war or had internal conflicts and plenty of countries that don't speak the same language have maintained peace both internally and externally.

Russia didn't invade Quebec or that weird little town in Russia where all the streets signs are in Yiddish or (insert hundreds upon hundreds of other examples here.)

[abaddon]

Originally Posted by theprestige

Right. Ireland has its own language: Irish.

Look under my avatar. I was born to Irish parents and that goes back generations some of whom died in the rebellion.

I was born in 1969 to Irish parents, who were born to Irish grandparents, who were born to Irish great grandparents and so on.

I can trace my family back to the Normans.

We speak english all the time. And nothing much else apart from some oddities.

How do you not know this already?

ETA: And it's called Gaelic.

Edited by sarge:

edited to remove rule 12 violation

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by abaddon

Look under my avatar. I was born to Irish parents and that goes back generations some of whom died in the rebellion.

I was born in 1969 to Irish parents, who were born to Irish grandparents, who were born to Irish great grandparents and so on.

I can trace my family back to the Normans.

We speak english all the time. And nothing much else apart from some oddities.

How do you not know this already?

Edited by Agatha:

Edited to match quoted post

How do I not know that lots of Irish speak English primarily or exclusively? But I do know that. Are you arguing with the proposition that a country can have its own language, even if it's not spoken exclusively by its citizens?

ETA: Anyway, it's not a big deal. Ukrainian is widely spoken in Ukraine. It's not a crime against humanity to establish Ukrainian as the official language of government in the country.

Cracking down on Russian ethnocentrism was perhaps ill-advised, and even counter-productive. But it's not neo-Nazism. Ukraine, perhaps alone of the USSR's former ethnostates, has been on a course towards European ideals of liberal and social democracy. Whatever ethnic conflicts it was having would almost certainly have been resolved peacefully and in a few more years. Especially if Russia hadn't been fomenting unrest in order to "justify" invasion. Hercules' complaint is crap. Oystein's extreme ideas about official languages are absurd and tangential to the question of the thread.

[Hercules56]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

And fining people for speaking Russian does not justify an invasion.

Never said it did. I fully support Ukraine defending themselves militarily against Russian aggression. Im proud of Europe for sending in volunteers to help Ukraine and for sending them tons of weapons to use to defend themselves against Russian attacks.

However, I think Ukraine helped fuel Russian ambitions in Ukraine with their anti-Russian rules and regs.

[Captain_Swoop]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

Never said it did. I fully support Ukraine defending themselves militarily against Russian aggression. Im proud of Europe for sending in volunteers to help Ukraine and for sending them tons of weapons to use to defend themselves against Russian attacks.

However, I think Ukraine helped fuel Russian ambitions in Ukraine with their anti-Russian rules and regs.

Bollocks, they were getting invaded whatever they did.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

Never said it did. I fully support Ukraine defending themselves militarily against Russian aggression. Im proud of Europe for sending in volunteers to help Ukraine and for sending them tons of weapons to use to defend themselves against Russian attacks.

However, I think Ukraine helped fuel Russian ambitions in Ukraine with their anti-Russian rules and regs.

You think wrong. Russian ambitions were already fully fueled (unlike their army).

It might be argued that cracking down on Russian ethno-nationalism and separatism in Eastern Ukraine was counter-productive, but why bother? Especially since Putin was fomenting unrest in those regions already - hence the understandable desire to crack down in the first place.

Anyway, go ahead: Make your argument, that if Ukraine hadn't tried to counter Putin's instigation of separatism, Putin would have stayed out of Ukraine, and they'd be at peace today.

Go ahead.

The bottom line is, Putin was trying to start a civil war, or at least enough civil unrest to excuse his invasion. There was literally nothing Ukraine could have done to prevent him from launching that endgame. It doesn't make sense to hammer them now for choosing one of a handful of increasingly crappy options to try to deal with it.

I wonder what Europe's final solution will be, to the problem of why they didn't come to Ukraine's defense in time to prevent the invasion. Probably something like, "well the Ukrainians weren't perfect little Europeans yet, so we could not in good conscience put them under our security umbrella."

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Originally Posted by Captain_Swoop

Bollocks, they were getting invaded whatever they did.

This.
The only way Ukraine would have avoided an invasion was to go the Belorussian way and install a puppet for Russia that just gave in to all demands without a fight.

[Vixen]

Originally Posted by BobTheCoward

The US does not have an official language.

Is that peak liberal democracy or just an anomaly?

Explain this:

Quote:

What is the official US government language?
English
3. English as official language of the United States. “The official language of the United States is English. “Representatives of the Federal Government shall have an affirmative obligation to preserve and enhance the role of English as the official language of the Federal Government.

English Language Unity Act of 2017 - 115th Congress

[theprestige]

Russia: "We're instigating ethno-nationalist dissent and civil unrest, and enabling ethno-extremists in eastern Ukraine, to lay the propaganda groundwork for invasion and annexation."

Ukraine: "We better crack down on ethno-nationalism, then."

Russia: "See?! We told you so!"

Europe: "You sure did! I guess eastern Ukraine is yours now."

[SpitfireIX]

Originally Posted by Vixen

Explain this:

That bill did not pass; it wasn't even debated. It was introduced by notorious right-wing Representative Steve King, and immediately went nowhere.