Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so they don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them.With the elderly it’s the opposite.
Further, most of the elderly lived at a time when the USSR was the clear and obvious enemy of “freedom”, so it’s not hard to fathom Russia being back into its usual shenanigans.
Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations.
Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.
Gen Z has thus mostly understood this conflict through the propaganda wars that play out in social media and thus have conflicting and/or “both-sides” takes.
> Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.
On the other side of things, on Reddit, nothing unfavorable about Ukraine is getting attention. You don't see any posts about Russia gaining territory, or Zelensky censoring media outlets favorable to opposition parties.
And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).
> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).
It's really hard to see that Ukraine by itself could defeat Russia and it definitely seems far fetched, even if the Russian army has shown itself more inept than expected.
But that isn't what is happening either, and a Ukraine bankrolled and armed by the west. That is something else, and that combination might definitely be abel to defeat Russia. So the question is more, is the west or parts of it willing to spend enough and accept escalating tensions with nuclear armed Russia by doing that?
If you look at what Zelensky is doing at the drumbeat of asks for more weapons is obvious that Ukraine is fully aware of this.
Assuming no direct western intervention, I think the crucial next steps for a Ukraine victory will center around whether NATO can transition from providing soviet surplus to modern western arms, and get Ukrainians the training required in time. F-16s or even 35s and modern air defenses could play a huge role in making russian territory gains largely impossible, but the operational training would be measured in multiple weeks at a minimum.
Russia has a ton of land (with most of it being unproductive land in Siberia), but that won't help them to win the war.
It is actually more of a problem than an asset, because they must guard very long shores and borders against unfriendly neighbors. And if they decide to redeploy a unit from Khabarovsk to Ukraine, it takes at least a week to move it by rail. Probably longer than that. Not exactly a recipe for flexibility.
> It is actually more of a problem than an asset, because they must guard very long shores and borders against unfriendly neighbors.
On the flip side they can afford to give up a lot of terrain while they get their act together. And now the other side has super long supply chains that they have to deal with.
Yes, for defense, it is great (on the other side of this scale would be Israel that lacks any strategic depth and thus must defend the border regions at almost any cost).
The Napoleonic wars were yet another great example of a strategic retreat and bleeding the enemy dry in the endless frozen steppe.
But for attacking someone else, the situation reverses and now it is Russia that faces serious logistical problems correlated to its sheer size.
Ukraine is approximately 603,550 sq km, while Russia is approximately 17,098,242 sq km, making Russia 2,733% larger than Ukraine.
The best effect of Russian admirers and propaganda alike is that people think it is bigger then it is and that everything Russian is better then it is. It is also country where huge amount of population does not have flushable toilet, have huge inequality and massive amount of internal issues.
Russian main advantage is that it does not value human life and is OK with massive looses. And that it has zero ethical limits with regards to civilians. That is amount of greatness.
This comment is really weird. It's written as though it's correcting an incorrect assumption in the parent. But it's literally confirming what the parent said.
Parent: russia is almost 30x the size of ukraine
This comment: what?! you're confused by russian propaganda! it's only 2733% larger than ukraine
And then, even if you adjust to claim that you were trying to reinforce parent's point, that's not plausible either since parent was actually pointing out that people's belief that russia was 10x bigger was actually a large underestimate of its size.
I didn't introduce the 10x figure. But if you look at GDP, 10x seems about right. GDP is often used to compare countries, and that the size, and quality of the army you can field is based on GDP of the country, seems somewhat reasonable.
The GDP doesn't really matter in this conflict, since the Ukraine is essentially getting all its weapons, intelligence and training for free.
That and, a lot of the Russian military (the reserves) and their equipment (ships, subs, intercontinental bombers, nukes, etc) are not really going to help the Russians win the conflict, since they're either not useful, or politically impossible to use.
I think if Putin can sell to the Russian people that this is a war, not a special military operation, and as such, they should call up the reserves, break the law about how those reserves are allowed to be used, etc, then they could probably win. Without that, I don't think it's that realistic: they're fighting against a totally mobilized country that's being flooded with high-tech weapons. Imagine afghanistan, if the taleban were armed for free by the western military-industrial complex. The US wouldn't be able to do it. Russia almost certainly won't be able either.
You should look at it from Putin's point of view. Escalating with the west is even less of an option. Militarily, I don't think he has any doubt about US, French and UK nuclear deterrence. Even if you take nukes off the table, if you look how poorly his troops are doing in Ukraine, imagine that against NATO, even without the US.
He might "escalate to de-escalate", i.e. make a lot of noise about escalation to intimidate Biden (so far it worked), but it can only be bluff. Whichever metric you use, the ratio of power between Russia and Europe is much greater than Ukraine to Russia.
While I tend to agree, reading through the various nuclear close calls as far as I can tell, there were far more on the Russian side than the American one, and while American nuclear incidents tended to be headed off with everyone following orders and working within established systems, Russian ones usually involve one guy literally refusing an order. It's hard to know how accurate all of this is, but it does imply deterrent through incompetence. The concern is not limited to intentional nuclear strikes, every time Russian forces get put on alert the threat of an accident grows. Putin likely knows this, and NATO is also very wary of it.
> if you look how poorly his troops are doing in Ukraine
s/are doing/have done/
History is replete with completely incompetent offenses that were highly useful and motivating learning experiences.
I'm not sure that Russia is culturally in a position to be their own schoolmaster here, but they could be. And they have virtually infinite domestic capacity to churn out, man, and power last-gen war materiel, even with sanctions.
Their war equipment is not "last-gen", they basically keep upgrading whatever was left of the USSR and they do sit on the huge stocks of non-modernized Soviet equipment, but eventually they will be left with a useless old and vulnerable hardware. Yes, they made some next-gen tanks and planes which are not combat ready yet but modern Russian industrial capability would be able to churn out only token numbers of those anyway, under sanctions and brain drain.
Russian equipment loss in this war won't be replaced for decades if not longer.
A ton of countries would join NATO ASAP (if allowed in, and several would be) or rush to form new collective defense coalitions that include at least one other nuclear power, which in many cases would likely come with significant concessions to that nuclear power (i.e. China gains a de facto, if smallish, empire overnight).
Everyone refuses to trade with Russia until they're reduced to one of the most miserable countries on the planet. If their nuke program falls apart, several countries take some territory from them and no-one minds. Possibly they're reduced to selling parts of the country (maybe on a lease-like arrangement, which isn't unprecedented) in exchange for re-opening limited trade with countries that are willing, but see that they really have them over a barrel (China, again, is a likely beneficiary)
Several countries start or re-prioritize nuclear programs. Turkey, Iran, South Korea, and maybe even Japan, all likely candidates. Maybe more.
That's roughly what I'd expect the world to do about it, if the result isn't a spiral into outright nuclear war, or a swift and decisive coup in Russia. No, it's not good, but it's especially not good for Russia.
That’s not what nuclear deterrence protects against. If he does that there will be other forms of escalation. A Iran/North Korean style set of economic sanctions possibly (I don’t think India and China would support Putin anymore at that point). Possibly a direct confrontation over Ukraine (no fly zone or a no fly zone by proxy, giving the Ukrainians the missile defence sufficient to clear the sky). Etc.
> You should look at it from Putin's point of view. Escalating with the west is even less of an option.
I see this differently.
My understanding of the Russian "heartland" narratives suggest Russia is dead if they cannot control Ukraine in the medium term. Their "multi polar" view suggests that they MUST be at the centre of an anti-US alliance extending across Asia, Europe and Africa.
From these perspectives they HAVE to fight this war now. Even if they lose now, they feel they have to keep trying.
Fair enough, I was thinking more of a classic win by defeating the Russian army on the battlefield. But the kind of loss the USSR had in Afghanistan might be possible without much if any help from abroad.
The kind of victory Afghanistant had also means ending up with deeply authoritarian and violent society. It implies complete destruction of democratic civil society, unfortunately.
>The kind of victory Afghanistant had also means ending up with deeply authoritarian and violent society.
The current Taliban are way, way more liberal than the 90s Taliban. They've embraced modern communication, dropped most of their Pashtun ethnic supremacy stuff and are a little less violent across the board. That's really a big change all things considered.
Depends on your definition of "fend off". Take back Crimea, I think not going to happen. Make it really hard for the Russians in Donbas, inflicting heavy losses, very achievable. Stopping the Russians from taking over the south, quite likely. The Russians taking over the whole country, that ship has sailed by now.
I don't know many western countries that would tolerate to be invaded, having some territory taken off without fighting back bitterly. I mean this is the whole story of ww1.
In the end it is up to the Ukrainians to decide how much pain they are willing to endure for their independence and freedom. But if they chose to fight, it's not our role to second guess their decision and it is our duty to help them (at least us Europeans - for US citizens, different story).
Russia is a paper bear, it makes up on quality with quantity but it's a vastly unpopulated country with an old population. Morale is low, equipment is old and in poor shape. Russia is an empire and have a large share of it's forces tied down to inner tensions and can't be employed. The gross of Russians soldiers are composed by ethnic and and poor soldiers thus some are more interested in stealing than fighting. Also Russian forces haven't been significantly employed in the last decades. It's no secret that poor equipped but combat experienced militia from Donbass/Lugansk are being more effective than better equipped and trained Russian forces.
This whole situation reminds me of the Spanish-American war. At the time Spain was thought to be a great world power, but in reality their ships were old and in disrepair, so much that a rag tag group of Americans defeated them in a few months. The whole Spanish empire collapsed afterwards.
> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender.
Isn't this up the ukranians themselves? I mean really.
Maybe the Americans should have just given up on their revolution in order to save more lives. There is no way they could win against the might of the british empire.
Yes, yes. Calling out the Russians for amassing 100k troops on the border of a single bordering nation was such an egregious escalation. If I was Putin and didn't plan on invading, what leaders up to half a world away were saying about my actions would absolutely make me change my mind and send them all over the border, anyway.
Not 10x. 146m vs 41m people… and a bigger percentage of Ukrainians are in the fight. Russia has only sent 200k troops to Ukraine.. ukraine has 500k active and reserve troops, not including civilians who take up arms.
Lest we forget how Joseph Stalin's military treated Russians who refused to fight (poorly armed and equipped, no less).
Just like many of the sportspeople who aren't in the country, even those who have left since the invasion, the majority of people who disagree with it are too afraid of the consequences for saying too much or saying anything against the Kremlin narrative.
As an example, a Nobel-winning journalist was assaulted by pro-Putin Russians in public, when he has even abided by the new laws.
Morale:
While the war is popular in Russia, that's mostly among older generation who won't be fighting in the war.
On the other hand Ukraine is highly motivated to not become a part of Russia.
Logistics:
The Russian military logistics are terrible, their military was built to wage a defensive war next to Russian railroads. They don't have much practice projecting power.
Kleptocracy:
The Russian commanders have been systematically stealing all of the money Putin was pumping into the military.
Training:
Since 2014 the Ukrainian military has undergone a revolution building a modern NATO trained military, the Russian military just isn't as good.
Command:
The Russian military does a lot of top down decision making, this means they can't react to news quickly. There observe -> decide -> act cycle is so long they can't really hit moving targets.
The only advantage Russia has is a larger population, and nuclear weapons. Every other advantage is to the Ukrainian's. Right now Russia has taken losses similar or worse than the absolutely worst his armies in the civil war. There are battalions where 80% of the soldiers are dead or wounded.
A large portion of the Russian military goes home in June, and they're going to have a tough time replacing them when Ukraine is viewed as a meat grinder.
Russian military conscript term of service is 12 months, and large chunk of the militaries conscripts will end their term of service and get to go home. They'll have to replace these conscripts with new ones but unless they declare a state of war it's going to be hard to find replacements because who wants to throw their life away walking into Ukraine which has had one of the highest casualty rates of any military in the last 200 years.
> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).
The status quo is far too advantageous for the pro-war segment of our national security establishment for that idea to get any traction. Currently we have a "moral" war for the first time since the Balkans, it's strengthening NATO, and Russia is being weakened at the expense of mere pocket change and outdated weapons. And from a PR perspective, the American public cares far less about Ukrainian casualties than dead American soldiers. Then there's the benefit of blaming Putin for inflation with "Putinflation" and advancing other goals like shutting down Nordstream 2 and selling LNG to Europe.
I'm pro-Ukraine, but I can't help but notice how average Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict, while US foreign policy hawks are breaking out the champagne.
"average Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict" because Russia decided to attack them and crush their resistance.
I feel sorry for the Ukrainians, having met a lot of refugees in Prague. But I don't believe that they would rather surrender and have "Russian peace". Some of them perhaps, but not the majority. They do not want to be yoked again.
Were "Russian peace" then means "comprehensive de-ukrainification and elimination of the intelligentsia to leave a braindead husk of a state behind", as publicly announced in Russia and partially implemented in occupied areas.
Are they going to end up with a better deal than what Russia was demanding before the war, or a worse one? Right now it's looking like worse, with Russia demanding territorial concessions in addition to Ukraine staying out of NATO.
And that's not even considering how Ukraine has taken thousands of casualties, has it's economy wrecked, had millions of people flee the country, and much of their infrastructure is ruined.
That compares the options as if the negotiation was a one-time thing. But game theory would say that giving in to Russian demands would get you … more demands.
Yes, any sort of demilitarization would make them into a satellite state, crushable at will.
They can possibly agree to territorial losses (though after all the bloodshed and murder I consider even that unlikely - not just that, but the West does not want Putin to gain anything from this war, so it will support Ukraine until victory, however long it takes), but not to any kind of hollowing out of their army. That would be a prolonged national suicide.
> You don't see any posts about Russia gaining territory
I have seen daily posts about Russia gaining territory in news. For weeks, it was daily report of Russian progression even with maps.
And Russia is not 10x bigger.
I have also seen more articles about nazi in Ukraine then nazi in Russia. In fact, Russian fascism and Putins rehabilitation of Stalin were oddly missing. For years, but also during this conflict.
It was only when invasion started to look like genocide journalists started to look more at who Russia actually is.
> It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).
Firstly, the size of a country doesn't immediately matter, it's more about the size of the army. E.g. China 50 years ago was bigger than the US, but couldn't "win" in a war with the US.
Having said that, wars are a political tool. For the most part, wars aren't about fighting until you "kill everyone" or anything like that. They are fought to achieve certain goals, and end when one side decides its goals aren't worth the price of the fight.
This is true in all situations - even in a war of conquest. Ukraine will put up a huge fight, because the goal is to stop themselves from being conquered. But there could come a point where they decide to surrender, because the death toll will be too high (or because the leadership is captured and threatened, or because the army is too fatigued to continue fighting and surrenders without the leadership, etc).
Likewise, it's possible that Russia decides to stop the fighting. This could be because they decide it's weakening the army too much (too many soldiers dying and munitions being used up). Or it could be because internal public opinion is too heavily against the war. It could even be for reasons that are only internally visible, like that Putin starts feeling that his position is threatened because of the war.
All Ukraine has to do is to keep up their resistance long enough for the war to not be worth continuing from Russia's side. Or for the rest of the world to decide to help more than they are, which is why Zelensky's main goal is to keep the front-and-center in the West's consciousness. How long that is (if it's even possible) nobody knows.
> don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them
I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada" meanwhile the graphic they showed while saying this clearly showed a map with more occupied territory than the same map the day before and another city under siege which has deteriorated my trust where I was a skeptic before, I did at least think war reporting would be rather accurate. I really got the feeling they were trying to calm us down and getting those talking points from some unified source (the govt?) and worries me that this conflict does in fact have potential to get massively out of hand
The reporting on the war has been fairly consistent: that Russia initially captured a lot of territory in a rapid advance, but overextended themselves and bogged down. Now they're retreating from much of this territory and are trying to reinforce their forces in Donbas. That narrative seems to be well-supported by reporting, and it also perfectly explains what you observed. Don't think anyone is misleading you.
This is also what i have gathered, ive used mostly youtube and r/ukraine to get some views, i do realize they are highly skewed to ukranian side of the conflict, but i prefer it that way, the aggression is absolutely started by Russia so i have no sympathy for them.
Healthy skepticism is important, but I have so far been amazed at how much of the information circulated by the Ukrainian govt has ended up being independently validated. Much of what ends up on reddit is nonsense, but I have begun to trust the govt reports, as so far they seem to be less a distorted picture and more an up to date one.
For me, what makes it believable are the casualty numbers. Ukraine claims Russia lost ~750 tanks. Oryx visually confirmed about 500. The 2/3 ratio of confirmed kills, only via OSINT is insane. That makes claims about lost aircraft - which is way harder to confirm - at least decently believable.
It's amazing that someone can be better informed by purely reading Ukrainian official propaganda than by reading independent news agencies like Reuters. The first has incentives to not lie as to not lose international support while the latter for the sake of being impartial while being unable to verify what's really going on has to take Russian propaganda (which is vastly misinformation) at face value.
For the same reason it’s really easy to get a good idea of where Russia has been attacking, advancing, or retreating throughout the whole deal by simply monitoring the Ukraine propaganda telegram channel. They want to highlight any atrocities committed by Russia to the West on full blast so we get to hear about every missile in every town almost immediately after it happens.
Yes and even from Russia you can't get information if you read between the lines. TASS was quick to report that Moskva "suffered an accident" but the crew was evacuated and later that the ship sunken. It was a strong signal that the crew was NOT evacuated or at least suffered heavy casualties as it typical for this kind of thing. Though this yet to be proved.
Ukrainian propaganda for an instance is obviously not eager to report on their military losses but have to do so to counter-attack Russian propaganda. It's just that it makes sense to be truthful when you are morally justified and in overall winning.
>I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada"
Same here. I consider myself a big consumer of news from a variety of sources, and it's hard to get nearly any perspective except "Ukraine is dominating the battlefield". It's strange times, but this is the information war.
I think there is a natural instinct to not believe things that are obviously propaganda, so when confronted by a party telling an obvious fantasy it’s pretty important to get the other party’s version, even if also nonsense and hope to suss out the truth.
You don't have to look very hard for the other side's version though.
Question is whether you think "Russia made a planned withdrawal from the north of the country after completing all the objectives of this military exercise which definitely isn't a war" is a more plausible description of the short-lived invasion of the north of the country than "Russia's advances have slowed down... Russia stopped advancing... Russia is retreating...". Both narratives agree that the facts on the ground are that Russian troops made large scale incursions into the north of Ukraine but aren't there any more.
Yes, most Western media has sought to emphasize Russian casualties over Ukrainian ones and Ukrainian minor success over Russian ones, but it's not like Western media hasn't been free to predict Russia will have full control of Mariupol in a couple of days for over a month now and talk up the Russian convoy advancing on Kyiv which never made it there, or like the official Russian narrative isn't palpably absurd.
I mean, you don't fire large numbers of intelligence agents and generals in the middle of a war because you're winning.
Propaganda is one thing, but right now every report we have, incoming from Russian state media, points in the direction of "Russia is getting their ass kicked".
> The baseline expectation was Ukraine folding within 3-4 days
I think the West expected better but not lot better, it does seem that was about what Russia expected (possibly on bad political intelligence on how the population would respond to an invasion.)
To me, it seemed that west expected Ukraine to fold too. And the west also have circles that admire Russia quite a lot while Ukraine was not taken seriously until they started to be serious in battle field.
You still have fawning over Russian this and that, culture, shock over their army being disorganized and corrupt or looting etc, despite them being like that always. While Ukraine was mostly non-existent.
> To me, it seemed that west expected Ukraine to fold too
That was pretty explicitly stated by a number of officials, I just get the feeling that they thought the timeline would be longer than what the Russians were thinking, but probably in the 2-3 week window for the government, in any meaningful form, holding out, with the situation, at best being guerilla resistance after that.
It's funny, I don't recall seeing any pro-Russian sources stating that the goal was to capture all of Ukraine. In fact, they've publicly stated their goals since the beginning, and annexing all of Ukraine was never listed. Where did this idea in the media come from, since it didn't come from Russia..?
Because a state-run news site accidentally published a victory article.
"Ukraine has returned to Russia...It will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state as part of the Russian world...[Russia, Belarus and Ukraine will now act] in geopolitical terms as a single whole,"
Also if you take the time to notice what Putin is saying and doing you will realize that denazification = genocide. The goal was not to arrest Hitler's fans but to destroy Ukrainian nationality.
Firstly, the claim that Russia is actually doing actual "denazification" is such obvious rubbish that no sentient informed person should come close to believing it.
What they do is far more informative than what they say. What they say also includes Mr Putin's frankly unhinged speeches calling for more Russian Lebensraum.
Second, the point of such disinformation is not necessarily to make everyone believe this story, but to muddy that waters so much that people are no longer sure where the truth lies, they either fall back to the "well, there must be truth on both sides" or just give up on ever finding out the truth.
Thus, this kind of disinformation does not need to even be self-consistent or even that believable. But it does need to be relentlessly sent out.
The Ukrainian Azov Battalion is very much proudly Nazi in their ideology, and they don't hide it. Where does this defense of them and their Nazi ideology come from? Nobody disputes they are Nazi's and yet we are supposed to defend them because Russia is the aggressor? Or is there another reason?
Yes, I did and they verify the Nazi ideology of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion. Nobody denies the Azov Battalion is full of Nazi's. That's why you're being coy with your responses, rather than providing a source that would dispute it.
> In fact, they've publicly stated their goals since the beginning, and annexing all of Ukraine was never listed.
Well, their publicly stated goal was "this is a training exercise how dare you accuse us of anything", and we all saw how much truth there was to that.
It makes perfect sense not to trust everything Putin says. That doesn't answer the questions though - where did our media get the idea that Russia ever intended on annexing all of Ukraine? They tell us this was a goal, but what is the source of that claim? Russia never made that claim. Only some in the media have, shouldn't we expect sources for claims like that?
..and the central city of Kyiv was the furthest east Russia ever went, which leads us back to the question of where people got the idea that Russia ever intended to annex all of Ukraine.
…you think the most likely explanation is that the Russians attacked Kyiv because that was the furthest west they wanted? They’d just leave the rest alone?
No, the most obvious answer is that they went there to destroy high value targets to weaken Ukraine militarily, making it far easier to do what they want to do in the Donbass/Crimean land bridge area. Now rather than having to deal with the Ukrainian air force, tank units, air defense etc. those obstacles are mostly gone.
> So to put it bluntly, if the 'clever plan' was to lose 10,000 KIA to set conditions to walk away with the Donbas, that's a stupid plan. That's winning the negotiation on a $15k car by cleverly offering an opening bid of $55k and throwing in your old car as a sweetener.
The Donbas isn't really the main target for Russia, since that is already essentially ruled by separatist pro-Russian forces for years. The prize is the area west of there and to the south, connecting Crimea by land and freeing up the water resources that have been blocked.
Admittedly I'm not a historian like the Twitter guy with the bad analogies, but I suspect the furthest west that Russia seeks to control is Kherson (not Odessa), then following the water going back NE of there to Zaporizhzhia & then all the way up towards Kharkiv in some fashion. This gives Russia a ton of natural[1] and industrial resources, plus significantly weakens Ukraine, without having to try and occupy the more populated and less Russian areas west of there towards Kyiv and further. Putin will likely try to sell this as necessary to provide a buffer zone for the heavily Russian Donbas region from Ukrainian shelling.
That being said, I'm just some turd on the internet so I'm probably wrong and nobody knows for sure what Putin's long term plan is.
Well according to the Russian media the west and Lviv particularly was the hotbed of Nazism (back a month ago some distinction was made that that was the particularly bad part of Ukraine, but now it's all teeming with Nazis), so denazification would have to involve the west too. I think it's pretty clear the goal was to replace the government at least, and if they could get another Lukashenko that in itself is almost "annexing"
Well the Azov Battalion was and is in Mariupol (not Lyiv), and they are the vanguard of the Nazi element in Ukraine. As to your point about Putin wanting a more pro-Russian government in Ukraine, of that I have no doubt.
"Azov's military and political wings formally separated in 2016, when the far-right National Corps party was founded. The Azov battalion had by then been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard.
An effective fighting force that's very much involved in the current conflict, the battalion has a history of neo-Nazi leanings, which have not been entirely extinguished by its integration into the Ukrainian military."
I note that they also say "Moscow has given the regiment an outsized role in the conflict" ... "Ukraine "is not a cesspit for Nazi sympathizers" ... "There are far-right actors prominent in Russia, too." ... "For its part, Russia also has a thriving ultra-nationalist scene that is tolerated by the authorities." ... " some experts say Russia's fixation on a minor player like the Azov movement serves a purpose -- allowing the Kremlin to frame the conflict as an ideological and even existential struggle. However remote from reality that may be."
> "Azov's military and political wings..."
And which one - military or political - is of interest to you?
The first, the military wing, is just another regiment (not a Battalion) under regular military command now.
There are _militant nationalists_ in a country's _national military_ ? No shit, that's literally the right place for them. Any country will be the same: people who want to fight for their country are a natural fit for ... fighting for thier country. Tell me that the USA doesn't have any gung-ho conservative patriots in the armed services ranks before you make a big deal out of this.
This is not remarkable about Ukraine outside of Russian propaganda, as the above CBS and CNN links make clear.
You say that the army is "very much involved in the current conflict"? No fooling, what else would the actual army be doing in wartime?
The second, political:
Myth: "Nazism is rampant in Ukrainian politics and society, supported by authorities in Kyiv."
Reality: "The candidate for the far-right nationalist party, Svoboda, won 1.6% of the vote in the 2019 presidential election."
That is not an indicator of widespread "neo-Nazi leanings".
So why do you continually bring this misleading scare story up? It's nothing but Russian propaganda talking points that don't have basis in current reality. The CBS link above made that clear, but you did not respond to it. Your own CNN report says the same.
Talk to us about the same in Russian military (e.g. Wagner Group) and society (Mr Putin's recent unhinged speeches calling for more Russian Lebensraum) before you say that this is a Ukrainian problem.
So first you say Azov no longer exists, and then when you get called out for spreading disinformation, you write a text wall explaining why although the Azov Nazi's are very much still prevalent in Ukraine and fighting in this conflict, that it doesn't matter.
no, I said that "the Azov Battalion" hasn't existed since 2015, when it ceased to be either independent of the military or a Battalion. This doesn't stop you using the misleading phrase.
> and then when you get called out
Cherry-picking quotes from a CNN article, without attribution, does not constitute a "call out".
> you write a text wall
I'm sorry if you didn't take the time to read it, but that is not a counter-argument in any way. First you say "you can't back up your claims with sources" then you change to "oh no, too many claims and sources, and thanks for locating my source for me, but let me fail to talk about any of them at all, but let's repeat a slur word and finish up with a 'zinger'!".
Well his take is a very polite and admirable way of calling Russia's arguments blatant lies without calling them blatant lies, and calling their perpetrators liars without calling them liars.
What you replied to said nothing about annexing all of Ukraine. Almost all evidence suggests Russia expected they would capture Kyiv and Ukraine would capitulate quickly.
Except Putin has publicly stated his goals since before the invasion and during, and they've not publicly changed. And at no point was annexing all of Ukraine a stated goal. I only bring it up because I'm curious where it came from.
> Except Putin has publicly stated his goals since before the invasion and during, and they've not publicly changed.
Sometimes what a person says and a person does don’t agree. In situations like that—you don’t need to believe what they say! You can just accept they lied and move on.
Maps of territory are a terrible way to show the state of the war. This article provides some color and might help underscore why the narrative could be correct even if the maps look otherwise: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/07/russia-war-ukraine-maps...
Maps of territory are a terrible way of showing ANY political conflict.
It's the same as the maps of county-by-county US election results that show a sea of red that equate to a population smaller than LA county.
People are the important unit in political conflicts and Russia is very much struggling to take any meaningfully populated area (See: Chernobyl, a place where sane humans refuse to go, being one of the first trophies)
I fully agree but it's my go to when my level of time investment is very low. First few weeks I was checking in maybe 5 minutes a day for the headlines, saw no real ground footage and only the maps and cities under siege. The next couple weeks I checked in less frequently but began seeing more imagery of the destruction/human toll. As of now, I haven't looked at any news on the topic this week at all.
The article you linked to disagrees: "Maps, after all, remain crucial for our understanding of conflicts. Even if they are abstractions, they remain immensely useful."
Maps should not be treated as simple visualizations. They can (and should) contain plenty of information, and interpreting them properly often takes a lot of skill and effort.
I can't remember a time in my life when war reporting was accurate.
I do find it interesting, though, that the media is willing to show the civilian casualties of this war, when there was a practical media blackout on the same type of reporting of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
That's not surprising at all. American forces had a very bad experience with reporters that reported damning stories about them in Vietnam. In Iraq and Afghanistan they took actions to make that kind of reporting hard, and the reporting they wanted easy. It wasn't even that secret and I'm fairly sure I at least saw some reporting on that they where doing this in Norwegian, and possibly British media.
There is a lot of OSINT now, given that the war theatre is located in a developed country with network coverage and a dozen million smartphones. From this point of view, accuracy is probably better than in previous wars. We didn't have much OSINT from Hindu Kush.
> I did at least think war reporting would be rather accurate.
I can't imagine why. There are massive disinformation campaigns and only a psychopath could be an impartial observer while watching two sides kill each other.
The "fog of war" is hard to penetrate for anyone, from reporters to combatants.
Maybe accurate is the wrong word, but consistent based on the information available even if disinformation. I didn't expect the new to be the source of the disinformation in regards to war. It also seemed to me to take a very long time to get any real footage of what was going on, war correspondents and so on.
I recall with the early days of Iraq and the Baghdad invasion that I felt like I was getting the full picture. Perhaps because it was US forces with journalists in tow. The reason we were there was highly questionable and suspicious but I felt like I was getting a rather accurate picture of what happened on the ground.
I say all this but should also mention that my perception could also be significantly off. I am not a regular consumer of news and this just happens to be what I'd see when I decided to get a quick update on the situation.
If the Russian invasion of Ukraine has taught me anything, it's that a) while overt Russian propaganda seems to largely fail in Europe, the more subtle suggestions are widespread b) most people have genuinely horribly bad defense takes c) there are somewhat more tankies than I expected
The number of tankies has been impressive. I'm not sure how anyone can look at Russia and think "yea, they made some good points," and I study misinformation professionally. It's not even on the believable scale.
> Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) [...] and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations. [...] Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. [...] You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.
I've noticed this too, and I need to make a point:
In the long run, this will be a serious security threat to Europe.
In this, Europe took almost completely the wrong lessons regarding America's role in NATO. Yes a stronger NATO is good. Yes, stronger ties to America are necessary to counter Russia.
But now is not the time to abandon strategic autonomy. Just the opposite. Macron is right, just as DeGaulle before him was right. Yes, Europe should ally with the United States, but it also must begin to stand on its own two feet.
Why? Because the next American generations don't give a shit about Europe. In a very deep way, Europeans have not absorbed the social earthquakes that have hit the United States. In younger American minds, Europe doesn't matter. Ukraine doesn't matter.
Europe should maintain its alliances, but it also needs to plan for a future in which it depends only on itself for its defense. It needs to do this seriously and as though its life depends on it.
>In this, Europe took almost completely the wrong lessons regarding America's role in NATO.
I think you misinterpret what Europe is doing, because it's mostly doing exactly what you propose. Hell, even Germany seriously plans to overhaul it's dismal army.
It seems likely that "gen z" americans have few clues about what historic and present day russia is, and generally about the land mass between Poland and Korea.
They are just now waking up from two years of debating whether not wearing masks was a hate crime.
Maybe in their minds, the conditions on the opposite side of the world just seem too brutal to belong in the same reality. It looks and sounds too crazy to be real, so they can't decide if it's fake.
I was a high school student during the collapse of the SU and even before that had a bit of a fascination on Russia. When I went to college (~1992), I took a Russian Politics class because I wanted to understand the collapse and what was going to happen. at the end of the course the teacher asked if we thought that Russia was on its way to becoming a western democracy and we all nodded. He said "you learned NOTHING! Nothing has changed in Russia except a slightly newer generation is in power. Their leadership and government are still corrupt and are handing over the russian state assets to oligarchs who share little with the people of russia. By the way, keep your eyes on these guys Khodorkovky (the oligarch) and Zhirinovsky (the ultra-nationalist) as they represent two directions that Russia could go."
I don't recall putin or medvedev ever being mentioned in that class, but it's clear that's the time that mattered to them, defining their worldview.
>"you learned NOTHING! Nothing has changed in Russia except a slightly newer generation is in power.
Words of Wisdom. It is the same with China as well. On the surface your might think things are moving in the direction to whatever you viewed or desire, western democracy in this case. But as your professor stated. Nothing has changed.
Neither is correct. Gen Z, like all young generations, is idealistic, anti-status quo, and thinks their experiences and perspectives are completely unique and novel. As they get older they will transition, hopefully retaining some of their more progressive and forward thinking values, which will become imbedded in society and so the cycle will continue.
The problem is we are not seeing this "As they get older they will transition" that usually happens.
What we are seeing, is that the transition out of the idealistic world view, is happening at a much later age. That is already happening with Gen Y or Millennials, and especially those in Tech. People who are over 40s still have these simplistic world view.
I dont know what it is about Tech. But it is especially problematic in tech.
Former university lecturer here. In my experience, gen Z have ZERO understanding of history or geopolitics. I'm serious, they just don't know what happened before their lifetime and cannot hold a coherent conversation about historical events or the geopolitical realities which flow from them. So no, this is not true.
I have dealt with people on a large spectrum of literacy -- it is true that many people have little practical knowledge of even major international events, but a simple measure misses an important point. People care about those events to vastly different degrees; people know about those events to vastly different degrees; and then people know and care about parts of real history, in skewed and incomplete ways, as an inevitable part of the human condition.
by example -- I knew about ancient greeks partly due to interest in classics as a young intellectual.. most people at that age did not know any details of ancient greeks. But I did not care very much about military history, so even if I knew it, I didnt factor it into relevant thinking. Next, wrt middle ages history of Ottoman slave society, fluxes in military rule in North Africa, or endless tribal and cultural clashes in eastern Europe.. I just did not know many of those things, to this day. Maybe I might care, but I had literally not heard of certain things (like Mongols in Poland, or Napolean imprisoning a sitting Pope, or Vikings in Turkey) and did not know they existed, even as as active learner.
So to sum up, people may know a little bit, but do not care, therefore do not apply it to reasoning. Even people who do have greater capacity for details, may not know, due to incomplete learning and local teaching of history. Last, wikipedia really is a remarkable thing in our time.
what's really crazy is my 12 year old is watching a lot of political stuff on youtube and was asking me about what will happen with belarus, and the fate of all the other ex-soviet union countries. He also asks a bunch about world war II, which in my opinion is the most important historical event to understand because it's what led to the current situation.
> Or, maybe, they grew up talking to people from all over the world and have a far better understanding than boomers raised on television
I would argue precisely the opposite.
Support in tech for Ukraine is quite high because most people have worked with Ukranian programmers, generally find them to be decent human beings like all human beings, and seeing posts/pictures from someone you know in the midst of being attacked upsets you.
Most Americans working non-tech jobs, even the supposedly worldly younger-than-Boomers, have never had contact with somebody outside American borders. Tech can expand your world. Tech can also simply provide a safe bubble that never disturbs your delicate sensibilities.
Case in point, had a meeting at the beginning of this week where the meeting request 'accept' included "we might have to cut short this meeting should the sirens sound, thank you for your patience". Brings things into sharp focus.
>Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army.
Maybe I'm old but I haven't seen any of these things. Where do you find all of these?
> It is not uncommon for Ukrainians to refer to African-Americans as “[N-Word]”. Volunteers of color may be called 'a monkey' or may see children’s games with Blackface. Being aware of the history of dehumanization for people of African descent may help inform where this comes from; it does not justify it. It will be at your discretion to determine the intent.
[2]
> "Problems arise when young foreigners are prioritised over women and children of Ukrainian citizenship who are trying to get on the same trains."
> "Maybe we will put all foreigners in some other place so they won’t be visible and there won’t be conflict with Ukrainians trying to flee in the same direction. This is something that has to be taken care of and we will be doing it."
[3]
> Ukrainian servicemen help evacuate civilians near Irpin, #Ukraine. Three civilians were killed as Russian mortar rounds landed, striking a route used by civilians fleeing southeast toward #Kyiv.
I haven’t personally watched any but I did see them thrown around in thread about India-Russian relations (videos of Indians being discriminated against by Ukrainians.)
As a younger millennial on the left, I am routinely frustrated by "anti-imperialist" attitudes (especially among my generation, and younger). I think "anti-imperialist" is one of the least useful labels for a political worldview in contemporary politics.
Prior to the invasion, there was rampant criticism of NATO, and calls for its dissolution, on left-wing media, as an instrument of American imperialism, despite the fact that Russia has a history of aggression against post-Soviet states (e.g. Georgia) in the 21st century. With the outbreak of the war (outside of east Ukraine), some have walked back the more extreme aspects of those statements (as NATO's potential usefulness has been illustrated), but American imperialism via NATO is still discussed in the same breath as Russian imperialism via a military invasion and territorial annexation.
The truth is we have very little choice in our great powers or global hegemonies, and I will always take the NATO brand of "imperialism" (e.g. where countries literally ask for American military bases to ward against actual aggression) over the Russian brand. Should we be skeptical of NATO? Of course, as we should with all power structures, especially when they engage in actual violence; but to not have a nuanced discussion about what actual imperialism looks like in the 21st century, and to simply be blanket "anti-imperialist," is juvenile, and I'd argue probably detrimental to those that actually feel its real world effects.
>Prior to the invasion, there was rampant criticism of NATO, and calls for its dissolution, on left-wing media
Can you provide examples? I have not seen this, and as dissolution of NATO or otherwise weakening NATO was a goal of the previous administration, I am confused at this claim.
You've vastly oversimplified the politics of the American left and right, which are themselves varied. Just because Trump criticized NATO member states and potentially weakened NATO with his rhetoric, does not mean it was ever actual policy of the mainstream Republican Party, or really even the Trump administration, to dissolve NATO. In fact, Trump himself now claims that, if not for him, there would be no NATO [1]. Trump is a president that ran on no clear platform (e.g. his 2020 presidential campaign did not even publish one) or real coherent policy.
With that in mind, here is an article from 2018 in Jacobin, a left-wing magazine, saying that, regardless of Trump's comments, NATO's continued existence remains a valid question [2]; in fact, the Democratic Socialists of America (the primary progressive/socialist/labor party in the US) has calls for the US to immediately withdraw from NATO as part of its stated policy, even after the Russian invasion of western Ukraine [3]. These are among the most well stated positions regarding NATO skepticism on the American left, but similar opinions were expressed throughout left-wing independent media in the months leading up to the invasion (and earlier).
When you state you are a "millennial on the left", In the context of US / Americans, does left here means Democrats, or does left here means left on the political spectrum. Or at least left in the US political spectrum. ( Since left in US and left in UK are largely if not completely different )
Because I have seen a lot of "NATO skepticism on the American left". I dont even think the word skepticism is correct. They literally wanted to cancel NATO.
Wouldn't your view, in this case be more aligned as what is called centre-left? Especially in the context of US. Because if an outsider were to judge the US Left purely from Internet / Social Media / TV / Mass Media, than being pro-NATO ( so to speak ) is very much a right wing or non left wing view.
I mean left on the political spectrum, and certainly far more left-wing than mainstream Democrats or "center" left (even in a British or European context). Additionally, I use the term skepticism here similarly to how the term euroskepticism is used to encompass varying degrees of criticism for the European Union (including criticism that involves full withdrawal of all member states), just in this case in regard to NATO. As I said in my initial comment, I'm well aware that many on the left want to see the dissolution of NATO.
I don't think I would describe myself necessarily as pro-NATO, I just don't think its dissolution is reasonable, and I think its actually quite arguable that NATO dissolution would be a net negative. With that in mind, it's not uncommon for people, who are otherwise very far off from one another on the ideological or political spectrum, to agree (or at least agree in policy outcome) on individual issues (especially foreign policy ones). That's the nature of using a relatively one-dimensional spectrum to describe a complex system of beliefs.
>That's the nature of using a relatively one-dimensional spectrum to describe a complex system of beliefs.
Yes. I mean internet discussions are already hard on any subject with just text and little context. And politics is possibly the worst of all subjects.
> despite the fact that Russia has a history of aggression against post-Soviet states (e.g. Georgia) in the 21st century.
The aggression against georgia was due to NATO. Just like the current aggression against ukraine. NATO's existence is a threat to world peace just like the soviet union was. Any sane person would be for the elimination of NATO.
> and I will always take the NATO brand of "imperialism"
Yeah because syria, libya, etc are doing so great. NATO's imperialism has murdered far more people than russia's. Even in europe - yugoslavia.
> (e.g. where countries literally ask for American military bases to ward against actual aggression) over the Russian brand.
There are ukrainians who asked russia to protect them too...
> The aggression against georgia was due to NATO. Just like the current aggression against ukraine. NATO's existence is a threat to world peace just like the soviet union was. Any sane person would be for the elimination of NATO.
A complete inversion of reality. Post-soviet states want to be part of NATO because they are afraid of Russian agression, and Russia is afraid of those states joining NATO, because that means it cannot agress against them. Hence, Russia starting border conflicts in countries that wish to join NATO in order to secure Russia's ability for further aggression later.
If you don't mind me asking, do you think the invention of the nuclear bomb was a mistake, and the world would be better off if nukes wouldn't have existed (1945-)?
> Post-soviet states want to be part of NATO because they are afraid of Russian agression, and Russia is afraid of those states joining NATO, because that means it cannot agress against them.
There is some truth in that. But you are conveniently leaving out the other part. These post-soviet states are threatened with economic isolation/attacks/destruction/etc from "NATO/EU/US". Lets not pretend we are saints. The empire that needs to go today isn't the soviet union or russa. It's NATO. The greatest source of destruction, death, instability around the world.
> because that means it cannot agress against them.
What exactly prevents aggression against post-soviet states? Nothing. All their membership means is that they get to serve as buffers/firing range. Instead of germany or france taking the brunt of the bombs, it will be poland, latvia, etc. If russia invaded a post-soviet state, which country in NATO will come to their defense if it meant getting nuked by russia? Do you think britain is willing to get london nuked over lithuania? Think france will sacrifice paris? Every international treaty has been broken for a reason. If russia marched into poland or lithuania tomorrow, we'd all say see you in another 60 years.
> If you don't mind me asking, do you think the invention of the nuclear bomb was a mistake, and the world would be better off if nukes wouldn't have existed (1945-)?
No. I think every country should get nukes. Who doesn't want ukraine to get nukes? Russia and NATO. Think about it. Who doesn't want poland, lithuania, estonia, etc from getting nukes? NATO. What would have kept ukraine safe? What would keep post-soviet states safe? Nukes.
Lonely north korea angrily firing missiles into the sea of japan is far more secure than any post soviet state in NATO. You would think these post-soviet states would have learned their lesson, but they apparently have not. The only thing these countries have going for them is russia's weak economic position and the lack of incentive to invade post soviet states. Simple as that. Is there any sane lithuanian who truly believes any country is willing to suffer nuclear destruction on their behalf?
I see a weird dissonance in your post - you clearly believe in nuclear deterrence, but also negate that NATO - a nuclear alliance - provides deterrence, and claim that it would be better for nations to not be part of NATO, but have their own small nuclear force instead.
The first point is something that you'll have to resolve yourself, so I'd actually like the time to disagree on your second point - that a small nuclear force provides deterrence against major powers, like North Korea. North Korea has a very small nuclear arsenal, and an even smaller number of carrier missiles; this is exactly the threat you counter with BMD, and indeed, if you look at a map of where the US's BMD is located, you will find that it's squarely pointed at North Korea. North Korea is safe for other reasons, not because it could lob a nuclear-tipped missile at the US; it could lob nukes at various US allies, this provides deterrence, and is more difficult to defend against (and, as you would expect from this line of reasoning, both Japan and South Korea have been investing and continue to do so a lot into BMD). And North Korea is of course in a range where it could glass Seoul using conventional weapons, which is virtually impossible to defend against. On top of that there is an unclear amount of China in the back of North Korea; it seems unlikely that you could intervene in NK without China doing something.
The situation is even worse for a country like Lithuania. Even assuming they bring up their own nuclear arms program without Russia or anyone else intervening, which seems like one heck of an assumption to me, deterrence requires that you're actually able to feasibly launch something. This essentially rules out land-based nukes, because Lithuania is too small and all possible locations are too close to Russian land forces or naval forces to be able to launch a missile without giving a large window to intercept it. Air-based nukes are out for similar reasons, the country is small enough that air defenses would cover most of it. So now you're looking at SLBMs and the submarines that go with them.
There is only country that managed to do something like this, and that's Israel. And it does not border on another nuclear country, not even close - in part because they actively prevent that from happening.
> Lets not pretend we are saints. The empire that needs to go today isn't the soviet union or [russia]. It's NATO. The greatest source of destruction, death, instability around the world.
This would have played a decade ago, or even after Russia's quasi-covert military actions in Ukraine in 2014 that were easily relativized away. But these days, tens of thousands of humans in mass graves and billions worth of destroyed civilian infrastructure say otherwise.
The USian economic empire is a malevolent force, for sure. But Russia's industrial genocide and concomitant domestic nosedive into totalitarianism is on a completely different level, on a scale that we thought was a relic of the 20th century. Equating the two demonstrates a staggeringly foolish lack of perspective.
The civilian casualties in ukraine since 2014 is about 3,000. Not sure where you get tens of thousands.
> But Russia's industrial genocide and concomitant domestic nosedive into totalitarianism is on a completely different level, on a scale that we thought was a relic of the 20th century.
You do realize that far more people died in iraq, afghanistan, etc than will ever die in ukraine right?
That fact that you have to outright lie shows that your position is wrong.
> The civilian casualties in ukraine since 2014 is about 3,000. Not sure where you get tens of thousands.
He is clearly referring to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
> You do realize that far more people died in iraq, afghanistan, etc than will ever die in ukraine right?
Iraq was notably not a NATO operation, and Afghanistan was a protracted twenty year long war that saw some ~50 000 civilian deaths. At this point, considering the intensity and very high casualty numbers in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it's hardly credible to claim to know how many will "ever die in Ukraine" if we don't even know where that war is going, let alone how and when it will end. Above you also brought up Syria, which is again not a NATO operation, and Libya, where some 10 000 NATO air-strikes ended up killing less than hundred civilians [1]. Would it be better if those 40-70-ish people not have died? Obviously. Is an amortized 0.7 % chance of a given air-strike killing one civilian showing that NATO targeted civilians? I think not. That brings up to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which if I recall is the only time NATO actually did something without UNSC (~everything) or Article 5 (~once) authorization, solely based on all NATO members agreeing to do it. Personally, I think it was the right thing to do, but it was done the wrong way legally and operationally.
[1] A popular claim on social media is that NATO killed over 500 000 civilians in Libya, which would amount to about 10 % of the population at the time.
Fog of war means there is no good count of casualties. Tens of thousands is my earnest order of magnitude based on rough estimations I've heard reading about various sites of atrocities. A good faith estimation is not a "lie". If anything, repeating an extremely conservative lower bound as if it were the full story is closer to being a lie (see also: the official USG Iraq body count versus unofficial ones).
The magnitude of the Iraq body count is horrendous, agreed. USG unilaterally deciding to attack Iraq is undeniably evil, agreed. If the US empire diminished, it would be a good thing - assuming it were due to underlying causes weakening the fundamental viability of large influence structures, and not simply different empires becoming more powerful.
But since we're talking about war, and not say cryptography bolstering personal liberty, then I'll begrudgingly accept the least-worst empire. And that is the role the US is playing in this situation, supporting Ukraine's self-defense against an aggressive totalitarianism-resurgent Russia. It does bother me to say that, knowing weapons manufacturers and other architects of USG's aggressive wars are making bank, and knowing the perverse incentive is for USG to string Ukraine along with just enough supplies to damage Russia but not make for a decisive end to the war. But I remember I am against Russia's imperialist attack on Ukraine for the same exact reasons I was against USG's imperialist attack on Iraq. The roles of the players have changed, so I must incorporate nuance to my views rather than leaning on the same old USG-bad heuristic.
If I may, my impression is also that the younger generations don't "get" war. Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle at me?
They've been raised in a post-modernist neo-marxist environment that very clearly marks the Western order as evil. To them, there is no "good vs evil", because they are evil and the West has no redeeming factors.
Why would you fight to defend that? Why fight to spread that?
Add a keen awareness of the Elites (however you define them) as the sole beneficiaries or war. The conscript or recruit on the ground pays the price so some WEF-agenda shareholder gets to see a bigger dividend this quarter? Hard pass fam.
Add in a general anxiety about everything: from talking to a stranger to the impeding collapse of life on Earth due to climate change within X years (where X is always a handful of years away), and war doesn't make sense. There are Bigger Issues than some lines on the map drawn by Evil White Men.
Now obviously this is all a generalization, and all of it goes out the window the minute someone shoots at you, but it's going to be interesting to watch what tactics have to be used to get an unwilling generation in the metaphorical front lines.
I guess I'm part of that generation you're talking about, and it it really feels like only one of the things you listed matters:
> Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle at me?
It's irrespective of the western order being evil or anything to do with climate change. Sure, there's a sense that the elites are the only beneficiaries of war, but even before that you'd have to explain why it's okay to shoot someone for someone else's _benefit_, even if it's our own. The very idea is absurd.
I think most millennial sorts are on board with the idea of a "war to stop atrocity", but that's about it. Why would you hurt someone to get what you want? How medieval.
This is somewhat shortsighted. You can replace 'country' by 'place where you live' and then you can decide what you're going to do about it, let it all happen, don't care while your family and children are being murdered because it doesn't really matter to you but that's not how it works in practice. In practice people will defend the place that they live in from external aggression.
Wherever your family lives, scattered or concentrated, when the place you live gets invaded a lot of the people around you die. You might be willing to flee all the time with no particular attachment to any place. This is uncommon but not impossible. Anyway war or submission will get you sooner or later.
Which is my point: if you don't care about "your" country, the theories don't go out the window. You might stay consistent and move instead of deciding that killing the invaders is what you do now.
My point is that at the end you won't have any place left to go, especially if a large part of the population behaves like you. No resistance whatsoever will make life much easier for invaders, so there will be more of them all around the world. The solution is not to flee, it's to eradicate the idea of prevailing using force or indoctrination.
That's all true regardless if your world is composed of houses, villages, countries, continents, or whatever else. What matters here is aggression, not aggression to countries, and focusing on countries only blurs the message.
That's why I pointed out that the position as stated is relevant only to the nationalist ideology.
I think in this case it's more than that... Russia (or at least Putin) is trying to impose a certain worldview that's very regressive: pro-oil, heavy censorship, against several human rights (including LGBT), autocratic regime. I think there's a lot of merit to resisting this regime, resisting being taken by force and turned into the opposite of what they want (which was to join more progressive European countries, from what I gather).
It's all connected... if you let oil-hungry autocrats rule the world, climate change is completely out of the window. Also human rights and ideals we should all stand for.
I do want peace as soon as possible. I believe a compromise might be necessary. I think Putin's worldview has been shown critically dated, so hopefully Russians can rise against this sort of government eventually. It's very difficult to rise up when your life is threatened by the regime though, but reason and truth tend to find their way through the cracks.
---
I am specially moved because of the parallels to Nazi invasions. Doing nothing proved a grave mistake, not standing up for human rights, giving fascists the benefit of the doubt cost so many lives. I've said "never again" too. It's easy to fact-check the fascist lies in this case.
I suggest any new generations read Anne Frank's diary if you can.
---
Also: don't believe narratives of doom. There's no doom incoming immediately, not from nuclear war (it's been shown it would doom civilization at least), not from climate change (we're in a pathway for significant damage, but it will be decades until it reaches its consequences, and it`s certainly no doom[1]). Doom narratives and hopelessness can create inaction, which is not what we want. Hope is the most powerful weapon for change.
Also, I don't want to come off as a cultural absolutist, I think other countries can have different cultures than standard western; but conquering and imposing culture with violence does not respect basic humanity. Also, we should be able to defend and evolve every culture with peaceful discussion, communication and schooling instead of bombs; and even incorporate other cultures as we see fit (this is a big theme here in Brazil related to our modern art week :) ).
Ideally, yes. But democratic countries have a fatal flaw that we don't really have a good solution for, democracy can vote itself out of existence to be replaced with fascism and the only way to reset it that we know about is through war. This is a real problem.
This attitude dissolves when the opposing army comes to your city. It's kill or be killed, and there are many people who do not share your pacifism. How detached from reality must you be to write this comment and the ones following? Frankly I'm surprised such genes have survived in the pool this long; your beliefs are dysgenic and suicidal. When the enemy comes, or they 'just' seize your farms, you fight or you die.
Not wanting to kill 'the enemy', even when under fire, is not a millenial invention. It's basic human nature. See "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" for more.
I feel like your post has a hint of disapproval in it--or maybe I'm just inserting that--but I find it describes my feelings (US born 1988) perfectly accurately, yes.
So you have no problem with Russia ultimately "winning" in Ukraine and then mass executing Ukrainians (like they did in Buscha and probably other towns) who don't want to be turned into Russian slaves and have their culture destroyed? You think NATO should roll over and let this happen when we can probably stop it by sending Ukraine weapons to fight back? Just don't care because it's "over there? I am just trying to understand this mindset. (Straddling millenial and gen-x age here)
There are few parts to this, but a lot of it comes down to non-interventionism and skepticism of the information provided. I can give a few thoughts that I hold to some degree.
I don't have a personal problem with Russia "winning". How could it possibly be "my" problem. It isn't impacting me and it not my responsibility.
I think that my country has a long history of intervention abroad, and it is nearly always shown to be negative and self interested in hindsight.
In past interventions, most of the information presented to the public is lies and propaganda, so I have essentially no faith any any of the reporting on the current war.
I think the US involvement in this war has resulted in escalated death and destruction, and prevented peaceful resolution.
If it were up to me (as a non-interventionist), the US would have agreed to keep NATO out of Ukraine, and thereby avoided the deaths that occurred. If it were up to me, I would have also offered this in negotiation for Russia pulling out of Ukraine after the war started.
I get war (kind of… never fought one). But I don’t get why this war is my war. It’s a conflict between Russia and Ukraine. We have no sworn defense pact with Ukraine, except that if nuclear aggression arises from some other power, we defend them from such.
Why do I care what the Russians and Ukrainians do? Now if the American world hegemony or whatever wishes to continue to exert control over Ukraine, fine. But, I have no stakeholdership in that, and it increasingly seems that I and people like me are quite disliked by said hegemony. If they want us to support their empire, maybe they ought to cut us in on a bit more of its spoils, and give us a bit more say in its aims.
You are correct in some immediate sense but this war is a bit different because it is actually revealing what using nukes or threatening to use nukes means in the context of war of conquest/genocide in 21st century. If the US completely abandoned Ukraine day one, then Russia would attack a NATO country next cause they would feel the nuclear threat is too much for the US to handle.
"If I may, my impression is also that the younger generations don't "get" war. Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle at me?"
What does that mean? It seems like a contradiction in terms. How could you have someone who rejects modernist ideology but promotes a modernist ideology?
It's a common cliché from rightwing circles (initially I think the combination of the two was produced by Jordan Peterson). Not to be too mean, but you'll see a lot of the Ben Shapiro fan crowd snagging on to it because it sounds smart despite being mostly meaningless. It's a placeholder for terms like 'degeneracy' and 'cultural bolshevism' and other such social forces that might undermine the status quo.
It is. The ideology that's referring to which is popular amongst politically active young people is frankly a mess. In particular there's a gaping hole in their post-modernism where they just completely fail to apply any of its tools to their own ideological beliefs or power structures, instead using it to prop up their vaguely Marxist and not so vaguely anti-Western ideology.
Anyone who ever actually read Foucault would instantly realize he wasn't a Marxist because he thought it failed to sufficiently describe why the way we produce truth and knowledge shift historically, which more often than not tends to only be explainable as 'progress' after the fact.
> Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so they don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them.With the elderly it’s the opposite.
That's a funny use of the word skeptical. I think you mean outright ignorant.
> You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.
This one really annoys me. Yes, people care more about people who look like them, and certainly those who are closer and where war is less common. Same reason predominantly Muslim diasporas in the west care about Palestine a lot
This particular refrain is one that's worth examining from the lens you're dismissing. Under what frame is "war less common" in Europe (or even "East Europe")? An extremely narrow one at best, IMO. A large proportion of pro-Ukrainian propaganda also outright contradicts this notion by referencing historical acts of Russian aggression.
There's a big difference between acts of aggression and war. With the exception of a Ukraine in 2014 and a week or two in 2008 in Georgia, most Europeans have to go back to the 90s for any conventional war. True, in Eastern Europe and the balkans things have been less peaceful but even so they've been living in times of almost no war.
I do concede that this is the least relevant point though, the similarity one is much more significant.
> Same reason predominantly Muslim diasporas in the west care about Palestine a lot
I don't think that's true. It's true the Muslims I know care about Palestine. But, for example, nobody cares about Uyghurs, who are Muslim. I don't know any Bangladeshis that care about the Rohingya, even though they're at least closely related to Bangladeshis (and "look" the same and speak a closely related language). My impression, being part of this "diaspora," is that the common support for Palestine is more about shared animosity against Israel. This animosity is partly just anti-Jewish, but also partly anti-Anglo-meddling, insofar as Britain was instrumental in enabling Jewish repatriation of Israel, and the United States continues to support Israel.
Absolutely false. We Muslims care about our brothers and sisters wherever they are, and regardless of their ethnicity or race. There are tons of material and videos online about prayers and donations and campaigns made in support of them. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941duulDzOs
Maybe it's different there, but in the UK which has a significant Muslim population, concern for Palestine, Yemen and Syria (and even the Uyghurs to a lesser extent) is common. The Rohingyas also had support in the UK, which again has a lot of Bangladeshis.
I don't think this is a modern phenomenon. Certainly it was the younger generation that was against the war in Vietnam. It would be interesting to see polls from the Korean War and World War I. My guess is that we'd see a similar split between young and older generations.
> You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist”
It’s interesting that I’ve noticed many posts of “Ukrainian refugees were accepted, Syrian refugees weren’t; therefore, racism” since the outbreak. I wish Instagram, Facebook, Twitter would release more research on ad spend by company and not activity.
It’s pretty cheap to buy these kind of ads and market toward people who signal boost such causes. So I’m assuming that Russia is doing that.
Perhaps. The reason I hav the suspicion is because it seems like Russia benefits the most in this situation from have a narrative against Ukrainian refugees and conflating Ukraine’s issues with Syria’s issues.
Logically, there are so many differences between the two populations it wouldn’t make sense to actually make a racism claim (eg, Syrians were high percentage young male vs Ukrainian families; Syria over multiple years vs Ukrainians in weeks; 8M Syrians vs 1M Ukrainians; Syrians travel across multiple countries far away vs Ukrainians in neighboring countries; we’re only weeks in for Ukraine vs years for Syria; etc etc).
The two situations are very different so comparing the two and then saying that the reason is racism seems pretty silly. So I think “what’s more likely, silliness or Russian bots?”
I wasn't really trying to disagree with you on this. I've seen a sentiment from some "anti-imperialist" voices that end up being primarily anti-western voices, that assume that _only_ the US and the West behave with imperialist policy.
Anyway, I wasn't trying to disagree with you or anything. Just adding my own clarification around the context from some of the other discussions I've had on this topic. See, for example, macanchex's reply to my topic, which places all of the blame for this war on Western powers.
In India, even very right wing people are ambivalent or only somewhat supportive of Putin, whereas the supposedly "anti imperialist" Communists seem to have fallen in love with him. They go to great lengths to localize and translate Russian propaganda.
This might be a case of the enemy of my enemy (capitalist USA) are my friends. Actually they are only the enemy of their enemy and also capitalists, but the hopes of a lifetime can be self delusional.
The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we knew about but refused to see:
on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);
on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;
and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.
> on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);
This is an Orwellian distortion of language.
Expansion can be interpreted in a literal sense or a metaphorical one. Organizations expand in a metaphorical sense. When we say that a company "expands" by by entering a new market or hiring new talent, we know that this is metaphorical.
NATO is a defensive pact with voluntary membership, but by calling it "expansionist," Russia plays a trick where it evokes the literal sense of expand to transform NATO into the aggressor. It seems fairly plain to me that the real expansionists would be the ones who have literally, physically expanded into a neighboring country by annexing Crimea. The expansionists would be the ones who are currently occupying territory in three foreign nations against the will of those nations' governments.
> and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.
By third party estimates, the civillian casualties in the Russian invasion are about two to three orders of magnitude higher than the civilian casualties in Donbass prior to the invasion. This is like slaughtering an entire village because it contains a single murderer. There is absolutely zero ambiguity about where the moral high ground is here.
>By third party estimates, the civillian casualties in the Russian invasion are about two to three orders of magnitude higher than the civilian casualties in Donbass prior to the invasion. This is like slaughtering an entire village because it contains a single murderer. There is absolutely zero ambiguity about where the moral high ground is here.
This does not even include the fact that any civilian casualties in Donbass were either incidents when counterfiring to russian and separatist shelling, or russian provocations.
We can even see this right now in the war: Russia just randomly shells apartment blocks with Grads, while UA only targets real military targets on Russian soil, like Belgorod fuel depots or Taganrog airfield. Russian propaganda doesn't even try to claim that, at least yet.
> the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here)
A voluntary alliance isn't an imperialist agenda (assuming that the sovereign nations have the opportunity to make a truly voluntary decision, without outside coercion).
In fact, many nations have requested voluntarily to join NATO. Ukraine was one such nation, and wasn't allowed in.
Arguing that Russia should get a veto over which defensive alliances other nations join is a pro-imperialist position. You're taking the view that Russia gets to determine the behavior of other nations, because they are "in its security umbrella". I'm sorry, but that position is inherently untenable for an "anti-imperialist".
It's a coherent position for Russian Nationalists, or for believers in Super Power Imperialism.
Wasn't expecting the author to start with their time at Nato. It certainly doesn't match the western narrative, but seems far closer to the Russian narrative (explained cohesively).
He seems to be claiming there wasn't weapons transfer to Donbass, etc when they were initially acting as break away republics. How does he explain MH17? I spent too much time looking at this.
> on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;
and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.
To think that Ukraine was shelling Donbass and "provoking" after what we seen in the last 50 days is truly a mental distortion.
This is, of course, the Russian take on the war. The Ukrainian version is significantly different. (And given the whole genocide thing, I know which I lean towards. I mean really, NATO, the West, and the Ukrainian government is responsible for Russian war crimes? https://www.reuters.com/resizer/i8u1Zr3pjvon_ZDTHHfs5b6IwlE=...)
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations.
Truly horrendous link. Your appeal to authority is nonsense, it doesn't take long to find someone with even more commas to dispute it.
> Anyone who is still pushing more weapons into Ukraine or tells Kiev to prolong the war is putting more Ukrainian lives at risk for zero potential gain.
Surely life under Russia will be blissful with no Ukrainians harmed.
It's 2022. Fire up TikTok, start liking videos, and choose whatever narrative you want. Everything you don't like is crisis acting and media bias? Sure! Digital reality is becoming schizophrenic.
In some left-wing circles anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism are indistinguishable. People like Max Blumenthal are the perfect representatives of this ideology.
I don't know anything about max blumenthal so sure.
But if you are american, those things pretty much should be the same. Anti-imperialism is not an abstract struggle, and for many around the world the US and its allies are a concrete enemy they've come by honestly.
If you live in the US, solidarity with those people means using whatever power you have internally to oppose the US's imperial actions.
The US is not the only imperialist force by any means. But particularly from inside one of these machines, it is hard to understand and act against other forms of imperialism without also assisting your own country's imperial projects.
Countries are adept at turning their own subversive and radical movements outward against their political enemies. An awareness of the mechanics of imperialism does I think lead to a "clean up your own house first" praxis and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
The US is currently helping Ukraine fight an invasion by a larger country whose soldiers have murdered and raped their way through its civilians. In this particular case, being anti-American is the exact opposite of being anti-imperialist. Either Ukraine gets weapons, or it doesn't.
Thankfully in this wonderful world you can both abhor and fight American imperialism and global stupidity AND also support America arming Ukraine to the teeth to fight off another imperial aggressor.
They are not opposing takes. Someone trying to tell you they are is trying to sell you a fiction that just so happens to benefit Russia
What you say here makes sense but it is not at all what is being practiced by some of the "anti-imperialist" left. Max Blumenthal's definition of anti-imperialism begins and ends with America. In his worldview opposing the US and its interests uncritically is the duty of every leftist. If the US supports Ukraine you must oppose it. If the US accuses China of genocide you must support China. If fascists oppose the US government you must side with them too. You must support any and every so-called enemy of the US regardless of what they do or who they are (after all it's all lies from the mainstream media). I am not saying every political commentator should be obligated to report on the abuses of every global power lest they be called "hypocritical", but some leftists will actively defend atrocities as long as they are done in opposition to the US.
Yeah I see what you're saying. Again without conceding that I share this view of this person, since I haven't read his works.
But while I don't think that position is correct, I do think it's probably valuable to have some people take that stance. It's similar to the social value in having non-political conservatism that will resist all change no matter what. We'll change anyway, but having to fight for it a little will slow down the changes, hopefully dodge some of the worst consequences, maybe prevent some changes that shouldn't actually happen.
The US should be opposed. Not because we are inherently bad, but because our interests aren't everyone's interests. An always-support, always-oppose, or case-by-case stance will each have different failure modes. I think we want a mix, as unpalatable as that can be sometimes.
If that's interpreted as can do no wrong, than always support and always oppose are just putting on blinders. I can see it as a media persona, but the intellectual dishonesty required to actually believe that is scary.
Apologists / accidents happen I can understand, but I wouldn't trust any individual pretending that they can do no wrong.
It's because kids are effed by the media. They have been fed a whole bunch of lies and propaganda one way or another in order to get them to support or denounce some cause or other so they don't know what to believe. So they throw their hands up and give up and "let them sort it out"
The media and establishment want it both ways. in the '80s imperialism was BAD. Now, rebranded as globalism, this imperialism is good, but that one over there by them is BAD! and so on it goes.
Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center with the exception of Libertarians.
> so they don't know what to believe. So they throw their hands up and give up and "let them sort it out"
This is a result of a common propaganda attack by a party that wants to cover up the truth: seed multiple competing story lines through varying outlets to create a sense of confusion. That way, when the truth is reported, people will react to it like it's just 1 more among the many competing stories.
Russia in particular has been running this play both domestically and abroad. It's a formidable approach, and defense against it is difficult.
In some cases the above is true. But we have many examples of not just the same organ but the same author saying one things one day, and making a 180 the next time it's convenient. Why censoring blah blah is good! Why censoring blah blah is bad! Why sympathizing with blah blah is racist, Why sympathizing with blah blah is actually anti-racist.
You get enough of this and people tune out and don't give a lick any more.
> Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center with the exception of Libertarians.
This is only true if your conception of 'the left' is just American liberals. Plenty of people and groups on the left were against the invasions from the get-go.
Sure and we also had a handful of people on the right who were against it too. I'm talking about groups that matter --those that make up more than 5% of a pop.
Main point stands though. the media want to have it multiple ways, like John Kerry, one day it's for something, then, the next, it's against the same thing, and a third day it's back on.
Ok, for groups that matter, a majority (61%) of US House Democrats formally opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2002. Even a majority of US Congress Democrats.
> Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center with the exception of Libertarians.
The Left (including most of the center-left Democratic faction in Congress) was against the Iraq War, the more dominant Democratic center-right faction was for it (or, at least, against not giving the President the authority to wage it conditionally, which some of them will distinguish by suggesting that the required determinations made by the President under that authority were in bad faith, but that was pretty predictable...)
">Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”)
An irony, considering that Russian imperialism is the one that actually performs land grabs and ethnic cleansing without even trying to cover it up."
you should learn about this thing called the 2003 invasion of Iraq, then the Vietnam war, etc.
At least Russia actually declares war when it places another country within its empire's sights. The USA just acts like it owns the entire american continent and the means to its imperialistic ends range from cultural exportation and massive economic leverage to literally teaching dictators how torture and repress dissidents. Look up School of the Americas for an example.
And the attempted assassinations of dissidents/defectors with nerve agents only available to one country seems a rather unambiguous way to declare it was a state-sanctioned hit, yet it was denied up and down.
As is this invasion portrayed as a 'special military operation', what distinction that actually is from an invasion is up to the rules lawyers, apparently.
> Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations.
I don't think it's accurate to say they're "broadly anti-American" because they're "more diverse." The increased diversity in the younger generation is due to Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their kids.[1] First and second generation immigrants are equally or more patriotic than native born Americans, and are significantly less likely to say they are “ashamed” of any aspect of America: https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-research-polic....
All else being equal, immigration-driven population change is driving down "anti-American" sentiment. Indeed, the only political group where a majority say they’re “ashamed to be American,” progressives, is also amongst the whitest: https://hiddentribes.us/profiles.
I think what you see amongst immigrants is a less ideological view of foreign policy. They have often seen first hand that American has done a lot of harmful things abroad. At the same time, they compartmentalize that because they don't view foreign policy in terms of "good and evil." They may also feel less ownership of America's role and status as world "lawgiver."
I also think immigrants are more cynical than Americans. I'd describe my dad and myself as "pro America," but neither of us care about Ukraine. (And frankly I see no connection between being pro-American and supporting Ukraine.) As immigrants from Bangladesh we don't have idealistic notions about sovereignty and human rights. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” (It drives my Daughter of the American Revolution wife nuts when we say "some countries' fate is to be a buffer state.")
And of course "immigrants" are not homogenous but rather from a wide range of different countries that have various idiosyncratic positions on foreign policy. Some of the most rabidly patriotic people I know are kids of Vietnamese immigrants. Meanwhile in India and Bangladesh, there is a historical affinity with Russia from the Soviet times.
[1] The Black population share was 11% in 1960 and 12% in 2010, and is projected to rise to 13% in 2050. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2012/11/117.jpg. The white population share will decrease from 85% to 47%, with almost all of the delta due to Hispanics, and to a lesser extent Asians.
FOX News and CNN have been in complete lockstep from day one, with the exception of Tucker Carlson. Sean Hannity & Anderson Cooper are ideological twins at this point. The last time CNN and FOX News have been this much in agreement, it was when we decided that an invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do in order to get rid of WMD.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/LSULYN3DV5JMHPGUUYJOEHOCHU.jpg){kind=link}
Further, most of the elderly lived at a time when the USSR was the clear and obvious enemy of “freedom”, so it’s not hard to fathom Russia being back into its usual shenanigans.
Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations.
Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.
Gen Z has thus mostly understood this conflict through the propaganda wars that play out in social media and thus have conflicting and/or “both-sides” takes.