Yes, but maybe we’re misunderstanding something else. The Russians are moving civilians from there, not placing more there.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
Unfortunately it's not only the Russians who are following this old and ugly Eastern European script:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signed two laws that strictly reinforce his country’s national identity, banning Russian place names and making knowledge of Ukrainian language and history a requirement for citizenship.
Zelensky Signs Ban on Russian Place Names in Struggle Over National Identity
The action late Friday was the latest in a series of steps by Ukraine to distance itself from a long legacy of Russian domination.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Except in this case it's their country. So what is wrong with requiring things to be named in their language and not in the language of the people who are invading and killing them?Unfortunately it's not only the Russians who are following this old and ugly Eastern European script:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signed two laws that strictly reinforce his country’s national identity, banning Russian place names and making knowledge of Ukrainian language and history a requirement for citizenship.
Zelensky Signs Ban on Russian Place Names in Struggle Over National Identity
The action late Friday was the latest in a series of steps by Ukraine to distance itself from a long legacy of Russian domination.www.nytimes.com
These places always had Russian names and the people who live there are of Russian ethnicity and speak Russian. What we are seeing here is an attempt at scrubbing history and ethnic cleansing.
There are also other ethnic groups like Hungarians living in Ukraine, and Ukraine was previously criticised for a lack of respect for minority rights.
Again what about "So what is wrong with requiring things to be named in their language and not in the language of the people who are invading and killing them?" don't you comprehend? Ukraine is not erasing Moscow and St Petersburg. If Ukraine loses this war they will be erased as a people by the Russian overlords. That's ethnic cleansing something Russia has done a lot in their past. If Russia loses they will still have their own country. There is no comparison.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
China's ambassador in France made some pretty ridiculous remarks recently when asked if Crimea belonged to Ukraine:
"Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there’s no international accord to concretise their status as a sovereign country."
Lithuania's foreign minister made a point that pretty much most people were probably thinking of in response:
"If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic states don’t trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine’, here’s a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries’ borders have no legal basis"
Baltic states condemn China envoy’s remarks over sovereignty of ex-Soviet nations
So far no response yet from China if this represents their official position or if they would retract it. Digging back to China's official statements (which remained the same from the start of the war to now), even though China repeats some variation of "The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld," they never say directly Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity (people seemed to have indirectly assumed that is what they meant). In context with the above statement, they could easily also mean Russia's sovereignty and territorial integrity (under the idea that legally the ex-Soviet Union countries never established true sovereignty).
China says it respects Ukraine's sovereignty and Russia's security concerns
Does make a farce of Macron suggesting China playing an actual constructive role in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
"Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there’s no international accord to concretise their status as a sovereign country."
Lithuania's foreign minister made a point that pretty much most people were probably thinking of in response:
"If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic states don’t trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine’, here’s a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries’ borders have no legal basis"
Baltic states condemn China envoy’s remarks over sovereignty of ex-Soviet nations
So far no response yet from China if this represents their official position or if they would retract it. Digging back to China's official statements (which remained the same from the start of the war to now), even though China repeats some variation of "The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld," they never say directly Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity (people seemed to have indirectly assumed that is what they meant). In context with the above statement, they could easily also mean Russia's sovereignty and territorial integrity (under the idea that legally the ex-Soviet Union countries never established true sovereignty).
China says it respects Ukraine's sovereignty and Russia's security concerns
Does make a farce of Macron suggesting China playing an actual constructive role in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
Last edited:
It appears most of what the Ukrainians are doing are occupying both sides of the Dnipro delta. This denies Russian boats and ships access to the Dnipro from the Black Sea.
This isn't a major game changer, but it helps the Ukrainians in a few ways. It gives them more clear control of the Dnipro. The Russians can launch small boats that can be brought overland, but anything larger (and potentially better armed) is shut out.
The western allies are limited in what boats they can send to Ukraine by the size of the locks on the Denube River which are 190 meters (625 feet) long. They will fit most ships up to the size of the destroyer. With control of the Dnipro, the west could move more troop vessels down the Danube and into the Dnipro. That will give the Ukrainians more lift capability.
Ukraine is not going to be able to do a full scale crossing of the Dnipro any time soon. But with the treat that the Ukrainians will take advantage of any Russian weaknesses, it forces the Russians to keep a force on the left bank of the Dnipro. If the Russians pull back from the Dnipro, then that will allow Ukraine to build a pontoon bridge and cross in force.
Russia's hands are tied. The best defensive position they have is holding one bank of the Dnipro, but Ukraine has proven they will exploit any weaknesses in that defense. That forces Russia to man the defenses there with enough force to hold the Ukrainians. The Russians will stay there until their rear has eroded from a Ukrainian offensive further east and they have to pull out to prevent getting encircled.
Ukraine now has about 5-6 times the number of people in uniform than the Russians in Ukraine. Russia may have as many as 200K troops, the Ukrainians have 1.2 million. The best of the Ukrainian forces are getting western equipment and training. There are quite a few units with old Soviet equipment with a bit of western kit thrown in and lower quality training. But these troops are perfectly adequate for holding territory freeing up the better trained troops for the offensive.
The Russians can't know for sure if the troops on the opposite bank of the Dnipro are mostly territorial guards, or second tier offensive troops waiting for an opportunity to cross the Dnipro. The Ukrainians can afford to place a large enough force there to pose a real threat.
The Ukrainians have also learned from NATO that when things looks fairly safe, train. The second tier troops on the west bank of the Dnipro are getting better every day because the Ukrainians have a corps of NCOs who will drill the troops and ensure they are ready when needed. There may not be enough good NATO equipment to give these units, but they can train to be as good as possible with what they have.
The Russians don't have an NCO corps. Junior officers fill that role in the Russian army, but the losses among junior officers has been very high. Intercepted calls from Russians indicate that many units have no junior officers at all.
Both sides have large differences between their best units and their worst units. Russia still has some good units, but it looks like they threw them into the fight for Bakhmut. The Russians initially gained ground as these better units had more weight to throw with better weapons, but things look like they have stalled out again as those units have been blunted by weeks for fighting and losses in both equipment and men.
Russia's forces are bifurcated with a few decent units with good equipment, and a lot of untrained mobiks who are poorly equipped with whatever was rusting in the back of the warehouse.
Ukraine has a number of Territorial Defense Units with poor training and scraped together equipment, they also have a fair number of units that have been trained in country and are equipped somewhat better, but most of their gear is old Soviet stuff. Then there are the elite units trained in the west and almost all their equipment is NATO gear. The elite units are all volunteer and are close to equal quality with western European armies.
Ukraine has 18 brigades of these elite units. A brigade is about 4000 troops, so that's 72,000 on the pointy end of the spear. They have another 106 brigades of the middling quality forces, but still offensive capable. That's another 424K troops. That gives Ukraine half a million offensive capable troops. The rest of the army are the TDF people and support people who are not really capable of offensive action. But the fact they are there prevents Russia from throwing off the Ukrainian offensive by doing something like recon in force near Kharkhiv or something like that. The TDF forces will be adequate to hold the Russians at bay if they try anything.
Russia has about 200K troops to try and hold back 1/2 million attack troops. Most of those 200K have poor training and poor equipment. Russia has to spread out that force everywhere. Any place on the line that Russia doesn't defend will see 100K Ukrainian forces pour through the gaps in short order once the offensive starts.
Because the Russians need to be spread out defending a large front line and the Ukrainians will concentrate their forces on one or a few points for the offensive, the Ukrainians will locally have at least a 10:1 local advantage when the offensive begins. That is usually good enough to defeat all but the most complex defensive lines. Defenses like Sevastapol in 1942 took large caliber railway guns to reduce the fortifications. The Russians have nothing close to that today.
In the offensive, the key is going to come down to Ukrainian supply. The offensive in Kharkhiv ran out last fall because they exhausted their supply. Ukraine is trying to ensure that doesn't happen again. But a lot depends on how much the west has been giving Ukraine. If Ukraine has enough supply to keep the vehicles rolling after punching through the front line defenses, Russia will have a hard time stopping them. Russia hasn't done any favors throwing their reserves into Bakhmut. Those forces will be badly missed when the offensive comes, they would have been the units that would try and stop the Ukrainian exploitation after breaching the line. If they can't stop the Ukrainians, nothing will stop them until they get to the shore of the Azoz and Crimea.
Unfortunately it's not only the Russians who are following this old and ugly Eastern European script:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signed two laws that strictly reinforce his country’s national identity, banning Russian place names and making knowledge of Ukrainian language and history a requirement for citizenship.
Zelensky Signs Ban on Russian Place Names in Struggle Over National Identity
The action late Friday was the latest in a series of steps by Ukraine to distance itself from a long legacy of Russian domination.
Is the United States an eastern European country now? To become a US citizen you need to have enough proficiency in English to pass a civics and history test. And the US has no official national language, unlike a lot of other countries. Germany has similar requirements to become a citizen.
The naming requirement is a counter to the Russian practice of renaming Ukrainian places they have occupied with Russian names. It is simply a law preserving the status quo from before the war.
By the Russians who were making excuses to invade.
Zelensky's first language is Russian and he spoke Russian most of the time before the war. He switched to Ukrainian early in the war as an act of patriotism. People who understand Ukrainian have said that his Ukrainian early in the war was pretty bad.
I saw this story. It was just the ambassador so it's possible he was speaking out of line, or it could be an attempt by Beijing to try a new line of narrative. One of the scenarios that a lot of people are talking about now is Russian civil war with a balkanized Russia. China had territory taken in their north in the 1860s. The Chinese may be looking to assert their claims to that territory again.
Taiwan is their primary territorial goal, but getting back their northern territories may be something they have just recently started contemplating as possible. If they can sell the narrative that "we once owned it so we can take it back", then they can assert their claim on this territory if Russia breaks up.
BitJam
Active Member
Zelensky is requiring that history be taught. Putin is forbidding it. See the difference? [ninja'ed by @wdolson]Unfortunately it's not only the Russians who are following this old and ugly Eastern European script:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signed two laws that strictly reinforce his country’s national identity, banning Russian place names and making knowledge of Ukrainian language and history a requirement for citizenship.
Zelensky Signs Ban on Russian Place Names in Struggle Over National Identity
The action late Friday was the latest in a series of steps by Ukraine to distance itself from a long legacy of Russian domination.
In addition, Putin has used the Russian place names and use of the Russian language as excuses for illegally invading Ukraine. [ninja'ed again] Next you will complain about Ukrainians killing invading Russians on Ukrainian soil using that as proof that Ukraine is just as bad as Russia.
If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Ukraine is fighting for survival. They are not fighting to exterminate Russia. I again recommend this lecture on Russian genocide in Ukraine by Timothy Snyder:
Or check out Russia's handy dandy guide for committing genocide:
Russia’s Genocide Handbook
The evidence of atrocity and of intent mounts By Tim Snyder (published on April 8) Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine. The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as...
human-rights.cmc.edu
The classic authoritarian trope of blaming the victims will not work here.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
.... by 'always' do you mean since the ~1930s? Odd how parts of Ukraine suddenly become populated by a higher percentage of ethnic Russians. Almost like something terrible happened.....
Basic Facts About The Holodomor
hacer
Active Member
And by "always" you mean since the Holodomor in 1933.
Do you see any prospect of Ukraine breaking through somewhere else and pressuring the supply lines to Bakhmut?
I don't mean stopping all supply to Russian troops in Bakhmut, just reducing and slowing supply enough to further stall the Russian offensive.
Another way to do that is create an urgent need for supplies and manpower elsewhere, so Russia needs to divert resources from Bakhmut.
if the Ukrainian offensive can take some pressure of the troops defending Bakhmut, I am sure they well welcome that, and the Russians may start to realise they have little to gain by attempting offensives.
BitJam
Active Member
Denys Davydov reports that Prigozhin has complained about Ukraine mining a bunch of buildings in Bakhmut and thereby blowing up a lot of Russian troops. I wouldn't be surprised if Russia eventually captures all of Bakhmut. What's left of it. They already control about 80%. But at a ridiculously high cost.
Zelensky said this war started in Crimea and will end in Crimea. Strategically Bakhmut doesn't matter. Cutting the land bridge to Crimea does. Ukraine only fights in Bakhmut to chew up Russian resources. It's not a strategically important location like, say, Stalingrad was. If Ukraine can cut the land bridge then they will win; Putin will lose face and maybe much more. Unfortunately, if Putin gets replaced it could be by someone even worse. But cutting the land bridge should be a signal to whoever's in charge that it's time to cut their losses and go home.
IMO that's the most likely scenario for Ukraine to get Bakhmut back.
The war isn't really about Bakhmut. The offensive will come somewhere other than Bakhmut. There are two likely candidates, one is somewhere between the Dnipro and the Donbas along that southern front. The other in in northern Luhansk.
The terrain of the Donbas is easy to defend and difficult to attack east to west. The terrain is like a rumpled carpet with a series of valleys running N/S. Losing one ridge just means dropping back to the next ridge and bombarding the other guy as he tries to climb the next hill.
The same feature makes it much easier to attack from the north along the grain of the valleys. It's very difficult to defend in that terrain. The Russians have one place where the terrain works in their favor around Svatove, but if the Ukrainians get past there, there will be little stopping them from running all the way to the Azoz.
If the Ukrainians breakthrough in the north of Luhansk, the battle for Bakhmut will be over because the remaining Russian units there will need to pull out to prevent getting trapped in a salient between the Ukrainians coming down from the north behind them and the Ukrainians in front of them. If they are lucky they may be able to pivot and present enough of a force to slow down the Ukrainians long enough to allow other units to escape to Russia, but what most likely will happen is they will join a headlong flight back to Russia with other units in the region.
Luhansk and Donesk could fall as quickly as Kharkhiv oblast last September.
The Ukrainians might do a one-two punch if they have the supply for it and attack in one place first, then the second place when the Russians are off balance.
The Ukrainians have run a shoestring operation in Bakhmut because they are saving their resources both equipment and people for the counter offensive. Bakhmut is not that important to anyone strategically. Russia made it the ant hill to die on and the Ukrainians have obliged them, especially on the dying part.
In war the first act of propaganda is to deny any wrongdoing of the side that you are supporting, while the opposing side gets demonised (not that that's too difficult as regards the Russians).Don't allow for any nuance. That's why the British government refused to blame Stalin for the massacre of Katyn, despite better knowledge.
Then history get's distorted and simplified to avoid even the shade of an impression that matters might not be quite as clear under a historical perspective.
That's what is at full play here.
The protection of national minorities is an obligation under International Law, it's not a "nice to have". It's also not acceptable to make the ethnic Russians who are living there responsible for Russia's invasion, as if they had had any influence on Putin's decisions.
Then history get's distorted and simplified to avoid even the shade of an impression that matters might not be quite as clear under a historical perspective.
That's what is at full play here.
The protection of national minorities is an obligation under International Law, it's not a "nice to have". It's also not acceptable to make the ethnic Russians who are living there responsible for Russia's invasion, as if they had had any influence on Putin's decisions.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
110% agree. We need to provide Ukraine with the resources they are requesting to protect Ukrainians (including ethnic Russians) from the Russians that are trying to kill them.
What is the solution here?
Ukraine is a democracy and ethnic Russians have a vote.. They should be accorded the same rights as ethnic minorities living in any country.
The best approach is to protect human rights for all people living in Ukraine.
If ethnic Russians decide they want to fight for Russia against Ukraine, then at a minimum if captured they can be treated like POWs according to the proper conventions.
After the war, there needs to be some settlement of all issues. Any citizen that actively fights in an army is responsible for any crimes they committed in the act of war. Beyond that, they are free to choose whether they which to stay in the country after the war, or leave.
There are many ethnic minorities living in countries where they are a minority of voters, and need to accept rule by a government elected by the majority. if they don't like that, they should always be free to leave.
Every country experiences racism to one degree or another. People being people, there are always people who discriminate against some other group.
There were reports early in the war that non-white Ukrainians were having difficulty leaving the country. There have been some other reports of discrimination too.
This paper on minority rights in Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution paints a picture of a process that has not been completely smooth.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...022-0001/pdf&usg=AOvVaw35iHbY7lAYps079_7VGz-p
The second section, second paragraph has this:
"The level of social alienation (index of xenophobia), was comparatively low between
Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians, Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians."
The claims the Russians made that native Russian speakers were being discriminated against in Ukraine are mostly false.
Ukraine is an emerging democracy. It is not a well established democracy like we see in western Europe, North America, and a number of other places around the world. Ukraine only took its first steps out of the Russian shadow in 2014. Ukraine inherited a lot of the corruption from Russia when they broke away and it's been a yoke around their neck for thirty years.
This war has set off a revolution in consciousness in Ukraine. The country has been waffling back and forth trying to sort out just who they were. The country is also stitched together from a bunch of different pieces.
Kyiv was the core of the Slavic world for centuries until the Mongols destroyed the city. It has retained some of that identity even as the Russians tried hard to erase it.
The Donbas was once an outlaw region where people who were outcasts from the entire region congregated. It later became a major mining region with the help of miners from the UK.
Crimea was its own place for quite a while until it was conquered by Russia and the Crimean Tatars have had it bad ever since. The Ukrainians haven't treated them very well either.
Western Ukraine was a part of the Lithuanian-Polish Empire and has identity stemming from that.
Ukraine is a patchwork of different identities and the question of who they really were once they were out of the Soviet Empire was a question that was not quite answered until the war. The war has de-Russified the country more thoroughly than anything. Many native Russian speakers who spoke Russian all the time have switched to Ukrainian, including President Zelensky. All things Russian have now become negative culturally and all things European have become positives.
Among those Russian things that are on the way out is corruption. Corruption isn't gone, but the current government has been aggressively going after it and rooting it out. Since the war began there have been many arrests for corruption
Ukraine's parallel war on corruption to unlock door to West
30% of Ukraine's population speak Russian as their first language and 68% Ukrainian. 30% is a large minority but it appears that most of those people are behind the new Ukrainian identity too. In a poll from December 2022, 84% of Ukrainians approve of Zelensky and 96% approve of the military.
I have seen no evidence that Russian speaking Ukrainians are paying a higher price or being discriminated against by Ukrainians. Russian speaking Ukrainians probably have suffered high losses because the Russians drafted every male they could find into the DNR and LPR armies and most of them got killed. Most of the male population in the parts of Donbas under Russian control are now dead.
The people killing Russian speaking Ukrainians are Russian. I have seen no evidence otherwise. If you have some, please post it. Sometimes propaganda has some truth to it, but without proof, it's just BS someone made up to try and sway the world to their point of view.
Nobody is perfect. Ukraine is not a perfect place and there have been problems. The overarching fact is that their neighbor has tried to wipe them from the face of the Earth and they are trying to stop that. At the same time, they are taking steps to clean up their problems too. Ukraine is ashamed of their problems and is doing all they can to fix the problems. Russia, on the other hand, is proud of what we would call major flaws.
