You can guess that Russia has not surrendered by the title of this post. In fact, the positions have been pretty much stalled since the first day of the war. That leaves me with "housekeeping" tasks: such as educating people in the West about the situation.First off, The myth of Russian military might has been blown to bits. I'm not exactly sure what to say about their intelligence capability (that is information gathering, instead of national IQ). Rumours are that the FSB advised against this, but Putain crashed ahead betting his political capital on this...and losing the bet badly. The FSB remain powerless to stop the madness.
The fact that Russia hit the negotiating table early on is the biggest hint that the war is indeed going badly. The amusing part is that Russia thinks it can get concessions from Ukraine. The longer this drags on the less likely that is to happen. In fact, Ukrainians are more likely to expect a treaty with conditions that make what Germany received in the Treaty of Versailles look generous.
The fact that Ukraine has been the protector of the free world pretty much on its own hasn't been lost anywhere other than the US and Russia.
I am amazed at people in the US who spout Russian propaganda (See https://youtu.be/qZPK4tZi21E).
First off, Ukraine is not part of Russia. It was part of the Soviet Union, but it was never really part of Russia. The territory of contemporary Ukraine used to belong to several empires
or states, so some versions of Ukrainian identity do not even have
anything to do with Russia at all. A short and simplified history:
In the early 1600s, Ukraine was a group of provinces under the control of Poland. Religious friction was inevitable: Poland was primarily Catholic, while the people in the region of Ukraine were primarily Orthodox. In 1648, a revolt led by the Ukrainian Cossacks broke part of the Ukrainian lands away from Poland. Until 1654, Ukrainians and Russians lived in two separate states. For almost 400 years, from the 13th to the 17th centuries, they were not in the same political structure and lived under different religious influences.
Resistance to Polish domination came from the Cossacks, a group with historically opaque ethnic origins. In 1654, they allied with Russia to establish a territory under their control, called a Hetmanate; it was an early form of what would become Ukraine, and it included Ukraine’s modern-day capital, Kyiv. Mapmakers of that time labeled Cossack areas as Ukraine.
After 1654, the Poles were less of a concern to the Cossacks, but independence remained a key goal. In 1708, when the Swedish army sought to push the Russians out of Ukraine, Ivan Mazepa, a Cossack leader, joined with the Swedes. The Russians routed their opponents, hobbling an independent Cossack state from that point forward.
Ukraine became a region divided by competing empires. The western provinces, initially under Polish dominion, were later governed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By the mid-19th century, the bulk of Ukrainian territory operated under Russian rule. Russian rule was harsh, and a sense of grievance began to foster a Ukrainian national identity.The Ukrainian language had taken shape over centuries. By the 1800s, a standard form had emerged. By the mid-1800s, these writers began to publish Ukrainian primers and expand the teaching of the language in schools.
The breakdown of the Tsarist empire and the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 proved to be a key turning point for Ukraine. Ukraine declared independence in 1918 and maintained that status until 1921. That led to a period where the government in Kyiv changed hands five times in 1919 alone. The Bolsheviks took advantage of the turmoil, focusing their attention on undermining Ukrainian national sentiment.
When the Bolsheviks seized Kyiv in early 1918, they targeted sites that were part of Ukrainian identity. They shelled the Ukrainian museum established by the head of the Ukrainian state, Mykhailo Hrushevsky. People caught speaking Ukrainian on the streets of Kyiv were shot. The independent government in Kyiv had claimed the eastern provinces as part of the new nation, but this spawned its own tensions. Although the Donbas region was majority Ukrainian.
The Soviet state under Stalin took on a more centralized and Russian tone after a period in which Ukrainian language and culture were supported in the 1920s. The Stalinist period and beyond was accompanied by greater repression. The longer Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, the more its antagonism toward Russia grew.
Ukrainians have been victimised by both the Soviet Union and Russia. Key events include the famine (or Holodomor) under Stalin that killed perhaps 4 million or more Ukrainians, as well as the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl (or, to the Ukrainians, Chornobyl), which occurred about 60 miles north of Kyiv. This war is a continuation of that victimisation.
Sorry, there is no love between the people of Ukraine and Russia. That is why the East is resisting the invading Russian forces. People who repeat the myth that Ukraine is part of Russia are repeating an erroneous transformation of a complex, entangled history between the two countries into a simplistic morality tale that serves Russian interests.
This war is going to have a significant effect on the power structure of the world since it is showing China, Russian, and the US powereless to stop the war. Likewise it is showing that there needs to be a stronger system for stopping armed aggression. This is truly showing that War is indeed NOT the answer. More nations have fallen from their belligerence than most people understand. But this war is showing that unarmed resistance might beat the most powerful armies.
