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Ukraine open to exchanging minerals for US military aid, says Zelenskyy
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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The Ukrainians who want to hate Russia are going to hate them no matter what Russia does. The rest i think are smart enough to understand that nothing that has been happening in Ukraine for the last 30+ years has been to their benefit.
It's not like the West has respected their sovereignty. They've had two color revolutions and neither time have the promises that were made to them been fulfilled. Things only got worse. So why not try something new?
A large number of Ukrainians have relatives in Russia so they are already not entirely ignorant of what things are really like there and how much better conditions are for Ukrainians living in Russia than in Kiev controlled Ukraine, despite the best efforts of the Maidan media's propaganda and harsh suppression of the pro-Russian viewpoint.
The biggest problem will be the young generation that has been educated on ten years of anti-Russia hate and lies and pro-Nazi indoctrination that the post-Maidan regime mandated schools to teach in Ukraine. But even that generation is now very disillusioned and many have been fleeing the country to escape the very real possibility of being drafted once the age is lowered to 18.
I'm not so sure. The sharpest decline in living conditions outside of wartime didn't stop the reaction against communism when the USSR was illegally dissolved against the will of its people. Sure, there was no longer a USSR to point to as evidence whereas Russia still exists and has been developing rapidly in recent years. On the flip side, China very much exists, but that doesn't stop the Chinese reactionary diaspora from spreading false narratives such as there being no democracy in China.
To add to that, most Ukrainians who hated Russia enough to fight are dead now.
Yes and no. A lot of the time the most ideologically devoted Nazis sit behind the front lines acting as blocking detachments and military police who will shoot retreating soldiers and make gruesome examples of deserters. They are too valuable to the Kiev regime to be wasted sitting in trenches.
Plus there are still plenty of cowards sitting safe in Kiev and Lvov working as propagandists and enforcers of the regime, plenty of thugs and criminals that the state has given power and weapons to who take pleasure in bullying and extorting poor Ukrainians. These people won't get sent to the front any time soon because they too are vital for the self-preservation of the regime.
On the other hand, because these are cowards and opportunists they will flip very quickly once the power shifts. It's the ideological Nazis that need to be dealt with first and foremost. Many of them will flee to the West once the collapse occurs, but some will stay behind to cause trouble and will need to be rooted out.
Right, most of these people are cowards who force others to fight for them. I expect most of them will flee to Europe once it becomes clear that the war is lost. Also, once the army collapses, Russia will very much do purges the same way they did with Germany after WW2. There's already a blueprint for this.
Not so sure about the purges. The Russian state is pretty soft and liberal these days. I think we will see a significant number of terrorist attacks initially before Russia decides to properly crack down. By that point though these Banderite terrorists will have discredited themselves with the majority of Ukrainians since their attacks will primarily harm other Ukrainians, so Russia won't encounter much resistance from the population.
Right, any sort of a partisan movement requires support from the general public, and I just can't see that happening. Another thing to consider is that Ukraine may simply cease to exist as a state. Russia will absorb friendly and neutral territories in the east, while Hungary, Poland, and Romania will grab the ones in the west. That seems like an increasingly likely scenario.
How will the western powers receive the compensation that they think is owed to them if what remains of Ukraine is absorbed by the surrounding NATO countries?
These countries would still mine the resources, and in fact this is a strong incentive for them to do land grabs as it would be seen as a way to bring economic growth by developing these regions. Powers like US would of course prefer a rump Ukraine where they could do this on the cheap, but they might not have the pull at this point to stop the partitioning.