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I don't know enough of the history and cultures of the area to know whether the Russian culture is naturally nativist or her type of comment is a more recent result of a strategic campaign by the Putin regime of setting up others as the problem, danger, lesser, etc.
Russia is really the the only large colonial power that didn't de-colonize after WWII. That's why you have soldiers from Asia with mongoloid features speaking Russian committing war crimes in Ukraine. They've been weaponizing their purposefully impoverished minorities to fight their wars. There's a reason Dagestan is exploding. They've already had 10x the per capita casualties of Moscow. A draft there would be brutal.

Zelensky understands this and has begun appealing to Russia's minorities to resist Russian colonialism and imperialism:

 
Russia is really the the only large colonial power that didn't de-colonize after WWII. That's why you have soldiers from Asia with mongoloid features speaking Russian committing war crimes in Ukraine. They've been weaponizing their purposefully impoverished minorities to fight their wars. There's a reason Dagestan is exploding. They've already had 10x the per capita casualties of Moscow. A draft there would be brutal.

Zelensky understands this and has begun appealing to Russia's minorities to resist Russian colonialism and imperialism:


An interesting observation.

Russia's colonialism, of course, was structured a bit differently than that of Britain or France, in that it was largely territory contiguous to Russia, or her initially expanded empire, as opposed to being on other continents. As with the UK and France, colonialism did see the spread of the colonializer's language, but perhaps more so than typical in the former cases, it also saw the spread of ethnically Russian people into the acquired territory. (though this obviously happened in a large way for Britain in North America and Australia, displacing those who were indigenous over time, as the majority); but not so in India or most or Africa.

Looking at areas that are, today, ethnic Russian, vs those that are not gives one a sense of what may happen here.

****

One additional note, China was not typically thought of as a colonizer; yet, much of today's China is not ethnically Han Chinese, and may still not have Mandarin as a mother tongue. Fully 1/3 of Chinese citizens are not native Mandarin speakers.

Divisions in China do exist today. In the west, we might think of Tibet or the Uyghurs (who are mostly Muslim), though there are other regions. I don't consider myself sufficient expert on China to discuss whether serious secession movements are plausible there. But that's something that always come up in the context of China engaging Taiwan, is whether those with domestic grievances might try to use such a moment to their advantage, and how cognizant China is of that risk.
 
Woah, Ukraine just officially applied to join NATO. No way this was not a previously coordinated move.

I saw a tweet earlier that said unprecedented speeches from the UN and NATO would be happening at 12:30 but can't find the tweet anymore. Will be interesting to see what happens here.
 
NATO press conference is going on right now. Boilerplate. Nothing new. It's in response to Putin's unhinged ramblings.
 
NATO press conference is going on right now. Boilerplate. Nothing new. It's in response to Putin's unhinged ramblings.
This is what I was expecting. Didn't think we would be seeing anything new, but then when I saw Ukraine's NATO application I thought maybe that would be discussed in the press conference.
 
Putin crossed a Ukrainian red line with annexation. Ukraine is crossing a Putin red line with NATO application.

The NATO press conference was just to make it clear that NATO does not recognize the annexation and will keep supporting Ukraine.
 
Just fantasizing here, but an interesting twist would be if Ukraine formally invited a NATO peacekeeping force into the territory it controls to just sit there while the Ukrainian army continues to battle to liberate occupied lands.
 
Just fantasizing here, but an interesting twist would be if Ukraine formally invited a NATO peacekeeping force into the territory it controls to just sit there while the Ukrainian army continues to battle to liberate occupied lands.

I can see that being a provocation and NATO declining. Even as Peacekeepers NATO troops would likely have to engage Russian forces. The only way NATO troops would be in Ukraine would be if somehow Russia attacked a NATO country.
 
Only problem is that no country actively involved in armed conflict is allowed to join NATO, unless some sort of exceptional work-around can be made.
 
Only problem is that no country actively involved in armed conflict is allowed to join NATO, unless some sort of exceptional work-around can be made.

I doubt they will permit it. Bringing Ukraine into NATO right now would mean an automatic invocation of Article 5.
 
Only problem is that no country actively involved in armed conflict is allowed to join NATO, unless some sort of exceptional work-around can be made.

1) This is not an actual requirement. It's a common consensus.

2) They won't be in NATO. But this could give pretext for some countries to extend security guarantees. As the US and UK did for Sweden and Finland.
 

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