Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[Robert]

Anti-war protests break out across Russia

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine ... ts-1682295

Protesters in cities across Russia have risked arrest and voiced their opposition to the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow-led forces.

The OVD-Info rights group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that as of Thursday evening, more than 235 people had been detained in 29 cities.

Rallies took place across many time zones, and those detained hailed from cities ranging from from the enclave of Kaliningrad on the edge of Europe to the far eastern city of Vladivostok.

There were also protests in cities including Yekaterinburg, the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and the capital Moscow.

Footage of the protests, which were of varying sizes, were shared on social media and showed people holding signs and chanting "No to war!"

And they are being arrested for these protests. I guess they learned from Canada.

[Szdfan]

Anti-war protests break out across Russia

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine ... ts-1682295

Protesters in cities across Russia have risked arrest and voiced their opposition to the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow-led forces.

The OVD-Info rights group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that as of Thursday evening, more than 235 people had been detained in 29 cities.

Rallies took place across many time zones, and those detained hailed from cities ranging from from the enclave of Kaliningrad on the edge of Europe to the far eastern city of Vladivostok.

There were also protests in cities including Yekaterinburg, the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and the capital Moscow.

Footage of the protests, which were of varying sizes, were shared on social media and showed people holding signs and chanting "No to war!"

And they are being arrested for these protests. I guess they learned from Canada.

Protesting in Russia has been always been a much riskier proposition than in the US or Canada. The fact that anyone is protesting at all is remarkable and says a lot about how at least some Russians are feeling about this.

[mike]

I haven't seen anybody of prominence calling for the US to wage war against Russia, although there are many accusations that a stronger US stance could have somehow prevented this, and that America would be ill-prepared for such a conflict due to various things. But there seems to be unity on imposing strong sanctions. I know that sanctions are generally seen as not making much difference, but weren't the strictures placed on Germany after WW1 by the Allies a form of economic sanctions? As such, they demonstrate that sanctions can give rise to extreme tensions that can lead to terrible consequences down the road.

[Neto]

This is a rather biased headline. When I was growing up, the Ukraine was just part of the USSR. Lenin divided the USSR into different states and one of them was the Ukrainian SSR, or “ УССР”. “Ukraine” simply means “border”. It was the borderlands of Russia with non-Russian countries.

Going back to the 1800s, many Mennonites settled in that area. They were invited by the Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great. We now call these people “Russian Mennonites”. They were never called “Ukrainian Mennonites”, because “Ukraine” as an independent country didn’t exist back then.

The native peoples of Ukraine are/were a distinctive ethnic group, with their own languages and cultures. (Plural to include the Tatars, who were ran out of Crimia by the Soviets, and now again in 2014 by the Russian occupation. They had returned under the free rule of Ukraine.)
Catherine the Great was a German, married to the Czar. The Czars of that era were looking West, even though the people as a whole resisted the push for culture change in that direction.
A comparison - What is now the nation of Israel was not an independent Jewish nation for something like 1800 years, until 1948. But they were always a distinctive people group. Other ethnic groups are still subjugated, without any right of self determination. (Kurds, many ethnic groups in China, the American Indians in both the States & in China, etc.)
During the Stalin era many Ukranianians were "eliminated" through an artificial famine. Their farm animals and crops were confiscated by the Soviets, and the power of the USSR was very predominantly held by Russians. (The Mennonites who did not emigrate prior to this also went through this same treatment, as did the Jewish people there as well - to an even greater extent.) I just do not think that the "real" Ukrainians are favorable to Russian rule. One of the policies of the Soviet era was to encourage ethnic Russians to spread into all of the satellite "nations" controlled by the USSR. None of those peoples really WANTED to be ruled by that foreign power, or give up their own languages and cultures to be Russified.

[Ken]

Russian anti-war protest in St. Petersburg

[mike]

[Ken]

We didn't need a new cold war to justify military spending. The military-industrial complex aided and abetted by both parties was doing that just fine year-in year-out regardless of world events.

[Sudsy]

Matthew 24:6

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

[Szdfan]

I haven't seen anybody of prominence calling for the US to wage war against Russia, although there are many accusations that a stronger US stance could have somehow prevented this, and that America would be ill-prepared for such a conflict due to various things. But there seems to be unity on imposing strong sanctions. I know that sanctions are generally seen as not making much difference, but weren't the strictures placed on Germany after WW1 by the Allies a form of economic sanctions? As such, they demonstrate that sanctions can give rise to extreme tensions that can lead to terrible consequences down the road.

Not sanctions...the Allies forced reparations onto Germany to punish them for the war that were seen as humiliating by the Germans.

[Ken]

I haven't seen anybody of prominence calling for the US to wage war against Russia, although there are many accusations that a stronger US stance could have somehow prevented this, and that America would be ill-prepared for such a conflict due to various things. But there seems to be unity on imposing strong sanctions. I know that sanctions are generally seen as not making much difference, but weren't the strictures placed on Germany after WW1 by the Allies a form of economic sanctions? As such, they demonstrate that sanctions can give rise to extreme tensions that can lead to terrible consequences down the road.

Not sanctions...the Allies forced reparations onto Germany to punish them for the war that were seen as humiliating by the Germans.

Arguably it was, to some extent, western sanctions (or refusal to engage economically) that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union in the first place. But that process took decades and decades until the whole edifice was so unstable it finally crumbled.