Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[Szdfan]

There's some hope with negotiations, but there's a long way to go. As I said previously, conditions on the ground are dictating what a peace deal might look like. Russia might be focusing its forces on southeastern Ukraine because they are not making progress in the north.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/29 ... om-ukraine

A deputy Russian defense minister said on Tuesday that Russia would sharply “reduce military activity” near Kyiv and the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, as the first signs of progress emerged from peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Russia also said it was prepared to accelerate the timeline of a possible meeting between President Vladimir V. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Speaking after talks with Ukrainian officials in Istanbul, Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the Kremlin was ready to hold such a meeting once a draft peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia was ready.

Russia’s apparent concessions in northern Ukraine reflected successful Ukrainian resistance that has bogged down Moscow’s forces in fierce fighting around Kyiv’s suburbs and retaken territory in recent days near the capital and cities closer to the Russian border.

As the talks yielded the first glimmers of hope for a reduction in the violence that has leveled Ukrainian cities, killed untold numbers of civilians and driven more than three million people from the country, Ukraine also outlined for the first time potential concessions over territory that it is all but certain to have lost to Russia.

Ukrainian officials proposed a 15-year process of negotiations about the status of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. The issue of the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas, which Russia no longer recognizes as part of Ukraine, could be discussed in talks between the two leaders, said Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Mr. Zelensky.

I do really hate the idea of rewarding Russia by allowing it to "peel off" parts of Ukraine, but none of this is my call.

[Josh]

I do really hate the idea of rewarding Russia by allowing it to "peel off" parts of Ukraine, but none of this is my call.

What if the people in those parts want to be independent like in Crimea, Luhansk, or Donetsk (and most likely Odessa)? The shelling by Azov the last 8 years and government of Ukraine not doing anything about it led to the present situation. Personally, I think this is a reasonable compromise, with Luhansk and Donetsk ending up with a de-facto status like Abkhazia, Artsakh, and Transnistria. At least then the people there can live in peace.

[Ken]

I do really hate the idea of rewarding Russia by allowing it to "peel off" parts of Ukraine, but none of this is my call.

What if the people in those parts want to be independent like in Crimea, Luhansk, or Donetsk (and most likely Odessa)? The shelling by Azov the last 8 years and government of Ukraine not doing anything about it led to the present situation. Personally, I think this is a reasonable compromise, with Luhansk and Donetsk ending up with a de-facto status like Abkhazia, Artsakh, and Transnistria. At least then the people there can live in peace.

The only way to find out is to have a free and fair referendum. I'm sure the people of Mariupol (which is in the Donbass) will be interested in voting to decide whether they want to be part of a Russian breakaway state or remain part of Ukraine after experiencing the last month of brutal shelling, starvation, and Russian atrocities.

The tricky part is deciding who gets to vote. Probably anyone who can trace residency in the area going back 10+ years.

[Szdfan]

I do really hate the idea of rewarding Russia by allowing it to "peel off" parts of Ukraine, but none of this is my call.

What if the people in those parts want to be independent like in Crimea, Luhansk, or Donetsk (and most likely Odessa)? The shelling by Azov the last 8 years and government of Ukraine not doing anything about it led to the present situation. Personally, I think this is a reasonable compromise, with Luhansk and Donetsk ending up with a de-facto status like Abkhazia, Artsakh, and Transnistria. At least then the people there can live in peace.

The only way to find out is to have a free and fair referendum. I'm sure the people of Mariupol (which is in the Donbass) will be interested in voting to decide whether they want to be part of a Russian breakaway state or remain part of Ukraine after experiencing the last month of brutal shelling, starvation, and Russian atrocities.

The tricky part is deciding who gets to vote. Probably anyone who can trace residency in the area going back 10+ years.

The Ukrainians are now recommending a 15 year negotiation regarding some of these areas. Kherson is the only major Ukrainian city occupied by the Russians. It’s also ethnically majority Russian. Even so, the Russians are experiencing resistance in that city, to the point they dispersed protests last week with gunfire.

[Szdfan]

Reporting from Kherson, which is an ethnic Russian majority Ukrainian city occupied by the Russians:

https://kyivindependent.com/national/fa ... residents/

As the Russian forces grow increasingly impatient and frustrated with constant pro-Ukrainian protests, their ferocity has greatly increased over the past week. Violent crackdowns and abductions are on the rise as yet-unconfirmed threats of mass deportations loom.

Journalists, once left alone, have shifted into working underground to avoid drawing attention from the Russian forces. As fighting continues near Kherson and multiple Ukrainian cities face devastation, locals fear that they may be subjected to the same atrocities.

The local sources confirmed that the Russians have made it their top priority to try to hunt down the supposed organizers of the daily protests against occupation that have been held in the center of the city since early March.

“I get the impression that they can’t understand who is the ‘main instigator’ of these demonstrations, so they started to intensely abduct activists and well-known people in the city,” said Yulia. “A few days ago, they abducted the director of a drama theater.”

The media reported that the director, city deputy and opinion leader, Oleksandr Kniga, was seized and questioned about the supposed organizers of the rallies before being released, which he confirmed.

Yulia said that some of the Russian forces really appeared to think that they were liberators and really believed that there was some mastermind out there, pushing locals to protest. They weren’t able to consider the possibility that people who care about freedom, democracy and self-determination are self-organizing.

“They need to have some kind of shepherd to control them and they can’t understand why we come out – they have this idea that we’re being forced and coordinated centrally,” she said. “It’s funny and sad at the same time.”

Even though people like Yulia are able to find humor in the Russians’ mentality, the crackdowns are deadly serious. Previously, Russians have let the protests run their course or tried to drown them out by blasting audio from old Soviet cartoons, Kostiantyn said. Now, as soon as they see any gathering taking place in the city center, they bring out a convoy of paddy wagons and deploy large formations of armor-wearing, assault rifle-wielding forces, able to arrest hundreds of people.

Last week, Russians deployed tear gas and flashbang grenades against the protesters and even opened fire with live rounds, wounding at least one local resident, locals told the Kyiv Independent. For all of these reasons, demonstrations have shrunk dramatically from thousands of people to less than a hundred.

“In the past week, these meetings were dispersed by force – with flashbangs, tear gas, clubs, arrests and beatings,” said Kostiantyn. “Everyone has breathed in some tear gas by now.”

British publication The Times reported that the Russians’ patience has run out in Kherson and they were considering large-scale terror against the locals, including the possibility of mass deportations. Most sources who spoke to the Kyiv Independent find this plausible, in light of the reports that Russians have forcibly deported thousands of people from Mariupol, a besieged seaport in southern Ukraine, into Russia.

[Ken]

What if the people in those parts want to be independent like in Crimea, Luhansk, or Donetsk (and most likely Odessa)? The shelling by Azov the last 8 years and government of Ukraine not doing anything about it led to the present situation. Personally, I think this is a reasonable compromise, with Luhansk and Donetsk ending up with a de-facto status like Abkhazia, Artsakh, and Transnistria. At least then the people there can live in peace.

The only way to find out is to have a free and fair referendum. I'm sure the people of Mariupol (which is in the Donbass) will be interested in voting to decide whether they want to be part of a Russian breakaway state or remain part of Ukraine after experiencing the last month of brutal shelling, starvation, and Russian atrocities.

The tricky part is deciding who gets to vote. Probably anyone who can trace residency in the area going back 10+ years.

The Ukrainians are now recommending a 15 year negotiation regarding some of these areas. Kherson is the only major Ukrainian city occupied by the Russians. It’s also ethnically majority Russian. Even so, the Russians are experiencing resistance in that city, to the point they dispersed protests last week with gunfire.

This is all going to be exceedingly difficult to untangle. The Russians have unleashed a ginormous mess.

For example, I have a student this year who is from Crimea. His mother is ethnic Ukrainian and his father is ethnic Russian. The family had to flee Crimea after the Russian invasion in 2014 because they were political and ethnic minorities and feared Russian rule. They lived in Moldova for a couple years as refugees before some of the family made it to the US and some is still in Moldova and Ukraine. He speaks Russian not Ukrainian but is most definitely anti-Russian and sees himself as Ukrainian. His older cousins who are all ethnic Russians but see themselves as Ukrainian all went back from Moldova to Ukraine to fight against the Russian invaders.

Should he and his family get a vote in the future of Crimea? They are Crimean going back many generations but had to flee in 2014.

[Neto]

The only way to find out is to have a free and fair referendum. I'm sure the people of Mariupol (which is in the Donbass) will be interested in voting to decide whether they want to be part of a Russian breakaway state or remain part of Ukraine after experiencing the last month of brutal shelling, starvation, and Russian atrocities.

The tricky part is deciding who gets to vote. Probably anyone who can trace residency in the area going back 10+ years.

The Ukrainians are now recommending a 15 year negotiation regarding some of these areas. Kherson is the only major Ukrainian city occupied by the Russians. It’s also ethnically majority Russian. Even so, the Russians are experiencing resistance in that city, to the point they dispersed protests last week with gunfire.

This is all going to be exceedingly difficult to untangle. The Russians have unleashed a ginormous mess.

For example, I have a student this year who is from Crimea. His mother is ethnic Ukrainian and his father is ethnic Russian. The family had to flee Crimea after the Russian invasion in 2014 because they were political and ethnic minorities and feared Russian rule. They lived in Moldova for a couple years as refugees before some of the family made it to the US and some is still in Moldova and Ukraine. He speaks Russian not Ukrainian but is most definitely anti-Russian and sees himself as Ukrainian. His older cousins who are all ethnic Russians but see themselves as Ukrainian all went back from Moldova to Ukraine to fight against the Russian invaders.

Should he and his family get a vote in the future of Crimea? They are Crimean going back many generations but had to flee in 2014.

I'm curious - how many is 'many'. I am American by birth, 3rd and 4th generation, and that gets back to the span of years from 1874 - 1891. Before that, I guess I would be Ukrainian, for at least that many generations, probably more. But that is an aside. Specifically in regards to Crimea, there is probably only a small minority (anyways of people my age) that can count their generations back farther than to 1853 at the very most. So it's a good question - who gets to decide? Especially perhaps if those who no longer live there were forced out by persecution or exile. (We were even invited to come back to Ukraine after the fall of the USSR.) If the political unrest that eventually lead to the Bolshevik revolution had not taken place, I would almost certainly still be in Ukraine, or very possibly Crimea (because that is where the Mennonite Brethren tended to move to after being forced out of the colonies by the 'big church' Mennonites). And if the Mennonites who stayed had not been systematically deported, killed, or forced out in other ways, they would very likely be a sizable percentage of the population of southern Ukraine, and of Crimea as well.

[Josh]

… Ukrainian or Russian? The identity of Mennonites in that region was 100% one involved with the Russian state. There was no independent Ukrainian state. The idea didn’t even exist in the 1800s. Some areas that are now Ukraine belonged to Poland (well, Prussia) or Austria-Hungary.

Ken, perhaps you can find a less biased source of news than the “Kyiv” “Independent”.

[Neto]

… Ukrainian or Russian? The identity of Mennonites in that region was 100% one involved with the Russian state. There was no independent Ukrainian state. The idea didn’t even exist in the 1800s. Some areas that are now Ukraine belonged to Poland (well, Prussia) or Austria-Hungary.

I was speaking more from a cultural standpoint, and assuming the breakup into the current nations, or something fairly similar. It's really impossible to think through all of the what-ifs, so anything said in this regard is pure conjecture. Also, that area was already known as "The Borderlands" (Lit. Ukraine, as I understand what I was told growing up), but I think it was officially known as both "South Russia" and as "New Russia". (The Russian Empire took Crimea from Turkey in 1953, which was long after Ukraine was taken from The Ottoman Empire.)
The move for "Russification" gained a good deal of force in around 1880. Before that, very few of the Mennonites spoke Russian to any appreciable degree. This was a common complaint of their Russian government supervisors - that these people had lived in the Russian Empire for over 100 years, and could barely communicate in the Russian language. But the same was true of the 'native' Ukrainian people, and also of the nomadic tribes who were probably the 'real natives', if anyone could claim that title. (I would suspect that more of the Mennonites spoke some Ukrainian than those who spoke Russian, simply because if they had business dealings with the common people (non-government workers) they were Ukrainian in language & culture, not Russian. They were also a suppressed people group - they no more asked to be a part of the Russian Empire than they did later ask to be a part of the USSR, or than they are now wanting to be a part of the Russian Federation.

[Ken]

The Ukrainians are now recommending a 15 year negotiation regarding some of these areas. Kherson is the only major Ukrainian city occupied by the Russians. It’s also ethnically majority Russian. Even so, the Russians are experiencing resistance in that city, to the point they dispersed protests last week with gunfire.

This is all going to be exceedingly difficult to untangle. The Russians have unleashed a ginormous mess.

For example, I have a student this year who is from Crimea. His mother is ethnic Ukrainian and his father is ethnic Russian. The family had to flee Crimea after the Russian invasion in 2014 because they were political and ethnic minorities and feared Russian rule. They lived in Moldova for a couple years as refugees before some of the family made it to the US and some is still in Moldova and Ukraine. He speaks Russian not Ukrainian but is most definitely anti-Russian and sees himself as Ukrainian. His older cousins who are all ethnic Russians but see themselves as Ukrainian all went back from Moldova to Ukraine to fight against the Russian invaders.

Should he and his family get a vote in the future of Crimea? They are Crimean going back many generations but had to flee in 2014.

I'm curious - how many is 'many'. I am American by birth, 3rd and 4th generation, and that gets back to the span of years from 1874 - 1891. Before that, I guess I would be Ukrainian, for at least that many generations, probably more. But that is an aside. Specifically in regards to Crimea, there is probably only a small minority (anyways of people my age) that can count their generations back farther than to 1853 at the very most. So it's a good question - who gets to decide? Especially perhaps if those who no longer live there were forced out by persecution or exile. (We were even invited to come back to Ukraine after the fall of the USSR.) If the political unrest that eventually lead to the Bolshevik revolution had not taken place, I would almost certainly still be in Ukraine, or very possibly Crimea (because that is where the Mennonite Brethren tended to move to after being forced out of the colonies by the 'big church' Mennonites). And if the Mennonites who stayed had not been systematically deported, killed, or forced out in other ways, they would very likely be a sizable percentage of the population of southern Ukraine, and of Crimea as well.

My only point is that these are terribly difficult problems to disentangle. The Russians will probably want a vote of just the remaining Russian loyalists who are still around after they have driven out or deported out everyone else who was opposed to them. Ukraine will likely want a much broader initiative including everyone who has recent ties to the region. Or perhaps a national referendum of the whole country which is what the Ukrainian constitution actually calls for.

The devil is always in the details and it will take years and years to sort out if they are going to do down any sort of separatist referendum type of path.