The Meme, and similar meme's is doing the rounds on other sites, i saw it on foxnews a few days ago.

I still regard leaning towards to the West, where press freedom, freedom of speech and human rights are thriving the best to be more beneficial to the people than leaning towards Russia, where life in average is of poorer quality by almost every measurable parameter. Finland played the neutrality game for the whole duration of the Cold War, while it drifted towards the West by slowly replacing its state infrastructre with a West-compatible one. It was a well-known secret that Finns identified as Western and opposed Russia, even the military pre-NATO was held up to deter Russia. Finland was under Western influence de facto, much more than Ukraine. Russia cant afford taking the risk of the same happening even to a "neutral" Ukraine.

This post was edited by Neptunus on Apr 17 2023 03:08pm

It doesn't seem to have benefited Ukraine very much

Yeah, Ukraine just didn't bend over enough for Russia. You get what you ask for i guess.

A democratic, West-leaning East Slavic nation of 40 million is a threat to the Russian regime. It could make the Russian people jealous and unhappy to see prosperity in a brotherly nation and would compromise their mandate to the current regime. Russia will do a lot more to stop it than what comes to Finland, a random Finno-Ugric nation of 5 million. Perhaps years of Finlandization is what Ukraine will be forced to do. Perhaps it will join NATO sooner. Only time will tell

This post was edited by Neptunus on Apr 17 2023 03:17pm

Ukrainian and Russian roots are intertwined to a level that to compare Ukraine and Finland is not even close really. Both Russian and Ukrainians are eastern Slavs, both have been part of the same empire, share the same culture largely, language is very similar, dishes, etc. I mean the modern western Russian and Ukrainian are both descendants of the Kievan Rus.

Russia can't afford for this to happen for many reasons but ultimately, the reason that irks them the most is this commonality, so to simply sit idly by as it's her historic sister is split away and turned against her is simply unacceptable. There are a lot of soviet ex-states that they can ultimately probably live with splitting away and do their own thing, the Baltics for examples, because even though they may not like it they don't have these same common roots as they do with Belarus and Ukraine.

It's the same thing, China and Taiwan, or India with Kashmir or England with Ireland. To have outside forces push for this split under the pretense of caring for freedom and democracy is not acceptable and ultimately viewed by many of these largely more dominant states as an attack on them.

However far Ukraine had to bend would probably have still been better than the current state of Ukraine, practically speaking. You can argue what Ukraine will look like in say 20 years but at the moment the country has been ruined in many ways and unless it receives major support in rebuilding it may not even exist in 20 years.

Sure it is a threat in some ways I suppose, I don't think Ukraine was really on the fast track to becoming the jewel of Europe or anything but I can see some reasons why the Russian government wouldn't be comfortable with it. Their statements regarding Ukraine don't seem to reflect that as much though, their main issues seem to be military alliances, and subversive activity being funded by western countries, specifically the US but most likely others as well.

Nobody knows how it will end for Ukraine, it is just my opinion that whatever the case, it will be worse off than it was before and this was entirely avoidable if western countries had been as committed to peace, stability and negotiation as they proclaim to be.

I disagree. On the outside it might seem as an unacceptable thing because of similarity, but Ukrainians have a pretty strong non-Russian identity. They are East Slavs linguistically, but they have their own distinct culture which also overlaps with Western Slavs. To claim that they're almost the same is inaccurate, because that's exactly what imperialists want to do - spread the idea of a great unified nation that already exists, but needs to only be unlocked... through conquest. A similar nation that separates is a threat to the regime, not the people.

If you dig in deeper you will see that the divide is bigger than you think it is. Russia has been screwing over Ukrainians for long, just like everywhere in history the majority or the entity in power will subjugate the smaller ones. Ukrainians are very wary of Russians, some outright racist (mostly the ultranationalists). In Russia they think of Ukrainians as funny weird Russians and call them with derogatory names. The whole brotherly nation rhetoric is a way of diminishing the significance of a distinct Ukrainian identity, eventually to assimilate it to the Russian world.

So tl;dr, Russians and Ukrainians are as much sisters or brothers as Serbs and Bosnians/Croats, the Chinese and the Taiwanese, NK and SK. That means nothing in history. I wouldnt even compare the Irish with the Brits. One is Germanic the other is Celtic. Theyre not the same in terms of identity albeit the overlap in dynamics when it comes to the Troubles.

This post was edited by Neptunus on Apr 17 2023 04:21pm

+1
well said.



yea but irish and english have similarities as do french and germans, as does holland and belgium, or the US and canada, the list goes on, as does ukraine and russia. they have a shared history at the very least. anyway, semantic's, we are where we are.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 17 2023 04:26pm

Yes, but in regards to Chinese and Taiwanese , they are ethnically Han Chinese, they speak Mandarin and in Southern parts of Guangzhou they speak Cantonese and towards Xiamen and Fujian they speak Hokkien / Taiwanese ( I can speak ).
In Taiwan the Mandarin is the defacto communication method same as China, but they have a huge Hakka / Teochew and Hokkien speaking population. The younger generation seldom speak those dialects.

In Hong Kong / Macau we speak Cantonese 99% of the time. I don't know much about the Russian / Ukraine divide, I do know that the Eastern Part are predominantly Russian speaking and closer to Russia in terms of culture and ties and they are pissed off with the Western Ukraine for reasons.

In Taiwan, the major reason is

1. Influence of the US for eons on younger generation.
2. A difference in political idelogy
3. Apart from the above two you can't find a single difference between Taiwanese and Chinese in General. They call themselves Taiwanese, similar to how Hong Kong call themselves Hong Kongers, Shanghai Shanghainese etc etc. Residents will say they are China Nationals / Residents but they are Shanghainese or Beijingese for example.

This post was edited by Hamsterbaby on Apr 17 2023 04:34pm

I don't need to dig deeper. I've been to Ukraine several times and have several relatives in Ukraine from my wife's side. Truth be told when i was in Ukraine in 2011 then again after 2014 there were no great 'shackles' being thrown off by all of the sudden them pushing the pro-east puppet out and having a pro-west one, it was all the same. Your post is an exemplification of the general internet today tbh. Broad generalizations, half truths, etc. But believe whatever you want to justify your pro-war perspective. "this time it's different" I swear this is a recurring theme every 5 years for us here.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 17 2023 05:03pm