Quote (Goomshill @ 13 Jan 2024 23:53)
Right now Russia is engaged in a whole lot of that nation building, in the DPR, LPR, Crimea. The west is still wringing hands over Ukrainian migrants and protectionism against their grain exports. Beyond the whole bit of Russia's casus belli and the Maidan's western backing, the outcome isn't looking much hotter than Syria or Libya or Yemen. We're getting the poorer half of the poorest country in Europe, deprived of its natural resources and economic hubs, bombed to ruins, and with lukewarm western support that isn't committed to rebuilding. Depopulated and particularly having lost productive aged males. I mean, a big difference in those other conflicts is we usually left the broken countries in total ruins when we lost and abandoned them, like how Gaddafi invested heavily in civil engineering and water resources and just this past year 5000 people were killed in the Derna dam collapse. But now in Ukraine, the parts of the country being annexed by Russia are getting massive infrastructure projects and reconstruction. And we're supposed to be proud when a NATO backed shadow op managed to briefly knock europe's longest bridge out of service for a brief period before Russia rebuilt it, too. What does it say when in November Brussels held a "Mariupol Reborn" forum that showcased a plan to invest $30 billion of non-existent western funds to build infrastructure in a city they don't control, while the Ukrainian FM is protesting a showcase of actual reconstruction in Mariupol (ya know, by Russia) being held in Modena next week, calling it a provocation.
A different outcome but not a better looking one.
Man, if living under Russian rule is so much better, the Ukrainians have to be the biggest morons in history to prefer living in the EU. Dito for the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians etc. pp., who all couldn't wait to join the EU and NATO, because they had actual, first-hand experience with living under Russian rule and collectively said "never again". But what do they know, they're probably all suffering from collective Russophobia, right?
On a more general note: it is completely trivial and a non-argument to note that places which are living in peace and can actually go through with rebuilding efforts look better than places which continue to be shelled on a weekly basis...
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We're getting the poorer half of the poorest country in Europe
That's not categorically true. I just looked up some pre-war data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GDP_per_capitaIf you list the GDP of Ukrainian oblasts by GDP per capita in 2013, you will see that 10 of the 13 oblasts with the highest pre-war GDP are currently being controlled by Ukraine, not Russia. This includes very populous oblasts like Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv or Odessa. Luhansk and Crimea are actually surprisingly far down the list. In a list weighted by population, Luhansk and Crimea would rank firmly in the bottom half.
Here's a visualization with 2008 data:
Yes, the stuff in Western Ukraine looks bad on the map, but there aren't actually a lot of people living there.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 14 2024 12:23am