There's much more the international community could do even without direct war. It should be possible to station troops in the West of country, thus freeing up Ukrainians to fight. If Putin wishes to attack them, than he'll be the one escalating.
It would be not too different than Idlib, which hasn't led to massive war, with the exception the government will have invited these troops.
The side by side satellite images really show you the devastating effect of the Russian bombings. It looks like a hurricane or tsunami hit the land.
How is this handled after the war, the aggressor should pay for the damages but we can't really force them.
What "siezed Russian assets" are we talking about here? The russian centeral bank deposits held with the federal reserve? Foreign assets of russian companies? Assets of russian "oligarchs"?
You are assuming this city will remain in Ukraine. That might be too optimistic as this is the only part of the coast on the land bridge to Crimea that is not yet under Russian control.
> "...Ukrainian television and radio were cut, and car stereos became the only link to the outside world. They played Russian news, describing a world that couldn’t be further from the reality in Mariupol."
As much as the whole world wants to believe that the people of the Russian Federation are uninformed, or disallowed the information, and disinformed by the propaganda...the grim reality seems that they rather need to believe that propaganda, because it seemingly absolves them of the resposibility for these atrocities
The simple folks of Russia are very much familiar with the horrors and the scale of such war atrocities as from the vast WW2 history, just as from Grozny and Aleppo times. They get how cruel and mindless this is. Just they cannot admit to themselves and their children that this time they are the aggressor side.
It must be the same kind of "fear of blame" that is not that different from decades of Stalin's rule. For many citizens of the Russian Federation, it's the only place to live their lives, there's no exit, not much choice for change. The fear has simply transformed the reality, just as it has done it in times before...
I have no hopes that these folks would suddenly "wake up to truth". Nor that they would attain to any collective remorse for this. Perhaps this fear could only be supplanted by their personal grief.
The Russian country seems to have turned into a Federation of Fear - the main product that its rulers now want to export to the rest of the world. It's the grief that the world is already harvesting.
I've been text messaging with random Russians a bunch over the last couple weeks and have had conversations with ~100 people, some of them quite extensive. Not once has anyone really condemned the war. A few are cynical about their government, people, and the rest of the world, and sad that this has to happen. But the vast majority weren't even that. Just straight up nationalist, repeatedly saying that they had to do something or they would be destroyed by the west. And insisting that Ukraine belonged to Russia. Absolutely no-one denied the facts as far as the toll on human life or the destruction of Ukraine, and not a single person thought its a "special operation" instead of a war. I heard a lot of what seems to me to be extreme paranoia about NATO, America, and Nazis just waiting for an opportunity to invade and destroy them.
The whole experience has been kind of shocking to me. I went into this believing that Russians where like innocent captives of evil politicians and oligarchs and had no idea what was going on. But based on the conversations I've had, that is not the case at all. They know exactly what is going on as far as the cost in human lives, and believe it's necessary to ensure their own survival.
You know, if I lived in Russia right now, and some random person I never heard of started texting me and talking about the war, I'd at least have to consider the possibility that they were FSB, and guard my words accordingly.
Not saying that all the people you texted thought that way, but I'm not sure you can reach a definitive conclusion based on your experiment.
I think you need to watch this one[0], it's an explanation of what you are seeing. In general, that is the propaganda doing it's job. It's similar to all countries, we all have our propaganda and our view of our situation in the world. Russias is the classical "It's us against them! And we are surrounded by our enemies!". I'm sure North Korea is about the same only worse.
> ...They know exactly what is going on as far as the cost in human lives, and believe it's necessary to ensure their own survival.
Given the propaganda and the extensive coverups by govt, it's not really clear what exactly the people know in terms of counts, but for sure the scale of the war is hard to cover up by now.
However, knowing the actual facts is rather irrelevant for them. The pervious decades of "raising from their knees" in fact gave even more rise to the cynicism - another product of the "developed socialism".
Thus lots of educated citizens of Russia would readily accept and justify any form of twisted falsehood as a given, kind of rules of engagement for their daily act of survival.
Sadly, similar cyncism seems to have its place in lives of may people from the former Soviet republics, Ukraine included. Just in Ukraine, there happened to be a practical succession of government and presidents. This has been powering a hope for changes, better future, access to Europe. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation got clearly stuck "in-progress", same as Belarus, and the Central Asian republics. Sans alternative.
How does one reconcile with such a reality? Well, if unable to leave, then adopting some cynical attitude to anything may perhaps become a choice.
It's no use to blame Putin's subjects for all this. They did not push for this war. They were as surprised as anyone from the invasion, but of course they will support their army now because they have spent a decade learning to hate the west and blame it for every evil[1].
But putin also calculated (correctly) that the west wouldn't react strongly , like it didnt react with syria, georgia, karabakh, libya. Invading weak countries to make a victory lap is how he legitimizes himself to his subjects and to the nearby dictators (like aliyev). This was made worse by watching how afghanistan ended, and how the US is quickly shifting to the Pacific. The US needs to set a red line to stop him, that is the only thing that delegitimizes him
One of the Ukrainian Twitter feeds I look at lists Russian soldiers Social Media and small town newspaper articles. Its depressing on their side seeing young kids and young fathers coming out of these small rural towns and dying in the army. https://twitter.com/666_mancer. Its interesting to see the translated Russian comments as well.
UN should just demand from Russian system of power that they delivered suspected war criminal mr Putin to Hague if they want to have any hope of Russia rejoining global economy any time soon.
> UN should just demand from Russian system of power that they delivered suspected war criminal mr Putin
I don't know if your proposal was supposed to be realistic, but it is just idealistically naive at best. Putin is the Russian system of power. Unless you believe that he is going to willingly turn himself in as soon as the UN makes that demand, I don't see any good coming out of such demand by the UN.
Also, don't forget that Russia is one of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, and there is nothing stopping them from vetoing any such statement from being made in the first place (which is one of the major perks of being the permanent member).
I have some words about Putin that I really want to say. They're against the site guidelines, though, so I am restraining myself. He sure doesn't make it easy...
Russians will be deemed worse than ISIS for history books. All the suffering they caused to their neighbors, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia. Millions of refugees, hundreds of thousands killed, families destroyed, hopes and dreams perished - all for Russian people imperialist ideology.
I hope to some day see Russian federation dissolved into it's federal states.
You know the west is weak when we're thinking about reconciliation when they're still bombing civilians. Do you think Russians are stopping to think whether killing pregnant women is bad for reconciliation?
Readit News
https://mobile.twitter.com/christogrozev/status/150421396163...
https://twitter.com/KSergatskova/status/1504782169188806664
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
"cant risk WW3 over Ukraine"
"cant risk WW3 over Poland"
"cant risk WW3 over Latvia"
"cant risk WW3 over Estonia"
etc, etc ...
It would be not too different than Idlib, which hasn't led to massive war, with the exception the government will have invited these troops.
Sure we can. Germany was paying WWII reparations into the 90's.
Where are those? I skimmed the link article and couldn't find any.
As much as the whole world wants to believe that the people of the Russian Federation are uninformed, or disallowed the information, and disinformed by the propaganda...the grim reality seems that they rather need to believe that propaganda, because it seemingly absolves them of the resposibility for these atrocities
The simple folks of Russia are very much familiar with the horrors and the scale of such war atrocities as from the vast WW2 history, just as from Grozny and Aleppo times. They get how cruel and mindless this is. Just they cannot admit to themselves and their children that this time they are the aggressor side.
It must be the same kind of "fear of blame" that is not that different from decades of Stalin's rule. For many citizens of the Russian Federation, it's the only place to live their lives, there's no exit, not much choice for change. The fear has simply transformed the reality, just as it has done it in times before...
I have no hopes that these folks would suddenly "wake up to truth". Nor that they would attain to any collective remorse for this. Perhaps this fear could only be supplanted by their personal grief.
The Russian country seems to have turned into a Federation of Fear - the main product that its rulers now want to export to the rest of the world. It's the grief that the world is already harvesting.
The whole experience has been kind of shocking to me. I went into this believing that Russians where like innocent captives of evil politicians and oligarchs and had no idea what was going on. But based on the conversations I've had, that is not the case at all. They know exactly what is going on as far as the cost in human lives, and believe it's necessary to ensure their own survival.
Not saying that all the people you texted thought that way, but I'm not sure you can reach a definitive conclusion based on your experiment.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw
Do they? Do they know how many Russians have been killed so far?
Given the propaganda and the extensive coverups by govt, it's not really clear what exactly the people know in terms of counts, but for sure the scale of the war is hard to cover up by now.
However, knowing the actual facts is rather irrelevant for them. The pervious decades of "raising from their knees" in fact gave even more rise to the cynicism - another product of the "developed socialism".
Thus lots of educated citizens of Russia would readily accept and justify any form of twisted falsehood as a given, kind of rules of engagement for their daily act of survival.
Sadly, similar cyncism seems to have its place in lives of may people from the former Soviet republics, Ukraine included. Just in Ukraine, there happened to be a practical succession of government and presidents. This has been powering a hope for changes, better future, access to Europe. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation got clearly stuck "in-progress", same as Belarus, and the Central Asian republics. Sans alternative.
How does one reconcile with such a reality? Well, if unable to leave, then adopting some cynical attitude to anything may perhaps become a choice.
But putin also calculated (correctly) that the west wouldn't react strongly , like it didnt react with syria, georgia, karabakh, libya. Invading weak countries to make a victory lap is how he legitimizes himself to his subjects and to the nearby dictators (like aliyev). This was made worse by watching how afghanistan ended, and how the US is quickly shifting to the Pacific. The US needs to set a red line to stop him, that is the only thing that delegitimizes him
1.https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_how_russia_has_come_to_lo...
https://eng.mil.ru/en/management.htm
UN should just demand from Russian system of power that they delivered suspected war criminal mr Putin to Hague if they want to have any hope of Russia rejoining global economy any time soon.
I don't know if your proposal was supposed to be realistic, but it is just idealistically naive at best. Putin is the Russian system of power. Unless you believe that he is going to willingly turn himself in as soon as the UN makes that demand, I don't see any good coming out of such demand by the UN.
Also, don't forget that Russia is one of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, and there is nothing stopping them from vetoing any such statement from being made in the first place (which is one of the major perks of being the permanent member).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkJUZZpH6M (skip to the end)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEdlINn2uA0
Warning that some of the videos and the account appears to be pro-russian(?).
awful, awful, awful...
I hope to some day see Russian federation dissolved into it's federal states.