One of the more significant results of the election was that Putin got 92.2% in Crimea and 90.2% in Sevastopol.
Moreover, these results were entirely fair.
Here are the relevant graphs from Sergey Shpilkin, who approximates electoral fraud by the extent to which the vote for Putin becomes disproportional relative to the rest of the candidates as turnout increases.
Crimea
Sevastopol
This doesn’t happen at all in the Crimea; in fact, Putin’s share of the vote marginally decreases with higher turnout there.
Here is the same data in 3D format, via Dmitry Kobak.
The big cluster is the (non-falsified) mass of Russian results, the “comet tail” to the 100/100 point reflects falsified results, while the small, distinct at 65% turnout/90% Putin results represent the Crimea.
Consequently, we can consider the numerous opinion polls that have consistently shown 90%+ of Crimea supporting joining Russia to be electorally certified.
One curious thing about the Crimean vote is that Sobchak [1.6%] did unusually well there, much better than in the rest of the Russian South – no mean achievement, that, considering how the overwhelming vote for Putin pushed down everyone else. Moreover, she almost did as well as Zhirinovsky [1.8%], a pattern only observed in liberal Moscow and Saint-Petersburg amongst the ethnic Russian regions.
What explains this? Crimean Tatars.
Sobchak’s share of the vote.
Crimean Tatars as percentage of the population.
Based on results from Crimean Tatar settlements, it seems that Crimean Tatars tended to have low turnout (around 30%-35%, or half the Russian rate), with those that did turn up, voting 75%-90% for Putin, 5%-15% for Sobchak, and giving everyone else low single digits.
Assuming similar levels of general political apathy as in Russians, it would seem that approximately half of Crimean Tatars are for Russia, as proxied by Putin, while the other half does not want to engage in “his”/Russia’s election.
This would seem to confirm my polls-based assessment of Crimean Tatar attitudes towards Russia being characterized not by uniform hostility, as the Western media would have you believe about Russia’s so-called occupation, but by division and ambiguity.
This would also seem to be a good opportunity to address a historical what-if.
It’s not like, say, the inhabitants of Dnepropetrovsk – one of the regions least supportive of union with Russia in the territories of the putative Novorossiya – was any more anti-Russian than the Crimean Tatars in 2014. To the contrary, support for union with Russia was almost certainly higher even in Dnepropetrovsk [15%] than amongst the Crimean Tatars. So what reason is there to think that if Russia had indeed annexed them that they would going into the forests, as opposed to just not turning up to elections in large numbers and giving Sobchak 10% of the vote?
The economic effect is going to be even nicer for Crimea soon after the bridge is finished.
In contribution to a possible alternative (or complimentary) explanation – albeit a much more disturbing one, particularly to those of us with musically sensitive ears -, the fact hipsters have been recently spotted infiltrating the streets of Simeiz should also be mentioned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgqUvBM3Y8E
Sevastopol has also not been spared.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv9naSyNC7g
Nor – where the subsequent photograph was allegedly taken – has fair Simferopol.
http://ncrim.ru/userfiles/picoriginal/img-20160325133919-693.jpg
The link gave a range of Crimean Tatar turnout as low as 20%, and a detailed example of a place with 30% turnout. It concluded that most Tatars boycotted the election, but of those that voted, 80% or so voted for Putin.
So let’s assume a high figure of 30% Crimean Tatar turnout. If “natural” turnout would have been 60%, 50% of Tatars boycotted and only 80% of the remaining 50% were pro-Putin (so, pro-Russia). So one can say that 40% of Crimean Tatars support the annexation.
Russians are about 15% of the population of Dnipropetrovsk. It is possible that, say, 2/3 of the ethnic Russians and a trivial percentage of ethnic Ukrainians wanted union. This suggests that there would have been a low ceiling for increase in support. After occupation, maybe almost all the Russians and a less-trivial but still small % of Ukrainians would have been happy.
Ukraine wasn’t a Crimean Tatar state. Most Tatars considered it to be better than Russia, but it still wasn’t their own country. Not many Tatars would want to fight or die for Ukraine. While I very much doubt Dnipropetrovsk would have offered mass resistance, Right Sector is from there and there would probably have been some IRA-type activities by local activists, with passive support by other locals. There is the possibility of occupation inspiring stronger patriotism.
To clarify: 40% of Crimean Tatars who care, support the annexation. 60% of those who care (the boycotters plus Sobchak/Yavlinsky voters) oppose it. It is not 40% of all Crimea Tatars, but 40% of likely voters (60% or all voters), half of whom boycotted and 20% of the rest of whom voted for anti-Putin candidates.
Crimea might be different. But in the rest of the country, Sobchak is not a single issue candidate – she squeezed into 4th place on her celebrity fanbase.
I think most people (and probably almost only people) who voted for her – were just her fanbase. And her fanbase. A lot of them are just the people who follow her on instagram and see her life-style as aspirational one.
From Crimea itself, she might anyway just have enough fans to get to the 1.6%. (She has 5.5 million followers on instagram – that are looking at her photos of her dog, or latest sponsored dress she wears).
So let’s assume a high figure of 30% Crimean Tatar turnout. If “natural” turnout would have been 60%, 50% of Tatars boycotted
The general point that you are making is reasonable, but I don’t see how the numbers work out. If 3 in 10 actually voted when 6 in 10 should have voted, then 3 in 10 who should have voted didn’t. Maybe these 3 are more likely to be not voting as a matter of principle. But then there’s still 4 in 10 that we wouldn’t have expected to vote anyway.
Never attribute to principle that which can be adequately explained by laziness.
Who says 2/3? Why not 80% or higher? What exactly constitutes a “trivial percentage”? As is especially true with the former Ukrainian SSR, a number of polls on political preference are subject to change within a relatively short period. Once again reminded of the 2009 poll showing that Putin would win the Ukrainian presidency against all of the actual candidates, as well as any other world leader.
There’s another poll noted by Adomanis, showing that a hypothetical Russian invasion of a good portion of eastern Ukraine wouldn’t be favored by much of the population there, while at the same time not being opposed by most in that group if it occurred. That dynamic concerns anti-Russian hostility not being so great as some suggest, along with apprehension towards the Kiev regime.
Good point on the lazy/apathetic. Something else might be at play as well.
I recall the claim (which I haven’t verified as accurate) that the polling venues for Crimean Tatars aren’t so accommodating in terms of their locale, relative to where much of the Crimean Tatar population lives.
In any event, it’s good to know that not all of them are extreme ethnic cleansing advocates like Mustafa Dzhemilev:
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-crimea-tatars-dzhemilev/25374059.html
A sharp contrast from Putin, who acknowledges the Soviet WW II collective wrongdoing to the Crimean Tatars, while advocating a multiethnic/multilingual Crimea:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/21028
The usual laziness or apathy would account for 4/10. 30% voter turnout obviously doesn’t mean that 70% of the Tatars boycotted. But the drop from previ0us elections (AFAIK, about 60% turnout) would indicate the boycott percentage.
It’s the same with the 2014 elections in Kiev-controlled Ukraine. In 2014 turnout in Dnipropetrovsk was 55.5%, about 10% lower than in 2010. It’s reasonable to assume that those missing 10% were Communist or pro-Yanukovich boycotters.
Well, if 100% of Dnipropetrovsk’s ethnic Russians wished that Ukraine and Russia were united, then that means that zero percent of the city’s ethnic Ukrainian majority felt that way, given that ethnic Russians were about 15% of the population and about 15% of the population of that city wanted Russia and Ukraine to United.
But if 2/3 of ethnic Russians wanted this, it would account for 2/3 of pro-union sentiment or 10% of the city’s population. The other 5% of the city’s population who supported union – a trivial percentage – would come from the city’s ethnic Ukrainians.
You do realize that this poll meant that Ukrainians wanted their own Putin, not that they wished to be part of Russia and led by the actual Putin.
One of the more significant results of the election was that Putin got 92.2% in Crimea and 90.2% in Sevastopol.
I seem to recall that the great Russian share of the population in 2014 was something on the order of 58%, so non ci credo.
Then the onus is on you to demonstrate that the elections in Crimea (and numerous polls) were falsified.
I would consider the possibility that a large percentage doesn’t know what they want. In Crimea: Tatars, Ukrainians, even Russians, and also in Ukraine. The last few years have been disorienting, conflicting passions, desires, hatreds. One reaction to uncertainty is to do nothing. Many people won’t vote, they genuinely don’t know what to do.
As we see with the likes of Savchenko, there will be strange convulsions between extreme patriotism and day-to-day realities. ‘Russophiles’ occasionally ranting about killing all Russians, maybe out of love. Putin and his entourage going on about mutual brotherhood knowing fully well that when the chips are down they will not hesitate to kill the ‘enemy’, brother or no-brother. Tatars are the same.
In a situation like this wild swings are common, surveying people is pointless. In 1790’s in consecutive elections in France (within a year or two), first royalists won big, then the radical Jacobins, and then back again. People were just overwhelmed. Then Bonaparte showed up, lined up a few cannons on a city square, and the confusion was over. That’s where this is heading in Ukraine. Or Ukraine may ‘decentralise’. But this is not about electoral preferences. It is silly to think that a show of hands in a mindless electoral ritual determines history.
Correct if those assumptions are correct.
But are they? While in any one region Russians are of course more Russophile than Ukrainians, it seems to me that most identify with the majority opinion in their region.
Even though Crimea is almost 30% Ukrainian, they are almost as enthusiastic about Russia as Russians (they mathematically have to be for the polls to make sense).
Conversely, Kiev is 13% Russian but had only 5% support for union with Russia; and the figure for Ukrainians in Kiev is surely not 0%.
Even in Lvov oblast, 3.5% are Russians, but support for union with Russia was close to absolute zero.
So, it seems to me that Ukrainians in Crimea, Donbass, and maybe even Dnepropetrovsk are more Russophile, than Russians in say Lvov. Conformity is a powerful drug.
Most Ukrainians have Russian spouses. Living standards have increased. Why is it unbelievable?
Russian and east Ukrainian ethnic identity are pretty flexible with a lot of intermarriage between the two communities (both are Russophone and Christian orthodox). The west Ukrainians are really different as are the Crimean tatars. It is likely that some of the people who previously self identified as Ukrainian now self identify as Russian.
The poll specifically meant Putin by name. A bit creative to automatically interpret that Putin equals any strong leader, with considerable control. Your thought reminds me of an ethnic Ukrainian acquaintance, who maintains the Ukraine needs a strong leader with good vision, who’ll have a great deal of control. BTW, that Ukrainian pretty much thinks along my lines – specifically, counter-Euromaidan, favoring closer and friendlier ties to Russia, while not blaming Crimea or Russia with the fotmer’s break from Ukraine.
In any event, it’s very tough to have a Ukrainian version of Putin (whether pro-Russian or otherwise) prevail, given the realities in Ukraine.
Your other point doesn’t take away from what I said regarding the Adomanis referenced poll (which I can probably dig up). As you probably know, there’s a view (not necessarily so off base) that Russia has taken pro-Russian sentiment in Ukraine for granted, which in turn has helped to better pave the way for the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan scenarios.
The commenter A. A. wrote that most Russians in majority Ukrainian regions are married to Ukrainians, while the opposite is true of Ukrainians in the Crimea, the only Russian majority region of Ukraine.
So I think there must be a cap on the number of Ukrainians supporting a union with Russia, at least until they assimilate to Russian opinions sufficiently. But how can it happen if local opinion will remain majority hostile?
So in summary, it’s likely that about 24% of Crimean Tatars support Russia (80% of 30%), 36% oppose Russia, and 40% are indifferent to Russia.
Keep in mind, however, that several thousand anti-Russian Crimean Tatars have left Crimea since 2014.
Although this seems realistic, it’s actually not so. At least, not to the extent that you think.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280735749_Gene_pool_similarities_and_differences_between_Ukrainians_and_Russians_of_Slobozhanshchina_based_on_Y-chromosome_data
Genetic research on ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians in the border regions (Slobozhanshchina) shows that a Ukrainian in Belgorod, Russia is more like a Ukrainian in Lviv than like his Russian neighbor (although both groups are very similar to each other); and ethnic Russian from Kharkiv is more like a southern Russian than like his Ukrainian neighbor.
Russian vs. Ukrainian ethnic breakdown is meaningful for the Hapsburg Ukraine, somewhat meaningful for the central Ukraine (outside Kiev,) and meaningless for the Northern, Eastern, and Southern Ukraine. The one-sided Russia-Ukraine conflict is 95% political, 5% ethnic.
As for Sevastopol, the results there are highly credible. You see, this city had been a major Navy base for 250 years. And, during the Soviet era, it was a closed city; i.e. you couldn’t just just move there for settlement. As the result, a huge percentage of Sevastopol’s population are Navy men or descendants of Navy men. Think Virginia Beach, or Honolulu, or San Diego — on steroids.
Sevastopol is the most patriotic Russian city in the Universe.
To illustrate, here is a song (in Russian) by a well known singer-songwriter Alexander Gorodnitsky. He is Jewish and a conventional Westernized liberal. But in 2007 he visited Sevastopol and sensed something about the place, which he expressed in this prophetic song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1XmlQN-cA0
This city will come back,
Sevastopol will remain Russian!
(Listen to the audience reaction.)
Of course. So?
Correct, but given the Russian nature of the place, the kind of Ukrainians who wanted to settle there were probably the kind that didn’t mind Russian rule. Not all, of course – but by this election, the Ukrainian patriots among them have largely left.
As should be continuously noted for accuracy sake, it can be a very fine line in determining ethnic Russian from ethnic Ukrainian.
Keep in mind that in the former Habsburg ruled Ukraine (western Ukraine), the Greek Catholic denomination is the minority Christian community in that area. A good number of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians there aren’t so pro-Russian.
The Rusyns in Trans-Carpathia (a part of western Ukraine) are generally not known for being against Russia. Some view the Rusyns as Ukrainians, who haven’t accepted the modern day notion of Ukraine/Ukrainian. The Rusyn numbers are relatively small.
The ethnic Ukrainians in the disputed former Moldovan SSR territory of Pridnestrovie (which was part of the Ukrainian SSR prior to WW II) are generally pro-Russian. There’re also ethnic Hungarians and Romanians in the former Ukrainians SSR, who’re generally not known for being supportive of Ukrainian nationalist positions.
Since the end of WW II, the predominating Ukrainian Galicia/Volhynia slant has gained momentum in Kiev itself – thanks to an influx of folks from that western area.
In your prior set of comments, you clearly suggested that the poll at issue meant something other than Putin.
There were American or German commenters who proposed that Orbán should be elected American president or German chancellor. I’m a great proponent of Hungarian world power (though Hungarian jokes about it usually involve the Hungarian-Japanese common border in the Far East), but even I am pleasantly surprised to learn that these people were wishing for their respective countries to be annexed by Hungary.
This is very plausible. Sevastopol had the highest rates of people taking an online test to assess their fitness for the Russian Army during 2012-2017, even though they only joined 40% of the way through that “experiment.”
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/yaroslavl-brights-buryat-patriots/
It’s not only peer pressure, but selection: Ukrainians who choose to live in a mostly Russian place such as Crimea probably tend to be more pro-Russian. There was a large exodus of Russians from Lviv after independence; the ones who stayed are probably ones who don’t mind Ukrainian nationalism.
A good point. Although I also suspect the larger the Russian population, the smaller the pressure to assimilate.
Also – I may have been wrong on the 15% figure for Russians in Dnipropetrovsk. I got it from wiki, which (as I see now) got it from a poll.
The 2001 census had Russians at 23.5% in Dnipropetrovsk, vs 13% in Kiev. Assuming some drift since then, it was probably around 20% in Dnipropetrovsk in 2014 at the time of your poll.
So if pro-Russian sentiment is only twice as great among ethnic Russians than among ethnic Ukrainians in Dnipropetrovsk you would have a rather small % of ethnic Ukrainians in favor of it (10% at most), and thus a low ceiling for growth in support.
If Russia were to have conquered Ukraine in 2014, there would be, as you stated, somewhere between IRA and Chechnya resistance (probably more like Chechnya) in Western Ukraine, IRA-like resistance in Kiev (occasional bombings and shootings of Russian forces, locals offering a lot of passive support and refusing to cooperate with Russia), and Catalonia in places like Dnipropetrovsk.
In other words, such a question cannot be taken literally seriously.
Would they vote for Putin if he was a candidate in Ukraine? Well, Putin is not a Ukrainian citizen, so it’s literally impossible. Also, would Putin even want to run?
Would they vote for him, if he were a Ukrainian citizen? But Ukraine doesn’t recognize dual citizenship.
Would they vote for him, if he renounced his Russian citizenship? But then he wouldn’t be Russian president. Besides, why would he do that..?
Would they vote for him, if he were Ukrainian?
The question literally doesn’t make sense. The only way to understand it is:
Would you vote for a Ukrainian candidate who would be similar to Putin (e.g. similar background, ambition, personality, etc.), did such a candidate exist?
According to that poll at the time (circa late 2009), Putin would win the Ukrainian presidency, if he was able to run and chose to do so. As noted, that poll also had him winning that vote against other major world leaders including Obama.
The points you bring up concern reservations about voting for Putin. Hence, Putin would’ve won as indicated in that poll.
Again, the question as stated already implies that the world leaders in question would not be leaders of their respective countries. Therefore, it’s not a vote on personal union between Ukraine and the respective countries.
As to why Putin won… would you like your leader to be like Obama, who hates the core population of his own country? Or Merkel? (Ditto.) Etc.
I agree with your argument, but another possibility I have entertained is that these swings in public opinion result from what we might call “patriarchal domino effects.”
My assumption is that Slavic wives and daughters are more likely to vote like their male kin than we are used to in the West and that this means that a flipped male vote is leveraged by the females in his household. If this assumption holds, we would expect rising nationalist fervor in the male population to translate into huge opinion swings once these nationalists begin to influence their families.
It’s not hard to think of other explanations for dramatic swings in public opinion — conformism, state propaganda, preferring a strong horse over a weak, and so on —
but this might add to those.
So, Tatars are roughly against the Russian option but they are not motivated enough to go guerrilla. That would be disappointing for some NATO hardliners proposing to “inject chaos” in Crimea.
What Tatars want? Returning Crimea to Ukraine or just “we don’t care”?
It’s your contention that a 91-9 margin (i.e 10-1) is kosher even though the population which was neither Ukrainian nor Russian stood at 18% ‘ere the annexation. That aside, 10-1 margins in favor of a particular political course of action are certainly unusual in countries where electoral institutions are well established (and where they aren’t, while we’re at it). You see them among certain population subsets where communal identity matters a great deal. Is that the case with Putin v. Grudninin v. Zhirinovksy v. etc?
There is something to that. It probably has more impact during times of crisis and encroaching violence. It might work equally well in Western societies – when in doubt, when in danger, follow the biggest man in your immediate surrounding.
Conformism is a fear of disapproval, a desire to fit in. Here, I think most Western societies have a higher built-in conformism than eastern Europe. Maybe there is more to lose, maybe rebellion has been bred out in the West, but I am always amazed by voluntary quiet conformist attitudes in the West. The fear of being seen as a ‘trouble-maker’ is palpable.
I personally think that propaganda is a symptom, not a core issue. It has only small and temporary impact. But I could be wrong, and sometimes looking at naive credulity that most high-IQ westerners display, I am probably wrong. They buy the propaganda and that is sad.
It is silly to think that a show of hands in a mindless electoral ritual determines history.
Every Communist must grasp the truth; “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
“Problems of War and Strategy” (November 6, 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 224.
Quotations from Mao Tse Tung
I was talking about cultural identity rather than genetics, my grandpa, dedshkas family came from Kharkov originally , he had to move to Moscow in the 1930s, the cultural divide was much further west and there was a great deal of intermarriage.
It is a bit like my ex girlfriend who is British, of Irish grandparentage but is very English.
There might be some kind of siege mentality since 2014 in Russia, and also at least one ongoing hot military conflict, and, perhaps more relevant, another frozen or half-frozen one in Ukraine, right next door to Crimea. Crimea itself was just annexed by Russia as basically part of that conflict. It was a wartime election. Especially in the Crimea, where it was probably also seen as a plebiscite to reinforce the earlier decision to join Russia, and to discourage any attempt to return them to Ukraine.
Even under less abnormal conditions, 90% is not necessarily unusual in a small and homogeneous community. For example President Roosevelt got 93.5% in Mississippi in 1944, and I guess he didn’t have such a total control over the press and media as Putin.
But probably Putin’s very large share of the votes (not so much in Crimea as elsewhere) was to some extent a result of his control of the media and the press.
Of those, a large portion of the Tatars boycotted the election, as we have just been discussing. Those who voted predominantly did so in favor.
Those who are neither Russian, nor Ukrainian, nor Tatar, are probably in principle indifferent. Except that their living standards just got a huge boost. So they must be supportive, too. Though if I had to guess, I’d guess their turnout was significantly lower than that of ethnically Russian voters.
Upon a quick perusal, this is what I found on that poll:
http://russiaotherpointsofview.typepad.com/russia_other_points_of_vi/2009/06/ukraine-a-union-state-with-russia.html
Doesn’t take away from what I said. Crimea had been content enough to stay in Ukraine. What transpired in Kiev shortly before and after the coup against Yanukovych, led to that area changing course, in conjunction with Russia’s preference.
The Euromaidan led to an increase in some pro-Russian and anti-Russian elements, faultily (IMO) seeking to partition the former Ukrainian SSR (more radically from the current status quo), which I argued would be difficult and ill advised. On this matter, I had an informal exchange with Alexander Mercouris (pro-Russian leaning) and another with Ethan Burger (anti-Russian slanted) – folks who suggested the partition route.
Overall, Russia hasn’t been so willing to see a post-Soviet union state involving itself and Ukraine – something more closely structured than the Russian involved Eurasian Customs Union. This doesn’t mean that they should give up on a friendlier Ukraine. Within reason, it has been said that the Kremlin initially took for granted and/or hasn’t effectively supported (as it could) pro-Russian elements in Ukraine to have greater influence.
Re: “So, Tatars are roughly against the Russian option but they are not motivated enough to go guerrilla. That would be disappointing for some NATO hardliners proposing to “inject chaos” in Crimea.
What Tatars want? Returning Crimea to Ukraine or just ‘we don’t care’?”
Their under 15% number in Crimea, relative to the rest of the population there doesn’t make that option a good one.
Keeping in mind that not all of the Crimean Tatars are so against Russia and for Ukraine. If anything, this scenario has increased. It’s not like Crimea was such a great place for them when it was part of post-Soviet Ukraine.
Know of someone with a relative, who was in a pre-2014 Ukrainian marine operation against Tatar activists. According to this source, that matter was hushed because of an anti-Russian element in Ukraine seeking to use the Crimean Tatars. Pre-2014, Taras Kuzio had an article posted by the Jamestown Foundation, which spoke of a terrorist problem among Crimean Tatars.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend concept doesn’t often work so neatly. Serbs aside, I don’t see Croats and Albanians getting along so well, as acknowledged to me by some Croats.
Crimea has same access to the media – in which many diverging views are available if you want it – as the rest of the country.
Well, Putin controls the media in the whole country. And people are lazy. If they have to actively look to see, then they won’t see. Probably as true in Russia as elsewhere.
Putin doesn’t control all of the media in Russia. Overall, Russians are arguably better informed about the West, than vice versa.
Many millions of people are following alternative views in the media (the media is free, with only an exception for those publishing material that creates racial/national hatred).
Millions of people listen to Moscow Echo each week.
Or even just on the youtube – look at viewcount for TV Rain youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/tvrainru/about
The other polls cited there better support your point.
The point is, all except the most naive voters, are aware of all the problems (e.g. that the Kremlin top get rich).
This is part of the deal. The problems don’t make the alternative more attractive, or enthuse you to vote for Grudinin, let alone – let’s imagine, Navalny.
English language media portrays it as if everyone is ultra-enthusiastic for the current authorities. No – people are aware of problems, they were not ‘born yesterday’. People are voting despite these problems, and in a general awareness of them, and with rarely more than a medium enthusiasm level (much like in other democracies – which are, in their favour, a little more competitive).
One has to ask what is competitiveness. By any elementary standard the ‘most democratic‘ democracy is the one where outcomes best correspond to what majority of people want. Where people get what they want, period. All else is process and social noise.
One can have a ‘competitive’ democracy with exciting elections and yet none of the preferences that people have is reflected are in the outcomes. What’s the point of that? An excitement of a horse race, with no real link to reality. And frankly, lately even the competitiveness of elections in the West has often been lacking. The fear of real change has been paralysing – voters are offered Merkels, Mays, Macrons over and over again. With a preventive demonisation and marginalisation of any alternatives. Lots of work to prevent actual voters having much of a say.
My test for Putin winning in Russia is how do his policies and results match what majority wants. In some areas very minimally, e.g. the oligarch-corruption complex or relatively open labor market to Central Asian migrants. In others more so: foreign policy, better economy, better social policies. Comparing to Western leaders the preferences-to-results equation seems more ‘democratic’. Let’s address that and not perceptions.
The general view across ex-Yugoslavia (of course, far from universally shared, but very widespread) is that Albanians from Kosovo are clannish, criminal, medieval savages. Albanians from Albania have a much better reputation, as being more “civilised”. A possible reason for this is that traditional Albanian society and religious structures were ravaged and repressed under Hoxha in Albania, while under the Yugo-communists they merely had to encounter modernity aka factory jobs and consumerism (as all traditional societies had to at some point). Stalinism vs. Coca-cola socialism. Or it could be the pre-existing north-south divide among the Albanians themselves, since the north (northern Albania and Kosovo) were and are more clannish and “backward” than the south. The blood feuds and arranged marriages are almost exclusively a northern Albanian phenomenon.
Another stereotype is that Kosovo Albanians are okay to deal with one-on-one, that such encounters can even be amicable and semi-pleasant, but woe betide you if you encounter them in a pack of five or ten.
Of course, Croats and Bosnian Muslims don’t shed many tears over Serbs’ travails with Albanians, but it definitely doesn’t imply any great sympathy or fellow-feeling for the Albanians themselves.
/digression
In the late 1980s (88 0r 89?) all of the then Yugo republics agreed that Kosovo’s status as an “autonomous” unit within the Serb republic had to change on account of the growing lawlessness within the Albanian community.
Somewhat reminded of the situation in Chechnya, following the first war there in the 1990s.
Northern Albania was a key strategic point for KLA activity. Serbs had ample reason to bomb that area. The neocons would of course disagree, while supporting Israeli strikes on Lebanon and Syria, as well as Turkish strikes on Kurds outside of Turkey, when Turkey was on better terms with Israel.
A few years back, a Serb told me that the Albanians in Montenegro haven’t been troublesome.
Offhand, I think that roughly 70% of Albanians are Muslim, 20% Orthodox Christian and 10% Roman Catholic. If I’m not mistaken, the Orthodox Christian Albanians aren’t greatly situated in Kosovo.
This is 100% pure, unadulterated bullshit. “””Ukrainian””” immigrants should never, ever talk about Ukraine ever, they know more about Narnia than about their putative “””home””” country.
Beware of genetic research and polls that might not be so accurate.
He has said some beauts like Ukraine being with Poland for a longer period than with Russia.
In fairness, some of his detractors have been over the top. Of course, Ukrainian immigrants have the right to say what they want. It’s not like they’re monolithic.
Knowledgeable balance as a truism, as opposed to some Canadian based academic, who bashes a certain venue, as the former links to “Russia Without BS” and some other anonymous obscure sources, while not linking to the Strategic Culture Foundation, among others offering some keen insight.
Should read as knowledgeable balance being a truer ideal to what’s brought up afterwards.
Not that RI isn’t without legit criticism. It’s hypocritical to go after it, while being soft on The NYT still employing Juliet Macur after she wrote a bigoted anti-Russian piece, followed by her ongoing bias against Russians.
Not always.
In Gibraltar, the vote to remain British was north of 99.9% (IIRC there were 10 votes against).
And in the Brexit referendum Gib voted 96% for Remain.
Peer-reviewed article written by Russian researchers. Sorry you don’t like science.
Since genetically an ethnic Ukrainian from Belgorod is more like an ethnic Ukrainian from Lviv than loke his Russian neighbor, mixing must not have been as extensive as some people assume.
No
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/poll-crimean-tatars-support-joining-russia.png
from https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/john-o%E2%80%99loughlin-gerard-toal/crimean-conundrum
Part of Poland or Lithuania longer than part of Russia.
Times varied by region.
Timeline:
Kiev City and eastern Ukraine: Lithuania, Poland 1362 – 1648 (about 300 years); independent 1648-1654 (6 years); autonomous (own military, legal system, locally elected ruler) but under the Russian tsar until 1709 (55 years); diminished autonomy until 1764 (55 years); integrated part of Russian Empire until 1917 (153 years); Ukrainian SSR 1918- 1991 (73 years); independent Ukraine 1991-present (27 years). Total: Russia 336 years, Poland 300 years, not-Russia 333 years and counting
The “Right Bank” – everything west of the river Dnipro, including most of Kiev province but not Kiev City: part of Lithuania and Poland 1362-1793 (429 years); integrated part of Russia until 1917 (124 years); Ukrainian SSR 1919-1991 (72 years); independent Ukraine 1991-present (25 years). Total: Russia 196 years, Poland 449 years, not-Russia 456 years and counting
Volynia – same as “Right Bank” but unlike the rest of the Right Bank was part of Poland from 1919-1939, missing the first 20 years of Soviet rule. Total: Russia 176 years, Poland 449 years, not-Russia 476 years and counting
Galicia – part of Poland 1349-1772 (423 years); part of Austria 1772-1918 (146 years); part of Poland 1919-1939 (20 years), part of Ukrainian SSR 1939-1991 (52 years); independent Ukraine 1991-present (25 years). Total: Russia 52 years, Poland 443 years, not-Russia 616 years and counting
Election results contradict what you think the poll meant. According to the elections, about 24% of Crimean Tatars support Russia (80% of 30%), 36% oppose Russia, and 40% are indifferent to Russia.
From the same poll:
https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_xlarge/wysiwyg_imageupload/555470/Screen%20Shot%202015-03-03%20at%2017.55.32.png
Most Crimean Tatars thought it was a problem.
We’ll see what kind of ‘beauts’ the master of illusion comes up with now? 🙂
Warning: his last resort is to accuse his protagonist of ‘cherry picking’ the facts, eh Mickey? 🙂
Very funny. Were those items on the ballot?
From the same poll the number of Tatars who believe that joining Russia was the right choice, more than the number of Tatars who believe that it was wrong. About
problems are completely irrelevant.
Why, can you point to any that cause you some consternation? If not, I’ll remain suspicious of you and your brand of unsubstantiated BS!
No.
Novgorod and territory near it are a part of Russia. The Novgorod prince who resettled Kiev, did so around the time of the academically termed “Kievan Rus” – Rus.
Rus, Russian Empire and USSR periods constitute modern day Russia and Ukraine. If you’re going to say that Russia didn’t exist for all of these periods, you’d have to for objective consistency sake say the same for Ukraine and Poland. The person credited for founding Suzdal near Moscow, was the Kiev prince who also had title to the Kiev throne.
Utilizing fact based substantive details, much unlike your troll self.
Such was previously followed up on with specifics, much unlike your sorry trolling self.
What specifics? Be specific now, Mickey (not more of your BS). 🙂
Following up on my comments in number 61 at this thread, Kiev itself was with Rus 882 to 1363. Kiev then became part of Lithuania (not Poland) from 1569-1649, along with some of what’s now modern day Russia. From 1649-1649, Kiev was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Thereafter, Kiev was part of the Russian Empire and USSR, until the latter’s demise. During the Russian Civil War period, Kiev wasn’t part of Poland, as the former’s status was contested among warring factions.
Moscow’s origin traces back to 1147 as part of Rus.
You’re confusing your MO with myself. You remind one of the guy sitting in the upper deck, yelling unsophisticated comments.
It was the right decision of the authorities, not whether they personally agreed or supported this decision, or benefitted from it.
They did say that the decision caused problems for them.
And in the Russian election, they demonstrated personal opposition by boycotting or voting for polticians who did not support the decision.
blah, blah, blah, where’s the beef Mickey?
You stated:
I stated:
Still waiting for a clear answer….
Your trolling self omits mention that the specifics at issue were previously detailed. At this point, you really don’t deserve a response, given your overly dull and stupid delivery.
Rus disappeared in 1241 (proto-Russia had been separated from it a couple years earlier) but ceased being a unified state after the death of Mstislav in 1132. For the first century or two it was a Scandinavian project. Scandinavian overlords conquered Slavs, forced them to pay tribute, and sold them as slaves to Arabs. When the Drevlian Slavs rebelled, for example, Helga (Olga) slaughtered them en masse.
I suppose Smolensk and Paris were both ruled by Germans for a couple years in the 1940s but this wouldn’t qualify as being part of one country in a meaningful sense.
Rus ceased being a unified country after the death of Mstislav in 1132.
From the same poll
“Consistent with and motivating positivity about Crimea’s direction, the annexation of the peninsula by Russia has the support of a strong majority of the Russian and Ukrainian ethnic groups. When asked if the annexation was a ‘wrong decision,’ ‘generally a right decision’ or ‘absolutely the right decision’, 84% of this combined group picked the third option. The Tatar response on this question is almost split evenly, with about one-third picking each of the first options and only 20% the ‘absolutely correct’ option.”
Gibraltar has a population of 29,000, not 2 million
The question at hand there was whether or not to turn the territory over to Spain, not which politician among a group of 7 to whom to hand off the presidency.
The other fellow quotes me Roosevelt’s margin in Mississippi in 1944. The question at hand is not whether something is possible, but whether it’s credible in a given context. Voting among whites in the Deep South was an identity affirmation and you see those sorts of margins in that case. It’s an identity affirmation among blacks nowadays (which it was not in 1955, go figure). What ‘identity’ are you affirming by voting for Putin over Grudenin or Putin over Zhirinovsky? Given that the population of Crimea had several communal components in 2014, is it really credible you run up identity affirmations with that ratio of one to the other?
That wasn’t the poll question. That was from a journalist writing in an article about the poll.
Poll had these questions: was the decision of the Crimean authorities to join Russia the wrong decision, generally right decsion, absolutelty right decision. Most Tatars said it was generally or absolutely right decision by the authorities (about 57%). claimingthis means support for annexation is only one interpretation (perhaps they felt that struggle would have been worse?). Interpreting this as support is contradicted by another question on the same survey: On the same survey, about 65% of Crimean Tatar stated that joining Russia was a large problem or quite a problem for them. Only 3% said it was not a problem.
In the Russian election, Crimean Tatars had a chance to show support for the man who united Crimea with Russia. 50% of likely Crimean Tatar voters boycotted the election (assuming baseline of 60% – voter participation was only 30%). Of those who voted, abut 80% voted for Putin. So 26% of Crimean Tatars supported the man who united Crimea and Russia.
When asked if the annexation was a ‘wrong decision,’ ‘generally a right decision’ or ‘absolutely the right decision’
Its ‘wrong /right decision’ for Crimea and Crimeans. For this not waste time for mental gimnastic
Not the same as “am I pleased the annexation happened.”
It is you who are engaging in mental gymnastists, by ignoring the other question in the same survey, and ignoring subsequent behavior in the election.
You create a spurious category of “identity affirmation” in order to try to use a “no true Scotsman” type argument here.
Given the broad overall success of Putin in bringing Russia from the parlous state it was in when he took over, to the far better in almost every way condition it is in now, and given the likelihood that this will be Putin’s last spell in government anyway, and given the absence of any useful alternatives, and given the general high approval ratings Putin has, and given the specific improvement in Crimea’s status thanks to his dramatic intervention there, it’s perfectly plausible, if impressive, that he would get this kind of high vote total there.
Of course, your kind have spent most of your time denying all these facts and insisting, counter to all the evidence, that in reality Russia is going downhill, doomed, a “pariah state”, run by a hated tyrant, etc etc, so it’s not at all surprising that you find yourself ambushed by reality yet again. If you were instead a member of the reality based community, to coin a phrase, you wouldn’t find reality so confusing.
You could of course try reading and honestly considering the points made on this very site, by Anatoly and in a couple of other recent articles:
Why I’m Voting for Putin
Vladimir the Savior
I already laid out my deep reservations about this argument in another thread.
I also find in these discussions a disturbing trend toward genetic reductionism (“Look how far apart we are in this cluster analysis — we couldn’t possibly be anything alike!”). I sometimes wonder if this is the natural defence-mechanism of the diaspora. Genes as the ties that bind, so to speak.
You create a spurious category of “identity affirmation”
It’s spurious only in the space between your ears. Back in the real world, margins of that character show up in communally fissured societies: black v. white, Anglophone v. Francophone, Catholic v. Protestant. They’re really rare anywhere else. Putin wasn’t running against some local satrap of the Tatar population.
Of course, your kind have spent most of your time denying
I’ll take you seriously when you can come within 1,000 miles of accurately summarizing my thesis in this thread and other threads. You’re nowhere near it.
Nice try, but no cigar for you.
Rus continued to exist til around 1240 as is universally accepted.
Your Smolensk-Paris 1940s analogy is off the mark, given how they were inhabited by two very ethnically different peoples, who were each part of a different and established nation, prior to WW II. Many in the international community didn’t accept Poland’s demise, following the Nazi attack on it. Likewise, Rus’ end didn’t stop the territory associated with it to willingly seek the occupation of others.
Olga was from Pskov. Her Scandinavian roots is hypothetical and by no means firmly established. The Drevelians killed her husband, Igor of Kiev. After Igor’s death, Olga ruled the academically termed Kievan Rus (Rus), as regent on behalf of their son Sviatoslav.
Once again, noting that this matter relates to your incorrect comment stating that Ukraine has a longer period with Poland than with Russia.
Because this requires a kind of siege mentality, which you can rarely find in established democracies. It needs to be us (united in voting for party X) vs. them (everyone else). Please note that the “rally around the flag” effect, making wartime leaders more popular, is basically a special case of this.
Now in Russia in general and in the Crimea in particular there were several reasons for Putin’s extraordinary performance. (I have already stated them, but you dismissed them anyway without answering why a combination of them couldn’t lead to his very high performance.)
1) There is currently no viable alternative for Putin.
2) All of Russia has a kind of siege mentality, with a new Cold War transpiring, where the population perceives to be under attack by a coalition of much stronger powers. (NATO) This leads to a rally around the flag effect in all of Russia.
3) Russians like a strong leader. Even Yeltsin was re-elected amid the greatest economic catastrophe of the century. Though there is some debate if fraud played a role, apparently it didn’t.
4) Putin increased the territory of the country. This in a country which still hasn’t recovered from the psychological blow of losing a lot of its territory and superpower status. This also increases the rally around the flag effect, basically a very visible victory in the new Cold War.
5) In the Crimea living standards have improved considerably recently. This increases Putin’s already high approval ratings above the rest of the country.
6) The Crimea is the territory which was annexed (see point 4). This greatly increases the rally around the flag effect – the population perceives (quite correctly) that there is a risk of losing their province to the enemy. (Contrary to your assertion the rally around the flag effect is not rational, so people won’t just vote for Zhirinovsky or some other ultranationalist. Often during wartime or in times of a terrorist attack leftist governments increase their support over more patriotically minded opposition parties as a result, so I don’t think it’s out of the ordinary that people vote for Putin and not Zhirinovsky in these circumstances.)
7) As we just discussed, many of the Tatars were boycotting the election.
8) One opposition candidate called for a boycott, too.
9) More importantly, due to the nature of the annexation, anyone opposed to Putin was more likely to question the legitimacy of the area belonging to Russia at all, and so was likely to stay at home.
To sum it up, Putin had a very large support all around Russia, which could only be larger in the Crimea due to local circumstances, and anyone not supporting him was more likely to boycott the election than anywhere else.
This is not necessarily true. Times spent during formative periods might be more important than later times.
Discussion involved being part of one state. Rus ceased being one state in the 1130s.
Scandinavians ruled and sold into slavery various Slavic and Finnic tribes.
Different tribes prior to Scandinavian taking over.
And there Brits born in India.
As solidly established as anything can be for those times. Its the consensus view. Even RT doesn’t deny it:
https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/history-and-mythology/princess-olga-of-kiev/
According to the most traditional theory, recorded in the Primary Chronicle, Olga was born in Pskov (currently a city in the northwest of Russia) into a family of Varyag origin. Varyags were also known as Vikings or Norsemen, who came to the territory of current Russia, Ukraine and Belarus during the 8th and 9th centuries. This theory about Olga’s birth also explains the origin of her name, which is derived from the Scandinavian “Helga.” Other historical versions state that Olga was either a daughter of Oleg Veshchy, the founder of the state of Kievan Rus, or had Bulgarian roots.
Russia comes from Moscow, which didn’t even exist when Rus was a united state.
In Crimea, this election was largely seen as a referendum on reunification, and Putin was rewarded for making it happen.
If an election had taken place in the Falkland Islands in 1983 (they don’t actually vote in UK elections) then the Tories would have won close to 100% of the vote (they do actually have a Thatcher Day holiday).
So, the reult in Crimea seems to be credible.
It will be dismissed by Art Deco because the Falkland Islands have a small population.
I reread all of your comments at this thread – nothing at all ‘detailed’ regarding:
which is at the crux of our discussion. Perhaps, your ‘details’ are at some other thread, or maybe you’re just making this stuff up (I wouldn’t be surprised)?
US history includes the Confederacy, even though it sought to break from the US. Eventually the two became united again.
Moscow existed when Rus did. California wasn’t a US state during the US Civil War, while having a good number of Mexicans and non-WASPs. So What!
Meantime, Novgorod, Suzdal and other areas of modern day Russia were with Rus at its zenith, prior to the Mongol subjugation period.
English Wikipedia correctly notes that Olga’s supposed Scandinavian roots is pure supposition and not a well established act, as is the case. Ditto the origin of her name. her DNA doesn’t appear to be available. RT like any major outlet isn’t always right. No one is perfect.
I didn’t make things up in the manner that you disingenuously suggest.
On the matter of surprise, it’d be surprising to see you come up with some fact based points, instead of sleazy innuendo, the MO of anonymous troll cowards.
As a follow-up to my comment 87 at this thread, your mention of Brits born in India is flippantly off base, in the form of a faulty analogy – far from a scientific approach.
Brits had nothing to do with the leaders making up India centuries ago.
Confederacy lasted 4 years. Rus split up in 1135 and never reunited. Russia gathered those lands together hundreds of years later.
Not as a unified state, which we were discussing.
Russia did not emerge from Novgorod. It destroyed it. Russia did eventually emerge from Suzdal. Suzdal was founded in 1024, after Olga’s rule, after Vladimir’s rule, indeed barely 100 years before Rus split apart.
It is the consensus, mainstream view among historians (“Hagiographical tradition characterized Olga as of Scandinavian origin and of non-noble birth”; Makariy, Istoriya Russkoy Tserkvi, I, 3rd ed. (Spb., 1889), 268; Golubinsky, Ist. Russ. Tserkvi, I, i, 74.).
You don’t think that Olga is the Slavic way of writing Helga?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_(name)
“Olga is a Slavic female given name, derived from Old Norse name Helga. It is used in Russia (Ольга), Ukraine (Ольга, transliterated Olha), Belarus (Вольга, transliterated Vol’ha),”
You prefer fairytales.
The Falklands consists of a four-digit population of Scots which the Argentine military attempted to kidnap and subjugate. The Crimea consists of a seven-digit population with some degree of ethnic variegation and with no antecedent consensus on who the ultimate authority should be. Margins of 10-1 and greater are unremarkable in one circumstance, not in the other.
All things being equal, small populations have more homogeneous outlooks than larger populations. This isn’t that difficult.
You’re a complete joke Mickey – a scatterbrained oddball not able to focus on the question at hand. My ‘fact based point’ is to have you explain why you make unsupportable statements like this:
Why do you feel that genetic research is inaccurate?
Mickey, no need to answer this question any longer. AP provides us with the answer:
I didn’t say otherwise, but obviously you didn’t address any of my other points.
A 99.9% result in a population of 30,000 is as remarkable as a 90% vote in a population of 2 million. And the population of Gib is pretty diverse as well.
When it comes to the National Question, near unanimous votes are not unusual. In Northern Ireland, 90% of Catholics vote Nationalist and Protestants vote Unionist. Ditto in the referendums that triggered the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Opinion polls and the referendum show 90%+support for reunification in Crimea and that vote went to Putin. Simples.
You’re the one here preferring fairy tales, with wild analogies like the one about Brits born in India, relative to the centuries Russian-Ukrainian togetherness going back to Rus.
That Rus had the misfortune of a lengthy occupation didn’t end the commonality of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus tracing their history to Rus, followed by the emergence of the Russian Empire and the overall unfortunate USSR experience.
You fail to prove that Olga had a Scandinavian or mostly background. You can’t say for sure how much of her DNA was Scandinavian as it’s unknown. Show proof of most historians on this matter in support of your belief which is a opinion masqueraded as fact. English Wiki tends to side with “most” on such an issue. English Wiki doesn’t do so in this instance.
Novgorod is an integral part of Russia and Russian history, as Russia itself correctly acknowledges. Novgorod wasn’t destroyed in the manner of Atlanta and a number of other examples.
Keep barking BS like the schmegegges in the cheap seats.
Following up on my post 97, the origin of the name Olga (Scandinavian 0r not) doesn’t disprove my core contentions. One of Obama’s daughters is named Sasha. I’ve a Jamaican friend who named his daughter Natalia. Some Latin Americans with no Slavic background have names like Vladimir.
Likewise, I’m sure there’re a good number of women from former Habsburg ruled Ukraine with common a genetic makeup from that area who’re named Olga.
Again, the Crimea wasn’t voting on a national question, it was choosing between a menu of Russian politicians. I think Yavlinksy was talking up another referendum, but that’s it. There is no analogue to Unionist v. Sinn Fein in the Crimea (and, while we’re at it, there are several unionist and several nationalist parties in Ulster, as well as a temporizer party).
Gibraltar may be ‘ethnically diverse’, but it has owed allegiance to the British crown for 300 years. There was no movement in the territory for Spanish sovereignty. The whole mess was driven by Spanish pride and Spanish effrontery. Ditto the Falklands. The stated position of Spain and Argentina in both controversies is that the preferences of the locals do not matter at all. That guarantees a big screw-you vote.
Obviously the Crimean voters considered it to be a vote on the national question. They are in an external conflict and they are rallying around the flag.
Besides, most of those who considered the annexation of Crimea wrong stayed away. This probably restricted the range of voters.
The same is true of Ukraine and NATO/EU. They don’t think the status of Crimea is negotiable – they think it should go to Ukraine. They also think Putin is an evil dictator whose annexation of Crimea was on a par with Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland.
So they said eff you, and voted for Putin. Most of those who disagreed likely didn’t vote at all.
Lengthy occupations do tend to end commonalities. Compare the English language after Norman rule to the German language it once resembled.
I provided sources demonstrating that this is the consensus among among experts. You provide wishful thinking.
I already did:
“Hagiographical tradition characterized Olga as of Scandinavian origin and of non-noble birth”; Makariy, Istoriya Russkoy Tserkvi, I, 3rd ed. (Spb., 1889), 268; Golubinsky, Ist. Russ. Tserkvi, I, i, 74.
Russiapedia:
“According to the most traditional theory, recorded in the Primary Chronicle, Olga was born in Pskov (currently a city in the northwest of Russia) into a family of Varyag origin. Varyags were also known as Vikings or Norsemen, who came to the territory of current Russia, Ukraine and Belarus during the 8th and 9th centuries. This theory about Olga’s birth also explains the origin of her name, which is derived from the Scandinavian “Helga.”
So yes, this is the traditonal theory. There are others, but they are not the main theory.
Novgorod was destroyed by Russia, its people scattered, and reduced to a small town. Russia emerged from Moscow, which emerged from Suzdal.
You’re quite stubbornly wrong again.
English is noticeably different from German when compared to Russian and Ukrainian.
Novgorod was very much a part of Rus as well as the Russian Empire. Atlanta got burned to the ground during the US Civil War. So what! Loose or otherwise, Rus existed with enough back and forth interaction within itself – indicative by how modern day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus trace their roots to Rus.
Your presented sources didn’t successfully show whether Olga was or wasn’t Scandinavian, as well as whether she was part Scandinavian. Plenty of credible sources verify this view. She was born in Pskov, part of modern day Russia. No apparent DNA on her.
Moscow existed in the time of Rus, as has been historically documented. Suzdal was developed by a Kiev prince who had dynastic title to govern over Kiev as well.
Your “main theory” point can at times be sheer BS. In the instance under discussion, I’m not sure it’s even a “main theory”.
Regardless, (and to repeat) main theories can be sheer BS. As an example (in conjunction with a recent discussion I had on this very matter), look at the McLaren report, claiming that 1000 Russian athletes benefited from a state sponsored doping campaign. The total number of Russian Olympians and Paralympians in the Winter and Summer games is under 1000, with the overwhelming majority of them clean. As far as much of Western mass media is concerned, there’s an established Russian state sponsored campaign, despite (put mildly) scant evidence – far from actual conclusive proof.
No, it’s actually you that’s acting quite ‘stubbornly’ wrong in refusing to see that AP has more than adequately rebuffed your weak points concerning Rus commonality. Nevertheless, you don’t seem capable to recognize that regardless of the few commonalities that tied the disparate parts of the Rus empire together in its earliest manifestation (a common ruling dynasty, a similar Orthodox church) , as time evolved all three areas that today represent Russia, Ukraine and Belarus evolved their own separate languages, culture and orientations. All three are entitled to their own separate states including all of the rights and privileges associated with statehood.
But wait, aren’t you the one trying desperately to cast some shadow of doubt on the validity of genetic testing:
And now you’re trying to rely on some sort of genetic verification that Olga wasn’t of Norse ancestry, but was Slavic? You can’t have it both ways, Mickey. 🙂
Because French is noticeably different from German compared to Polish from Ukrainian or Russian.
You do know how analogies work, don’t you?
And the Phillipines are named after a Spanish king. And Romania is the nearly the same word as “Rome” in the Romanian and Italian langiuages. So?
And Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay. You seem to be unaware that in colonial situatons people are born in places their ancestors conquered or came to rule.
As you have demonstrated, Moscow was founded after Rus seeing being a unified state. We were discussing periods of union between Ukriane and Poland, and Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine spent more time in the same state as Lithuania and Poland than in the same state as Russia. I posted the timeline. Your counterargument is to bring up the state of Rus, which ceased to exist as a unified state in 1132 after the death of Mstslav of Kiev, the last ruler of a united Rus. Rus ceased to be a united state before Moscow (the foundation of Russia) was founded.
Suzdal, from which Moscow emerged, was founded in 1024, about 100 years before Rus ceased being a united state. If you want to add 100 years to the Russia-Ukraine total Poland still was united longer with Ukriane in total.
I don’t know what paraolympians have to do with this.
I don’t understand why intelligent and otherwise rational thinking Russians are unable to accept that Ukrainians are a separate nation. I have seen similar thinking in Hungary about Transylvania (Erdély; the circumstances are obviously quite different, but the irrationality is the same), even I was affected by it to an extent at a younger age, but I haven’t seen transhumanist types with this kind of thinking.
Though the Kremlin is still stupid for giving Kazakh immigrants preference over Ukrainians.
Why not pose this question to Anatoly Karlin, who believes in this kind of thinking? He’s both a trans-humanist and a Russophile who believes that Ukrainians and Russian are one and the same people. I’ve been waiting patiently for two years now for him to explain his ‘irrational’ (as you put it) style of thinking about this matter?…
Who here doesn’t recognize that Ukraine is no longer a part of the USSR, Russian Empire, Rus and Russia?
Not me.
Ukrainians are obviously similar to Russians, AP’s calculations notwithstanding. Something like the similarity of the Dutch and Germans. I think Hitler wanted to convince the Dutch that they were actually Germans, but it was a long term plan, and his short term policies led to considerable alienation.
Anyway, I don’t think the biggest country in the world needs additional territory, nor that the Ukraine wouldn’t be more of a headache than an asset.
You failed again to0 successfully refute any of my fact based points, which can be observed at this thread. Your clinging to off base analogies (already debunked) and grossly incorrect comments (like Ukraine being with Poland longer than with Russia) are a matter of record at this thread.
It’s not my fault that you don’t fully comprehend what was communicated regarding the answer to your “main theories” point. In that instance, a coherent analogy was presented.
You’re of course free to misrepresent with rehashed innuendo.
I don’t deny similarity; the question is degree. Russian nationalists often pretend that the two are as similar as people form different regions within England, or Americans from the South and the North. This is just wishful thinking.
That is a fairly accurate analogy, actually. Languages are a bit more distant:
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/a-map-of-lexical-distances-between-europes-languages
The discussion about German vs Dutch seems to match Ukrainian vs. Russian experiences:
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/13595322/German-vs-Dutch
Under certain circumstances it’s possible for different ethnic groups to unite into one bigger ethnic group. History never ends, and who knows, maybe the Dutch will eventually decide that they are Germans, after all. Not very likely, but who knows. Anyway, it’s not healthy or rational to make such hypothetical scenarios the cornerstones of one’s identity.
Kazakhstan has the same economic level as Russia, and itself – with its own very multi-national population – a generally mutually respectful relationship.
More like I’m shoving his emphasis on genetics right back at him, you intellectually challenged troll. Such an emphasis can involve fuzzy science. More accurately put, that kind of testing needs to be done on an individual basis, covering a large number in a given area to accurately come up with a general finding. Even then, there’re exceptions which pertains to Olga.
My point about Olga and those with Galicia and/or Volhynia roots who’ve that name wasn’t successfully refuted. The Vikings were in numerous areas. It makes sense that they were more evident in northwestern Russia than Ukraine, much like Turkic influences are more evident in parts of Ukraine than Russia. Never mind my other point about how peoples the world over take to first names from vastly different cultures of their own – some examples of which were given.
The (put mildly) overly stretched analogy about Brits in India (made at this thread) relative to Russia and Ukraine wasn’t successfully supported because it (on a matter of fact basis0 can’t be.
As you probably, know the northern half of Kazakhstan bordering Russia (which was considered the southern part of Siberia at one time) has many Russian speaking Slavs.
As you note, Kazakhs include ethnic Kazakhs and non-ethnic Kazakh citizens of Kazakhstan – similar to the situation with ethnic Russians and non-ethnic Russian citizens of Russia.
At the official level, Russian-Kazakh relations are noticeably better than Russian-Kiev regime relations.
Some (definitely not all) people of Ukrainian background like yourself distort with faulty comparisons.
Ethnically and linguistically Russians and Ukrainians are closer to each other than the English and Scots.
Russians and Ukrainians have clearly had an overall much closer relationship with each other when compared to the Dutch and Germans.
If you mean Gaelic, sure.
Debunked in your mind only.
Well, for once you’re writing about a topic that you have some expertise in. BTW, AP has never pointed to any evidence of Princess Olga’s genetic structure that might shed some light on her ethnicity, because there isn’t any. You’re the one who has introduced this topic, EVEN THOUGH YOU DON’T SEEM TO PUT MUCH STOCK IN RELYING ON IT.
What’s there to refute? It’s a ridiculous supposition no matter how you examine it. Princess Olga was a 10th century personage. Those who are named that now (or even in the past) were named in honor of her namesake. UNLESS YOU CAN POINT TO ANY OTHER CITIZEN OF THE RUS STATE THAT WAS NAMED OLGA BEFORE THE FAMOUS PRINCESS, you’re out of luck here. Additionally, there’s absolutely no doubt that the name ‘Olga’ was taken from the Scandinavian ‘Helga’. Also, for several generations, the Rurikids kept very active relations with their kin back in Scandinavia, and the language used at home was of Scandinavian origin, not Slavic. This,of course would include Princess Helga, I mean Princess Olga!
Dutch and Germans were both in the Holy Roman Empire for about 600 years – longer than Ukraine and Russia were together.
Correct, although it’s never happened after mass literacy and concomitant national ideology.
Not at all.
Talk about something that became quite loose and for a considerable time before the end of its formal existence. That particular entity ended quite some time before the end of the national togetherness between Russia and most of modern day Ukraine.
It also developed different Christian denominational loyalties than Rus. The foreign subjugation of Rus didn’t suddenly end a feeling of togetherness within that entity.
By the late 1500s, Holland was clearly established as a separate independent entity with a great power status. Prussia did likewise regarding itself in the early 17o0s.
National consciousness takes different forms. Austria and Germany serve as an example of two close, ethnically and linguistically related peoples bordering each other, who nevertheless were clearly separate from each other for a lengthy period in more recent history.
A different variant of a national consciousness concerns more multiethnic places – some having an even more diverse makeup when compared to Russian-Ukrainian differences.
As for Russians and Ukrainians, there’re plenty of Kislyaks, Medinskys and Matviyenkos (from the former Ukrainian SSR and qualifying as ethnic Ukrainian) in Russian society to underscore this point. From an earlier period, you’ve folks like the Kiev born Igor Sikorsky who saw themselves as Russian. When compared to other non-Russian former Soviets (Belarusians aside), the Ukrainians in Russia aren’t seen as so different for a number of obvious reasons, that among other things includes your emphasis on genetics.
National identity, the world over isn’t determined by genetics. I’m sure a good number of folks identifying as ethnic Russian, actually have greater elements in their background (like Armenian, Georgian, Jewish et al) which aren’t ethnic Russian. So what! Great nations are able to attract people of different backgrounds who often end up intermarrying.
All this is said without challenging the reality of a post-Soviet Ukrainian state, which isn’t directly affiliated with Russia. Rather, my points explain why the two have been pretty much agreeably together for a lengthy period.
BTW, the Dutch in general were quite bitter towards the Germans in the early years following WW II – something that lingers on to some degree (among the older generation) today. The past German-French, French-English differences don’t make Russian-Ukrainian differences so insurmountable.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/09/29/reassessing-russian-ukrainian-past-present-and-future.html
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09052016-ongoing-russian-ukrainian-intricacies-analysis/
He initially said that she was Scandinavian as a clearly established fact, which isn’t the case, as numerous historical pieces note. I appropriately brought up the DNA matter to further substantiate my fact based follow-up.
Moot point on the genetics emphasis. As the Vikings expanded outside their main base, they developed differences with that main base. This dynamic involved interaction with the larger respective population.
Do you know for sure that folks from Galicia and/or Volhynia weren’t named Olga before the person at issue? Come up with evidence showing that the name Olga only came in Galicia and/or Volhynia after her existence.
She apparently wasn’t so bad. I’ve yet to hear of any extreme Ukrainian nationalists seeking to ban her name. I’m sure that there’re some Ukrainian nationalists with that name. So what!
Why should I do your homework for you? You’re the one suggesting that it’s possible that there were girls named ‘Olga’ before Princess Helga???….
You’re the one suggesting such. I’m asking for you to substantiate that suggestion.
Why? There are few Kazakh immigrants in Russia. Overwhelming majority of immigrants from Kazakhstan are ethnic Russians, so for Russia they’re some of the best possible migrants by definition.
I’m the one stating that Princess Olga was the first to carry the name ‘Olga’ in Rus lands. I haven’t encounteres anybody before her with this name. You’re the one trying to suggest that there were others – you prove that there were others before her in Rus lands that were named Olga.
Have you actually “encountered” anyone from that period with the name Olga?
That she’s perhaps initially the most famous person from Rus with that name certainly doesn’t mean that she’s the first from that entity to use it. If she’s so Scandinavian, why wasn’t she simply named as Helga?
I’ve not actually encountered anybody from that period besides Princess Olga with that name in my readings.
Have you?
She was named Helga. The Slavs use her name as Olga or Olha.
This source names her Helga
957 Princess Helga of Kiev visits Byzantium, is baptised as Olga.
A section in a book about Vikings.
“Helga’s Journey to Constantinople.”
::::::::::
You are very silly. If you make a claim (i.e., there were Slavs named Olga before St. Olga) than the burden of proof is on you to provide examples to support your claim.
The first link draws blotted out content, with the second coming from what suggests to be a Vikingcentric work. Upon a quick perusal, books dealing directly with Russian and/or Ukrainian history (including Vernadsky and Subtelny) don’t make that characterization – instead calling her “Olga”, with no reference that she used “Helga”. Subtelny of course stating “Olha”, which in any event is closer in spelling and pronunciation to “Olga” than “Helga”.
The silliness is coming from your admirer at these threads and yourself. On the matter of “burden of proof”, I’ve yet to see proof showing that Slavs weren’t named Olga before she established herself as a prominent figure.
Which goes back to the coherent point made that her perhaps being the earliest most famous person with that name doesn’t (by default) mean that others (less famous) in her area (Pskov) and other parts of Rus didn’t have that name as well during the period at issue.
Googlebooks.
In your world, does this make it less objective than a Slavocentric work?
Since Olga is how Slavs called Helga, it is not surprising.
Burden of proof falls on the person making the positive claim.
If you claim Hitler faked his death and is alive in Brazil, prove it. Others don’t have to claim that Hitler isn’t alive in Brazil.
If you claim Olga was a Slavic name prior to Helga, provide evidence for your claim.
No, it doesn’t. If perhaps you can identify any (less famous) person in the Pskov area, or even in any other part of the Rus Empire, that was named Olga before the famous princess and saint, your idea (that the name ‘Olga’ was of Slavic origin) would gain some weight. However, since you obviously cannot, your theory, at this point, garners a big fat Nada, zilch, BS, -0-.
In your world, suspect claims used to belittle Russian-Ukrainian ties don’t get challenged when compared to fact based realities running counter to your preference.
A matter which you haven’t proven regarding whether folks in Rus (Pskov and modern day Ukraine included) had the name Olga before and/or during her period of existence
Did she call herself Helga?
Besides being way off the mark, your Hitler analogy is pretty rich, seeing how you second guessed my earlier point at this thread on the matter of how main theories (or however it was you worded it) conclude the actual reality. Specifically, Western mass media spin of a supposed matter of fact Russian state sponsored doping campaign.
You’re wrong for reasons already detailed.
As a follow-up to the absurd Hitler analogy, it’s very well established that Hitler died in Berlin. At least one person apparently hasn’t been kept up to date on that matter.
No suspect claims. Claims made by various sources, even by Russia Today.
I didn’t make the positive claim that Olga was a Slavic name prior to St. Olga. You did. So prove your claim.
I can play your silly game and state that Olga’s real name was Jack. Prove that it wasn’t.
You get it now?
Since Olga is how Slavs called Helga, it is not surprising.
So, we are still waiting or evidence that Olga was a Slavic name pre-St. Olga, as you claimed it to be.
Did she call herself Olga? AFAIK we don’t know what she called herself. We do know that sources call her Helga and state that she was a Scandinavian, so it is more likely that she called herself Helga, than that she called herself Olga.
But with Mikhail-logic one can say – prove that his death in Berlin wasn’t a hoax and that they he didn’t move to Brazil and father a dozen children there.
Prove that Goebbels didn’t fake his poisoning and didn’t move to Argentina.
Prove that the Lenin corpse is not a fake and that Lenin has not been kept alive by alien science this whole time.
After all, according to special Mikhail-logic, one can make claims without having to prove them – the opposite of those claims has to be proved 🙂
A claim made at this thread challenged the idea that people in Rus weren’t named Olga prior to the famous person at issue.
That suggestion is bunk. On the supposition that Olga is derived from the Scandinavian Helga, note that the Viking presence in numerous areas of Rus had predated her birth. Hence, the reasonable conclusion that the name Olga had been in existence before her birth. Likewise on the supposition that Olga being derived from Helga isn’t necessarily true.
This specific issue has little if anything to do with the close ties involving modern day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, relative to Rus, the Russian Empire and USSR periods.
Keep trying to stretch things out from reality.
You’re really being (put mildly) silly. Dr. G, his wife and children’s remains were evident enough with eyewitness accounts to confirm their deaths.
The matter under discussion here doesn’t have anywhere near the same particulars as your far out comparative reference to WW II era Nazis.
You’re like the boxer not realizing that the bell has rung against him.
Prove that the remains weren’t faked and that witnesses weren’t lying.
Prove that aliens didn’t evacuate Goebbels and his family.
After all, according to Mikhail-logic, one can make claims and the negative of those claims has to be proved.
You’re like the guy on a tennis court holding a racket, and thinking that he is participating in a boxing match.
Your circular comments/analogies have already been debunked. Yet you choose to carry on like the punch drunk boxer, who doesn’t realize that the fight is over.
We’ve clear photos and living at the time eyewitness accounts on Dr. G’s and his family’s death, which is much different from Olga regarding her DNA.
Many things exist in your mind. In the real world, alas, this is not the case.
Prove that they weren’t faked, and that he wasn’t evacuated by the aliens.
We are using Mikhail-logic here.
Get help for your own sake.
WW II isn’t so far removed from the present. In this era of technology, one would find plenty of info second guessing whether Dr. G and his family are dead. That’s not the case.
On the other hand, the DNA on Olga isn’t known, with accurate historical accounting which very reasonably second guesses the degree of any Scandinavian ancestry she might’ve had.
So, go ahead and show us some ‘eyewitness accounts’ to confirm your theory that there were little Slavic girls running around in the Pskov area named Olga, before Princess Olga.
I dare you!
I already did. Learn to read more carefully.
You never did! You’re lying and you’re wrong! 🙁
I’m simply using your own logic. You think that it is acceptable to make a claim and demand others to prove it wrong, rather than for you to prove your unsubstantiated claim is correct. You claim Olga is a Slavic name first and that there were Slavic Olgas before Helga. Prove it.
Otherwise one can just use your approach, and make claims such as about Goebbels being evacuated by aliens and replaced by a fake corpse, and ask that you prove that that’s wrong.
You state a lie which is in line with your cowardly trolling self.
Again with the way off base comment on Goebbels, whose end is much better established when compared to the matter of whether Princess Olga was Scandinavian and if so by how much?
On the matter of her, I noted the historical accounting in support of my presentation. You can’t offer DNA to support your claim on her.
Under the belief that Olga is a Scandinavian derived name, I noted further up this thread, that the Scandinavian presence in Rus occurred before her birth. At the time of Olga, how many famous Yulias were there? A rhetorical shot at one of your talking points, dealing with not knowing any Olgas prior to her existence.
On the closeness of names and their origin, is Mikhail derived from Michael, or vice versa, or do they just happen to be close in pronunciation?
Matters like the origin of the name Olga and her ethnic background don’t successfully refute my core points concerning Russo-Ukrainian history.
Hi AP (and Hello, Пан Hack),
If you’re still reading this thread, I just wanted to give you a little insight. Disclaimer: not going to try to meddle or try to take away from the whole “Eastern Slavic” unity thing but I saw a prior discussion about Russian and Ukrainian languages that was quite interesting. A few months back I started looking into Ukrainian (casually, not learning it systematically). My Russian is at near native level so I expected to be able to understand most of it. What followed was what Russians call an “облом” (rude awakening or bummer). Now, I knew they were not mutually intelligible but I was still hoping to understand real content. Не фига! I would say – no more than 30% can be understood immediately (if that, I’m talking about what is spoken on main TV networks, not Carpathian). Typically what happens is you can understand a few phrases here and there, but once the conversation starts going deeper, more complex, that’s it. There are a lot of words that one can guess intuitively, but also a lot of words that have a root that sounds Russian but the word has a different meaning! (Words such as “питання” where your first impression would be that it means “effort” like with the Russian word for “to try” (пытаться), or even “to torture” (пытать)) but no – it means “question”. This makes perfect sense from the semantic point of view but is hard to catch simply by knowing Russian. There are also examples where, from first hearing it, it’s incomprehensible, but once you see it written down, you may or may not get the meaning. There is no other way but to pull out the dictionary and learn the vocab (which I’m doing casually and it’s helping a lot).
Another absolutely fascinating thing – there are words with a meaning common with Latvian, but not Russian (and Latvian has a lot of common roots with Russian). Or words that have a Balto-Slavic root, but where the connection is more visible in Ukrainian (such as the word for “he / she” which is almost identical to the Latvian words but not as obvious with Russian – I almost fell off the chair when I saw that). Another aspect is the pronunciation: as you know, Ukrainian vowels sound harder than the Russian ones. It makes them more familiar, slightly more similar to how my language sounds with flat, wide vowels (words such as мене sound closer to the Latvian version than the soft Russian меня). Don’t get me wrong – Ukrainian all in all still sounds much more similar to Russian (and Latvian doesn’t sound Slavic at all), but these similarities are simply uncanny (I’m still tripping out on it).
And btw, both Russian and Ukrainian are beautiful languages. They are absolutely fraternal peoples, in fact, I’d even go as far as to say that Baltic and Slavic peoples, too, are fraternal. But the languages have more differences than the Scandinavian ones (except Icelandic and Faroese, they don’t even use translators in the Nordic council for Swe-Nor).
I wonder what language the amazing Knyaz Svyatoslav spoke (Olga’s son).
We had a Russian nanny who remarked how surprised she was that she couldn’t understand Ukrainian. Most Russians assume the languages are very similar because, thanks to the the Soviets, all Ukrainians can speak Russian and because they’ve mostly been exposed to snippets of Ukrainian here or there that sound familiar.
He most likely spoke Norse as a first language but would have spoken Slavic as well. Both of his parents were Scandinavians and his mother made sure that he had a Scandinavian tutor (Asmund, according to the Primary Chronicle) when growing up – kind of like how Brits in the colonies would bring nannies from the old country to raise their kids properly.
you replied:
Okay, then point out exactly which comment you included this information within. What number?
‘Fraternal’ peoples should not murder or steal from one another, like Cain and Abel. I wish that I could share in your glib assessment…
The sentiments expressed within this popular song have not changed much in Ukraine over the last three years. Healing can only start once Putin calls of his wolves:
https://youtu.be/d_sTAhZv_rI
Pretty girl.
Indeed. She’s smart too. A graduate of Kyiv Polytechnical Institute:
http://dmytruk.com.ua/about/
Actually, polling shows the “healing” is already well underway: Anti-Russian feeling in Ukraine has fallen to its lowest level since March 2014, back to where it was before the civil war in Donbass began. The most recent poll has “cold” attitude toward Russia at 48%, down from a peak of 66% in the same poll.
Are you kidding?
I repeated yet again in comment number 154.
Like OUN(B) and OUN(M).
It makes sense that he was bilingual, but I thought he worshipped Perun (not Odin).
Crimea was not stealed. Like it or not; Crimean people decide to be Russians. Time to digest it.
We’re talking about two different things (I apologize for not finishing my thought and ignoring the elephant in the room). I meant “fraternal” from the racialist and linguistic (ancestral) point of view. Fraternal wars are as old as the earth and this one is very, very painful… What I meant to say is that just because Russian and Ukrainian languages are similar it doesn’t mean they should both live in one state (or that for one to ravage the other is somehow more excusable in that context). And Russia’s attitude towards Ukraine has been more paternalistic than fraternal. The song you posted mocks that attitude (by the way, I’ve watched that video many times). And unfortunately this is even worse – what brother would send Chechens, Buryats and other assorted, pardon me, ch*rkas, to kill young, wholesome European men in their own country? It is simply enraging. (Likewise, it is offensive to Russians when some of those few Germanics fight in the Donbass, but in my example those aren’t even European peoples).
I would agree with you that the political reconciliation is nowhere on the horizon. I say this while acknowledging the close ties between Ukraine and Russia. From what I sense from the whole situation… I would even go as far as to say that there won’t be a complete political reconciliation even for generations. It’s possible that something very historic has happened. But I could also be mistaken. Either way, I hope this will give us a chance to solidify the Baltic-Black sea community over the years and to protect our identity.
Ukrainian women are famously beautiful. The whole world knows it. A lesser known fact is that there is also a high percentage of hunks in their population (no surprise there either).
Quite idiotological and a view not shared by a good number of Ukrainians.
A more preferable slant:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/22052011-pavlo-skoropadsky-and-the-course-of-russian-ukrainian-relations-analysis/
That and it being stolen are not mutually exclusive, as it was internationally recognized as Ukrainian and the grabbing of it was done by the Russian military.*
Also this process involved unambiguous theft (such as Ukraine building some gas wells in the Black Sea which were just taken by the Russians, including one that is closer to Odessa oblast than it is to Crimea).
For things to be done justly, there would have to be some UN-run referendum (Russia would surely win), stolen things returned, and compensation paid for the thefts.
Which poll? I found this one:
http://www.kiis.com.ua/materials/pr/20182003_ukr-rus/1ukr.jpg
Feelings have improved significantly from the low point in May 2015 but they are still much lower than the status quo had been prior to February 2014.
Also – feelings towards the Russian state are lower than towards “Russia.”
Ukrainian military personnel are genetic waste – every one of them deserves to die and Ukraine is better off without them. Every dead Maidanaut is another step toward a better Ukraine.
That you consider these looters and torturers ‘wholesome’ would be baffling, if you weren’t an admitted member of an absolutely depraved race such as the Latvians.
Mobilized men are a general cross-section of the population. I know one personally – young schoolteacher, married with two kids. Good guy. Came back uninjured thank God.
Good for Ukrainians to know where they stand with the pro-Russian nationalists.
Many of those you consider “looters and torturers” come from the parts of Ukraine with high church-going rates, low crime rates, low abortion rates, low out of wedlock birthrates, particularly in comparison to their enemies. No comparison to the moral cesspool that is Donbas.
There are looters and torturers among some of the Ukrainian volunteers (not coincidentally they are from the more demoralized-by-Soviets eastern parts of the country), just as there are among the pro-Russians, like this Russian “hero” from St. Petersburg who made of a video of himself beheading a poor puppy:
http://www.mk.ru/politics/2014/07/04/fashistzhivoder-iz-peterburga-priekhal-voevat-za-opolchencev-lnr.html
He then went to Ukraine where he was killing Ukrainians in their own country. Now he is back in Russia. Here he is on Russian TV:
https://life.ru/t/%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8/150712
I don’t have much pity for them, on either side. But such people don’t characterize the Ukrainian armed forces in general.
http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2018-1-30_ukraine_poll_presentation.pdf
It tracks the figures I posted.
“Cold” or “very cold” was only 15% – 19% as late as February 2014, shooting up to 66% and is now down to 48% – still more double what it had been as late as February 2014. And “cold” is still more than double “warm.” “Cold” is decreasing very slowly,at the rate of the latest decrease it will get down to February 2014’s level in December 2024.
If it only takes 10 years for “cold” to return to where it was, before the annexation of Crimea and deaths of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen in a war against Russian-backed forces, that seems surprisingly rapid to me. Particularly given that under the Maidanist regime, Ukrainians are constantly subjected to heavy doses of anti-Russian propaganda, and that some Ukrainian troops are still dying in Donbass.
Also, since early 2014, Crimea and the DLNR are not included in the polling. If just the DLNR were still included, “cold” would return to its February 2014 level in even less than 10 years.
You’re the one that’s kidding Mickey! Where in comment 154 do you provide:
You’ve not once provided any eyewitness accounts to subtantiate your claim, yet require others here to provide the same to counter your claims. That’s not the way it works in the real world. As AP has already pointed out:
This refers to attitudes towards Russia, not to attitudes towards the Russian state (which in earlier polls has been more negative than were attitudes towards “Russia.”)
I was assuming a “best case scenario” for Russia. It is likely that “cold” feelings will hit a floor and never get back to February 2014 levels. Note that decline in cold feelings has slowed down.
You’ve yet to successfully refute me – your rehashed BS notwithstanding.
Once again, the Scandinavian presence in Rus predated Olga. Hence, others before her more than likely had that name in Rus, whether Olga is derived from Helga or otherwise.
I wouldn’t assume that a continuation of the current rate of decline is a “best case scenario.” Sure, it could easily slow further or hit a wall while still well above Feb 2014 level (I’d agree that some further slowing seems like the most likely scenario), but it’s also not implausible that it could speed up again. While Tymoshenko isn’t likely to make major changes to Maidanist policy, she had fairly good relations with Putin in the past, so she might well dial back on the anti-Russia rhetoric, or even makes some symbolic moves designed to improve relations. Or, if Ukrainian economic growth significantly slows down sometime in the next six years (I’d say the odds of Ukraine making it to 2024 without another recession aren’t any better than 2 in 3), this might reduce anti-Russia feeling by further discrediting Maidanism.
Military service in 2014 was easy to evade, and many did. Even scum who supported the war frequently had the sense to stay out of it. The war is wrong and senseless and the Maidan regime is solely to blame for starting it – you have to be an absolute moral cretin to fight on Maidan’s side.
Pity. Perhaps Ukraine shall have better luck next time.
I had a cousin who joined the DUK – he was killed in action and I hope it hurt like hell.
You don’t get to spend two decades vomiting hate propaganda against Russians and eastern Ukrainians and then be indignant when somebody speaks harshly at your mob.
They were themselves trash – don’t give me another paean to Galicia, which I personally found as dirty and shabby as any other part of Ukraine.
The oligarchs and gang-bangers of Donbass declared for Kiev – you won’t see Ruslan Onischenko or Sergei Taruta in St George Ribbons. They are your peers – your kin.
The regular army has been as guilty of crimes against civilians as the militias – more so, since the volunteer battalions generally don’t have heavy artillery. One really must scoff at the American congress critters who think they are taking some great moral stand by refusing weapons to Azov – as if there were any ethical difference between Azov and any other Ukrainian military unit.
Most of the Russian Nazis who got involved did so on Kiev’s side. The few who didn’t frequently got whacked, and at least one defected from Spartak to Azov. Shame that the puppy-cutter wasn’t among the dead, but again, perhaps better luck next time.
They do.
Prove it with some eyewitness accounts if it’s ‘more than likely’…
I respect your opinions. Wells can be paid. On the other hand, while the west claims “Maidan was democratic but the Crimean referendum was not”, it just shows it true hypocrite face. The West now is starting to live with the consequences of the own actions.
By the way, Crimean referendum was more democratic than the Falklands one. The British regime claims just the opposite. Crimeans laugh on their faces.
How many? AFAIK it was something like 30%, meaning that 70% did not evade and force someone else to take their place.
Wrong and senseless, but it is necessary to contain the Donbas Sovok-jihadists in the Donbas and to keep Dnipro and Kharkiv peaceful.
The Russian state, not the Kiev government, is to blame for this senseless war. It could have annexed the region as if did Crimea, and there would have been no fighting. Or it could have not actively supported the rebels, and fighting would have stopped long ago.
What is DUK?
It was a dump when I visited in 1990. Better than the rest of the country by the 2000s. By 2013 Lviv has become like any other central European city in appearance, cleanliness, busynesss (if not price). Unless you were there closer to Soviet times, your impressions were quite strange. And by Galicia I assume you understand historical Galicia – Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk only. Not Volhynia, or Bukovyna, or Transcarpathia.
Highest HIV rate in the white world, highest abortion rate in the world, etc. etc. don’t reflect Taruta’s personal behavior. It is, rather, the behavior of the Donbas general population.
Outsiders have observed this also:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/im-shocked-shocked-to-hear/#comment-757678
“The Western Ukrainians are like Poles. Even despite decades of outright Soviet neglect and outright antagonism the level of culture in a place like Lwow (Lviv) far outstrips anything in Donetsk. I’ve spent significant time in both cities. Lwow felt like a Western city occupied by a foreign power. The people are fantastic, in a true conservative sense. They value their history, their land, their crafts, and they are a self-sufficient people. Donetsk is completely Soviet – deracinated, crappy industries, corrupt and crime ridden, and full of people who would emigrate to the West in a heart beat if they could. Even before the fighting Donetsk was a basket case like every other Russian and East Ukrainian city. If you want to get laid, go to Donetsk. The women have no morals, prostituting yourself is just what women do. In Lwow people still get married and value families. That alone explains why so many in the “manosphere” side with East Ukraine.”
Do you have figures for this? It seems the Nazis has high position in Donbas. Here is Pavel Gubarev, the original “People’s Prime Minister”:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CH1tFmM8Av4/VXawBHcmVqI/AAAAAAAAb6o/uUGAm2zzWX8/s1600/nazi-donetsk.jpg
Certainly no less important than the Azov battalion.
I certainly do not wish death upon Russians or Eastern Ukrainians, nor refer to them as “genetic waste.”
But good for Ukrainians to know how their adversaries really feel.
Ukrainian military personnel are genetic waste – every one of them deserves to die and Ukraine is better off without them. Every dead Maidanaut is another step toward a better Ukraine. That you consider these looters and torturers ‘wholesome’ would be baffling, if you weren’t an admitted member of an absolutely depraved race such as the Latvians.
I don’t think it’ll ever occur to Russian nationalists of the modal type that you catch more flies with honey.
Neither was strictly democratic although both reflected popular opinion.
Hopefully Crimea will not turn into a Turkish Cyprus, and some normalization can be achieved (in exchange for easing Russian sanctions?). There would probably have to be a rerun of the referendum under UN supervision, return of some of those gas wells closer to Ukrainian territory (as well as for the gas that has been pumped out of them since the takeover) and compensation for wells recently built in Crimean waters by the Ukrainian state, etc.
I still don’t see the “International community” accepting the will of Crimean people by a couple of centuries. The west is simply unable to recognize something that’s against her wishes. Crimea will be a sort of Tibet for the foreseeable future. Anyway, Crimeans just don’t care.
With respect to the wells, a direct deal between Russia and Ukraine should be the best option; but I think the current Ukrainian authorities consider this as a sort of mortal sin.
Good for Ukrainians to know you consider them flies.
The Ukrainian defence ministry maybe could tell you, supposing that they wanted to.
The number is not the point though – the point is that anyone with any shred of sense found a way to avoid serving in the Ukrainian forces.
You see, this is your problem – you don’t get how stupid these slogans sound to anybody not marinated in diasporite idiocy.
They are not peaceful. Perhaps they would be if the likes of yourself would clear out.
Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, Right Sector. I’m amazed you didn’t recognise the acronym.
Let’s clear something up – the war did not start in April. It started in February.
When you overthrow the lawful president, that is war. Maidan had no justification for seizing power, and the character of the people they installed in office showed that their claimed motives were a sham. You don’t ‘uncorrupt’ or ‘Europeanise’ a country by handing power to a grab bag of Yuschenko-era politicians, nor by covering them in the cloak of revolution so that they’re even less accountable than usual.
We can spend all our lives trading subjective impressions. It’s terribly pointless when one of us is wearing the old rose-tinted spectacles.
The people you refer to? They flocked to Kiev. They are the Europeans, not you.
One can only speculate on the mental degeneration that produces such nonsense. Lvov is not conservative or virtuous, just backward, and not even that for long. And bloody hell, ‘like Poles’!? Is that supposed to impress me?
Tesak and that red-haired character are both declared Ukraine sympathisers. Azov is full of Russian Nazis. RNE without Barkashov also declared for Kiev.
Gubarev repented of his RNE membership – keep up.
If you differ from the standard Ukrainian talking head it is only because you keep such thoughts private.
I have read enough Ukrainian media and Ukrainian nationalist chatter to get a pretty good idea of what you say among your own.
Again, something like 30% avoided the draft (I may even be exaggerating) . 70% did not. 100,000s were mobilized and entered the armed forces, which is their obligation.
They joke about it themselves. Here is Donetsk:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bx-k2W7CYAE-G5v.jpg
https://www.kyivpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/22/p192f3qjak93n4lf19rpk3fse04/original.jpg
Marginalized, violent young people from places like Russia or Serbia come to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians. The St. Petersburg puppy-killer is analogous to those Westerners who join ISIS. Obviously, they are Slavs rather than Muslims so they are not beheading people at least, but it is an apt analogy.
A revolution isn’t an excuse for foreign soldiers/volunteers and bullets to be sent into the country.
RS is a Francoist neo-fascist, not Nazi, organization (unlike Azov). So, not neo-Nazis.
You are the type of person who revels in the death of your own cousin. I suppose of you knew that he had committed some atrocity it might be understandable (though the decent thing would be to mourn his fall, rather than hope for a grisly death).
The ” grab bag of Yuschenko-era politicians” were the ones who had won the most recent parliamentary election popular vote but had been shut out of power because Yanukovich after winning his election was acting like Maduro and monopolizing power.
Handing over power to people who had won the most recent popular vote (despite their being of questionable quality) makes it a democratic revolution.
Much improvement from 2010 to even 2011. By 2017 it is just a normal central European city, except cheaper and without gypsies. And arguably better food.
Low crime rate with safe streets, low bribery rate, low HIV rate, relatively low abortion rate, low rate of children being born out of wedlock in Lviv reflect decent virtuous behaviors, not backwardness.
It ought to. But, no accounting for taste.
IIRC Karlin stated that at the beginning of the conflict 75% of Russian neo-Nazis supported Kiev but after a year or two it became the reverse. Was he wrong?
Only in the mind of a Russian nationalist, who considers anyone who does not believe that Ukrainians are Russians to be nationalists, am I a Ukrainian nationalist.
Factor in desertions to get a clearer picture – if public military data allows you to.
They joke. You mean it in all seriousness.
If you attack people you are not entitled to complain about how they choose to defend themselves. As for the bullets, you should direct your complaints to Ukrainian military logistics.
An extremely petty distinction, even if I accepted it.
Blessing those who curse you can grow tiresome, and joining that band of savages is proof enough in itself that he’d done things his own mother couldn’t forgive.
All they had to was win the presidency. They were to have gotten their chance in 2015 – but it wasn’t enough for them to gain power. They had done that once, failed and lost it. So they preferred to take power and destroy their opposition permanently.
Using violence to remove the lawful president is rebellion and terrorism. Like most diaspora nationalists, you understand ‘democracy’ and ‘European values’ only as war totems.
We have different notions of normal – obviously.
Peasant backwardness that Europe will be delighted to stamp out.
Family has carefully preserved and extremely bad memories of Poland from the great old days. Aversion to them is an inborn Ukrainian quality that even Pans share.
But not yourself, evidently. No accounting for taste indeed.
I never noticed any change. Fairly sure that the shameful march where they shouted ‘stop feeding Donbass!’ took place in late 2015 or early 2016. Nor can I imagine why they would have changed their tune – the Lugansk rebel commander ‘Batman’ had such people in his outfit, and it is abundantly clear that Plotnitsky had him killed. The Donetsk and Lugansk authorities have drastically cut down on Russian Nazis’ opportunities to profit from the crisis. Ukraine however is content to have Russian Nazis in its ranks – and deport them back to the motherland once their service is concluded (although the latter is probably more due to bureaucratic inertia than policy).
No doubt killing the Bat was the right decision – the meagre military value of such people doesn’t even come close to justifying the disgracing of being associated with them.
Karlin may be right about their changing attitudes though – they are blithering idiots, every one – but Kiev is the party that accepts them as brothers in arms.
You are free to claim whatever nonsense you please, of course.
The joke is funny because it is based on reality.
But they are not the ones defending themselves. Motorola, Girkin, etc. were foreign citizens. No Russian assistence, the war would have been over long ago.
So in your world, the distitnction between Franco and Hitler is “extremely petty.” Good to know.
So you consider low criminality, low promiscuity, low abortion etc. to be “peasant backwardness.” Good to know.
This sounds as parochial as some Jewish people who hate German composers because of what Germany had done.
Which would be less than 2 years from when the war started. Karlin stated that Russian neo-Nazis, who hate Putin, were intially pro-Ukrainian but were turned off by Jewish presence in Ukraine and then switched their allegiance (or 75% of them did).
Yes, of course – all the suicide bombings and slave raids committed by the DNR army. Somehow I haven’t read about them even in the Ukrainian press.
You should really abandon untenable positions instead of doubling down on them.
Two of tens of thousands. SBU’s actual assessments of Russian citizen involvement are quite different from the crap Poroshenko spews to bored European audiences. No Maidanaut aggression, no war.
I don’t quite know where the rightist enthusiasm for Franco Bahamonde comes from – this is the man whose idea of defending Christian civilisation in Spain was to unleash an army of Moroccan murderers and rapists upon his country’s own working class. Hitler himself once complained that all the idealism in the Spanish civil war had been on the red side. Nor do I accept the distinction anyway – there are no meaningful ideological differences between Azov and Right Sector, only their leaders and their egos.
That is the source of them – noble savages don’t stay noble (don’t misunderstand me, Galicians are not that), but they frequently grow more savage. Technological progress and societal scale don’t respect creeds or peasant customs – you wanted into Europe, you’ll have it and all that goes with it.
They’re not wrong to.
LOL this being a new development.
Perhaps they are merely slow on the uptake.
I’ve not seen them develop new enthusiasm for the cause of Donbass though.
As I had posted earlier, the similarity is in marginalized, violent young men going to some other place to kill people for a cause. Like the St. Petersburg puppy-killer. Or Motorola (who was a petty criminal in Russia but a “hero” in Donbas, similar situation to the Pakistani losers in London who came to Syria or Iraq). Of course in Donbas we are dealing with Europeans so things are not nearly as brutal.
Humor typically has some truth to it, this is what makes it funny.
You should take this advice.
You think Motorola and Girkin were the only ones?
Poroshenko exaggerates (to put it mildly), but about 10% at least of the Donbas fighters have been volunteers from Russia. Many of them were seasoned from fighting in Chechnya. Then you can add Russian military advisers, a few hundred troops here and there (you think it was a fluke that the Ukrainians captured those Russian paratroopers?).
So you supported the Bolsheviks in Spain, against Franco.
Good to know.
If you don’t see the enormous difference between the ideologies and governments of Franco (who is not terribly unlike Horthy, or even some of the Russian Whites) and Hitler I can’t help you.
So you confirm that for you Christian virtues are “peasant backwardness.”
Lviv with its intact Christian virtues is much larger by population, and more sophisticated, than Luhansk. Lviv is also much more technologically advanced. Don’t project moral degradation onto others.
Not sure of your point in bringing it up but Yulia is a Latin name.
Not sure of your point here either. Michael is a Biblical and Semitic name. Both English and Russian versions derive from: מיכאל
That’s what Ukraine did. I don’t liken their troops to jihadists (except for a handful of Chechens and Tatars who are just that) because the comparison’s superficial and silly.
From memory, the SBU could name fifty.
Never bought the ‘North Wind’ crap and you’re not going to sell me on it. That business with the paratroopers happened because the Russian government was bending over backwards not to get into fisticuffs with the Ukraine.
The milquetoasts of Negrin’s outfit were vastly less cruel and weird than Franco, Yague, Serrano, Quiepo de Llano and friends.
Azov and RS are not ideologically distinct. Bandera nationalism is functionally indistinguishable from Hitlerism, whether clad in a swastika or not.
Uniates and schismatics aren’t Christians. Their inability to live without inflicting their stunted worldview on everybody else makes it pretty clear that Christian virtues don’t exist among them. They will be sleeping around, aborting and gay-marrying each other in due time, simply because that’s what it means to be part of the west that they want to join.
Has been defeated by Donetsk and Lugansk. The Sovoks beat you, and they did it with a considerable handicap.
Just throwing out comparisons, which is what at least one other person does at these threads.
Meantime, whether Olga is derived from Helga or not, it’s quite believable that there were plenty of Olgas throughout Rus before the famous person who has been discussed here – once again noting that the Scandinavian presence within Rus had predated her birth.
Twisted neolib thinking aside, there’s no need for a UN referendum in Crimea. The initial vote is in line with independent polling on that area since the reunification. Keeping in mind that roughly 17% of the electorate there were reported to have not voted in the 96% or so tally favoring reunification. Assume that the aforementioned 17%, pretty much don’t support the reunification. There’s a clear well over 2/3 pro-Russian majority in Crimea – including the majority of Ukrainians there.
Kosovo hasn’t had as referendum and not much of a fuss is made over northern Cyprus. So much for anti-Russian hypocrisy.
You haven’t proved me wrong. That includes a believable reasoning for thinking that my logical basis is incorrect.
An extremely petty distinction, even if I accepted it.
It doesn’t matter whether you ‘accept’ it or not. The distinction between the two was large. Franco’s movement was multiform, a fusion of two antique political strands with a novel one. It wasn’t the least bit revanchist or imperial-revisionist. The only enemy it much cared about was the nexus of organizations which it fought in 1936-39. Once the firing squads were done with them in 1939-40, the violence was over. The regime had no bizarre or vainglorious objects nor was it beset with madcap social paranoia.
Franco was a military professional of considerable accomplishment, not a no account like Hitler, nor a one-step-above-no-account like Mussolini. One student of him put it thus: “he had no ideology; none was necessary to justify his right to rule”. Although he’s been identified as an advocate of the union of throne and altar, what he actually did was make it possible for the Church to live and breathe and for someone to ascend that throne when the time came. Nor did the Falangists (much less the Carlists or Alfonsine monarchists) object catagorically to parliamentary institutions. The view articulated by Serrano Suner was that such institutions were unsuitable to Spain, not to every other place (as in fact they were to the Spain of the inter-war period).
Donbas is within Ukraine’s recognized border. Troops mobilized by the government and sent to serve within the state’s borders are very different from Russo-jihadists flocking to Ukraine from Russia. Even the volunteers form Azov or Right Sector are mostly from eastern Ukraine – locals.
The Ukraine war is a more-civilized and more localized analogue to the Syria, with Russia playing the role of Turkey or Saudi Arabia.
And how many others has it named?
A list of casualties early in the war showed 10% from Russia plus a few more % from Crimea.
It isn’t a fluke that people from Russia like Pavlov or Girkin have played such important roles. In the beginning, the first PM – Alexander Borodai – was an adventurer from Moscow, and 1 of his 2 deputy prime ministers – Vladimir Antyufeyev – was a Russian from Novosibirsk, a guy who had helped set up the Transnistria Republic.
You can buy or not but what you want. The ideas that the Russian paratroopers that Ukraine captured happened to be the only Russian servicemen in Ukraine, or that they happened to wander in by mistake, are not very realistic.
Let me guess: in your world this is fake news:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-ukraine-syria-insight/fog-of-ukraines-war-russians-death-in-syria-sheds-light-on-secret-mission-idUSKBN1FI12I
Azov is neo-Nazi. RS has a Jew as one of its two parliamentary representatives.
Review the meaning of the word functionally.
Bandera nationalism of the mid 20th century was evil, though not as evil as Nazism or Bolshevism.
So in your world non-Orthodox are not Christians. This is not even the position of the Orthodox Church.
Most of the ones doing the fighting were not from Lviv. And Russian aid was, of course, critical.
The Russo-jihadists wanted to build a New Russia from Odessa to Dnipro to Kharkiv. All they got was 60% of the Donbas. This doesn’t look like a victory.
::::::
So, to recap – you support the Bolsheviks in the Spanish Civil War; you are glad your own cousin was killed in a war and hope his death was painful; you believe Roman Catholics and other Catholics, as well as Protestants, are not Christians; you view any Ukrainians in their armed forces to be “genetic waste” and hope for their deaths; and you dismiss morality such as not committing murder or rape, not getting HIV, as “peasant backwardness.”
Is that an adequate summary of you, defender of Donbas?