Russians genuinely do not care about Eastern Europeans. Last time I've checked, the only Eastern Europeans living in Crimea were Russians, with some Crimean Tatars and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Ditto for the "new territories" including the Donbass.
Actually, same for Kiev (add some Jewish minority in Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk). So you do not have anything to do with it.
The rest of advise is unwanted. It looks like Russia is not going to collapse in any of the modes you have described, and it's going to hold whatever lands it is holding, and that is how it's going to be.
Dude, read Ruzzian media. Kremlin always threatens us, those idiots are expert linguists, historians and they want us to do whatever they want. Not sure why they hate we entered NATO to defend ourselves if they do not plan to attack, the nukes still work so there is no chance Eastern Europe invades Ruzzia to liberate your from Putin, you are stuck with him.
> Russians genuinely do not care about Eastern Europeans.
That's not what actions say. Constant economic, political and social sabotage since the end of USSR, combined with hostile rhetorics from popular slogans like "The masters will be back!" to official demands to kick Eastern Europe out of NATO, leave little doubt. There is nothing people in Eastern Europe wouldn't like more than the luxury to focus on domestic issues and pretend that Russia doesn't exist at all, but Russian actions force us to divert considerable amount of resources towards ensuring that you stay where you are. Russia is the only reason why we need to have an army at all. Were Russia a normal country like Germany or Spain, we could disband the army tomorrow.
> It looks like Russia is not going to collapse in any of the modes you have described, and it's going to hold whatever lands it is holding, and that is how it's going to be.
Total delusion. Russian economy is already a dead man walking. The financial blockade keeps getting worse, and even the people from your central bank are saying: "Потому что [если] не будет нормальных расчетов за продукцию по внешнеэкономической деятельности, для нашей и экспортно, и импортно зависимой страны это просто все, это погибель". You can't run a modern country on Dogecoin or "import substitutions" hammered together by some Vanyas, that much is clear to everyone. This won't end in any other way than the previous time.
Likewise, Crimea is already lost. Every air defense system you set up there gets blown up by Ukrainians using weapons that cost a tiny fraction of their target. Without air defense, the remaining forces are sitting ducks. Russian ground forces will eventually either get destroyed, or pull out like they did from Kherson to save what's left. This is purely a matter of time. The navy has already abandoned Crimea.
Not to mention Eastern Ukraine. 10 000 Russians die every month just to keep the frontline where it is, and twice as many get wounded or crippled for life. It will only get worse as Soviet era stocks deplete and get replaced with older and older junk with every passing month while Ukraine keeps getting better and better new production as western arms factories gear up. At the start of the war, European factories were producing large caliber artillery ammo in batches of tens of thousands. This year they will produce over a million units, up to three million next year, going as far as it needs to go.
I wonder when will you finally wake up to the reality that Putin blundered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sell oil and gas while it still has any value, and use that flow of money to bring Russia to European level of prosperity. Gazprom is now in the red while Germany has produced 2/3 of all electricity this year from renewables. The window of opportunity is closing. Every Kinzhal blown up by Patriots somewhere in the skies over Ukraine costs as much as a modern schoolhouse, but instead of engaging in international trade and investing in schools that produce value for decades to come, you only get a loud bang. Putin is destroying your opportunity for a better life. Why do you choose to accept that?
> Russians don't care and don't think in such terms.
That's a lie and you know it. Variations of it like "We can show it again!" (that is, rape our way to Berlin) are in very widespread use among the Russian public and represent exactly the way most Russians think. Revanchism is the cornerstone of Putin's Russia, and that is also clearly present in your constant complaining how Russia has been humiliated and unfairly treated, and how it is entitled to anything more than it currently has, while the truth is that western nations spent a lot of money to relieve the humanitarian disaster that came from your own long-term mismanagement that you now try to pin on the Americans. You are - without any shame - biting the hand that fed you.
As you can see, I am polite to you and you use that opportunity to invoke the most grave insults you can think of.
Russians did indeed win World War Two as a part of victorious Allied coalition. The "raped their way to Berlin" is represents a completely undeserved slur. The German army did not consist of fertile women but of seasoned and well-armed German males who invaded Russia previously (under Meth as we've just learned) and they had to be killed first.
The Germany after the atrocities that they have done was at complete mercy of winners, who in their wisdom and kindness has chosen to spare it. We didn't have to.
The only way Russians may care about Eastern Europe is extinguishing the sources of such unpleasant noises.
> The "raped their way to Berlin" is represents a completely undeserved slur.
It does not. The war memorial that Russians erected in central Berlin is still colloquially known as "the tomb of the unknown rapist". The number of people raped by Soviet forces is estimated between 1 and 2 million, among them many well-known people, such as the wife of Helmut Kohl, raped when she was 12. At least 100 000 people were raped in Berlin alone, aged "from 8 to 80", as one Russian war correspondent put it, and often died in the process due to blood loss, were murdered or committed suicide thereafter. Victims were not only German civilians, but also from Polish, Belarussian, Ukrainian and other nationalities who had been brought to Germany as slave labor. War correspondents like Vasily Grossman have recorded vivid descriptions of the gang rapes and other depravity; I believe it was Grossman who described a German village - whatever house he looked into, each had women on beds, dead, with dried pools of blood between legs.
And the typical response from Russians is that of yours: how they should be thankful that you didn't rape even more. You have the audacity to call it kindness.
And of course, anyone who dares to remind of this is making "unpleasant noises" and should be "extinguished". We can all see in Ukraine what that means. Murder, torture and systematic rape once again. A lot of elderly people in Europe are disturbed more than the rest by reports of Russian conduct in Ukraine because they remember it from their own youth. Despite their limited income, they are some of the most generous sponsors of aid to Ukraine.
> The number of people raped by Soviet forces is estimated between 1 and 2 million, among them many well-known people, such as the wife of Helmut Kohl, raped when she was 12.
No Russian would accuse their grand dad that has taken Berlin of anything, before walking in his shoes first. Walking to the Berlin obviously.
Around 2 millions of Russian civilians starved in Leningrad during the Nazi siege.
I'm honestly not sure which kind of a different response would one expect after murdering more than 20 million Soviet citizens in the four years before that. You do not want to ever bring this topic into conversation because you're going to look worse than the side you are accusing. "We said we are sorry" is not good enough, just like the post-Soviet borders. I believe Germans should start going around whacking annoying Eastern Europeans over the head when they try to dig out this hideous mass grave again. Extremely annoying behavior.
Still, our ancestors had to kill all of armed to the teeth German males first, and that was no small feat, that we are still proud of; and obviously they were 100% righteous in doing so. Then all the Eastern Europeans who we "set free" did their little ethnic cleansing against Germans. I've heard Czech has expelled circa 300,000 Germans, killing several tens of thousands in the process. Ditto Poland.
> I'm honestly not sure which kind of a different response would one expect after murdering more than 20 million Soviet citizens in the four years before that.
Ah yes, FOUR years, 1941-1945. Because the year 1939, when you signed a secret pact with Hitler dividing Europe, jointly invaded Poland and even held a joint military parade celebrating victory over Poland, didn't exist. Nor did 1940, when you invaded the Baltics and Romania, and supplied oil and other key materials in defiance of economic blockade to the Nazi war machine as German bombers were flying sorties over London, and your own were bombing Helsinki, with "bread baskets for starving Finns" as the propaganda put it (Finns invented the Molotov cocktail as a drink to go with that generous gesture). None of this happened. The war started in June 1941, right.
But no. The war didn't start for Europe in 1941 nor did it for Russians. Germans and Russians were the two main instigators of the Second World War and in cooperation invaded one country in Europe after another in the first two years of the war until there was no-one left but the two of them and the stage was set for the endgame.
Germans have recognized their responsibility and devoted to building a better Europe. Russia, let me check the news feed... another 5 civilians killed, 53 injured in today's drone and missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. And god knows how many died on the frontlines defending their country, and in torture chambers on occupied territories.
There is no need to speak about digging out old graves when you are producing new ones every day.
> when you signed a secret pact with Hitler dividing Europe, jointly invaded Poland and even held a joint military parade celebrating victory over Poland
I didn't sign anything. And before that, Germany and Poland has jointly invaded Czechoslovakia and divided it between themselves. It was wild; still I don't understand why I would feel responsible for any of these events in history.
> Germans and Russians were the two main instigators of the Second World War
That is, like, just your opinion, man. I have a different one. We can agree to disagree here. Even if was just Germany and the Soviet Union fighting each other, the point about not wishing to dig up that mass grave persists. Most of the mutilated corpses there are, tragically, Russian.
> Germans have recognized their responsibility and devoted to building a better Europe
Great for them, but as a Russian I saw nothing useful coming from it my way. So why would I care.
> Russia, let me check the news feed... another 5 civilians killed, 53 injured on today's drone and missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro
So go sign some peace treaty with Putin, he has some fresh terms for it. People in Dnepropetrovsk and Kiev stop dying, but so are people in Donetsk and Belgorod and Sevastopol. After several deadly Ukraine's attacks against civilian targets in Russia, I grew tolerance to Ukrainian losses. I genuinely don't care mourning somebody other's dead when I have enough of my own.
Just don't expect us to cede any lands we paid in blood. We used to be that stupid, but I hope not anymore.
> It was wild; still I don't understand why I would feel responsible for any of these events in history.
> Great for them, but as a Russian I saw nothing useful coming from it my way. So why would I care.
> After several deadly Ukraine's attacks against civilian targets in Russia, I grew tolerance to Ukrainian losses
Excellent example of Russian mentality on full display. Don't understand, don't care, don't feel responsible.
This is how you differ from Germans. They have faced their past and developed a deeply internalized sense of duty not to repeat the past mistakes. They are a key contributor to the European Union, a major platform for peaceful cooperation in Europe and beyond. Despite long and violent history, they have mended relations with France and Poland and many others who have seen Germans as enemies for centuries. Since the 1960s, Germans have pursued the policy of Wandel durch Handel, hoping to bring positive change through mutually beneficial trade, including with Russia. They have provided aid and investments in billions and billions, and if anything has not reached you, then that's because Putin chose to spend the money earned through trade on missiles killing people in Ukraine instead of building better schools in Russia.
Your attitude towards the victims of the latest war is particularly vile. The only reason why anyone is dying, including Russian civilians caught in the crossfire, is because Russia started the war for which people like you keep inventing excuses out of imperialistic delusions and entitlement.
This is especially revealing:
> Just don't expect us to cede any lands we paid in blood. We used to be that stupid, but I hope not anymore.
You "pay in blood" only because you invaded another country, murdered and continue to murder people defending their homes and loved ones as you try to steal their property. There is nothing smart about thievery and murder. Germans are smart. They found a way to have a influence on the world without all that. You will continue to pay in blood until you leave Ukraine alone because that is fair and just.
> They are a key contributor to the European Union, a major platform for peaceful cooperation
Since it excludes Russia from the day one I also care very little, and for me that's a liability not a virtue.
> The only reason why anyone is dying, including Russian civilians caught in the crossfire, is because Russia started the war
Again, that's only your opinion with which I disagree. There's Crimea and LPR/DPR and Ukraine has started a civil war against LPR/DPR. They should've thought twice about that.
> you invaded another country, murdered and continue to murder people defending their homes
They should go to Putin and sign some ceasefire or peace treaty with him if they don't like it. Why come to me. I am not Putin and I didn't even vote for him.
They should go to Putin and sign some ceasefire or peace treaty with him if they don't like it. Why come to me. I am not Putin and I didn't even vote for him.
And yet - when someone corners you on the internet you run to stand behind him, like a big papa.
So in that sense, you very much are "voting" for him.
The emphasis here is not on Putin but on the negotiations. If you refuse to negotiate, you will get killed. Even if Putin is replaced tomorrow with Mutin or Agutin, it's not like you can skip the negotiations stage.
It was stupid for Ukraine to skip negotiations in 2014, it was stupid for them doing three coup attempts in 15 years, but it was also stupid for Putin to do what he did in 2022. That's past now, though, that is immutable, and the future can only be fixed by negotiations.
In Russia, most people put some part of the blame on the WWI winning coalition for humiliating Germany too much and then failing to keep its power in check, leading to a large, angry Germany in 1939.
The lands the USSR has occupied in 1939 are mostly Russian Empire lands, so USSR never really agreed to part with those. Neither was Germany committed to parting with its German Empire lands. You may argue they have both "signed something", right.
If you praise Germany for changing its strategy after 1945 to avert future wars, at the same time you should blame the US world order for failing to part with strategy which got them WWII after WWI, when dealing with post-Soviet Russia.
As they should have noticed by that moment, you do not get into stable, reciprocital relationship with someone you've either raped into signing a piece of paper or got them to sign for a $2.99 can of food or starve. I believe Soviet troops in 1945 Berlin did not have such expectations, but to my surprise, US and its thralls still do.
> Since it excludes Russia from the day one I also care very little, and for me that's a liability not a virtue.
There is nothing in the key treaties of the EU excluding Russian membership, provided that it meets the criteria, of which the rule of law and the respect for human rights are the largest concerns. Back when Gorbachev was seeking "Common European Home" with the EEC, European countries were quite open to the idea. Certainly no less than they were open to a good working relationship with Germany only five years after their citizens had been saved from concentration camps. In Central and Eastern Europe, everyone who set European integration as their goal reached it in 10-15 years, and it has been an incredible success for everyone involved.
But I believe we once already discussed that feeling of empowerment from being able to kill people across the world with impunity is more attractive to you than fishing quotas and other mundane things that the EU deals with most of the time to improve the lives of its citizens day by day.
> Again, that's only your opinion with which I disagree. There's Crimea and LPR/DPR and Ukraine has started a civil war against LPR/DPR.
There was no civil war in Ukraine. LPR/DPR are fiction created by Russia to mask their invasion. And this is not my opinion, but facts established by the European Court of Human Rights. A few years ago they had a case brought against Russia by countries whose citizens perished in the shot-down MH17 airliner. Russian representatives tried to spin the old lies about "separatists" in Ukraine being at fault (and thus absolving Russia of all responsibility), but the court found no facts to support that there had been any separatism worth mentioning in Ukraine. Those people were, from the start, like Girkin from Russian secret services, recruits from local criminal gangs working for them, or from the armed forces of Russia without proper insignia, all acting under Russian military command.
Pay attention to the reverse side of the Russian campaign medal awarded to the participants of the invasion of Crimea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_%22For_the_Return_of_Cri... The start of the campaign is incribed as 20 February 2014. That was months before LNR/DNR "declared independence", and even predates Yanukovych running away from the country (the event gopniks call "CIA coup" that started it all).
The truth is that Russia invaded Crimea as Ukraine was in internal turmoil, and then made special operatives cosplay separatists in Donbas and used that as an excuse to invade Eastern Ukraine.
> They should go to Putin and sign some ceasefire or peace treaty with him if they don't like it.
All offers Putin has made so far can be summed up as "let me keep what I've stolen, and add a bit more". Anything less than a retreat from Ukraine is not a serious proposal. You are paying one Afghan war worth of killed every month for the stubborness to admit in the third year of the war that the three-day land grab has failed. The price is only going to rise as European arms factories ramp up production, and more of the fighting is carried over into Russia as restrictions on weapons get looser. The batch of fighter jets that the Netherlands signed over to Ukraine yesterday came without restrictions about their use over the skies of Russia.
> Why come to me. I am not Putin and I didn't even vote for him.
People like you are the reason why Putin has any impact in the world. Putin is not sitting behind a bench in a factory and milling artillery shells that reduce Ukrainian cities to rubble as if a nuclear weapon had gone off. He is not programming Ukrainian power plants into missile guidance systems to make Ukrainian cities unlivable. He is not the one sitting in a jet and dropping bombs on Ukraine. He is not the one torturing minors in cells fitted for children. He is not the one raping, murdering and stealing across Ukraine. Without millions of people acting as his willing executioners, he would be a rambling maniac without any influence on the world.
By choosing to adopt his bunker mentality and spread his lies, you have a part in this too.
Circling back to the beginning, you may disagree with everything, but the way Russians treat Ukrainians in words and actions alike shapes how you will be treated in return. By the way things are going, you will have many more opportunities to complain about humiliations.
> Why does LPR/DPR militia fight the Ukrainian army then, from 2014 onwards? Because they totally do. They are among the most motivated troops.
There never was such a thing. The war in the east started on 12 April 2014, when Russian commandos led by Igor Girkin from FSB seized government buildings in Sloviansk. The ECHR did not find any evidence of a militia in Ukraine that wasn't manned, supplied and controlled by Russian armed forces. But you cannot admit any of this, because without the origin-myth of civil war in Ukraine, the whole justification for the invasion would collapse.
> Then more Ukrainians will die "defending their homes", as well as Russians of course.
That's the price many nations in Europe have had to pay for their freedom. It is not too common to see people throw away their freedom and willingly become serfs like Russians have under Putin. There is no greater indictment of modern Russia than the the fact that Ukrainians choose to go through this hell if it saves them from ending up with the kind of life you have.
> They just really don't like the state of Ukraine (and post-Soviet borders), but at the same time want Russia to win the war. It's simple.
Indeed. Simply a Russian version of Nazism. Delusional ideas about rearranging the world put forward by a paranoid dictator, with population that out of deep inferiority complex willingly believes his soothing lies and follows him blindly, united under Z-swastika, in murdering peaceful people across Europe by hundreds of thousands while erasing entire cities from existence. And then you wonder why no-one respects you and why Russia is increasingly seen as a curse on this world.
> DPR was already proclaimed by then, and I believe most of these comandos were on Ukrainian passports ATM.
Ukrainian citizenship doesn't prevent one from serving Russian interests. As the ECHR concluded after reviewing facts, there is no reason to consider the people who started the war in Eastern Ukraine as distinct from Russian armed forces. Russian government brought together the people, equipped them, gave them goals to fulfill, and supported them in any way they could. Likewise, the Freedom of Russia Legion is without any doubt a part of Ukrainian armed forces despite consisting mainly of defected Russians.
> Then why all the whining?
It's you and your Führer who are constantly whining how everyone humiliates and deceives you. Just a few days ago, he came up with a new sob story - that the assault on Kyiv failed not because of successful counterattacks at Hostomel and Irpin, but because western countries deceived Russia into a ceasefire that they dutifully followed. How can you listen to that and not think "what a moron"?
> No - that's just siding with your country and your people.
That's what Nazis and their supporters thought too when they rallied around Hitler. Hitler didn't act in Germany's best interests and nor does Putin act in Russia's best interests. The longer it takes you to recognize it, the deeper hole you will have to crawl out from. It's great irony that revenge has put you on track of repeating the 1990s.
For Russians, the 1990s are as coupled to territorial losses and new borders as they are to economic hardships. So tearing down these borders is a case of recovery.
> For Russians, the 1990s are as coupled to territorial losses and new borders as they are to economic hardships. So tearing down these borders is a case of recovery.
No, I am not speaking about the mythical 1990s as they exist in the mass conscious in the present day, warped by a huge dose of Soviet nostalgia. I am speaking about the 1990s that people actually lived through. Hyperinflation, shortages, poverty, crime. Breakdown of social order. Life's savings losing value almost overnight. Wages going unpaid for months and months. Abandoned kids sniffing glue and no-one caring. Few people had the luxury to care about issues beyond their immediate survival. Knew a family that had collected enough money for a house. Money lost value in such a short time that they managed to get only an ugly floor lamp by the time reality hit them. Nobody gave a shit where borders ran or if they even existed.
Massive spending on completely non-productive activities like the war against Ukraine while the world pivots away from you in disgust is a solid strategy for reaching such socio-economic deterioration again.
And it's important to stress that the 1990s were not seen as separate chapter at the time, but as the natural endgame of USSR's deep internal rot and failure to provide even bare sustenance to its population. Somehow you managed to run a resource-rich country into the ground during peacetime, and dragged down with you the European nations that you had enslaved during the WWII. And yet, for some reason, you think you've suffered a great injustice and still deserve an empire. Why? You can't run a normal country.
> I am speaking about the 1990s that people actually lived through. Hyperinflation, shortages, poverty, crime. Breakdown of social order. Life's savings losing value almost overnight.
I can see that happening easily if Putin loses his war, and all of the options I've ever saw coming from the West drooling with saliva converge to Russia losing.
As Sukhov once said, "I'd prefer to suffer a bit".
> still deserve an empire.
Not sure about Putin, but I don't want one. A nation state would suffice. Crimea is populated by Russians. Everybody speaks Russian in Lugansk, Donetsk and Mariupol. I don't see any utility in a border which separates them from the rest of Russia, or any excuse for it to be where it is. I'm not against any borders at all, just these particular ones.
> I can see that happening easily if Putin loses his war
Putin lost the war a long time ago when the attack on Kyiv failed, Ukraine managed to maintain unified government and military command, and found allies. Countries representing the majority of the world economy are now behind Ukraine and that seals the deal for Russia as much as it did for Nazi Germany. Putin has no path to victory and cannot retreat for domestic reasons. The plan was apparently "3 days to Kyiv" and Plan B does not seem to exist. He is stuck as Ukraine is grinding away the huge inheritance of USSR's weapons that make up the bulk of Russian army to this day. Again, great irony - in the end, it's Russia who is demilitarizing. Ukraine has destroyed over 8000 tanks. By most estimates, only 1100-1500 of old stock remain for refurbishment from graveyards. New production is 120-150 tanks per year. I guess that's why we didn't see a trace of the famous Brezhnev-era armadas on May 9th parade anymore. All the new tanks are gone and patched up rustbuckets from the 1960s would be nothing less than another humiliation.
> I don't see any utility in a border which separates them from the rest of Russia, or any excuse for it to be where it is.
I don't see any utility in a border which separates Finno-Ugric people in Russia from the rest of them in Europe, especially considering the abysmal state of human rights there. When can I expect the return of Karelia to Finland?
Why then do you preach to me instead of just waiting for your victory to realize?
Karelians has never made dominant part of the population of what is now republic of Karelia. The problem here is that the name Karelia comes first and Karelians are an ethnicity of people who also happen to live in Karelia alongside larger nations. Which, ironically, included a lot of Finns and even Swedes before the Revolution.
Currently, ethnic Karelians make up 6% of the population of the republic. So the fact they've got a republic with some support for local culture shows the deep left-leaning woke organization of Russian Federation. But that's the most what they can ever have with 6%.
Meanwhile, Crimea was what, 80% Russian? Donbass was between 60% and 95% Russian speaking depending on the metrics?
> Karelians has never made dominant part of the population of what is now republic of Karelia.
Nor did Russians form the majority in Donetsk or Luhansk or Mariupol before the war, yet you have no issue making territorial claims. This is just another invented excuse. Why was Kherson oblast officially annexed by Russia when barely 14% of Kherson's population identifies as Russian? Who invited you?
Hey, can you point to some live instances for these fun quotes ("The masters will be back!", "We can show it again!")? Particularly from anyone public and notable? Original Russian is fine; no need to translate.
Actually, same for Kiev (add some Jewish minority in Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk). So you do not have anything to do with it.
The rest of advise is unwanted. It looks like Russia is not going to collapse in any of the modes you have described, and it's going to hold whatever lands it is holding, and that is how it's going to be.