Charles Pierce: "When Did It Stop Mattering That Ukraine Doesn't Want to Be Part of Russia?

[kpete]

..........

They call it the Holodomor, the largely Soviet-engineered famine that killed somewhere around four million people in Ukraine in the early 1930s. For background, the website of the University of Minnesota quotes Professor Andrea Graziosi of the University of Naples:

"In the case of the Holodomor, this was the first genocide that was methodically planned out and perpetrated by depriving the very people who were producers of food of their nourishment (for survival). What is especially horrific is that the withholding of food was used as a weapon of genocide and that it was done in a region of the world known as the ‘breadbasket of Europe.”

I mention this because the current Russian insistence that Ukraine is
traditionally part of Russia is a contemptuous insult to the four million people that the Soviet Russian government killed. Obviously, being traditionally part of Russia didn’t work out so very well. Oddly, we’ve seen this same argument coming from some on the left, too. It is more than clear that Ukraine doesn’t want to be part of Russia. How national self-determination stopped being a liberal value is certainly worthy of further study when and if we step back from the brink of all-out war in West Asia."

...........

.......under Putin, Russia is a goddamn economic basket case. It has been looted for decades by Putin and a kleptocratic class over which he presides. Making the oligarchs scream can be a massively destabilizing move, and the oligarchs are how Putin and his government survive. Provided that the administration can hold alliances and get other countries to follow this plan, it perhaps can alienate the Russian people from their regime, and from the fat and wealthy apparatchiks behind it. It may not stop Putin’s next move, but it may stop the next one after that.

the rest:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a39178953/biden-sanctions-russia-ukraine-putin-oligarchs/

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[treestar]

2. The US was traditionally part of England

that's no argument.

If Russia is economically badly off, how can they have a war? Those are expensive.

[Sneederbunk]

3. Ukrainians hate the Russians.

During WWII many Ukrainians fought with the Germans against Russia.

[erronis]

4. And the Kremlin has forcefully moved Russians into areas it wanted to own.

True in Ukraine, true in the Baltics - especially Kaliningrad.

See, people speak Russian - they belong to Mother Russia!