Recommended sources on Ukraine include kleptocracy expert Casey Michel

[cimorene]

NBC Opinion: Why does Russia want to invade Ukraine? To rewrite the post-Cold War order
Moscow’s demands were always about more than the security arrangements in Ukraine: The West can’t say we weren’t warned, Feb. 23, 2022, by Casey Michel, author of "American Kleptocracy"

For analysis, I mean.

I have noticed a tendency for my American friends and family to be more surprised, and to have missed more of the background stuff going on with Putin's Russia, than I expected, having spent my adult life here in Finland.

I learned about the Maidan protests and the 2014 invasion of Crimea in realtime with my Ukrainian and baltic friends in the advanced Finnish class I was taking at the time, and Finland is full of Russians who have fled Russia. I think we have two Ukrainians and a Russian out of like less than twenty employees at the store where I still (until next Wednesday) work.

So... talking to my family about this today gave me a bit of worldview vertigo.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I studied Russian in high school and college and am also kind of a European history buff, so I was not at all surprised that Putin decided to do this. I'm kind of amazed that he has decided to try to conquer Ukraine and not just chip away at it.

I am so very sorry it came to this, but I don't think there was very much anyone could have done to stop him once he decided.

I feel so badly for the Ukraine people and now all the uncertainty and suffering that will ripple out from this everywhere.

The way the Trump supporters in the US have parroted him and become Putin supporters is kind of mind blowing, though.

[cimorene]

Unfortunately, as a lot of area experts have been pointing out, it's almost universal with dictators that they're malignant narcissists. Putin is too, just more intelligent than Trump originally. Their character flaws inevitably lead to their getting more and more isolated and insulated from anyone who could talk sense to them, because they choose sycophants to empower. The circles of access tighten and they ultimately become completely divorced from reality, with the people who would normally provide reality checks simply guessing how best to please them and reinforcing their delusions. Apparently there are a lot of delusions behind this one, some long-standing, not least the obviously insane revanchist obession with restoring the Russian empire's "greatness", but for example, people are saying Putin and leadership legit expected a large amount of Ukrainian military to simply lay down arms in immediate surrender.

So I mean, not only could nobody stop a dictator - as a condition of the kind of power they amass - the type of government they create always exists mainly to feed their egos, which sets them in a spiral to become less and less accountable to reality and also more able to simply deny it.

[princessofgeeks]

IAWT.

[yvannairie]

It drives me crazy b/c in my day-to-day I've had to deal with Finnish nationalists chest-beating about [insert anti-Slavic slur] and then I open Tumblr and people from half the world away are saying the exact same thing but framed as progressive b/c they are supporting Ukraine, suddenly.

Seriously this is kicking up so much Mess:tm: I avoided dealing with post-2016. The completely unsympathetic reaction people had to an ongoing war that didn't involve a single American was so upsetting, especially when all everyone could do was frame it as somehow being about Trump again. Yankees exhibiting Main Character Syndrome about the rest of the world once again.

[cimorene]

Well, I guess my social media is a lot more tightly-controlled - and also my... life... because I haven't personally overheard this stuff (although that part is probably also lower Finnish comprehension and never going out in public).

But obviously nowhere is safe from American Main Character Syndrome and Western lack of empathy for the inhabitants of less wealthy and powerful countries.

[cimorene]

Oh and also apparently a lot of Finns, and also Russians sometimes, assume I am Russian from looking at me.

I'm not! I'm like 40% Ashkenazi and like 40% Polish Catholic, or something like that, so mostly slavic, though. And understandably both Finns and Russians have seen a lot more Russians than Poles.

But anyway, if they think I'm Russian and AREN'T feeling motivated to verbal hatecrimes against Russians, they probably would keep their slurs to themselves.

And also if they didn't I might not have noticed they were talking to me anyway. I tend to assume people speaking Finnish in public are not talking to me and just gently tune it all out into background noise, except when there's like, proximity and eye contact. I lived here such a long time without being able to understand it that tuning it out sort of became reflexive, and I still do it whenever I'm tired.

[cesy]

It amazes me how many people seem to have forgotten that Crimea is still occupied.

[cimorene]

I know! A total lack of object permanence in the greatest mass of mainstream western media, and apparently popular imagination, about the major events, calamities, atrocities and tragedies of the rest of the world.

My sister, who majored in Russian language in college, said the other day she thought 2016 or so was around the time she thinks she "realized" that Putin was evil and I was like "Well, sadly a lot of people in America especially seem to have realized it much more recently, like this week, but it wasn't a secret. English-speaking experts on the topic were publishing articles and essays about it even before the 2014 invasion of Crimea..." and she said "Oh, I forgot that was that long ago!" -_-