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

[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.