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[Article] ‘Evil must not win’ — how Ukraine’s female partisans resist Russian occupation
(kyivindependent.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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EU should allocate more spending on their military so that when the day comes, they will have more than enough professional soldiers to fight Russia and have no need to mobilize civilians. If EU was one country it would be hard, but when there is NATO, contract soldiers from many NATO states might be enough without additional conscripts.
And why should EU do that for your sake, when you no longer give a shit about your own country?
Ask him why he thinks NATO uses the "contract soldier" vs "conscripts" distinction, or where he got that mental model from to use it habitually. That's not how Ukraine does it, is it? Or is it? Presumably most Ukrainians would know that it's specific to Russia instead of assuming everyone does it that way, right?
It is how Ukraine does it, too. Currently I don't think you can go for contract when you already have to be mobilized according to databases (on "Wanted" list in apps like "Reserve+" or "Dija"). And payment is laughable anyway. It would be really easy to boost morale if government decided to end forced conscription and paid to volunteers more than russia does. And it also could probably help to stabilize the frontlines. Given how much they steal I'm pretty sure they have more than enough money to pay more than russians 22k$ to volunteers as a single-time payment.
Too bad if they doesn't. What they gonna do when the time comes. In EU conscious objection is supposed to work, so people can decline en masse (did you know that includes personal beliefs, not necessarily religion?). They'd better start using that distinction asap and consider soldier as a full-time work even in peace time. So that enough people will be paid to be soldiers like a job but in case of war they and only they will go fight and no one else.
Why would they need soldiers "when the time comes" / "when the day comes"? I thought Ukraine was a lot more evil dictatorship than Russia. Aren't you looking forward to peace? Wouldn't it be nicer to have Russia on their borders, with open borders and free media, and finally put an end to the corruption of Ukraine? You said you were looking forward to the Russian military rolling over Kyiv, and then you could leave under the auspices of Russia's more friendly government. Right?
I'm mostly done talking, I'm just fucking with you I guess for my own amusement. It was enlightening though. Thanks for the insight.
I don't understand where do you see any paradox in that. Yes I'm looking forward to peace for Ukraine. Yes, I think it will be possible to leave the country in case of peace deal or if Ukraine falls. Yes, I consider it possible for Russia to continue and attack EU states eventually. Do you think I'm telling NATO to come fight for Ukraine or something? That would be neat, but that's obviously not going to happen.
It's not that they are kind, they just less absurd and at least don't sabotage their own economy and morale as hard as ukrainian government does.
…
If you're interested what ukrainians are talking about today, it's how USAID funded Maidan in 2014 and how it explains why we don't have Maidan now even though we have 100x reasons for it. In the meanwhile, Verkhovna Rada fighting each other while admitting terrible mismanagement of the frontlines. I'm personally researching some threads on extents of foreign influence in 2014 Maidan and some general things about colour revolutions.
Ukrainian ladies would be very disappointed in you.
The US State Department (more so than USAID, although I'm sure they were in Ukraine) was certainly involved in Maidan. They didn't create all those people in the streets. Those same crowds of people are out fighting against the Russians right now.
Just give it a rest. Russians can fuck off and go home. That's peace.
Apparently a lot of those far-right NGOs who were "the muscles" of Maidan were funded by west. I guess most of those have found their way to Valhalla by now. Certainly there were some civilian activists as well. I hope they don't have to participate in undersupplied meat assaults.
You didn’t reply again, but I decided to get ahead of it a little bit, in case you decided to:
https://ponder.cat/post/1520470
Oh yeah, the muscles came with their thick skulls and brutally assaulted the batons of the berkut and titushky.
Get fucked. I think how I'm going to start to deal with it when people start commenting bullshit to me, is to start to make posts about the accurate side of the matter, so that the sum total impact of you talking with me will be the spread of a lot more accurate information, instead of anything achieving your actual goal.
https://ponder.cat/post/1518838
Have fun! Tell me more about these far-right NGOs. Which NGOs, and about how many of their "muscles" were in the protests in 2013?
I took that straight from the Reddit thread I linked, you can find more there (there are some links to other sources as well). There were dozens of far-right NGOs, some of the biggest ones are listed in Wikipedia article you posted (Right Sector, Svoboda, UDAR, Spilna Sprava, Misanthropic Division). By the evening of today dozens of our popular videobloggers made videos about USAID and Maidan. I'm getting kinda sick of digging through this stuff.
Here is Reddit thread I posted before: https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/tg9zwp/what_evidence_exists_for_or_against_the_assertion/
Here's my reply to your comment elsewhere, off topic:
You said "I said it has open borders which is factually true. Also, last summer they paid their conscripts in Moscow 22k$ for a contract. Regarding “human rights”, well, lets try to count human rights. We don’t have the right to criticise our government and we don’t have the right to leave the country. Russians don’t have the right to criticize their government but they do have the right to leave the country. They also pretty much free to walk their cities and participate in whatever activities present there unlike our conscription-aged men who are only really allowed to participate in war." Sounds like you envy a lot more about it than just the ability to leave.
You said "Apparently a lot of those far-right NGOs who were “the muscles” of Maidan were funded by west." In general, you seem to think that without "the West", Maidan would never have succeeded, which given how little the West as a whole cares about Ukraine is pretty laughable. But it's hard for me to interpret this combination any other way than that the "muscles" were helping it succeed, and it wasn't a genuine people's movement.
"Your" government has fended off an enemy which is outspending and outmanning it by more than an order of magnitude. Of course, this kind of thing happens sometimes with empires, but usually if the little country is incompetent, it stops working the instant that US troops leave the country.
I made this point, and you made a weird non sequitur about "caldrons" that didn't really seem to grasp the core point that I was making.
I'm not really interested in the conversation anymore, I just wanted to respond since you made some specific points accusing me of misrepresenting you. That's what you said, maybe my summary was sloppy. I'm just mostly not interested in what you have to say anymore, to be honest.
Also:
You said, "And payment is laughable anyway. It would be really easy to boost morale if government decided to end forced conscription and paid to volunteers more than russia does. And it also could probably help to stabilize the frontlines. Given how much they steal I’m pretty sure they have more than enough money to pay more than russians 22k$ to volunteers as a single-time payment."
Maybe you're right, my summary was pretty inaccurate there. It sounded to me like you were pining for the higher pay, similar to my "envy" quotation above, but it's true you didn't explicitly say it.
Like I say, I'm mostly done, just wanted to respond to the accusation that I was lying about what you said.
Enjoy: https://ponder.cat/post/1522382
True, but that doesn't mean I want to live in Russia. It's just ridiculous to fight for what our people get and how our government treats us vs country that gives their people more and treats their people better. Countries aren't something that has inherent self-worth after all, the whole concept of states was supposed to be a tool to make people live better.
Those "muscles" played central role in making it succeed, people alone couldn't do it. Civilians in general are really bad at violence, especially in eastern europe. I was a student back then, and I didn't know a single person among my classmates or relatives or their contacts who went to Maidan.
It's "genuine" in a sense there is definitely something upsetting people and at the right time forces come in to drive that energy of people into revolution. The point is, it doesn't happen to most of things upsetting people. Since then we've many times had 100x more reasons for another Maidan, but there were no forces investing into "muscles" during long timeframes that were interested in our upset at those moments to overthrow government again. West is way more interested in dealing maximum damage to Russia at the cost of lives of ukrainians than saving lives of ukrainians. Also West thinks that if we become Russia it would just mean that Russia became stronger and it's better to just kill us all to prevent Russia from getting us. It's understandable point of view, but we as ukrainians are not interested in it.
I wrote a longer reply to this, but my browser ate it. Short version:
Here's your dose of general Ukraine postings:
https://ponder.cat/post/1528372
I can't decide which Ukraine-specific RSS feed to create and promote. I think it should just be one for now, multiple isn't necessary. Which one do you think I should pick?