Stas Olenchenko 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 26 14 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
As a Ukrainian person looking at everything that’s been happening in the world lately, here’s what I really, REALLY need people living in liberal democracies to understand as soon as possible.

This isn’t a pleasant conversation.

A thread.
1/
You can’t afford to take democracy for granted.

It may feel like your countries’ democratic institutions have been there forever — but that’s just because you were born after generations of your compatriots had given their lives to defend and develop these institutions.
2/
You’ve lived your life in the comfort of your ancestors’ victories, but you may be the last generation that can feel this comfort while growing up.

Things are changing, and democracies around the world are struggling to defend against internal and external threats.
3/
Now, there are actors in this world whose main aim is to crush your countries’ democracies. These actors are your direct enemies — it’s as simple as that.

I know that you don’t want to have enemies or fight wars. Ukraine also didn’t choose to have this war — Russia did.
4/
Russia and Iran are our most obvious enemies. Their allies and proxies must also be viewed as your enemies.

These countries/corporations/actors are not driven by your logic of cooperation and stability — they seek instability and want to hurt you as much as possible.
5/
The sooner you realize you need to see these powers as your direct enemies and act accordingly, the more chances you’ll have of preserving your democratic institutions and welfare states.

If you ignore this threat, the war will still come, and it will catch you by surprise.
6/
The fact that Russia can still buy practically all military tech components from European companies to keep bombing Ukraine into rubble is a clear signal for me: most Europeans still don’t understand the threat we’re all up against.
7/
You can’t be doing any business with actors whose goal is to hurt you.

You can’t be helping Ukraine with one hand and enabling Russia with your other hand.

This is not just unreasonable — this puts your democracies at an even greater risk.
8/
Russian businesses/representatives can’t be viewed independently from the Russian state.

Yandex can’t be a growing browser in Europe. The Russian House can’t keep standing unbothered in the center of Berlin.

You can’t afford to keep your eyes closed security-wise.
9/
If you run things the usual way, the democracy that many of your compatriots take for granted will fade in your country as well — because of the powers working hard at it and not getting nearly enough pushback from your governments and corporate representatives.
10/
As someone who witnessed two nationwide pro-democracy revolutions in my homeland and two waves of Russian aggression in just 28 years of my life, I can assure you: your democracy won’t last if you’re not ready to take security seriously.
11/
All you need to do for now is to make your institutions cut ties with everything Russian, clear them from spies and harmful actors, and invest in your security — especially by helping Ukraine’s security as the only country currently defending common European democracy.
12/
If Ukraine is allowed to get crushed by Russia’s war of attrition, you will be the next to know what it feels like when someone directly attacks your democratic welfare systems and seeks to take away your freedoms.

Trust me, you won’t like the taste of it.
13/
If you want the next generation to live in the comfort of your democratic institutions, it’s time to take security matters seriously and act now.

There is no time left — many forces are already at war with you even if you choose not to see things this way.

End.
14/14

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More from @TheStanislawski

Aug 15
Last week a small Russian media outlet posted a guide on how to get rid of imperialistic thinking.

It mentioned basic stuff like "avoid addressing all people in Russian" and "respect indigenous people’s culture"

Let me walk you into the heart of darkness aka the replies.
1/9 Image
First, some context.

Komi Daily is from the Komi Republic, a Northern region of Russia with an indigenous population of Komi people who speak one of the Uralic languages.

Russians have colonized the exploited the region extensively since the 19th century.

2/9 Image
Now, let’s get to some replies that Komi Daily's guide received here on Twitter.

I translated some of them and added some crucial context.

At the bottom of the screenshot, you can see the only positive comment I saw. It gets much worse.

3/9 Image
Read 9 tweets
Jul 17
Exactly 9 years ago, I rushed to my dad with the news I just saw: passenger flight #MH17 got hit in the Russia-occupied part of eastern Ukraine.

Dad went silent and then said, “At least now the world will stop Putin.”

It didn’t. But let me walk you through some context.

1/15
In July 2014, Ukrainians had just gone through Maidan, had a new democratically elected government, but also had gotten the first taste of Russian invasion: Crimea was occupied in late February and Russia actively fought in Eastern Ukraine.

2/15
Of course, back then Russia was more successful at spreading the narrative of a “civil war Ukraine” — and Ukraine didn’t have much international trust or support (I’m not even talking about military help) against Russia’s hybrid warfare.

3/15
Read 17 tweets
Jul 2
Lately, I’ve been very critical of how some western media outlets cover Ukraine‘s counteroffensive.

There’s a pattern of narratives that are just poor, harmful reporting — based on wrong expectations, failing the reader, and needlessly hurting Ukraine.
No, the counteroffensive is not failing. It was never supposed to be a victory march — it’s a complex nonlinear process that requires time.

Every military expert with combat experience knows that.

Your expectations were wrong, and you shouldn’t project them onto your reporting
No, there’s nothing wrong with Ukraine’s actions.

The autumn’s Kharkiv success can’t be reproduced because Russians now had the time to dig multiple layers of defense (partly because Ukraine wasn’t granted sufficient weaponry back in 2022).

Ukraine acts with what it has.
Read 12 tweets
May 23
Up until fairly recently, I used to be okay with the term “post-Soviet state.” Not anymore.

Let me try to explain my previous thinking.

Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union for 70 years (50 years for western regions).

The legacy of Soviet institutions is still alive.
1/9
Whenever I visit Eastern European countries that had Soviet or socialist history, I can instantly feel the shared context.

Our streets and buildings look familiar.

Our elderly people seem very alike.

Our economic and social contexts have similar pre-1991 roots.
2/9
There’s no point in denying all of this. We are all post-Soviet societies — because we used to be a part of Soviet world. This is just a factual statement, right?

Well, no. It’s not just that. It’s a simplified umbrella term that distorts more than it explains.
3/9
Read 9 tweets
May 10
So I would like to clarify another extremely important detail that I feel this thread didn’t communicate properly.

Singling out and discriminating ethnic Russians or Russian-speaking people in former colonies is just not a real thing. It never was.

1/10
In Ukraine, ethnic Russians are so intertwined with ethnic Ukrainians that nobody really knows their ethnicity for sure.

There are signs like Russian surnames or family origins, but people absolutely don’t give a crap about these things — and never did.

2/10
Speaking Russian is also not a clear identity marker: Ukraine is vastly bilingual and almost all Ukrainians had to learn Russian after centuries of aggressive Russification and Ukrainian language bans.

What’s left of it is a system of Russian-first speaking norms.

3/10
Read 10 tweets
May 9
I noticed that a lot of people from Western democracies with imperial past don’t get that ethnic Russians living in Ukraine (especially Crimea), the Baltics, Caucasus are not indigenous ethnic minorities.

They are mostly Russia’s colonial settlers.
1/10
Russians in Crimea and the Baltics often moved into the houses of recently deported indigenous owners.

Russians across ex-colonies have enjoyed all the privileges of a colonizer nation for centuries — they aren’t an oppressed population in any common sense of this term.
2/10
Whenever Russia claims its people are being oppressed in Latvia or Ukraine — it’s because these countries are decolonizing themselves and balancing out the existing system of Russian privilege (especially language-wise).
3/10
Read 10 tweets

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