Many thanks to everyone who donated yesterday! The military and the volunteers who are helping them already got significant contributions . One reaction:
"We have got $1200 within 2 hrs, are shocked and already buying headsets, uniform parts etc. We are thankful unlimitedly"
This help is more important than many presume. Much of the Ukrainian armed forces are essentially the citizen levy, like the territorial defence. For example Borden Markovskyi used to work as a recruitment lead in a software company before the war started linkedin.com/in/bohdan-mark…
You can read his account with google translate. Much of the territorial defence is decentralised acting as the guerrilla troops. They know what equipment/clothes/medicine they need much better than the central command does. You can donate them directly
There's another reason for direct private donations. Many exaggerate how easy it is for Ukraine to get a material support from the Western governments. Consider this misleading statement about the "largely unimpeded support" from the yesterday's article warontherocks.com/2022/05/would-…
The argument about Ukraine getting the "largely unimpeded materiel support from the West" is misleading, whether intentionally or unintentionally. In fact, this war demonstrated that there is no "West". There are various Western governments with very different policies and agenda
Consider Europe. While the United Kingdom provided quick and well-targeted material support for the Ukrainian armed forces, Germany largely sabotaged it and is still sabotaging, breaking its own promises. See the article: welt.de/politik/auslan…
The argument about the supposed United West, providing massive and unimpeded support to Ukraine is wrong because no such West exists in reality. It's cheap propaganda. The war revealed the inner divisions within the West that had previously remained invisible for the public
The private donations to the Ukrainian armed forces are necessary largely because *some* Western governments are not really willing to help. They are not even willing to fulfil their own promises made earlier. That's why individual citizens have to step up
Once again thanks a lot to everyone who donated to the links I posted yesterday (all collected and verified by @sumlenny). In the future I am planning to post more of such threads to collect more help for the armed forces and for the volunteers
PS here's a yesterday's thread with the links for donations
Fake jobs are completely normal & totally natural. The reason is: nobody understands what is happening and most certainly does not understand why. Like people, including the upper management have some idea of what is happening in an organisation, and this idea is usually wrong.
As they do not know and cannot know causal relations between the input and output, they just try to increase some sort of input, in a hope for a better output, but they do not really know which input to increase.
Insiders with deep & specific knowledge, on the other hand, may have a more clear & definite idea of what is happening, and even certain, non zero degree of understanding of causal links between the input and output
I have recently read someone comparing Trump’s tariffs with collectivisation in the USSR. I think it is an interesting comparison. I don’t think it is exactly the same thing of course. But I indeed think that Stalin’s collectivisation offers an interesting metaphor, a perspective to think about
But let’s make a crash intro first
1. The thing you need to understand about the 1920s USSR is that it was an oligarchic regime. It was not strictly speaking, an autocracy. It was a power of few grandees, of the roughly equal rank.
2. Although Joseph Stalin established himself as the single most influential grandee by 1925, that did not make him a dictator. He was simply the most important guy out there. Otherwise, he was just one of a few. He was not yet the God Emperor he would become later.
The great delusion about popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when they exacerbate. Nothing can be further from truth. For the most part, popular revolts do not happen when things get worse. They occur when things turn for the better
This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really, really, really bad, the masses were too weak, to scared and too depressed to even think of raising their head. If they beared any grudges and grievances, they beared them in silence.
When things turn for the better, that is when the people see a chance to restore their pride and agency, and to take revenge for all the past grudges, and all the past fear. As a result, a turn for the better not so much pacifies the population as emboldens and radicalises it.
The first thing to understand about the Russian-Ukrainian war is that Russia did not plan a war. And it, most certainly, did not plan the protracted hostilities of the kind we are seeing today
This entire war is the regime change gone wrong.
Russia did not want a protracted war (no one does). It wanted to replace the government in Kyiv, put Ukraine under control and closely integrate it with Russia
(Operation Danube style)
One thing to understand is that Russia viewed Ukraine as a considerable asset. From the Russian perspective, it was a large and populous country populated by what was (again, from the Russian perspective) effectively the same people. Assimilatable, integratable, recruitable
In 1991, Moscow faced two disobedient ethnic republics: Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both were the Muslim majority autonomies that refused to sign the Federation Treaty (1992), insisting on full sovereignty. In both cases, Moscow was determined to quell them.
Still, the final outcome could not be more different. Chechnya was invaded, its towns razed to the ground, its leader assassinated. Tatarstan, on the other hand, managed to sign a favourable agreement with Moscow that lasted until Putin’s era.
The question is - why.
Retrospectively, this course of events (obliterate Chechnya, negotiate with Tatarstan) may seem predetermined. But it was not considered as such back then. For many, including many of Yeltsin’s own partisans it came as a surprise, or perhaps even as a betrayal.