Sounds like you envy a lot more about it than just the ability to leave.

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.

But it’s hard for me to interpret this combination any other way than that the “muscles” were helping it succeed

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.

and it wasn’t a genuine people’s movement.

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.

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/

They didn’t create all those people in the streets.

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.

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.

Casual adhominem comment

Thanks for your valuable contribution to the discussion.

They can’t efficiently extend frontline “into the depth” (km) because it leads to “cauldrons”, so they extend it along all the border.

My point is that that’s an incredibly poor showing for Russia fighting against a massively outnumbered enemy that’s mismanaging a war fought by people who don’t want to fight.

It took 2 absurd failing counteroffensives to wipe all willing soldiers and forced conscription started just half of year ago, and everything was on rapid decline since then. It doesn’t all happen overnight.

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 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.

and then you could leave under the auspices of Russia’s more friendly government

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.

Also, it’s 68196-65871=2325 km since September 3.

I like the one with “are you sure how this evening will end?” It gives some funny spy vibes.

Idk where you get that from, you can check the map that is updated every day here: https://deepstatemap.live/ I just checked total occupied territory month ago and today and it’s 68196-67889=307 km in a month.

That’s not how Ukraine does it, is it?

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.

why he thinks NATO uses the “contract soldier” vs “conscripts” distinction

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.

I agree. I wanted to say it’s kind of immoral to write that propaganda when you’re not even fighting yourself. And it’s twice as immoral when you know that no one wants to fight anymore and people are forced against their will. Not that something should be banned.

Some of what he’s saying is clearly total bullshit (“Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships” “ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder” “a worse dictatorship than russia is”)

There are thousands of videos like this: https://streamable.com/lzh27n

If you want to check the scale of this and find more videos and news of how this is going, you can check this telegram channel: https://t.me/+MUx169gobDtjZjJh

Many of our videobloggers compare this to Holodomor due to the fact that those who were executing those orders back then were also locals.

“Military is terribly mismanaged”

Military commandment is very bad. A lot of soldiers escape from there (AWOL/deserting), everybody is talking about this, even the most patriotic bloggers that oppose ceasefires etc.

“US/EU giving money to Ukraine is basically sponsoring kidnapping/torturing/killing people who don’t want to fight”

How are regular ukrainian soldiers responsible for any of this? It’s the fault of our corrupt government. Most soldiers are also very unhappy with this mismanagement and and ask to not send people who will most likely desert from battlefield to their brigades.

“it’s not like they can’t go to Ukraine-controlled territories and mobilize there and go to the frontlines if they really care for this country so much”

Sure because that whole article is bullshit propaganda by people who will never have to fight in war themselves. Is it even moral to be allowed to have a voice in question of whether to continue the war when they aren’t even subject to conscription?

Sorry, what? How is EU allocating money to defend themselves from Russia is for my sake? That’s for the sake of their own people. They should watch closely what it does to people morale here in Ukraine when civilians are forcefully conscripted and try hard to make sure they never have to do the same to their civilians.

this will happen sooner or later regardless.

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.

People are dying to keep your apartment building safe,

Just open the borders and there’s no need to protect me personally.

trashing them

I’m not trashing ukrainian soldiers. Conscription officers are not soldiers and never were. Neither are politicians.

It sounds like that’s really important to you.

It’s just that russians lives now supposedly valued way more than ukrainians while it was part of propaganda that russian lives worth nothing and ukrainians are part of civilized world and share its values.

Women and ukrainians who live outside of Ukraine, especially those who left before May 2024, have a very different mental image of Ukraine. For me the main turning point is the scale of unlawful forced conscription really. Simple as that. I stopped paying taxes, stopped donating, and stopped mentally supporting Ukraine. I just care for borders to open at this point. Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships to me.

So why don’t you go get conscripted and give up to russian soldiers? If Ukraine is a worse dictatorship, surely that will be a step up.

Just one “step up” from ukrainian levels of shittiness isn’t enough. This is too unsafe compared to giving up to EU. Russians will definitely want to trade you to some of their captured people even if you don’t want to go back. EU will most likely not trade you back if you ask them.

and on social media

Maybe those people are there to create a picture for you. Now that USAID and similar projects are stopping, we might see less of those.

every so often they bring up what the bonus amount is for people signing up for armed forces in Moscow

You all look at this literally as battle of good vs evil, the reality: ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder, while russia stopped forced conscription and pays 22k$ to motivate their conscripts. The propaganda image of ukraine as good or democratic is absurd. It’s just a meat shield of west at best, and it rapidly becomes more and more inefficient.

If you want to check current ukrainian inside discourse, watch independent ukrainian bloggers, a few for a start:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk0GhCkrcX0
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFupMbqaF-k
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R0YGBMAz7s