this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
38 points (79.7% liked)
Asklemmy
44413 readers
1168 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No, why would they? Haven't you heard that Russia is literally Mordor filled with orcs, while Ukraine (especially under Zelensky's rule) is a bastion of democracy? I don't think that western governments/media and especially Zelensky (who doesn't benefit at all from this war and is the main victim here) would lie to anyone about that!
Now that we got sarcasm out of the way..
If you want to form an informed opinion about it you can start by looking at the map of 2010 elections, where there was basically two candidates, a pro-EU one and pro-Russian one. Take a look at the distribution and percentage of people voting for a particular candidate in particular regions. Then look into the coup that happened in 2014, which powers participated in it (you can listen to their leaked conversations as well), then remember the electoral map you just looked at, and maybe make some conclusions.
That's "before the invasion" the part.
"After the invasion" part is of course less clear, but again if you want to start making an informed opinion you can start by looking, for example, at the level of freedom people located on Ukraine controlled territories have and that of people on annexed by Russia territories (or just "Russia proper" territories). Who is free to leave at any moment and go anywhere, and who is forbidden to leave the country because the government needs cannon fodder? Who is encouraged to volunteer to join the army with monetary incentives, and who is kidnapped from the street, beaten, held in basements for days and forcefully sent to the meat grinder? Again, you can try to make some conclusions from that, and maybe speculate whether it's possible that people from one of those groups may want to join the other one.
As a finishing touch - I am Ukrainian, I was born there, and lived most of my life there. Thankfully, I left the country before the war started. If I visit Ukraine - I will most likely be dead in a matter of months (after being kidnapped and beaten by the brave TCC guys). If I visit Russia - I will at most face more scrutiny at the border due to the war. I'm not from an eastern region of Ukraine and I never wanted it to become a part of Russia. You can try to guess which options are preferrable for me currently.