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Absolutely. Whether or not Ukraine was showing “proper” respect for ethnicly Russian Ukrainians. Putin’s response was wrong. If he was concerned for them he would have offered to resettle them in Russia. Truth is Putin cares so much for them, he’d put a bullet in each one of their brains personally. It was always about the land and warm water ports in Crimea and the donbas.
As a Hungarian with relatives near Uzhhorod and Mukachevo, I can tell you that Ukraine’s treatment of minority citizens has been abysmal ever since the breakup of the USSR (there were problems there during the USSR as well, of course).
However this does not give Putin, or any other neighbouring country, the right to invade and all willy-nilly demand territories from Ukraine.
With that said, the whole mistreatment of Russian nationals/ethnics was way overblown by the Russian media, and is nothing more than a very, very unstable casus belli…
Almost as if it is possible for two bad things to be happening at once at the same time, without it meaning that one of them is actually a good thing now.
I’m reminded of the run-up to the 2nd Iraq War, near enough to the dawn of the mainstream internet that there was one Iraqi blogger who was well-known in the West. He was kind of a minor celebrity and people read him attentively to figure out what the reality was like for people in Iraq, up to and including the beginning of the war. One thing that he said that always stuck with me was, more or less: Yes, things are bad here. Some of the things the US is saying are true. But it is INSANE to think that anyone here wants the US to invade to “save” us from any of it, or that there’s any chance that it will make anything any better. It will make things ten times worse. It’s insane to me that people who are supposed to be qualified at world events are saying that the US is trying to “help,” or that anyone wants this or will “welcome as liberators” the people coming to bomb our cities and make our government even worse.
I mean Russia isn’t famous for mistreating ethnic minorities. That would be hilarious.
Those are Asian and that’s why no one cares.
Agreed. Sadly there is little more human than to discriminate and have prejudice against those different from you. Especially when the relationship was previously reversed as it was.
But as you said, it was always a flimsy false pretense.