In Poland it’s not even that hard, you go for obvious banderite worship first. Problem is, you might accidentally hit a hardcore PiSmann who would take you for his fellow fash. Then again such people are rather easy to spot since they never shy from announcing their political opinions.
Fortunately my friends and family members don’t need it explained to them because we’re all leftists, but outside of the hardcore Ukro nationalist types I find that almost no one where I am has a strong opinion on the conflict other than a) people should stop dying and b) we should stop sending our money to them. I’ve found it pretty easy to suggest to them that Russia has legitimate reason to start this war and that media has mislead them, and we can usually agree that ending it as as soon as possible is best course of action.
For the nationalist sorts I just avoid all discussion of it lol you will never break through to someone who is able to hold contradictions like that in their mind seemingly without issue.
I find it’s pretty much impossible to engage with people who still think Ukraine can either win or negotiate better terms by prolonging the war. No matter what you say, they’re just going to counter with that.
It’s going to be easier to talk about this once the war is over and Russia has won. At that point, they will have to grapple with the fact that Ukraine is objectively worse off than it would’ve been had it taken the deal two months into the war. Once that’s established, then it’s possible to start talk about whether the west actually helped Ukraine in the end.
once the war is over and Russia has won.
I hope we make it to that point (my brain is probably cooked from all the news about the recent escalation and I’m overreacting, but still)
I am hoping we don’t all die in a nuclear holocaust, but if that’s the way things go then we won’t have to worry about much else at that point.
100,000s have died that would be alive today if a ceasefire was reached. The West is so russophobic that context will just make them dig their heels in deeper, you need to get them to accept that endlessly killing Ukranians isn’t helping Ukraine first and foremost.
you need to get them to accept that endlessly killing Ukranians isn’t helping Ukraine first and foremost.
Indeed, that’s what I’ve always found most effective. If they can’t accept that, they’re basically admitting they’re bloodthirsty ghouls that only care about seeing Russians die.
That it is a proxy war between two world powers on the territory of Ukraine, as a start.
Hmm? What superpower are using Russia as a proxy?
Russia has the world’s fourth largest economy and the world’s second (by some rankings even first) strongest military. It is currently taking on basically all of NATO (which is providing all of the equipment, logistics and intel for Ukraine, basically doing everything but being the cannon fodder) by itself and winning. It is the superpower.
Sure. I thought both sides had to be proxies for it to be a proxy war.
Given the narratives about the cold war I can forgive you for saying that but no. One side using a proxy to attack the other side is still IMO a proxy war. They’re waging war but via their proxy. I don’t think it’s requisite for both sides to use a proxy, just one. (Take Vietnam for example, US accused Vietnam of being a Soviet proxy, attacked it directly after its own proxy started losing. Obviously Vietnam was not a Soviet proxy, the US just saw beating on them as a way to attack the Soviets via proxy. Same with Korea.)
Yes you’re right. I was uninformed!
By referring them to the Cuban Missile Crisis and reminding them what the US did to one of the tiniest countries in the world the second they thought about joining an economic and military alliance with our rival superpower
If geopolitics is actually their interest, I share John Mearscheimer’s lecture on Ukraine with them. It both helps that he isn’t a communist and that his analysis and breakdown is accurate and accessible.
I don’t talk about it with people who are heavily dug in, but I will talk about it with friends and family who see the headlines or the two minute national news segment and never looked further. They’re usually quite open to learning more.
I give them the broad strokes of Ukranian political history since 2004, and the expansion of NATO since 1991. I really try to underline the material interests of the parties involved, specifically Russia’s security concerns and the desire of the Ukranian people to choose their own path rather than have one dictated to them. I sometimes go into how US capitalists have bought up Ukraine in return for the weapons if they’re still interested at that point.
For me, the biggest thing is hitting the right tone in talking about this. Not lecturing, not talking down, but meeting people where they are at and finding common ground like wanting all peoples to have self determination.
Not at all, they will gleefully talk about how they hope for a second “Nuremberg trials” for Russia and talk endlessly about how this shows how much of “Stalin’s legacy” remains in Putin
Nothing I can do there
You don’t lol but in all seriousness the only conversation I had about Ukraine at all with family was when my stepdad asked me my feelings on it. I cannot for the life of me remember why he asked me this but what I do recall is bringing up Euromaidan and the Donbas. The conversation was incredibly short as I had to leave right away but I remember it ending with him asking if I thought Putin had legitimate reasons, I said yes and left (I did not leave because of the conversation, I needed to take the dog for a walk because a baby just entered the house and my dog hates young children).
I think the main thing is gauging whether the person is open to even talking about this or not, to my surprise my stepdad did (he and his family are Ukrainian, but I think only his great grandparents were immigrants) and even though we could not continue the discussion he hasn’t acted cold to me at all and still engages in political talk even if I find his opinions misinformed. I could gather from our brief talk that he was open to listening to me and giving background information tends to help understand the conflict a bit more, because surprise surprise a lot of people didn’t know about Euromaidan or the Donbas (I sure didn’t). I wasn’t able to talk about NATO expansion but that would be a good idea as well.
Depending on your situation, avoiding the topic at all might just be your best bet. I never bring up politics ever because of how insane my family can get, so sometimes you have to wait for them to come to you. Knowing your stuff beforehand and relaying that information in a calm and kind manner can go a long way.
The points I try to hit most are:
- There is no way for Ukraine to win short of WWIII, so the best option for the Ukranian people is to negotiate an end to the war immediately. This will not be on great terms, because that’s what happens when you lose a war.
- Fighting longer will only kill more Ukranians and get them a worse peace deal.
If you can bring them around on these very immediate points, maybe they’ll listen to what you say about why the war began in the first place. If you can’t get through to them on “they lost, how many more have to die,” it’s not worth arguing much else.
Fighting longer will only kill more Ukranians and get them a worse peace deal.
Only Ukrainians?
Depends on who you talk to. Some more twisted sorts see dead Russians as a win.
The price of being the attacking side is heavy casualties, which will continue for Russia as they got 80% of ukraine to go and it gets harder the further west they go
Russia does not have heavy casualties compared to Ukraine. The initial assumption may only be true for equal opponents, which is not the case - Russia has gargantuan advantage in artillery, armored vehicles, total domination of the skies, powerful long-range strike capacity, and now even drones. It has more of everything, including total manpower, and its military industrial base is vastly more powerful than anything the Western empire can muster. If a boxer can only punch once and then gets punched 9 times - that’s not “equal”.
The other factor is the fact that we’re talking about attrition warfare, where there’s close to zero big arrow maneuvers, instead the Russian military is methodically grinding down the AFU until its combat capacity is negligible. That helps Russia keep its casualty numbers low, regardless of what Western propaganda press is trying to convince the public of. So it actually gets easier for Russia the longer it goes on - because at some point the AFU will not be able to hold the line, which is going to end up in the general collapse of the front line. If you destroy your opponent’s ability faster than they destroy yours and you’re more powerful to begin with - the collapse is a mathematical certainty.
Also - Russia does not want to occupy all of Ukraine, that goes directly against their economic interests and it is something they want to avoid if possible.
Mediazona seems to have a decent system for tracking Russian casualties and they put Russian KIA at minimum 75k, meaning there’s at least 150k more casualties, for a total of 225k. Ukraine could be having up to 10 times more casualties, but these are not irrelevant numbers for Russia either.
Then why is Russia paying NK for their troops, shit can’t be cheap…
Russia does not want to occupy all of Ukraine
when did position change?
When was that ever the position held by Russia? I’ve only seen this assertion made by western demagogues without any evidence. The closest they have come is pointing at Dugin and his works but then they don’t give evidence of any direct effect it has had on Russian policies.
There never was a clear position beyond Crimea, but things just kept escalating on both sides from there, so now it’s also Donbas. Since Putin keeps avoiding a full scale invasion it doesn’t seem likely to me they are after the whole Ukraine, but I could be wrong ofc.
Neither of those statements is true. Russia is suffering less casualties than Ukraine because they have an enormous firepower advantage. And the most heavily fortified and urbanized part of Ukraine is the Donbass. It actually has been getting easier for Russia the more it has broken through those lines that have been fortified since 2014, and the more it has attrited and degraded the army that NATO had trained and equipped in Ukraine, leaving Kiev having to increasingly resort to dragging unwilling and unfit conscripts off the streets.
Yeah, that’s probably the case.
I think the comment you were replying to earlier didn’t leave out Russians because they weren’t suffering casualties. More likely folks are going to be more sympathetic to the defenders in this war, especially with manpower shortages leading to more and more people unwilling to fight being forced to the front line.
Well I tried to tell them about what’s really going on but they bought the Mainstream Media narrative about stopping Putin from getting into Europe. I was disappointed but they’re smart people, I’m sure they know shit’s crooked.
