ladyoflucifer

[ladyoflucifer]

Please don’t underestimate writing as an actual way of learning how to write.

[ladyoflucifer]

me staring at my calculator app for 45 seconds before i remember i was trying to open my clock app to set an alarm

[ladyoflucifer]

christ in the wilderness, ivan kramskoy

[ladyoflucifer]

If i see one more American joking about a war breaking out, I'm just gonna fucking dropkick them out the window.

It's easy to joke around when you're all the way on the other side of the globe isn't it? Well. It's much less fun when you're in direct proximity of Ukraine.

"oh it's just jokes" then where's the punchline. Where does the funny start bc i don't see it. Please tell me.

"it's a way of coping" YOU'RE IN AMERICA.

[ladyoflucifer]

there is literally so much drama happening inside of a lava lamp

[ladyoflucifer]

[ladyoflucifer]

First Draft: Russia, Ukraine, and Rumors of War

What’s happening with Russia and Crimea?

Short answer: Putin wants everyone scared enough to do whatever he asks.

The long answer comes in 5 parts:

Russia

Crimea

Ukraine

Germany & the United States

Putin

RUSSIA

A few cultural traits or principles have remained true in Russia for centuries, regardless of changes to its form of government:

They believe they are the rightful heirs of Ancient Rome. Rome conquered the Mediterranean by finding paranoid reasons to believe that neighboring countries were about to attack, and then preemptively but defensively attacked them first, thereby conquering the world defensively.

Russia believes it is their moral obligation to protect ethnically Russian populations anywhere in the world, and especailly in neighboring countries. (This is often their reason for their preemptive defensive wars.)

They don’t trust a united Europe, like the EU and NATO represent today. They genuinely think a united Europe will inevitably invade them and fight deep into Russian territory before eventually being destroyed by Russian winters. Like how Napoleon did after the French Revolution, and like the Austro-German Alliance did in World War 1, and like Hitler did in World War 2. The USA even invaded Russia during its Bolshevik Revolution. Nuclear weapons and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction are probably why that pattern stopped since then, but Russia hasn’t forgiven or forgotten.

In addition to that, there are some current, modern factors that affect how its national character expresses itself.

Russia still has about 45% of the world’s supply of nuclear weapons (4,000 or so), and they’re old and in bad repair. It would be almost convenient to use some of them, but it might expose that most of them don’t work anymore and in their view that’d be tantamount to suicide to expose that weakness. They almost certainly won’t use their nukes, but 99% certainty isn’t comforting.

Russia’s economy is heavily dependent on the export of fuels and energy products these days (63% of total exports, with crude oil and natural gas accounting for 43 of those percentage points).

Putin’s political agenda has two points: 1) to restore Russian power, and 2) to convince the Russian people that all democracies are pretty authoritarian and corrupt, so they shouldn’t bother to complain about Russia’s corrupt authoritarianism.

That’s Russia today.

CRIMEA

Crimea is a peninsula sticking south out of Ukraine into the Black Sea the way Florida sticks south into the Caribbean.

Russia (under the Tsar) first conquered the Crimean Khanate in 1783, ran it as a Russian province for centuries, then (as the Soviet Union) added it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921. Ukraine declared independence in 1991, taking advantage of Soviet weakness during an attempted coup d'etat in Moscow. When Ukraine elected corrupt oligarch billionaire and pro-NATO President Petro Poroshenko, replacing corrupt pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, Putin took decisive action to keep Ukraine out of NATO and the EU. He declared Poroshenko’s government to be a modern Nazi party, a theory based on delusions and string, and sent Russian troops disguised as pro-Russian locals to hold a popular referendum on whether Crimeans wanted to join Russia or get shot where they stood. 96.77% of respondents voted to join Russia (local community activists put the real number at about 20%), and the international community labeled the entire Crimea adventure “the Russian annexation of Crimea.” Russia disputes this characterization the way Trump denies the 2020 US election results.

Torture and other human rights abuses of hundreds have characterized the Russian occupation of Crimea, but most Crimeans keep their head down and Russia treats that compliant set like citizens with rights. Selective application of human rights is one of the hallmarks of tyranny.

Russia also invaded eastern Ukraine, justifying themselves with the argument that the far east was mostly Russian, mostly pro-Moscow, and the imaginary Nazis just elected would otherwise have killed them off. Poroshenko, bloated plutocrat that he was, still managed to arrange an impressively effective resistance to Russian aggression in the east, but that took all his forces. All he could do about Crimea was dam up the North Crimean Canal that supplies Crimea most of their drinking water. Crimea’s agriculture was destroyed, and the population is chronically short of drinking water. Russia spent a ton of money trying to build wells and things, but it’s not really working.

Putin has to get Ukraine to open up that canal.

UKRAINE

Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, similar to how the Great Plains states feed America. Ukraine and Russia have been parts of the same country a lot in recent centuries, and citizens of both countries tend to have a lot of family in the other and a lot of mutual loyalty. War between them is a war between brothers.

In the mid-1600s, a war against Poland was going poorly, so Ukraine called in Russian help. They ended up split between Poland and Russia, with the exact border bouncing around for a few centuries but favoring Russia. They also oscillated between relative independence and heavy-handed rule by Russia. Ukrainians fought on both sides of World War 1, but about 14 times as many on the Russian side. Ukraine was one of the founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1921, and the centralized management of agriculture quickly led to widespread crop failures in Ukraine and tens of millions of people starving to death across the Soviet Union. In 2010, the Ukrainian Parliament declared this mass starvation to be a genocide, but scholars are divided on whether that’s technically true.

When World War 2 came around, Russia’s alliance with the Nazis included uniting the Polish part of Ukraine with the Russian part for the first time. But when the Nazis (predictably) betrayed their alliance with the Russians, much of the fighting took place in Ukraine, including the famous resistance of the Battle of Kyiv (or Kiev). Caught between two dictatorships, about 6 million Ukrainians died, about 40% of the USSR’s total causalities. After the war, the Soviet Union invested heavily into Ukraine, and it quickly developed into a major European industrial center, and many leading Soviet citizens came from Ukraine.

Ukraine developed a major energy and energy transportation sector, made infamous by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, killing 56 people directly and an estimated 4,000 due to increased cancer rates. Mostly safe today, the site has become somewhat of a tourist attraction.

A unity and independence movement arose in 1990, and when an attempted coup distracted Moscow in 1991, Ukraine declared its independence. Ukraine voluntarily gave up their nuclear arsenal, the 3rd largest in the world, and ceased to be a nuclear power in exchange for security assurances. The collapse of the Soviet Union hit all of the component republics with a severe economic disaster as the economy adjusted from centralization to something more like crony capitalism, with Ukraine hit with a deeper economic depression than most. After a particularly corrupt election in 2004, the people arose in the peaceful Orange Revolution seeking freer elections and spreading the economic benefits of the energy industry away from the oligarchs and toward social safety nets and infrastructure projects. When President Viktor Yanukovych reversed national policy, pushing away from Europe and toward Russia, another wave of anti-corruption and anti-Yanukovych protests known as Euromaidan broke out. Yanukovych reacted by banning protests, and the protesters reacted to that by getting violent; 86 died, 100 went missing, and an estimated 15,000 were injured. Yanukovych signed a compromise that included freer elections, and the elections chose pro-NATO President Petro Poroshenko.

Putin accused this populist movement of being as bad as Nazis, and used the imaginary danger to ethnic Russians as an excuse to invade eastern Ukraine and annex Crimea. (Protests gone violent seeking democracy and justice portrayed as rising tyranny… why does that rhetoric sound familiar? Oh, because that’s exactly the same rhetoric in the USA about 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. It’s almost as if the same sources are telling the same lies in Ukraine and the USA, almost as if Russia is using the same lies in both countries to deepen national disunion.)

Before and after Putin’s 2014-6 campaign of hostility in Ukraine, pipelines through Ukraine continued to deliver Russian natural gas to German customers for a transport fee. This was a huge economic benefit to Ukraine, and Russia hoped to evade those charges. To that end, they built the Nord Stream 1 pipeline through the Baltic Sea to Germany (now open) and the Nord Stream 2 to Germany’s border (Germany refuses to allow the construction to continue onto their soil, because it gives Russia too much money and power). Natural gas transport through Ukraine has dropped to about a quarter of what it once was, dousing the Ukrainian economy. This pressures Germany to buy Russian natural gas through the Nord Stream pipelines, where more of the money goes to Russia, rather than through Ukraine, where Ukraine gets transportation fees.

In the Ukrainian election of 2019, Poroshenko was beaten by Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his populist, pro-NATO, anti-corruption platform with over 73% of the vote. Zelenskyy represents a move from oligarch-headed crony capitalism towards genuine representative democracy. Though he is praised for his handling of Russian and American meddling in his country (remember Trump’s phone call to him?) and for his handling of the COVID pandmeic, his critics generally complain about his not doing enough to shed Ukraine’s authoritarian past.

Russia wants to avoid having to pay Ukraine’s transport fees when it sells natural gas to Germany, so that Ukraine’s economy and international sanctions against Russia will be weakened.

GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES

Germany’s entire political system and governing philosophy is based on never again resembling Nazi Germany to even the least degree.

Germany wants to move to 100% renewable sources of electricity, but about a third of their energy comes from natural gas and about 16% from nuclear. They’re trying to cut their dependence on these thermal energy sources, while investing tremendously in solar and wind energy. In the meantime, though, they’re importing a lot of natural gas from all over. About 10% of their total energy consumption is Russian natural gas specifically. There’s far more capacity for Russian natural gas to be imported through Ukraine, but with war and rumor of war blocking the use of Ukraine’s pipelines, Germany is actually getting more Russian natural gas through Nord Stream 1 now than through Ukraine.

Then-Prime Minister Angela Merkel encouraged the importation of more Russian natural gas through Nord Stream 1 and 2 as recently as summer of 2021. But her center-right coalition was voted out of office and replaced her with Olaf Scholz of the most left-wing party in the left-wing coalition that formed Germany’s new government. He opposes Nord Stream 2, fossil fuels generally, Russia’s escalation of tensions in particular, and anything that smacks of war most of all.

Since the fall of the Nazi Party, Germany never wavers on its anti-war stance. To that end, they’ve refused any hint of willingness to defend Ukraine if Russia attacks and even refuses to let other nations use German-made military equipment to defend Ukraine. The have dragged their feet about Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO and the EU, in hopes of preventing tensions from escalating by preventing Ukraine form joining. But tensions have escalated anyway. Germany is disgusted with Russia’s tactics of disinformation and provocation, and has declared intention to stop importing Russian natural gas entirely if they invade Ukraine. This would mean paying a LOT more money to keep Germans warm this winter, but most Germans across the ideological spectrum consider that a small price to pay to prevent war.

Then there’s the United States. The United States led NATO in laying the sanctions smackdown on Russia in the aftermath of the 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. Neoconservative Republicans wanted Obama to take a stronger stand against Russia, perhaps with some bombings or military assistance to Ukraine, but paleoconservatives wanted to stay out of any foreign conflict. When Obama did take a strong stance against Russia, the paleoconservative position became the party’s dominant position. Donald Trump took special glee in his 2016 campaign calling Obama a warmonger and making excuses for Putin’s Russia.

After the Trump Campaign’s cooperation with Russians who hacked the 2020 election fell technically short of the US criminal law definition of conspiracy, Trump was adaptable – some would say erratic – about US foreign policy towards Russia. He would strengthen and weaken sanctions without obvious pattern, met with Putin at times openly and other times in secret, and when Congress passed a new sanctions bill against Russia (and other countries) Trump simply refused to enforce the Russian sanctions.

The Trump Administration also dragged their feet in defending the interest of any countries that sought American help against Russia, including Ukraine. The most famous example of this is Trump’s call to the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in which he ostensibly demanded a political assassination of Joe Biden in exchange for actually giving Ukraine the military aid that Congress had already voted to give them. This was bribery (specifically, soliciation of a bribe) under US criminal law and the US Constitutional description of what crimes justify conviction on impeachment of a President. But, in a rejection of rule of law, most Senate Republicans ignored the evidence and worked directly with Trump’s defense lawyers in order to thwart the impeachment trial. Trump was impeached by the House, but escaped conviction in the Senate, for his role in undermining Ukraine’s defense against Russian meddling for his own personal benefit.

Trump and German PM Angela Merkel found a rare point of common ground in their mutual support for Nord Stream 2. But when they both lost elections in 2020, the dream of Russia circumventing Ukraine to sell natural gas directly to Germany died. In April 2020, in response to the economic impacts of the COVID pandemic, Trump brokered an international agreement with 20 countries including OPEC, Russia, and Mexico to cut global oil production by 9.7 million barrels/day (3.1 million B/D of it in the USA) and slowly reintroduce oil production back into the economy; half by 2022, and the other half to be negotiated based on circumstances in 2022. This deal or one substancially like it was absolutely necessary to prevent adding an global oil crisis to the already tumultous first pandemic year, but as a side effect ensured US and global oil and gasoline prices would stay high for years after lockdowns ended and oil demand returned. Russia heavily favored cutting oil production, since the oil company profits enabled Russia to improve their economy without despite the economic sanctions they operated under, and Trump did nothing to oppose Moscow’s call for as large a cut as possible.

PUTIN

Summarizing all this, Putin has at least 4 good motives, solidly based on Russia’s national interest, to heighten tensions with Ukraine. And history demonstrates that he will lie, cheat, steal, and commit acts of war in order to achieve his ends.

The very existence of tensions between Ukraine and Russia has increased profit margins on Russian oil and natural gas exports, helping Russia’s economy and helping them circumvent international economic sanctions.

Putin can pressure Ukraine to release fresh water into Crimea, implying that they accept the validity of the annexation and making it easier for Russia to manage Crimea.

He can pressure Germany to accept natural gas through Nord Stream 2, either by physically destroying the Ukrainian alternative pipeline or as a German concession in negotiations to prevent war. This would hurt Ukraine’s economy, benefit Russia’s, and would make Russia even more impervious to international sanctions.

He can test the resolve of the USA, NATO, and the EU (collectively, “The West”), and take for Russia whatever they will allow Russia to take. This fulfills his political promise to restore traditional Russian power on the global stage by traditional Russian means.

More speculatively, he might be able to annex more of Ukraine. Traditionally, Russia doesn’t feel complete as a nation without Kiyv and Moscow residing within the same national borders. Think of it as Russia’s equivalent to the Manifest Destiny cultural myth.

Interestingly, he can accomplish all of these goals (except annexing Ukraine) without war. All he has to do is bring the West to the negotiating table and get them to concede these points. But, if negotiations fail, he can go to war to try to take these concessions by force. This puts him in a strong negotiating position. Russian people generally think that Putin would never be crazy enough to fight their family in Ukraine, but is just trying to bluff the West into greater concessions. They’re probably right about that. That doesn’t imply that it will fail.

[[ TODO: integrate bibliography from external file ]]

[ladyoflucifer]

Russia Invaded Ukraine

DONATION LINKS:

https://savelife.in.ua

https://voices.org.ua/en/

https://ukrainewar.carrd.co/

SUPPORT SANCTIONS OF RUSSIA

In 2014, Russia annexed a part of Ukraine (Crimea) and since then has been funding and arming Pro-Russian separatist and terrorist groups that have seized Donbas, an eastern region in Ukraine. Russia has been funding a civil war in Ukraine, essentially. Recently, the separatist groups have been sending civilian women, children and elderly out of Ukraine and into Russia, but leaving fighting-age men inside. These separatist are directly controlled by Kremlin (the government of Russia) and they are how Russia has been leading a proxy war on Ukraine since 2014. 

But now, Russia has sent their own troops in, which is an invasion. They are doing it under the pretence of ‘peacekeeping’, but this is an obvious lie.

Russia accuses Ukraine of aggressing on Donbas and on Russia, prompting the war on Russia and conducting genocide on its own people. None of this is true. Russia is the one arming Pro-Russian terrorists in Ukraine, Russia has been surrounding and provoking Ukraine with military, and is the one that has been spreading misleading historically-inaccurate disinformation. It’s what Russia did in Georgia in 2008 and similar to what Germany did in Poland in 1939.

Making this post cuz I don’t see anything on tumblr about this, and to spread links and information. 

If I find any more donation fund links, I will add them to this post.

[ladyoflucifer]

Kenya's strong statement opposing the undermining of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine during the emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on 21st February 2022.

A powerful and poignant speech.

Paragraphs 10 - 17 are a must read for everyone in the modern world. Read them, then read them again. And again.

[ladyoflucifer]

In case you'd not know which side is good and which is bad, let me tell you, we all have history with them.

(photo edited by me)

[ladyoflucifer]

What the actual fuck is this

[ladyoflucifer]

polish government has opened a website for ukrainians seeking safety and trying to cross the ukrainian-polish border:

ua.gov.pl

as of 13:10 polish time, it has been said as many people as possible will be let through the borders. they are also supposed to let through children who do not have passports, as to not divide families.

[ladyoflucifer]

"the fuck is happening in ukraine??" for the ignorant [23feb22]

THIS IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE. I have left out happenings. As I typed this more movement was reported. This is happening NOW.

Here is a map of Ukrainian oblasts (regions)

Direct your eyeballs to the eastern (that's on the right of the map) oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. These two oblasts make up the Donets Coal Basin, or Donbas region, of Ukraine. coal coal coal.

Hold them in your mind.

On this map above you can see an outline of the Russian separatist-controlled area of Eastern Ukraine. Please note that the Russian separatist-controlled area is not analogous to the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. When on 21 February 2022 Putin declared recognition of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) as independent, we did not know if he meant just those cities and the surrounding Russian separatist-controlled areas OR the entirety of the oblasts. Where these borders are is incredibly important because Putin will use any excuse to declare a Ukrainian provocation. This ambiguity is to his advantage. [This is besides the fact that Putin has no fucking right to declare any of this land independent, or take any of it for Russia in the coming days.]

The Russian separatists, of course, claim the entirety of the oblasts, and Putin recognizes those claims. Russia has come to the "aid" of the separatists to defend against Ukrainian "aggression."

Tonight (23 February 2022), President Zelenskyy of Ukraine tried to speak to Putin on the phone, but was rebuffed. He gave a brief update to his people in Ukrainian, and then a long speech to the Russian people in Russian. Below is text of a translation of that speech from Max Seddon on twitter [thread starts here, good follow]:

We are divided by a shared border of more than 2,000 kilometers. Almost 200,000 of your troops and thousands of military vehicles are standing alongside it. Your leadership has ordered them to move forward, onto another country's territory. This step could be the start of a big war on the European continent. The whole world is talking about what could happen any day now. Any provocation. Any flare-up – one that could burn everything.

They're telling you that this flame will liberate the people of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian people are free. They remember their past and are building their future. Ukraine on your TV news and the real Ukraine are two totally different countries. Ours is real.

There is more, click above link to read.

Russia is going to invade Ukraine, and not just the Russian separatist-controlled regions that were recently declared independent republics by Putin. This is colonization. Ukraine has a rich history and culture separate from Russia (its history and culture is MUCH OLDER than that of Russia, even). Putin denies this and claims that Ukraine is Russian. This is false and ahistorical.

(But why are there so many Russian-speakers in Donetsk and Luhansk? Well perhaps because the Soviets committed genocide in the 1930s and purposely starved millions of Ukrainians so that ethnic Russians could move onto their land. Search "Holodomor" if this is new information to you.)

The UN Security Council has called an emergency meeting for 9:30pm EST (I'm posting this at 7:22 PM EST)

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitaly Klitschko, has declared an emergency.

Airports are closed in Eastern Ukraine.

[ladyoflucifer]

I’m ukrainian, I live in Kyiv on the edge of the city I woke up to my family saying that “It begun” and that my uncle heard shots in the distance at 5am (he supposes it was defense against air(?) because we live somewhat close to an airport) We’re calm but vigilant, people at the shops while my grandmother was stocking up were civil A lot of people are panicking, our neighbor that was in the process of moving out says he saw people leaving cars behind to get out of the city Airports are unavailable and most train and bus rides are already bought We’ll be leaving for Poland asap (likely tomorrow), leaving behind my uncle, the house and the cats Aid who you can, I am lucky to be getting out of the way but some people, including a friend of mine, are unable to leave I’m getting the word out just so people are aware of what’s happening in some parts of Ukraine

[ladyoflucifer]

24 hours difference

[ladyoflucifer]

Sorry to sound ignorant, but I genuinely don’t understand what Putin could stand to gain from invading Ukraine. Can you shed any light on the subject?

He doesn't. That's the super frustrating part of this mess. Everyone with an ounce of knowledge about European-Russian international relations is scratching their heads going "what is this, and why now? He gains nothing."

A lot of people will blame this on NATO expansion concerns, but the truth is that NATO expansion has been a "concern" for years and nothing like this has ever happened (even the Invasion of Crimea in 2014 wasn't near the level of what's happening right now). Putin's not afraid of NATO; NATO's largely proved to be 'all bark and no bite' in response to repeated acts of Russian aggression since 2008. He's gotten bolder and bolder and tried to assassinate an ex-FSB agent-turned British spy on UK soil less than 5 years ago, for god's sake. Also, Ukraine's not even in NATO; if he wanted to be aggressive on that front, he'd go bother the Baltic states. If people think he's scared of NATO, they're not paying attention.

There's basically two answers that I can give that might make some sense:

Ukraine has a lot of natural gas and mineral resource reserves, and he could be trying to control them. He could also be theoretically be trying to gain control of Ukraine's southern ports, since having access to those waters been an everlasting Russian NatSec and trading issue for say......the last thousand years. That doesn't really make much sense considering the circumstances, though, especially since Russia already controls Crimea.

He's an ex-KGB officer whose pride was mortally devastated by the fall of the USSR and has been longing to recreate what was lost for thirty years. He wants to reinstate the Russian Empire (or at least the USSR as he remembers it), and he's tired of waiting for these silly little democracies on his western border to give up their "teenage rebellion phase" and come home to Mother Russia. It would explain Russia's ongoing attempts to undermine democracy worldwide (including in the US in 2016) and their cyberwarfare against the US and UK too, since a Divided West is a Weak West and a Weak West is a Beatable West. It's Russian imperialism at its finest, led by a man emboldened by his hurt ego, the West's appeasement tactics re: Crimea, repeated lack of consequences for Russia's aggressiveness on the world stage, and four years of Trump sucking up to him.

That's.....unfortunately all I've got. #2 makes total sense and is absolutely what's happening, but the way he's going about it and his actions over the past few weeks are really baffling me, because it's a completely irrational and politically stupid way to actually achieve his intended purpose of re-consolidating the former Soviet Bloc (and make no mistake because that is his purpose, which anyone who's ever listened to one of his annual speeches at the Kremlin would know).

So the only answer I really have for you is "he's finally gotten impatient waiting to re-draw the map of Europe by force and thinks he can escape permanent consequences by doing so now," even if it still doesn't truly explain what the fuck he thinks he's doing by invading Ukraine now with the strategy he appears to be using.

[ladyoflucifer]

The worse this situation in Ukraine is getting the more i hate the jokes americans make about it. All of those "vladdy look at me this isn't u 🥺" "not me living through ww3" and "i don't wanna get drafted" jokes are just in bad taste to me. If it were my country, i would not want people to joke about it this way.

And i see so many of them go "well we use humor to cope" literally from what? What do you need to cope from? The traumatic event of watching the news and seeing footage of something that's happening hundreds of miles away from you? That's no different from any other war that's been happening over the last two decades though. Wars that America has very much been involved in. So why is this different to you? Because "white" countries are involved now?

Before you joke think about what you're saying. American teens and young adults are probably as far removed from this conflict as can be, which is why you find it so easy to joke about this. I have also seen brits and other west europeans make jokes so ofc americans aren't the only ones, but you are the majority. I have yet to see east europeans make jokes though. Why? Because they realize how serious this situation is and jokes don't help.

Meanwhile Ukrainians have to sit and watch their land be invaded. They are losing their homes. I stand with Ukraine 💙💛