Do you want the Ukrainian War to end today?

[Estro Felino]

If circumstances change such that Eurostan
sees it that way, they USA likely would too.

There are already the circumstances.
The US should stop funding Zelensky and the Sorosian framework.

Because Europe has shown itself unable to
cope with threats that are global in nature.
It even causes such threats at times. So USA
must babysit them.

We are not handicapped.
We are perfectly capable of managing our geopolitics, alone.
For instance, the Germans built two gas pipelines, together with Russians.
Nordstream.
Americans haven't helped them.
As you can see...we can do things without Washington DC.

 

[Revoltingest]

There are already the circumstances.

Oh, really.

We are perfectly capable of handing our geopolitics, alone.

Until you can't.

 

[Estro Felino]

Oh, really.

Until you can't.

As American citizen...do you think that Hussein Obama didn't do anything wrong during his administration?

He did things which affected three continents: Asia, Africa and ultimately Europe.

Do you wonder why in 2014 there were these signs all over Rome?

When Trump was elected people were GLAD because they finally got rid of that Obama guy.

 

[Copernicus]

I really don't think about all this often, because it doesn't do any good to worry needlessly about it. But if I had to choose an option, I'd choose that I just want the war in THE UKRAINE to end, no matter who wins it. Does anyone know that about thirty percent of Ukrainians speak Russian? That THE Ukraine contains a city that till recently we called KI-ev (as in Chicken Kiev), not Keev. The Ukraine (which we called it till recently) is a border region, and has been pretty hotly contested for centuries. It contains the city of Chernobyl, for instance. The country has been ruled by the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Austrians, and the Russians. In 1919, the country changed hands five times in one year. 44 percent of Crimeans did not vote to leave Russia. In 2014 the President of the Ukraine fled to Russia and gave a press conference from Russia. He was replaced by another President, and then another one and then another one. I can't keep it all straight, nor do I want to, frankly. All I know is that the Crimea (in eastern Ukraine) is hotly contested. Is it part of Russia or part of Ukraine? Honestly, I have no idea and I am not qualified to pass judgment on it.

Far more than 30% of Ukrainians speak language. In surveys, the majority of Ukrainians will claim Ukrainian as their native language, but far more will admit that Russian is the language they use for daily communication. The cities of Odesa and Kyiv are primarily Russian-speaking. President Zelensky's dominant language is Russian, although he uses Ukrainian for all official communications, as required by law. Since the 2022 invasion, Russian-dominant speakers have been switching to Ukrainian in very large numbers as a nationalist reaction to the invasion. In 1990, the Soviet Union made Russian the official state language for all territories. Ukraine did not adopt a similar law until after the initial invasion by Russia in 2014.

Note that the current official spelling is "Kyiv" and "Odesa", with are transliterations from Ukrainian Cyrillic. The deprecated spellings "Kiev" and "Odessa" are transliterations from Russian Cyrillic. In Russian, the capital city is pronounced "kee-yif", with a soft (palatalized) "k". In Ukrainian, the capital city is pronounced something like "kuh-yif", if you use English speech sounds. But, in truth, the main difference is that the "k" is a hard (velarized) "k" in Ukrainian, not the Russian soft "k". English makes no significant distinction between hard and soft consonants, but both Ukrainian and Russian do. So the advice to pronounce "Kyiv" as "keev" is not really sensible, but it is what TV announcers have settled on. TBH, English sounding "keev" comes off more like standard Russian pronunciation than Ukrainian.

The history of Ukraine is complicated, but the ethnic rivalry between Russians and Ukrainians goes back centuries. It started with the liberation of most of the Ruthenian-speaking "Kievan Rus" from Mongol domination. The Russian language developed for decades longer under Mongol domination. Ukraine and Belarus are modern countries that were originally part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which merged (by royal marriage) with Poland in the 16th century to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, essentially Europe's first nobility-dominated republic. Peter the Great began the Russian annexation of parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which ended with Catherine I's almost complete assimilation of over half of its eastern portion, including most of Poland in the 18th century. In the 20th century, Ukraine was decimated first by Stalin in the 1930s by Stalin and later by Hitler. Hitler used Ukrainian nationalists to fight against Soviet occupation but then suppressed them after the country was conquered. Ukraine was among the first Soviet republics to vote to leave the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991. Majorities voted to leave in all Ukrainian regions. The vote wasn't close. Ukrainians remembered how they had suffered under Stalin, especially during the Holodomor and the Great Purge.

In 2014, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who had promised to seek closer ties to the EU, was forced to flee by the popular uprising known as the Maidan Revolution or Revolution of Dignity. Yanukovych had signed an agreement with Putin to distance Ukraine from the EU and integrate more closely with Russia--a reversal of what he had promised. This enraged Ukrainians and his overthrow is what really triggered Putin's illegal invasion of his neighbor.

 

[Revoltingest]

As American citizen...do you think that Hussein Obama didn't do anything wrong during his administration?

If you'd read my posts, you'd know the obvious answer.

When Trump was elected people were GLAD because they finally got rid of that Obama guy.

People can be idiots.

 

[Copernicus]

I study Russian, I like it very much.
I have never studied Ukrainian...but listening to it, it sounds like very, very, very similar to Russian to me.
Most words are identical.

My Russian is fairly fluent, and I have studied Ukrainian, which I can read but not converse in. They are much more different languages than you realize, but the differences are primarily in vocabulary and common phrases to foreigners trying to compare the languages. There are actually some substantial grammatical differences and even a casually spoken blended dialect known as "Surzhyk" spoken in some areas. Ukrainian Cyrillic has some fairly substantial differences from Russian Cyrillic, although they look mostly the same on a superficial level.

So I am not understanding how they don't get along.

Getting along has nothing to do with speaking the same language or similar languages. Italy itself has a long history of Italian speakers fighting and killing each other. Read up about the Holodomor and Great Purge, if you want to understand better why there are still bitter divisions between Russia and Ukraine.

 

[Estro Felino]

People can be idiots.

I am speaking of Italians.
Yes...they adore Trump.
They think Trump was a godsend after the horrific years of Obama.

 

[Estro Felino]

Getting along has nothing to do with speaking the same language or similar languages. Italy itself has a long history of Italian speakers fighting and killing each other. Read up about the Holodomor and Great Purge, if you want to understand better why their are still bitter divisions between Russia and Ukraine.

Honestly I couldn't care less about two Slavic nations who kill one another from sunrise to sunset.
We had a world war among Europeans and now we are all friends and love each other.

If there are people who are not able to move on...and to think of the future...it's not my fault.

 

[metis]

Yes...they adore Trump.
They think Trump was a godsend after the horrific years of Obama.

So, they went from "intelligent" to "dumb as a brick blindly believing in a con-man".

 

[Estro Felino]

So, they went from "intelligent" to "dumb as a brick blindly believing in a con-man".

I remind you that you married an Italian, dear.

 

[metis]

I remind you that you married an Italian, dear.

And let me remind you that all Italians are not alike, and my Sicilian wife hates Trump, dear.

 

[Revoltingest]

I am speaking of Italians.
Yes...they adore Trump.

This is a time when I'll avoid specificity.

 

[Estro Felino]

This is a time when I'll avoid specificity.

Maybe if Obama hadn't done what he did...Italians wouldn't have become so...Putinophiles...

 

[Revoltingest]

Maybe if the Americans hadn't elected a character like Obama...Italians wouldn't have become so...Putinophiles...

People can be Italians.

 

[Estro Felino]

People can be Italians.

...and Mussolinis.

 

[Yazata]

I have decided to start this thread to understand American users' stance here.

I think that there are wide differences of opinion among the American people.

Also because I talk to Europeans all the time, and they are very clear expressing their stance about the prosecution of this horrific war.
Most of them are against it.

My impression from afar (way over here in California) is that Europeans are just as divided as we are.

They hope for the end of this war, that the both parties stop fighting and strike a peace agreement.

I personally hold out little hope for a peace agreement. Both sides are too dug into what they perceive are matters of vital national interest. What's more likely is that both sides will eventually tire and the front line will more or less freeze in place permanently, like it did 70 years ago in Korea.

But Americans tend to have a very ambiguous stance, that doesn't make you understand what they really want.

There's the position of the US government, which seems to be all-in for Ukraine, except without any direct participation in combat by US forces. The boundaries of that are fuzzy and flexible. (They seem to believe that US ISTAR aircraft flying on behalf of Ukraine over the Black Sea isn't direct combat involvement. The Russians will likely disagree.)

The American people, as opposed to the government, were divided on issues like nato membership for Ukraine before February 2022. (Ukraine joining a hostile anti-Russian military alliance was seen as intolerable by Russia and they warned long and hard that further motion in that direction would provoke war.) Then when Russia did as promised and attacked, American public opinion was initially almost 100% for Ukraine. There was strong support, among the people as well as among the politicians, for helping Ukraine survive.

But since then, as the war morphed from Ukraine's battle for survival into its drive to force Russia out of all territories claimed by Ukraine, American popular support for continuing the war has been declining, even as the government's support for feeding and enabling a proxy war with Russia has remained strong.

American voters' reservations about the war have grown even stronger as it became obvious that the US was depleting its own military stockpiles, needed in case of war with China (our major peer-competitor) in order to pursue some Quixotic proxy war against Russia which represents (apart from its nuclear weapons) no threat to any vital US interests. (And pushing too hard on the proxy war just makes use of nuclear weapons more likely, which is not in our or anyone's interest.)

So today, I'd say that US public opinion out on the street, is very ambivalent about the war. Much as I sense public opinion in Europe currently is. But in both the US and Europe, most government and most media are still on the pro-war side.

My own view on the matter is that it would be best for everyone if the war stopped today.

 

[Estro Felino]

awww...he sounds so naive and tender....

dear Zely....
It's more likely that I marry Leonardo Di Caprio...
than you winning this war.

 

[Copernicus]

Honestly I couldn't care less about two Slavic nations who kill one another from sunrise to sunset.

Yet you started an entire thread on this very subject.

We had a world war among Europeans and now we are all friends and love each other.

If there are people who are not able to move on...and to think of the future...it's not my fault.

Nor is it their fault that yo are no different in that respect.

 

[Estro Felino]

Nor is it their fault that yo are no different in that respect.

yes...Europeans are different,

I bet some godless warmonger will force American soldiers to go fight along with Ukrainians against Putin.

We Europeans would never do that. We don't send our soldiers to die for the sake of that Ukrainian government.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

I am speaking of Italians.
Yes...they adore Trump.
They think Trump was a godsend after the horrific years of Obama.

Can you show some statistics to support your allegation that Trump is tremendously popular with Italians? I doubt he's as popular as you try to portray...but I'm willing to see what evidence you've got...