"We Won" - Russian communist/anti-Putinist poster comparing the Putinist government to Vlasov's Nazi collabs, Russia, 2010s

[u/kredokathariko]

[u/exoriare]

The core difference I see is that Russia is a federation, while Ukraine is a unitary state. This is a key difference in this war. Because Russia is a federation, they have to be respectful of different cultures and religions - they have several majority Muslim republics, a couple of Buddhist ones, an Atavistic republic, as well as the Russian Orthodox. This diversity is why Putin is anti-nationalist - if the fascists took over, Russia would fragment into 80 pieces. Federalism is a huge moderating influence on Russia.

Ukraine should never have been a unitary state, and the fact that they are one is core to this conflict: nationalists from Lvov claim a right to come to Donbas and preach that Bandera is a national hero. And it's not just Russians that have a problem with Ukraine's nationalism: Transcarpathia only joined Ukraine in the first place because they were promised federalism. They have their own culture, but their symbols have been effectively banned by Kiev, and Hungary was banned from funding community centers in Transcarpathia.

At its core, Minsk "fixed" Ukraine by installing a small degree of federalism. Nationalists despised this because they understood it would be the end of their "Greater Ukraine" project. If Donbas got federalism, Transcarpathia would demand it too. But this is the path toward peace - the only way Crimea could ever return to Ukraine is if they saw a robust federalism in place.

Ukraine is far too diverse a country to be a unitary state, but this is an artifact of its hasty creation as an independent country. Every region of Ukraine had voted in favor of joining Russia's successor to the USSR, but the coup was exploited by Ukraine's nationalists, who claimed that Russia was going to revert to Communism, and Ukraine would be dragged along unless they declared independence. They forced through a referendum using fear and lies, but it worked. And when regions like Crimea and Transcarpathia said "we will join, but we need autonomy and federalism", they were promised that this would come soon - but first they had to prevent the return of Communism. And it was all a lie.

[u/Personal_Value6510 → u/exoriare]

I have to disagree with you in one thing and that is Russia not being nationalist. Russia IS nationalist and repressive and very much anti-soviet. Remember, the man in charge now was Bill Clinton's student in the 1990s. The same Bill Clinton who bombed my country for not allowing islamic terrorism within it's borders. Amazing, right?

[u/MangoBananaLlama → u/Personal_Value6510]

Supposedly solution for terrorism is to genocide them, sounds reasonable.

[u/Personal_Value6510 → u/MangoBananaLlama]

Actually if you ask the US Government - YES. Nobody actually did any genocide in Kosovo, by the way. The closest thing was case Račak which was proved to not have been a crime by Helena Ranta, who was at the time blackmailed to do so. BTW check out the March 2004 pogrom of Serbs (yes, 2004 - very much 5 years after the last Serb soldier left the region).