During the last few days I noticed a few people demanding that every Ukrainian refugee in Germany who is of able bodied age should be forced back to Ukraine to either fight on the front or work in ammunition factories or hospitals. As far as I can tell no major publication or politician has echoed this sentiment yet. I hope that will stay this way. But the sheer audacity with which these people demanded strangers to be sent to their death is astounding. “Fighting to the last Ukrainian” really is something they want and it sickens me.
I live in Ukraine, so as you can imagine, liberals here have long since gone full fash. The situation here is a really good illustration for the old “scratch a liberal” adage: a lot of people have been more than scratched, and in response they’ve went absolutely rabid.
Stay as safe as you can, is there any possibility you could get out? For the obviously material safety reasons, but also some of the stories about how the post-war economy is likely to go is extremely concerning.
I realise not everybody can just drop what they are doing and gtfo, so I hope you stay as safe as possible regardless.
Is it even safe for you to stay there?
Even leaving the whole risk of a war zone, it feels like a total lost cause when it comes to any politics.
Forget the liberals, the biggest Dutch left wing party has announced they will send more money to NATO and they are getting applauded for it
Evil genocidal Putin will conquer all of Europe if we don’t and that’s why we need to assign an anticommunist as left wing leader who will give money to an anticommunist military force.
Just piggybacking to reiterate the sad truth of this comment, the Dutch have lost their effing minds and IMO are even more self-righteous about “Muh-kraine” than the USAmericans. Both in regards to the politicians and also majority of the people I’ve talked with about it. It’s fucked.
Seems to me the endless onslaught of propaganda during Covid broke so many people’s brains to the extent that they are seeking out more propaganda because they literally don’t want to think for themselves at all. Hell I’d be surprised if many people on Lemmygrad continued to “follow the science” on Covid since Ukraine started as results from that worldwide experiement are finally starting to come out (instead of just the number models). shrug
Japan, there was an initial outpouring of support, we never like to be behind on the latest Cause. There were a few marches and the like, but those seemed to be largely foreigners and the foreigner hanger-ons, I know very few people personally who participated.
A lot of that sentiment has kind of burned out from what I have seen. A lot of people I have talked to are, understandably, sad about the loss of life but see immediate peace talks as the best way to bring that about.
People were very against NATO’s attempts to built an office here (which thankfully got stopped), and were worried we would be used as a Ukraine vs China if the situation in Taiwan escalated. It’s the most vocal I have seen people protest for a while, we tend to be very politically apathetic.
Sanctions on Russia have also hurt us immeasurably, we are obviously located very close to them and rely on Russian trade in several sectors. Sanctions plus a general move away from nuclear power has resulted in a 50-60% increase in electricity bills this summer across the country. We always have people, mostly the elderly, die every year from heatstroke and there is an expectation that this summer is going to end up even worse than usual. Not to mention the yen has absolutely tanked, which reduces our buying power even more.
Basically since people here have been affected, at least economically, a lot of the popular support has waned.
Basically since people here have been affected, at least economically, a lot of the popular support has waned.
Interesting. Here in Germany we can also feel the sanctions quite a lot. Electrical bills also went up and big concerns announced that they would leave Germany and outsource their production to somewhere else. So a lot of people are afraid they could end up jobless in a while. And yet support for Ukraine is not going down. I think it just makes people more bloodthirsty.
We have had our arguments over territory, but by and large the average person here have never had a very anti-Russian point of view to begin with. It was a pretty popular language to study for business reasons, because we do so much trade with them. We also don’t have much of a connection to Ukraine.
I think a lot of the Japanese opposition was more a “war is bad” point of view, as opposed to “russia is evil”. Which results in people just wanting a resolution as soon as possible. On the other hand there’s not a good understanding of the circumstances that caused the war, and the news doesn’t really report on it. So there are still plenty of people who think Putin woke up one one day and decided to invade for no real reason. They just would still prefer the killing stops now.
Could it be that people in Germany have the idea that if evil Putin is defeated, everything will just return to normal?
So they are rabidly in support of a war that actively makes theirs lives worse on the grounds that if they “win” then things will just go back to normal, but if they “lose” then all the bad things that are happening due to their involvement in the war will become permanent?
Maybe but then again Annalena Baerbock herself said that things won’t go back to being normal “even after Ukraine has won”.
So it might be self delusion at this point.
I mean, it is going down. You can see it by the rising numbers for the AfD. While people will likely never outright go “this is a waste of time, let’s ditch Ukraine to save ourselves” there’s a lot of people going for the party they think will give them just that - and it happens to be the far-right - who have no qualms about supporting Russia over questions of morality and aren’t constantly infighting.
The whole War in Ukraine really was the nightmare scenario for the left.
and rely on Russian trade in several sectors
I’m guessing oil and metals?
For imports, metals, coal, oil, gas. Which makes it pretty readily apparent why our energy costs have skyrocketed. We actually get a lot of seafood from Russia as well, which may surprise people who assume we just get our own fish. Salmon and roe primarily, I believe.
Exports were largely cars or car parts.
so it’s basically “Hitler’s 1935 Nuremberg Rally Speech” translated into Estonian. Of course the only difference is people aren’t calling to mass slaughter 300.000 here. Not yet anyways. 2014-22 now did not happen at all and people genuinely think Ukraine will be a prosperous, wealthy and powerful democracy. However, it will most likely be Hitluania or Natsvia who will build the first Bantustans.
Oh, and stay away from :reddit-logo:/eesti
Also anything remotely contrary to NATO narrative is immediately branded as “Kremlin propaganda” - Auschwitz was also called “Russian propaganda (like page 10 in Blackshirts & Reds)” but whatever ig
I’ve also since abandoned my more liberal take of “Russia was wrong to invade” and have shifted more Russia-leaning, along the lines of “Russia gave the post-coup government of Ukraine chances for 8 years - ceasefires, Minsk agreements, renounciation of joining NATO, deploying Western nuclear weapons and immediate halting of Apartheid policies against Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine - really basic, normal, reasonable demands. This war is not so much about whether it was right or wrong, but a response when all other options were exhausted”.
How’s the overall situation over there? I’ve heard talks about deporting Russian speakers, but I think it was Lithuania? Does your government have similar ideas?
I’m from Portugal, a country that has no history with either Russia or Ukraine. No one here knows anything about the history of both countries. So it was very surprising, that when this war broke out for there to be an absolute insane support for Ukraine. People here are deluded that Ukraine can still win this war, they have no clue what’s going on in the front lines. Even the tiniest achievement by Ukraine is celebrated by the media. It’s ridiculous how much anti-Russian sentiment there is. Our participation in the war has been pretty much non-existent, so the fanatic support for Ukraine is even more ridiculous.
Hey this war opened my eyes , I realized west is full of bigoted racists specially those who are in the EU
God damn, right? I’d think I was in 1930s Germany for the shit I see and hear said about Russian people
In the first days of the war , Tolstoy to Russian cats got cancelled. I was so angry when they rejected Paralympic Russian team because they refused to sign a proclamation for not supporting the war. It was so disgusting, how can any Olympic dommittee support this Nazi type discrimination to Olympians and athletes I just don’t understand. Then I saw Russian paralympic team singing their national anthem in a self made video. I felt so bad… so bad… I am in full support of Russia and Russian people for this SMO. Down with NATO nazis.
Excuse me for asking Lusitanian comrade , but there was no dismissal of Russian history professors at universities in Portugal, because of the war, I saw some Portuguese journalists commenting on this aspect. and also the Ukrainian refugees were asking for the closure of the Portuguese communist party?
Yes, one Russian college teacher was fired because he was accused of spreading Russian propaganda (so much for free speech). He wasn’t even allowed to defend himself. The accusation was started by a TV political commentator (absolute clown, claims Putin is far-left), the University fired the teacher and reiterated their support for Ukraine.
Also yes, we have some Ukronazis in our country. There are also Ukrainians that are pro-Russia, so Ukrainian immigrants are a mixed bag. But the Communist party has been taking a beating in the media. They frequently have to assert that they have no connections to Putin, because news reporters keep asking them the same questions (with obvious malicious intent). This war has been an excuse for rampant anti-communism in the media. Anything goes these days.
