I wanted to write this post for a long time. The first couple weeks after the war started had been hard as I tried to consume tons of information from all kinds of sources and figure out for myself what was going on. It came to the point that my wife insisted that I stop and take a break from the news. As Vil and others here said, it's hard to understand what is legit and what is fake as on top of the military conflict there is information war which Russia certainly is losing to Ukraine as there are tons of fake reports. This forum has been such a blessing for me that I feel like I can't just sit silently and passively read what my fellow forum residents post while knowing that due to my background and family circumstances my thoughts might be quite helpful for someone reading this forum. And when Vil shared his story I knew I have to chip in.
I was born into a Russian family in one of the southern republics of USSR. After graduating from high school I moved to Russia to attend college, and there I met this gorgeous Ukrainian girl who later became my wife. We lived in Russia through all the craziness of the late 80s and 90s. We've seen it all with our own eyes - the Gorbachev's reforms, the breakup of the Eastern Bloc, the 1991 coup that led to collapse of USSR, the painful and poorly planned transition to the market economy, the Russian Treasury bonds bubble of 1998, the hopes for better future ("the West will help us!") as the Cold War ended and Russia's relations with US and Western Europe somewhat improved.
At the dawn of the 21st century, shortly before Putin came to power, we immigrated to US. Both my wife and I have relatives in Russia and Ukraine, and my wife's home town in Eastern Ukraine is actually very close to the area held by the separatists. After the 2014 coup happened in Kiev and the conflict broke on the East her town suffered from the fight between the Ukrainian army and the separatists, we helped her family financially to fix the roof that was damaged by shelling. After this invasion started on 2/24 we've been in daily contact with my wife's folks in Ukraine, some of them moved to rural areas away from the town, while others preferred to stay in town. Thank God everyone is safe and healthy so far.
Having lived a good chunk of my life in socialism and then developing economy I finally got a chance to live in a diverse democratic society and understand how and why the true democracy works and what it means to have freedom in all aspects of your life (of course I'm not oblivious to all the negative trends and social and economic problems we face here in US). After 20+ years of living in US my views certainly evolved and I think I can understand the global trends as well as specific developments, like this war, better and with less bias than if I were still in Russia. While I am Russian ethnically, I think of myself more as Russian American.
Now that I bored you enough with my long intro I'll get back to the topic of this thread. I have many friends and relatives in both Russia and Ukraine, so I can get information "from the field" so to speak and use it in addition to the input gathered from the news and other sources to do my own analysis of what's happening. I didn't believe Putin would invade until that day (February 23) when he recognized the two regions as independent republics and gave a long speech on Russian TV. I watched the whole thing and it gave me chills as it dawned on me what the next step could be. Now, all the reasons he gave
ARE real issues: the 8-year conflict on the East, the rise of Neo-Nazism, poorly controlled nationalist militia groups trained by Western instructors, the war on Russian language and general anti-Russian policies, etc. Nazism is a very sensitive topic for any Russian. USSR lost 20 mln people in WWII and almost every family was affected. My grandfather died fighting Nazis in one of the Baltic countries in 1944. However, if these were the only reasons then I don't think the war is a legitimate answer. The conflict on the East is technically a civil war and should be resolved by Ukrainians themselves (however in reality I think it's a proxy war between 3d parties and that could be one of the reasons Putin acted. I provided links to some resources at the end of the post, including the Oliver Stone's film "Ukraine on Fire"). The rest is mostly social and governance issues that, again, should be tackled by Ukrainians internally. As a neighbor, Russia could help with these issues through humanitarian and diplomatic channels. Things like offering immigration and education opportunities, supporting opposition leaders in the government and community to facilitate favorable laws (fact: president Yanukovich made Russian language the 2nd official language, but the junta that came to power in 2014 annulled that law), offer favorable trade conditions and so forth. This is a long process and the success is not guaranteed. I don't know how a war would be a solution here - to the contrary, this war alienated two friendly nations turning brothers into enemies and killing thousands of people on both sides.
But what if this war is a result of something other than the issues above? Could it be that there is another reason that we don't hear about from the world leaders when they talk on TV? I thought about this for a long time and while my insights could be wrong (like everybody else's) and I hardly know the exact reason, I think at least I know the context in which this topic can be thought about - geopolitics. It seems to me that this war is not about Ukraine, but rather this is a global conflict between the superpowers. I don't want to go too deep into this topic, but over the last 8 years Ukraine has amassed lots of weapons from NATO countries, the NATO instructors trained the Ukrainian military (including nationalist battalions) and the conflict in the Donetsk/Lugansk area devastated cities and led to massive civilians casualties.
Now, regarding the invasion start date - why did it start on 2/24? The Russians recently published a top secret military order dated January '22 signed by the commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, Colonel-General Balan. It describes in detail the plan for preparing storm groups for offensive operations in the zone of the "operation of the combined forces" in the Donbass. It turned out that a large-scale offensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the nationalist battalions was planned for March. The Russians claim that the units that were preparing for this offensive were trained by American and British instructors under the "NATO Standard" programs in Lviv (a major city in the Western Ukraine). The Russians consider the published documents a proof that official Kyiv lied when it promised the whole world to resolve the issue of Donbass exclusively “by political and diplomatic means.” As a result, the Russians launched a preemptive strike, breaking the plans of the Ukrainian authorities. I read the document and it looks legit with all the signatures and seals/stamps, contains pretty detailed instructions to the specific military units, and is written in a familiar bureaucratic lingo that hasn't changed much since the Soviet era. Now, being a techie guy I understand that in this day and age you can forge any document, but based on my analysis the document looks like a real thing and so far I haven't seen any rebuttal from Ukrainian sources.
A couple of other points:
- The NATO-Ukraine collaboration plans included deployment of ground-based missile systems in Ukraine, including nuclear missiles capable of destroying targets within a radius of 5.500 km. These systems would be able to hit objects throughout the European part of Russia, as well as beyond the Urals. The flight time to Moscow for Tomahawk cruise missiles is less than 35 minutes, for ballistic missiles from the Kharkov region - 7-8 minutes, and for hypersonic strike weapons - 4-5 minutes.
- Zelensky recently talked about revising the Budapest Memorandum, the agreement that confirmed Ukraine's status of a non-nuclear power. By breaking that memorandum Ukraine could have tried to create a so-called "dirty bomb". According to the prominent nuclear physicist Alexander Borovoy, who helped with the post-explosion clean-up at Chernobyl, Ukraine is capable of creating such a bomb as they still own Soviet nuclear technology.
I don't want to turn this post to a small poem and frankly at this point I feel exhausted. To conclude this post I'll give you some resources that might be useful for those who want to better understand the history of Ukraine and the global events we're living through.
To my fellow Slavic brother Vil (if I may call you that) - thank you so much for posting here. I haven't been in Bulgaria, but I remember the wonderful taste of the brandy Slanchev Bryag (
Слънчев Бряг). It was hugely popular in Russia (before the arrival of Hennessy and Martell).
1. Interview with Patrick Lancaster, Navy veteran and independent reporter who lives in Ukraine. He also has a channel on YouTube where he posts his talks with the locals at various locations with English subtitles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RVn_bslSKQ
2. Ukraine on Fire - a documentary by Oliver Stone. It was filmed in 2016 and digs deep into history of Ukraine before explaining the 2014 events. CAUTION: the video includes graphic content (war footage). I included the 2nd link in case YouTube blocks the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcmNGvaDUs
https://www.redvoicemedia.com/video/202 ... ntary-2016
3. John Mearsheimer is a professor in Political Science at the University of Chicago. This 2015 video got 20+ mln views on YouTube and is still relevant. He shares his view of the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to end it, and its consequences for all of the main actors. The talk goes for ~45 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
4. Vladimir Pozner is a prominent Russian journalist. He was born in France to a Russian Jewish father and French mother, grew up in the US, then he spent some time in the East Berlin and eventually ended up in USSR. In the 80s he co-hosted a talk show Pozner/Donahue for US and Soviet audiences with Phil Donahue. This is his talk at Yale where gives a brief history of post-Soviet era in US-Russia relations and how Putin came to power. I found it interesting that, at the beginning of his term, Putin actually expressed a desire for Russia to join the EU and NATO. His talk starts at minute 6 and ends at ~40, followed by Q&A.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ
5. Article from National Security Archive at George Washington University on the topic of NATO expansion eastward:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book ... ders-early
6. A Russian fact-check website.
https://waronfakes.com
be king for a while longer. 
