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Comment by kozak | Hacker News Reader

What happened in Ukraine in mid-2014 was not a civil war at all. One side poorly pretended to be a militia, while the other side were regular military forces of Ukraine. It's not a civil war when one country attacks another country.

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You had civil militias fighting on both sides, although both regular Ukrainian and Russian armies were involved. Of course, the Russian army always claimed it was not involved but that is another topic.

I agree there's a non-negligible dimension of foreign military invasion in the ukrainian conflict, but it's not exactly as clearcut as that. Now is a good time to mention i'm neither ukrainian nor an expert on the topic; this analysis is based on my readings and first-hand accounts from ukrainian refugees.

I get your point. But this is exactly what Russian information sources are trying to make everyone believe (that "it's not exactly as clearcut as that", almost a literal translation of the phrase they like to repeat so much). I can presume that your information sources got most of their information from Russia-influenced media, and this pretty much expected if they were in the East at the time everything started. But the truth is that, once you peel back the informational disguise, it actually is very clear-cut.

I have first-hand accounts from ukrainian refugees/comrades telling me about how it was on the streets, and how the far-right movement in Ukraine was strongly divided between those siding for Ukraine as part of a nationalist stance, and those siding for Russia because it was seen as the strong authoritarian hand they wanted.

They have even explained in length how Ukraine's government has since the civil war incorporated Azov and other nazi militias into a kind of national guard / para-military organization which now greatly threatens social/political activities on the streets.

That sounds plausible to me, unless of course these acquaintances have lied to me about their actual experiences of a civil war, but i somehow trust them more than imperialist media whether from EU side or Russia side. Disclaimer: these acquaintances of mine were on the pro-Ukraine/EU side, some of them fought as part of civil militias before becoming refugees.

A prolonged conflict is only clear-cut if you’re pushing a narrative. https://youtu.be/4pfYeDAKiyA It’s obvious that the majority of DNR and LNR military are locals. We can speculate all we want how they joined the forces, but it is what it is.

It’s the most peculiar war ever, though. Imagine being at war with someone and importing electricity from your foe [1]. Either there’s no war or someone is demented.

1. https://iz.ru/1119009/2021-02-01/ukraina-vozobnovila-import-...

I've sometimes heard the expression "non-linear war", although i haven't dug into that concept much. On a sidenote of specifically Russian government propaganda, Adam Curtis had a short video called "Oh Dearism 2" which briefly touches on Vladislav Surkov's approach to public relations.

Also worth pointing out, being at war with someone you are materially dependent on is the essence of most (all?) colonial wars. The colonizing powers depend on the colonies' resources, and further arrange to destroy local material autonomy so the colonies depend on colonial supplies (whether for electricity, operating fuel extraction sites, food, etc). This dependence on the colonizers, created by the colonizers themselves, is part of the reason why colonizing nations get away with neocolonial settings despite formal independence (see for example Françafrique or Franc CFA on wikipedia or your encyclopedia of choice).

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