Russian invasion of Ukraine

Whichever way this conflict ends, the long term issue will be how Ukraine can be secured from repeated invasions from Russia.

And giving up Crimea is a bit of a problem because it is a big chunk sticking out into the Black Sea, so is militarily useful.

Crimea is a bit like Alsace-Lorraine

Is it in reality though, in terms of languages and culture? I would think all of France is 100% French, by legal regulation. It would be hard for Ukraine to achieve this in Crimea. Well, France has had 80 years or so…

I suspect that at least part of the reason people were so laid back about the 2014 invasion is that its hard to argue against the Crimea rejoining Russia if its population would be genuinely in favour of that – and it can plausibly be argued that they were.

Geographically though, it’s always going to be dependent on Ukrainian water, and the Kerch bridge in its present form blocks a lot of shipping. There’s always going to be friction if it stays in Russian hands.

The French have been working on the Corsicans since 1769, and French language signs still get painted over and ‘corrected’

I suspect that at least part of the reason people were so laid back about the 2014 invasion is that its hard to argue against the Crimea rejoining Russia if its population would be genuinely in favour of that – and it can plausibly be argued that they were.

There would also have been heavy political pressure to let it go (cheap gas etc).

It’s hard to make the argument that a border should be redrawn just because of a sizeable minority. You could create havoc all over the place. Start with Scotland, where 45% voted for independence. Economic issues also come in; a lot of these regions would not be economically autonomous (Scotland included, actually). I don’t know anything about Crimea. So while a lot of countries would not dislike getting rid of the poorer regions, the argument turns around when one realises that much of the population would emigrate, and where will they go? You know where they will go

The French have been working on the Corsicans since 1769, and French language signs still get painted over and ‘corrected’

Corsicans probably love France as much as Unkrainians love Russia

I wouldnt like to argue with such colourfully presented statistics.

This encounter was before the current conflict, I can only say that being able to speak a language and actually using it most of the time are two different things – perhaps he meant “we all speak Russian” as in we can… But it has stuck in my mind following the events of the last year.

Not really. Donetsk/Luhansk perhaps could be such a transition area between two nationalities and languages. But Crimea was an independent Khanate under the influence of the Otttomans, then annexed by the Russian Empire around the same time Ukraine was, late 1700s IIRC. It only became part of the Ukraine SSR in the 1950s.

In the question of Russian vs. Ukrainian identity on both sides of the border, there are more dimensions than commonly thought.

• Citizenship: mutual diasporas are huge, and lots of people have dual citizenship despite restrictions.
• Inner allegiance: does not necessarily coincide with citizenship, nor with residence, and besides UA and RU, there is ‘plague on both your houses’.
• Cultural affiliation: does not necessarily coincide with the above two, and the subculture often prevails over the culture, just like being Bavarian is more important than being German, or being Texan is more important than being American. However, it’s important to mention one strictly Ukranian cultural phenomenon: it’s one of very few nations worldwide where anarchy can be a viable and stable political system. The self-organisation capability and resourcefulness of the Ukrainian community is amazing (ask me for a story how a tank with a broken track was repaired within mere minutes by a local guy who just happened to have a link pin of the right size in his garage). Accordingly, delegated and/or distributed decision making is one of the key strengths of the Ukrainian army (although e.g., the Finnish army seems to have perfected it even further).
• Languages: very few people born in Russia speak Ukrainian. Among people born in Ukraine, some speak Russian at home and some speak Ukrainian, but most are either bilingual (and capable of code-switching) or, conversely, speak one language colloquially called Surzhik (“two-grain bread”): a mix of mostly Ukrainian grammar with a vocabulary that’s mostly Russian, but some very common words are Ukrainian. Interestingly, the Russian language spoken by bilingual Ukranian natives contains, on the average, much less garbage than the one spoken by the Russian natives. At the bottom line, Ukrainians have a fantastic collection of shibboleths against Russians, but the reverse isn’t true.

In particular, Crimea is not as overwhelmingly Russian as the above diagrams show, it merely has a very strange mix of these affinities and a strong local spirit.

As an aside, how different are Ukranian and Russian? Is it like the difference between Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, which (if spoken slowly and clearly) does not create a big barrier?

To my understanding it’s more like Norwegian and German, or perhaps English and Dutch. It’s not all that difficult to learn, but it has to be learned. The difference is larger than “odd” pronunciation.

Edit: A google search came up with this. With this map

aart wrote:

As an aside, how different are Ukranian and Russian? Is it like the difference between Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, which (if spoken slowly and clearly) does not create a big barrier?

Ukrainian vs. Russian is like Portuguese vs. Spanish. Roughly the same degree of similarity, and intelligibility is one-way: the Portuguese understand Spanish noticeably better than the Spaniards understand Portuguese. Similarly, the Ukrainians understand Russian better than vice versa.