• cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    10 days ago

    give humanitarian refugee status to ethnic Russians and rescue them peacefully for resettlement in Crimea

    This is a horrific proposal. You are literally suggesting that Russia aid Ukraine in its Nazi project of ethnically cleansing the Donbass. This is no different from the faux-humanitarian proposals to “relocate” Palestinians from Gaza, i.e. aid “Israel” in their genocidal ethnic cleansing project.

    I don’t understand the connection people have with their land.

    Therein lies the problem and why you can’t see that Russia had no choice. Most people are intrinsically tied to their land, it is their home, it is part of who they are. Just like Palestine is and always will be the homeland of Palestinians and they would rather die than leave it, so the Donbass and Novorossiya is the home of millions of ethnic Russians. They were born and grew up there. Their parents were born and grew up there. They have been on their land for generations and are not going to willingly leave it. And being forced to do so would cause them immense generational trauma just like the Nakba did for the Palestinians.

    What you are suggesting would have been absolutely and utterly political suicide for a Russian government to do. It would have been viewed not just in the Donbass but in most of Russia proper as a heinous betrayal of the Russian people. As capitulating and selling them out for the illusory promise of a few more years of peace.

    Capitulating to Nazis and giving them what they want does not bring peace. It only emboldens them to go even further.

    I think fewer people would have died or been maimed by becoming Russian citizens proper and defensively preparing for Ukrainian aggression.

    They did become Russian citizens proper. Russia gave citizenship to all the residents of the liberated regions, and additionally took in millions of people who fled from Ukrainian occupied territory that Russia has not yet liberated. This is a defensive war against the Banderite Kiev regime’s aggression against the Donbass, it has been since 2014.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      10 days ago

      This is no different from the faux-humanitarian proposals to “relocate” Palestinians from Gaza, i.e. aid “Israel” in their genocidal ethnic cleansing project.

      There’s a pretty clear distinction here in that Palestinians have no where to actually go. None of the proposed countries could actually handle this level of mass migration. They’d just become a permanent impoverished refugee population and left homeless, jobless, separated from friends and family, and totally reliant on humanitarian aid.

      I think Russia actually could absorb the relocated people into their economy. In fact, as you point out, they already have! But it could have been done without the war, even if it was done at the cost of people losing their land. The war certainly doesn’t make it easier to handle the population influx.

      Therein lies the problem and why you can’t see that Russia had no choice. Most people are intrinsically tied to their land, it is their home, it is part of who they are.

      Yeah I can’t imagine it and it’s an ideological block that makes me unable to really get it.

      I think being alive and healthy and keeping families whole is much more important than land. I don’t get it and I don’t think I can, I’m so alienated from land that the idea of dying for it when there’s other options makes zero sense to me.

      In the end it looks like Russia made the strategic choice and is going to win this war, but it came at a terrible cost.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        9 days ago

        Yeah I can’t imagine it and it’s an ideological block that makes me unable to really get it.

        As an immigrant i share your feelings on this, but at the same time i know that most people don’t feel as alienated from their land as we do. And we have to acknowledge that we are an aberration as far as this is concerned, and that most people do feel a very strong connection to their land.

        Understanding this is not really about any ideological block, it’s about being able to put yourself in the shoes of another person and imagine how they think and feel based on their own personal and generational lived experiences. It’s a form of empathy I suppose.