Quote:
Originally Posted by malcolmk14
My father-in-law is Russian and immigrated in 1995. I like to ask him his perspective on this stuff as he consumes primarily Russian media and I’m always non-judgmental. I’m legitimately curious to know how Russian media is selling this war to their people and how it’s coming across. I don’t know all of the details, as I don’t follow Eastern European politics too closely, but in general he said:
There is an arm or faction of the Ukraine military called the Azov Battalion who has slowly been amassing power in Ukraine politics since 2014. This is the primary group Putin is concerned with removing.
The Azov Battalion is defending Mariupol and Russia has effectively trapped most of them there. Russia has provided humanitarian corridors to get civilians out of Mariupol and now it’s basically just these Azov people left so they’re going to level it now.
Putin is using this Azov arm as a scapegoat to exert more control over Ukraine, he predicts they will take Kiev within 2 weeks, “demilitarize” the country, and install a puppet government.
His prediction for when all this is over is that Russia exerts their power, does what they want in Ukraine, and eventually the west just kind of forgets about it and drops sanctions. Putin continues on as President and everyone just kind of moves on.
He buys the Russian propaganda hook line and sinker so it’s really interesting getting his perspective. I don’t try to change his mind, I just show him articles or resources that show the western perspective of things he talks about and let him make his own decisions about what he believes. Anyway, he thinks Putin will survive all this and the world will just let Ukraine go.
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It’s true that the Azov Battalion is a far right faction that has been integrated into the mainstream Ukrainian defense structure out of necessity and have gained a small amount of political clout as a result, but it formed as a response to Russian aggression so Putin using it as a justification for aggression is disingenuous. The party associated with them only received something like 2% of the vote, so it's not like they are extremely influential.
The same types of groups emerged during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, however Ukraine is in a much better position to keep them in check because they have been an independent country for 30 years and are not building their military from scratch.