Excellent post from the daily reddit r/worldnews Russia invades Ukraine thread, thought it was worth sharing:
Something I felt like saying in the light of ongoing events:
I have left Russia, the place where I lived my whole life, 3 months ago because the country began descending into full insanity. The negative feelings towards Ukrainians have always been there but they were mostly expressed through jokes and kitchen talk; a lot of people had family in Ukraine whom they mostly seen as "kinda weird and uppity" but still kept in touch.
When I think about it now I realize that it was because no one saw Ukraine as a threat or even a serious entity; everyone made fun of Ukraine's often-changing government and loud political activists and thought to themselves "how does this country even exist, they're so disorganized, they can't do anything".
In the last couple years something grim has started happening: the dismissive attitude towards Ukraine and its people started being transformed into full blown hatred. By power of changing information background the people of Russia were encouraged to no longer just think about Ukrainians as silly and unworthy of attention but as evil malevolent beings whose very existence as a nation is an unacceptable threat to Russia and its people.
The people were explained that Nazism is the essence of Ukrainian culture, that the entire Ukrainian people should be punished for the crime of "genocide" against ethnic Russians and that Ukrainian language, culture and heritage need to be exterminated forever to remove the threat against Russian people. It sounded like a big task but the Russians were not to worry for Putin had an answer: Ukraine is a severely corrupt non-functional country and as soon as Russian troops crossed the border the Ukrainian army and government would run away without any resistance and Russia would be free to fulfill its mission.
Now we've seen the opposite happen: Ukraine has stopped Russian army after it barely managed to take 20% of Ukrainian land with severe casualties and is now rapidly retaking its land.
I think the most poetic aspect of this war is that Russia, which prided itself on its military might and being the world's second greatest army, took an embarrassing defeat not from another one of the world's major militaries, but from the very country is used to degrade and dismiss and consider "not a real country" for such a long time. I don't know yet how everything will end but I like to think that the sheer scale of this embarrassing crushing defeat will prevent any future Russian government from trying anything like this ever again. This turnaround has been one of the few examples of justice being delivered in world affairs and one of the few things inspiring hope for the better future for at least some people.
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