What’s Ukrainian For Motti?

History is full of parallels.

Trying to use them to predict the future is a fool’s errand. It almost never works. .

Almost.

But huimans instinctively seek out patterns; it’s evolved into our brain; it’s a survival mechanism. We see things that belong together. We find Waldo.

And the historically parallels with Finland’s 1940 “Winter War” (Talvesota) against the USSR are hard to ignore.

One Finnish historian runs down the comparisons in this long, but utterly worth-reading, Twitter thread:

John Fund:

No one disputes that Russia dwarfs Ukraine’s military — just as the Soviet forces dwarfed Finland’s in 1939. In 2020, Russia spent ten times more on its military than Ukraine did.

Nonetheless, historian William Farley recently wrote, “the Winter War offers a hopeful lesson for Ukraine, in that it is possible for a smaller country to badly bloody Russia’s nose.”

Robert Service, a veteran historian of Russia at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, told the Wall Street Journal’s Tunku Varadarajan that he thinks the Ukrainians could well lose the war eventually. But he finds it inconceivable that they will accept subjugation. “The Ukrainians have become more nationally conscious over the 20th century, and they’re a proud people who’ve seen what happened to them when they were subjugated by the U.S.S.R.,” he noted. “They had it in the early 1930s, when millions died under Stalin’s famines. They had it again in the late 1940s, after the war ended. I don’t think they’re going to let history repeat itself.”

Finland had one advantage the Ukrainians don’t – most of its frontier with Russia was dense, wooded Taiga, broken up by swampty motti that made movement of any kind difficult.

Ukraine? It’s got distance – some, anyway – and cities, which favor the defender in other ways – ways that Russia isn’t above solving with high explosives, which have their own political and military disadvantages.

82 thoughts on “What’s Ukrainian For Motti?

  1. Swiftee, fact of the matter is as I stated. 59% of Donbas residents are ethnically Ukrainian, and many of the speak Russian simply because they happened to (a) be taught that in school under the Soviets and (b) the mostly Russian-speaking cities were where they were getting jobs. It continues today because the destination for the crops they grow and the products they create is….the Russian-speaking cities. Doesn’t change their ethnicity. Doesn’t make the province Russian.

    Regarding the biological research centers, look up the term “microbiology”. Lots of people major in it, and almost every hospital in the world has such a lab.

    And the 2014 Revolution? Alright, Swiftee, so you’re arguing for Yanukovych, who murdered dozens of his political opponents, put more of them in jail after show trials, pillaged the country for himself and his buddies, all while reneging on his promises for greater EU integration in favor of closer relations with Russia–much to the horror of Ukrainians who had voted for just the opposite. After he was gone, polls indicated 95% of Ukrainians (that would have to include a significant portion of the Russian minority) were glad. The legislature voted 326-0 to remove him from office.

  2. Both of comrades Twat and jdm’s pithy comments could have been written by Neville Chamberlain, who said the same about one German dictator. Hitler at the time was “only” interested in Czechoslovakia, the Munich agreement was signed, but he ended up not only invading it but went further and invaded Poland. Remember that Macron got assurances from Putin that no invasion was in the works.

    Chamberlain like compromises are what got us here. If Putin’s calculation was that the Ukrainians had no fight and that Europe and NATO are weak and divided and he can survive any sanctions just like he did after 2014. Reach for your inner Churchill my dear comrades.

  3. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 03.10.22 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain

  4. It’s not reflexibe anti-Americanism, E. It’s skepticism. The problem is trust.

    Does the United States government own or operate a laboratory in Ukraine? No, we don’t own or operate a single lab over there. Other people own and operate them.

    There are 26 laboratories in Ukraine conducting biological research. Does the United States government fund any of them? Certainly not. We give grants to scientists who conduct important research, we do not fund foreign laboratories.

    The research being conducted at the Ukrainian laboratories involves things like anthrax which could be weaponized. Doesn’t that make it a bio-weapons lab? Absolutely not, the notion is laughable. A bio-weapons lab does research intended to Take lives; our grant recipients do research intended to Save lives. Completely different.

    Then why do we care if the Russians capture the labs? Because they might use the dangerous material from the labs as bio-weapons. They’re Russians, after all, pure evil. They always do what they accuse other people of doing. It’s disinformation and proganda and projecting. That’s why we must stop them from seizing the dangerous biological materials from the laboratories where the scientists we funded are working on things like anthrax.

    Feel confident now? Trust the speaker? Believe the US isn’t funding bio-weapons research? Or did the careful phrasing of the answers make you think, “wait a minute. . . .”

    It’s like Bill Clinton saying, “I don’t think you can find evidence that I took money from special interests solely to change legislation.” Doesn’t mean there is no evidence he took money, only that you’ll never find the evidence. And if he did take money, it wasn’t the sole reason for the change. His statements dance around the central issue – were you bribed or not, dammit?

    So, too, the government’s denials dance around the central issue. That doesn’t mean the Russians aren’t lying, but it doesn’t mean my own government isn’t lying, either. And if Fauci had anything to do with the funding . . .

  5. JD wrote: “And if Fauci had anything to do with
    the funding..”

    Something serious happened in the world and the low-grade culture warriors miss their era of triviality.

  6. Derbyshire, Coulter, Brimelo can still be enjoyed at TakiMag and VDare

    I listen to Derb’s podcast every Saturday morning. Always great.

  7. My country died in 2008. This steaming pile of shit calling itself the USA isn’t worth trying to save, and neither are the degenerates, greedy self serving fucks and mental deficients controlling it as ordered by the Global Bankers.

    I’m treading water, waiting for the reckoning. It always comes.

  8. Here’s an interesting video. Don’t decide whether it’s propaganda or not. Take what they are proposing as fact, and measure it against other information.

    It’s the same thing I do for everything put out by Sacky, the fake media and neo-con die hards.

    https://rtd.rt.com/films/donbassdebaltsevo/

  9. Sophocles is eating dates, drinking meade and laughing his ass off while watching the death throes of the United States.

  10. ^^ The term pro-Putin gets thrown around too loosely but it does exist and this is what it looks like. The Russians know their target audience — gullible dimwits who spend their days going down conspiracy rabbit holes. This is aimed squarely at them.

  11. Say rAT? We’re twigging your misplaced sense of competence, because know what a douchbag you are. But newcomers probably are not getting it.

    Why not join your fellow nitwits, degenerates and reprobates and change you’re avi to a Ukrainian flag emblazoned with “I stand”…think of the status you’re missing out on.

    Or better yet, why not join the Ukrainian army’s elite cross country ski teams? You could teach them some tricks you’ve picked up at the BirKie, I’m sure. Shusshing silently through the birches and pines, sneak up on them Rooskies and pew pew pew! mow ’em down. After you’ve wiped them all out, you could have the whole team over to your fabulous Lake Estate and relive old times.

  12. Just a matter of time before the QAnon timeline fused with the Ukraine war timeline.

  13. After an amazingly successful 2 years as an infectious disease expert😷, rAT is moving on to ply his expertise in Eastern European foreign relations and asymmetrical warfare🥷🏻.

    We’re truly blessed. 🤣

  14. ^ SiTD has been much better ever since the Covid-19 and vaccine experts who became election fraud and “stop the steal” experts turned out to be military experts.

  15. I’ll have you know, Blade, that Emery graduated from the same graduate epidemiology program that I did.

  16. I listened to the Commentary Magazine podcast today.
    The Neocons at Commentary have already declared the start of Cold War Two, which will be fought against and allied Russia and China. They are calling for an increase in US defense spending from 3.5 to 5.0 percent of GDP (~300 billion bucks), and are debating the use of NATO tactical nukes against the Russians.
    None of the Commentary writers & editors on the podcast has ever served in the US military. Their children will not server either.
    I guess I am not patriotic if I think that this is madness.

  17. The Russians said if the Migs took off from a NATO air base (Rammstein has been mentioned), they (the Russians) would consider this a NATO sortie, regardless of who owned & flew the planes.
    So this is more incompetence by Harvard Man Antony Blinken, who once again did not cross his T’s and dot his I’s before announcing US policy.
    Team Biden may hate America and want it to fail. Another explanation is that Biden does not have the mental ability to oppose the rogue Obama retreads infesting his administration.

  18. Unrelated to mocking the resident dickhead, while looking through the appropriate emojis, I see Apple has added a new one.

    It’s the salute lower party members make during the 2 minutes hate in the film 1984. No, I’m not kidding.

    🙅🏻🙅🏻‍♀️

    Used in conjunction with the pregnant man, I think Apple has really captured our times.

  19. Hunter Biden is behind the Ukrainian biolabs. A man too stoned to tie his own shoes is remotely running a sophisticated viral engineering lab. It’s all on his laptop— maybe Putin will can help with that …

  20. More fake news pro-Putin conspiracy theory: the State Department wants to use a Middle Eastern ally to launder arms shipments to the insurgents so we can fight another proxy war against Russia.

    No, not Libya, that was the last fiasco. https://search.brave.com/images?q=benghazi%20bloody%20hand#1

    And what difference, at this point, does it make?

    This is a new fiasco.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/11/history-rhyming-biden-administration-constructs-familiar-war-plan-using-qatar-as-long-term-mechanism-to-fund-protracted-war-in-ukraine/

  21. Even given the paper differences in the size of each country’s armed forces, the reality as I see it is that you can give a local a rifle and light training and they will be able to hold a point on their home ground to a degree. Give a teenager a similar weapon and training and they will find it harder to attack and hold ground. Then you have the question of morale.

    Russia has an army of however many hundred thousand men. Ukraine can enlist millions of men to fight for their homeland and arm them with advanced defensive technology.

    I don’t believe Russia can win using the materiel and methods used to date and my concern is they will switch over to chemical/biological weapons to break the will of the defenders. The conflict will get uglier and I believe NATO should have some clear red lines as regards these weapons.

  22. We already have a clear red line. It’s the Western border of Ukraine.

    West of that line is Poland, a NATO country, which we have an Article 5 duty to defend.

    East of that line is Ukraine, a non-NATO county, which we do not.

  23. “American Voters Now View Ukraine as Favorably as France, Germany and Japan”

    In other words, relentless propaganda works. Works even better when opposing viewpoints are suppressed under the pretense of “misinformation.” And God only knows what happened to The Truth in all of this.

    Proud to be playing your part?

  24. If that were fully true — no opposition party would be elected, no demonstrations would occur. The fact that civil society exists and that there are a diversity of beliefs means that the propaganda function of the press, which maybe powerful, is never truly hegemonic. That is also the faulty reasoning underlying someone like Michel Foucault and the suggestion that biopower is everywhere and subliminal. Where you have an active and expressive culture, propaganda can never be truly effective.

  25. American Voters Now View Ukraine as Favorably as France, Germany and Japan

    OF *course* they do. Zelensky made a video of himself doing the tranny dance in leather halter top, spandex pants and spike heels…that’s as American as apple pie!

    If he really wants those MIG’s, all he has to do is post a video of him being ridden like a mule wearing that get-up, and the sky will be filled with fully armed combat planes.

    I’m curious though. Do Ukrainian traffickers teach degenerate sexual activities to the kids they kidnap before being sold, or let the buyers groom them to suit their own tastes? Only Zelensky knows for sure, and he’s not talking.

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