The Situation in the Ukraine. #26

Re: Odessa/Kransodar

Figure 2. Preferences for the territorial boundaries of the Russian Federation

Odessa was certainly a Russian city, but the position that it is not a Russian city anymore is valid.

Khepesh wrote:Siberia begins under Ivan IV in 1582 with Ermak expedition. It is of course the case that the empire is dated from Peter the Great, but to me that is splitting hairs, as the taking of Kazan and subsequent advance over the Urals into Siberia looks very much like empire building to me, and Peter the Great and then Catherine simply expanded on what was an already ongoing process. To me it is a matter of the territory, not whether it is before or after Peter.

The Czardom and the later Empire were two different realms with different capitals and elites. It is not just splitting hairs.

On that logic then Brasil as it is now is not the same country as it was before the capital moved to Brasilia.

A change in the ruling family of a country does not change the country into a new one.

Peter the Great changed how he styled himself from Tsar to Imperator as it seemed more grand and modern. But this is simply a change of emphasis on the use of two of the titles used by Roman emperors. Tsar is Caesar and Imperator is unchanged, only that in some countries the word Emperor is used, but they are one and the same. Roman emperors were Caesar, Augustus, Imperator and Pontifex Maximus and could use whichever they liked to describe themselves, even give one of the titles to a consul to maintain the fiction of the dual consulship of the Republic remaining. During the time of Nikolai II both names were used as there was a desire to appear more Slavic, as by then the Romanov's were more German-Danish than Russian, and Tsar was thought better than Imperator, but both are Roman so it's all convoluted nonsense.

By continuing to say that Odessa, or all of Novorossiya, is not Russian is music to ears of Kiev, so I wonder why there is this rather poisonous attempt to contort history and legitimize Ukraine as a valid state. 25 years as a fake state does not negate hundreds of years of being Russian.

Who do you support, Donbass-Novorossiya or Kiev? and if Donbass-Novorossiya, why make posts that legitimize Ukraine, and by extension, the regime in Kiev.

Khepesh wrote:By continuing to say that Odessa, or all of Novorossiya, is not Russian is music to ears of Kiev, so I wonder why there is this rather poisonous attempt to contort history and legitimize Ukraine as a valid state. 25 years as a fake state does not negate hundreds of years of being Russian.

Who do you support, Donbass-Novorossiya or Kiev? and if Donbass-Novorossiya, why make posts that legitimize Ukraine, and by extension, the regime in Kiev.

Odessa has not been part of Novorossiya in living memory.
Modern Odessa was forged in the USSR and according the USSR Odessa was Ukrainian since the creation of the Ukrainian SSR.

Does that mean that Odessa should be ruled by Kiev?
No, but I do not see any reason to consider it part of Donbass-Novorossiya either.
That makes as much sense as Crimea as part of the Ukraine.

Odessa was founded in 1794 under the Russian Empire.
In this Odessa census from 1897 please point out any "Ukrainians", and yes, there are of course Malorosiy, "Little Russians", at 9,39% of total population.

Khepesh wrote:Odessa was founded in 1794 under the Russian Empire.
In this Odessa census from 1897 please point out any "Ukrainians", and yes, there are of course Malorosiy, "Little Russians", at 9,39% of total population. Please show any evidence for existance of a state of "Ukraine" before 1991.

What is the (pre-USSR) Ukrainian SSR?

Just ignore the flaming troll. He is a traitor, and is a waste of time and space to reply to him.

Ok, back on topic. I really try hard to figure out what's going on the front. I think it has been ascertained that DPR official daily briefings are badly translated and incomplete. At another forum I am having a hard time explaining civilians with no knowledge of war or history what is positional warfare like, and people are a bit schyzophrenic. Everybody accepts at face value that the war in Syria is bloody and there are hundreds of wounded and killed in every major attack, but because the Ukraine war remains unseen and there are no videos, people have a hard time understanding there's no ceasefire but a constant exchange of fire and shelling.

I am pretty confident that judging from the reports and logic, the Ukrops fire many many more times shells than what the Novorussian briefings say, because when translating to english they confuse "times" with "individual shellings"

A cannon or mortar doesn't just fire one projectile and it's done for the day. It's evident that the Ukrops don't have anything remotely resembling a fire plan, but even if they fire by single pieces and not batteries, they surely fire more than single rounds. Even for ukropithecs, they must have some semblance of fire mission orders and some plan. That's why I say, and voenkor "Mage" confirmed this, that every time a "shelling" is reported it means more than single shots. An average of 10 rounds per shelling per piece it's a low end estimate wich takes into account that either the ukrops are firing a few rounds from isolated guns, or couple salvos for whole batteries.

I checked the OSCE monitor reports but I find them useless, since what they report does not match at all with the DNR briefings, and videos from the front.

http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm

I would like the professional opinion of Khepesh. There has been many complaints that the OSCE people are worse than useless in that they are systematically lying and looking the other way regarding ukrops attacks, but from what little they report from the handful of cameras that they have on, at least they are sincere in saying "undetermined" explosion, or "uncountable overlapping shots".

This is physically impossible that the DNR briefings are able to count so precisely every individual shell and to precise the caliber. The Russian original says "times" not "individual shells".

Besides is plain common sense. Anybody that has read a little history knows what positional warfare is like. A constant shelling, exchange of shots, patrols and raids. Of course the intensity of the fighting is not anywhere near the trench warfare of the Western Front in 1914-1918, and there doesn't seem to be massed artillery fire or sustained barrages but neither is just a few isolated shots throughout the day.

Thus I believe the Ukrops are firing thousands of cannon and mortar shells daily and countless other munitions. and despite the claims of adhering to the ceasefire, we all know the Novorussian artillery hits back. Locals have many times recorder the sound of the outgoing cannonade. It can't be just counterbattery fire. It may be that they do not fire on Ukrops frontline positions, but given the low density of troops, I think artillery barrages are essential part of the Novorussian defensive tactics. Whenever the enemy assembles for an attack, they get pummelled by artillery and mortars, wether on their concentration areas, or once they go over the top and enter the Novorussiand defense zone. The accounts of the Ukie attempts at breakthrough suggest this is the case.


On the other hand, maybe Novorussian cannon keep silent, but if nobody is firing artillery, then where all the Ukrainian wounded are coming from? It may be as Khepesh describes:

Khepesh wrote:

krops take casualties when they are in the open and engaged in small scale infantry attacks, raids really, and so are hit by fire from small arms, AGS and BMP. They are not taking artillery fire onto their prepared field positions, and VSN are only using artillery for counter battery fire, if necessary. If ukrops fixed field positions were being hit by VSN artillery then they can show the evidence to media and OSCE that VSN break Minsk, but nothing. Casualties from small arms fire don't have propaganda value to them as it shows that they can only have occurred because they have moved forward from their fixed positions and actively attacked, and so broke Minsk.

But in that case we would have a situation where the Ukrops dare not use their big guns, but sends mobs of orks one after another to be mowed down by Novorussian machine guns. It sounds ludicrous, but the casualty returns indicate that there is a real war going on

ExBeobachter1987 wrote:What is the (pre-USSR) Ukrainian SSR?

A communist abomination with borders and national credibility of a banana republic.

Ispan wrote:Just ignore the flaming troll. He is a traitor, and is a waste of time and space to reply to him.

Unsubtle manipulator of misinformation and convolutions....

Anyway. To be honest, only Basurin can give you a proper answer, tho some of what he states is unambiguous. If he says that they fired 24 times with 152mm artillery, then he really does mean 24 rounds, not 24 volleys, and the same with Grad. Were it becomes fluid in what he means is when he talks about "violations", and here, as I wrote before, one artillery round can be one violation, but also a battery of artillery all firing one round each, or multiple times in sustained fire, can also be "one violation" or even "one time" if they all fired simultaneously. One artillery battalion can fire almost three hundred rounds in just over two minutes, mortars fire even quicker. So, sustained fire like that can be counted as one violation, three hundred violations or three hundred rounds or three hundred times. It's all semantics and we could run around chasing our tails over this and never get the real answer. It probably all depends on what is need to be told, either to minimise what happens, or of course to exaggerate, but I don't think there is much, if any, exaggeration.

There was some comment elsewhere a few days back about Hug. I don't remember all the details as I only lazily read it, but it seems he does not care for either side, only about manipulating everything to further his political ambitions in Switzerland, but as the Swiss like to buzz Putin's plane, I guess the political climate there would be for him to favor Kiev, which really has always been obvious.

Khepesh wrote:Odessa was founded in 1794 under the Russian Empire.
In this Odessa census from 1897 please point out any "Ukrainians", and yes, there are of course Malorosiy, "Little Russians", at 9,39% of total population.

Not easy for me to identify the which are the groups refered in the source, but I was looking at these data in other formats. The second group was the Jewish population.

Do you trust the change in the percentage of Jewish population between the census of 1897 and the census of 1989?

So giving opinions around here is trolling? You know kind of off topic but the Russian army should have been in Kiev by the end of 2014. It's too late to say cities like Odessa are even Russian aligned. They were butchered, brutally beaten, without any help there was no way any organized rebellion could have started there. I'm sure if the Russian army pulled up into the city a large portion of it would be helping Russian troops.

eehnie wrote:

Not easy for me to identify the which are the groups refered in the source, but I was looking at these data in other formats. The second group was the Jewish population.

Do you trust the change in the percentage of Jewish population between the census of 1897 and the census of 1989?

Great Russians
Jews
Little Russians
Poles
Germans
Greeks
Tatars
Armenians

There is another type census in between 1897 and 1989. Not really census, but list of all who died in the famines in Odessa by ethnic group. Jews are the single largest group, followed by Russians. In this document from early 1930s we find "Ukrainians", but very few. Many Jews of course did not survive the nazi occupation, but seem to have made a recovery in numbers by 1989, and I think those numbers are probably reliable. After 1991 there was a mass exodus of Jews and this is visible on the latest census from 2000 or 2001. I don't have the figures to hand right now but by memory the figures for Jews does not seem unusual except maybe a rather bigger recovery after the war than expected and I don't know why this is, maybe immigration into the city by Jews not previously residents, I don't know. The major mystery is in the large number of people calling themselves Ukrainian, much higher than Russian. This is not actually possible and work has been done by a journalist in 2014 to understand this. Generally it comes down to lazyness. Since creation of Ukrainian SSR they have been brainwashed into thinking they are Ukrainian, then after 1991 they found themselves in a country called Ukraine and with Ukrainian passport. On census they simply tick box for Ukrainian no matter what their origins. The journalist. from Odessa, asked people whose family history he knew, what they ticked on census, and in very many cases they ticked Ukrainian. On being asked why, as their families were in fact Russian and had always been Russian, they admitted they were Russian, but ticked Ukrainian to simply "go with the flow". So while the figures for Jews is probably correct, the figures for a majority at this time of Ukrainians is wrong by significant margin.

This discussion reminds me of a revenge attack that happened in either Odessa or Mariupol (I can not remember which, or I may be off completely) where the banderite thug that poured milk on an 80-90 year old veteran was stabbed to near death in the street.

There is resistance... it may not be partisan or Novorussian level, but it's there. I do not think it deserves to be discredited at all.

Talking as a Basque (we have been really alone and treasoned after fighting with the allies in Western Europe in the WWII after being expelled in many cases of our country, while we helped cleaning the Fascism from countries like France, the US, the UK and France payed us leaving Franco to enjoy his dictatorship 30 years more after 1945), I can not agree when Russia is blamed for lack of helping to the Russians in Ukraine. To be fair, I think it is difficult to have more help than the help that have the Russians in Ukraine.

What Russia can not do is to become agressor. The people of the territories affected must talk first publicly and clearly like the people of Donetsk, Lugansk, Transdnistria or Crimea did. The borders of Novorussia can be moved still, but will not reach Kharkov or Odessa without the initiative of the local population.

My country is small, smaller than some Oblasts of Ukraine and have not strong allies close like the Russians in Ukraine have, but the people continued fighting after the late 1930s extermination, and even after the death of Franco in 1975 around 400 persons died in the Basque side. It means 1.3 by 10000 inhabitants after 1975.

Traslated to the Odessa Oblast it would mean 133 people death. Tranlated to the Oblast of Odessa it would mean 320 (including the previous of the city). Translated to the Oblast of Kharkov it would mean 375 more. This is the level of violence that my country suffered recently. Important despite to be lower than in the previous stage of the Francoism.

It is true that there is a difference between Donetsk and Odessa or Kharkov. The people of Donetsk is fighting and is winning (with help). To recognize it is only to be fair with the citizens of Donetsk.

Khepesh wrote:

eehnie wrote:

Not easy for me to identify the which are the groups refered in the source, but I was looking at these data in other formats. The second group was the Jewish population.

Do you trust the change in the percentage of Jewish population between the census of 1897 and the census of 1989?

Great Russians
Jews
Little Russians
Poles
Germans
Greeks
Tatars
Armenians

There is another type census in between 1897 and 1989. Not really census, but list of all who died in the famines in Odessa by ethnic group. Jews are the single largest group, followed by Russians. In this document from early 1930s we find "Ukrainians", but very few. Many Jews of course did not survive the nazi occupation, but seem to have made a recovery in numbers by 1989, and I think those numbers are probably reliable. After 1991 there was a mass exodus of Jews and this is visible on the latest census from 2000 or 2001. I don't have the figures to hand right now but by memory the figures for Jews does not seem unusual except maybe a rather bigger recovery after the war than expected and I don't know why this is, maybe immigration into the city by Jews not previously residents, I don't know. The major mystery is in the large number of people calling themselves Ukrainian, much higher than Russian. This is not actually possible and work has been done by a journalist in 2014 to understand this. Generally it comes down to lazyness. Since creation of Ukrainian SSR they have been brainwashed into thinking they are Ukrainian, then after 1991 they found themselves in a country called Ukraine and with Ukrainian passport. On census they simply tick box for Ukrainian no matter what their origins. The journalist. from Odessa, asked people whose family history he knew, what they ticked on census, and in very many cases they ticked Ukrainian. On being asked why, as their families were in fact Russian and had always been Russian, they admitted they were Russian, but ticked Ukrainian to simply "go with the flow". So while the figures for Jews is probably correct, the figures for a majority at this time of Ukrainians is wrong by significant margin.

Then some changes since 1897 can be credible. I really can not see an anti Russian contamination in the census of 1989. Difficult for me.

The fact that the city had roughly 400000 inhabitants in 1897 and had 1000000 by 1989 can be in agreement with the difference if the new population was mostly Ukranian (I assume from rural parts). There are data from 1897 for the rural areas near to Odessa?

flamming_python wrote:

TheArmenian wrote:I am sure you remember the hundreds of thousands of Odessites on the protest marches chanting: "Odessa Russky Gorod" and "Odessa Gorod Georoya".

They did what they could, they were attacked by the meydan mob, beaten and burned. They were defeated. They cannot raise a finger against the junta regime at the moment. They will have to wait for the right moment to rise again.

Few people (from any country) can do what you are expecting to do: take arms, kill and get killed, be a partisan. Those who could are already in the DNR/LNR armed forces.

You are entitled to your opinion of course , personally I think you should empathize with the silent majority of Novorossiya residents. They need to have hope and not feel abandoned.

I'm not sure if they're the majority any more - if they were the majority then they would have rebelled just like the Crimea and Donbass did. Why did the Maidenites fail to entrench themselves in those regions, if not because they were genuinely not welcomed there? The Maidanuts travelling circuses of gangs and activists were beaten to a pulp every time they turned up in Donetsk or Lugansk, and once the SBU secret police attempted to arrest the street protest leaders - people started to take weapons into their hands.
And that's what would happen if the Ukrainian nationalists/authorities tried that sh*t in any Russian city too that inexplicably ended up under Ukrainian jurisdiction tomorrow. Yup even here in St. Petersburg with our hordes of hipsters, draft-dodgers and weakling middle-class suburbanite types.
Contrast this to Odessa where a huge amount of activists and protestors were butchered and everyone simply shrugged their shoulders and kept on about their business.

I don't know how to explain it - effectiveness of Ukrainian nationalist propaganda, pro-Russians voting with their feet and leaving en masse, some sort of mass apathy or Stockholm syndrome, but it is what it is.

You are 100% correct with your analysis. They are all Banderatards now. They drank the U-rope easy life koolaid and transmuted their inadequacy into
hate for Russia. They allowed themselves to be led around by the nose by obvious Banderite scum. (The 2004 Orange Revolution was total Banderite
excrement). It is utterly pathetic how ethnic Russians in Ukraine hate Russia. These people deserve no respect and no mercy. They can lie in the
bed they made and eat the shit consequences. Russia should never, ever go back to supporting this debilny tualet with welfare. It sank up to
$300 billion worth of welfare into Ukraine after 1991 while it was starving itself. These ingrates do not deserve this sort of sacrifice.

eehnie wrote:There are data from 1897 for the rural areas near to Odessa?

The figures divide into cities and rural areas, but while there are specific figures for Odessa city, on the rural areas it comes in bulk, and not just for Odessa oblast but an all inclusive figure for all Kherson governature which includes Odessa. These figures show that for the entire governature, cities and rural, half the population spoke Malorussian and the other half spoke predominantly Russian with a mix of all the other languages. The situation in Odessa oblast outside the city is that the further away from the city, particulary in west and north direction, then the greater the instances of languages other than Russian, for instance, while Rumanian does not exist as a figure for the city, as the oblast extends west into present day Moldova and north into Transcarpathia, we see 147,218 Rumanian speakers appear in the census and also 25,685 Bulgarian speakers.

Edit: The figures that say Bulgarian are what is written, which seems rather odd as Hungarian is not mentioned at all, tho Czech and Slovak are, but very small amounts. Also, all the variations of East Slavonic other than Russian, Malorussian and Belarussian are not recorded and I suspect are included within the three major variants as simply local dialects.

Odessa was discussed plenty of times in 2014 after what happened. I'm not taking any sides here but flamming_python is mostly right about Odessa in general. People were tortured and burned alive in that building yet no real anti-Maidan force responded/retaliated in a proper manner. The biggest paradox of all is that the Odessa massacre is the sole reason for Donetsk's and Lugansk's uprising, yet the same didn't happen in Odessa. Why is that? Because either no one there is willing to fight Kiev or there is no real anti-Maidan movement left.

With that having said some people here want the Russian army (or something alike) to liberate them? And face an anti-Russian atmosphere in the city? Leave the armchair-general-attitude behind and start thinking clearly I'd say. The difference between Donetsk/Lugansk and Odessa is that the people in the first mentioned cities were willing to fight against what they saw as oppression. So again, as I mentioned before, the uprising in Odessa failed because there was no substantial force to fight against Kiev. Obviously I want the situation there to change just as much as you do but it won't happen soon. Maybe Odessitans will realize how catastrophic the new "reforms" are and Kiev's unwillingness or incompetence to better the economic situation in the country. Perhaps then they will demand more self-rule (which will obviously anger the forces in Kiev). Understand that the authoritarian measures currently in place are also Kiev's weakness. They will try to silence any dissident forces in Odessa through the SBU first. When that proves to be insufficient they'll bring in the National Guard or the army which will infuriate the people even more.

On a side-note: Poroshenko is facing a serious scandal due to what Oleksandr Onyshechenko revealed to a Times journalist (apparently he's recorded every meet-up he had with Poroshenko and allegedly they are very incriminating). There's increased fighting and finger-pointing in the Rada. Timoshenko's voice becoming louder and louder. The best part is the apparent (though invisible) grim sphere of panic. They clearly bet HEAVILY on Clinton winning the election and now they don't know what to do.

This isn't over yet. To be continued after Trump's inauguration...

Shitting on people, calling them "ingrates" etc is not needed and shows a hatred that is rather odd and extreme.

Also, this hatred shown towards people controlled by Kiev because they have not risen shows ignorance of history and human nature. Spontaneous uprising by "the people", in the few cases that they are spontaneous and not planned, are always crushed. In Warsaw the Polish "Home Army", armed, determined and prepared, did not dare rise until Red Army were on doorstep. Subsequent contentious events are irrelevant to my point, which is that people will only rise when they see that they are not alone. How can they rise now in Odessa or any other city when they know they will all be killed? To expect them to rise at this time is stupid and insulting. Are the people of occupied Mariupol "ingrates" or "worthless" because they have not risen, but seen their police massacred by heavily armed fascists. And in the photo of Slavyansk, are they now "ingrates" and "worthless" for not rising when they know that if they attempt what we see them do here again they will all be killed. It has been said countless times now that many thought there would be Russian intervention before it came to civil war, so why fight with bare hands knowing you will be killed when you are led to believe an army is coming to protect you. After Crimea and then seeing columns of Russian Army driving towards the border, some with МС on the sides of the cab, what are people supposed to think? An inconvenient question that gets ignored or shit on by those who seem to hate people for not rising. We know that it is easy to shout from sidelines and complain about sofa warriors calling for action, yet this insulting people for not rising is no different. Those who want a rising now, then pick up AK and go to Odessa and rise, and if not, then shut mouth and stop complaining when you are not in danger of being taken to SBU basement.

Let's be clear: I NEVER called Odessitans "ingrates". I simply said they are unwilling.

No, you didn't. My post was of the variety "If the cap fits, wear it".

Pdf of complete original 1897 census for Kherson governature
http://nipol.ucoz.ru/load/statistika_rossijskoj_imperii/pervaja_vseobshhaja_perepis_naselenija_1897_goda/tom_xlvii_khersonskaja_gubernija/191-1-0-3521

Odessa is part of Kherson governature due to Novorossiya being split into three governatures for administrative reasons, as Siberia is a Federal District but divided into various republics and oblasts.

I don't want to make a big fuss or disagreement over all this. I'm already being branded a 'traitor'. We're all on the same side here.

All I'm saying is that I'm opposed to helping those that are not willing to help themselves. And that's the way Russia has operated often in history. In regards to NATO splitting Kosovo from Serbia - I believe that someone said that we can't be more Serbian than the Serbians themselves.
As cold blooded as that may seem, I feel it's the correct approach - if the Serbians at that point were no longer willing to fight and sacrifice to retain their territory, Russia wouldn't do so either. Serbia at that time was chiefly interested in EU integration.

And similarly, we can't be more Eastern Ukrainian or 'Novorussian' than the people of these areas themselves. Attempting to do so would be a recipe for disaster. If they themselves do not want to split from the Ukraine, view staying in the Ukraine as a better alternative to 'oy vey! not war!!!', view tolerating the illegal government there as preferable to the risk of personal injury or death - well I don't see why we should help them, as cold blooded as it may seem. It may just as easily turn out that if we do enter the city, we would find that we are not actually welcome there as 'liberators' at all. How can we know? There isn't even a partisan movement there, no local forces to support - which are almost prerequisites for every Russian military campaign since Afghanistan.
Crimea, when Russian forces arrived, was already in the process of rebelling, Sevastopol had already elected a mayor who refused to recognize the new Kiev government, and there were masses of crowds on the streets. And I firmly believe that this is the reason why Russia intervened. Putin even admitted, that they had loads of surveys of the opinions of Crimean people, and that's the only reason why they were confident enough to go in.

I remember hearing a few reports in the weeks following the Odessa trade house massacre about brutal revenge attacks on several of the murderers responsible. I was excited to hear the news. Revenge against these killers.

It turned out to be bull excrement - there were no revenge attacks. Nothing. Nobody cared about what had just happened in their city, and what sort of forces had taken it over - at least nobody cared enough to do anything about it; which is the same thing in my mind, for a situation as serious as this one. For a situation as serious as this one, with the revival of Nazi-era atrocities - cannot possibly beget apathy as anything other than silent support and acceptance.
'We just want to work', 'we don't need war', etc... these are the attitudes of the people of Odessa, people making excuses, who are not interested in confrontation, neither physical against the regime nor intellectual against the propaganda. They are willing, in fact, to accept the propaganda of the illegal regime, accept their rule, in return for the small measure of prosperity and stability that they can retain - even this small amount is still preferable to war for them, and therefore is preferable to any Russian 'liberation' of their city too.
They will oppose any such Russian landing in Odessa and will quickly find comfort in Ukrainian nationalism (which they had tried to ignore/be neutral about until now) to do so - don't you people understand?

The same process is underway right now even in Mariupol. Assimilation.
Yup Khepesh - I'm about to post that video. I know you know it, that's for sure.



Although, Mariupol should not be thought of as the same; there really is a mass military occupation of the city and many of its military age males are already fighting for its liberation; so liberated it should ultimately be.

And yes it's sad. I wish things were different. But the key thing you have to understand is that these people have made their choice and we should.. 'respect' it, for not doing so will not lead to the sort of 'liberation' that some envisage here but a potential quagmire that won't bring anything good to anyone.