Fate of Western Ukraine after the SMO

They probably will but they shouldn't.

I would say Putin should be getting to the point where his offer mirrors the Minsk agreements, except in reverse.

Ban Ukrainian language and culture from schools and government jobs, and allow fines for speaking Ukrainian in public.

The western most regions might get autonomy but Russian troops will man the borders with the EU and Belarus and Moldova.

Not all Ukrainians were fooled...

If I am not mistaken, in soviet time study of Ukrainian in school was also imposed also in Russian schools in Odessa.

In Donetsk and Lugansk now the only official language is Russian.
In Crimea they have also Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar as official languages, and they "can" have schools in Ukrainian (from my understanding at least up to kindergarten and primary school level) but I do not know if there is any actual request for it.

If I had to think something for western Ukraine after the SMO (either as a Russian protectorate (à la Puerto Rico) or as various Russian oblasts or republics),
I would say that Russian will be the official language, Ukrainian (better call it Malorussian) should be one of the recognised regional languages (as Hungarian should be as well in Carpathian Rus (former zakarpatia oblast).

But knowledge of Ukrainian (Malorossian) should not be mandatory, just an option.

Schools should be in Russian, with the possibility to have a certain amount of them Bilingual, at least up to primary school, and in many high school malorossian should be offered as a optional second language.
(So first language (and language of most subjects) Russian, and for second and third language the high school students should have the possibility of choosing between the regional languages and important foreign languages (Ukrainian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, German, French, English, Turkish, Italian, Greek, Latin, etc).

University should be only in Russian.

I would not ban the speaking of Malorossian in public or even in government jobs, at least between individuals, as long as the people do not use it in official meetings or refuse to speak Russian to russian speaking people or to anyone that prefer using Pushkin's language.

Question - how would you go about denazifying/debanderizing Ukraine after the war? What steps should Russia undertake so that the banderite ideology never rises again?

Walther von Oldenburg wrote:Question - how would you go about denazifying/debanderizing Ukraine after the war? What steps should Russia undertake so that the banderite ideology never rises again?

Its impossible to fully control the human mind, you will never fully get rid of it but you can certainly nullify it.

You need to do things like give them a better standard of living, programs that benefit them, hunt down and get rid of all extremists.

Once they start thinking "Hey I am living better now than I did before" and you get rid of all the poison the problem will be very easily controlled.

Its important to realize a military cannot do this, a military is like a hammer it just smashes whats in its path it is the job of police and such groups to be a surgical tool to go in and manage it.

This is why any such extremists will not be gone if Russia takes over all of Ukraine but the militaries job is just to smash the foe and clear the way.

They will need to establish a strong police based formation to do the delicate work within the population

Well, Russia managed to do a good work with Cecenia.

Of course it is much smaller than west Ukraine and home to less than 1.5 million people, but now it is mainly home to patriotic people. And the western Ukrainians are much more similar to ethnic russians than Chechens are.

Eventually it will be done. It would help a lot if they found some pro-russian Lvov native to lead the new local government.


By the way, about Chechenia, did you know that in October 2022 the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada voted to recognize the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as "temporarily occupied" by Russia

sepheronx wrote:

By the way, about Chechenia, did you know that in October 2022 the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada voted to recognize the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as "temporarily occupied" by Russia

So?

Just to show the amount of ridiculous statements made by the people that sent their countrymen to die

Its impossible to fully control the human mind, you will never fully get rid of it but you can certainly nullify it.

I totally agree, but when you **** up a country like the west did to the Ukraine and the way the Ukrainians did to the Ukraine... essentially what the west and some Russians did to Russia during the 1990s then extreme views are much easier to encourage.... you got no job and no money and everything is a problem.... it is the Russians... they did it... if you get the Russians out of your country then the west can come in and build factories and massive farms where you can work and earn good US dollars instead of shitty Russian rubles... it is a very simple formula... you just need down trodden masses... an enemy to focus on to distract from the fact that you are their real enemy.

They did it in Europe before except instead of Russians it was Jews. But commies or Russians will do... next it will be Chinamen or those damn Indians again... repeat it often enough and they forget that Russians and jews in Ukraine are suffering being robbed by big western companies too and that China and India were never really a problem for anyone really... certainly no one in the west... except that the didn't do what they were told.

I would say the Russians know what they are doing and when they start fixing things and building stuff... something the EU and US never did... it was all take take take, which makes all the money they are throwing into war now amusing but they never learn do they?

Once order is created and rebuilding starts it will be pretty clear to everyone who the real enemy was... the most important thing is to get rid of the western press influence in the country and allow independent press to start up and start telling the truth and notify the people what has been done in their name... and the trials will help in that regard getting information out that has not been checked and approved by some CIA in the US embassy before being allowed to be posted.

reports from Russian TG channels say Ukraine is mirroring the Surovikin line in an attempt to stop further advances by the Russian army. How well would Russia perform against this kind of defense?

Their core problem is that if they were mobile then the Russians would nail them with air power and ground forces, but if they think that digging in will save them then they need to understand that 1.5 ton bombs using glide kits and Tulip and Malka guns are going to be devastating too.

A static target is easier to deal with than a mobile one if you have heavy enough bombs and guess what... those heavier bombs are now cleared for service with glide kits that allow using them from safer standoff ranges but also with a level of accuracy that will make them devastating.

And it is not like Syria.... Tu-22M3 and Su-34s wont need to fly very far to deliver the goods.