There are two sides in the Russia vs Ukraine drama, but they are not the two sides most people imagine.
All countries are a mix of tribal and melting pot aspects, but the Ukraine has recently been driven to extend itself to the melting pot to an unusual degree.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/03/russia-invasion-ukraine-surrogate-family/623327/
The 'Russian invasion' is basically the exact same situation as the Cuban missile crisis, but with the sides reversed.
Here is an African diplomat pointing out the obvious which it seems most people in Europe and the U.S. are oblivious to.
https://twitter.com/mkainerugaba/status/1498094460580016128
And some basic links.
https://www.google.com/search?q=cuban+missile+crisis+ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
In this case NATO has been trying to plant offensive weapons as close as possible to Russia to create a coercive climate which will lessen resistance to further NATO expansion. Russia put its foot down and said Britain and the U.S. cannot keep expanding Eastward through proxy organizations.
This is the 'big secret' which the British and U.S. propaganda machines are trying to hide from Europeans as well as people in the U.S.
Anybody interested in studying the propaganda operation can Google "Why did Russia invade Ukraine". In the United States, and most of Europe, the first result on Google will be a carefully crafted BBC propaganda page. Read it carefully.
Russian media, which are telling the truth about NATO having provoked the invasion, are now banned across Europe so the British and U.S. version is not challenged.
https://www.cnet.com/news/russian-news-outlets-rt-and-sputnik-are-now-banned-in-europe/
At some point, Britain will run out of steam to promote its fictions, and Europe will start racing to distance itself from the various legacies of European expansion into the Americas.
Britain will then try to consolidate its power through Australia, but as long as there is a sizeable population of indigenous Australians it will be stymied.
Britain's signature has always been expansion on the backs of vulnerable populations, and it is certain that Aboriginal Australians will be targeted by the British.
Anybody with an interest in the long term harms caused by colonialism should be creating defenses for Aboriginal Australians which will be perhaps the most targeted group on earth soon.
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It's very dangerous that most academics are still hiding behind empty philosophical cliches instead of addressing the rapidly collapsing melting pot.
"“During the Cold War, the Soviets were trying to sell socialism to African nations while criticizing Western colonialism and imperialism,” he said. Now, Russia is engaged in a fresh bid for influence in Africa, but driven by right-wing nationalism."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/world/africa/russia-ukraine-eritrea-africa.html
The truth is that the 'Soviet Union' was just a Russian face of the global melting pot designed to compete with the British side.
Their failure, the fact that the Russian face did not get traction, effectively set the stage for growth of independent worldviews to the East. In other words Britain and its derivative cultures can no longer expand except through war, and their ability to wage war is drastically declining.
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During the 'USSR' phase of Russia, Russian used the context of 'the USSR' to extract gain for their specific 'Russian' ethnic group.
Likewise, Britain and its derivative societies today use 'NATO' and other similar constructs to covertly profit their ethnic interests.
Russia has moved on to a crude federation style of local alliances, a sustainable thing, while Britain is still trying to expand where it ought not.
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Here are some generalities of the two ideological camps, along with some other interests neither on one side nor the other.
1) Overtly tribal
Although Russia as a 'federated' nation has incorporated a lot of other ethnic groups, it has more or less reached a sort of federative status with them and probably will not be overtly exterminating smaller cultures, as the British continue doing.
2) Overtly melting pot
The Ukraine is unusually melting potted, and this could only have happened with covert effort from foreign powers. The obvious tool that has been used in most places is the financial carrot, but a person would have to study that area's history to figure out exact details.
Here is an article that makes clear where Ukraine stands with regard to the melting pot.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/03/russia-invasion-ukraine-surrogate-family/623327/
Archetypally, a melting pot is almost the same as a prostitute. In other words any archetypal connections that refer to the common phrase 'melting pot' can also be used with the word 'prostitute'.
The reason for this goes back to the origins of diplomacy.
If you imagine two homogenous tribes thousands of years ago, each tired of war, the one commodity which could be traded for peace was women. Even today, with paternal societies on the decline, this concept is easily understood, even if it attracts hostility from posturing people focused on civil rights.
Ukraine has a Jewish leader i.e., somebody who is not overtly Ukrainian, and considering that the melting pot is decaying rapidly, it seems almost a parody of history that a Jewish person will symbolize 'melting pot leadership' in a country where the melting pot will soon be thoroughly discredited.
Much worse, communism in Russia had a high proportion of Jews, and the battle is being drawn into appearing as 'organic tribals' vs 'Jewish melting potters', although clearly the melting pot power is British and not Jewish.
If a person were to study the minutia of Zelensky's rise, they would find British fingers at each level of every step, not Jewish fingers. As Jews have no reliable homeland they are in a subordinate position in the political world.
3) Other interests
In progress
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Analyzing news
People on all sides are getting propagandized, but in the United States it is a bizarre layer of propaganda built on the enforced ignorance of a melting pot.
"One aspect of Putin’s rhetoric on the Ukraine invasion—that the Western hegemony is trying to force progressive values on Ukraine—will appeal to Americans steeped in far-right conspiracy theories"
'Progressive values' refer to values which allow consolidation of the melting pot. In this case the United States pretends it is championing civil rights for various groups when its real motive is to use those groups as muscle to enforce assimilation and consolidation. It's very similar to the populist thugs used in many countries in the past to, knowingly or unknowingly, support this or that political interest.
Specifically, Western Europe is starting to contract at an accelerating pace, and Britain faces a steep decline as a result. The decline of the British aspect of the United States will be even worse, and Britain has been trying to extend its power into Asia to see if that might offer some help.
The problem is that Britain and its derivative societies are not Asian. No matter how many Asian groups can be co opted into pretending some alliance with Britain, it will never be an organic alliance.
So now, after exterminating hundreds of indigenous cultures as defective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_extinction Britain is trying to paint itself as a mix of two completely incompatible things, a) a defender of the interests of the components of a melting pot, and b) the power behind the melting pot itself.
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FAQS
Question / What is the 'federal' side of a melting pot, and why is it relevant to the Ukraine issue?
Answer / In organic society, a 'federating' influence is simply the mixed blood people between two cultures. 'Federal' political entities try to hijack that natural federating power to use to benefit whichever group is most powerful.
Britain created a 'new' type of federalism in the United States whose purpose was not to federate existing cultures, but to exterminate non European 'Eastern' cultures from territory conquered by Europeans, while creating artificial 'new' cultures called 'states'.
Indigenous Americans have largely resisted assimilation, and even those who have partially assimilated are still largely rooted in resistance to the United States.
NATO was created as a way for Britain to expand Eastward from Europe towards Asia, part of a two pronged strategy which required complete conquest of indigenous cultures in North America at the least.
As Asia has been growing more rapidly relative to Europe than 'Western' strategists anticipated, NATO has been obligated to take up the slack and try to extend eastward to cover an increasing threat emanating from Asia towards the European foothold in the Americas.
Russian 'federalism' is far from perfect, but it is based on harmless, or peaceful, coexistence unlike the extermination federalism used against indigenous Americans.
Britain and its derivatives i.e., the U.S., Australia etc, managed to lead Ukraine into a very unstable and unsustainable melting pot status using secretive influences from government projects, as well as overt military interference. Here is a news article from several weeks before the Russian invasion.
At the moment Britain and the U.S. have the financial ability to lure segments of foreign populations into 'supporting' the U.S., in other words supporting the idea of getting wealth from 'the West', but the segments of foreign populations which accept that sort of arrangement are not the leading segment of those populations to put it politely.
So Britain and the U.S. are trying to create a new battlefront between Asia and Europe which is in Eastern Europe, rather than in the Pacific.
tldr / Russia has been trying to act as a federating influence in its own region, while Britain and the U.S. are introducing 'melting pot federalism' which is meant to ultimately eliminate Ukrainian identity and create a new melting pot outpost which can later be consumed.
An interesting part of this conflict is the role of 'dispossessed' people.
Collectively, Jews are a heavily dispersed and intermixed population which presents itself as homogenous. Like any individual which has no clear home and roots, dispossessed groups are quick to mistakenly accept 'wherever they are' as their place.
A similar example is the Basques, the next step back from the British. As the British gained the Basques lost, and vice versa going forward.
In this WSJ article there is an attempt to synthesize a false narrative which defies nature and is not wise.
"His account of that war in the stories of “Red Cavalry” shows why Jews and Ukrainians may be the two peoples readiest to live and die for their freedom—and how their fused spirit lives in Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky."
In the past such deceptions might have served a purpose, but as is explained on other pages, like the Unwinding page, all it is building is a tragedy.
One of the drawbacks of manufacturing contrived kinships is that eventually they must yield to more genuine associations.
https://www.insider.com/decoding-the-z-symbol-russia-ukraine-conflict-2022-3
Question / What is the likelihood of some use of nuclear weapons in this conflict?
Answer / More and more likely as time passes. This podcast is one of the first mentions of possible tactical nukes in the future.
Popularizing tactical nukes would be one way to harden borders, and make sure conflicts stayed more or less local.
There is a popular distaste among a lot of people for any use of nuclear weapons, but the simple truth is that they are pretty easy to design, and build, and they will be gaining popularity eventually. Introducing them in an appropriate way, to enforce borders, would lead to proliferation, but all roads lead to proliferation at this point.
Bigger nukes, so called 'strategic' weapons, are not as likely, and would probably be more likely to be used against, or by, countries not directly involved.
Britain, and its derivatives like the U.S., has the most to gain 'strategically' by using bigger nukes, against China or Russia, but there would be a big public relations hurdle.
China is winning the long game rapidly, and may already have game changing weapons systems.
Britain has built its empire through dirty tricks, and a nuclear surprise would not be that much of a surprise way for Britain to try to buy time.
https://news.yahoo.com/britain-send-worlds-most-advanced-164309737.html
A second mainstream reference to small nukes.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/a-uniquely-perilous-moment/627040/ Paywalled
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But there was also a thinkable version of nuclear war, one that relied on a kind of nuclear weapon that could perhaps deter the Soviets (and, if deterrence failed, smash their invading armies) without triggering a global thermonuclear exchange. The common term for these armaments is tactical nuclear weapons.
It’s precisely this kind of weapon that raises unique and profound concerns now, as Russia attacks Ukraine, and as NATO allies consider the limits of their support for Ukrainian resistance. Vladimir Putin is using a threat that NATO used to deter the Soviets to now deter NATO. Even worse, we have reason to believe that Putin may actually deploy such weapons, with the goal of not merely ending but also winning the war.
There are many definitions for tactical nuclear weapons, but as a general rule the term refers to low-yield, short-range weapons that are designed for use against military targets, such as enemy airfields or columns of enemy forces. Tactical nukes can be mounted in simple gravity bombs, on rockets, or even in artillery shells.
In theory, NATO could have used tactical nuclear weapons to blunt a Soviet attack without threatening or attacking Soviet cities. Why escalate to city-busting strikes when you could destroy Soviet forces in place?
But the ramifications of using tactical nuclear weapons still rightly frightened American’s military planners. Even without diving into the immense amount of scholarship and war-gaming around the use of tactical nukes, the problems they could create are still obvious. Wouldn’t the Soviets view the incineration of their forces in the field as an existential threat? If tactical nuclear weapons were mainly viewed as defensive, wouldn’t the allies be deploying them on their own soil? And the Soviets could (and did) build and equip their military with them as well. If used, tactical nuclear weapons could quickly inflict such immense casualties and damage that they could trigger the exact strategic attacks they were designed to avoid.
From an American perspective, tactical nuclear weapons became less important as we closed the conventional-military gap with Russia. By the end of the Cold War, the balance of power had shifted decisively. NATO possessed overwhelming conventional strength. Russia was the inferior conventional power, as it remains today.
But it’s not inferior throughout its force. Today, Russia is the power that holds a dramatic advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, Russia possesses close to 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons. The U.S. stores roughly 100 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. As we gained the conventional advantage, we essentially gave up on our tactical nuclear force. Russia did not.
Moreover, there is considerable evidence that use of those tactical nuclear weapons is part of contemporary Russian-military planning. Russia has reportedly adopted a military strategy known as “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to terminate.”
In a March 2014 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nikolai N. Sokov, a former Soviet and then later Russian arms-control negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, described Russia’s current military doctrine as open to using tactical nuclear weapons to inflict “tailored damage,” which is defined as “damage [that is] subjectively unacceptable to the opponent [and] exceeds the benefits the aggressor expects to gain as a result of the use of military force.”
Imagine if Russia were to use low-yield nuclear weapons to destroy key air bases throughout Europe or attack an aircraft-carrier task force. How could NATO expect to operate a no-fly zone if its principal air bases are a smoldering ruin or one or more aircraft carriers is at the bottom of the Atlantic? Or imagine if Russia were to use low-yield nuclear weapons to destroy specific army bases, catastrophically damaging NATO’s ground-based striking power.
To put it another way, Vladimir Putin’s 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons make him the first opponent that NATO allies have faced since the end of the Cold War who has the raw military capability to destroy a substantial portion of NATO forces in the field.
Putin, Sokov argues, is borrowing from the 1960s-era American policy I described above. It’s a doctrine that enables a weaker power to deter a stronger power. It is not the strategy of an ascendant conventional military. Indeed, Russia’s struggles and losses in the first two weeks of its conflict with Ukraine serve only to underscore Russia’s conventional vulnerability. Those same struggles may very well make Russia more likely to pull the nuclear trigger. It is now painfully clear that its military is in no shape to wrest control of the skies or the ground from a motivated NATO force.
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Important to note that the danger is not from Russia, it is from Britain. Russia is in a rapidly increasing stance and has no reason to threaten other countries, it only has to wait. Britain though has been in rapid decline and has few options.
And of course nuclear weapons are obsolete at this point. Bioweapons are the trade of the day. The United States i.e., Britain, has the most developed bioweapons capability, and this 'skirmish' will provide cover for Britain's elimination of the indigenous Australian population, though it's not clear how they will carry that out.
If the British are successful it will be the end of any possible human expansion into outer space for a very long time.