Some more reading on the war

[rogin]

 I read Timothy Snyder's "The Road to Unfreedom" and it helped me a lot to come to terms with what is going on in Ukraine.

It's kind of funny to read the reviews on amazon, where the people who rate it poorly complain about how much history Snyder unravels before he reaches Trump and his russia connection in the end of the book. Yeah figures that some people back then were frustrated reading a book that is 80% about Ukraine. Now it is pure gold.

The conclusions I draw from it are not hopeful though. This is not gonna end soon and it will probably dominate our lives here in Europe for the next decade at the very least if not the rest of our lives. 

We need to stop funding Putin, not gradually but right now. He is counting on western decadence making that impossible but on this we have to proove him wrong. If we cannot manage that, we wil pay for oil in blood. What Synder calls the politics of inevitablity tells us that Putin will not butcher the cow he is milking but I am pretty certain we are very wrong applying that logic to him.

Comments

[ruuger]

If you're interested in reading more about how Putin has been setting this up for years, I recommend Putin's Troll Army by Jessikka Aro. She's a Finnish journalist who became the target of a smear campaign by pro-Kreml trolls after writing an expose about Russian information warfare.

[rogin]

Thank you, I've been reading on this for a while but not this book. I will definitely get it!

How is the athmosphere in Finnland at the moment? Here there is talk about Finnland and Sweden contemplating NATO but not much more information.

[rogin]

I just tried to get it, but it is unavailable on amazon and on my usual sites. Any idea, how I could get an english copy?

ETA: Strike that I Found it! It's released as an ebook on th 29th

[ruuger]

The first week everyone was pretty paralyzed with shock, but I think we've now moved on and accepted that everyone knew this would inevitably happen and at least we werent the first ones on Putin's hitlist. So now the focus is more on preparing for hybrid/cyber attacks, cutting all dependencies with Russia and helping Ukrainian refugees.

Finland has one of the strongest armies in Europe (guess why) so after the failure of Russia's initial attack on Ukraine the likelihood of a direct military action towards Finland is quite small. And so while the support for joining NATO has risen, there is also a lot of talk about how Finland should not make any defence decisions out of fear but rather through serious consideration of the whole picture

[rogin]

Seems like a very reasonable stance.

Here in Austria (and also in Germany) there is also a focus on the refugees at the moment. But I really hope that people will wake up more towards cyberwarfare and the energy dependancy. They are, don't get me wrong, but Austria gets 80% of it's gas from Russia and we need to find alternatives way faster than they are proposing at the moment.

I wonder how much of the Covid propaganda is comming from Russia. Russian flags are appearing at the Covid protests here and I always had the vague suspicion that the Troll army has been in that particular game.

[lirazel]

Snyder is just excellent. I haven't read this one yet, but Bloodlands completely changed my understanding of Europe. I am sure this one is well worth the effort.

[rogin]

He helped me immensely to come to terms with the horror that is unfolding at the moment. I really needed to understand the history behind it.