Comments by "" (@sir_humpy) on "Asian Boss" channel.

As a person whose country (Belarus) is forced by Russia to be part of this conflict, I have to say that it's very reductive and dangerous to assume that it was Ukraine's NATO ambitions that has caused this. NATO issue is not the key here, it's just the straw that broke the camel's back. The actual reason should be much more worrying for the Taiwanese because it's the widespread conviction in Russia from Putin to a good 60-70% of Russians that Ukraine as an artificial state without sovereignty and Ukrainians are ethnically Russians just misled by the West. The real culprit is this "Russian world" concept that has developped in Russia since the break up of the Soviet Union and which posits that Ukrainian and Belarusian people/nations should be brought back and united willingly or by force to Russia for their own good of course and it is Russia's duty to help the little brothers led astray by western powers. Does this ideology seem familiar to the taiwanese?
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Actually it's a very good comparison if you really know the context since 1991 like I do (my country, Belarus, is Russia's unwilling ally in this horror). It doesn't matter if Ukraine is recognized as a sovereign state by the UN, it only matters if Russia recognizes it as a sovereign state which unfortunately it doesn't, just as for Taiwan it really matters what China thinks of Taiwan and not what the rest of the world thinks of them bc it's China their only threat not the world. What the world around thinks about Ukraine is of no importance to Russia and short of nuclear bombing some sense into Russia there's nothing the world can really do. The comparison is actually incredibly apt. Russians consider Ukrainians ethnically as Russians who invented a new identity out of the blue and were let astray by the west, same as what Chinese think of Taiwanese. Just as they consider Belarusians part of the Russian world, too.
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@qwkl2450 , as a matter of fact Europe already passed a lot of military gear to Ukraine along with US and Canada. Saying that absolutely no country assisted Ukraine militarily is a blatant lie.
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@qwkl2450 , why would anybody need to send their troops to Ukraine? Ukraine has the numbers to defeat the russians by themselves, what they lack is modern military equipment and foreign help is filling that gap. More than 300,000 males came back to the country since the beginning of the war.
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@johntitor8294 , as far as I see it, rather cynically I admit, it doesn't really matter what the weaker defending side thinks of itself (Ukraine or Taiwan), it doesn't matter if they have or haven't developped a separate culture because the ball is not in their hands, they cannot act, they can only react. What matters is what motivates the stronger aggression-prone side to start aggression, what justifications the aggressor will use to sell the necessity and the righteousness of the impending conflict to its own people to support the war and here we find that Russian and Chinese narratives are a carbon copy of each other and both russian and chinese populations are already very much sold on that and the Chinese are obviously watching very closely how the world reacts to something similar to what they've had in their military plans since forever.
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There are a couple things to consider. First, any monoethnic culture is not used to diversity by default and will naturally be diffident towards others. A second thing is more Asia-specific. There is a cult of whiteness or rather your skin being lighter than average in countries like India, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea and China. It's historical, going back thousands of years and related to the fact that whiter skin was an indicator of a more noble status, that you basically don't work the fields for living. Just check the popularity of skin-whitening products in those countries. While European-stock cultures are on the contrary obsessed with having a nice tan.
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Hear, hear. The "older brother" trope does not sell well in my still quite pro-russian Belarus, never mind in Ukraine even before the war.
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@azuragoddess , I will not call provincial people less intelligent, it is an insulting thing to say, I find. I would say however that they are obviously not as world savvy due to lesser exposure to the big world outside.
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As far as I know, there are only two cities in KZ that have average citizenry modern in their worldview, it's Almaty and Astana or whatever it's called now. Other cities are much more provincial and you'll struggle to find people as articulate and aware of the political goings-on. At least, you'll hardly be able to conduct an interview in russian in other cities as few will speak it decently and russian IS still the lingua franca in the region and their window to the world through the russian segment of internet that dwarfs their own. English is coming along fast but not fast enough.
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What Russia formally recognized is of no importance to Russia first and foremost as Russia herself backed off several times on her own formal recognitions and signed agreements. Ukraine signed in 1994 the Budapest memorandum releasing it's nuclear arsenal in exchange for territorial guarantees and Russia offered those guarantees along with other western signatories. Well, that lasted only 20 years until Crimea. Putin has stated multiple times in the past year that Ukraine in an artificial state with no sovereignty because it's manipulated by the west and we see that his actions run along those absurd claims rather than the formal recognitions. You really should've followed your own advice and invested a tad more into knowing the facts about Russia and the Soviet Union to learn to separate Soviet and Russian words and promises from their actions and facts.
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@moocorp4574 , precisely, for the sake of brevity (who has time to read yt novels :)) I didn't want to annoy people rambling on the possibility (indeed very slim) of Ukraine to be part of NATO any time soon, that with Crimea ill-defined status and an ongoing 8 year old conflict with the two secessionist regions.
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Yup, that sounds exactly like a russian Lakhta bot to me.
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@PoliticalWeekly , sir, your patience is legendary. As a person who's delt with nostalgic Soviet Union old-timers for years and observing currently all the patriotic BS propaganda coming out of Russia's mainstream media, I recognized a lot of the comments addessed to you just replacing China for Russia or Soviet Union. I woe the day the spectre of communism that's been haunting Europe reached the Russian Empire and spread to China.
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As a belarusian I've been following polls on how belarusians view their relationship with Russia -- more integration, less integration, status quo. One alarming thing emerged in the latest poll taken after a two-three weeks weeks after the war began. The majority, which for the past two years was rooting for a comfortable status quo, now lost a fair share to those who want more integration with Russia and to those who want a full-fledged 20 feet wall between us. In other words, belarusians became more radicalised. We don't have a sizable russian minority and russians are geographically evenly spread but in your case, IF the same centrifugal trend takes place, it's probably going to make the russian minority even more pro-Russia.
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Demilitarize and neutralize, you say? Do you know that Russian propaganda calls the war with Ukraine a "special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine"? You sound very much alike.
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@linnicole588 , you're wrong thinking that Ukraine and Russia are having a war between nations because Russia does not consider Ukraine a nation anymore than China considers Taiwan a nation. Russia doesn't give a hoot if the whole world thinks Ukraine is a nation. For Russia Ukrainians are part of the Russian people world and Ukraine is not a sovereign state because it's an artificial construct ruled by the West. It's Russia's official stance and Putin has reiterated it many times. In case you don't know it, Russia jails people for calling it a war, they insist on calling it a "special operation" implying it's their internal affair.
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@xristinas2767 , actually what Russia considers unfortunately changes the reality a lot for Ukrainians. If Russia truly considered Ukraine a sovereign country, they would've let Ukrainians do whatever they desired and most certainly wouldn't have invaded a sovereign country for any reason, be it NATO or language issue or russian minority rights or whatnot.
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The mustachioed chap is impressively articulate. I wonder what he does for a living.
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It's sort of funny how I was following two russian expats in Seoul on yt. One person that I deemed to be somewhat shallow, leading a relaxed life married to a well-to-do Korean businessman, she was good at video editing though :) and another, a single mother with two kids, one of them mixed-race, a very down to earth woman. Well, the first one made a very strong point on several occasions that she was against Russia waging the war, pro-Ukraine and lost by doing so quite a few russian subscribers AND proved me wrong. The second one, again against my expectations, went for the I-dont-understand-politics-and-have-no-opinion excuse. Needless to say, I'm not following her anymore.
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@bekindandpolite2158 , AFAIK, that's not the india way of looking at things. They especially prefer lighter skin coloured brides for their sons to marry, as being more prestigious. Isn't Bollywood into lighter skinned actors and especially actresses too?
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Slim chance of that. I'm pretty sure ukrainians will hate russians for the next two-three generations. That's how it goes: people pay for their leader's crimes long after the leaders are dead.
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@asw654 , the thing is you constructed a whole theory based on the fact that Russia recognized Ukrainian sovereigny. Tbh, this is pretty ridiculous if you know the historical context of Russo-Ukrainian relations of the past 350 years and that Russia was AN EMPIRE from 1700 to 1991. I guess, you have to be born in an empire (British, French or Soviet) to understand how an empire feels about its lost lands. What I'm saying is that formal recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty is a non-argument, it doesn't matter AT ALL, it's a red herring that people far from the historical context see while missing the elephant in the room. It's not a coincidence that Ukraine's historical name is Little Russia (Malorossia). Ukraine and Belarus (my homecountry, now unfortunately ally of Russia) ARE NOT considered as sovereign states by Russia anymore than Taiwan is sovereign in Chinese eyes, Ukrainians (and Belarusians) according to Russians are ethnically russians, SAME people led astray by the treacherous West. The concept of the "Russian world" perfected during the past 20 years and introduced by Putin as Russia's mission specifically calls for Ukraine and Belarus to be part of Russia, as the three slavic sisters are destined to be forever together and all that BS. That is what makes the situations analogous, the motivation behind the attempts to get hold of Ukraine (or Taiwan) not the papers signed with western archenemies that Russia spits on. How's that different from the Chinese narrative of why Taiwan must come back? They are the same word for word: not sovereign states but artificial constructs, our historical lands, same people, same language. This is what the Taiwanese should worry about, that the majority of Chinese is sold on this, just as the majority of Russians is. And it's easy to make wars when the majority is on your side. Taiwanese beware.
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I admit that Poland may not be the best place in Europe for a black person. Not only they are ethnically highly homogenous and have no previous experience with black folks, they also don't have any black colonial guilt on them, so naturally BLM doesn't mean anything there.
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@holyfox94 , the events of 2014 were a severe reality check for the whole nation and I'm impressed by what they achieved since in terms of building their military basically from scratch. When there is a will, there is a way. As far as I know, they were coached by NATO instructors and have adopted the NATO military structure, concepts and tactics instead of the outdated soviet ones.
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@SoraCyn , I just love you logical chain from China's recent growth to the fact that Xi is a lot of things but not stupid enough to follow on Hitler's footsteps. May I remind you that the same things russians and the whole world was saying until recently about Putin who also granted russians 15 years of uninterrupted growth and unprecedented well-being. Do not underestimate human ambition, desire to be in history textbooks and sheer stupidity. Xi IS human after all and there are other nearby ...lands he may rough handle aside Xinjiang.
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I was following two russian expats in Seoul on yt. One person that I deemed to be somewhat shallow, leading a relaxed life married to a well-to-do Korean businessman, she was good at video editing though :) and another, a single mother with two kids, one of them mixed-race, a very down to earth woman. Well, the first one made a very strong point on several occasions that she was against Russia waging the war, pro-Ukraine and lost by doing so quite a few russian subscribers AND proved me wrong. The second one, again against my expectations, went for the I-dont-understand-politics-and-have-no-opinion excuse. Needless to say, I'm not following her anymore.
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