Comments by "1midnightfish" (@1midnightfish) on "12 May: CONVOYS ABLAZE! Ukrainians Destroy Russian Convoys Already at the Border | War in Ukraine" video.

Timothy Snyder has an interesting take on this, based of course on evidence like all his statements. He doesn't pretend that Ukrainian democracy is all done and dusted (in fact, true democracy never is, it's always a work in progress) - what he says is, that Ukraine is one of few if not the only country whose democracy has been progressing over the past decade, while in many "established" democracies, democracy itself has actually been regressing over the same period. This is a point that's not often made, probably because even Ukraine's allies don't like to put Ukraine on the same level as themselves to compare not so much their level of democracy, but the progression of their democracies.
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@scobie0 Hasn't Kharkiv been within firing range the whole time? Or am I misunderstanding the kind of artillery you're referring to? (that's possible, I'm far from an expert) Ukrainian bloggers like Sternenko (and also military bloggers) have been raising the poor state of some fortifications for some time. It does sound like that section of the border hadn't been mined. However I too trust RfU because I've heard him report Ukrainian mistakes with painful clarity at various points. Also, mainstream media does have a way of - not sure how to say this - almost listing to one side when there's a significant sudden development, so even the BBC is now in doomsday mode, and it's so important to keep as balanced a view as possible of what's happening on the ground.
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Because that became the "face of the channel" early on, I suppose.
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There are problems with fortifications in some areas, I've been hearing this from weeks from the Ukrainian bloggers I follow. But the problem with building effective fortifications so near the border is that the personnel building them would probably get wiped out by russian artillery before they're even done
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That's partly because mainstream media don't report in as much detail as this channel does. Also, no one is reporting "massive" breakdowns.
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I've heard some Ukrainian bloggers point this out for some weeks. It's not a general problem, but it is a problem in some areas. The problem with building effective fortifications this close to the border is that it would make it so easy for the personnel doing that to get wiped out by russian artillery before they're done... so Ukraine is, yet again, stuck between a rock and a hard place.
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I see your point, but my guess is that "settlement" is actually a good catch-all translation for the Ukrainian administrative term населений пункт, which translates literally as "inhabited point" and means "community of any size, in which people live". I translate from Italian, which has a similar term (centro abitato) and uses it a lot, with none of the implications you mention. We speakers of regional varieties of English need to get used to their native language being used by many as a lingua franca, which entails using some words in a slightly different way or without some of the connotations that are instinctive to us. I agree that it takes some effort to do that, but it's good for our brains, as well for relations with people from other parts of the world... and after all, we have the immense privilege of being fluent in the dominant language of the world, if anyone's going to make an effort it should be us.
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@weedwacker1716 This is the best kind of reply one can ever expect on YouTube! Thanks ☺ I kept thinking about it after posting (we translators are hopeless language nerds), and the thing is, we often say "built-up area" at least in British English (not sure that's as common a term in the US), but that would definitely give listeners the wrong impression about what some Ukrainian settlements are actually like: many of the homes will be smallholdings, meaning that most of the buildings are not close together, or if they are, they'll have a shared yard that will actually be quite large and include vegetable plots, maybe a shared wood-fired oven. Some of the houses may be quite far from the others, but from an administrative point of view they'll belong to the same unit, which could not be described as "built up". I really understand why this guy and other Ukrainians reporting choose the word "settlement" as a relatively neutral term, and I think it's down to us to divest the word of the associations you rightly mentioned in your first comment - and also to keep informing ourselves and others so that our comprehension of Ukrainian realities keeps growing.
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These reports are always factual, they always check out with other sources of information and they are often the first I hear of any mistakes made by the Ukrainian side. That's why I trust this channel.
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@ThunderSen "winning all battles" 🤣🤣
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I'my copying and pasting my comment from elsewhere in this comment section (something I don't normally do, I'm not a bot) because so many people are posting this same question: There are problems with fortifications in some areas, I've been hearing this from weeks from the Ukrainian bloggers I follow. But the problem with building effective fortifications so near the border is that the personnel building them would probably get wiped out by russian artillery before they're even done
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I recommend emailing the channel directly about this... it's possible that the French channel is being blocked by YouTube again
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@scobie0 Aren't we all 😓 Sending a solidarity hug ☺
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It's been difficult to build effective fortifications in areas near the border, where the personnel involved could have been wiped out by russian artillery before they were done.
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@yfpdfybt NATO is not and never has been a country, it's an alliance
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@Comm.DavidPorter That's without counting all the deportations carried out by imperial and then soviet russia 🥺🤬
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That's partly because mainstream media from around the world are less likely to report in so much detail. This channel tends to analyse very specific situations, and that's as important as giving overviews. He does analyse Ukrainian mistakes in painful detail, when they happen, and that's why I trust him.
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@vd121 That doesn't mean no one was watching it from the other side...
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There is a team of people behind this channel. Can you imagine how much work goes into these reports? This is work. Why should they be doing it for free?
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