Comments by "" (@EbenBransome) on "Russian soldiers defecting to Ukraine" video.

  1. Read the article in Aljazeera by an Ukrainian journalist and an academic from Germany. Ukrainians have been voting with their feet since long before the war, and fewer and fewer want to fight for the oligarchs in Kyiv. I don't disbelieve it since I've spoken to Ukrainian refugees and heard stories of escaping over the Black Sea to Turkey, and know that Russian speaking Ukrainians are often very critical of Zelensky. Both Putin and Zelensky and their entourages need to go as soon as possible. Zelelnsky sleepwalked into the war, Putin started it, both of them are political failures.
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  2. @ But that doesn't affect the issue that "Ukraine" is a very recent creation and far from homogenous culturally or linguistically. Looking at the ISW map, the Russians continue a very slow advance. The areas behind are presumably destroyed. What is this achieving? The best that can be hoped for is a ceasefire on the present line followed by years of negotiation. The worst is that younger and younger Ukrainians get fed into the grinder while more and more emigrate, until former Ukraine is split between Russia, Poland and Romania.
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