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jeannetheblonde · 2 years

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putting out some thoughts about the war on Ukraine before I start to scream, also why can Putin go and fck himself. he can take Orbán with him, I don't really care at this point.

disclaimer 1: I'm Hungarian, not Ukranian, so everything what I'm writing is from a Hungarian perspective. please take this into consideration.

disclaimer 2: if I write something and it seems generalizing (like "Ukraine did this" or "the Russians did that") it's never about the regular folks but mostly the Russian, Ukrainian or, in some instances, the Hungarian governments. most of the folks in this conflict didn't want any of this to happen, the so called """leaders""" did.

disclaimer 3: I didn't have a draft for this post so if my thoughts seems to be incoherent, not that consistent or anything else, I'm sorry for the mess, but keeping this fever dream in my head is just torturing me. laying at home with postcovid symptoms doesn't help, but enough about me.

disclaimer 4: any other perspectives than mine are more than welcomed.

so. where to start. besides that I can't remember when I was this anxious or scared about a semi-foreign situation.

one thing I guess I can safely say is that this was one of the Central and Eastern European region's (including Finland, Georgia and the others) worst nightmare. the threat was always in the air, even during the fall of the USSR, that the Russians can come anytime and claim our countries, and no one will interfere for us. the region is a pufferzone between Russia and the West, it's convenient for them to keep it that way, not so much to help small, not that notable countries with very, very complicated relations with each other and everyone else.

the thing which scares us the most right now: the fact that Russians can come any time.

this is the map of the USSR before it collapsed between 1989-1991, and I don't want to be to harsh but this is still the sphere of interest of modern day Russia. yes, the most Western point of it is Germany. Putin said it on more than one instance that the fall of the Soviets was a disaster and implied that it's his intention to restore the "glory of the old days". he just went for the long game.

the ethnic map of this region is quite colorful. each and every one of these sovereign countries has their own, very distinctive ethnicities with their different cultures and languages, including the majorities and the minorities.

to understand some parts of this conflict, we have to talk about minorities. (also, I can't stress enough the huge impact of the nation or ethnicity one belongs to in European politics. not only this part of the continent but anywhere else.)

first of all: Ukrainians are NOT Russians. both of them speak an Eastern Slavic language, from the outside, they seem to be culturally similar, but they're very much not the same, and that's basically the root of the problem. because the Russians don't think so.

let me draw a very, very vague, not specified timeline for the events: Ukraine became the part of the USSR around the end of WWI, faces disastorous events like famine, WWII, aggressive attempts for assimilation, poverty etc. -> Ukraine gets its independence after the fall of the USSR -> USSR turned Russia doesn't like that -> Russia puts a constant pressure on Ukraine -> Ukraine, after a while, without any other tools, starts to discriminate minorities, mainly because of the vast majority of them are Russian -> Russia, claiming it's for saving their minority in Ukraine, starts with the first attack in 2014 -> full-blown war in 2022.

it's kind of common knowledge that Russia never thought about Ukraine as a sovereign state, more like "the stolen part of the Motherland", and since 2014 it was certain that the conflict will spiral down, and won't stop until Putin doesn't try to annect the land some day - all of it or only some parts, doesn't matter, but one way or other, that's not a thing you can do silently nowadays.

not that Putin ever intended to do that, but I digress.

Russia did everything so Ukraine cannot join the EU or the NATO (same thing with Georgia), which means they won't (well, they can't really) intervene immediatly, which gives Putin plenty of time to make a mess in Ukraine. and he does.

here comes another fear: the West never really took a step when Russia started to play the bully. not really during the chechen wars, calling it an inner conflict, not really when Russia started to bomb Georgia (in the Caucasus) in 2008, the list goes on - and not now, when a sovereign country is on the verge of getting partly or, God forbid, completely swallowed. this last one can change though, it's only the first day right now, but the option of "no intervention" is still there, and if that happens, that will carry the message of "if it's not directly threatening us, we won't do a thing. you can lay down and rot, just let us be in peace." and that won't make us feel safe in the close proximity of the conflict, that will make us feel like "free real estate for Russia", and I'm not so sorry to say, but 40-80, sometimes even more years for this region was more than enough with Russian influence over our heads. (not to mention the overall feeling of the West sacrificed us. AGAIN.) if Ukraine goes, that will mean that anyone can be the next one: the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, the list goes on, and if one thinks that Russia will stop after a while then I have to say no, they won't. if no one stands in their way, they just roll through Europe.

of course, that's the worst case scenario, but based on the last hundred and more years, I would not dare to say it's completely unconceivable.

and after the vage international situation, here comes the case of Hungary, just to show how a "seemingly local conflict" can go more complicated than it seems to be. and it's only one little slice of it.

because, oh boy, did we fck up again, and this time, BIG TIME.

Hungary has a pretty strained relationship with Ukraine. besides our dearest leaders Orbán Viktor's association and known stan-status with Putin, here's the thing with those minority laws: we have a considerable amount of Hungarians in the Western corner of Ukraine, living mostly between the border and the Carpathians, and they would've been hit pretty hard by those laws (mainly about the language of education and what they could use, in what amount, until when, etc.). though I don't agree with those, the only one I'm putting blame on is mostly the Government of Ukraine, not the everyday folks. oh, and also on the Russian Government, cause God forbid they can't stay on their place and stop trying to win everything through brute force, or thinking the whole globe is the Kreml's righteous property.

so yeah, we have those constant debates with Ukraine over our minority, Orbán is one of the biggest fan of Putin, what could go wrong?

everything, mon ami, everything.

the war over there was expected, there's only a small amount of folks who told otherwise - if not in months, in the last few weeks it was obvious that open conflict is unavoidable.

so Orbán went and promised Putin that Hungary will NOT engage in this conflict.

...

Hungary is a member of the NATO. if they tell "you will send soldiers to Ukraine" one can't answer with a noppe, not in this situation, and I don't want to be there when the sanctions will go live, no thanks. (neither from the EU, they hate us already.)

but if Hungary does just like that, Putin won't be forgiving about or forget this breach of contract either.

the only way getting out from this catch-22 if the conflict doesn't escalates and to be honest, Putin doesn't seem to be in the mood for some peace.

maybe if the conflict stays in Ukraine, but after that, Hungary loses the last amount of its dignity we had left.

we can't win in this situation, and I don't want to be that pessimist in the back corner of the kocsma, but I'm pretty much afraid about how things will work out, and to be completely frank, our odds are far from being the best.

tl;dr: Europe is a hot mess right now, states which were part of the USSR or had close affiliation with it are afraid for their existence, the Prime Minister of Hungary somehow found the way to be the aggressor's best footman again, and I can't decide I want to scream, cry or laugh over how fucking terrible this is, maybe all of them at the same time, but I know for sure that I hate all of it, and I'd be grateful if once, for fucking once, Hungary wouldn't be the asshole in a conflict this big.

thank you for reading my mad rambling.

my heart goes out for Ukraine.

#good side #ukraine #war in ukraine #russia #don't mention the thing with Belarus #that's a can of worm I don't want to open right now #some things about Hungary #we can never be on the

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