> They were detained by Russian border troop officers while they were crossing the Russian border near the Chukotkan village of Uelen, for not entering Russia at a correct port of entry. They were threatened with being banned from Russia, which would stop the journey.
You can always trust russia to be a pain in the neck, to put it mildly.
What? The almighty musk is lying about this? His whole presidential campaign is around needing more kids and illegal immigration. You didn't hand over your country to some criminals & grifters did you? Or maybe it was always in the hands of these people.
Just yesterday/past few days russia bombed Ukraine on a Christmas Day, downed Azerbaijan Airlines plane and cut power cables between Finland and Estonia. My take is good. Your turn to touch grass and stop defending fascists.
The Ukraine side has fascists of their own, see the Azov Battalion.
Also recall, Ukraine suspended elections until after the war. While that’s following Ukrainian law, that still sounds pretty undemocratic to me. Ukraine possesses Lviv which was Polish since the 1400s. Crimea was Russian from the 1700s as a result of a war with the Ottomans — a war started by the Turkish because they were made that Russia was interfering with Polish internal affairs. Russia has a much stronger claim on Crimea than Ukraine, historically speaking.
Lviv was stolen from Poland by a Soviet-Nazi agreement during World War II. If the Russians should leave eastern Ukraine, then certainly the Ukrainians should give Lviv back to Poland right?
My point is that the Ukraine conflict isn’t as black and white as people make it out to be. This entire conflict is based on overlapping and often contradictory versions of history. Claiming it’s a battle against fascism is glossing over the realities.
The grumbling about the Azov Battalion and martial law in Ukraine is deflection. Pretty much every nation has some amount of paramilitary nationalism, and it should surprise nobody that a country at total war is going to suspend civil liberties. The war in Ukraine has basically nothing to do with fascism and everything to do with Russian revanchism that NATO would never allow to go unopposed, and it's pretty clear what's in the best interest of Western Europe and the US in this situation. Letting a perennial bad actor walk all over you because there's a veneer of largely irrelevant historical legitimacy over what is pretty clearly a test to see what you'll let slide is just stupid.
It became a Russian colonial possession around that time. But that did not in any way establish an innate "Russian-ness" to the peninusla that overrides modern international law. Specifically multiple treaties affirming Ukraine's sovereignty over the Crimea that Russia itself signed (and which the Crimean electorate also ratified in 1991 via an internationally recognized referendum). And which Russia again affirmed via another major treaty in 1994.
Russia has a much stronger claim on Crimea than Ukraine, historically speaking.
You can believe you want about historical "claims" and whatever they are supposed to even mean. The vastly bigger point (and the only point that really matters in this context) is that in the 21st century, we don't go around starting wars that will inevitably murder hundreds of thousands of people so at one side can get a shot at "correcting" past border resolutions (that it never formally disputed in the first place).
There is a name for this tendency - "territorial revanchism". You might want to look at what happened the last time a major power in Europe started to pretend to believe that it had a historical imperative to avenge and reverse prior "humiliations":
As does your country, I'm sure. That doesn't mean that other countries get to start invading and bombing your hometown willy-nilly. And if they did, I somehow doubt you'd be getting on HN to tell us that "It isn't as black and white as people make it out to be. After all, we've got fascists of our own in this country. So the invaders have a point too, you know."
This entire conflict is based on overlapping and often contradictory versions of history.
The history really isn't that complicated, and the whole idea that the conflict is in any way based on "history" is part of the fabric of myths used by the aggressor to justify its invasion and to mollify and deflect opposition to it.
The war is about the ideology and interests of the small clique that runs Russia's current regime. Not about Ukraine or its history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Bushby