“I would choose to be shot to death right here, in Kyiv instead of going to the frontline,” Serhiy, a 17-year-old high school graduate, told Al Jazeera. “I wouldn’t be able to raise my hand at the people of my blood.”
He cited the customs of Cossacks, a medieval caste of frontier warriors in what is now central Ukraine who formed quasi-democratic communities and combined nomadic cavalry tactics with firearms.
“Our forefathers, Cossacks, didn’t allow a man who had no children, no heirs, to go to war,” Serhiy said. “I would have done the same. If there are no people, who the hell needs this land?”
Finance capitalism, kid. Finance capitalism wants your land.
Nice that there are kids who haven’t bought in to the “russians are orcs” ukronazi bullshit.
How fucked is it that NATO’s strategy to conquer Ukraine and steal it’s land and riches is to create a war, send a half million Ukrainians to die against their own cousins, finance the war, and then demand everything of value Ukraine has left as repayment?
And now that it’s looking like there may not be a ukraine to pay the war debt NATO is toying with the idea of taking things nuclear and just ending the world entire instead of capitulating and writing off some paltry amount of debt.
(CW: SA) Cossacks weren’t their forefathers though, they were separate people cosidering themsevles nobility (nobody else agreed with that though) and called the local peasants “Blackness” which means “common rabble” (at best). And they were resettled by the Russian Empire to other places, iirc mostly Kuban. Cossack ancestry is only real in the meaning that they r*ped A LOT, but the same was done in Ukraine by Tatars and Poles.
yeah his historical knowledge is deeply flawed, but his modern sentiment is in the right place. He should not want to die for finance imperialists, and at least in that he has a correct consciousness.
Yeah, not disagreeing with that naturally, just pointing out that this kinds of fake ethnogenesis is usually a reactionary brainworm breeding ground, for example Poland still cannot entirely shake off the Sarmatism nonsense even after 400 years.
Since modern Ukraine is not willing to admit the only reason their current state even exists is due to Vladimir Lenin and the actual historical precursors are too Russian, apparently Ukrainian historians have landed on Zaporozhian cossacks for their nationalist myth. The kid was probably taught that in school, I’ve seen Ukrainian professors say the same thing.
There are like 3-4 competing nationalist myths in Ukraine right now. The problem with ethnogenesis is that it isn’t about the genesis of the state, it’s about the genesis and literally lineage of a people which quite literally is insane and flat out wrong for most states unless most of the people lived on an island for millennia.
Even those that live on Islands have a really hard time, for example TERF Island doesn’t really do well by it’s indigenous populations in its current ethogenesis, it’s mostly ruled by it’s Norman and Angelo invaders and it’s purely German monarchs.
The kid was probably taught that in school, I’ve seen Ukrainian professors say the same thing.
The kid was taught one of these myths likely by their uncle or family member. Ukrainians culturally have somewhat of an oral history due to language suppression, these oral histories are tested at Ukrainian universities, rather than created at the universities.
The reality of the Ukranian ethnogenesis is that it’s inseparable from the Russian and Belarussian ones. They’re all branches of the same tree, and people do a shit ton of copium when retelling this stuff to put an emphasis on their favorite grudge. Ethnogenesis stories are almost often lies so the need of the Ukrainian state and intelligentsia to create one is telling, they’re effectively picking and choosing whatever happened on “the land” and shoving that into “the people”.
Finance capitalism, kid. Finance capitalism wants your land.
Nice that there are kids who haven’t bought in to the “russians are orcs” ukronazi bullshit.
How fucked is it that NATO’s strategy to conquer Ukraine and steal it’s land and riches is to create a war, send a half million Ukrainians to die against their own cousins, finance the war, and then demand everything of value Ukraine has left as repayment?
And now that it’s looking like there may not be a ukraine to pay the war debt NATO is toying with the idea of taking things nuclear and just ending the world entire instead of capitulating and writing off some paltry amount of debt.
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(CW: SA) Cossacks weren’t their forefathers though, they were separate people cosidering themsevles nobility (nobody else agreed with that though) and called the local peasants “Blackness” which means “common rabble” (at best). And they were resettled by the Russian Empire to other places, iirc mostly Kuban. Cossack ancestry is only real in the meaning that they r*ped A LOT, but the same was done in Ukraine by Tatars and Poles.
yeah his historical knowledge is deeply flawed, but his modern sentiment is in the right place. He should not want to die for finance imperialists, and at least in that he has a correct consciousness.
Yeah, not disagreeing with that naturally, just pointing out that this kinds of fake ethnogenesis is usually a reactionary brainworm breeding ground, for example Poland still cannot entirely shake off the Sarmatism nonsense even after 400 years.
Since modern Ukraine is not willing to admit the only reason their current state even exists is due to Vladimir Lenin and the actual historical precursors are too Russian, apparently Ukrainian historians have landed on Zaporozhian cossacks for their nationalist myth. The kid was probably taught that in school, I’ve seen Ukrainian professors say the same thing.
There are like 3-4 competing nationalist myths in Ukraine right now. The problem with ethnogenesis is that it isn’t about the genesis of the state, it’s about the genesis and literally lineage of a people which quite literally is insane and flat out wrong for most states unless most of the people lived on an island for millennia.
Even those that live on Islands have a really hard time, for example TERF Island doesn’t really do well by it’s indigenous populations in its current ethogenesis, it’s mostly ruled by it’s Norman and Angelo invaders and it’s purely German monarchs.
The kid was taught one of these myths likely by their uncle or family member. Ukrainians culturally have somewhat of an oral history due to language suppression, these oral histories are tested at Ukrainian universities, rather than created at the universities.
The reality of the Ukranian ethnogenesis is that it’s inseparable from the Russian and Belarussian ones. They’re all branches of the same tree, and people do a shit ton of copium when retelling this stuff to put an emphasis on their favorite grudge. Ethnogenesis stories are almost often lies so the need of the Ukrainian state and intelligentsia to create one is telling, they’re effectively picking and choosing whatever happened on “the land” and shoving that into “the people”.