An important decision was made today. It's fair. Legally perfect. Historical.
Ukraine confirmed its respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Japan, including its Northern territories, which are still under Russian occupation.
Today, I signed the relevant decree. There is a corresponding statement of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. And we call on everyone in the world to make similar decisions.
Russia has no right to these territories. Everyone in the world knows this well. And we must finally act.
We must de-occupy all the lands that the Russian occupiers are trying to keep for themselves.
Its not the same topic (as it is today's address of President of Ukraine), but it does include excerpts from latest presidential decree.
Main link directing to Decree of the President of Ukraine №692/2022 (in Ukrainian), signed today:
> 1. Ukraine confirms its respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Japan, including the Northern Territories, which are still under occupation by the Russian Federation.
> 2. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, in accordance with the Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of Japan on the establishment of diplomatic relations (in the form of an exchange of letters) dated January 26, 1992, in its activities, proceed from the position specified in Article 1 of this Decree. The Northern Territories are an integral part of the sovereign territory of Japan.
It's remarkable. Between the myriad international and domestic crowdsourcing events (eg, Bayrakter TB2s [0][1], a Tank [2], lots of Drones [3], First Aid kits [4], etc), the postage stamp [5] and the Foreign Minister doing international late night talk shows[6], they've set the bar for Global PR tactics of an invaded country.
It's possible they literally have a top-tier PR firm working on it. Maybe more than one.
Not to discount the possibility that they've simply knocked this out of the park themselves, but the "West" sure seems to be providing them a lot of soft support in addition to equipment, and some of that might be that kind of thing (I'm assuming Ukraine wouldn't be paying such a bill themselves, under these circumstances). The US government has been known to engage Madison Avenue & co. themselves, including for war-propaganda purposes, and not in the distant past.
Zelenskyy's political party is essentially a PR firm: he became famous by starring in the _Servant of the People_ TV show playing the Ukrainian president, and then after the show ended the production company Kvartal 95 [1] became the Servant of the People party [2]. I bet this is a big reason they're so amazing at communications - the party was literally born out of a hit TV studio!
No question Zelenskyy and his team have been killing it (uh, so to speak). Outside help or no—if I had to put money on it, I'd bet on "yes, world-class PR and/or marketing firms were engaged, probably before the most recent invasion started"—he and his team have been incredible from hour 1 day 1.
Not necessarily US firms. And making it feel authentic could just mean they didn't fuck up.
Again, I'm not saying the Ukrainians didn't do this themselves. They may have. Or there may be some obscure books few people read in 30 years that tell the story of the companies NATO paid to prep the Ukrainians to win the propaganda war.
I'm pro-Ukraine (of course?) but I doubt there's anyone who's dipped more than a toe into poli sci and international studies who's not had this through cross their mind, on seeing how fast, consistent, excellent, and on-all-fronts Ukraine's public information warfare has been. It's not exactly a way-out-there possibility. And if they did it's not like that's necessarily a bad thing. Just... don't be surprised if there are some pieces about how much more there was behind the scenes to make that happen, in Foreign Affairs or something, that only politics nerds will ever read, in a few years.
Whats confounding to me is how disciplined they are with media coverage. Early in the war, you could follow Ukrainian retreat, Russian "misfires" into civilian habitations, russian frontline advance etc. I thought to myself that any counteroffensive couldn't be done secretly and that the war would be fought inch by inch. I was obviously very wrong (i'm not remotely educated on this questions, i just really like planes).
They still upload combat footage to diverse repo, but nowadays its less accessible and more delayed, sometime 5 days "late".
Not only that but I think it was prepared for in advanced, similar to the training they got. They knew what could happen and were ready on multiple fronts.
Right, if this is what's happening that's exactly what I expect is the case. They prepped and gamed out the messaging strategy, who does what, tone, et c., ahead of time.
I'm sadly lost the link (and never found it again despite checking all my browsing history), but there was an article on how some guys literally waited for the war to start to make needed calls and arrange firms to work on it.
If you want - you can try your luck finding it, it was here, on HN.
You're absolutely right. There are probably plenty of foreign ministers who would love a late night talk show segment with Stephen Colbert but convincing the show producers would be an impossibly tough sell without high powered connections.
I'd put the likelihood well over "everything is possible theoretically" territory. Though of course it's also possible that it was 100% home-grown and Ukraine's schooling the whole world on how this should be done, before a live studio audience.
Here's something that got a lot of attention in Sweden yesterday: A small housing co-op/tenant-owner's association (BRF Vinkelhaken 12 in Stockholm) decided to donate $3500 to a Ukranian defense cause. In return they got a video showing a signed shell being fired towards the invaders at the front.
Of course something like this will go viral in the source country because of the sheer absurdity of a co-op building "arming" a country being invaded by Russia. Genius.
Personally I'm torn on this. And I'm not the only one. On the one hand, this means basically killing people. On the other hand, they are protecting their homeland, their homes, their families. So as a compromise I try to donate for civilian causes, not military.
Although, frankly, I sometimes do wonder if I'm not a hypocrite. I want to defend the image of myself as a person who would never support killing. But in this case, it means innocent people will die attacked by Russians if everybody has the same outlook like me. So I have this doubt, and I don't believe is an easy decision for anyone in the West who really understands the consequences.
Do you tell someone being assaulted that they should stop fighting back against their assaulter and submit? Because that's what people shouting for "peace" are doing.
There are many civilized people that are disgusted by those governments (such as e.g. India, China, North Korea and Iran) that are unwilling to even condemn Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine.
A German word, “Realsatire” comes to mind. As you might guess from the words alone, it describes something so absurd, you wouldn’t believe it not to be an exaggeration if you didn’t experience it yourself.
Among the many, many mistakes Putin made was picking a fight with someone with a great deal of professional entertainment experience.
Modern wars are fought with blood, money, and message. Putin picked a fight with an opponent that is beating him on 1 and killing him on 3, and the international community is stepping up to provide 2 (partially because of how good Zelenskyy and his team have done on 3).
Putin - UNFORTUNATELY - already crushed all of EUs economies as his country thriving as never before. And that wasn't even his goal.
I'm not sure who are the not-so-smart ones in Europe atm. Consider Germany buying gas off India (probably at a higher price than usual, haven't checked the numbers), which India got from Russia. Very smart. /s
Mass uprisings are probably near. It will become awfully clear which Kaisers are actually naked. Hint: It's not gonna be Putin.
I have friends in Russia who actually believe this. They think Russia is winning and the West is in utter chaos, and will soon fall. I saw advertisements on Russian TV showing how Europe is freezing and so on. Meanwhile one fifth of Russian households doesn't even have a toilet. They have a completely different mindset.
As with any war, propaganda is strong. Situated in the United States where I am, I have no doubt Ukraine is doing a bit worse than I think they are, and Russia is doing a bit better.
But the thing that nobody can hide behind the propaganda is the fact that the war is still ongoing. Relative to projections before the invasion began, the fact that there is still war in progress is itself, alone, a glaring and unmaskable indicator that this did not go according to plan.
You don't even sound like you have any idea what's going on inside the EU atm.
Do you know that in Italy already a right-wing party just got elected into government?
Do you have any idea about rising sympathy for the right-wing AfD in Germany?
Do you have any idea about rising energy prices and how they are about to mass destroy businesses? How people are beginning to struggle paying for their energy bills?
This oblivious attitude to what's going on is exactly going to be the reason for the downfall of the EU.
Why do I never see these types of people address the facts and numbers? All I see is mockery and complete oblivion to reality.
Probably the same thing the US did in Afghanistan up until the moment they suddenly had to gtfo.
I live in the very center of Europe and fortunately not much changed for me - yes, the prices are slightly higher, and electricity and gas quite a bit, but we knew about it from the moment Putin started the war and fortunately it's manageable. Yes, businesses depending on huge energy consumption will need to find a way to deal with it, and it's something that could be good for us in the long run. Just like COVID increased digital transformation, the war accelerated our plans to make us less dependent on fossil fuels.
Sounds good on paper except that it's a complete and absolute pipe dream in reality. Even without the war that transition would've taken at least half a decade if not a decade. Believing that this can now somehow be magically achieved even faster than originally planned despite what's going on is basically the definition of wishful thinking.
Also, I have no idea how you live, but I wouldn't be surprised if you have but yourself to feed, live in a small apartment and happen to be among the few with a good income. That's unfortunately not very representative of your average family household.
I think you are being optimistic - I don't believe the transition can happen in a decade, even two seems wishful thinking. But it's about something else: about making sure everybody in our society understands the transition is necessary and they are willing to adapt. This wasn't obvious before the war, with many people or even whole societies preferring the old comfy status quo.
As for myself, I have a quite large family, and of course as all human beings we have worries about the future, but nothing really serious happened to us, and our lives are more or less as before. My electricity bill rose by 30% but it's still ridiculously small. I see no any signs of Europe falling despite of what Russian media are actively trying to tell their viewers. Maybe it's to stop emigration, but the ones likely to migrate (=young & talented) know better already. Many of them are staying only because they don't want to leave their older parents.
Again, I can see you're one of the few who are well off and have a nice, comfy financial buffer to fall back to. Congratulations!
But I don't get how you can brush off fuel prices that have almost doubled since 2 years ago, almost double the butter and egg prices, rocketing energy prices, to just name a few examples as "ridiculously small" and "nothing really serious" when a good chunk of the populations live more or less hand-to-mouth and can barely afford such a drastic and sudden increase of living costs?
This to me is simply willful oblivion, and it's sad to see how people never learn from the past.
I don't know where you are taking your data from. In Berlin, you can but butter for €2.20-€2.50. Do you want to say that in 2020 I could buy butter for €1.10? Same with eggs - €2.70-€3.00 a dozen. I don't think you could buy them for €1.35 (that could be the price 10 years ago).
I don't think I'm particularly well off. I rent my apartment and I don't even have a car. I regularly meet with the members of my family living in different places and the amount of complaining hasn't increased considerably. There are more Ukrainians everywhere mostly women with kids, but they're nice people and many of them are working wherever they can, it's very good for our economy.
I'm getting my data from my own observations, buying for my family. At my place, eggs used to be 1.69€, now 2.29€. Butter used to be well below 2€, now 2.29€. Petrol with around 1.20€-1.40€ per liter just 2 years ago, now getting up to 2.30€ and beyond. Meat, for example beef, used to pay 7€ for a kilo, now 10€.
Take electricity prices in Germany: Used to be around 20-30ct/kwH, now beyond 50ct/kwH.
Yep, that's why the flights sold out from Russia. All those men were looking to go rub it in the faces of the other European countries that he crushed.
I don't think Putin wanted to crush EU. He is desperate to start the oil.
This whole warfare is for resources (oil and gas). Both the US and Russia have investments in the black sea but Burisma and co (With US investments) are strangling the Russian energy companies slowly.
NATO/NAZis/Democracy/Freedom/Freeing DPR etc are all excuses by Russia and West while the primary reason is gas and oil
US has been rabidly pushing EU to cut off all Russian energy for years and years.
It’s interesting how much this depends on your bubble… most of the news I follow and people I know side with Russia or are at least extremely sceptic of nato/etc and from what I see everything is the opposite.
This war has taught me that even though there is only one truth to everything it’s impossible to know it unless you are there to see it with your eyes.
I'm guessing you might be from a non-western country like India if there really isn't anyone around you who sides with Ukraine.
I'm curious about how a population across the political spectrum (i.e. not just marginal political ideologies) can justify siding with Russia in this situation.
I mean, is it really that Ukraine's intent to join NATO was provocative enough that Russia had no choice but to invade?
I'm only really curious to understand a potential non-western perspective here, not an argument.
Are you familiar with the Cuban Missile Crisis? Why on earth was the US so concerned about a defensive pact between Cuba and the Soviet Union? Surely that wasn't provocative enough to almost go to war over, was it?
I live in the other bubble and yours always puzzles me. How do the folks in your bubble justify a full-scale war against Ukraine? Do you find their explanations convincing? So far the justifications I heard are pretty weak, like Russians in Eastern Ukraine felt threatened or were worried they wouldn't be able to speak Russian. Do you personally find any of these sensible reasons for invading another country and effectively killing thousands of people?
First, most people in the West were very much against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially before the Iraq war, we had the largest anti-war protests in modern Europe:
Not hundreds of thousands but millions went on the streets in major European streets. The invasion on Iraq was as bad as invasion on Ukraine, and it doesn't matter that Saddam was a cruel dictator killing his own people. There is absolutely no justification for that.
And history shows we were right: starting a war in Middle East doesn't bring peace but only more wars, and sometimes even evil we hadn't imagined like the ISIS. And I'm happy Americans finally left both countries, and they finally learned the hard lesson that this kind of aggression has only negative consequences.
I was just pointing out that if you know somebody who was pro invading Afghanistan (which in 2001 was like, 90%, so most people do) or Iraq you know somebody who would probably be pro-Ukraine war were they born Russian. It shouldnt be a mystery.
I don’t side with either country, I don’t care about them personally. I see this war the same way I’ve always seen wars in the Middle East: who gives a shit.
I lament the incompetence of the eu in securing sources of energy for us, but I’ve always seen the eu as incompetent so this is hardly surprising.
Can’t really tell because I don’t pay much attention. It’s a proxy war between the us and Russia, the oblasts belong to Russia, Ukraine breached the Minsk treaty, Russia needs access to the sea to secure the country against the nato aggression, Ukraine massacres civilians… etc
Nothing justifies the dead civilians but I guess war is war, what are you going to do.
I wasn't aware of the controversy until now and I assume most people didn't either. This declaration will likely raise awareness but I'd be surprised if it did much else.
You may be surprised, but in the 1920s there was a border between "Green Ukraine" (Ukrainian colonies) and Karafuto Prefecture (external territory of Japan) in the middle of Sakhalin Island.[0,1,2]
The entirety of russian far east is not majority russian.
It was colonized using interned Ukrainians, Poles, and other captive Eastern Europeans.
I spent my early childhood in Vladivostok. The city, and the region has a very different air than the rest of russia.
Even places considered "oriental" in russia, like Siberia, or Astrakhan feel much more like the rest of central russia, than parts of russia east of Blahoveschensk.
I'd heard of Kuril islands dispute. The "northern territories" are apparently the four of the Kuril islands that Japan claims as their own but Russia occupies.
so many comments here are unbearable to read for an Ukrainian person.
in moments like this I question why I have been on this site for 10 years.
anyway, if someone wants to learn more about Ukraine - shoot me a message or give me a call. I think this is more productive than writing comments online.
Crisis, combined with the pseudo-anonymity of the internet has a tendency to encourage people to show who they really are – and amplify their worst instincts. Unfortunately this leads to the conclusion that many (if not most) of those commenting online are full of shit.
I didn't think about why such comments are here. Just wanted to share that reading them on Friday evening was heartbreaking.
and all of the questions popped up in my head:
why am I on this site for so many years?
who are these people?
did I work with the same people in all the tech companies over the years?
why do they say those things?
why don't they ask questions but make statements?
Those are very good questions I don’t have an immediate answer for. As with many things regarding human beings, it’s complicated. I don’t believe the best place to discuss them is a flagged submission on HN. If you feel like talking (well, writing) this through a bit more, my email address is in my profile.
I would love to learn more from actual Ukrainians. I have spoken with a few. It’s heart breaking how ridiculous every corner of the Internet can be for one topic or another.
You think you find a sanctuary and then… more of the same.
I think this is the best way.
There are tons of Ukrainians online who also write in English. I'm more than happy to share many links so that you can pick from them.
For the not-geographically or politically savvy, does this accomplish anything substantive for Ukraine? Did/do they cede any dubious or de-facto-dead but legally standing claims over any Ukraine controlled territory?
Ukraine is at war with Russia. Japan has a claim over the islands, which are currently held by Russia.
For Ukraine, formally recognising Japan's claim to the islands might achieve a few things.
First, it might cause Japanese public opinion to change in favour of Ukraine, potentially increasing material Japanese support for the Ukrainian cause.
Second, it might cause Russia to divert military resources to the east, in order to forestall any attempt by Japan to re-take the islands by force (though this is very unlikely).
Third, it might be a bargaining chip in any future peace treaty between Ukraine and Russia. Most likely, both sides will have to agree to respect the territorial integrity of the other party, so Ukraine might withdraw its recognition of the Japanese claim as part of a deal with Russia. It's unliklely to be a significant factor, but every little helps in a negotiation.
I'm sure these are other reasons, but these are the ones that occur to me.
> Ukraine is at war with Russia. Japan has a claim over the islands, which are currently held by Russia.
As an addition, technically Japan still is at WW2 war with Russia (which claimed itself as "the legal successor of the USSR"), because peace treaty still has not been signed since 1945.[0,1]
I don't believe there are any substantial consequences, it's just a way to make Putin even more angry. Nobody is going to start a war with Russia on this as long as they have nukes, no matter how many harsh words are exchanged over this issue.
It seems a bit of a weird political move for Ukraine to draw attention to dubious post Second World War territorial annexations, a large amount of the territory of the country was acquired after what was basically a war of aggression against Poland - that's just ignoring the stuff acquired from Axis members or co-belligerents.
I know it was all rubber stamped after the war, and modern European countries are very unlikely to push it any way, but given how the communist regimes are viewed now I don't know how much people would accept that.
Again, I don't think it'll cause any problems, but right now I would be avoiding anything at all controversial given that support for them might wane over winter if things get bad in Europe.
I don't know how cold Europe will get this winter, but I suspect it won't be "reverse territorial losses by the Axis powers" cold. I think in this case you should probably just enjoy (or choose not to enjoy!) Ukraine's joke.
I'd say this motion is basically meaningless and all it means is "Fuck you Russia, in five hundred different ways, and if there's one more way I can say Fuck You I'll find it and do it!"
Last spring, the Ukrainian government tweeted the picture of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito together, saying "Fascism and Nazism were defeated in 1945." Japan complained, and Ukraine apologized and took it down [1].
That is, Ukrainian officers don't really have a deep understanding of East Asian politics, and why would they - it's not their problem, and they have a much much bigger problem at home right now.
I very much against what Putin is doing with the Ukraine and Russia. The sooner this abomination is gone the better. However I am under the impression that until their own troubles started Ukraine would not give a flying fuck about Northern territories.
The population of the largest island, Iturup, at least is majority ethnic Ukranian. Arguably Ukraine has a greater claim than Russia to be the successor of the USSR's holding there, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if a referendum held today chose Japanese administration over Russian.
So you claim is what at some place the majority of population is ethnic $nationality, so those people have a greater claim than $current_country to be successor of USSR's holding there. Right?
Now insert 'russians' and 'Donetsk|Lugansk' there and suddenly this whole sentence stops working for some reason.
The usual situation with these kinds of things is that they're not super valuable or vitally important claims and even allies shy away from strong support to avoid upsetting the geopolitical kettle over something minor.
... but if you're already at war with the power you'd be upsetting, screw it, why not?
This is apparently about the Kuril Islands. Total population around 21,000. Old dispute, which no one is really excited about.
Now, what would really upset Russia would be some dissident group in St. Petersburg declaring the Independent Region of Leninburg Oblast. This would begin to undo the takeover of local power which Putin pushed through in 2002. Before that, the regional governments had real power within the Russian Federation. After that, they were subordinate to Moscow.
Much of Leninburg Oblast was once Finnish, after all.
I assume this is sarcasm and the article doesn’t actually say that? Looks like a lot of people are confused by this comment (understandable because the original article is Ukrainian).
Either you universally believe in certain principles and values, living up to them or you have to live with the fact that people will call out your double-standards / opportunism.
>This is truly a brave and principled stance taken by the government of Ukraine.
It's impossible for us to comprehend the mindset or clarity of purpose that such a situation brings. Many of our grandparents knew it, and we called them the Greatest Generation because of it.
Zelensky's (and really, all Ukranians) story over these last 8 months has really been the quintessence of self actualization. I suspect we'll be taking notes for decades to come.
The clarity of purpose that the Greatest Generation started with was the purpose of not defending the Spanish Government, not allowing Jewish refugees to immigrate from Germany, finally showing up late to the party, then after the party was over rehabilitating the Nazis and adopting their enemy, the USSR, who had lost 27 million people while everyone else was being so brave.
The Soviet Union defeated Germany. There's no greatest generation without them.
Funny also that Israel acquired the Golan Heights while defending against a Syrian attack. If Ukraine were to gain territory later in the war, would they disregard it based on a similar principal?
Honestly, it looks not unlike Justin Beiber declaring support for some cause which he knows nothing about. They appear to be promoting morality, when really they are promoting an oversimplification for a narrative. But that sure gets Twitter followers, likes, and upvotes.
Germany doesn't claim Königsberg, now known as Kaliningrad, or any of the territories it ceded to France, Russia, Poland, and I believe Lithuania after World War II.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/treba-zvilnyati-vid-ros...
It starts:
Dear Ukrainians!
An important decision was made today. It's fair. Legally perfect. Historical.
Ukraine confirmed its respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Japan, including its Northern territories, which are still under Russian occupation.
Today, I signed the relevant decree. There is a corresponding statement of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. And we call on everyone in the world to make similar decisions.
Russia has no right to these territories. Everyone in the world knows this well. And we must finally act.
We must de-occupy all the lands that the Russian occupiers are trying to keep for themselves.