Beyond Selidor

I live in Estonia so witnessing Ukraine fight against Russia has been basically more than a year of bystander trauma. There were legitimate possibilities that Estonia and the other Baltics were an invasion target so the things I've seen happen are things that could have been done to us. And now we're preparing for being ready for that more than ever, even though the likelihood has actually drastically dropped.

Oh, I can only imagine how incredibly traumatic this whole thing has been to witness by people in countries previously colonised by Russia during Soviet times, or in central and eastern Europe, with the secondary trauma of having spent years warning about exactly this kind of war and the dangers of appeasement and economic entanglement with Russia, and being dismissed as hysterical. You're absolutely right that the Baltic countries, and probably Moldova, would have been subjected to the same treatment, if not for the incredible sacrifice and resistance shown by Ukraine. I personally find it traumatic to watch them having to do all the fighting and dying alone (with, yes, military and financial support, that they had to fight and beg and bleed to be given), and I'm an Australian who lives in a western European NATO country that has nuclear weapons — about as far away from the threat as it is possible to be while still being in Europe.

But it's been made clear we're not in posthistory and won't be until the Russian Federation either breaks apart or changes radically. I think the first is likelier to happen due to how racist and colonialist the government is, but that's something most of the West doesn't want to happen, just like they didn't want the USSR to break down even though a lot of it was occupied and repressed territory.

Yep, you're right about all this, and the sad thing is that a broken apart or radically changed Russian Federation would make things safer and better for all of Europe, and reduce the risk of having to go through all this again (with, in addition to the obvious horrific human cost, the effects on the economy, global food security, having to allocate money and equipment to support Ukraine militarily and economically) in the near future.

So I am like 99.9% it was Russia and tbh Western media going all "Russia claims it was Ukraine, Ukraine claims it was Russia" is actually disgusting to me. Russia always accuses Ukraine of doing what it does itself.

Yes, I agree with you, and I hope I made that clear in my original post. When I wrote it, there was doubt as to whether Russia had deliberately caused the collapse of the dam by blowing it up, or deliberately caused it by neglecting its maintenance, but no serious person thought Ukraine had done it. (It made zero sense for them to do it, for a long list of reasons. It made a lot of sense for Russia to do it, again for a long list of reasons.) Now, the evidence is overwhelming that Russia blew it up, and I have updated my post accordingly.

I think a lot of the problem with people being susceptible to Russian propaganda and disinfo lies in the fact that they never push a single line — they just flood the world with lots of competing nonsense theories so that people with little knowledge of the situation lose the ability to wade through it all and find the truth. I also think it's a huge problem that most people in the West lapping this nonsense up don't speak Russian, and don't seem to be aware that Russian propaganda put out in English for external audiences differs a huge amount from Russian propaganda in Russian on state TV aimed at internal Russian audiences. The latter is genocidal and gloating in destruction, but unless you understand Russian or seek out people who translate it (such as those highlighted by sheron, this completely passes you by.

We had a scandal here recently where a local org with Ukrainian ties turned out to have been stealing money on both sides, and it was really bad.

I heard about that when it happened — it was awful! That's why I always tell people not to blindly share lists of charities on social media, but only donate after investigating, and only promote organisations that they personally are comfortable donating to. I've donated to similar small volunteer groups that I found on Instagram through people I know personally, but I feel it's better to be cautious when asking others to donate and only highlighting larger initiatives recommended by Ukrainians.

I'll see if there's an initiative in Estonia about diverting the frozen funds, and thank you again for keeping your attention on it. A lot of people are tired and it's understandable, if it's not in your direct backyard, it can be hard to care.

In Estonia this will have been done as an EU-wide initiative, and I don't think it's the sort of thing individual EU countries can decide about on their own, so it may be worth contacting MEPs as well as Estonian national government representatives. As far as I understand, it's extremely complicated legally to free up these funds, but hopefully with more people pushing, politicians will find the will to do so.

I actually read your warning and was like "oh, but this is just life now, we need a warning" but then I realised not everyone has been inhaling news and blogs daily since Feb 2022.

This is me too, but I know from my everyday life that I'm pretty much the only person I know whose entire life has been swallowed up in following and supporting Ukraine's existential fight for survival, and the consequences of the dam's destruction are truly some of the most evil things I've ever seen, so the warning is definitely necessary.