Putin says Ukrainian troops in Russia's Kursk must 'surrender or die'
www.voanews.com
The Russian leader says his forces have trapped the remaining Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had trapped the remaining Ukrainian soldiers in its western Kursk region, where they have held on for more than seven months in one of the most important battles of the war.

  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.socialEnglish
    6·
    11 hours ago

    Finland isn’t what I’m quite so worried about yet.

    Its more Estonia. And Latvia. And Moldova, Romania, Poland, Chezchia, Slovakia, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc.

    Hungary and Belarus I think we can say are pretty much already Russia.

    Also I didn’t know about the Kaliningrad Oblast, anyone know what the fuck happened there?

        • Tuukka R@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          41 minutes ago

          There are two "why"s: Why Kaliningrad became.part of Soviet Union and why it ended up as part of the Russia in 1991. Here the answers to both:

          After WWII, Germany had to give USSR a lot of land as a form of reparations. Mostly this was done by handing parts of Germany in the east to Poland, expanding Poland to the west AND them handing the same amount of territory from Poland to USSR, essentially forcibly moving Poland westwards. This was quite an a-hole thing to do to Poland. Also, it had the weird effect that the culture and dialects of easternmost Poland suddenly moved to westernmost parts of Poland. There is a weird dialect border where if you go west past the old German border, suddenly you have eastern dialects. But, the Königsberg area had been an integral part of Germany for a long time before WWII began, so it was possible to simply annex it to USSR and that’s it. Germans were expelled from it, and the area was largely empty. Soviet Union decided to make it part of the state called RSFSR, not a new state, even though the annexed parts of easternmost Germany were not connected to the rest of RSFSR.

          When parts of Poland were annexed to USSR in the process of moving Poland westwards, those parts were made part of the “Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic” (which was called “USSR” within Soviet bureaucracy, heh!)

          Why the Kaliningrad area wasn’t made a part of the neighbouring “Lithuanian Socialist Soviet Republic”, is an interesting question! Probably because in Ukraine the Russification was already quite far, in Lithuania absolutely not.

          In any case, in 1991 the Soviet Union fell. Each state became an independent country. Kaliningrad was a part of RSFSR, and that became the Russian Federation, so Kaliningrad ended up as a part of the Russia.

    • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      11 hours ago

      Yeah kaliningrad oblast came like as a surprise to me as well some years back. Like what the fuck is a piece of Russia doing there?!

      Estonia is a EU and NATO country. It’s not part of NORDEFCO but we still have exercised with them extensively I believe especially after joining NATO.

      Finland is the backbone of the Nordic defense.

      And that’s my favourite role. In the army we won the rope-pulling contest with me as anchor. The other teams wore fucking boots while we had sneakers on (because dress code says no boots with exercise gear) so they broke military dress code and accused us of cheating.

      I know I wasn’t the strongest member of our group (we had one EU judo champion who could toss a 10-20kg exercise ball to the ceiling of a sports hall like 10m high), but I was the most unyielding one with the most spirit and anger and that’s infectious.

      I like to think I channeled the spirit of Óðinn:

      As mentioned above, Odin’s name can be translated as “Master of Ecstasy.” His Old Norse name, Óðinn, is formed from two parts: first, the noun óðr, “ecstasy, fury, inspiration,” and the suffix -inn, the masculine definite article, which, when added to the end of another word like this, means something like “the master of” or “a perfect example of.” The eleventh-century historian Adam of Bremen confirms this when he translates “Odin” as “The Furious.”[1] Óðr can take countless different forms. As one saga describes Odin, “when he sat with his friends, he gladdened the spirits of all of them, but when he was at war, his demeanor was terrifyingly grim.”

      https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/odin/

      (as a side note odin was way gayer than ppl think and slightly genderfluid and I respect all lgtb and im not a racist, it’s just something you have to mention when talking about norse myths)

      And thats wholly tangential but it’s what I bring to the table… Let Vanja fucking try opening up another front.

      “Silmien Välliin” - Finnish Anti-Russian Song

      • Maeve@midwest.socialEnglish
        1·
        11 hours ago

        Fascinating! Thanks for this mythology lesson. I once read that although referring to the same god, “Wodan” is Odin on a grumpy day. Would you agree (I believe it was a modern Norwegian practitioner saying this, it was a long time ago, though).

        • Enkrod@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          Wodan, Wotan, Woden, Uuoden or Wuotan are just the continental germanic spellings of the name, while Odin is nordic. They all go back to proto-germanic Wōðanaz.

          The Old English Wōden of course going back to the Anglo and Saxon invasion of England.

        • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          10 hours ago

          I’m not an expert. It’s think the name might just be derivative, but obviously with the time it takes for a name to change, their aspects might change as well.

          It is a fascinating site.

          • Maeve@midwest.socialEnglish
            3·
            10 hours ago

            I think a lot is personal perspective too. Anyway, Odin has a special place in my heart. A lot of deities from around the world do. The archetypes are us, after all.

            Thanks for your reply.