Diversity of War in Ukraine

Ukraine is such a diverse country that pretty much every claim made about war in Ukraine is true, including all contradictory ones. In one city people prepare for a fight to the death and in other welcome occupiers as liberators. You just need to find the exact region where each happened.

I recently watched several documentaries about actual course of war in Ukraine in different regions. The most impressive ones were about Chernihiv and Sumy regions. There Ukraine managed a resounding victory despite being severely outnumbered. 2 thousand regular Ukrainian troops repealed Russian 30 thousand in just 40 days and with heavy losses for Russian side. Lots of destroyed Russian tanks and even more destroyed Russian supply trucks. 

Ukrainian police, territorial defense units and even regular citizens all mobilized and contributed to war effort. It was not that Russia did not fight. Russia fought, but defenders made their very presence untenable. Russians expected to an easy cakewalk but got a grueling war of attrition where every local citizen was their enemy and a source of danger. Ukrainian unity in face of the aggression was unparallel. They decisively repealed Russian invasion.

However, such valiancy is far from universal. For example, in Kharkiv, some citizens helped Russians instead. That did not lead towards ultimate Russian victory, but Ukrainian armed forces had to bring a lot more troops to ultimately repel them, and it took much longer. In the south war is clearly not a people's effort, but a clash between armed forces. It was ultimately won with skill of Ukrainian commanders who made use of Russian command mistake when they noticed it.

Similar situation was in Kherson, but at least there was no help for Russians from local citizens. People either fled to safety or watched from sidelines.

Things were even worse in Crimean Peninsula in 2014, where public welcomed Russian occupiers as liberators and half of the armed forces downright deserted to Russians. That was not because they feared Russia or were unprepared, they genuinely see themselves as Russians, most of them do. There are Crimean Tatars who do not and do not like being part of Russia but on peninsula they are ethnic minority.

To end with something positive for Ukraine. Picture of war would not be complete without Lviv, city very far from Russian borders or any threat of an invasion, but more than willing to fight for the whole nation if needed. Residents turned the city into literal fortress, sandbagged everything and prepared to fight to the last man and even die for their freedom and country if needed. Back after WWII they continued their fight for independent Ukraine way into 50s and USSR had harder time defeating them then marching to Berlin.

Despite this diversity, no matter who you ask, they will think that the rest of the country is just like them. Most are either unaware that people different from them even exist or severely downplay their numbers or influence. 

Now that brave citizens valiantly repelled Russians in the north and vile traitors defected to occupiers in the south, we finally reached the final stage of war: battle for the no man's land. Land, where people refused to take either side and instead simply fled the country to safety of either Europe or Russia.

There are many refugees from Ukraine, but most of them are from that middle belt (pale on map) that trusts neither Kyiv nor Moscow and definitely not willing to risk their lives for either of them. They fled and not it's up to the soldiers to decide who is going to keep the land.

In exile these refugees influence public opinion of those they talk to a lot more than those who stayed behind and fought. 

As I write this, soldiers from Lviv on Ukrainian side and soldiers from North Korea on Russian side fight to decide who is going to keep it. Residents themselves have long obtained EU and other Western countries refugee travel documents and likely do not want to go back.

See the map for details.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, current zones of control on the ground are not perfect but they much better represent real boundaries between different people and mentalities. Those who live in the south are fundamentally not the same people as those who live in the north. Those who fled are different kind of people as well. Now we have a chance that they all will find themselves in different countries and stop interfering with each other's lives.