Україна | Ukraine 🇺🇦

I'll take a stab, but please do bear with me as I'm also not an expert by any means :)

To understand the pre-war situation, you really need to bear in mind that Ukraine was a divided nation for years. The West and North were pro-Western: they wanted to join the EU, push for NATO membership and generally push for closer ties with the West. The East and the South, though, had deep economic dependencies on Russia since Soviet times, and worried that getting closer to the West would seriously damage their livelihood. Culturally, the East was more conservative (in terms of, say, religion) than the West.

Also bear in mind that Ukraine is a very centralised Republic, where most political power is concentrated in Kiev. And Kiev, for its part, was typically more pro-Western.

Such tensions erupted into the 2014 "Maidan" protests. Their immediate cause was that then-President Viktor Yanukovych backtracked on a deal to enter the EU that he'd announced in late 2013. This led to widespread anger and protests, which soon turned very ugly.

Now, bear in mind that Russian propaganda loves to claim that Maidan was a Nazi uprising. As with any good propaganda, there's always a kernel of truth in the lie. The far-right was present in Maidan, and they did ally with the pro-West side. But they were far from the "leaders" of the protests. However, they did play an instrumental role in thwarting a peaceful resolution to the situation. Yanukovych was in the process of making a deal with the parliamentary pro-Western factions, but it was the violent elements of the extra-parliamentary pro-Western factions that stopped this from happening.

After Maidan came "anti-Maidan", which were a string of movements throughout the South and East to maintain their ties with Russia. Bear in mind that 50% of Ukrainians speak Russian, and that most of these also live in the East and there South.

Soon enough, you had two declarations of independent republics in the Donbas region -- the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR).

Things get interesting here, because Western propaganda will have you believe that the DPR & LPR were fully Russia-backed and led by the Russian militant Igor Girkin. Again, there's a kernel of truth in the lie: Russia did militarily support the new Republics, but this support would have had zero effect if the people of the Donbas didn't already have a strong sense of disillusionment with Kiev. The Russians merely exploited this discontent to their benefit -- just as they did with Crimea.

The issue is, all these divides became irrelevant once the Russians declared war. Just because the East was "pro-Russia" didn't mean they were "pro-seceding into Russia's". Even if they spoke Russian, shared religious beliefs and had strong economic ties with Russia, they still saw themselves as Ukrainian.

Think of it this way: "Russian" is an international language just like English or French. Most Indians speak English. Most Quebecois speak French, as do a lot of Swiss. They'll be up in arms if French was banned or if, say, the Swiss govt planned to cut off all ties with France. But that doesn't mean they want France to conquer them.

Once you understand these nuances, you'll see how Russian propaganda tries to polarise Eastern and Southern Ukrainians in favour of the invasion. But obviously, this has utterly failed. Most people here -- as far as I know, that is -- are as enraged as any Ukrainian by the invasion.

Western propaganda, though, has been exceptionally successful, since most Westerners assume that Ukrainians are a monolithic group, 100% of which wants to join the EU, NATO and embrace so-called "Western values" of freedom. Most Westerners are convinced that there was a negligible far-right presence at the 2014 Maidan protests, which is as much a lie as saying that the far-right dominated. The truth lies somewhere in between.

As such, personally, I exhort people to reflect on the possibility that Western propaganda is just as real as any Russian yarns, if not more. I mean, even the idea that the FSB is this highly efficient spy agency on par with the CIA is something of a joke.

Those in power love to weaponise the word "propaganda" to focus on their enemies' lies. They count on our ignorance and unwillingness to think for ourselves.

The greatest power we can wield is to reclaim our ability to think for ourselves -- that's all it takes!