More on the 50-50 split pro/anti Russia:
"The Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions were once the engines of the country’s economy and dominated its politics."
"Since then, however, the two areas—now nominally independent “people’s republics” inside the larger regions of Luhansk and Donetsk (
I.e., parts of Donbas)—have turned into impoverished, depopulated enclaves that increasingly rely on Russian subsidies to survive.
As much as half the prewar population of 3.8 million has left, for the rest of Ukraine, more prosperous Russia or Europe."
"“
The nightmare that started in 2014 in Donetsk has transformed the popular attitudes in mostly Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, a lawmaker from Odessa, one of the cities in southern and eastern Ukraine rocked by large-scale pro-Russian protests at the time.
“Back in 2014, the majority here were undecided—their main priority was to keep living normally, working in their businesses, sending their kids to school,” Mr. Goncharenko said. “Since then, they’ve seen very clearly that life is quiet only in the areas where the Ukrainian flag remains. They said: We don’t want to live in such a zombie zone, in some kind of Somalia.”"
"“
They’ve managed to rebuild a Soviet system in the occupied territories—and not the Soviet system of the 1960s and 1970s,
but a Soviet system of the 1930s and 1940s, with dungeons, with torture chambers, a system where lives are ruined if you dare to write or say something negative about these republics and their authorities,” Mr. Aseev said."
So nothing has changed in 8 years? You think it's still 50-50 across Ukraine? LMAO.
The areas, once engines of the Ukrainian economy, are now impoverished, depopulated enclaves that increasingly rely on Russian subsidies to survive. It’s what many fear could happen to the rest of the country if Vladimir Putin carries out a broader invasion.
www.wsj.com