r/AskUkraine

I’m probably asking the wrong sub but it is crazy to me that even after four years of war some truly think that even if they capture new territory, they will be able to keep it or have the support of the local population instead of the reality: any remaining grandma finding the last jar of tomatoes she has to throw at them.

So Fire Point didn't exist before 2022, plus its owner and CTO came from film scouting and concrete furniture, zero defense industry knowledge and by 2025 it's the largest single recipient of MoD drone/missile money plus billions more from Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands.

While Zelensky called its Flamingo missile "our most successful" weeks before his own military spokesman called it "experimental."

OTOH Sapsan/Hrim-2, built by an actual state design bureau with 18 years of institutional work behind it, had experimental launches and sold prototypes to Saudi Arabia.

Recently NABU's leaked "Mindich tapes" have then-defense minister Umerov discussing Fire Point's funding directly with Mindich, Zelensky's former business partner, and NABU is investigating Fire Point separately over pricing and whether Mindich is a hidden owner.

How does a company with zero track record, run by people from Zelensky's old film circle, end up outcompeting a real design bureau for defense budget?? Is it coincidence, defense needs or exactly what it looks like?

I asked a similar question here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUkraine/s/rKJiFF8pXL

And I promptly bought and opened Gates of Europe by Serhiy Plokhy. But while I’m almost on half, I’m not very satisfied compared to what I expected based on what people say about the book.

For one, it’s very dense with information, doesn’t go very deep into historic events or persona and overall, it’s just tough to understand. It’s perhaps because it contains lots of terminology from ancient and medieval times, making it very foreign to me and it’s easy to get lost in because I feel like I can’t leave or ignore any piece of information because everything becomes important later, so much of the book becomes just a blur in my brain.

Is the problem that the book covers millennia of history within 400 pages of one volume? Is it because of the author’s prose? Or is it because I’m just not used to read literature like that?

Do you think you could recommend something better to me? I’ll look up the other regimentations in the original post, but since I didn’t get that many, maybe there are some others.

I remember a few months ago, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus's main oppositional figure visited Ukraine, met Zelensky and toured around a little. There haven't been any oppositional Russian figures visiting that I can think of. A lot of them will go on television and give elaborate interviews about the horrors and corruption of the Putin Regime and how he needs to be stopped or whatever, but have any of them fundraised for Ukraine or done anything to specifically help Ukrainians?

I mean it seems pretty obvious that if you want a shot at regime change in Russia, whatever you think that means, the best chance of that occurring is via a Ukrainian victory. The only oppositional Russian figure I can think of who is close to Ukraine is Ilya Ponomarev, but that's because he lives in Kyiv and Russia tried to blow his house up in 2024 in a drone attack.

I know there are Russian units in the Ukrainian army, and military figures like Denis Kapustin, but I'm talking about oppositional political figures.

Why doesn't Boris Nadezhdin for example organize a trip to Ukraine and meet Zelensky? He fled to France after being declared a foreign agent, convicted of some BS extremist symbol charge, and barred from running in Russian elections. If he were to go back he'd almost certainly be jailed for the next decade at a minimum, so he's got nothing to loose at this point if he is truly anti-war and wants to fight against Putin. The lack of overt support for Ukraine and concrete actions from these people makes me suspicious personally.

I am a woman from an EU country having a relationship with an ukranian man and we both live in other foreign country (Germany). we communicate in English.

Basically I am very isolate here because in my country we are not so close each other when we live abroad, having german friends cost more time and patience, I had but some of them moved out to other cities, hanging out with coworkers in my case is not an option either like foreigns who work in some companies like IT. Not my case.

In my case making friends with men in this country is quite hard because all the male interactions ended up in missunderstood. They want always something physical with me. Not matter if I have bf or not. .So all my close friends are woman and mostly foreigns from different countries. Recently got friend from similar motherlanguage. But we are not so close just go to pilates together.

Mostly of the friends of my boyfriend are ukranian /russian speakers and mostly women and very attractive women, a lot of them single.

I had interest in slavics / russian language in the past because in 2004 I had some friends russian speakers but never the oportunity to learn it, I have a lot of pressure with german (work in German and for them you wont never speak properly not matter if you are attending 1000 curses and you have C2) and English (for socializing). So not so much place in my brain and energy to learn other 2 languages.

In shortly:

He has easy access to friendships, mostly new female friends, through his community, ukranians add easilierr other ukranians. And he is kind and alwasy doing a lot of favours to all this women (for me a bit cultural shock because nobody cares about me, I did a lot of things alone like painting my whole appartament alone in 2 days) . If I meet randomly persons from my country they ignore me or say me that they know enough people and want to speak English /German. Or with the men... the sex stuff again.....

He prefers to hang out alone with people from his country and I respect that he has his own space but it is a bit annoying for me and I feel me like dummy... he increased his friendship circle every time with new female friendships while I am hanging out with girls and dealing with thirsty men..... That makes him having a lot of options passively.

I wanted to break up with him due to that because I feel me like the dummy wester woman. And I feel that he got more attention of women since he has girlfriend.

Last time I agreed to go with him and some of his friends because I know one of his close friends who sometiomes speaks with me in German and seams happy to see me but there were 3 women (so all of them ukranians except me) and I dont know. I was there isolate. The women spoke russian, the friend ukranian and my boyfriend a mix so I am not so motivated to learn any language you can not learn 2 languages who sounds sometimes similar and sometimes not at the same time as a non slavic person.

I wanted to ask if some woman had the same experience and how to deal with that. Or it is better just to break up and try to find other guy with similar circunstances like me.

I feel me like a placeholder. I dont understand why is he with me...maybe only due to physical attraction and with the others such things are hard to get I dont know, , he could choose better women than me, younger, with more common interest that I dont have but they have with him (climbing, running, SUP Padel Boarding), he has access to meet actively a lot of women from his country, while me any interaction with a man is a missunderstood and I am not a model, ist just that the men here are quite desperately to get something physical asap.

I am from Bucharest, a city with a lot of ukrainian immigrants from the war

A thing I keep noticing since ukrainians started appearing is that basically 70% of the ukrainians on the street speak russian, and even surzhyk is only spoken by like a further 15%

I am trying to understand the things that the ukrainian language went through, and why so many ukrainians speak russian, but one would think they would try to stop speaking it now that russia is invading their country, it makes me kinda mad whenever i hear ukrainian families speaking their invaders language but at the same time it’s not really my place to get mad over it

Can anyone please explain it to me? I speak russian and I would love to learn ukrainian, it sounds more beautiful and melodic, but it is very difficult to learn and also apparently not even you guys speak it (/j)

I enjoy listening to both Russian and Ukrainian trad folk music, but i would really like to know the differences between them.

Five years later I still don’t really get it

I'm not assuming you're ultranationalists, but i saw he has many monuments and streets named after him despite his notable atrocities

Right now, Ukrainian men are facing a level of discrimination that no woman in a Western country experiences. They are banned from leaving the country and are required to serve in the military. This means a high risk of being mobilized into a combat unit, which obviously comes with the threat of death or disability. I’m not saying I’m completely against this policy - hard times require the government to make tough decisions. But the fact remains that women have no such obligation and are free to leave.

Obviously, many men are unhappy with this. It creates a strong sense of injustice, and the difference in what men and women are going through right now is huge.

After the war, the EU will likely push Ukraine to adopt even more anti-discrimination laws, as this is just the standard path of development for any European country.

How do you expect society to react to this once the war is over? How will people balance the push for European feminist laws with the disproportionate burden placed on men? And what is your personal take on the whole situation?

So I saw this guy on TikTok talking about his shock of the amount of mixed (half black/african and Ukrainian) Ukrainians and saw a comment explaining that due to the fact that Ukraine never had slavery or standard colonialism but we’re actually the ones to be colonized, they have little prejudice towards black people or other poc and don’t see them as inferior. And that a lot of doctors from various African countries came to Ukraine and ended up staying there and having children with Ukrainians.

I thought that was really cool so I am here asking if that is true!

I'm from Georgia and currently live in the United States. I have a meaningful keychain with two small statues:
Kartlis Deda (Mother of Georgia) for Georgia and the Statue of Liberty for the U.S.
My great-grandmother was from Ukraine, so l'd love to add a Ukrainian statue to the keychain.
Would Батьківщина-Мати (Motherland-Mother)
fit the theme better, or would the Independence Monument in Kyiv be more appropriate?
I'm mainly looking for something that fits the idea of an iconic female monument representing each country.
Thank you!

If you left to avoid being caught up in war with Russia, are you hoping you might be able to return home soon?