Canadian farmer Arend Feenstra, who moved to Russia through a streamlined immigration program for citizens of “unfriendly” countries who share “traditional values,” has complained that he cannot get a permanent residence permit. The news outlet Nizhny Novgorod Onlain drew attention to his YouTube video.
Feenstra received a three-year temporary residence permit in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region in early 2025. He then brought his wife and eight children to Russia and began farming.
But Feenstra has now learned that to replace his temporary residence permit with a permanent one, he must sign a contract with Russia’s Defense Ministry.
Surely context matters. For example, one of the flags of where I live, the English flag, has been used to essentially express support for a more restrictive immigration policy
Whereas football fans will use that same flag with a completely different intended meaning - they just want to express support for the England football team
Sure, context matters. For example, if they used that slogan while throwing up statues of Stepan Bandera everywhere and celebrating him, that context would indicate that they’re intentionally using the slogan because they’re proud of him and the things he did, and want to associate themselves with him. If they used the slogan while acknowledging his involvement in the Holocaust and criticizing him, it would likely indicate that they’re separating it from its original context.
Where I grew up, some people like to say, “The South will rise again.” Some people claim it’s harmless, that it’s just about the South “rising” in the sense of developing and becoming prosperous. But generally, it’s understood to mean the South rising up in rebellion. And you can tell that’s what it means by the fact that it’s generally said by people who wave Confederate flags, get Confederate tattoos, downplay the crimes and atrocities of the Confederacy, etc.
And the fact that this strain of far-right nationalism is prominent in Ukraine was documented by Western news media such as Reuters and The Guardian, until the war started and those stories suddenly became “Russian propaganda.”
I want you to follow me on a hypothetical. Suppose you suddenly found yourself in 1981, in the middle of a TV debate about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Of course, being from the future, you know that the groups the US is arming and supporting are the same mujahideen who will attack the WTC in 20 years. You have the possibility to prevent that, and the 20 year war in Afghanistan that got countless people killed, if you can just convince the people of 1981 that the mujahideen are dangerous and that we shouldn’t be arming and training them.
What do you say? The moment you suggest that, they accuse you of supporting the Soviets, of trying to undermine US interests, of repeating communist propaganda, of just letting the Soviets do whatever they please, and they won’t stop at Afghanistan. Of everything you say to and about me now.
Whatever you would say to them, you can just imagine I said it to you. And while I’m not from the future, I do have basic pattern recognition, and the fact is that arming dubious, right-wing groups has not really worked out super well for us historically.
Are you seriously trying to use that incident as a point in your favor? How does a Holocaust denier get a job as ambassador to Germany in the first place?! And obviously, it was an international incident that made Ukraine look bad and risked alienating their allies, of course he’d be fired.
I don’t think we should start arming Russian far-right groups either, and if my government started doing that with my taxes you’d hear me talking about them a lot more. Just because we shouldn’t have armed the mujahideen, that doesn’t mean that the Soviets should’ve gone into Afghanistan. I’d prefer if there was peace, but if the right wingers want to kill each other over which great power gets to extract some minerals, I see little reason to take sides.
According to the article I linked to, the ambassador to Germany was challenged in an interview about Bandera’s antisemitic views (apparently academics regard it as undisputed that Bandera did hold antisemitic views). And the ambassador to Germany said:
I don’t think that’s the same as Holocaust denial. But in any case, Zelenskyy thought the comment wasn’t acceptable, so he fired the ambassador. Anyway, you also said this:
I guess my view is that countries shouldn’t be invaded. Unfortunately sometimes an imperialist power (e.g. Nazi Germany, or Putin’s Russia) decides to invade its neighbours, to gain more land, and sometimes to try to suppress the population of its neighbours, or ethnically cleanse them.
I guess I do take the side of wanting Ukraine to successfully defend itself against Russia’s invasion. Ukrainians should be able to make their own democratic decisions without the boot of Moscow forcing them into making decisions they don’t want to make.
The issue is, how do you decide which country is legitimate?
Ukraine’s current government came about because of the Euromaidan uprising, where a bunch of armed men stormed government buildings in the capital in the west, and declared a new, pro-Western government. Not everyone in the country agreed with this direction, particularly some people in the east, but when those people tried to vote against this new direction, the parties they supported were banned. Then, a bunch of armed men stormed government buildings in the east, declared a new government, a new country, and when the central government tried to subdue them, they requested Russian aid and voted to become part of Russia.
You will no doubt tell me that the votes in the east were rigged, that the armed men in the east were nothing but Russian proxies with no popular support, but that the armed men in the west were totally legitimate, and you’ll downplay, justify, or ignore the fact that they banned opposition parties to ensure they won their elections. The pro-Russian side will tell me that the armed men in the west were just Western proxies, and they will cite a leaked phone call where Victoria Nuland handpicked which figures would emerge on top, and they will downplay any concerns about the rebels in the east being Russian proxies.
From where I’m standing, it seems very reasonable to treat both of your claims with equal skepticism. Both groups of armed men have some degree of domestic support and some degree of foreign backing, and I have little evidence or basis to determine the exact proportions. Maybe they’re both primarily proxies, maybe they’re both primarily genuine, but saying that one’s a proxy and the other’s genuine is just biased.
For the government in the west to have the right to govern the east, for it to have the right to defend itself and maintain territorial integrity, then it has to be worth defending. Which, at the very least, means that it needs to be democratic. And if it refused to let the matter of which power to trade with be decided democratically, if the people in the east were denied any peaceful approach within the system to advance their views, then I don’t see how Ukraine’s government could really be called “democratic,” or how it could be said that Ukrainians are “making their own democratic decisions.”
Genuine democracy in Ukraine is likely impossible at this point. Ideally, the conflict would be resolved through a referendum in the disputed territories, but I don’t think there’s any neutral party who could oversee that which both sides would trust and accept the results. So, they’re just going to keep killing each other, and since they both suck and can’t be convinced to stop, my position is to just stay out of it.
Even if the US could afford to keep getting involved in all these conflicts, which it absolutely can’t (we just got out of a 20 year occupation and are $40 trillion in debt), my assessment has always been that Americans will eventually just get bored and move on, at which point Ukraine will have little chance anyway. It would’ve been better to cut the losses from the start and save lives. Now, Russia controls the region anyway, it’s a stalemate, and prolonging it is just throwing more lives into a meat grinder.
Even if your narrative was not one-sided, even if the situation was as black-and-white as you claim, I see no point in fighting if I can’t envision a path to victory. It would hardly be the first time in history that the “good guys” took an L. And if we allow conditions to decline at home while materially supporting this war effort, there’s a good chance the right will take advantage of that and gain power, and that’s a much bigger concern to me than some minerals on the other side of the planet.
What I read is that Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from the presidency, and hold a new presidential election.
I think it would be good if Ukraine could have new elections, with all regions that are legally part of Ukraine being able to vote. That would include Crimea, the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
I guess the reason that’s currently impossible is because the Kremlin gave weapons, troops, and assistance to rebels in the Donbas, to help them violently take control of the region. Then Russia increased its invasion in 2022.
Literally the first sentence of your link:
How is that any different from the secession referendums held in the east? Protesters took over government buildings, held a vote, what’dya know, the vote went the way the protesters wanted. In both cases, of course, the protesters were carrying assault rifles.
If the capitol police had stopped guarding the government buildings in Washington and let the Jan 6’ers take full control, and then Congress held a vote in favor of the the Jan 6’ers demands, would that be a legitimate vote?
I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be concerned about what’s “legal” when looking at geopolitics. And if I was, I’d probably say that Yanukovych should be reinstated as acting president to oversee new elections (or, if you’d prefer I treat armed men seizing government buildings as “legal,” then I would say that the referendums in the disputed territories were legitimate. You don’t get to have it both ways). Which, of course, is impossible. About as impossible as thinking that Ukraine is somehow going to break the stalemate and regain all its territorial claims. I am a realist and a pragmatist, not a legalist.
I see little difference for the average person between life under the Ukrainian government and life under the Russian government, including before the war. What are the rights Ukrainians have that Russians don’t? I do see a significant difference between being drafted and forced to die in a ditch for the glory of the motherland, vs not doing that. Peace is more important than reclaiming “legal” territory.
War is the continuation of politics by other means, and the political question that led to the war was simply whether Ukraine would send it’s resources east or west. That’s what the war is being fought over, not some high-minded ideal. And the minerals are not worth the cost, neither in cold financial terms, nor in terms of the lives being sacrificed for them.
It’s unfortunate that Ukrainians are being used as pawns in the Great Game like this, and I do feel for them. If my government had sent them more aid for domestic development and to actually improve people’s lives, then perhaps people in the eastern regions would’ve been more inclined to stay. There are countless other countries in the world right now that are in a similar situation right now, where our neglect and lack of investment is pushing them towards China, and we could earn their loyalty for pennies on the dollar of what we’re spending on bombs.
There’s also regions in the US that are economically neglected, providing a fertile breeding ground to the far-right, which is, frankly, way more urgent to address than any other concern on the planet. I mean, if the US goes full Nazi, then what does it matter if it maintains it’s influence over the far reaches of Eastern Europe? We should get our own house in order before we go worrying about expanding the empire.
When Russia murders political opponents, does that make its votes legitimate? I don’t think Ukraine is killing political opponents without even a trial.
Yeah the US has economically neglected parts. I’m not American myself, I’m European, and over here we have Russia waging the largest war on our continent since World War 2. Zelenskyy did win an election in 2019, an election which, as far as I can tell, was more legitimate than Russian “elections” for a long time.
If you want to focus on America then fair enough. Here in Europe I don’t want a future where Russia can invade any part of our continent, whenever they want, and rule it without question. If Ukrainians willingly chose to be close to Russia then that would be fine, but that isn’t what has happened.