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.
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.
That was after banning the opposition party popular in the east, though. You can argue that it’s more legitimate than Russia, but that doesn’t mean it’s legitimate.
Then I’ll give you a “fair enough” too. You are closer to the situation, and there are many ambiguities that could reasonably be interpreted in different ways.
My experience is generally that there’s little tolerance for nuance or for respectful disagreement on the topic. I’ve opposed to every military intervention the US has been involved in in my lifetime, and my impression is that the government uses military solutions as a first resort rather than the last. I might see this conflict differently if I hadn’t spent 20 years trying to convince people we have no business being in Afghanistan, and if I wasn’t currently trying to convince people we have no business sending bombs to Israel. I set a high bar for military interventionism.
I’m sure Ukraine’s democracy is flawed but I also just don’t think Russia should be invading Ukraine, or making demands of Ukraine, for example the demand that Ukraine can never join NATO. If Ukraine were to democratically choose to become a strong ally of Russia then fair enough, but that’s not the same as Russia using force and threats to make Ukrainians behave a certain way.
Obviously the war is terrible though since it is causing so much suffering, for both Ukrainians and Russians to be honest.
Yes military intervention is often bad. I guess I do believe in defence though. I wouldn’t want my country, the UK, to be taken over by force, so I think defence makes sense. The UK has a lot of flaws but I think a successful invasion of the UK could make life here much worse.
What is defense and what is offense depends entirely on which political entities you consider legitimate. If you treat the DPR as legitimate, then it was offense for the Ukrainian government to try to assert control.
In the Vietnam war, when the US was sending troops halfway around the globe to try to force a puppet government on the Vietnamese and kill all who resisted, all you have to do is treat the South Vietnamese government as legitimate, and suddenly it transforms from an “offensive” war to a “defensive” one, because the US was simply “defending” the South Vietnamese government. Afghanistan, likewise, if you treat the puppet government we set up there as legitimate then you could claim that the occupation was merely “defending” it. Even the Roman Empire often justified it’s conquests by saying they were merely defending an ally. Find two tribes that like to kill each other, name one your ally, wait for a conflict, bam, now you have an excuse to send troops in and acquire new territory for your empire.
Who was on the offense or defense in the American Revolution, or in the American Civil war? That question is entirely dependent on whether you believe the colonies/the South had the right to declare themselves a separate political entity. This is, in my view, a very arbitrary and subjective lens through which to understand conflicts.
A state’s legitimacy depends on whether it represents the will and the interests of the people. Offense, defense, legal, illegal, I don’t see why any of that would matter from that standpoint. Every revolution or revolt in history was an illegal act of aggression on behalf of the rebels, but just blanket condemning all revolutions on that basis is absurd. We have to look at what they were actually fighting for. John Browns illegal act of aggression was intended to free slaves, the Confederacy’s illegal act of aggression was to preserve slavery, and it’s on that basis, not the basis of legality or aggression, that we can understand who’s right and who’s wrong.
When I evaluate the Civil War, I’m not interested in examining the legal minutia to determine whether or not states had the legal right of secession, in order to determine which side was the aggressor. I’m only interested in what the outcomes would actually mean for ordinary people. Even if the Confederacy had had the legal right to secede, then I would still support the outcome that leads to slavery being ended, because that’s what materially benefits the people. Therefore, that is the criteria that matters.
I wouldn’t regard the DPR as legitimate myself, due to reports like these about the “referendum” which established the DPR:
If you have a different view then fair enough.
I take a similar view of both. Like I said, if you want me to overlook the issues with Ukraine’s elections, then I consider it only fair to overlook issues with the referendum. Otherwise, I will be skeptical of both. What I won’t do is overlook the problems in one case but not in the other, because that would be biased.
Regardless of the numbers in the referendum, it seems clear to me that there is/was some genuine support for it. If there wasn’t, then the government wouldn’t have banned the party popular in that region. Whether it’s 40%, 60%, 80%, whatever, I don’t have enough evidence to determine. But, the reason that I don’t have enough evidence is because the government of Ukraine refused to give them an official referendum, refused to let them vote for their preferred party, refused to give them a voice in government to express their views in a peaceful and legal way. That is evidence that they themselves believed pro-Russia sentiment was high in those regions.
You don’t just need to prove that the DPR is illegitimate, or that the Ukrainian government is marginally more legitimate, because if they are both illegitimate then I’d still want to stay out of it. The Ukrainian government needs to be legitimate enough to be worth fighting for, worth sacrificing and dying for. Nobody should be drafted and forced to fight for a marginally more legitimate, but still illegitimate, government. The human cost isn’t worth it.
I would definitely prefer a situation where nobody is forcibly drafted or pressured to sign up for fighting.
There might well have been some legitimate support for certain regions of Ukraine to join Russia. I don’t think that gives Russia the right to start invading Ukraine though. I don’t think Russia would be happy if a country where to invade Russia to “liberate” Chechnya, a region which tried to become independent from Russia. The Russian government claims to care about the will of the people when some people are allegedly wanting to join Russia, but it clearly doesn’t care about the will of the people in other cases.
Anyway, I hope the Ukrainian people can determine their own future, whether that’s being close to Russia, or close to the EU, or neither, or splitting the country, or whatever. Also I think they should have the right to join NATO if they wish, regardless of what Russia wants. Would Russia willingly accept it if the US said to Russia “you can’t join a military alliance”? Russia would surely not tolerate being lectured by the US.
The whole point of democracy is that it gives people a pathway to persue their political agendas without killing each other. But now you have a case where there’s a bunch of people, with something they want politically, but they have no referendum, they have no ability to advance that agenda through a political party, what are they supposed to do? If you don’t allow them a peaceful path towards secession, then don’t be surprised when they take a violent path. It really seems that you’re prioritizing the state and its territorial integrity above what the people actually want.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Again, I don’t live in Russia, I don’t have any say in what the Russian government does. I don’t want my government to start sending Russia military equipment either.
I agree. But I don’t really see any future where that happens. It would be pretty odd if, say, Ukraine wins the war completely and then holds a referendum in the disputed territories and they vote to become part of Russia anyway. I think it’s pretty obvious that that’s not going to happen. That’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it?
I feel like people treat this like some kind of superhero movie, where the good guys have the purest of intentions, always win, and everything ends up wrapped up with a nice little bow at the end. But Superman isn’t real. I don’t believe the powers that be have pure intentions for really allowing Ukrainians to decide their own fate, and I also recognize that we have limited power and resources and have to be realistic about what is achievable. Both of those are lessons that Afghanistan taught us, plain as day, whether we accept the lesson or not.
I would definitely like a situation where everyone in Ukraine and everyone in Russia can decide their futures democratically but yes, that’s not likely to happen soon, particularly because Russia seems to have very little democracy.
Zelenskyy apparently had an approval rating in Ukraine of over 50%, and sometimes over 60%, earlier this year, and also apparently 71% of Ukrainians think that new elections should only be held after the war ends.
Russia has no right to invade Ukraine to impose Russia’s will on Ukraine, such as the demand that Ukraine can never join NATO. Any flaws Ukraine may have don’t justify Russia’s murderous aggression.
If you view things differently then okay, but I guess that’s how I view it.