De-russification didn't really start until the Orange Revolution, though. It's a long and painful process for Ukraine as reducing corruption requires shedding all the Russian influence. Before that, a lot of the problems genuinely are because of Russia.
All states escaping the Russian curse improve speedily once they join the EU, and I expect the same to happen in Ukraine.
Belarus developed much faster than Ukraine in the decade between the Orange revolution and the start of the war. It's per-capita GDP quadrupled (to a much higher end result) in that time, while Ukraine's only doubled.
Yet, Belarus is politically 100% a Russian province.
Belarus was rewarded for loyalty. Ukraine was unstable, oligarchic, and increasingly punished for partial exit.
Belarus in 2004-2014 is a subsidised client. Ukraine after 2004 Orange Revolution is a contested borderland. They are different mechanisms inside the same imperial political system.
Russian dominance can produce short term client-state rents (Russia sells very cheap crude to Belarus, Belarus sells world price refined products to world market), but it tends to trap countries in dependency, weak modernization, and political subordination. When a country tries to leave the orbit, the coercive part of the system appears. Ukraine had it's gas price dramatically increased, then supply interrupted, among other pressure.
So when Russia sells oil for low price - it's rewarding for loyalty, when Russian sells gas for normal price - it's punishment.
What the price of hydrocarbons should be to make you happy?
>then supply interrupted
You might have consumed too much of Western and Ukrainian propaganda, if you re-translate it in 2026, long after Ukrainian lies have been exposed.
"The conflict began when Russia claimed that Ukraine was not paying for gas and was diverting gas bound from Russia to the European Union from pipelines that crossed the country. Ukrainian officials at first denied the last accusation, but later Naftogaz admitted it used some gas intended for other European countries for domestic needs. The dispute peaked on January 1, 2006 when Russia cut off supply.[" [0]
Russian propaganda is really running out of steam if Belarus of all countries is now the success case. What's next, statistics of how happy the North Koreans are?
>if Belarus of all countries is now the success case
That's how easy it is to be a success case when compared to the independent Ukraine. Even landlocked Belarus with no natural resources is doing better.
Funny story, except Azerbaijan, which has its own oil of premium quality is doing worse than Belarus[0]. Still better than the Ukraine, but anyone is doing better than the Ukraine.
I've been paying attention to that line of division and came to the same conclusion. We're seeing the "tiers" diverge as AI becomes more capable. As the saying goes, you don't know what you don't know.
I think there were plenty of signs for the reader. My pet theory is that overly verbose llms have trained people to skim text instead of reading it. I've certainly noticed more cases than usual of people not reading HN comments thoroughly enough in the last six months
I’m sorry too. my stupid jokes in response to yours earlier were just me taking advantage of bad fan puns but others seem to have jumped on the downvote bandwagon.
Better for people to know they're just blindly copying tools and parroting their output as if it's automatically meaningfully. Any warning against that should be built into the individual, for their own sake
Right? Some of these comments feel “you gave me commands to run and I should be able to turn my brain off to interpret the outputs”. These aren’t newbie commands so the assumption would be that you kinda know what you’re doing at least a little bit. If not, then don’t run them… similar to how you should approach all commands/things from the internet
reply