Re: Main Battle Tanks and Armour Technology
I understand the error Damian - he collided with a modern outlining of the history. Indeed, now relations between Ukraine and Poland are very good. But these two neighbors fought all their history, starting from the 14th century to 1939. And Poland has never not among the Ukraine as a friend, and acted as an occupier. Mr. Damian communicates on one of the Ukrainian military site where there were a lot of Pro-Western-minded people. This is why he it created the illusion of that Ukrainians closer brothers poles, and not to the Russians. It's in the 20th century - the religion gave place to the other values. But Ukrainians are Orthodox, but the Poles - Catholics,, who tried to draw their faith in the Ukrainian people. Therefore, there were constant conflicts. Someone who is closer seen from the statistics. 82% of Ukrainians consider Victory Day (may 9) the great feast day.
Oh but this is very wrong.
Ukrainian cossacks were not allways an enemy of the Crown, in fact they were perceived as loyal and good citizens, if we can call it this way.
The problem started, in a really silly way, it was because Cossacks aspired to be the elite of Ukraine as a province of the Crown, it made tensions and there were several smaller, let's call them insurections of smaller Cossack "warlords", this forced the crown to estabilish a law, which was not completely fair, especially from Cossacks perspective, this lead to the big insurrection of the Chmielnicki.
It was because King Vladislav IV prepared a war, and started preparations in which Cossacks had very important role to participate, it was something that pleased Cossacks, reasons are obvious, however plans were jeopardized by some part of nobility that seen a threat in Kings actions.
There were also some uncertain action on King court back then, in which Chmielnicki take part, and later he clearly stated that the war he started, was not against king and crown but against some part of nobility.
In the end it was not really a war between Polish and Ukrainians, but between two sides of nobility, if we can consider Cossacks as sort of Ukrainian nobility back then.
Also very wrong is to take here in to consideration religion. The Commonwealth as this great country was called, never was divided by religious differences, in fact Commonwealth was at that time, probably the only country, when any sort of religion was not attacked by anyone.
In fact during that time, Commonwealth was multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious country, we had catholics, protestants, orthodox, jewish and even muslim citizens. There was even a King's law that ethnic and religious minorities were protected, law was estabilished in miedieval era, by king Casimir III The Great.
I think Akim that you just believe in lies that were widespread in educational system of the Soviet Union, to convience Ukrainian population that Commonwealth and 2nd Republic were unfrindly to Ukrainians. Which is not truth.
A British historian, profesor Norman Davies not only written several books about this subject, but there is also very good explanation of what Commonwealth was on YouTube.
These are facts.
But people outside this part of Europe must understand that for decades, history had been rewriting by communists to justify their goals.
One of their goals was to discredit 2nd Republic and create more animosities between nations that earlier created the 2nd Republic and commonwealth.
I actually agree with prof. Davies that today, due to World War II and later actions of communists, we lost something unique in the scale of Europe, perhaps even whole world. We lost that unique multiethnic, multireligious state.
Of course I do not say, hey we should be a one single country right now, Ukrainians, Bellarusians and others deserve their own states and full freedom to what should they do. However there is an obvious problems that Russia dislikes for example Polish support to the Ukrainian "Orange Revolution".
