Replying to:~fonner-batmul
That reminds me of something that the “Vostok battalion leader Khodakovsky was saying, that he's thankful that the enemy turned out so difficult since it gave an impetus to change not only how everything is organized, but also society, and that a civil society was created. Of course the trick is not to lose the war afterwards.”
This is true, and the process is accelerating. At the beginning of the war, most people were in shock and the kremlin propaganda was very incoherent and obnoxious. Since then, decent normal people have become increasingly involved and step by step society is cleaning up. In particular, Russkaya Obschina (organized ortho-bro-ery) has been working with the police to shut down all kinds of degeneracy (sex clubs, for example) and round up misbehaving or illegal immigrants. Also, the Church has become very active at the front, providing humanitarian aid and giving spiritual guidance. I don't know about absolute numbers, but though starting from a very low base, it seems a lot of soldiers have been baptized and catechized.
“Karlin never really lived in Russia before and when he came there he had a strange accent and only hung around with weirdos”
He was into the libnat scene of Prigozhin, who tend toward degeneracy and delusional self-importance. They are more interested in mocking the imperfections of the government to make themselves feel superior than doing the hard and patient work of making compromises to build something better. To be fair, though, the Ordinary Czarism and the Listva booskhop guys do raise money for humanitarian aid and support of some battalions. But they were also extreme Wagner simps so shouldn't feign surprise that the State keeps them on a short leash.
They are also insufferable White Guard LARPers. While the White Guards were obviously preferable to the Reds, it is in fact largely the White Guards who are guilty of enabling the Reds. It was General Alekseev and others who conspired with the libs in the Duma to overthrow the Tsar, and it was General Alekseev personally who (according to Denikin) kept secret the Tsar's revised abdication in favor of his son Aleksey (the original, hasty abdication illegally passing over Aleksey in favor of the Tsar's brother Mikhail).
“Hey, you're a scientist in Russia? Do you have any contacts to research universities in Donetsk/Luhansk/Melitopol?”
No, I don't, and to be honest, there's not a whole lot there. In general, science in Russia and Ukraine is quite centralized in big centers. In Russia, it's mostly Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk (there are some exceptions), while in Ukraine, as far as I understand, it is mostly Kiev and Kharkov.