If you love Russia, pray for a Ukrainian victory. Seriously.
Ukrainians who live freely in other lands tend to be fine citizens and a bulwark of their adopted home. Ukrainian immigrants built much of Canada’s agriculture, in particular farming the aspen parklands on the fringe of the Canadian prairie. Poland has leveraged the massive pre-2022 Ukrainian diaspora into growth for itself.
Ukrainians who are captured by hostile regimes are the death of their country.
The first example would be the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Ruthenians (Ukrainians) within the Commonwealth participated in the 1610 capture of Moscow. On the other hand, Ukrainians fleeing Polish enserfment found their way east, organized themselves into Cossacks and drove the PLC out of Moscow in 1612. The enserfment of Ukrainians continued until the Khmelnitsky Rebellion which also saw with the Zaporizhzhian Sich allying with Muscovy, in short, by adhering to their master’s enemies. After that rebellion, the Swedes invaded and the Sich allied itself with Hungary and Transylvania to invade Krakow.
With their typical bad faith, the Tsars destroyed the Sich and reduced the Cossacks to military slaves. In general, they did not break faith with Russia when Napoleon invaded. They also reduced themselves into being the Tsar’s enforcers and terrorizers of Jews.
1905: The Potemkin revolt was instigated by Afanasi Matushenko and Grigory Vaselinchuk, both Ukrainians. This revolt entered Russian/Soviet iconography, celebrated in Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”.
1940s: One aspect of history Ukraine has to live with is the collaboration of Ukrainian forces with Nazi Germany as it invaded the Soviet Union. After the Holodomor of the 1930s and the Soviet conquest of western Ukraine (then southeastern Poland), Ukrainians saw the Nazis as liberators...at least until Ukrainians got wind of Hitler’s real opinion of them. Ukrainians shed a disproportionate share of blood in aiding the Red Army’s conquest of eastern Germany and “liberation” of the Warsaw Pact nations.
1991: Why did the USSR die with a whimper? Ukraine joined Russia and Belarus to dismember it. Poor Kazakhstan was not consulted; four days later it turned the lights off.
So, if, God forbid, Russia takes Ukraine, here’s what awaits Russia. Partizan activities are a given: 300 Russians were killed by partizans in southern Ukraine and on the timescale of such revolts, 300 dead Russians is just the beginning. Ukrainians will adhere to any enemy of Russia that pops up. But one event illustrates that the Russian government would be better served by replacing Orthodoxy with snake-handling,
In 1969, Yevhen Adamtsevych debuted his new compositon, “Zaporizhzhan March” to thunderous applause. His revision in 1970 enjoyed such a reception that all concerts presented in Kyiv featured it. Obviously, the Soviets tolerated it in Ukraine. Then he took his work to the bright lights of Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater, where the Russian response was so positive that the Soviet Union began to worry about an excess of spirituality bubbling up in Moscow. The song was banned.
Wikipedia on Zaporizhian March
The KGB knew the true danger coming from Ukrainians: a sense of self-respect spreading through its territory. Without self-respect, people are easy to lead and willing to cower. The Russian system is built on annihilating the self-respect of its citizens/subjects. Scatter Ukrainians into the population (a nation that knows how to dissimulate) and the Russian mass will be leavened with this self-respect. If local minorities get “contaminated” the regime may fly apart, and you can bet that there will be Ukrainians involved taking their historical revenge. If the Russian masses leaven well, the people will learn not to fear the midnight knock or the OMON riot police (whom ordinary Russians _hate_) and Russian rule will crumble. At that point, the only question would be if Putin gets a dignified execution or if his body is treated like Mussolini’s.