Volodymyr Zolkin, a Ukrainian interior ministry official who has interviewed non-Russians who fought in the Russian army but are now prisoners of war in Ukraine about their attitudes, reports that few of them think their home republics have any chance to become independent or are prepared to fight for such an outcome.
Related: Inter-ethnic animosity saps effectiveness of Russia’s army in Ukraine
“The point here,” Zolkin says, “is not that their regions are rich. The point is that it doesn’t even occur to them that they need to fight for freedom.” Instead, having concluded that Moscow isn’t going to let them go, they see no reason for considering what they might do to hasten the day of their liberation.Zolkin’s findings throw some cold water on the hopes of some in Ukraine and elsewhere that the non-Russians within the Russian Federation will seek to follow Ukrainians and others to achieve their independence.
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![Vladimir Putin's wrestling coach, the person who reportedly helped him get admitted to the Leningrad State University using his connections, was one of the city's top criminals, had served 20 years in prison, and died in a gang battle at 57. Putin admiringly wrote about him in his memoirs called "From the First Person" without using the coach's surname or mentioning his criminal links (for obvious reasons). As the engraving on his grave stone states, the coach Leonid Ionovich Usvyatsov composed the epitaphs himself. [Translator: Please note that in the original Russian the epitaphs crudely rhyme, but the translation did not attempt to reproduce rhyming prioritizing accuracy instead.] The epitaph on the front panel says: "A grave and on the grave there is an epitaph: 'I am dead, but mafia is immortal.'" The back panel is engraved with the following epitaphs: "Hooray! I finally died!!! All of my life I worked for broads like a slave. Now I won't spend a kopeck on this liver sausage anymore." "I gave her my two final bangs and then was carried away on a hearse." "Let's drink to us all, because the curtain will soon fall." (Image: openrussia.org)](https://euromaidanpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/4bbcb9a683811.gif)
