“Fuck Nazi Germany for doing ethnic cleansing, and fuck Russia for actually invading and bombing the shit out of it” - liberals who can’t define imperialism
Russia literally intends to annex (as in, turn into own territory) 4 Ukranian oblasts, banning ukranian language there, turning over capital to its own oligarchs (or their cronies), all via a means of war. I would like to remind you that Russia is an authoritarian capitalist oligarchy, with overt ambitions of turning itself into an empire. This definitely fits at least multiple definitions of imperialism.
I despise the shit that Ukraine did to its eastern regions for many years. What Russia is doing now is worse on multiple accounts (human suffering, death count, material damage), though.
What Russia is doing now is worse on multiple accounts
How?
Like, you are literally suggesting that the rest of the world should just roll over for NATO.
There is a better argument to be made for Ukraine being imperialist for brutally repressing the independence movements in Donbass that were themselves in response to the US-backed coup that you seem to recognize for what it is. The war was eight years old by the time of Russia’s invasion.
The people of Donbass want to join the Russian Federation, nobody but Nazis and NAFO dipshits who don’t know anything about the conflict care what the corrupt regime in Kiev has to say about sovereignty, if they wanted to maintain territorial integrity then they shouldn’t have couped a democratically elected government and tried to ethnically cleanse their fellows citizens for speaking one of their mother tongues
Also don’t trivialize rape for the sake of making some half-baked geopolitical analogy, it’s gross incel behavior
The people of Kherson don’t want to be part of Russia. Why is Russia trying to annex it? Why is the russian military leveling towns, sometimes still with civilians living there, in the very regions they are purportedly trying to liberate? Let’s be clear here, neither US nor Russia actually cares about people living there, they just want territory, resources and influence.
The people of Kherson don’t want to be part of Russia. Why is Russia trying to annex it?
Russia is building a buffer zone to push the site of potential NATO bases and weapons systems further and further from Moscow, and to be able to militarily hold that buffer zone (requiring infrastructure, transportation, continuity with Crimea which was annexed for similar reasons, etc.). It views NATO expansion and encirclement as an existential threat, for pretty good historic reasons.
You’re right that its intentions aren’t altruistic as other users are claiming/implying. It is a nation-state. But its intentions are predictable and inline with those that basically every other nation-state would have in the same situation, because that is the nature of the institution.
Why is Russia trying to annex it?
Oh I don’t know maybe because the Kiev regime had been telegraphing for eight years their plans to use the oblast as a vector to reconquer Crimea
Why is Russia trying to annex it? Why is the russian military leveling towns, sometimes still with civilians living there
You think the Russian military are the one leveling towns and territories they’ll have to rebuild and administer, filled with allied civilians? Motherfucker, the Ukrainian army are the ones openly leveling towns to stop any and all Russian advances, angering western advisors by wasting mountains of artillery ammunition while hunting “collaborators” in the regions they’re purportedly trying to liberate, only Bakhmut can be said to have been destroyed in equal measure by the Russians, and that was a result of Ukraine turning that town into Redux-Stalingrad for no real strategic reason beyond media glazing
You literally don’t know anything about this conflict
The territory Russia wants conceded is more than just the Donbas tho, isn’t it.
How do you explain that on invasion 1 million ukrainians gone to russia? (That’s not counting the 3 millions they occupied)
It’s delayed civil war, cause ukraine couldn’t live like civilized bilingual euro countries
But yeah, invasion is bad
Some of them genuinely wanted to go to Russia (I expect it was a significant percentage), some of them didn’t care and it would be easier to go there, some literally didn’t have a choice, some were moved to Russia forcibly. However, consider that of the remaining ~35 million Ukrainians ~5 million went to Europe, and of those who remain in Ukraine support for Russia is in low one-digit percentage. Simply put, not that many Ukrainians (outside Crimea) wanted to be part of Russia, and of those who did a lot are dead now as a result of the invasion, and more now hate Russia.
It’s delayed civil war, cause ukraine couldn’t live like civilized bilingual euro countries
Sure. However, Russia turned a skirmish into a bloodbath, for the benefit of its elites.
Ah, but the last point is the interesting part. It’s definitely not for benefit of elites in russia, with some squinting corruption in ukraine maybe made local oligarchs come out ahead.
Anyway, cause it’s not for benefits of elites, the reasoning is more complicated in russia (like genuine dislike of nato 500 km from moscow).
To the first point, not that many wanted to be part of nato either (when it was shoveled in constitution in 2019 (?) it was like low 30s), or renaming streets for heroes of oun. Yet both happened without any resistance, as donbass has demonstrated what happens to those who try to protest.
Re:numbers it implies some 16 percent sympathizers (as it’s snap decision on invasion, it’s not biased selection I don’t think), and if we include 3(?) million who chose to stay where they were we get near parity.
IMHO russia not being capitalist hellhole could have saved a lot of heartache by assassinating nazis earlier, instead of allowing them to grow unmolested, but then it arrived where it’s either let them cleanse donbas and plausibly join nato, or try to shock them in neutrality. Which they nearly did in march of 2022, and then everything went to shits. But I feel you don’t place a lot of culpability on ukraine before the invasion
imperialist
either you seriously think Russia’s invasion was motivated by the export of dominant financial capital or you just like to add this word like seasoning to sound leftist, not sure which is more embarrassing
It is not easy to gauge what the war is motivated by, as it is waged mostly by one dictator’s wishes, but my bets are on territorial gains, resource gains (as eastern Ukraine notably contains quite a lot of resources), cultural expansion (see: banning of ukranian language in schools and government services), and perhaps delusions of grandeur and desire to bring back USSR/Russian Empire (which appear to be entirely interchangeable in Russian propaganda lately), all of which fit the definition of imperialism quite well. It could also just be an internal political game, attempting to repeat the “Crimean consensus” and get Putin’s waning ratings back up. That didn’t quite work out, so the governance model descended from authocratic capitalism into near-fascism. In the latter case it would indeed not exactly be an imperialist war, but I’m not sure if that helps Russia’s case here.
my bets are on territorial gains, resource gains
Russia is famously lacking for land and raw materials
one dictator’s wishes
You mean Zelensky, right? The guy that sold the country to foreign capital before indefinitely suspending elections, jailing any dissidents, and giving himself absolute power?
I joke of course. You can tell Putin’s a dictator, because he was popularly elected multiple times by the Russian people. If Russia were a real Democracy™, he’d be broadly unpopular among every Russian demographic and chosen by an unelected cabal of wealthy party elites like in the US.
USSR/Russian Empire (which appear to be entirely interchangeable in Russian propaganda lately)
Sure man, it’s Russian propaganda in which they’re interchangeable. I mean, I’m sure you’d know what with all the Russian media you’re busy avoiding.
You really like to dance around admitting the fact that the war was started because NATO tried to set up its weapons on the Russian border and use the threat to either coerce or openly attack Russia.
On that note, mind telling us how you think Russia should have reacted to the NATO-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014?
You know there is like history and real life and stuff that happened prior to the invasion right? Like you don’t have to guess or speculate or make up fan theories? Like you can just like read and find out why.
This feigned “who could possibly know” attitude is baffling. Just like look it up
what a buch of idealist garbage. love to solemnly intone about how “it is not easy to gauge” what the war is motivated by when you haven’t read the explicit justifications given in Putin’s speeches and therefore cannot critique it even from a materialist standpoint
you are a joke, stop attempting to sound leftist and actually do some reading
I’m going to take your comment seriously even though I don’t know if you’re making it in bad faith or not, and I’m going to say that this war was entirely avoidable if Ukraine had just applied their laws. I’m making an assumption here when I say that terrorism is illegal in Ukraine, but I’m fairly confident in this assumption; I mention this because Ukraine had eight years to take terrorism by militias in their country seriously. There’s a video of Elensky going out to talk to the militia to tell them to disarm, but they basically didn’t take him seriously at all; at this point, the military is supposed to step in and deal with it, one way or the other. They had eight years to send in the military to take out those terrorists who were literally indiscriminately shelling civilian areas in Donbas, but they didn’t. Counting the military casualties in this war, over half a million Ukrainians have now died just because the Ukrainian government decided to allow terrorism in their country. The reality is they want the land but they don’t want the people who live there who are ethnically Russian; this is not the attitude of good people, it’s the attitude of people who want to engage in ethnic cleansing. When they were in a position of power, they could have made peace with Donbas and applied their laws and obliterated the terrorists striking Donbas residents, instead you even had a president promising that while Ukrainian children were attending kindergarten, that Donbas children would be hiding in bunkers; these are utterly atrocious people who are the literal cause of the war (in addition of course to our government who supported them).
Although all of this is basically true, the fascist slaughter of people in Donbass wasn’t even the deciding factor. Whether Ukraine was accepting NATO weaponry, military infrastructure, training exercises, and hopeful, near-future membership was. Russia wouldn’t have invaded even to stop the potential genocide going on. It invaded because the U.S. was threatening its western border and escalating the Cold War (again/still). It’s exactly as if Russia had made an agreement with Mexico to put military bases and weapon systems right on the U.S.'s southern border. (Or maybe Canada would be a better parallel, due to the proximity the weapons systems would then have to Washington DC.)
So it WAS avoidable. Just on a slightly different basis than whether or not Ukrofascists were happily doing their thing unmolested (which they also were).
All the same can be said about current Russian invasion. US-backed coup wasn’t great, Ukrainian attitude to its eastern regions was atrocious, but Russia invading with full force didn’t help anyone but wealthy Russian elites (and perhaps corrupt ukranian elites too, not 100% sure on internal ukranian politics): it destroyed yet more regions of Ukraine, killed yet more people, and there’s no resolution in sight except for a slightly different frontline.
I agree that Russia invading didn’t help anyone as terrorists are still striking Donbas as far as I’m aware, but they ARE trying to change that, which Ukraine had all the power to do prior to the war and which Western European powers could have invested just a tenth of what they did towards the war effort in putting a stop to.
and there’s no resolution in sight
Now that’s not true; there was an attempt at a peace plan about a year or two ago that we and the UK blocked, there’s also the peace plan now that people are trying to push for. You may not like the term concede as your initial post stated, but I would hope you would also support this peace plan regardless because it would end the war. Myself I would be fine with Ukraine keeping their territories provided they can prove that these regions will be safeguarded from future attacks and that the people there will be allowed as much autonomy as any Ukrainian city and the safety as well, but we both know they won’t. As I said, this war could have absolutely been avoided if Ukraine had simply administered their anti-terrorism laws; if a similar situation happened back home, do you think our government would have allowed such terror attacks to go on for eight years? Whether Russia or Ukraine controls the territory, I hope both our concerns are aligned in that the people living in these territories MUST be guaranteed safety.
