balsoft
Me
My gf
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.
Russia is famously lacking for land and raw materials
Strategically important and tourist-attracting Crimea with a land bridge to it would be pretty useful by itself, couple that with prime agricultural land (Ukraine is a massive producer of grain), lots of coal, some oil and gas.
I joke of course. You can tell Putin’s a dictator, because he was popularly elected multiple times by the Russian people
There was not a fair presidential election in Russia since (arguably) 1996, when communists were defeated with significant use of administrative resource by Eltsin administration. Any serious political opposition began to be silenced in 2012. 2020 constitutional changes were actually unconstitutional, and as such were a soft coup. Both 2018 and 2024 elections had massive electoral fraud too.
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.
I’m actually reading official and independent Russian news weekly due to Russia being my home country.
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.
NATO has had weapons on the Russian border for 20 years now. There were obviously no plans to “openly attack Russia”, as they would have been realized after Russia actually invaded Ukraine. As for coercion, yeah, imperialism sucks, I wish US didn’t do it, but it does not justify starting a war with a smaller country with intent to invade it.
On that note, mind telling us how you think Russia should have reacted to the NATO-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014?
I’m not one to give complex geopolitical advice, but definitely not by invading it. Perhaps a good start would be exercising its immense soft power inside the country to help pro-Russian powers (which has been attempted, but extremely unsuccessfully).
All the reasons I’ve provided are grounded in actual Russian reality as it was before the invasion. I had been following russian news, from both official and independent outlets, due to actually living there. I don’t think I need to look up the obviously made up reasons of “denazification” and “demilitarisation”.
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.
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.
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.
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.