Here's how Ukraine was being reported by the West before the war.
Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.
Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march. A neo-Nazi battalion in the heart of Europe
If you whitewash NAZI POGROMS just because you want to beat Russia, fuck you. Siding with far-right fascists to defeat far-right fascists doesn't make you the good guy. There is no lesser of two evils here.
If you dismiss any criticism of Ukraine as Russian propaganda, you might want to ask why the rest of the world, including the West, was concerned about Nazism in the area and then suddenly changed their tune only after the war started.
We should be getting both sides into peace negotiations, not prolonging the bloodshed and providing Nazis with illegal cluster bombs
The Baltics have been in NATO since 2004, so Russia already had NATO on its border. Plus Poland on Belarus's border. It's not about having NATO on their border in general, it's about having NATO in Ukraine specifically. Finland and Sweden joining means nothing.
But Ukrainian bombing of the Donbass absolutely was a factor as well. For 8 years Russia tried the diplomatic route to get them to stop, but despite signing agreements, Ukraine just ignored them and kept bombing anyway.
The baltic route to invading Russia is a lot more difficult than the Ukrainian route. Ukraine was always the "red line" for them because of the topography, and the closeness to moscow. Also they were pissed when the baltics joined. The brits declassified that informal promises were made to Gorbachev (ugh....) to not expand NATO eastward in March 1991 if he dissolved the USSR. Of course these informal promises weren't in writing and were never kept. the USA denied they were ever made, but luckily the brits declassified
Really no one should be shocked that an informal promise wasn't honored. If a legally binding treaty can still be ignored by a sovereign power, informal promises are always worthless and no one should be pointing to them and going "but they promised!"
Yes. Gorbachev was a clown who got clowned upon. Still, I think it's worth mentioning, because it reveals that the West was always willing to be deceptive about NATO expansion, and what the role of NATO actually is (i.e. it is not a "defensive" alliance but a reactionary alliance of imperial core countries to protect the superprofits afforded by imperialism and neocolonialism)
I mean, it is literally a defensive alliance if only because if one country is attacked, the others are legally obliged to treat it as an attack on them. It is then also an alliance of Imperial core countries (it was after all, founded in response to the Warsaw Pact).
It is indeed worth mentioning, but I don't think it's worth framing it as some sort of public promise that was walked back.
It was NOT founded in response to the Warsaw pact. NATO was formed in 1949. The Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955. The Warsaw pact was founded in response to NATO. NATO was building up West Germany economically less than 10 years after the fucking holocaust. The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 and was told "no, you aren't democratic enough." But they had no problem letting West Germany in while integrating "former" nazis like Adolf Heusinger into their command structure.
less than a third of NATO countries were admitted to NATO through some kind of democratic referendum. It was almost always the unilateral decision of the given country's bourgeois class, rather than something the people themselves were consulted on. In the cases where democratic referendums were held, it was often in countries that had just been balkanized (former Yugoslav countries, for example), or countries that were just at the outskirts of NATO and were therefore pressured geopolitically into choosing whose "sphere of influence" they were under: Russian federation, or USA. When a nation is compelled under duress to pick sides like that, and a class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the one that usually ends up making the decisions, I doubt the alliance can reasonably be called "defensive." Its borders keep expanding to encircle and balkanize nations whose main "crime" was being socialist Once Upon A Time. NATO expansion is marching us towards WW3. It is an expansionist and aggressive alliance that merely uses Article 5 to appear defensive and Democratic, while trying its hardest to constantly provoke wars and lay claim to natural resources.
Is the following something a "defensive" alliance does?
Literally yes, none of that changes the fact that if one NATO country is attacked, the other ones are legally obliged to respond. Therefore, it is a defensive pact. A defensive pact simply means that if one member of the pact is attacked, all members of the pact are. It's political activities and ideology don't factor in to whether or not it's a defensive pact. Nothing about what NATO does as a bloc changes that.
Also, as soon as you put up the dates I remembered that the Warsaw Pact was formed afterwards. I'm probably mixing up NATO with more informal things that happened in Europe between '45 and '49.
it's like you ignored the entire thrust of my post, which is that this "defensive" alliance refused to cooperate with a UN inquiry when it destroyed libya (and before that, Iraq), that this "defensive" alliance immediately integrated former nazi leaders into its command structure back in the '50s, that this "defensive" alliance pressures former soviet countries to join or be destroyed, that only 6/30 of the countries that joined this "defensive" alliance did so through democratic referendums. They all claim to come to each other's defense if one of them is attacked, therefore it's defensive? This has been the main rhetorical strategy of every expansionist confederation of nations that has ever existed. Far from making an alliance defensive, it creates a huge incentive to put pressure to join on nations bordering the alliance, and creates a huge incentive to deliberately provoke attacks on the alliance ("I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" but as a foreign policy) so that overwhelming force in response is justified. The "defensive" nature doesn't make sense since it formed FIRST, not SECOND, and since the main "enemy" of this "defensive" alliance (USSR before '91, RF after '91) was rejected from joining on several different occasions. Also the leader of this "defensive" alliance, the USA, keeps invading, bombing, sanctioning, embargoing, and couping any country that doesn't go along with its foreign policy and private sector interests. And why wasn't the USSR allowed to join? Because they weren't "democratic" is the excuse, but neither was West Germany, nor Italy, nor Turkey, and they all got to join. No. the real excuse was because they were the target of the "defensive" alliance, and because they refused to privatize their economy as the marshall plan demanded. The USSR refused Marshall plan money because it was contingent upon them taking high interest loans from the USA and privatizing their economy, opening them up to direct foreign investment, etc., in a word, becoming capitalist. And even after they became capitalist, it is not as though that really put an end to the tensions, since NATO kept expanding anyway.
Why were these people put into key positions in this "defensive" alliance?
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It's true tbh, Yeltsin was an absolute dumbass to trust Bill Clinton without getting it in writing.
They're only upset about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO because of the fact that the Baltics were able to join. If Putin had amassed enough political capital and military strength earlier, they probably would have intervened militarily there before they could join too.
Nothing is so one-sided. It's not like portions of Ukraine still under Ukrainian control and not separatist control weren't also getting bombed in turn. You could see it from Google Maps back in like, 2018. It's not like the damage magically ended at the trenches and was only on the side controlled by the separatists.
I mean if you're getting shelled from enemy territory then the way you stop it is by shooting at the enemy artillery in enemy territory. Do you not support the right of Ukrainians in Donbas to defend themselves?
They were fighting against the wholesome Banderite Nazi government of Ukraine. There is no sympathy for them.
it's factual the separatists did cease-fire violations, we shouldn't sweep inconvenient facts aside & tarring everyone pointing them out as banderites. the rhetoric around here is getting way too dogmatic to start denialism because it slightly complicates the overall narrative of NATO aggression
no reasonable person would ever think a dozen LPR guys taking some potshots at ukrainian positions justifies NATO arming neonazis but putting our fingers in our ears about separatist/russian misbehavior makes us look like idiots
Sure, but the majority of cease-fire violations on the separatist side were in response to being attacked by Kyiv military or paramilitary forces. It doesn't count as breaking a ceasefire if the other side hasn't ceased fire.
Do you not support the rest of Ukraine's? And what about all the people in the Donbass that relocated to parts of Ukraine still under control of Kyiv? After the separatists took power there many people went to western Ukraine. Do those people not have a right to one day return to their homes?
Ukraine could have stopped their war against Donbas at any time. In fact they were legally obligated to according to the Minsk agreements that they signed. Ukraine had no legal or moral right to continue attacking Donbas after they signed a ceasefire.
Not a lot of people went to western Ukraine. Most people went to either Russia or other parts of eastern Ukraine. Western Ukraine is pretty far away from the conflict.
Do you think only Ukraine violated the agreement? Why is on them to honor it when the rebels weren't?
People in the political minority in Eastern Ukraine went to Western Ukraine so they'd be in the majority, in the period between the ouster of the Kremlin-prefered leadership in Kyiv and the rebels getting organized. This was in the news back in like 2014, so it's likely been buried in the more prevalent discussions about the Minsk agreements and the subsequent invasion of the wider country.
With all ceasefires, both sides claim that the other violated it. I have no reason to give the Donbas separatists the benefit of the doubt anymore than I do Ukraine. It's not like either side is openly communist, Russia isn't some left wing workers state anymore, it's not like they're trying to reverse the economic and political changes of 1991, only the borders.
For a self-styled Marxist, you don't seem to appreciate the idea of states being historically progressive or reactionary beyond "is it socialist or not?" Starting in 2014, Ukraine started moving in the direction of ethnonationalist policy. Palestine isn't socialist, but I think socialists usually understand that if they are going to give one side benefit of the doubt, it's the insurgency trying to resist the supremacist military trying to dominate them.
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We were talking about the ceasefires, which were prior to the invasion (though some say there was one during the war that Ukraine immediately betrayed, idk, if that's true). It's further a false equivalence because Russia is not a supremacist state, it's multi-ethnic and has multiple times cracked down on the fascist opposition trying to make a Russia's policy ethnonationalist.
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