NATO's playbook in Syria will be in play here shortly. NATO will partner with the devil himself if it hurts Russian interests at this point. The costs for the people on the ground in Ukraine because of Biden and Putin is going to be secondary to their domestic politics.
Putin is not as fucked as Brezhnev was in going into Afghanistan, but if this war turns economically ugly for Russia it might break Putin's spell on the oligarchs. Biden was already a lame duck, by 2024 Trump will be in in White House again probably building hotels in the breakaway republics.
What a clusterfuck on all sides. Shame the world doesn't have an international neutral peacekeeping organization that anyone would trust in Ukraine. After the Balkans war in the 1990's the UN peacekeeping forces lost a lot of trust across Europe.
Everyone knows this is about access to a warm water port and Putin could give a fuck about the people in these breakaway regions. Why are people here taking Putin's stance on the matter credulously?
Russia was fine with Ukraine while it was openly corrupt and let them use the seaports in Crimea and Donbass. NATO really fucked up in doing everything in their power to stop Russia from having access to those ports, but stanning for Russia in this is stanning for Putin-style Russian imperialism which is explicitly anti-LGBT and anti-socialist.
The US invaded Iraq because they were anti-socialist? I don't understand what you are saying.
Are you for Putin-style Russian imperialism?
are you for putin-style Russian imperialism
"Do you support Saddamn Hussein?"
What does that even mean?
Saddam invaded Kuwait. What country did Ukraine invade?
Anyone cheering on Putin's blunders is only supporting a more aggressive NATO.
The solution is regional peacekeeping or international peacekeeping. Not an invasion and a proxy war.
Ah yes let me just do some light peacekeeping with this here totally impartial worldspanning imperial military:so-true:
I literally don't care because the US created this entire clusterfuck when it was never our business in the first place, Russia's military wouldn't even have to be there if it wasn't for US and NATO aggression, and now you're arguing on behalf the nazi alliance funding the nazi militia instead of taking the obvious, non-brainwomed stance which is "US AND NATO OUT OF FUCKING EVERYWHERE." Amazing.
Peacekeeping with a capitalist war machine is a contradiction. It will never happen, but liberals keep falling for it.
The solution is regional peacekeeping or international peacekeeping. Not an invasion and a proxy war.
The UN has extremely limited credibility in Eastern Europe after the 90s, so international peacekeeping effectively doesn't exist and is, to be blunt, a euphemism for imperialist genocide. What does regional peacekeeping look like to you, NATO? Germany? If Germany, why shouldn't Russia be involved with those efforts?
Mutual defense pacts among Eastern Europe are possible outside the NATO framework.
Sure, I can follow that. Do these defense pacts already exist then or are they hypothetical? If they do exist, why hasn't The Ukraine activated them?
There are a few but no one obviously wants to form a new one with Ukraine atm.
The question is whether those organizations themselves can send representatives. It has happened before in some African countries.
There are a few but no one obviously wants to form a new one with Ukraine atm.
Okay, so then these defense pacts don't sound like a viable alternative to Russian intervention. I feel like I'm missing something here?
The question is whether those organizations themselves can send representatives. It has happened before in some African countries.
Which organizations? I'm confused, the eastern European defense pacts sent representatives to African countries? Were these diplomats or actual military?
The African Union uses peacekeepers from other countries in the AU when two countries are in conflict. In theory the EU could do the same but the Ukraine is not part of the EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-UN_peacekeeping_missions
So then what are you suggesting? I thought this was supposed to be an alternative to US or Russian intervention, but it doesn't sound like political reality.
How can any diplomatic solution be a political reality now? Russia has invaded.
All that is out of the window now.
I think aggressive nato was a given, this move was an acceptance of ukraine joining nato in all but name :shrux: at least according to the reasoning I gleaned from our news
Oh, Saddam invaded kuwait a second time in the 2000’s? How did I never hear about this wow
Putin has a lot more similarities with the Tzarist regime and with the Nazis themselves than the USSR. Reducing everything to nostalgia for said USSR and someone painting qualities of it on top of modern Russia is peak brainworms. This is an internal war of capital and there is nothing anti-imperialist in supporting Russia. It's a shit situation with two equally bad sides. This is not centrism.
WWII started when Germany argued for invading Poland to save German-speaking populations from Polish persecution and to prevent the "encirclement" of Germany by Western imperial powers.
Not wanting a relatively cold civil war in Ukraine to turn into a hot civil war or regional conflict doesn't make me a centrist. If Russia continues this sort of border imperialism, where does it end? Will Russia take back the Kuril islands?
Imperialist excursions of any kind should be condemned. All that Russia has guaranteed is not the safety of people in Ukraine but the inevitable ratcheting up of a proxy war. All for a warm water port - which we can both agree - NATO never should have jeopardized by backing Euromaidan .
WWII started when Germany argued for invading Poland to save German-speaking populations from Polish persecution and to prevent the “encirclement” of Germany by Western imperial powers.
This is literally a nazi talking point, my dude.
What the Germans claimed and what they acted upon are two different things.
It’s frequently used to excuse or minimize nazi ideology and the very clear goals Hitler and other nazis stated from the beginning.
I thought the above dude's point was acknowledging the "liberation" of german speaking poles as a flagrant lie by the nazis and likening it to russia's motives in donbass. maybe I'm just bad at parsing arguments and don't get what points people are making.
Yeah, they were also making it sound like it was the main motivation and excuse for nazi aggression, which isn’t accurate. It was one of the lines they ran with, but based around “living space” more than any kind of humanitarian reasoning.
Trying to compare nazi Germany to Putin is frankly gross, not a coherent argument, and also extremely insulting to anyone with family who survived the Shoah.
There are plenty of things to criticize Putin on without trying to claim he’s a nazi, especially when the Ukrainian government is literally run by neo-nazis after their NATO-backed coup.
yeah
I was just confused by the quip. I see what you meant now. I was following the exchange until I thought I was reading the other guy be like "so the nazis had this talking point" and you coming back with "but that's a nazi talking point" and at that point my brain short circuited and stopped functioning
The USSR was trading with Nazi Germany as they annihilated western european nations, the Germans were receiving their much needed oil from the Soviets.
for fuck's sake. learn history and stop repeating Western Cold War lies and propaganda. The British and French were trying to goad Germany and Russia into war.
The Soviets were the last country in Europe to sign a pact with the Nazis and here’s a handy infographic of the countries that did sign.
https://pics.onsizzle.com/what-countries-signed-contracts-with-hitler-and-when-1933-uk-1601874.png
The Soviets spent over a year before then trying to sign an anti-Nazi alliance with the British and the French, but both of those countries were uninterested.
Effort Post With Sources
The British confirmed all of this in 2009 when the 70 year limit ran out and their archive was opened and the full scale of what Stalin offered the Brits and French was basically enough to ensure WW2 never happened.
The British and French however sent delegates with no authority to sign an alliance. The polish hated the Soviets because Poland was fascist under Pilzudski and were hoping for an alliance with Hitler.
Poland also realized that if they allowed the Soviets onto Polish territory the Soviets would unilaterally annexe the land the Polish had stolen from the Soviet Union in the 1918-1920 invasion of the USSR where Poland annexed land from Belarus, Lithuania (they stole Villinus the capital of Lithuania) and Ukraine.
The Polish then enacted a forced “Polandisation” of the citizens living there. Suppressing native languages and treating Belarussians/Lits and Ukrainians as 2nd class peoples.
Bear in mind this is one year after they signed the Munich agreement which gave Hitler Czechoslovakia.
"Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance. The new documents, copies of which have been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, show the vast numbers of infantry, artillery and airborne forces which Stalin’s generals said could be dispatched, if Polish objections to the Red Army crossing its territory could first be overcome. But the British and French side - briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals - did not respond to the Soviet offer, made on August 15, 1939. Instead, Stalin turned to Germany, signing the notorious non-aggression treaty with Hitler barely a week later. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries, came on August 23 - just a week before Nazi Germany attacked Poland, thereby sparking the outbreak of the war. But it would never have happened if Stalin’s offer of a western alliance had been accepted, according to retired Russian foreign intelligence service Major General Lev Sotskov, who sorted the 700 pages of declassified documents. "This was the final chance to slay the wolf, even after [British Conservative prime minister Neville] Chamberlain and the French had given up Czechoslovakia to German aggression the previous year in the Munich Agreement," said Gen Sotskov, 75. The Soviet offer - made by war minister Marshall Klementi Voroshilov and Red Army chief of general staff Boris Shaposhnikov - would have put up to 120 infantry divisions (each with some 19,000 troops), 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 heavy artillery pieces, 9,500 tanks and up to 5,500 fighter aircraft and bombers on Germany’s borders in the event of war in the west, declassified minutes of the meeting show. But Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, who lead the British delegation, told his Soviet counterparts that he authorized only to talk, not to make deals. *“Had the British, French and their European ally Poland, taken this offer seriously then together we could have put some 300 or more divisions into the field on two fronts against Germany - double the number Hitler had at the time,” said Gen Sotskov, who joined the Soviet intelligence service in 1956. “This was a chance to save the world or at least stop the wolf in its tracks.” *"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html
And yes, there were talks to join the axis! Germany at this point was in war with Britain and France and the Soviets needed another year and would still suffer horrendous losses (27 million dead)
So what was the result of those axis talks? (Besides the end point which was Germany invading the Soviet Union but let’s continue down the fantasy path that the Soviets trusted fucking Hitler and they were going seriously joining any German axis) .
“Hitler, however, saw the Soviet territorial ambitions in the Balkans as a challenge to German interests and saw its plan as effectively making Bulgaria into an adjunct of the Axis pact. On several occasions, Molotov asked German officials for their response to Moscow’s counter-proposals, but Germany never answered them. Germany’s refusal to respond to the counter-proposal worsened relations between the countries. Regarding the counter-proposal, Hitler remarked to his top military chiefs that Stalin “demands more and more”, “he’s a cold-blooded blackmailer” and that “a German victory has become unbearable for Russia” so that “she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible.””**
-Ericson, Edward E. (1999), Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941,
Right so the axis talks ended with Hitler so pissed off at the Soviet Union Hitler assessed
Stalin was a “cold blooded blackmailer” and that he “demands more and more” “A German victory is unbearable for Russia” that the Soviets were trying to have Germany “brought to her knees as soon as possible”
And Hitler killing the talks.
We’ve established so far that the Soviets prioritized a British-French and polish anti-nazi alliance. That the British, Poles and French were rat bastards that saw communism as a greater evil than fascism and were hoping for the Germans and Russians to kill each other.
At this point though I’ve only quoted bourgeois sources so let’s see what the Soviets said about all this .
"After the first imperialist war the victor states, primarily Britain, France and the United States, had set up a new regime in the relations between countries, the post-war regime of peace. The main props of this regime were the Nine-Power Pact in the Far East, and the Versailles Treaty and a number of other treaties in Europe. The League of Nations was set up to regulate relations between countries within the framework of this regime, on the basis of a united front of states, of collective defense of the security of states. However, three aggressive states, and the new imperialist war launched by them, have upset the entire system of this post-war peace regime. Japan tore up the Nine-Power Pact, and Germany and Italy the Versailles Treaty. In order to have their hands free, these three states withdrew from the League of Nations.** The new imperialist war became a fact. It is not so easy in our day to suddenly break loose and plunge straight into war without regard for treaties of any kind or for public opinion. Bourgeois politicians know this very well. So do the fascist rulers. That is why the fascist rulers decided, before plunging into war, to frame public opinion to suit their ends, that is, to mislead it, to deceive it. A military bloc of Germany and Italy against the interests of England and France in Europe? Bless us, do you call that a bloc? “We” have no military bloc. All “we” have is an innocuous “Berlin-Rome axis”; that is, just a geometrical equation for an axis. (Laughter.) A military bloc of Germany, Italy and Japan against the interests of the United States, Great Britain and France in the Far East? Nothing of the kind. “We” have no military bloc. All “we” have is an innocuous “Berlin-Rome-Tokyo triangle”; that is, a slight penchant for geometry. (General laughter.) A war against the interests of England, France, the United States? Nonsense! “We” are waging war on the Comintern, not on these states. If you don’t believe it, read the “anti-Comintern pact” concluded between Italy, Germany and Japan. But war is inexorable. It cannot be hidden under any guise. For no “axes,” “triangles” or “anti-Comintern pacts” can hide the fact that in this period Japan has seized a vast stretch of territory in China, that Italy has seized Abyssinia, that Germany has seized Austria and the Sudeten region, that Germany and Italy together have seized Spain – and all this in defiance of the interests of the non-aggressive states. The war remains a war; the military bloc of aggressors remains a military bloc; and the aggressors remain aggressors. **It is a distinguishing feature of the new imperialist war that it has not yet become universal, a world war. The war is being waged by aggressor states, who in every way infringe upon the interests of the non-aggressive states, primarily England, France and the U.S.A., while the latter draw back and retreat, making concession after concession to the aggressors. Thus we are witnessing an open re-division of the world and spheres of influence at the expense of the non-aggressive states, without the least attempt at resistance, and even with a certain amount of connivance, on the part of the latter.** To what are we to attribute this one-sided and strange character of the new imperialist war?
This is literally anti-communist propaganda.
trading with the Nazis was kinda profitable for Stalin, he who seeked an alliance with the western powers just a few years ago
Yes, Stalin tried to broker an anti-fascist coalition and France / Britain weren't interested. That meant Russia had to buy time while they built up the army and weapons needed to fight fascists solo.
It should also be mentioned that the USSR was one of the last hold outs for trading with either of those countries.
The Fascists, of course, cared as much as Stalin did for ideological diffierences
This is completely ahistorical and frankly also fascist apologism.
Wait, was there a lib doing the whole “hitler and stalin were allies” bullshit here? wtf
stanning for Russia in this is stanning for Putin-style Russian imperialism which is explicitly anti-LGBT and anti-socialist.
stanning for neo-nazis in this is stanning for nazi-style American-backed imperialism which is explicitly anti-LGBT and anti-socialist. Not supporting nazis and american imperialism != supporting Putin. There is not a "good team" here, aside from opposing American military intervention.
Help me out then and outline them, what are the different sides to this conflict? Also, given what you said about Russia as a contrast, which one(s) are explicitly pro-LGBT and pro-socialist? Genuinely asking this in good faith.
That" journalist" had weapons and grenades on them. The article itself is filled with weird paragraphs ranting about "Neo-Stalinism". The article you linked is also a secondary source that links out to Radio Free Europe, which is literally funded by the CIA.
You're either not aware that you're repeating imperialist propaganda or you're intentionally licking boot. Either way, describing what's outlined in that article as concentration camps is disgustingly flippant and a disservice to survivors of The Shoah. I won't bother arguing a definition of that either way.
There are no pro-LGBT or pro-socialists in this fight. None that I see.
Both LPR and DPR have socialists involved in their governments. They are apparently not fully socialist, but I would say that those two states were pro-socialist. I can't speak to whether they are pro-LGBT.
That website is sketch as hell and also references Radio Free Europe in multiple articles. It also has a lot of questionable stories in it and is clearly very biased against Russia.
stanning for Russia in this is stanning for Putin-style Russian imperialism which is explicitly anti-LGBT and anti-socialist
:bruh:
Putin just ranted against communism for two minutes straight last night during his Ukraine speech.
Are you claiming Putin is socialist?
Lol what the fuck no. Begging you to get a better understanding of anti-imperialism and to be less idealist. All the bullshit with Pussy Riot alone makes it very clear Putin isn’t a socialist or supportive of queer rights.
Are you implying Russia can't be imperialist?
I am begging you to read this statement from Kenya's mission to the UN.
https://twitter.com/KenyaMissionUN/status/1495963864004976645
Why do you keep trying to put words in my mouth? There are people throughout this thread explaining this for you if you want to figure it out.
Seeing a lot of reactionary support for capitalist Russia because it is not the capitalist United States.
In case you didn’t see it, I already disengaged after you started doing weird nazi apologism in a different thread here.
Putin could give a fuck about the people in these breakaway regions
I don't think it's total altruism or anything, but I think Ukraine constantly violating the Minsk agreement gave Putin some great propaganda material about "defending Russians around the world" on a golden platter. Getting involved is only a positive for his popularity, regardless of ports or other economic consequences (which I wouldn't doubt play in as well).
The "warm water port" thing hasn't been important for a long time. Economically, most bulk exports are by pipeline or rail. Militarily, the most important warships travel under the ice now.
Crimea just isn't that important as a fleet base, even with Montreux Convention.
Eh, considering putin will suffer severe popularity losses from this (I suspect like tanking from 65 to less than 50), it will cost money, and so on, i suspect it’s natsec question exclusively. It’s not warm water port, it’s putting thaad system into donbas, or some shit which scares russia
It’s time to end this conflict swiftly, call out NATO bluff, and end the US hegemony.
Russia's actions today aren't going to get it anywhere near these goals
Yea, there's no way Macron and Olaf doesn't know this will happen. Probably the best route for this situation
It is what it is. The US created this clusterfuck, and now it reach to this point.
A lot of countries had their hand in Ukraine turning into the conflagration it is today. Russia propped up openly corrupt officials pre 2014 who were about to sign a 25 year extension for Russians to use Crimea and Donbass for military ports. European Economic ministers looked the other way while Ukraine then openly punished the breakaway regions with austerity while Nazis and their own Army laid them under permanent military siege.
NATO and the US overreacted to Russia's access to a warm water port by dumping money into every anti-Russian group in Ukraine from ~2010 onward and thought that cutting the Russians off from the Black Sea would weaken Putin. Instead it emboldened him to take back Crimea at any cost. Taking the two breakaway regions is strategic to ensure roads to Crimea stay open no matter what.
Ukraine today and Putin are the product of the CIA Yeltsin coup and the Soviet collapse. All these oligarchs sell the country out and pat themselves on the back, then backstab each other for 2 to 3 decades now. As I said, it has reached this point because of self-interest of these oligarchs, especially the US when they are way too greedy and want to end Russia once and for all.
I agree with your read of the situation but if I'm understanding your last point right; even if the DNR separatists controlled all of the historical borders of Donbas (which they don't right now), there is still some 250 miles in Ukrainian territory to reach Crimea by road.
The more territory along the east that the Russians control the more they can demand Ukraine open the borders to their trucking.
It would be like Mexico preventing the US from trading by road to Central America.
regional capitalist war does tend to be a boon for communist movements especially with the nostalgia in east europe
The nostalgia for communism in EE is of the same type that drives the conflict with Ukraine today over western influence..i.e..that means "the good old days when we were strong, and the west wasn't corrupting our kids with gender propaganda". It is not because of ideological commitment to communism mostly, but a mix of missing the good social isntitutions and a solid dose of social conservatism
Preparing for the us to claim this is in fact the invasion they were warning about
Isn't it though? The US has also used "peacekeeping" forces to invade other countries.
The US has been saying that Russia was going to target Kyiv as part of an invasion, just peacekeepers in the Donbas isn’t that
Now you're arguing semantics of "invasion" versus "peacekeepers" which is stupid, and arguing that they didn't go where the US said they would but instead went somewhere else in the country. It's pointless distinctions
To be more precise, the current areas they've "invaded" are areas that Russian troops have already been in for several years. All that really changed today was that Putin made their presence official.
Not to say that what Putin is doing is "good," but you reap what you sow, and maybe if NATO hadn't lied so much to Russia over the years things would be different. Innocent civilians getting caught in the crossfire has certainly never stopped NATO before.
Canada airborne inserting "Peacekeepers" into Korea, the last time they would ever deploy paratroopers as such
Never give Nato the benefit of the doubt
The west, particularly the United States, does not respect Russia’s red line of admitting Ukraine to NATO. Russia will wreck Ukraine to show the West they are serious. Ukraine begs the West to stop and as a result never gets admitted to the EU and NATO. If it moves closer to the EU, it will end up limping into EU after Russia ruins it. This is what happens to your country when it’s a pawn of Imperial powers.
Russia will wreck Ukraine to show the West they are serious.
I sincerely doubt this. Unless you just mean what they are already doing in recognizing and defending Donetsk and Luhansk.
https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4
Go to 43 minutes for implications for Ukraine.
Imperial power putting peacekeeping troops in a rebel state not acknowledged by most of the world
It's okay if we do it in Taiwan tho:porky-scared-flipped: Noooooooooo what about the tanks rolling into Kiev? What about the decapitation artillery and airstrikes?
Like what position? It's been 7 years of shelling and a lot of citizens already fled, with this, the potential of war is close to zero, unless the comedian are suicidal.
One of the things we can retaliate with is the fact that they were evacuating people from fucking Kiev
Damn thanks, gonna hold on to that one.
Even if Ukraine had agreed to fully implement Minsk, they would have claimed that Russia had invaded “in spirit” or something
My guess is that Biden isn't going to do shit. There will probably will be sanctions, though.
Good. Putin is only doing this to protect his own country’s interests, but Donetsk and Luhansk are both anti-fascist states with a decent socialist base in them.
You do realize that the socialism they support is very different from the socialism this site generally supports? And that they are heavily chauvinistic and nationalistic. There are no good guys here and the whole situation is only good as far as we will see fash killing other fash. But a lot of innocent people will aslo die along the way
Chauvinist socialists are far from optimal, but also the best you can hope for in the region right now.
Chauvinism, just like other conservative/regressive ideas can not be done away by force. It requires the culture to gradually change, preferably during a long period of peace and stability. It sucks, but that's how things usually go.
There is also a little interesting thought Yugopnik added on this topic. Hyper-masculinity can be easily twisted towards socialist ends. I paraphrase:"Do you think its manly to get assfucked by your boss abd just take it?"
Capitalism can be broken by getting the means of production into the hands of the workers, and during that period feminism tended to also always gain a lot of ground.
I'd say take the wins where we get them. Chauvinist socialists still beat hyper chauvinist fascists any day.
Thats the thing tho, those people have a very different view of what socialism is, compared to people over here. Conservatism is a big part of it. And today nationalism as well. And antisemitism too. It is nominally socialism, but it is in no way different that the fascism in ukraine. Like the names of the ideologies here are just for aesthetics, the underlying actual beliefs and dispositions are the same. The socialism espoused here is not the words of Lenin, or Marx or whatever, but a jerkoff over tanks with red stars, strong masculine hierarchy and the ability to make the gays go away. There is very little material analysis going on, and very little Marxism and very little interest in worker controlled means of production.
And I personally do not have the time to wait for the long time of peace and stability to pass to be treated like a human being or not murdered on the streets. So no, this is not a win for socialism, or a win at all, beyond two fascist factions fighting each other being a win.
Call it critical support and move away. I wouldn't have the nerve to wait through the long period of peace either, mostly because it'd take generations, but what can you do? It really is the only way that progressive social changes have occured historically.
The presence of exploitative capitalism plunging people into poverty surely doesn't help.
I mean, Ideally, you get a Vanguard party to lead and correct the people's reactionary views via discourse and using the Mass Line to direct the people's frustration to it's actual material causes.
Unfortunately, the Communist parties of these regions are mostly moribund with 90s era leaders, though there are some positive exceptions and young progressive factions.
It really is the only way that progressive social changes have occured historically.
Not really. Progressive changes occur through struggle and direct action fairly often. Relying on purely history is pretty reactive and does not guarantee you anywhere nearly the same degree of success. I dont mind critically supporting things, but this aint one of the situation that deserves any.
Of course it's direct actions and struggles that make way for progressive changes, but it's a lot easier to concentrate on those without the boot of capital pushing down on your neck.