Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Finland was already a NATO ally so really, Russia was looking at a situation where you have a pseudo-NATO country already on their border (but still relatively far away from Moscow), and a country that isn't a NATO ally but is actively threatening it and is closer to Moscow and in a geographical position that makes it easy for them to invade you due to the flat land.
And like, in retrospect you might be able to say "Oh, of COURSE Ukraine was never gonna join NATO, of COURSE they were never gonna get nukes" but imagine if you were the leader of a country and an alliance that hates you and literally exists to try and counter your influence says that they might expand into the country right next to you and give them weapons that would make them effectively uninvadable, in a critical position for your gas pipelines and such. Even if you calculate the real odds to be low, if you get that decision wrong and it actually does happen, then that's it. You've critically fucked up. No take backsies, no way to meaningfully counter them past that point.
Like, if you poke a bear, then this is what happens. I don't think bears should maul people, but there's a certain degree of common sense that you need to employ when you're around bears. If you're not doing anything to it and it attacks you then that's fucked up, but if you're continually trying to provoke it, I will have less sympathy when it turns around to face you. This is especially true if you're, like a Nazi, or something. idk, the analogy breaks down a bit
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Actually "Russia is the victim in this" is quite the take. Pretty shure a starting a war of aggresion isn't realy harm reduction.
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The victims here are those in the Donbass and the people who have been displaced, conscripted, or basically doing anything against their will.
Russia isn't a victim per se - my point is that blocs remain a thing. They might not be moral, they might in fact be very bad, but pretending that it doesn't exist and that you can do things contrary to your nearby bloc's interest will often have bad results. There's a reason why Cuba hasn't seized Guantanamo Bay despite it being well within their rights to do so.
NATO started the war by instigating a civil war with a Nazi coup. Russia is ending the war like they ended the Syrian civil war and ended the Kazakhstan and Belarus coups. Disgusted by this shitlibbery
Shut the fuck up liberal
I'll agree that that is a bad analogy. Russia isn't a victim. Russia is stepping in to protect victims.
Eastern Ukrainians have been living through hell for 8 years. Nazis took over Ukraine's government and illegalized the native language of 13% of the population of the nation. Some states decided they wanted more power over their regional government. So the Nazis went and started killing them. Zelenskyy was elected on one promise, ending the civil war but didn't deliver. Russia convinced Ukraine to have a sit down with France and Germany's leaders so they could come up with a peaceful solution. Ukraine failed to implement any of the agreed solutions. The killing of innocent Ukrainian civilians by Nazis did not stop. Russia tried again and with France and Germany as mediators Ukraine agreed top do certain things to end the civil war. But then the Ukrainian government did nothing to implement what they had agreed to do. So Russia mobilized their army on their border to try to threaten Ukraine to think and stop the Nazis from murdering people. Ukraine decided to dramatically increase the attacks on civilians essentially calling Russia bluff.
NATO expansionism is a background theme but really doesn't need top be brought into the discussion to justify Russia's invasion.
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Russia should’ve never taken the Donbas and Crimea. Once they did that, it made war inevitable. I know people justify it by saying that the ethnic Russians in those places were discriminated against, that they wanted to join Russia, but it clearly wasn’t worth it in hindsight.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and subsequent fiasco of privatization, the only political project holding Russia together at this point is a shared history, shared ethnic identity and some degree of national chauvinism. Now, I am not strictly calling Russia facists here, they are a capitalist nation that was on the verge of geo-political decline. As most elements of fascism are just capitalism in crisis, an element of that national chauvism is the idea of a 'stewardship of the people'. That is essentially what Russia is doing, which, within Russia atm is very popular, except for with Russian libs, who already weren't a fan of the whole 'Russian national identity thing', and are marginalized politically.
That being said, it is also clear that since the Western backed ultra-nationalist Maidan coup, and the responsive Russian supported and driven uprisings in Crimes, LPR and DPR, (in order to protect their oil interests and with a fair amount of local support, almost universal in Crimea, which is rare) that Ukraine has resorted to the old right-,wing standby of just straight terrorism on the local population of the Donbas for the past 8 years, and it was only a matter of time before this all came to a head, either from Ukraine or Russia.
Whether or not it will be 'worth it' will be debated by future historians. At the moment, I think the Russian people are generally ok with it, though there is a large degree of public suppression of the minority that are trying to be vocal about their opposition, and the geopolitical order is in flux, which is by Russian standards better than a certain decline into irrelevance. NATO is reinvigorated, the Germans position in the EU is weakened, and the U.S. has a place to funnel their MIC. Lotta win-win going on here. Russia seems to be managing fine, but the situation remains volatile for them economically. It is clear that even after privatization they have still managed to hold onto more state capacity than the U.S. If they will suffer from deflationary issues and major supply crunchs remains to be seen. The only real losers so far are the Ukrainian working class of whatever ethnicity as they have to deal with large scale military actions and all the brutality, both psychological and physical, personal, criminal and collateral.
Honestly you should just read the links in the OP. They are pretty informative.
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Uncritical support for Nazi-mauling bears
:sicko-hexbear: :pit: