• edge [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Vladimir Putin is a fucking maniac who really shouldn’t have his finger on the button right now

    I hate this characterization. It's basically how libs explain the war happening because they refuse to recognize that it was provoked by NATO. Putin isn't some madman hellbent on conquering Ukraine no matter what it takes. He knows very damn well the consequences of using nukes. He's basically threatening MAD. i.e. if NATO comes after Russia, it won't be good for either side.

    • DictatrshipOfTheseus [comrade/them, any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Exactly this. I agree with the first 3 bullet points completely. The 4th one "It’s a complete losing battle that the US, NATO, pretty much anyone else has no business being in," well yeah, sure I agree, but it's a strange thing to say since the conflict wouldn't exist if the US and NATO hadn't relentlessly pressed it. But that last thing "pUtIn's a MAAAANIAC!" is just lib-brained nonsense. Obligatory yes, fuck Putin, he's a capitalist opportunist and not a comrade, but that said, he has been by far one of the most rational major actors in this conflict (even among other Russians like Medvedev). Ideally, no one would have their hand on the button, but that's not the world we live in.

      • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        if the russian army had rolled up to the western border of the separatist regions to protect them from kiev/azov sure, but attacking the rest of ukraine looks pretty stupid and it was completely trivial to predict that doing that would be dumb and bad, which is why we didn't think he would.

        • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          if the russian army had rolled up to the western border of the separatist regions to protect them from kiev/azov sure

          That's what they did, and they got artillery shelled. They had to invade or just sit there and get shelled eternally.

          attacking the rest of ukraine looks pretty stupid and it was completely trivial to predict that doing that would be dumb and bad, which is why we didn’t think he would

          I'm not sure you understand how war works. You don't go to war with only part of a nation

          • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            if we're fighting over part of california i don't gain much of anything by half-assedly bombing baltimore

            • CarmineCatboy [he/him]
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              edit-2
              1 year ago

              that might help convince the government of 'baltimore' to stop bombing 'california'. it might also be the only way to do it.

            • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]
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              edit-2
              1 year ago

              You understand that a national military has bases and supply warehouses all throughout the country and logistic networks to move them about to the front right? You understand the concept of barracks and reserves? Why would a nation attack another and only hit the things on the front and ignore the reinforcements behind it?

              • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
                ·
                1 year ago

                yeah no shit and the coverage from the beginning of the invasion indicated that russia was doing way more than that.

                because ukraine has shit for a military until the nato proxy war materiel rolls in, and maybe you don't provoke that if you don't expand the fucking front all the way west.

                • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  because ukraine has shit for a military until the nato proxy war materiel rolls in

                  Even before the conflict, Ukraine had the 2nd largest military in Europe (#1 being Russia). It was NATO trained since 2014. Ukraine inherited 30% of the Soviet war industry, they had massive munitions supplies. Nobody else in Europe would be able to stand up to Russia like they could, and that's before they received $110 billion in western military heavy arms. Russia has had to destroy 3 Ukrainian armies (Their original massive army, their 2nd army filled with Soviet systems from donations from Poland, Baltic Nations, post-soviet states, Turkish TB2s, and then their 3rd army of NATO German/American munitions is being destroyed currently). Ukraine has suffered likely hundreds of thousands of casualties and lost thousands of MLRS, tanks, drones, etc.

                  Again, I don't think you are understanding how war works and how committing to a conflict with a nation state involves going all-in and striking their re-supply lines and economic and transport infrastructure

                  When you decide to attack someone else in a fight, you don’t limit yourself to only touching their hands. You go right for the throat.

                • DictatrshipOfTheseus [comrade/them, any]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  no shit and the coverage from the beginning of the invasion indicated [...]

                  If there's anything western leftists can learn from this war, if they weren't already aware, it's that whatever "coverage" they get from western media can be immediately discarded. Same goes for the opinions of people who believe that coverage.

                • MoreAmphibians [none/use name]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  NATO has been arming and training Ukraine since 2014. US Congress had to pass a law forbidding the army from training Azov troops. Obviously the Azov guys just got around this by being in a different battalion when the training was going on.

              • daisy
                ·
                1 year ago

                This is not Advance Wars. You don't win by occupying all the enemy cities. You win by ending the enemy's ability to wage war.

                  • daisy
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    How? Ukraine's government would just move their operations elsewhere, and occupying the city would be a brutal Staligrad-esque siege that would destroy troop morale and tie up resources. Russia gains nothing from that. The way to wreck a country's ability to wage war is to blow up supply depots and transport links, lure enemy troops and armor into meat grinders, and prioritize taking out AA to make those things possible.

                    • yastreb
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                      edit-2
                      1 year ago

                      deleted by creator

                    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      1 year ago

                      it's not that easy to just move all the operations of running a war there's a lot of bureacracy involved it isn't just some guys in a hotel room with a whiteboard

        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          So they roll up to the edge of controlled Donbass and instantly come under the constant artillery fire that's been going for eight years. What next, just experience the hell the people that live there have experienced?

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Same. He's not a maniac. I'm a maniac. I have bipolar disorder. I have actual, literal, (hypo)manic episodes.

      Putin doesn't have bipolar disorder, he's just a lib doing lib shit. This is the same nuclear brinksmanship we've been doing since the fifties, and it's exactly what nuclear weapons are for - Protecting your national sovereignty from foreign aggression. If Russia didn't have nukes NATO would have carpet bombed Moscow right now.

      The reasonable thing to do a long time ago would have been to not provoke Russia in hopes of collapsing the state so the neoliberals could loot it's corpse. Then the reasonable thing would be to not ban Russian as literally the first act of a new Ukrainian nationalist, fascist adjacent coup government. Then the reasonable thing would be to acknowledge that Crimea is strategically vital to Russia and the RF taking defacto control of Crimea was forseeable and was, indeed, probably one of the goals of the coup operation (or Washington is just monumentally stupid). Then the reasonable thing would be to acknowledge that the Donbas has legitimate concerns that the hostile Kiev government might do little a ethnic cleansing, as a treat, and send in a joint peacekeeping force to maintain some kind of peace while Kyiv negotiates with Donbass. Then the reasonable thing would have been to not shell Donbas for years killing thousands of civilians and outfitting Nazi death squads. Then the reasonable thing would have been to support what's his ass when he tried to end the war and help him dispose of the Nazis who told him to fuck off. Then the reasonable thing would have been to tell Ukraine to stand down instead of sending their army in to Donbas to do a little sectarian violence. Then the reasonable thing would have been to negotiate some kind of peaceful settlement with Russia that would secure it's national interests without resort to open warfare. And it just goes on and on and on and on.

      But Washington doesn't want to be reasonable. They want to devour the corpse of the RF for those sweet, sweet natural resources.

    • Vampire [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I hear leftist say that the war is all about NATO expansion, and say that the claim that Putin is looking to conquer Ukraine is a lib talking point... but did you people not watch Putin's declaration of war? It's mostly about Ukraine's right-to-exist, not about NATO.

      • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I hear a lot of people say a lot of things. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to figure out what's really going on. For example, despite what they claimed, the US wasn't bringing peace and democracy to Afghanistan.

      • yastreb
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator