The person you're responding to is dumb, but what they said can be reconstructed into a useful statement. People largely didn't know about the civil war, they heard about shit happening in 2014 and then nothing to do with Ukraine besides . They did, however, get an escalating amount of press coverage about how evil Putin is oppressing gosh darn Pussy Riot and true democratic hero Navalny. Now Russia invades for reasons they haven't been told while the media actively obfuscates Russia's motivations, and get told that the Russians -- who they have only seen in the most terms along with some legitimate reporting on the actual social reaction in Russia -- are fascists working with Nazi mercenaries to try to annex "historically Russian territory" from the wholesome pro-EU, pro-America Jewish president's administration, and this is what happened. It makes sense that it went like that and even some people here are so fucking dense in parsing its most basic elements.
I am with you on all of that, yes. Except I'm a little lost on how their statement can be reconstructed into a useful one without changing most of its core implications.
and even some people here are so fucking dense in parsing its most basic elements.
I know. I hate to see it here on hexbear and it's why I decided to pipe up when someone was trying to spread the propaganda they swallowed from the MSM again. It does make sense why they believe it, but this is the last place that NATO->Ukraine propaganda should go unchallenged.
Except I'm a little lost on how their statement can be reconstructed into a useful one without changing most of its core implications.
They expressed pretty clearly why someone would think what they do, which incidentally meant it was easy to explain not only that they were wrong but what lead them to their wrong conclusions. Perhaps it was just me being precious, idk.
So in your view Putin is a rational leader and the “good guy” and Ukrainians are the bad guys for defending their country? I understand the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine starting in 2014 (was bubbling up even before then) but just want to understand how you see things so black and white that way. Are Putin’s stances on gay and trans people pure Western propaganda? Because what I’ve seen him supposedly say is not good to say the least. But maybe I’m just fully propagandized
Um sweaty, have you considered that Ukraine is one of the three little pigs and Russia is the big bad wolf?
Why yes I will echo generic “war bad” sentiments while completely ignoring historical context and coincidentally towing the state department line but “leftist” so it’s ok
There is a reason why an overwhelming majority of socialist and communist movements in the global South are on Russia’s side.
The overwhelming majority of the global South and thus the world are on Russia's side period. This is how you get English articles like Why Are Haitian Protestors Waving Russian Flags. Anyone who has been following protests in Africa know that Russian flags are not an uncommon feature there. Someone from the news megathread recently came back from Lebanon, and almost everybody he talked to from his communist uncle(?) to random strangers were pro-Russia. Of course, you wouldn't recognize this in an Anglo website that's 80% white.
Putin is not a “good guy” and that’s not the point. This is possibly the most provoked invasion in world history, instigated by an American vassal state, which was and still is the most corrupt state in Europe and acting like Ukraine is some sort of innocent little angel being invaded for no reason by crazy evil Putler is a symptom of a total break with empirical reality, which is that Russia had tried for eight straight years to reach a peaceful resolution. Ukraine was defeated in 2014 when its government was couped by US-backed forces. It is no longer a sovereign state. You don’t have to think Putin is a great guy to subscribe to these fundamental facts.
NATO expansionism is bad regardless of the moral character of its opponents.
Of course war is brutal and barbaric but it’s no use going both sides or poor widdle Ukraine when it’s very clear that one side deliberately and massively provoked this.
If you think that Russia invaded Ukraine because they’re fascist and Putin is crazy, you have completely and totally lost the plot.
I agree that Ukraine is very corrupt and not “fighting for democracy” or whatever the Western media is saying about this war, but is there any chance that Ukrainians wanted to push toward the EU and away from Russia’s economic influence? It’s always taken at face value that the Euromaidan protests were US backed and the protestors were all US/NATO puppets, but what if many of them just didn’t want to be another Russian puppet state like Belarus and wanted to try to increase their standard of living? Not saying I agree with them, both options of moving forward are shitty but the “Russia was provoked” argument only works if the Ukrainians had no autonomy whatsoever and were being controlled by the CIA like puppets.
Otherwise it’s much less justified if Ukraine just wanted to move away from Russia’s influence toward the West on its own accord. Having millennial cousins over in Belarus who hate Luka I wouldn’t be surprised if most millennials in Ukraine truly just opposed Russia and wanted to move away before the invasion. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea is a different situation as that part of the country was much more sympathetic toward Russia but I don’t get why Putin didn’t just ramp up the fighting against separatists there instead of push to Kyiv? Once he brought the invasion to the entirety of Ukraine it can only be justified if he was provoked beyond belief, not just a regional conflict.
I get we are propagandized to an absurd degree in the West but I feel like lots of users here swing too far the other way. I don’t think NATO is as smart as lots of people here might think, Ukrainians wanting to move toward Europe is not even considered as a possibility which seems at the very least to be intellectually dishonest.
It's certainly the case that some of Ukraine's population supported the coup, fascism has been actively cultivated there for decades (see Operation Bloodstone) and the Banderite cult has shown itself to be alive and well. That said, they do not represent all of Ukraine, particularly not the massive Russian population who make up the majority in the eastern part of the country (nor the other minorities like the Poles, Jews, Romani, etc.)
I don't know enough about the proportions of demographics to give you a more numerical estimate, but the coup did throw out an elected leader, which inclines me to say that it was more likely a large minority sentiment using force to get its way when a system that got more widespread input (liberal though it was) didn't work for them.
Here's an alright article on the topic:
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
Those are good points. I do think the youth doesn’t have the sentimental attachment to the USSR that older Ukrainians would have. It sounds absurd but from what I hear from my Belarusian cousins they are jealous of Poland for being in the EU and they’d prefer to join the EU if it meant giving up their Russian ties. It’s probably similar to how lots of Scottish and Welsh people feel about England.
I guess my main issue with the “they couldn’t possibly side with Europe over Russia because they’re ethnically Russian” is that if Luka were to ever be overthrown by a pro-EU government in Belarus I know my cousins would love that and like most Belarusians they grew up speaking Russian. Many on this site would say that was a CIA plot or that they are brainwashed by Western propaganda but idk their economic outlook is generally pretty shitty over there. One of my cousins made it over here to the US from Belarus and loves it here compared with back home.
People aren’t necessarily 100% loyal to the country that aligns with their ethnicity or native language, that doesn’t really make sense. It wouldn’t surprise me if lots of Ukrainians disliked Yanukovych without the CIA brainwashing them into doing so since it’s probably similar to how plenty of Belarusians hate Luka in a similar way.
You've got it completely backwards. The people saying that what Russia is doing is good for the global south and that Russia is justified in entering the conflict in Ukraine while also saying that Russia is bad for it's reactionary policies, there aren't the ones who are seeing things in black and white "good guy and bad guy." They're the ones who are looking at the situation through a materialist lens. Putin is not a "good guy" by any means, but he is not wrong when it comes to the situation in Ukraine and yes he definitely is rational, one of the most pragmatic and restrained of the major actors on either side of the conflict. Don't fall for the lib bullshit that tries to paint him as some crazed lunatic. THAT is where your black and white thinking accusation should be directed. Putin being rational doesn't also make him a "good guy" and I don't remember anyone on hexbear ever saying he was.
The person you're responding to is dumb, but what they said can be reconstructed into a useful statement. People largely didn't know about the civil war, they heard about shit happening in 2014 and then nothing to do with Ukraine besides
. They did, however, get an escalating amount of press coverage about how evil Putin is oppressing gosh darn Pussy Riot and true democratic hero Navalny. Now Russia invades for reasons they haven't been told while the media actively obfuscates Russia's motivations, and get told that the Russians -- who they have only seen in the most 
terms along with some legitimate reporting on the actual social reaction in Russia -- are fascists working with Nazi mercenaries to try to annex "historically Russian territory" from the wholesome pro-EU, pro-America Jewish president's administration, and this is what happened. It makes sense that it went like that and even some people here are so fucking dense in parsing its most basic elements.
I am with you on all of that, yes. Except I'm a little lost on how their statement can be reconstructed into a useful one without changing most of its core implications.
I know. I hate to see it here on hexbear and it's why I decided to pipe up when someone was trying to spread the propaganda they swallowed from the MSM again. It does make sense why they believe it, but this is the last place that NATO->Ukraine propaganda should go unchallenged.
They expressed pretty clearly why someone would think what they do, which incidentally meant it was easy to explain not only that they were wrong but what lead them to their wrong conclusions. Perhaps it was just me being precious, idk.
So in your view Putin is a rational leader and the “good guy” and Ukrainians are the bad guys for defending their country? I understand the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine starting in 2014 (was bubbling up even before then) but just want to understand how you see things so black and white that way. Are Putin’s stances on gay and trans people pure Western propaganda? Because what I’ve seen him supposedly say is not good to say the least. But maybe I’m just fully propagandized
deleted by creator
Um sweaty, have you considered that Ukraine is one of the three little pigs and Russia is the big bad wolf?
Why yes I will echo generic “war bad” sentiments while completely ignoring historical context and coincidentally towing the state department line but “leftist” so it’s ok
The overwhelming majority of the global South and thus the world are on Russia's side period. This is how you get English articles like Why Are Haitian Protestors Waving Russian Flags. Anyone who has been following protests in Africa know that Russian flags are not an uncommon feature there. Someone from the news megathread recently came back from Lebanon, and almost everybody he talked to from his communist uncle(?) to random strangers were pro-Russia. Of course, you wouldn't recognize this in an Anglo website that's 80% white.
Putin is not a “good guy” and that’s not the point. This is possibly the most provoked invasion in world history, instigated by an American vassal state, which was and still is the most corrupt state in Europe and acting like Ukraine is some sort of innocent little angel being invaded for no reason by crazy evil Putler is a symptom of a total break with empirical reality, which is that Russia had tried for eight straight years to reach a peaceful resolution. Ukraine was defeated in 2014 when its government was couped by US-backed forces. It is no longer a sovereign state. You don’t have to think Putin is a great guy to subscribe to these fundamental facts.
NATO expansionism is bad regardless of the moral character of its opponents.
Of course war is brutal and barbaric but it’s no use going both sides or poor widdle Ukraine when it’s very clear that one side deliberately and massively provoked this.
If you think that Russia invaded Ukraine because they’re fascist and Putin is crazy, you have completely and totally lost the plot.
I agree that Ukraine is very corrupt and not “fighting for democracy” or whatever the Western media is saying about this war, but is there any chance that Ukrainians wanted to push toward the EU and away from Russia’s economic influence? It’s always taken at face value that the Euromaidan protests were US backed and the protestors were all US/NATO puppets, but what if many of them just didn’t want to be another Russian puppet state like Belarus and wanted to try to increase their standard of living? Not saying I agree with them, both options of moving forward are shitty but the “Russia was provoked” argument only works if the Ukrainians had no autonomy whatsoever and were being controlled by the CIA like puppets.
Otherwise it’s much less justified if Ukraine just wanted to move away from Russia’s influence toward the West on its own accord. Having millennial cousins over in Belarus who hate Luka I wouldn’t be surprised if most millennials in Ukraine truly just opposed Russia and wanted to move away before the invasion. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea is a different situation as that part of the country was much more sympathetic toward Russia but I don’t get why Putin didn’t just ramp up the fighting against separatists there instead of push to Kyiv? Once he brought the invasion to the entirety of Ukraine it can only be justified if he was provoked beyond belief, not just a regional conflict.
I get we are propagandized to an absurd degree in the West but I feel like lots of users here swing too far the other way. I don’t think NATO is as smart as lots of people here might think, Ukrainians wanting to move toward Europe is not even considered as a possibility which seems at the very least to be intellectually dishonest.
It's certainly the case that some of Ukraine's population supported the coup, fascism has been actively cultivated there for decades (see Operation Bloodstone) and the Banderite cult has shown itself to be alive and well. That said, they do not represent all of Ukraine, particularly not the massive Russian population who make up the majority in the eastern part of the country (nor the other minorities like the Poles, Jews, Romani, etc.)
I don't know enough about the proportions of demographics to give you a more numerical estimate, but the coup did throw out an elected leader, which inclines me to say that it was more likely a large minority sentiment using force to get its way when a system that got more widespread input (liberal though it was) didn't work for them.
Here's an alright article on the topic: https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
deleted by creator
Those are good points. I do think the youth doesn’t have the sentimental attachment to the USSR that older Ukrainians would have. It sounds absurd but from what I hear from my Belarusian cousins they are jealous of Poland for being in the EU and they’d prefer to join the EU if it meant giving up their Russian ties. It’s probably similar to how lots of Scottish and Welsh people feel about England.
I guess my main issue with the “they couldn’t possibly side with Europe over Russia because they’re ethnically Russian” is that if Luka were to ever be overthrown by a pro-EU government in Belarus I know my cousins would love that and like most Belarusians they grew up speaking Russian. Many on this site would say that was a CIA plot or that they are brainwashed by Western propaganda but idk their economic outlook is generally pretty shitty over there. One of my cousins made it over here to the US from Belarus and loves it here compared with back home.
People aren’t necessarily 100% loyal to the country that aligns with their ethnicity or native language, that doesn’t really make sense. It wouldn’t surprise me if lots of Ukrainians disliked Yanukovych without the CIA brainwashing them into doing so since it’s probably similar to how plenty of Belarusians hate Luka in a similar way.
You've got it completely backwards. The people saying that what Russia is doing is good for the global south and that Russia is justified in entering the conflict in Ukraine while also saying that Russia is bad for it's reactionary policies, there aren't the ones who are seeing things in black and white "good guy and bad guy." They're the ones who are looking at the situation through a materialist lens. Putin is not a "good guy" by any means, but he is not wrong when it comes to the situation in Ukraine and yes he definitely is rational, one of the most pragmatic and restrained of the major actors on either side of the conflict. Don't fall for the lib bullshit that tries to paint him as some crazed lunatic. THAT is where your black and white thinking accusation should be directed. Putin being rational doesn't also make him a "good guy" and I don't remember anyone on hexbear ever saying he was.