Sometimes a war is justified, and coming to the aid of an ally getting invaded is a damn good justification.
Especially if that ally is simply asking for more hardware and not asking for feet on the ground.
Edit: Fixed the link, it was broken for some reason though it worked earlier today. IDK this mirror should work though
As a Czech, I feel like many people forget that the Soviet Union demanded all the allies come to Czechoslovakia's aid and kick the Nazi menace in the bud as soon as they tried to subjugate us. Instead, the UK, USA, and most egregiously, Poland, stabbed us all in the back at the negotiating table while denying the Soviet Union a seat. The western allies were intent on bolstering Nazi Germany and Poland so that they could mount an invasion of the Soviet Union in order to 'free' more markets for Western exploitation. This necessitated conceding to Hitler's demands on the Sudetes and Danzig. Even more interestingly, it also necessitated giving Czechoslovak land to Poland, and some of these regions were quite important for steel production. Of course, the western powers were playing with fire. Hitler famously gave the Danzig or War speech, much to the surprise of Polish diplomats, who were actively in talks to cede Danzig to Germany in order to receive support for war against the Soviet Union (which they had already instigated once before, annexing an independent socialist government in Western Ukraine, and one in Belarus, both who were allied with the Soviet Union and later voted to join it). Turns out, Nazi Germany wasn't a fan of sharing spoils of war.
These things were all fairly obvious to people that lived in Eastern Europe back then, which is why so many Slavs turned to communism.
So to reiterate, anti-war positions are actually good. The west wanted this war, it simply backfired. If the West never jockeyed for this war posture due to a never-ending greed for increasing profits, its likely Hitler would have never gotten anything done and would have been a footnote.
This is what Czech textbooks generally teach about the war, and I'm partial to this interpretation, though I've read that they are changing them recently to 'revise' our historical narrative.
That's why the udssr where allied with Hitler early in the war and signing a NAP, only stopping because Hitler betrayed them and attacked anyway?
Sorry, but this interpretation sounds a bit revisionistic. It was lot of people's fault that Hitler could do what he did, that's not a east vs. West thing. People should focus on the real factors and watch that something like this never happens again.
Claiming the USSR and Nazi Germany were allied is not only Nazi propaganda (aka 'double genocide' theory), but also holocaust denial. And, you know, a basic denial of reality.
It should be noted that Poland invaded the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War and opportunistically killed tens of thousands of Jews. The Soviet Union, by the accounts of many Jewish and Slavic survivors of the holocaust, saved hundreds of thousands of lives and won the war by not only signing that NAP, but also making sure that the Nazis were not occupying vast swathes of territory in western Belarus and Ukraine that had tons of vulnerable groups in them. The price for being an antisemite was death in the Soviet Union.
I say this as someone whose family house was annexed by the Nazis, and our relatives house was torched and their kids were stolen away to the Rhineland, which we only learned of recently through genetic testing. We just assumed they all died.
Not saying allied, but had an agreement that lasted until the nazis betrayed them. But equalling that saying this is the same as holocaust denial plays holocaust denialism down.
To me it seems that the polish wanted independence, but I don't know much about this conflict, so I am not really comfortable to comment on that.
Fighting nazis was a good thing and the appeasement politic from western nations was a bad take, I would never argue against that, but I don't know how the NAP helped, because for me it semms more like it gave the nazis time and space to make atrocitys in Europe and German.
Sorry to hear that this happens to your family. War is hell an leaves it scars. Hope your family can heal.
To me it seems that the polish wanted independence, but I don't know much about this conflict, so I am not really comfortable to comment on that.
Poland went to war with basically all their neighbors at this point and were largely supplied by Germany. There are anxieties about this history to this day in Western Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia, and Czechia, because the Poles massacred a lot of people. Its one thing to want independence, its another to massacre innocent civilians for fun.
It wasn't 'appeasement', it was active collusion.
because for me it semms more like it gave the nazis time and space to make atrocitys in Europe and German.
The Soviet Union had just got out of a Civil War and had almost no industry. They had roughly 10 years to build an industrial base capable of defeating what essentially amounted to all of mainland Europe. They were a feudal society before WW2 and were starting from scratch. And they won, so clearly what they did, communism, worked.
I'm curious as to why this comment was deleted, I don't see a reason in the modlog, and nothing said here was incorrect or inflammatory.
So we should just let the Ukrainian people be steam rolled by Russia then as they ask for help?
I'm sure letting counties invade their neighbors in acts of conquest has no history of going poorly for a lot of people.
That's a false dichotomy, though it's important to consider that the people in Ukraine suffer massively under the strategy of sending "aid" (which I described earlier in a comment removed with no explanation).
The Western/NATO approach, which is to say the US approach, has been to use UA to apply maximum pressure and pain on Russia. Prevent, avoid, disrupt peace talks. Saber-rattling. And prior to the war, funding Ukrainian Nazis and refusing to implement Minsk II. There have been so many options and opportunities, and the "stoke more war" button has been pressed every time.
The simplified answer is to use diplomacy to end the conflict. That is the best option for the lives of the people of Ukraine and for the existence of the country itself.
Russia has the power to stop the war and retreat.
Yeah the west and Russia where saber-rattling. But Russia choose to act and it.
The thing is putin will only use diplomacy on his on terms, and these terms alone will threaten the existence of Ukraines souveränity itself.
And victim blaming is never ok, even when you think the victim is an asshole.
Russia has the power to stop the war and retreat.
Yes, but if they do this, Ukraine may kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the previously occupied territories, including Crimea. Such an outcome is obviously unacceptable to Russia. The Ukrainian fascist paramilitaries have seen the pro-Russian separatists as subhuman for many years.
Yeah the west and Russia where saber-rattling. But Russia choose to act and it.
Russia chose to act on it because it was quite literally the last moment they possibly could have done so, given the rhetoric at the time of Ukraine potentially joining NATO (and even Zelensky asking for nukes!). NATO attempted to provoke Russia into war for decades by marching their military forces towards Russia's border and establishing anti-Russian governments in ex-Soviet countries. Many in Russia accuse Putin of cowardice because he didn't act sooner against NATO and Ukraine and getting them into this mess now when almost every country of note has been converted into NATO vassals, far from opposing him for being a tyrant or whatever. I'm not saying that this makes those civilians correct, it's merely outlining how Russia "choosing" to act on it might not have been a random act of cruel violence by Supreme Dictator Putin but instead an action informed by a whole bunch of factors and that the Russian government has generally been pretty non-violent up until this point even when America is directly spitting in their face and adding more and more countries to the Fuck Russia Club. The Russians might say that they heavily disagree with these countries having NATO membership because it imperils them - and it very obviously does - but when the Baltic states joined NATO for example, Putin didn't march his army to conquer them in retaliation. When Finland joined, he didn't send the tanks over the border. It was a measured decision by Russia to intervene in Ukraine, and it is important to have understanding beyond cliches.
The thing is putin will only use diplomacy on his on terms, and these terms alone will threaten the existence of Ukraines souveränity itself.
This is untrue. At the beginning of the war, in April 2022, Russia and Ukraine almost made peace along the lines of Ukraine regaining Kherson and Zaporozhye, and ceding control of the Donbass, which they already didn't really control anyway due to the Donbass War that has been ongoing since 2014. Ukraine was also allowed to join the EU, but not NATO. The West - in the form of Boris Johnson - came along and told Zelensky to not make peace with Russia, and so the deal was cancelled. We know this because Putin showed off this unfinished peace deal to various African politicians earlier this year. Ukraine could have kept millions of people inside their borders and hundreds of thousands of men alive, and kept two oblasts that they now do not own, if they had taken this deal and ignored the West.
Even so, Russia stated numerous times that they were still willing to make peace. It is Ukraine that does not seem to want it, because their terms are always "If Russia completely withdraws their forces then we will begin to talk," which is an absurd condition no matter whether you're in the right or wrong in any geopolitical or military situation. You see this a lot in history, where countries say "Oh yes, we won't declare war on you, you must only agree to a set of conditions that we know you will never accept," because it makes them look slightly more reasonable to other countries for not just marching in there. I'm sorry, Ukraine could be the most perfect, utopian society that has ever graced the world and Russia could be the most barbaric, backwards, evil nation ever seen in world history, and I would still see Ukraine's demand for Russia's total retreat as ridiculous.
And victim blaming is never ok, even when you think the victim is an asshole.
The question of who's the "victim" here depends on how far you're willing to look back in history, what you think are relevant facts about the situation, whether you believe the 2014 coup was in fact a coup, whether you believe that Ukraine is plagued by fascist paramilitaries like Azov or whether they're cutesy fun girl scouts, and quite literally hundreds of other things. I'm not even willing to be automatically contrarian and say "Actually, Russia is the victim and NATO is the aggressor!" because that's also not correct, the situation is way too complicated. This isn't Harry Potter vs Voldemort.
Russia has the power to stop the war and retreat.
I assumed that the folks rationalizing sending arms to Ukraine are people whose governments are doing so, or are otherwise in that sphere of influence. They can politically organize to stop that. They can't politically organize to get Russia to do anything. That has to come from people organizing within Russia. I'm attempting to ground this discussion in the real world, which contrasts with the world of propsganda and facile abstraction that is unfortunately common, and implicitly devalues human life.
If someone here is a Russian in Russia, I encourage you to safely politically organize.
Yeah the west and Russia where saber-rattling. But Russia choose to act and it.
The West acted, of course. Destruction of the USSR, shock therapy, creating Russia's political system (including supporting Putin's group), NATO expansion, Euromaidan, funding Ukrainisn Nazis, refusing to implement Minsk II. All of this exists in a regime of maximizing domination.
And now promoting war, preventing diplomacy, sending weapons, trying to punish states falling out of line, causing global economic issues, particularly for poor countries, all because hurting Russia is more important than all of this suffering. Story of the 20th century, really. Fall of the USSR revealed, clearly to sll, that this apparatus was not defensive or reflexive, because it not only continued to operate, but ramped up in the absence of opposition.
The thing is putin will only use diplomacy on his on terms, and these terms alone will threaten the existence of Ukraines souveränity itself.
Russia's general thrust of demanding a neutral Ukraine is as sovereign as it's going to get for Ukraine, and would be more sovereignty than they had before or during this war. The status quo is a coup government that does the bidding of Western powers and doesn't even have the de facto autonomy to even negotiate peace. Its current trajectory is to become a failed state picked apart by Western capitalists, probably with its Western portion taken over by Poland and its Eastern portion by Russia, but not before hundreds of thousands of more dead Ukrainians - normal, common people.
Personally, I don't want that to happen and therefore oppose the status quo of funding the destruction of Ukrainians.
And victim blaming is never ok, even when you think the victim is an asshole.
Who is victim blaming? States are not people and I've pointed the finger at states. The victims here are the people of Ukraine and they are already suffering dearly under the policies I'm criticizing. The West, including through arms, treats them like expendable pawns to hurt Russia with, and has for at least a decade.
prior to Pearl Harbor german warships had attacked 5 US navy vessels and over 100 US merchant marine vessels. the nazis declared war on the US 4 days after Pearl Harbor. the fact is that Nazi Germany was waging undeclared war on the US for the better part of a year, and indeed were the ones to formally declare war too. this is not an apt comparison to contemporary events.
See, much easier when you just admit that you’re fueling the meat grinder to weaken your geopolitical rival
![Strict anti-war people in nutshell [Rule]](https://files.catbox.moe/sv57ng.webp){kind=link}