Western media have finally change course. They are now admitting that the much promoted Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed. In fact, the acknowledge that it never had a chance to win in the first place.
The Hill, the Washington Post and CNN now agree that the Ukrainian army will never achieve its aims.
western MSM has a rare encounter with reality!
That makes it difficult for the Biden administration to get Congress approval for $24 billion in additional ‘aid’ to Ukraine. It does not make sense to pay for a cause that is evidently lost.
b seems overly hopeful regarding the rationality of US congress, but i think hes right- why would we throw more money at them, US politicians have made it clear they do not support bringing Ukraine into NATO if they do not win this conflict. of course, US politicians are prone to lying and misleading
Nothing has come from the ‘peace conference’ which Saudi Arabia arranged on Ukraine’s behalf
lol. lmao even. props to big dog MBS for trying
Despite the onslaught of bad news the Ukrainian army is still trying to take Russian positions in the south and east of Ukraine. But it simply does not have enough in men and material to break through the lines.
Even if they would manage to get a local breakthrough there are not enough reserves to push for the necessary follow up. Just one of the NATO trained brigades has still been held back. All others have been mauled in their various deployment zones.
nothing has changed it seems
In the northeast around Kupyansk the Russians have started their own offensive which has the Ukrainians on the run. Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of the area
But Kupyansk is a Russian city and people refuse to leave.
show this to the libs claiming Russians are committing genocide in the regions they capture. curious that these civilians are content with Russian occupation when you believe what western media claims
The Russian campaign is slowly speeding up. As the Ukrainian Strana.news reports (machine translation):
Also in Ukraine, it is recorded that from Kupyansk to Bakhmut, Russia has increased the number of attacks.
"Over the past month, the total number of attacks in the Kupyansk, Limansky and Bakhmut directions has grown significantly. In July, during the week there were 6-6.5 thousand attacks, during the last week-9 thousand attacks, " - said the representative of the National Guard Ruslan Muzychuk.
According to him, the Russian Federation does not experience “shell hunger”.
Aviation is also actively used, and over the past few weeks, more than 50 air attacks have been taking place every day, and sometimes more than 80.
That is bad news for the Ukrainian side which lacks the reserves to counter the Russian onslaught. There are also less weapons coming in from the West. F-16 fighter jets will be delayed for another nine months due to training issues. Tanks and other material are in short supply.
these supply issues sure bode well for the west’s performance in WW3 
Strana also report of an interview with a knowledgeable Ukrainian soldier (machine translation):
Continuing the topic of the situation at the front, an interesting interview was given by a Ukrainian sniper fighting near Bakhmut with the call sign “Grandfather”. On the air of political scientist Yuri Romanenko, he was introduced as Konstantin Proshinsky (this is a pseudonym).
The fighter spoke in detail about his vision of the situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Russian army.
- Mobilization. In his opinion, it is conducted incorrectly. Recruits are sent to the front who have never been trained, and they are often over 50 years old and with a whole bunch of diseases.
- No rotation. The soldier says that “the same brigades” are fighting at the front, and people are not taken out of the front line for six months or more. Whereas by Western standards, they can be kept in a war zone for no more than three months.
- Behavior of mid-and high-level commanders. According to Proshinsky, many of them are trying to arrange a “mini-Stalingrad” on the positions, forcing them to go into frontal assaults on well-fortified Russian positions.
- The Russian Army began to fight better.
- Proshinsky believes that Russia has not yet used much of what it has against Ukraine.
The soldier thinks that the Russians will not move from their positions and that a stalemate peace like in Korea would be the end result.
UAF in real dire times— recruiting the elderly, poor logistics, engaging the enemy at inopportune times, and Russia has yet to waver
I believe that to be wrong. Russia’s aim is to liberate at least the four regions that it has claimed for itself. For political reasons it can not stop before that is done.
Should the Ukraine continue to fight after that, Russia is likely to set new aims and take more land.
more editorializing, but it doesnt seem unreasonable. i thought Russia would stick to its original goal of Donetsk and Luhansk, but if Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are receptive to Russian governance, it would be foolish for Russia to give them up
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The situation is more complex than the media presents it as. The conflict started in 2014 when the Ukrainian government was coup’ed and banned opposition parties, causing seccesionists to rise up in eastern Ukraine. The involved parties signed a cease-fire agreement, but Ukraine violated it by bombarding cities in the disputed territories. Russia sent troops in in response, at the request of the separatists.
We don’t write off the Russian narrative as baseless, but we do have a range of opinions about the conflict, aknowleging that historical context. Personally, I believe that there were (and are) diplomatic solutions that would minimize loss of life but they are being ignored, in part because of domestic pressure from far-right groups in Ukraine, but mostly from US pressure to have a conflict for the sake of the military industrial complex.
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Donbas has been defending their homes and their right to speak their native language for 8 years. Russia is not invading Donbas they have been invited. Russia is trying to stop a civil war. When western nations have assisted one side in civil wars in places like The Congo in the 60s or Yugoslavia Somalia and Haiti in the 90s they called it peace keeping.
Unfortunately Ukraine has refused to stop fighting even when faced with insurmountable odds and the USA and its vassals have given them the false hope that they could win. Had nato stayed out of the conflict Ukraine would have surrendered a long time ago likely well before the referendum on joining Russia. The DPR and LPR would have been free nations not part of Russia but seeing that the entirety of the western world was against their peaceful existence as an independent state they held a referendum on joining Russia.
TLDR: Its really not an invasion when the people of the occupied territory want you there.
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Should the defenders of the DPR and LPR be forced to only fight on their own territory? If Russia’s army doesn’t push out of Donbas then all the collateral damages happens to the place they are trying to defend. “the best defence is a good offense.”
The way to win a war is to kill enough of the enemy’s soldiers that they are unable or unwilling to continue fighting. Russia is just going where Ukraine’s army is. The more Ukraine resists and refuses to let the people of eastern Ukraine choose their own path the more of Ukraine is going to be occupied.
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Those areas will likely be annexed and I am betting Russia will take Odessa too. The majority of Ukrainians east of the Dnipier are Russian speakers. Before 2014 the number of Ukrainians who said Russian was their mother tongue was consistently polled around 40%. Again this was a civil war between Ukraine’s Banderites and Russian speaking Ukrainians. If Nato and Russia never got involved the DPR and LPR would have probably gained their independence and split the country in 2 on the same line.
Russia spent 8 years trying to negotiate a settlement peacefully and Ukraine used that time to build up their army and never implemented any of agreed measures. Putin didn’t want a war NATO did. “The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this time to become stronger” -Merkle.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s involvement Ukraine’s army ratcheted up its attacks on Donetsk. Russian was goaded into action. They were given the choice between 2 bad options, invade, or let Ukraine kill civilians that share Language, cultural, and Family ties with Russia.
Say someone is kicking a dog and you say “stop it.” They keep kicking it so you get in the way and despite you saying “be chill, lets talk this out” They now want to fight you so they can go back to kicking the dog. All their friends show up pushing them to fight you. They just wont stop and even if you are giving way more than you get you get hurt. Wouldn’t you feel like you should take the guys other dogs as well as the one he was beating?
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Yes, at this point I think that’s looking like the most plausible end to the conflict, regardless of whether we keep throwing people into a meat grinder for the next 20 years or not. Ukraine’s stance is that they won’t consider any territorial concessions at all, including Crimea which they haven’t controlled since long before the conflict started. I don’t think that’s realistic.
There were better options for Ukraine that would’ve avoided this outcome. If they’d upheld the cease-fire, if they’d allowed them to have a voice in a democratic process, maybe if they’d given them some kind of status of an autonomous zone. But with all the bridges burned at this point, the options are considerably narrower.
As for Russia, the thing is even if they withdrew, that wouldn’t necessarily settle things because there’s still Ukrainian seperatists. I didn’t agree with Russia’s intervention, but I’m not sure what they could’ve done differently to stop or prevent the shelling of Donbas. You could argue that they’re just a Russian proxy, but a lot of people there do have cultural ties to Russia, and if the support isn’t genuine, then why did Ukraine feel the need to ban the opposition parties? And you could just as easily say that the Ukrainian government is just a US proxy.
Ultimately, I just don’t trust the same politicians and media that lied us into Iraq to present an honest account of things, or to have the interests of the people at heart. Even if Ukraine was able to reclaim Donbas, and even if we say it’d be good if they did (which considering their inability to get along, I’m not sure of), I just don’t think it’s worth the cost.
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I totally agree with you there. Sometimes people here can get a little too pro-Russia for my tastes, but generally there’s skepticism towards sources from both sides, while a lot of places are more one-sided and uncritical (towards one side or the other). We believe that multipolarity is a good thing for the world (especially for developing countries), but also Putin is not a socialist and sucks in various ways (transphobia for example). He’s the enemy of our enemy, no more, no less.
But yeah war sucks, and I’d like it to end as soon as possible, in a way that lasts, regardless of where the line gets drawn. I wish it were possible to return to the ceasefire arrangement, or to return to before 2014 when Ukraine was more neutral and everybody got along. They’re both capitalist countries so the whole thing’s kinda dumb and at the end of the day, I just want everybody to be able to go home to their families.
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It’s very simple: we are leftists whose only position in this war is to support whichever side that is more beneficial the survival of working class movements.
NATO/Ukraine winning means the resurgence and victory of fascism in Eastern Europe and Russia, it means replicating what Ukraine has done to its own people (banning socialist and communist parties, persecution and murder of labor activists, rise of violent fascist gangs, mass privatization of public utilities to foreign capitalists, and the inevitable neoliberal shock therapy being perpetrated in the region to impoverish the working class as if those countries haven’t suffered enough). Essentially, a repeat of post-Soviet Russia shock doctrine in the 1990s. The Western media literally have been salivating on the prospect of collapsing Russia’s economy with their “sanctions from hell” as though collective punishment is going to stop the war somehow.
As much as we criticize Russia for their problems, it is nowhere near as severe as the fascism problem in Ukraine today, which is being actively promoted and glorified by NATO and Western media. For one, the Communist Party of Russian Federation is still the second largest political party in the country, despite them not being as radical as we’d like them to be. Meanwhile, Ukraine is actively decommunizing the country to erase its own Soviet legacies.
On a higher level, though, we as Marxists see this as the ultimate clash between neoliberal finance capitalism (represented by the US) and industrial capitalism (represented by China). As followers of Marx’s thesis, we believe that industrial capitalism remains most viable path towards socialism. The Russia-Ukraine War is thus a proxy war between two systems: Ukraine representing the expansion of finance capital led by Washington into Russia to ultimately weaken the rise of China; and Russia which is resisting the encroachment of Western capitalism and is being increasingly pulled into the sphere of Chinese socialism.
To put it quite simply, we see that neoliberalism represents a dead end where fascism is the imminent outcome. Western imperialism winning will truly doom the Global South for they will be the first ones that will be sacrificed to the gods of free market as the global capitalist system crumbles from within.
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I can’t and won’t speak for every hexbear, but I personally want the war to end as soon as possible. The failure of the counteroffensive to make any actual gains, far under-performing the expectations of most Russia-optimistic commentators (by Russia-optimistic, I mean people who think that Russia is on the trajectory to “win” the war) just goes to show that Ukraine is not going to be able to achieve its war aims. The only thing that could change the trajectory at this point would be full NATO entry into war, which would begin WWIII and be quite likely to lead to nuclear war and the subsequent deaths of billions of people.
Given that Ukraine isn’t going to win, then the only thing that is going to end the war is a negotiated settlement. That settlement would have to concede to Russian war aims, since again, they’re winning. Those aims seem to be the recognition of Russian territorial gains in the war, as well as a neutral status for Ukraine (de-militarization/de-Nazification have been dropped.) I think pro-Ukraine commentators would call this a defeat for Ukraine, but in my view this is the best deal that Ukraine could plausibly get at this point. There’s simply little remaining equipment that NATO is willing to give away that Ukraine is capable of deploying. For example, the F-16s are 9+ months away from being deployed, and I don’t see how a handful of old fighter planes are going to make any difference going up against the most sophisticated anti-air missle systems in the world.
So, reality checks for NATO, Ukraine and the western press are good, because the alternative is throwing away more life for zero return.
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Finland maintained neutrality and sovereignty in its domestic politics throughout the cold war despite neighboring the USSR and having joined the Axis powers. A “finlandization” of Ukraine is certainly possible (and is probably the best that Ukraine is going to get). All states are influenced by other nation-states, so a post-war Ukraine is going to have both western and Russian influences to various degrees. What Russia finds a provocation is NATO military forces in Ukraine.
Again, I feel for those who have lost their homes in the war. However, the war could be ended today on the negotiation table, or it could be ended 12 months later at the negotiation table and the only significant change will be that even more Ukrainians have lost their homes.
I’m not saying that this is a good or happy situation, but I think that it’s the reality of the situation.
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The sooner Ukraine loses the less Ukrainians die. We aren’t nationalists so we don’t value national sovereignty(at least inherently).
Among other reasons.
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What about the defenders the attackers are defending? This is a civil war. Russia is assisting the defenders of the civil war.
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Fair enough.
It’s not about cheering for a side, it’s about seeing reality for what it it.
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We don’t want them to lose, we want the war to end. At the moment, that would mean ending in Russia’s favour. Ukraine has been propped up by the west since last year. Without American money and weapons, they would already have collapsed. A staggering number of people have fled, and hundreds of thousands of men have come back from the front with life-changing injuries, which means their economy is going to really struggle for the next few decades. The West will have to pull out eventually, and then Ukraine will have to sign some peace agreement which likely won’t be in their favour. However, continuining until the West says “enough is enough” (and after Iraq and Afghanistan, who knows how long that will be) will force more people out of the country and deplete the working population inside the country even further. What does Ukraine have to gain by sticking it out?
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In that case, I’m not sure you do understand. They will never get the Donbass or Crimea back (at least not during this conflict); every Ukrainian death that happens now is happening for no reason, and is actively going to make their recovery harder. I’m saying that by packing it in now, they’d be cutting their losses. Do you think losing now would be worse for them than losing further down the line, when their population has been further depleted?
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God that is such a brain dead stupid take.
explain?
Short answer: We don’t want Russia to win we just want USA and NATO to lose.
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They’re responsible for the worst atrocities committed since 1945, including not only shielding perpetrators of the worst atrocities between ~1933 and 1945 from prosecution, but rewarding them with status, money, and influence. The US and its NATO lapdogs stand with their feet on the throat of the global south, preventing them from developing and threatening their hegemony, as well as actively exacerbating climate death through capitalism.
The US and it’s NATO lapdogs are responsible for the position we find ourselves in at this moment: staring down the barrel of climate death and hastening to pull the trigger because it will affect our bourgeois masters the least and the last. The only way to liberate humanity is to overthrow the US led “rules based” hegemony.
I’ve run out of time to tie this into the Ukraine conflict due to real life intruding on my posting habit. Hopefully a comrade can pick up my keyboard as I fall, lol
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Russia isn’t really capable of being a global hegemon, and a multipolar world is better for the periphery who can play the major powers off each other.
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The Russian Federation, you don’t gotta hand it to them. But liquidating tens of thousands of conscripts in order to preserve the Ukranian state as currently constituted, while the state cracks down on Communists and Anarchists, dismantles unions, bans opposition media and political parties, and operates under martial law is nothing worth defending either. The people would genuinely be better off if the Ukrainian state conceded. If negotiations were carried through to completion over a year ago. Great power conflicts between rival capitalist nations are not an effective site of struggle for proletarian revolution, no matter how you slice them. It would be ideal if people stopped getting killed.
The status quo is gone. Changed irrevocably. The outset of the kinetic war, and the resulting economic war have imposed permanent changes in global geopolitics and the economic system. We are left only with the potential outcomes. The NATO victory, where the global imperial hegemon succeeds in making one of its key adversaries geopolitically irrelevant, or the NATO failure, where a different reactionary capitalist state prevails, but the concentration of power in the imperial core wanes. Ukraine is left a smoldering crater littered with landmines and unexploded ordinance which will take generations to recover - regardless of the outcome.
It is a truly fucked up situation, but the vast majority of the English-speaking Internet seems to be inundated with pro-Ukranian war propaganda, and at the very least we have been skeptical of the viability of this war effort from the outset. In a lot of places, simply commenting on the apparent state of affairs has been branded as defeatism and propaganda. I think in general, we aren’t excited about the prospect of the Russian Federation, as currently constituted, becoming more powerful - but embracing the United States and its allies to see it punished is not a viable path either.
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We don’t have to worry about Russia becoming “more powerful” because the only way they can achieve that under the current climate of unprecedented sanctions is by abandoning neoliberalism and adopting socialist policies. If they manage to overcome that, and that’s a big if, then they are already on their way towards socialism, so it doesn’t matter much to us leftists anyway.
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