• SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The KPRF was the only party that never stopped supporting and materially aid the people and the militias of Donbass over the years. Reminder that Putin wanted to return Donbass to Ukraine to make amends with Europe, and is now only being forced to take the matter into his own hands because he was denied from joining the fascist club of Europe.

          • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            8 years of waiting for Ukraine to start implementing Minsk agreement just to see NATO arming them instead.

            The fact is that both Merkel and Hollande (guarantors of Minsk II) have publicly admitted that Minsk was merely to buy time for Ukraine to militarize itself, and was not a serious attempt to pursue peace between both countries. Ukraine was going to invade Donbass and Crimea sooner or later, Russia only realized this after stupidly waiting for 8 years.

            Like it or not, United Russia is a capitalist party that wanted to increase business ties with Europe and make money. Do you seriously think that Putin invaded Ukraine not knowing they would get sanctioned by the entire Western world and losing hundreds of billions of their oligarchs’ money? The Minsk agreement was their compromise - to return Donbass to Ukraine in an attempt to make amends with Europe. The communists are the ones who continued their support and aid to the Donbass militias all these years.

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Do you seriously think that Putin invaded Ukraine not knowing they would get sanctioned by the entire Western world and losing hundreds of billions of their oligarchs’ money?

              I’ve heard people say that United Russia is made up of two main components - the Oligarchs and the Siloviki (the security and intelligence complex). Occasionally they struggle for power internally but since Putin is strongly of the silovik background, the oligarchs have been subordinated to the siloviki for a long time.

              I don’t understand the complexities of Russian politics enough to have a firm view, but it’s possible that the Oligarchs losing a bunch of money (and therefore power) actually benefitted the Siloviki faction inside United Russia. That goes hand in hand with the idea that by sanctioning the Oligarchs, the West actually threw away their best chance at overthrowing Putin internally via some sort of Oligarch-backed coup.

              Edit: preemptive apologies to Russian speakers for probably butchering the grammatical forms.

            • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              The fact is that both Merkel and Hollande (guarantors of Minsk II) have publicly admitted that Minsk was merely to buy time for Ukraine to militarize itself, and was not a serious attempt to pursue peace between both countries.

              Nitpick but I see this claim a lot but I don’t buy it. Mostly because I don’t believe Germany would plan so heavily around Russian gas if it knew the war was inevitable. I’m inclined to think they’re impling it to look like they knew what they were doing and cover their own asses for negotiating a failed agreement, while appealing to an audience that is (for the most part) uncritically supportive of Ukraine. I also think its a pretty big stretch to characterize their words as “publically admitting it was not a serious agreement.” What Merkel said was,

              Then, in order to prevent even worse things, everyone signed this agreement. Was it possible to stop the war then? This question is no longer relevant. I believe that the Minsk agreements gave Ukraine more time to develop between 2014 and 2021.

              What she’s saying is that regardless of whether or not it was possible to achieve peace through the negotiations, they were still beneficial to Ukraine in buying time. That’s not the same thing as saying they were done in bad faith.

              I think the Russian charactization of this quote is trying to paint a picture of Western governments as highly co-ordinated, when the reality is more complex. Germany isn’t holding Ukraine’s leash, the US had to blow uo Nord Stream because the Germans weren’t willing to co-operate, etc. There’s bumbling, competing interests at play.

              • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Mostly because I don’t believe Germany would plan so heavily around Russian gas if it knew the war was inevitable.

                Yes I understand what you’re saying, but it needs to be reminded that the post-2009 German economic recovery was highly dependent on cheap Russian gas import. There is simply no alternative, Germany struck gold with Russia selling them cheap gas with euro as the currency of transaction. It was cheap energy that allowed Germany to preserve its high labor wages. That, or expensive energy with depressed wages (like many Asian countries do). No other way around that.

                What I think actually happened though (and there are many circumstantial evidence to suggest this), was that Germany was absolutely convinced that the combined sanctions of the world’s largest economies (US + EU) would absolutely demolish Russia’s economy within months, if not weeks, which they often deride as one that is smaller than Italy’s GDP. In their chauvinistic mind, there is no way that a weak economy like Russia’s could ever survive such powerful sanction forces of theirs. With the collapse of the Russian economy, they’d be able to actually carve up Russia’s resources for themselves. In other words, they got greedy.

                The EU responses after the war started support this hypothesis. Instead of advocating for ceasefire, the EU continued to pile up more and more sanctions against Russia, somehow hoping that just one more sanction would actually bring Russia to its knee. And they kept waiting and waiting and didn’t see what they expected to happen.

                It also wasn’t helped by the fact that Western propaganda churned out in support of Ukraine had distorted their frame of reference, often painting a picture of Russia on the brink of collapse, and it would not surprise anyone that their politicians and bureaucrats actually bought into that. Then, you also have someone like George Soros making headlines saying “Russia would not be able to stop exporting their gas because otherwise their wells will freeze, so Europe just need to hold out a little longer and wait for the Russians to come begging again.” Many European industrialists didn’t even see the perils of their own sanctions until it was too late.

                • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  I’ve had this conversation before but I find it extremely implausible that the West planned all of this out in advance and the lynchpin of the entire plot was being able to destroy Russia with sanctions alone. Again, Germany wasn’t even willing to fully participate, and they had to resort to some pretty desperate measures after the pipeline was destroyed. Nothing was done to ensure India’s cooperation, and they were saber-rattling with China, neither of which makes sense if they were planning on all this.

                  I also haven’t heard any real explanation for what caused this miscalculation, other than pure stupidity and buying into their own propaganda. I think this is the same flawed analysis behind the initial point that I disputed. When a politician says something you can’t just take it at face value, even when it fits into your narrative and makes them look bad, you still have to consider why they’re saying it, what they’re trying to accomplish, and who they’re trying to appeal to. When they started doing sanctions, obviously they would say they thought they would work, but this indicates nothing about their actual beliefs. They were just trying to drum up support for the sanctions, there’s no reason why they’d say, “Well, who knows if these will work or not” if they’re trying to get people to support them. Very rarely do politicians say something just because they think it’s true.

                  The narrative that fits actual events better without requiring abject stupidity and actions contrary to the actors’ own interests, is that Germany did not expect a full scale war and did not plan for losing Nord Stream 2. The outbreak of war came as a surprise to a lot of people, including the majority of this site, and Merkel did not have a crystal ball. The ceasefire was broken due to domestic pressure from the far-right, plus international pressure from the US, which did not assume sanctions would work, but rather saw extended bloodshed as a possibility and did not care, due to the profits it would mean for the military-industrial complex and not caring at all about the lives of Ukrainians. There are internal fractures within NATO and within NATO states, due to competing class interests, it’s not one big conspiracy working together.

                  • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    Why do you think it would need to be a conspiracy? The Europeans simply didn’t see Russia as a potent threat and felt entitled to not giving Russia the respect it deserves. This attitude was all too common during the lead up to Ukraine signing the EU Association Agreement which then led to the Maidan coup. The crass European behavior can be seen as them not taking Russia seriously.

                    For Europe, Russia is simply a gas station with an economy smaller than Italy. If Italy is barely surviving in the EU, you don’t even have to think about what would happen to Russia when both US and EU combine their economic forces whose GDP is many fold higher than Russia’s.

                    In other words, they perceive Russia as a nuisance that can be easily crushed when worst comes to worst i.e. a war broke out. No need to anticipate for what will happen in a war when you already see yourself as an economic powerhouse against a tiny struggling economy and has the power to turn it into a pariah state in a matter of weeks, which would then end the war.

                  • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    Russia was following Minsk 2 much, much closer than Ukraine was, who had tens of thousands of cease fire violations. Its not a “both sides didn’t follow it” situation. It’s a “one side was acting in bad faith to buy time to militarize and always fully intended to attack eventually vs. the other side just didn’t want to have to deal with the whole situation and wanted it to chill out”

                  • Farman [any]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    No they didnt. The obama regime was already thretening european companies that planned to invest in iran after the deal was suposedly in effect and before trump won.

              • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                This always seems like a poorly based position to me. All Russia wants would’ve been guaranteed by successful implementation of the agreement. What part of the Minsk agreements did Russia not adhere to?

          • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            the invasion was a terrible idea that has greatly harmed Russia and Russian interests

            speaking a bit soon, aren’t we? Also we’ll never get to see what the alternative was.

            VASTLY worsened Russia’s strategic position vis a vis the west.

            USSR asked to join NATO in 1954. They were told “no.” Then NATO let west germany in and appointed a bunch of “former” nazis to key positions. Russia tried to join NATO in 2002. Were told “no.” Russia supported America in its reactionary “war on terror.” and that still didn’t tighten Russia’s relationship with “the west.” turns out the only thing that can make Russia have a better relationship with the west is balkanizing themselves, breaking up into dozens of tiny republics, and privatizing everything, because the west’s vision for Yugoslavia is the same vision it has for Russia. Turns out there is nothing Russia can do to have a better relationship with the west. Because the west isn’t mutually interested in a better relationship. The west is interested in balkanizing and privatizing former soviet nations. To punish them for having the audacity for being socialist once upon a time. To make sure it never happens again. To turn them into neocolonies. Ukraine has tried to have a better relationship with the west. What did it get them? It got them to sacrifice themselves by the thousands in a western proxy war in exchange for not even a NATO membership. Ukraine is getting balkanized and privatized on NATO’s behalf.

            Oh, and the sanctions? They aren’t working. Russia is still selling gas to Europe, just through third parties. The entire situation is a reactionary shitshow, and the chief responsibility lies with the imperial core for deliberately instigating the conflict for years and years and years. Russia’s options were to allow itself to get slowly encircled, or to ruin its “reputation” with a bunch of reactionary capitalist nations. It chose the latter.

            Russia is reactionary and capitalist too? No shit! How did that happen? The west was gleeful when the Russian federation came into existence.

              • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                there was no good moves for russia, even fewer for ukraine. i don’t think of it in terms of good moves. I think of it in terms of russia and ukraine as they currently exist both being byproducts of imperialism.

                Also I don’t think we can really know if it chose the better of two bad moves because we cannot see what the alternative would have been, we can only speculate. I thought that was clear in the last post.

          • tuga [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            There is no evidence that Russia ever seriously meant to give up its influence over the D/LPRs.

            Minsk what? Ok no evidenc-Minsk 2 what?

            Ya’ll could have a Minsk 3 and then 4 years of ukraine bombing people they supposedly want to reintegrate into their country and still find it hard to fault the ukranian state

          • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            That’s what the Minsk agreements were all about.

            In the 12-point protocol included the adoption of the “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts” that was passed in Ukraine’s parliament in September 2014. It would grant increased autonomy to the local governments in Donbass. And as you will note, this was a bill from the Ukrainian parliament - meaning that Donbass will be returned to Ukraine but with the conditions of having more local autonomy.

            To elaborate further, the protests against the Maidan coup government stemmed from the fact that the very first act of the new regime was repealing the Kolesnycheno-Kivalov Language Law that was approved in 2012, which granted the regional language status to Russian and other languages. The Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine obviously saw it as an infringement on their language rights, and started to protest, which eventually devolved into a separatist movement and then a full-fledged civil war (most significantly fueled by the the Odessa Trade Union House massacre by the fascists).

            So, an important resolution to the conflict in Ukraine would be for the Donbass regions with Russian-speaking majority population to have autonomy when it comes to protecting their cultural identities, such that someone in Kyiv cannot simply impose a nationwide ban on certain languages without regards for the local population in the regions.

            Ukraine refused to implement Minsk.

        • christiansocialist [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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          I wonder what kind of parallels can be drawn with Ukraine now and China during WW2 (when the communists allied with the nationalists in order to fend off the Japanese). Perhaps strategically it makes sense for Russian communists to “support” Russia in order to stave off NATO. This would give more breathing room for leftist agitation inside of Russia (and eastern Ukraine for that matter, perhaps western Ukraine too I hope).

                • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  The shock therapy was done by the west to Russia. Are you saying that Russia should receive millions? That’s like blaming the massacre of Indonesian communists on the communists

                  • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    uh… i mean the massacre of indonesian communists wasnt done by the american military, it was done by the indonesians as a proxy of the west. the russian government started as a proxy of the west for shock therapy. they participated.

          • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            These exact parallels have been discussed here quite a bit. The class breakdown of China in WW2 was that the communists (representing the landless peasants and proletariat) built a temporary alliance with the national bourgeois (the local owners) in order to fight outside colonizers, invaders and the international bourgeois (global imperialist capital hegemony).

            Russia, Iran, Syria, Belarus, Brazil and others are currently representing the national bourgeois in this alliance with the proletariat states of China, Cuba, DPRK, Venezuela, Vietnam, etc. They are temporarily allied to defeat the greater enemy, the international bourgeois of imperialist capital (NATO, America, UK, EU, Israel, Anglo-nations).

        • I get the impression the DPRK’s support boils down to the fact that, if the US is bogged down supporting Ukraine, that’s less resources going to harass the North.

          Their support of Russia has zero impact on the status of the war as imperialist or not.

          • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            They have stated their position very clearly, you don’t need to go off “impressions”. They understand how anti-imperialism works. DPRK has never once in its history supported an imperialist war and have been on the correct side on basically every single conflict. They have a 100% track record in my view.

          • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Well every single western leftist poo pooed Syria and Russia for a decade, and now most realize that the anti-imperialists were correct and Syria/Russia were the side to be supported against the imperialists invaders and their proxies (ISIS, Turkey, US, etc). Just like Iraq should be supported against the US during the American invasion and Libya should have been supported while it was under attack. Nations being invaded by imperialists deserve critical support, regardless of if they are bourgeois capitalist states or not.

            Not all capitalist nations are imperialist.

            I’m going to trust DPRK’s assessment of the war over the westerners who have shown consistent patterns of chauvinist errors in regards to analysis of geopolitics. There’s a reason why Russia is allied with every single AES nation on Earth, do you really think every socialist nation is wrong and you have the perfect analysis from within the bowels of the empire?

              • Let me explain:

                So when the Minority Region is at War with the Nation state it “de Jure” belongs to

                Then THAT is the Imperialism. Serbia did Imperialism TO Kosovo … not Kosovo to Serbia … And Nato the intervene to Protect the Minority against the raging hate of the Majority) Same story with Ukriane , dont get confused … it is West Ukraine , that did the Imperialism TO the Russian Majority Eastern Ukraine

                • forbidding their media ,
                • forbidding Russian in Adminsitration Use ,
                • Forbidding the Consume of Russian Media,
                • othering them “Orcs” / Vatnik / Russian / Occupiers.
                • Burning them In Odessa
                • Bombarding them
                • Proudly proclaim you want to Cleanse them when you “retake the territories”

                Russia protects Its Minority from Racial Persecution by a Faschist Regime. No Imperialism.

                This is a Anti imperialsit Global war , You lack the Expertise to understand that , it is no problem … BRICS 11 , Africa , Saudia Arabia , India , Latin America , Turkey , Eagypt , Iran all Understand it perfectly… on the Street of Niamey , Quagadgou and Bamako , they all understand it. its only your Tiny Minority in the West that still have not figured out that 2014 comes chronologically before 2022. its a Fascinating Phenomenon… Maybe its the Vitamen D deficit they have in the West ? maybe thats makes “the West” so collectivly unable to understand , basic physical concepts like “CHRONOLGY” … and “CAUSE AND EFFECT”

                  • The problem with the theory that Russia only invaded to pre-empt a Ukrainian invasion of the Donbass or to protect Russian-speaking minorities (and nothing else) is that the initial Russian push was, above all, towards Kyiv

                    i dont accept this reasoning to protect your minority you try to topple the regime … ???

                    If this was true, then why would Russia have committed so many documented atrocities in Russian-speaking areas during the invasion?

                    name a specific one thats not "atrocity propaganda bullshit like "they aim Missile on Residential blocks and graveyards … etc… . Stop try to argue on the baseline of knowledge thats “American thats watch TV” , i now what they tell you on TV …

                    Enemy Bad !.. Does bad things !.. We Godd .!. do good things !

      • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Most of their youth wing literally split over supporting the war. when at best the only people worth supporting even critically was the LPR and DPR (and Putin couped their nascent proto-Socialist governments almost as soon as they formed.)

        I mean it’s right there ffs “Revolutionary Defeatism”

        • RedDawn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Revolutionary defeatism is when I root for NATO to finish what they started in their quest to destroy Russia so they can then move on to China

          • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            no one here doesn’t agree that NATO should stop arming ukraine and withdraw, the rhetorical sheen of ‘critical support’ or ‘defeatism’ doesn’t change the priorities of western leftists, but it gives everyone around here endless excuses to lecture each other about the way they talk about it being more “marxist” and “materialist”. it doesn’t matter what we call it, all that matters is pressuring natio governments to stop perpetuating the war

      • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Hey at least they helped that Communist guy in Ukraine that lost his eye and had a red star etched into his back by the Nazis there