because Putin wants more power

They managed to get a Russia loving president in US

Holy moly “great men historiography” and “Russia is behind everything I hate” both in one single comment, that’s quite the feat. Great job firstly ignoring the material analysis and geopolitics of the situation and trying to explain history as “big man makes decision”, and then falling for the racist trope that the USA isn’t capable of electing a fascist without external interference, as if the US wasn’t founded in the fascist principles of the Lebensraum and slavery->segregation

If Ukraine falls

Ukraine will not fall. The objective of Russia in this war isn’t pure expansionism further to the west, it’s the imposition of its political principles and strategic desires in its sphere of influence. The Russian government knows it cannot control successfully for a long period of time the now (understandably) anti-Russian radicalised sections of central and western Ukraine, what it wants are concessions in geopolitical and strategic terms. Mark my words: the war in Ukraine will stop sooner than later, and after it, only some sections in eastern Ukraine will be annexed to Russia.

Furthermore your reasoning of “if this nation falls, there’s gonna be the next”, is exactly the way Russia feels about its geopolitical allies. In 1990, there was an agreement that NATO wouldn’t push beyond Germany, and that has been violated first with Poland and then with more countries. Why push a US-backed military alliance to the borders of the US-declared main geopolitical enemy? What consequences do you expect from that? Imagine a Russian-led military coalition pushing for the annexion of Mexico.

Ukraine rejected the US offer because it didn’t offer any safety guarantees

Regardless of safety guarantees, the resources of western Ukraine will be plundered by the NATO block, whether it be EU or the USA I cannot know, but mark my words when you see the economic situation of Ukraine in 2030

This is just a reiteration of what we’ve already seen in the russian empire and in the USSR

Comparing the Russian Empire and the USSR is the most ahistorical thing you can possibly do. During the Russian Empire and for all of history before that, Ukraine was a people without a nation. Oppressed, without representation, without borders, without a right to education or even learning to read in their language.

The Bolsheviks, with their first constitution in 1917, granted the right to self-determination and secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire, which Lenin referred to as “the prison of peoples”. Quite literally after Poland seceded in this legal fashion, the Polish government decided it wanted to return to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth borders, and proceeded to unilaterally invade Ukraine and part of modern Belarus. It was the Red Army of the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, that fought off the Polish invasion and established a lasting Ukrainian People’s Republic for the first time in history.

This wasn’t without controversy: while Lenin argued for the right to representation and to a Ukrainian Republic within the USSR, others like Rosa Luxembourg argued for a united, more homogeneous sort of socialist soviet nationality that outgrew former nationalisms. It is partially thanks to Lenin that Ukraine ended up having its own borders, administration and representation.

I know what you’ll say: “but Holodomor! Genocide against Ukrainians!”. The famine of the USSR was a sad and unintended consequence of bad policy during the collectivisation/dekulakization process of the early 30s. Millions of people died both within Ukraine and without it, especially as well in Central Asia and southern Russia. As bad as it was, and as avoidable as one can argue it may have been, there’s simply no evidence of any intent of attack towards Ukrainian people, it’s not precedented by anything similar, and it’s not followed by anything similar in the entire history of the USSR.

In those decades and the ones to come, Ukraine would obtain and solidify its own nationality, people would for the first time obtain generalised literacy in their own language, the right to study in their language up to university level, a majority of publications (both journalistic and literary) in Ukrainian, and the very next president of the USSR Nikita Khruschchyov would be Ukrainian.

Attempting to construe a history of oppression of Ukrainians in the USSR is nothing but fictitious, anti-communist and russophobic propaganda, meant to create a divide between Ukrainians and Russians. There are clear geopolitical reasons to do so, and there are clear reasons why Ukrainians are very much afraid or simply hate Russians, because of the modern proto-fascist state that the Russian Republic has become. But creating a line between this capitalist country, the socialist USSR, and the feudalist Russian Empire, is simply an attempt to divide Eastern Europe further and to push Ukraine towards the EU and away from Russia. This point can be argued for without resorting to russophobic and anticommunist myths. We’re smarter than this.

it’s surrender

That’s generally what happens when, you know, you’re losing a war.

If Russia withdrew their troops, there would be peace immediately

That’s technically true. However, Russia uses military force in its sphere of influence for a reason, not solely because Putin bad (which he is, I’m a commie and Putin is fascist-adjacent at best).

Russia, like all big capitalist countries, wants to secure a sphere of influence in which it can do easy trade, influence the politics, and generally have support from these countries. The US does this for example with western Europe through NATO, and with less diplomatic methods by supporting coups and invading other countries. China does this through economic trade and through massive investment projects. Russia is in a weak position internationally, barely recovered economically from the dismantling of the USSR, and it’s surrounded by former soviet republics very much in a similar plane (barely economically recovered from the 90s crisis as a consequence of the dismantling of the USSR).

These post-soviet republics, such as Ukraine or Georgia, adopted capitalism (as Russia did) in a very quick and disorderly fashion, and the resulting oligarchs and capitalist owners ended up fumbled in a mix of pro-russian and pro-european/US positions.

The EU and the USA both exert pressure on these countries to try and bring them to their side. Being economically and politically stronger, they can use trade, diplomacy, intelligence and economic means to alienate these countries front the Russian sphere of influence. Russia, in a more precarious and weaker economic and political position, simply doesn’t have the means to maintain the diplomatic, economic and intelligence means to maintain these countries aligned to itself.

The war in Ukraine, much as the interference in Georgian and Romanian elections by the EU, mustn’t be understood as a struggle between freedom and oppression. It’s sadly just a struggle between two capitalist empires, namely Russia and US/EU, fighting for the control of smaller countries that they want aligned to themselves.

Once Russia doesn’t have the means to economically, diplomatically and through intelligence, to influence its former sphere of influence into staying by its side, the only option left is the military route. The US and the EU know this, and they keep trying to mess with Russia’s sphere of influence for gains to their empires. The reality is that there is no good side and no bad side: it’s just struggle between opposing empires.

So yes, technically if Russia withdrew its troops, there would be peace. But this peace would mean that firstly the surrounding regions around Russia, and Russia itself, would become colonies and vassal states of the western world. It wouldn’t mean “freedom” for Ukraine, as we can see by the exploitative contract for the minerals of Ukraine that the US offers. If you think the EU will offer something substantially less exploitative towards Ukrainians, you’re wrong.

Ukraine, sad as it is, as long as it remains a state between empires, will suffer the effects of both. And only socialism in Europe and Russia can offer a meaningful response to this.

Point systems that prevent you from air travel or entering other provinces because you dared criticize the almighty government

That’s… just not real… Your understanding of Chinese policy comes from curated western sources with vested interests in putting a dystopian and totalitarian understanding of China and its government in our countries’ people (we’re both westerners). There are systems in place to prevent certain convicted criminals from freely moving around there country, but that has little to do with criticising the party.

Regardless, big data on traffic doesn’t imply knowledge about the particular vehicles and drivers inside said vehicles. You’re just going ahead and assuming “dystopian control of people” because it’s China.

So let’s push for ramping up the military industrial complex in Europe instead?

The horrible and dystopian part for the comment above yours is the fact that it happens in China, which is ontologically bad and oppressive

Your take is that changing traffic management is a violation of human rights?

What’s your solution to that

And yet. All of this feels like a seismic shit prefacing going to war

And what’s the solution to that? Further militarization of the US and Europe? Or diplomacy and negotiations?

“Diplomacy dies”

What diplomacy has there been for the past 3 years of war?

We are workers as a class, not consumers, we work way more than the wealthy whereas they consume more. Our power resides in labor organising, unionisation, and mutual aid, not in consumption.

Neither of those were consumer boycotts though

Bottom 60% of earners in the US represent less than 25% of total consumption. The power is in labor and labor only, there’s a reason why we have plenty of historical examples of successful labor movements, not so much of consumer movements.

“Espouses but fails to uphold” sounds more like negligence to me. Negligence would be allowing fascism through inaction (like democrat administration). But the US does far worse than that (funding genocide and propping up fascism elsewhere)

While I agree, the discussion in other instances like .ml or hexbear is much more nuanced IMO (plenty of critical voices against Russia too, just not based on US State Dept. propaganda)

Seeing as you’re radicalised against Russia to that degree, any further discussion is useless, I won’t change your mind and you won’t change mine by making false claims of genocide and failing to understand the slightest nuance beyond US state department propaganda

I don’t defend the uncritical banning of non pro-western outlets or viewpoints carried out by .world mods, I’m asking them that if they ban comments for it, they should be open about it and admit that they will censor non-pro-western voices.

If attacks to civilian infrastructure and election interference are enough to claim war, Germany should be in the first instance at war with the US and Ukraine according to that logic, given the explosion of the Nordstream (much more important and evident than reported drinking water alteration or whatever you claim of DHL planes with incendiary devices). Also, Ukraine should be at war with the US for its interference in the election process in 2014, where the democratically elected leader was toppled in a blatant west-backed coup.

You know what Georgia and Ukraine have in common? They’re in the Russian sphere of influence area and have been for the past century. What’s happening is that the west keeps meddling in the Russian sphere of influence and Russia responds in the only way it can: militarily. Russia exhausted the possibilities of diplomacy with the west, warned repeatedly of the consequences of western-alignment of Ukraine (which, again, was done antidemocratically in 2014). That’s the reason why Russia invaded Ukraine, because its diplomacy, soft power and interference were weaker than those of the west in maintaining a sphere of influence. Believe it or not, history didn’t begin in 2022.

The EU should stop the US-directed meddling in Russia’s sphere of influence, and start building relations with the countries that are actually sharing a continent with it. It’s just too racist and too subservient to US interests to do so.

Putin is our fascist problem and people appeasing Putin are also a part of the problem.

Putin is a fascist and that’s a problem, but he’s not the one pushing to cut our healthcare and education and pensions budgets, he does that in Russia. He’s not the one threatening our minorities and our women, he does that in Russia. Europe is more than capable of having fascism by itself without the help of Putin, and blaming everything on a Russian conspiracy is, well, a conspiracy. Russia isn’t nearly powerful or influential enough to be mostly responsible for the fascist problem in the EU, there are a lot more material conditions thst give raise to that.

Stop fucking cheering for war. Stop your warmongering attitudes, stop presenting Europe as the fighting ground for WW3, you DO NOT WANT to see war in the EU, and it’s absofuckinglutely not too late to go back.

No need for whataboutism when discussing the imperial tendencies and supremacy in the west.