SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]
but Russia hasn’t been able to get the kind of [material] support from its allies that Ukraine has
It hasn’t needed to. Ukraine wouldn’t be a functional state at all by this point were it not for the tens of billions of dollars in aid as well as all the military equipment slowly depleting the west. Russia on the other hand, has been doing quite well in holding it’s own economically despite the sanctions and in holding the literal defensive line against all the NATO weaponry. It’s a nonsensical comparison to make.
Have you even been following the war at all?! ive seen 4k videos of Russia bombing Ukrainian Civilians for months now
Russia has been extremely restrained in destroying Ukrainian infrastructure, especially in the first year of the war. It has also made strong efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Considering it wants to incorporate the zones where there is the greatest conflict into being part of the Russian Federation, it’s not like this is surprising either. I’m sure this sounds shocking or ludicrous to someone who has been closely following along, and I do take your word for it that you have. But there is a very good reason for that. To explain:
I have also been following the war extremely closely since the beginning, including from countless telegram channels of people on the ground on both sides in addition to official outlets and what I’ve seen is a massive amount of ridiculous false propaganda spewing out of Ukraine’s official outlets that the west eats up and repeats without question, often amplifying the false parts and making up even more. It is to the benefit of both the current Ukrainian rulers and the west to make this propaganda, so I’m not saying Ukraine is doing this to the west, I’m saying they’re both complicit. Yes, I’ve seen plenty of propaganda from Russia too, obviously, but it is nowhere near the same scale or level of outright lying about what’s actually happening on the ground, not because Russia is somehow above all that (it’s definitely not) but because it has far less need for such false propaganda. (It is also arguably not as good at propaganda as the West which has the most developed propaganda apparatus in the history of humanity).
There is material reasons behind all of this. Ukraine relies almost entirely on NATO countries for its ability to wage war, this is not in question. It therefore needs to sell that war as not only just, but winnable - and whatever you you think of how just it is, it is definitely not winnable in terms of taking back the currently occupied regions let alone Crimea. That will simply never happen. NATO also has a vested interest in Ukraine winning this war, and in many ways is NATO’s proxy war, so it also has an interest in pushing this propaganda on the people of its member nations. However, Russia has ramped up production of its war machine (and is highly self sufficient despite what some western propaganda might say about them having to fight with shovels lol) and importantly is not dependent on other countries to wage this war. It doesn’t need to sell this war internationally and It doesn’t even need to sell this war to the Russian populace who already broadly support it. Hence the large difference in amount and severity of false propaganda. If you have been following the war closely, but you have been relying entirely or mostly on Ukrainian, Western, and NATO information (which is understandable because it’s really all you get offered in the west), you have been closely following a massively lopsided story being told to you by someone who isn’t just distorting fact, but outright lying.
Since you specifically mentioned bombing of infrastructure, here is one example I just happened on in a different thread today. It’s from the New York Times, which has been one of the cringiest large network liars throughout the conflict, but even here they are making an admission that what was claimed to be Russian attack was actually Ukraine itself. This happens all the time but usually admissions aren’t made or are done very quietly so everyone believes the first story of “look at how horrible Russia is!” My suspicion is that admissions like these are starting to happen more often because there is beginning to be a shift in the narrative and propaganda as it becomes increasingly clear how unwinnable this is for Ukraine and NATO is beginning to look to pull support.
NYT: Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy
From their original article:
A Russian missile strike in Kostyantynivka that killed at least 17 and injured more than 30 others was one of the deadliest in months.
There are tons of other examples of this, but I don’t currently have access to the laptop I saved all my sources on. Anyway, the reality is that you are being lied to constantly about the crimes Russia is supposedly committing, at the very least, the severity of them. And it’s helpful to understand why.
I know I’ll get called a Russian bot/shill for pointing these things out. Whatever. I have no love for Russia. Fuck Putin and the reactionary Russian government. But I really do despise the intensity of misinformation I’ve been witnessing and how it gets repeated by genuinely well-meaning people around me (I’m in the west too) who only have access to lies that are perpetuating death and human misery.
How do rate hikes signal that Putin is being undermined by the central bank? Don’t most countries attempt to raise capital in the short term during wars?
I’m not as versed in the economic nuances as the person I quoted above, but from what I do understand, I think your confusion comes from conflating finance capitalism with industrial capitalism. Finance capitalism in Russia has more interests tied to western interests. All the sanctions hurt them, though the sanctions did not hurt the industrial capitalists nearly as much because Russia still has great productive capacity (unlike the US whose foreign policy is almost completely ruled by finance capital now). It is the productive capacity that is being consolidated in Russia under the Russian government, which has been nationalizing a lot of industry - something we commies tend to see as a good thing. I’m sure others with a better understanding of the economics could give you a more precise/accurate answer. Reading some more Michael Hudson would do us both some good. Still, it does not undermine the fact that a victory for Russia would be beneficial for everyone who is not a NATO country, or an aspiring one, it would be beneficial to the global working class.
But I want to ask you the other side of a question you raised: what happens to left wing movements in Eastern Europe if Russia completely annexes Ukraine? It creates a migration crisis and a new “threat” on the eastern border.
It doesn’t create a new threat. The threat has been existing for a while which is why the SMO became necessary. This will be a problem going forward, but it already was, and would have been worse had Russia done nothing as NATO continued to train Nazi paramilitary groups for that express purpose, continue to spread deeply racist Russophobic propaganda among the populace, crush any whiff of dissent and/or leftist, and put military bases and Nukes within a distance that Moscow couldn’t take them down before they reached the capital city.
At least this way, the Russians living in Eastern and Southern Ukraine won’t be ethnically cleansed, but instead protected and become part of the Russian Federation, as they overwhelmingly want to do. This problem you’re describing about terrorism happening won’t only be directed towards Russia, either. When the war is inevitably lost by Ukraine, there will be a lot of Nazis who are going to justifiably blame the west and we will be looking at some hideous terror actions against western Europeans.
As for leftist movements in Eastern Europe, it can’t be much worse than it is now, where they are all completely repressed, made illegal, and in Ukraine, shot as traitors. I highly doubt Russia is going to “completely annex Ukraine” because anything they might gain from annexing it in its entirety is easily outweighed by the many difficulties of doing so. I think as far as territory under Russian control, Russia will be happy with Crimea, the current contested Oblasts and perhaps a bit more where there is actual support for Russia by the Ukrainians living there. However, that doesn’t mean Russia wouldn’t demand regime change in Ukraine, making sure that a government is installed that is not frothingly hostile to them, will not pursue NATO membership under any circumstances, and will not be pro-west in general. In such a scenario, I don’t see any reason why leftist parties that are now illegal will not be able to begin to operate again, especially seeing as leftist parties tend not to be pro-western for very obvious reasons. The government Russia is trying to (and succeeding at) taking down is extremely fascist and there is literally no hope for anything even the tiniest bit leftwing to gain any sort of foothold there. It’s impossible to predict how things like that will percolate out of this war, but to think that the status quo, or the pre-war situation in Ukraine was better for leftists is just not knowing anything about the recent history of the region.
Russia being ultimately victorious would indeed be good for leftist projects in that region. But it is nothing compared to how much better it would be for leftist projects in the rest of the world. It is in the rest of the Global South where hope can truly flourish and I’m totally fucking here for it. That’s a whole other effort post, but also hopefully it’s even more obvious why that’s the case.
Certainly not that I know of, and as I mentioned in my other comment, it seems so obviously counterproductive, I would look at it with an extremely skeptical eye if someone from the Kremlin did say something weird as hell like that.
No, as usual, it’s just western projection and lies. Because Russia did attack places in western Ukraine early on, NAFO types take that as undeniable proof that Russia wanted to take all of Ukraine and thought it could do so in a week but failed (like that weeks Saturday morning cartoon villain, Putin shaking his fist but promising he’ll be back next week). So it becomes part of the canonical text of The Narrative. It also allows NATO/the west/US to claim they didn’t actually lose the war because “Look! See, Russia didn’t take over all of Ukraine like we know they wanted to! We won afterall!” When Ukraine’s military finally collapses, and Russia’s terms don’t include making the entirety Ukraine part of Russia proper, that’s what everyone in the west will be using as their strongest copium.
It’s so fucking funny when the geopolitics understanders who have been drip-fed NATO propaganda state the clear opposite of reality and think they made an insightful comment.
Russia has all but won the military conflict, as has been made clear by this utter failure of a “counteroffensive.” Russia is doing better economically than before the SMO, despite the supposed economic wunderwaffen sanctions that only backfired and hurt NATO countries. Russia has only gained support by most of the rest of the world and has showed the global south that the US/NATO are indeed paper tigers. Russia has all the leverage now. So yes, for Russia to compromise right now would be bad for them because they don’t need to compromise, they can keep going as they have been and eventually have their demands met, or Ukraine/NATO can recognize they’ve lost and make a bid for peace by acquiescing to Russia’s demands before more lives are needlessly lost.
Ukraine on the other hand will be crippled for decades regardless of how things pan out. Ukraine is now deeply indebted to Western countries, has already had all national assets sold off, has had a major chunk of its working-age population killed or maimed, and is beholden to a fascist, nazi-worshipping government.
As for Germany, yeah they have been working to the end of hobbling themselves for decades too by allowing their remaining industrial capacity to be completely gutted, kowtowing to their US masters that bombed their infrastructure to prevent them ever again getting oil from ‘The Bad Country,’ they have irreparably removed nuclear power as an option even as they’re facing an impending energy crisis (in large part because of aforementioned no-oil-from-bad-country), and are right now also sliding towards right wing populism.
i think we mostly care about people, and place humans, sometimes other animals (usually pets), childrens’ toys, and occasionally some machines or fictional characters into the “person” or “not person” buckets depending on our personal attachment and a bunch of arbitrary social norms.
You think “we” do that? I don’t. I make it a point to carefully consider who should be given my empathy or condemnation based on material reality.
I’m not entirely sure what your point is to be honest. Yeah, unfortunately there are plenty of people who base their sphere of empathy not on a materialist examination of the world but on societal norms, and that’s the problem here (along many of the problems we rightly rail about as leftists). It’s what I mean when I talk about arbitrary lines differentiating the human animal from all others to justify the way some humans treat all others.
Are you equating pets to children’s toys? Hopefully you’re just pointing out how ridiculous that is? One of those things is a lifeform that has the capacity to experience their existence, the other is an inanimate object no different than a rock. These things are not comparable. Same thing with a machine. There is a material difference between an animal (homo sapien or pig) and a machine, just as there is between a human and an LLM. That some people might be so ignorant as to think an LLM and a human being deserve equal consideration and empathy is not a valid or coherant argument that sentient beings who happen not to be human are ok to torture and kill.
You can call it person-hood if you like, but that just obsfucates things because people tend to think of “person” as “human” and what we’re talking about here is the capacity to suffer and to experience, which is not exclusive to humanity. It’s just another example of using the bias that’s already built in to language as a means to prove a point through circular reasoning, something we should be familiar with and wary of as leftists.
A less circle-jerking version of this bait post might be a pig versus terry schaivo’s corpse being kept “alive” by a heap of medical devices.
How is that less circle-jerking? Why is this version “circle-jerking” at all? The difference in either version is a lever to choose between something that can experience and suffer and something that can’t.
Same vibes as supposed progressives who are sharing pro-Israel PragerU vids after criticizing PragerU on other topics.
Ideally every comrade is vegan, but if for whatever reason you cannot be or are working towards it then at the absolute least you can support those who are and accept that it is the morally correct position instead of all this hoop jumping
Sorry for the cliche response, but really. This.