Me getting banned from lemmygrad entirely for calling this shit out.
Oh man, that reminds me I have a screenshot of a tankie saying "mark my words, Ukraine will not exist in 1 month" from like... 3 months ago? And I really wanna follow up on that but I don't think my sarcasm will play well with their essay writing sign up process.
It's insane. It's international politics as team sports.
Oh man, that reminds me I have a screenshot of a tankie saying “mark my words, Ukraine will not exist in 1 month” from like… 3 months ago? And I really wanna follow up on that but I don’t think my sarcasm will play well with their essay writing sign up process.
They'll just say something along the lines of "Well right now Russia is ACTUALLY fighting NATO and Ukraine has ceased to exist, so checkmate, shitlib"
I had a guy on reddit WAAAY back when the war was just starting (when it was clear they would invade, but either had not yet or had literally just begun hours before) tell me all the Ukrainian citizens had to do was not resist and accept their Russian citizenship, the Russian soldiers were their ethnic bretheren, it would all be over nearly bloodlessly in three days, and of course Putin would not harm anyone if he didn't have to.
I was in disbelief that he believed this was true, or that he could believe there was any possibility they'd just stand by and let themselves be invaded. A month or so later I dug out the thread and called him out for his ridiculous bullshit (which had already been ridiculous bullshit when he first said it) and he gave me some version of "any bloodshed is the fault of Ukraine" and cursed me out.
I fathom neither how anyone sees Ukraine as anything other than the victim in this war, nor how anyone could ever have thought this would be quick and bloodless.
I've been trying to keep an open mind about the hexbear people even if I disagree with them a heap. One thing I don't understand is the constant defense of their stances with 'critical support' I can buy into some of their arguments but like, shit, I hate the west, too, but I'll 'critically support' them and their non aggression pact over whatever the hell Russia is doing.
There's no communism without liberation from capitalism. The reactionary communists-in-name-only serve the capital with their support of Russia/China/etc
There is a long way to go, both in the war and after it, but I wish all the best to those fighting for a better Ukraine
Be it the US, Russia, China, or whatever. All imperialism sucks. Let people live however they see fit between their own borders. This is why I never understood tankies. Why call out US imperialism but stop short at calling Russia out
bad use of the meme format
Like even at best do these people have anything else going on in their life holy shit.
It's a very messy situation there in Ukraine, and my support goes to whatever will stop it. I have no sides in this game, my close ones are on both sides of the actual conflict and this is terrifying. Stop fighting, and then make talks.
That's a disclaimer.
Now one correction on the post: what happens is not ethnic cleansing, and we should not call it that way, for it shows incompetence and may hurt us when talking about real ethnic cleansings, like Myanmar and whatnot. No one pushes Ukrainians away from their land or seeks to genocide the population (even though, as in any war, civilians get hurt dramatically). The proper wording would be forceful reintegration, which, I gotta stress, is super bad, but it is not cleansing.
Ukrainans do have an identity of their own, an identity that doesn't go anywhere, including in those migrated to Russia long ago. Sure, Putin's plan is to reinstate the idea of a brotherly nation, one we shared our core history with throughout almost entire timeline, but even if you look from the position of "turning Ukrainians into Russians" (which is still not how ethnic cleansing is defined), this is simply not possible. Again, I'm speaking this as Ukrainian AND Russian by bloodline, I know what I'm talking about.
What really happens is an invasion, an occupation of the country in order to reinstate a puppet state which has been there, partially, before 2014. It is more akin to USSR driving tanks through Eastern Europe than anything else. Essentially making "friendly" puppet regimes as a form of political control. Very sad Putin didn't learn from past mistakes, doomed to repeat them through a never-before-seen massacre - the one my people, on each side, struggle with.
Russians steal Ukrainian children, they've multiple times been caught mass executing civilians too.. Their side iterates that Ukraine doesn't exist, like Putin implied.
Putin wants to eradicate the Ukrainian national identity.
The official narrative is that Ukrainian government is illegitimate and ruled by Nazis, abd the country needs to be "liberated" from their rule. It doesn't strongly assume destruction of Ukraine the state, but clearly indicates that Russia or its puppets should be in charge.
And even then, there are many stateless nations, and I don't think Ukrainian identity is the one that is easy to erase.
No one pushes Ukrainians away from their land or seeks to genocide the population (even though, as in any war, civilians get hurt dramatically).
For starters, US press releases should not be your go-to source of factual information. Ever. It's like going to the site of Moscow Kremlin.
Here's a press release from the United Nations still confirming your point of view, but which is way more credible: https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15395.doc.htm
But even it mentions those things mostly through Ukrainian-sided official statements, which include things like "million Crimean kids deported to Moscow since 2014" (sorry, what?), which destroys a lot of trust in the content of the statement.
Still, some children are taken to Russia, this is true, and a lot can be done differently. I support the idea to take kids from orphanages situated in a literal warzone (don't you?), but I don't like the idea of teaching them all things Russian, although it should be noted they are taken from the Donbass region which has always been heavily dominated by Russian, not Ukrainian, culture and language. Those people are and were already closer to Russia than to Ukraine, they have strong ties to Russia, which is why the separatist movements emerged there in the first place after 2014.
Same are the reasons Crimea has got into Russian occupation with absolute majority of locals cheering and welcoming this (this is true, I've been on the ground at the time) - the region is dominated by ethnic Russians, and they never really had strong cultural ties to Ukraine in the first place.
Again, delivering those kids a more balanced picture would absolutely be amazing. But it is not literal conversion from Ukrainian culture to a Russian one.
Fuck off. The only way this ends is for Russians to learn to stop murdering their neighbors. There is one belligerent and one defendant. The belligerent must cease belligerent behavior.
I knew I'd get some knee-jerk hate here.
In an ideal world, revenge always finds a way, but this time the war can literally drag on till the last Ukrainian soldier, and who will stand to benefit from that?
Without international troops stepping in (which would be a hugely consequential escalation against a nuclear nation), Ukraine just really can't turn the tides of the war, which was clearly demonstrated by failure of the counter-offensive.
My point is, as much as I'd like Putin to respond for everything and borders set back to where they should be and reparations paid, this is not feasible. This is not gonna happen magically. And while people daydream of that outcome, thousands of others - my close ones among them - get killed, again and again, in a stupid stalemate that benefits no one and hurts everybody.
No one was there to stop US when they invaded half the world. No one is there to truly stop Russia. Because superpowers do that, and, as terrible as it is (and my sincere hope goes it can be solved in the future), your sheer determination to crash them and make them stop bullying their neughbors isn't enough.
We need to protect human's lives, we need to stop the bloodshed and negotiate real security guarantees for Ukraine - not from Russia, but from EU & US, so that attacking Ukraine ever again would be a military and political suicide.
Stop your revenge lust and think of actual people, right there, forced to both sides of the frontline. They die. They die for nothing. They don't turn the tides.
I support Putin, because there is no practical alternative in the near future.
It's not like Russia has a well-oiled transition machine where if he were to leave office, everything would smoothly shift to a new regime that brought unicorns and love to all.
We'd be rolling the dice on a rogue's gallery:
Maybe we'd get someone Yeltsin-ish, who is buddy-buddy with the West by allowing the widescale plundering of Russia's assets, and further driving their quality-of-life metrics into the dirt, starting the cycle that leads to another strongman.
Maybe we'd get someone even more militant than Putin, especially if the war leaves them spiritually depantsed. Launches nukes or directly engages a NATO member. Putin may have a taste for blood, but he's not on a suicide mission.
Or maybe we'd just get someone incapable of holding the federation together, creating a new Balkan-style slow-motion crisis. Whee! Squabbling new nuclear states with the GNP of a Carl's Jr. franchise and unknown leadership... that's not going to cause proliferation issues.
I still believe there are options to wind down the war, but the West will refuse anything that smacks of a concession for as long as possible. Conversely, I suspect what Putin wanted from day 1 was some form of formal concession-- the fact he got foreign powers to give up something is more important than the specifics delivered, for the sake of displaying his power at home.
This is exactly the type of logic used by conservatives to resist any progressive agenda, and one of the many ways redfash unmask themselves
Average Pootin supporter
Putin is big part of the reason why there is no alternative. It won't emerge specifically because of him.
Which, in turn, means we have to consciously go through the path of uncertainty (i.e. fight Putin) before it hits us anyway. Waiting is delaying the inevitable, all while people die and economy is crumbling.
