- Ukraine says it has liberated four villages in the south-east, calling these the first settlements won back from Russia since Kyiv’s counter-offensive began
- On Monday morning, officials reported that “the national flag is once again waving” over Storozhove, in the Donetsk region
- A day earlier, footage showed Ukrainian troops celebrating in Blahodatne and Neskuchne - and a minister said nearby Makarivka was also taken
- The settlements are relatively small - and Moscow is yet to confirm any retreat
- The Institute for the Study of War backs up Kyiv’s claims, saying Ukraine captured “multiple settlements” along the frontline over the weekend
- On Saturday, President Zelensky acknowledged that the long-awaited counter-offensive was under way
ITT: Russian sympathisers coping
It’s good news; though, nothing spectacular like the earlier offensive. It’s to be expected though, the muscovites have had time to build up those defences.
Hopefully the exodus from Reddit will help drown out the authoritarian-worship here.
Yes, my Russian-sympathizing friends. You can certainly classify the actions of Russia and China as imperialist & bad too, and it will not detract from the imperialist & bad stuff the US or “the West” has done. Most humans can walk and chew gum at the same time, you can too!
Muh both sides!
What do you understand the word “Imperialist” to mean?
Wikipedia’s first paragraph is:
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing not only hard power (economic and military power), but also soft power (cultural and diplomatic power). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire.
Russia (and the Soviet Union) has had multiple rounds of imperialism throughout its history. Slicing bits off Ukraine and its continued occupation of parts of Georgia in the modern era certain counts as expansionism. It also exercises cultural power by using state controlled Russian-language media to influence both domestic and foreign populations.
Thanks for that, I was too lazy to respond to him. Glad someone else brought the receipts
Unfortunately receipts aren’t any good to someone who hasn’t achieved reading comprehension
Somebody who’s achieved reading comprehension would know that there are many theories of imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_imperialism
It’s shit like this that makes this one of the hardest wars to follow. Before that, it was Syria.
The Russian commanders, who were wrong to invade, have learned a lot since the initial invasion. It’s the same reason that Assads army was much better after they lost a lot of their soldiers. When you have a lot of your army die, on average, the ones remaining are the ones who managed to stay alive who, again on average, are now much more experienced combat troops.
The Russians did exactly what Ukraine did during the Russian offensive. They pulled back behind their minefields, and then used artillery to drop more mines on the assaulting force that was in the process of clearing mines. This was the same tactic that the Ukrainians used to great success that caused a bunch of Russian tanks to be blown up in columns in Vulhedar.
Remember, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. If the basis of your view of why you think a given side is losing is because you don’t like them, then you aren’t actually interested in the war. Just in cheerleading your team.
Honestly, I can’t understand the strategic goal of how the Ukrainians are running this particular offensive. It truly seems to be to spend as much Ukrainian blood to secure western financial and logistical support. Not to actually gain territory they can hold. At least, that’s my best guess with articles like this in the American media: Politico
The “Muscovites”?
Russians, without any double meanings that Russian sympathizers could jump in and say “aha, racists!” or “aha, russophobes!” over.
The two places in Russia that aren’t pro-Ukrainian war, are Moscow and St Petersburg.
Putins powerbase is sort of the equivalent to Trump or Erdogan. The people in the larger cities don’t like him, but the rural areas love him.
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Pretty sure that describes pretty much the entire planet now.
Wrong, the world stands with Russia. You’re in a bubble.
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Russophobe because he’s antiPutin and anti-invasion? Tf you smoking tankie
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Sure, you just keep gargling Putin’s cock and calling everyone else fascists. lmao. I’m a Marxist. Proud anti-imperialist. Full-on America-bad here. But I’m not going to defend a literal authoritarian dictator and an obvious war of aggression. You 🤡
Why do you libs always go with the homophobic insults?
Lmao sure. Keep simping for the dictator that literally locked up Pussy Riot and LGBTQ folks for existing. Your projection and false concern bullshit doesn’t work for people with more than two neurons to rub together.
Less of the homophobia dickhead.
This is America’s war.
Tell that to the Ukrainians, Putin apologist tankie fuck.
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LMFAO sure, sure sure. Totally coherent. You fucking clown.
The only coping here is coming from people who think that the fact that Ukraine hasn’t even reached the first line of defence in over a week is some kind of a stunning success. To give people some perspective, here’s what western media said Ukraine would have to achieve in the first day in order to succeed https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/18/ukraine-russia-war-counteroffensive-attack-bakhmut-himars/
you know it’s possible to ‘dislike’ Russia and at the same time know that they will completely overpower Ukraine, right? you’re letting your hatred for Russia blind your understanding of military power and strategy
Anyone that “knows” they will completely overpower Ukraine apparently stopped paying attention to reality many years ago. They’ve been proven to be incapable of it.
Yeah the correlation I see is that people who are paying really close attention to the war are most optimistic about Ukraine’s chances, relative to the not paying much attention mainstream and the delusional cohort who are getting their news updates from Russian sources.
oh cool, i’ve found the military understander. so what is Ukraine’s strategy here? What does victory look like for them?
In weapons, ammunition, and soldiers Russia outnumbers the AFU, as assessed by any reasonable expert. Russia sees this as a special military operation, not a war. They are comfortable being conservative with their resources and not committing too many at once (which is what they’ve done so far). Even with this restraint, they are killing Ukrainian soldiers at a higher rate than Russian soldiers are dying. Russia has an army, including reserves, of around 2million soldiers.
Look I hate seeing young men sent into a meat thresher because they are serving the interests of NATO and capitalist interests. I wish the AFU had the courage to not waste the lives of their soldiers and come to the negotiating table so that no more lives are senselessly wasted
I wish the AFU had the courage to not waste the lives of their soldiers and come to the negotiating table so that no more lives are senselessly wasted
What’s to negotiate? Russia has seized Ukrainian territory. Ukraine wants it back. There’s nothing for Ukraine to concede.
The only side “wasting” lives here is Russia, if they’d just go home the war would be over. Ukraine’s not going to try seizing any Russian territory.
i am once again urging you to understand that the war began in 2014.
the LPR and DPR regions are ethnically russian. they were living peacefully until 2014 when their political parties were disbanded and they’ve been systematically shelled by ukranians every day since 2014. minsk 2 would have reintegrated Donbas with Ukraine with some protections for its minority population, but Ukraine didn’t even implement the first step. zelensky was elected on a platform of ending the war, but when he tried Azov told him they would rather coup his government than stand down. at some point when negotiations are broken down the only thing any organization has left to do is resort to violence, which the Russian state did when it felt threatened enough by NATO (which if you’ll recall spent months warmongering prior to the invasion start) to justify the risk.
Of course, the people of the Donbas were just sitting there peacefully doing nothing when all of a sudden the Ukranians started shelling them. That was the start of the military action, silly me. Good thing all those vacationing Russian soldiers happened to be there a the time to defend them.
In 2022 it also just happened that russia was hosting possibly the largest military excercise in recent memory right on Ukraine’s border when the situation turned too menacing. Good they happened to have all those cruise missiles ready as if they hadn’t acted, russia would have been wiped out or something…
Occam’s razor cuts well on the two “possible” viewpoints of this war.
First is that big country sees an opportunity to capture land from a smaller one. In multiple stages between 2014 and 2022. A very limited amount of assumptions that can explain what is happening…
Second presumes that all the occupied areas secretly wanted to be a part of russia, nato is threatening russian territory while not being present, non affiliated soldiers with russian (but not russian) equipment occupy areas, a jewish president turns out to be in charge of a genocidial nazi regime that just has to be replaced with a peaceful one, and finally all of this is best achieved by a 3 day (actually 476) special military operation that has a goal of achieving something, but nobody actually knows what.
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That’s the most tankie shit I have read in a while. I don’t get how anyone with a modicum of humanity can go out of their way to defend the war of aggression Russia is waging against the people (mostly civilians!) of Ukraine.
You seriously need to stop living in your tiny bubble. The shit you are spewing is just sad and you probably don’t even get why what you say is awful.
So I sincerely ask you to either become a better person or just stfu.
Stop, you will make them cry back to lemmygrad!
I love how you think the person who is going against the dominant Western narrative is the one living in a bubble when the US operates the largest, most effective, and most funded disinformation and propaganda apparatus in the history of the world.
Ukraine hasn’t even reached the first anti-tank trenches yet, which are at the first line of defense which is part of at least three lines of defense (depending on location). They’ve taken very heavy losses to this point too.
Ukraine is getting stomped, and that’s why the NATO bosses are now talking about possibilities like a coalition of the willing or even giving Ukraine tactical nukes in one extreme case I read.
Literally no one is talking about giving Ukraine nukes. Stop reading communist propaganda.
Ukraine has the Leopard and the Abrams. The Abrams was made specifically to fight the Soviets. In a weird way it’s like the Abrams is “going home”.
ISW is one of, if not the most highly regarded military think tanks in the world. They’re backing these claims which means it’s true.
Ukraine hasn’t even used F16s or the Abrams yet and they’re still succeeding. Russia is using T-90s, but mostly T-72s. Do you know the last time the M1A1 went up against a T-72? When the US invaded Iraq, the US defeated the Iraqi army within a month.
YOU seem to be the one who has no idea what they’re talking about
and how did those tanks perform this weekend? and how many of those tanks are ACTUALLY IN UKRAINE right now? without air support those tanks are sitting ducks and will continue to be destroyed.
ISW was founded by an historian. please tell me you’re joking when saying anything they say should be taken seriously. this shit is so easy dude, how do you all get dooped by these people every time.
The reason I know you’re talking out of your ass is because the Abrams isn’t even in Ukraine right now. You clearly aren’t following what’s going on in the war.
They’re training them in Germany. Similar for the F16s. The Leopards are performing quite well however.
Set your confirmation bias aside. ISW is highly regarded and demoting them to a glorified historian is a gross oversimplification.
hey buddy just doing a 6 month checkin with ya. how are those leopards performing in Ukraine? and where the heck are those f16s that are totally going to change the course of the war?
Not doing much to combat the tankie reputation
lol, Russia can’t even overpower a 5 ft 6 inch bald man riddled with amphetamine paranoia. The chances of them overpowering a real army backed by modern technology is about the same as you not accepting the “russia strong” bukkake
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I understand this is a positive news in the first week of the counter offensive, but to me - it makes me feel depressed.
It makes me look at the size of Ukraine and the occupied areas. There are thousands or probably ten thousands of occupied settlements and villages. Reporting 5 of e.g. 18.000 liberated… it is positive, it is a news, it makes me depressed looking at the scaled of what lies ahead in this war to get Russia out of Ukraine.
The thing I am hoping for and expecting, that this is not a continuous speed. In the past, we have seen Russian lines disintegrate, troops flee in civilian clothing and the front lines moved tens of kilometers within a single day.
I think it’s what you said, it is not continuous speed. The offensive may slow down, may accelerate - let’s be honest, there is even the chance of failure. However, looking at the last 6-9 months, we should be optimistic. The recapture of a small village may not seem impactful, for people who were born there, lived there until the war or even still live there under Russian oppression - it means the world to them.
The recapture of a small village may not seem impactful, for people who were born there, lived there until the war or even still live there under Russian oppression - it means the world to them.
That’s right. There were many examples, but even with the recent ones like destroying dams is clear they don’t care about the people, they care about the land. And even ethnic Russians don’t want to be under their control.
I understand we’re you’re coming from but I think that’s a wrong way to look at it. The villages and towns rarely are equal in the face of front-line activities - some offer great defense opportunities and can be held for months. Most are strategically unimportant and their freedom is reclaimed by battles fought in other locations. History books are full of small town names that have witnessed grand battles and sometimes a victory over a small patch of land can translate to a much greater victory later on.
Edit: typo
Just remember how Kharkiv oblast was liberated in September 2022. Ukraine made some progress in the weeks before, which put enough pressure on the Russian occupiers to make the continued occupation untenable, so they had to pull back into Luhansk.
Something similar could easily happen here, all it needs is a cirumvention of the defense fortifications to push far enough to disrupt e.g. the supply lines between Donetsk and Crimea, and significant parts of the occupation could crumble quickly.
Ukraine will need to push through the first and second lines of defense, where the Russians are extremely dug in. Once they breech those fortifications it should become like driving a scalpel through Russian defenses.
If they manage to go through the first lines of defense, they’ll operationally encircle a lot of Russian positions on the west, either prompting the Russian forces to retreat or get trapped in the pocket.
TL;DR this is the hard part
27k settlements according to a quick search. Yikes.
But progress in anything is rarely sweeping and most commonly a matter of chipping away at an issue one tiny step at a time. Environmental issues, social issues. Unless you’re finally hitting a watershed moment it’s a depressing battle of inches. But you won’t ever get the former unless you commit to the later.
Also, while it’s easy to reduce humanity down to numbers at the scale of a war, to the people finally getting to rejoin their country today – this is the victory that matters. The one they will remember most clearly after the war is over. To us on the outside it might seem small, but to those people it’s their entire world.
Hopefully russia crumbles from within. They are doing everything possible to show that this is a battle between “good” and “evil” - the destructin of cities, kidnapping children, rape, castration, civilian deaths from distance and in person.
This will not happen. The reason that you think that is due to the fact that this is the most propagandized wars I’ve ever seen from personal experience. That heavy amount of propaganda is flowing both ways.
Basically, everything you just described is the natural consequence of war. That’s not excusing the Russians, but acknowledging that there are always examples of everything on that list on both sides in basically any war. It doesn’t matter if one side causes much more of those things than the other side when it comes to propaganda. All that matters is that both sides have done it. Then, the Russians use that to make their own propaganda. Which they’ve done. The Russian population honestly also believes that this is a war of good vs evil, too. To be clear, I’m not saying that it is, just that the Russian population, fed Russian propaganda, believe in this war.
The end result of all of the above words is that the unrest in Russia at this point is due to Russians being unhappy that Putin isn’t more aggressive. If Putin is replaced in a coup, the person that replaced him will be more aggressive against Ukraine, not less.
undefined> Basically, everything you just described is the natural consequence of war. That’s not excusing the Russians, but acknowledging that there are always examples of everything on that list on both sides in basically any war. I
Except the Ukrainians aren’t intentionally striking civilians, raping, killing soldiers who have surrendered, castrating soldiers - we would have heard about it from the russians (though anything they release has to be treated with suspicion).
The russians appear to want to be labelled as “evil”.
And so they will be, except by russian sympathizers, whether they admit it or not.
The Ukrainians have explicitly struck civilians. They’ve accepted responsibility for some of them and lied about some of the others where the US’s intelligence agencies believe that it was the Ukrainians. Fuck, in the recent discord leaks, we discovered that our security agencies don’t even know what the truth is with Ukraine because we don’t really have intelligence assets with the Ukrainian side, and we know that the Ukrainians lie to us about a lot.
Who used an unwilling suicide bomb to take out a strategic bridge? Who attacked a NATO countries infrastructure in an act of war? Who used a car bomb against a Russian, I don’t know, unpopular political figures daughter? The car bomb intentionally killed civilians, and did so intentionally in a civilian area. Dugin is, within Russia, right now, effectively only a pro-war blogger. He doesn’t have political power. He also doesn’t even have the ear of powerful people, really. But killing him(who was the likely target), a civilian, was apparently worthwhile for the Ukrainians. He and his daughter were civilians.
For the other stuff, the Russians absolutely are saying that that is happening. I agree with you that those claims, coming from the Russians, do need to be treated with skepticism. But you are wrong that the Russians aren’t claiming the Ukrainians are doing those things. They absolutely are. The fact that you don’t think they are making those claims makes me wonder where you are getting your information from.
So, the worst crime the Russians committed was starting the war. All of their other crimes follow from that first crime. Without it, none of the others would have happened. That is because war itself is evil. It makes good people do horrible things. Don’t even think about what it makes bad people do. Every side in every war, has done, and will do what you are saying the Ukrainians haven’t done. They have. I’m not saying it is official policy, but that probably isn’t true, even for the Russians.
The Russians don’t want to be labelled evil. Do you really think that? NO ONE THINKS THEY ARE EVIL. HITLER didn’t think he was evil. No. The Russians don’t think they are evil, and they don’t want other people to think that either. Saying that doesn’t require any knowledge about this war, just knowledge about human nature. You want to think they’re evil? That is entirely fair. But if you actually believe they think they’re evil, that is just stupid.
To be clear, I’m not a Russian sympathizer. As said above, the Russians committed the largest crime possible by invading. Everything else came about because of that. I am a war nerd. It is something I find interesting. Part of the problem with the fucking propaganda for this war is that it makes actually finding out what is happening the most difficult to follow of all of the wars in my lifetime. It also leads to just stupid fucking opinions, like if someone says the Ukrainian offensive is going poorly means that that person is a Russian Sympathizer. Being morally right doesn’t mean that everything you do is effective.
Slava Ukraïni!
How dare someone be proud of a country and want them to be victorious against invaders!
Yeah whatever, it’s still a banderite slogan lmao
Bandera? The guy who was imprisoned by Hitler?
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Point is, the guy’s motivations were singularly around Ukrainian nationalism. Then when Hitler found him inconvenient, he was imprisoned. When judging people’s actions, it’s best to stay informed about their motives. Especially so when you’re trying to cast people as Nazis by two degrees of separation.
Then when Hitler found him inconvenient, he was imprisoned.
And released soon after and pumped with money and send as agent to fight Soviets. You might also read what happened to him after war.
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Heroyam slava!
This is a fascist slogan.
Quit reddit behavior please. This adds nothing and is not at all useful.
I’m just expressing my hope they will succeed and liberate many more villages and cities, in the most succint way possible. And they will succeed.
You just said ‘glory to the heroes’. Which heroes are you wishing glory to? Cause that saying has a history that you are apparently unaware of.
The ones right now (not 70 years ago) defending their country (aka the Ukrainians) from imperialists (russians) who are shelling civilians, kidnapping children, castrating soldiers, raping women. YHave you been keeping up?
Totally agree bro we must secure the existence of our people amirite?
Funnily enough, the Ukrainian constitution does have a line in there like that, although thankfully it has to do with radiation and not… you know.
Providing ecological safety and maintenance of ecological equilibrium in the territory of Ukraine, overcoming consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophic crash - catastrophic crashes of planetary scale, preserving gene pool of the Ukrainian people are obligation of the state.
I don’t know, the gene pool comment is weird. Do they think Chernobyl is going to give them superpowers, or are they Banderites?
Frankly, if the Germans were invaded, it wouldn’t excuse starting to use a phrase the traditional Nazi’s used, even if the people invading were monsters. In the same way that the swastika is an appropriated symbol, but no longer represents that because something came along that carries far more … historical weight, shall we say.
If someone invaded the South of the US, I would not be okay with The US starting to use wildly well known confederate slogans.
Also, you just said the Russians are the heroes you were referencing that were defending their country from imperialists who are doing all that bad stuff. I know that isn’t what you meant, but that is what you said. Might be worth an edit, if you care.
undefined> Also, you just said the Russians are the heroes you were referencing that were defending their country from imperialists who are doing all that bad stuff. I know that isn’t what you meant, but that is what you said. Might be worth an edit, if you care.
Ah, yes, I meant the russians are doing the evil things.
Unrelated: When you quote me, are intentionally typing undefined? Or is that a weird Lemmy bug?
No but see, 70 years ago, this guy did a bad thing, so now it’s basically even Stevens.
no they won’t lol
Just things fascists say while they murder Poles and Jews.
you’re super and are loved… No need to be the token edgemaster 5000 here.
This was literally what Bandyerites, i.e. fascists that assisted the Nazis and did ethnic cleansing all on their own, used as a rallying cry.
Context is important for meaning.
The nazis used a salute one French painter imagined the Romans using. In the United states kids used to make the same salute to pledge allegiance to the flag. This doesn’t make the american kids (nor the Romans) nazis. Becouse the context matters.
Context is important. The people in Ukraine who started making that a thing again now were, for the most part, all direct descendants of the Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, who are now erecting statues to their Nazi father/grandfathers.
I wish this war hadn’t started. The Russians were wrong for invading, but the amount of white-washing of literal Nazis because the Ukrainians are reframing their national identity away from the USSR and Russia is absolute dogshit. The people who used that saying were bad. The people trying to make it a thing now are directly related to those bad people, and don’t want them thought of as bad anymore.
All of the justifications people are using now are the same justifications used by assholes promoting the lost cause myth about the civil war.
all direct descendants of the Nazi collaborators in Ukraine
literal Nazis
That’s the same sort of twisted interpretation of history that I see out of Republicans in the US. The Democratic Party used to be the party of slavery and the south, so they’re practically all slavers today! Black people just laugh at them and continue voting Democrat in droves.
Bad analogy. Better one would be if the Democratic party started to put up statues to Jefferson Davis because the Democratic Party members who were children/grandchildren of Jefferson Davis wanted to re-rehabilitate the image of Jefferson Davis.
I promise you that if the Democratic party started trying to retroactively white wash the confederacy, or specific subsets of the confederacy, in the same exact way the Ukrainians are, that the people that were oppressed by the Democratic Party would no longer vote for them.
so if i understand correctly, you’re saying it’s ok to do this salute today as long as I’m saying I’m doing the Roman one, not the Nazi one?
Nah dude sorry, context does not matter if the phrase/symbol has been used for fascist terror. That salute (and the phrase above) has been used for fascist ends. It’s done and can no longer be used
No, it’s not. You are lying.
https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/download/164/160
This is pretty basic knowledge about OUN-B. They did it all the time, nationalism was kind of their thing, and these chants were rare before the OUN.
It’s so nice to see the influx of redditors down voting the loonies who had settled in like black mould around here!
lemmy is written by Marxist Leninist’s. Before the blackout on reddit, redditors complained about the tankies on lemmy. The site is lemmy.ml because the ml stands for Marxist Leninist.
This comment is the equivalent of going over to the black mold mansion that was built with black mold framing and black mold windows by black molds hands, and being like “How did the black mold invade this house and take it over”
What do you think the .ml of lemmy.ml stands for?
Mali?
That is the country that owns the TLD. Do you think the people who run this server, and wrote the code for it are from Mali?
I mean… to anyone who doesn’t know or is interested in who is hosting this instance .ml is just some top level domain. Just like .com or .de or .io this TLD, as you said happens to be the one of Mali. Yet you ask that question as if it’s so obvious and react as if people are stupid when they don’t reply the “correct” answer…
Kinda toxic ngl.
You being willfully obtuse and pretending this isn’t settled isn’t productive or in good faith.
Dude, 99% of people who joined Lemmy cannot define Marxism-Leninism in a reliable manner… Most had no idea who the devs are, most have no clue how federation works, they just joined the first server they came in contact with…
If you think the people joining here all believe in Marxism-Leninism or are aware that the admins of the server are Marxist-Leninist, you are living in a fantasy world.
No they’re just defending the invasion and forced annexation of a country, brushing aside mountains of documented war crimes and Um AksHuAllying /both sidesing a war of aggression by an authoritarian dictator that rigs his own elections and came to power by killing his own people (while talking about wanting to annex Ukraine at the time) for… reasons. You can jump to defend the tankie fucks if you want but I’m not, I’ll continue to call them what they are.
Lemmy.ml has been clear from the start that ML stands for Marxist Leninist. You’re the one pretending ignorance for some reason.
I’m not saying it’s not what you say it is. I’m saying the way you said is is toxic. It’s never gonna be clear to new people. I also have a .me domain and pretend it’s from lotrs Middle-Earth. But I don’t imply its obvious and react annoyed when people get it wrong.
idc. People are dying, and pretending that you don’t know what is going on is toxic af.
machine learning? millilitre?
Marxist Leninist
What I don’t get is why Marxist leninists seem to support Russia in this conflict, just because it was ruled by a Marxist Leninist party over 30 years ago. The current Russian regime is just as capitalist as any western government. The only plausible reason to me is that they still see capitalism as synonymous with “the west” even though it is a global system which rules all large nations today.
We don’t. Russia is a capitalist country. In some ways, more so than America.
The thing is, the US is not a country. It is an empire. It is the largest empire in the world, and definitely the most powerful. A lot of wars, especially ones in countries with resources valuable to the US or to the US’s Allies (most specifically Libya, and Syria, and Yemen) are propagandized to an extent that most Americans have literally no idea about.
We also kill a bunch of people. Like, I know that metrics for evil are hard. Metrics in general are hard. It’s hard to know that what you’re measuring properly represents what you are trying to measure. But I think the number of people killed over time is a pretty good one. I’m always open to input on that, but most of the time it is simply to defend the current bi-partisan Neo-liberal foreign policy, and not an actual discussion on what is a good quantitative representation of evil.
America kills a lot of people. Like, orders of magnitude more than any other country. Most of the people killed are not killed with military means. Instead America mostly kills people through restricting access to trade with the entire world. It mostly kills civilians through these measures. The genocide in Yemen was done basically with the knowledge, approval, and assistance of the US. When it does kill people in countries that it is in active military campaigns against, it kills people by intentionally destroying all infrastructure in that country. This is excused as being a necessary aspect of war, but it really isn’t. It really is a specific tactical doctrine that then also makes the country a lot more easy to control with sanctions after the fact. Not excusing the Russian invasion, which is absolutely wrong, but they are the perfect example of a military doctrine that doesn’t destroy infrastructure in the first wave of an invasion. It was interesting because there was a sense of “WTF?” from the American Military, if you looked in the right places. Like “Why the fuck did they not do that? That is basic strategy 101. What the hell are they trying to do?” And, maybe that is a proof that the people who argue that destroying infrastructure has to be the first step in a war. I’m not sure about that. But regardless, it kills far more people than bombs or bullets. And the people that it kills are almost always civilians. And it generally makes the civilians tie themselves to the leaders we’re trying to oust. The whole justification of sanctions is to make the civilians rebel against their leaders, and to hurt the leaders. We now know, after multiple decades of experience, that it NEVER works. It hasn’t every worked. Maybe you could say Libya, but again, they were destroyed because Macron needed to try and erase loans that he received from Libya. I.e. even when the leader capitulated, it still wasn’t enough and France and America started a war there that ended with open-air slave markets in Libya, again.
The Russian-Ukrainian war is being used to justify a lot of fucked up stuff that is going on domestically here. Not only that, but by using sanctions in the manner that we have, I think Biden has permanently broken the American Empires most potent weapon in using sanctions the way he has against Russia. American sanctions are basically just us saying “We won’t trade with you, and we won’t trade with anyone that trades with you.” When EVERYONE trades with America, that is a really powerful threat. But, the more you use that weapon, the weaker it becomes. If you can’t trade with anyone if you piss off America, that is a lot scarier than "You can’t trade with anyone but Cuba, Venezuela, China, North Korea, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa. I’ve missed some countries, and now some of allies are willing to trade with others assuming that America won’t do anything, but you understand my point. The more you use sanctions the less scary and useful they are. Obviously, I think that the American empire needs to be brought down, but there is a huge difference in a soft landing vs a crash.
Finally, Ukraine can’t win. Cannot. In fact, I would make the argument from a war goals perspective, Russia is already victorious, no matter what happens from here on out. i.e. it will make a costly victory, into an even more costly victory. Ukraine’s already had enough damage done to it that is effectively a dead state. It cannot exist without outside countries basically paying for literally every aspect of the government running. It cannot run on its own anymore. It has no production of its own. On the production issue, when you see articles like “Ukraine was given 6 months of HIMARS, and they used them up in a week and want more” what that really means is that we’ve given them the total amount of weapons that takes us 6 months to make. There is a reason for that. America makes basically nothing but weapons now. We outsource everything else, and that still hits the production of weapons, and thus even our weapon production systems are slower than countries that valued maintaining internal production systems for their weapons. One of the countries that have done this (For a variety of reasons, some of them not voluntary) is Russia. That is part of the reason of the artillery advantage that Russia has. That and the fact that Iran is basically the king of the drone game right now, but that is completely different side topic. But, if you assume Ukraine can’t win, and you have one side continuing to give Ukraine weapons and training and intentionally blow up peace negotiations between the two sides than that makes the country that is propping Ukraine up evil, as well as the country that invaded. Its like if you encouraged a 5 year old to keep fighting with a teenager. A teenager attacking a 5 year old is evil. No question. But, so is the person who keeps comforting and encouraging the 5 year to not make peace with the teenager and encourages them to keep fighting back. Can the 5 year old hurt the teenager and surprise them? Sure. Can the 5 year old win against the teenager? I could make up some scenarios where they do, but it is unlikely enough that you can say no, they never will. I know that this is a bad analogy, but this is already a book, and I think this bad analogy explains the gist of what I’m trying to get across.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the only groups that really care about the Russian-Ukrainian war are America, and Europe. Africa, South America, The Middle East and Asia do not care. The stuff I wrote above is just part of the reasons why.
I know people will say that all of this is whataboutism, but if I truly believe that America is the most evil country as measured by the number of people that die as an intentional direct outcome of America’s actions then the focus on Ukraine is nothing but a smoke screen so that people can ignore the much larger numbers of people that die because of our actions. America is very good at killing people in ways that photos don’t show that America is responsible for it.
Basically, America is the most destructive evil empires in existence right now, if measured by the number of people intentionally dying of our actions, and if you want that to stop anything that is used to justify Americas foreign policy needs to be dealt with again.
Not a fan of Russia, and I think Russia’s biggest crime is invading, as that is what caused all other crimes of this war. Being critical of the US’s role of this war is not, and never has been, pro Russian, though. The fact that you think being critical of the US’s role in this war is the same of being supportive of Russia should tell you something about how you think about this war. Why do you think it is binary?
Finally, and this is purely personal, I’m a war nerd. The amount of insane propaganda around this war is worse than any other war I’ve lived though. It makes it both impossible to figure out what is going on, and it causes insane shit like saying this latest Ukraine offense that obviously failed, where most of the NATO trained people died and significant amounts of material was destroyed is a great success. It wasn’t. But somehow that is viewed as pro-Russian. It’s not, its pro knowing what is going on in a war. But this is a reason that only really applies to me and other war nerds.
“Support” is a big word. Most would see it as an inter-capitalist war. One staged and initiated by American imperialism in the region. The end result of which will be the weakening of American imperialism and the emergence of a multipolar geopolitical reality, in which the conditions for socialism are more amenable.
But really this “seem to support Russia” is simply an inability to deal in nuance, much like how libs think criticising Joe Biden equals “support” for Donald Trump.
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Yeah, you’re black mold. Noxious, only able to spread in the absence of honest attention and sunlight, and frankly embarrassing. What are you going to do about it?
What are you going to do about it?
Bully you so much you go crawling back to spez lmao
Lol sure, clown. Come at me bro your bullying game is weak. Meanwhile I get to enjoy watching you and yours get run out of town as the migration continues.
Run out of town as the migration continues? Do you… not understand how the fediverse works? Do you not understand you’re posting on lemmy.ml right now, and lemmy.ml will never defederate from my instance, lemmygrad.ml?
You’re not on Reddit anymore, and I would be happy to give you the crash course.
And yet you will be overrun until lemmy.ml stops accepting new sign-ons, and the new users are all going to continue calling out and outvoting you and yours. You’ll be downvoted to oblivion. Because we’re not going anywhere, and there’s more of us than there are of you.
Oh no, not the downvotes. Anything but the downvotes.
Are you 12? Do your parents know you’re online without supervision? Maybe they should explain this federation thing to you.
and the new users are all going to continue calling out and outvoting you and yours.
Uhh, you have -9 and literally nobody has upvoted you.
And why are you obsessed with internet points rather than actual correctness and education?
lol, new Navy Seal tier copypasta just dropped.
You’ll be downvoted so much!!! Oh no, muh internet points!
You are such a dork this is awesome haha
It’s not like these old users were not fighting to protect your freedom of speech, by creating an open-source federated social network or anything. Yet you use that same freedom of speech they enabled for you against them on the same platform they created. Everyone here will fight for your right to do so, btw, but I just wanted to point that out.
Lmao you didn’t create shit.
He’s gonna keep riding the russian dick train, of course. Choo choo!
Yesterday he was literally defending the Tienanmen Square Massacre. It’s unreal.
You mean the CIA colour revolution attempt in 89?
Homophobia is funny amirite?
There is nothing homophobic in my statement. It is more referring to someone whoring themselves out.
It’s just homophobic, there’s nothing at all about prostitution in it. This place is for adults, try to pretend you’re one.
Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦 Good to see
An area amounting to about 6 km by 6 km. Still an excuse for cheerleading and manufacturing consent for escalation. One of the villages is like 6 houses.
It’s funny how with certain folks its always the fighting back that’s the escalation, never the original aggression…
never the original aggression…
Ah the Maidan Coup, ya the Ukrainians shouldn’t have done that, you’re right
How dare the people rise up against their rightfully-installed rulers and decide they want someone else. What did they think this was, a democracy?
Yanukovich, while definitely corrupt, won in a fair democratic election that was judged free and fair by international observers… The coup overthrew a democratically elected leader. He was not appointed by anyone.
Oh yeah the original aggression. Which one?
Your head is so far up your own propaganda I can’t even tell where you’re trying to say here.
Western liberals keep ignoring anything before 2022 in order to create a black-and-white narrative. This leads them to the conclusion that they’re fighting absolute evil and so any means are justified no matter how many people will die, and how dangerous and even counter-productive their actions.
Before 2022, like Russia didn’t invade in 2014.
Nah. I don’t see Russia as absolute evil. And there are plenty of means the west does not consider justified. Nobody I know falls into either of these categories.
I don’t want Ukraine to kill poor Russian sods but as long as Russia kills poor Ukrainian sods I think it’s only fair if they get to shoot back.
Most of us just want Russia to go home and let Ukraine be Ukraine.
Do you want the USA to go home?
Don’t get me wrong. I’d be highly surprised if there weren’t at least some American fighting in Ukraine on a more than just “personal capacity” but with the fixation the Republicans have with tying Biden to Ukraine it’s highly likely that any sizeable involvment would have been been discovered and made public by now.
If you think the Russian Army is fighting the combined western might right now, then I have disappointing news for you.
This is such a simplistic view of the war. The civil war started because the country already had internal fault lines, and was pulled in different directions by Russian and Western meddling until it broke. The invasion was just the latest in a series of escalations. Nothing about this war is in the interest of the people living on the battlefield, they got duped or forced into fighting each other. Encouraging them to fight on is messed up.
Edit: I’d also like to add that Russia seemed quite willing, prior to the invasion, to have a compromise in which Ukraine would be neutral. The US especially clearly wasn’t interested, insisting instead on its own supremacy, in which no opposing or neutral countries are to be tolerated. To this end they also supported the worst elements of Ukrainian society, ultra-nationalist Banderites, which they had been doing since the end of WW2.
This is so bizarre to believe considering Putin has been very clear and vocal about his interest in annexing Ukraine since he came to power.
I guarantee you it means something to the residents of those six houses.
It’s easy to lose track of individual humanity at the scale of a war, but this victory is the one these people will always most remember when they think of the tide turning. Their lives are worth something.
I’m pretty sure these people support Russia lol.
Doesn’t change the fact the the suMmEr OfFensIVe is going horribly lol
Real life is not like the movies
The summer offensive that has been going on for what? One week? Looking at how fast Russia gained ground in bakhmut, vuhledar, and avdiivka, this offensive is going swimmingly
I would save this comment and get back to you when the offensive has crumbled, but something tells me you and all the other Reddit libs currently swarming this website will have long crawled back to daddy Reddit by then ;)
Reading this made me very sad for you. Good luck.
Who hurt you.
@DerPapa69@lemmy.ml The fact that this instance often bans people for countering your imperialist world-view created a bubble where you might think it’s the libs that you speak out against. In reality it’s not only radicals that you write of but it’s also our comrades, long time antifa, anarchist and communist militants that are dying fighting back against yet another imperialist incursion into CEE from Russia. No amount of western ignorance, privilege and lack of education will stop us from struggling for our right to self-determination, solidarity with the refugees from Ukraine and all victims of this invasion or the broader struggle against a centuries long oppression of our peoples. With regards, from admin of one of the first lemmy instances.
If everyone else is a “reddit lib” then that makes you a rightwing raving loony, which, according to your comments, may be accurate.
Oh yes, the only two political alignments: liberal and right-wing :D Thanks for letting me know you’re a yank.
No they didn’t. They said Slava Ukraïni. Someone else responded with the hero one, but not the person you replied to
Now we see Schrodingers offensive has resolved itself- any success means the offensive is now happening for real and however meek the victories they will be inflated to an appropriate size. I’m sure the Western news and the redditors that lap it up will be just as excited when the offensive grinds to a halt and these villages are retaken
I wish there was a way to block all lemmygrad tankie cretins as an individual account
Loving how the liberals have to leave their shitty site to migrate over here. Whats wrong with reddit?
I have to genuinely ask - who is the liberal in this context? People are leaving reddit because it’s encouraging them to do it, simple as that.
Apologies for the confusion, this comment is only for the radlibs arguing under your post. There’s plenty of them using really disgusting slurs.
Sounds like this war is nearly over!
Don’t confuse propaganda for the actual status of the war.
it literally took 1 day for the cia and nafo freaks to overrun lemmy world news…
TIL iam a CIA freak
People that call themselves communists but support Putin make me sick.
Nice straw man, nobody actually says that.
Maybe you’re just discovering what the median opinion of the mainstream public looks like?
I don’t think the person you’re responding to has the capacity to realize anything except their own delusions
Yeah no everyone is well aware of the mainstream opinions lol
so much projection
Today our troops captured a two-room apartment with kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. They have succeeded in retaining two-thirds of it despite fierce counterattacks by the enemy.
You might have the wrong city. Mr prigo was originally hailing those successes in bakhmut.
Cope harder, orc.
I don’t think dehumanizing name calling is acceptable here. There are only three rules, and following them isn’t very difficult. You can disagree with someone and be respectful towards them. If you can’t be respectful towards them, you can simply not reply at all. There is no excuse for being hateful.
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It’s really unbelievable the amount of aggression, hate, personal attacks, and the like I’m seeing. And the issue is, those tactics aren’t used in addition to real logical and rational discussion backed by facts, they’re used in place of those. So instead of seeing level-headed conversation (even with disagreement!), I’m seeing an unsettling amount of vitriol that does nothing useful.
If you’re so unquestioningly tied to your beliefs that you become aggressive at the thought of considering that you may be wrong, and don’t feel bad for attacking another human to defend your ego, I don’t know why you engage in “discussion”. There’s some leap people take from “this person has a different opinion than me” to “this person is not worthy of respect and actively deserves to be attacked for their beliefs”.
I understand reddit was thriving largely on rage, and I guess it was probably naive of me to assume that people would moderate themselves in another forum to act any differently.
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average liberal go five seconds without calling someone they disagree with a racial slur
Ukraine doesn’t really win anything. This is the third Army they are wasting. Too bad for the Ukrainian conscripts.
Third army? Did the other two go somewhere?
Hell, if you’re religious.
correct, they have reconstituted themselves twice over and there’s hardly any elements left of their prewar jäger, mountain, airborne etc. divisions.
Ukraine doesn’t really win anything. This is the third Army they are wasting. Too bad for the Ukrainian conscripts.
Bunch of Redditors hete getting stoked for this war to be down to the last Ukrainian.
I can’t wait for the “blackout” to end so they can go back to huffing cope and baying for blood on r/ukraine again
You want russia to win? Not enough rape, castrating, stealing children, shelling appartment blocks for you?
the thing you bloodthirsty redditors don’t understand is, the only correct position on this war is hoping it ends as soon as possible. I hope peace talks can be established, and we can all move past this with less people being shoved into the woodchipper. I am not pro russia, and I’m certainly not pro ukraine. The only correct position is anti war, anything less is baying for blood.
I have little trust that an “end” that leaves Russia occupying a large portion of Ukraine will last. It’s a message to Russia’s leadership that invasions will be rewarded. First Georgia, then Crimea, then Ukraine more broadly. Make some allegations about a Russian minority being persecuted and it’s time to roll in the tanks! That’s probably a large reason why Europe has been willing to arm Ukraine to the teeth: to send a message that the West is serious this time after wimping out in the case of Georgia and Crimea.
That’s literally how we got here. Russia has been appeasing NATO as it deploys nuclear capabilities on it’s border in many countries. This most recent move by NATO, under US direction, to establish nuclear capabilities on the Ukraine border could no longer be managed through appeasement and diplomacy. It’s not like Russia hasn’t tried, it’s not like the US didn’t know Ukraine was a red line for Russian national security. Russia has been appeasing US nuclear expansion for decades, and slowly demonstrating their willingness to fight back. Now they’re in a proxy conflict where the US is pumping Ukraine full of the equipment Ukraine needs to send out soldiers. If the US hadn’t done that, Ukraine would have far more people still alive and would have capitulated far earlier and begun negotiations. This is the same pattern we see every time the US pumps up a proxy, the proxy suffers the most.
