Russian invasion of Ukraine

[think positive]

Hmmm. Reading both views is interesting, there is always 3 sides to every story.

One thing seems to be certain though, Putin is a stain on humanity. As much as the US using Ukrainian soldiers as cannon fodder, Putin is using his own citizens as such. He seems like a madman on a never ending quest to be top dog, ‘desperate to stop at all costs” not cost to him personally though, more to gain or keep his power and wealth. I agree with comments re the EU, anything is better than communism led by a despot.

From PTID above “Naturally, Putin's fear is this: every Eastern European country that has escaped the old Soviet shackles is far wealthier than they ever were, and absolutely hate the Soviet past. They have far less corruption, far better legal protections, miles better future opportunities, and on. He wants to rule over some grand fantasy Soviet Empire in his mind, no matter what the cost to anyone else. Meanwhile, his own people want something better and he can see Western Russia is next. Well, eff him.

All but clueless fools, corrupt Ukrainian billionaires with deals in Russia, and corrupt petty officials taking backhanders from citizens, would want to escape Russian influence to become miles better off. “

- absolutely, Yes, and that’s the problem with communism!

So this Manafort started with good intentions depending on your point of view, but still managed to gain outside his salary from it! Yanukovych was? The best of a bad lot? Started well but then got greedy? I mean a pirate ship restaurant in his back yard?

MTTM, you mention mineral resources and the US, well the Middle East was apparently all about oil.

Any chance if a government that isn’t all about what it can gain in return for ‘helping another country”?


can I get opinions on Zelenskyy too please? Is he as honourable as he is making out on his tv interviews?

[think positive]

Dp but I’ll use the space!

Thankyou all for answering me without wondering at my complete ignorance at the situation.

My interest and questions come from there not being an new action stuff on Netflix or anywhere else, I had influenza a for 2 weeks, and even now my energy doesn’t last long so I’ve watched a few documentaries or movies based on documentaries. Yesterday I watched an eye opening doco, Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads. my assumption was always, as they noted, was they had no choice but to participate in the killings. Shocking to hear the actual perpetrators say they did have a choice. Shocking to read the scale of it and just how barbaric it was.
And Russia, and the Ukraine feature in it.

[Magpietothemax]

I too oppose imperialism, but the world has other things to deal with, as well. I too hate war, but that doesn't mean I don't want help or would roll over to be shafted by violent thugs if invaded, FFS.

Any gripes with the US can wait five minutes; this is about Ukraine and its own views and desires, not some absurd grand conspiracy people read in a socialist pamphlet that reduces the entirely sane desire of Ukraine to lean in to the EU, move on from the corrupt Soviet past and Putin's thuggery, nothing but a re-run of Iraq. What insulting, distracting nonsense that only further Putin's deranged desires, and makes a mockery of Ukraine and Ukrainians.

You do not oppose imperialism, you support it to the hilt. That is why you write off the criminal invasion of Iraq by US imperialism as irrelevant. Neither do you hate war (enough) because if you did, you would be demanding that the US government should stop escalating it.

[David]

Thankyou all for answering me without wondering at my complete ignorance at the situation.

No worries! Happy to discuss, and kind of wish more people would take this approach of asking for further info.

One thing about the post above: Putin isn’t a communist. Russia’s totally capitalist these days, kind of like an (even) poorer version of the United States. When people talk about him wanting to resurrect the old Soviet Empire, it’s the "empire" part of that phrase he’s drawn to. He’s far more drawn to re-creating the old Orthodox Christian Russia of the Tsars than the USSR.

What he does have in common with the Tsars and communist dictators alike is his contempt for democracy and intolerance of opposition.

[pietillidie]

I too oppose imperialism, but the world has other things to deal with, as well. I too hate war, but that doesn't mean I don't want help or would roll over to be shafted by violent thugs if invaded, FFS.

Any gripes with the US can wait five minutes; this is about Ukraine and its own views and desires, not some absurd grand conspiracy people read in a socialist pamphlet that reduces the entirely sane desire of Ukraine to lean in to the EU, move on from the corrupt Soviet past and Putin's thuggery, nothing but a re-run of Iraq. What insulting, distracting nonsense that only further Putin's deranged desires, and makes a mockery of Ukraine and Ukrainians.

You do not oppose imperialism, you support it to the hilt. That is why you write off the criminal invasion of Iraq by US imperialism as irrelevant. Neither do you hate war (enough) because if you did, you would be demanding that the US government should stop escalating it.

Why would I presume to tell Ukraine and Ukrainians what they should think, and reduce the vastness of the world to your singular obsession, America?

Just as Iraq and Afghanistan were primarily Anglo-American productions, this happens to primarily be a Russian production. The clue is in who has invaded who's country without invitation, and whose help Ukraine requests on a near-daily basis.

Is there no room in your world for more than one imperialist aggressor? Do you somehow imagine that human violence is solely a Hollywood production, made only in America? That if it doesn't align with what you believed in 1980, it doesn't really exist?

And are you certain you know just how many thousands of lines I've written vehemently opposing Afghanistan and Iraq since it was a gleam in Cheney's eye and a bulge in Little Johnny's pants? I'll leave you to conduct your own VPT searches on that matter.

Do you understand what fundamentalism is? Your ideological fundamentalism aligns you far more closely with the very worst of American and Russian imperialist psychiatry and thought than you seem to realise. Imperialism reduces everything to a reflection of its own power and identity, erasing the Other, which is exactly what you're doing here, such that you can't even grant Ukraine a voice or modicum of identity, awareness, intelligence or will. How you missed the entire poststructuralist retort to Marxian grand narrative, including the self-fulfilling reduction of the sub-altern to a mere residue of the hegemon, is beyond me.

Reducing the vastness of the world to little black and white pawns on a Marxian chessboard might make you feel efficacious, but the world's not just about your personal comfort and sense of control. Your doctrine is of no help whatsoever in the real world, where we grapple with complex, multifaceted, contradictory problems involving far more than just the American imperialism of your mind's eye.

[think positive]

Thankyou all for answering me without wondering at my complete ignorance at the situation.

No worries! Happy to discuss, and kind of wish more people would take this approach of asking for further info.

One thing about the post above: Putin isn’t a communist. Russia’s totally capitalist these days, kind of like an (even) poorer version of the United States. When people talk about him wanting to resurrect the old Soviet Empire, it’s the "empire" part of that phrase he’s drawn to. He’s far more drawn to re-creating the old Orthodox Christian Russia of the Tsars than the USSR.

What he does have in common with the Tsars and communist dictators alike is his contempt for democracy and intolerance of opposition.

oh really? they have elections? boy i missed that, when did that happen! and who would vote for him

[Magpietothemax]

This post is dedicated to TP, and to all those who are genuinely seeking the truth about the war in Ukraine:

Definitely true that there is no democracy in Russia and Putin heads a police state apparatus. As I have mentioned many times, Putin represents a band of criminal oligarchs who either sold off the nationalised property of the ex USSR to their own advantage, or took private ownership of it themselves. As a result of the liquidation of the USSR, millions of ex Soviet citizens were thrown into desperate poverty. Life expectancy in the ussr plunged in a way unprecedented since WW2. Putin is an authoritarian dictator who enforces massive social deprivation on the vast majority with an iron fist. However, Zelensky is the same. In fact, Zelensky represents exactly the same type of financial oligarchy in Ukraine as Putin does in Russia. In Ukraine, all parties opposing the war are banned. Anyone opposing the war is jailed for "treason"'. Young men are forcibly shanghaied off the streets and in their homes, to be conscripted into the army. Wages for workers are the lowest in Europe. That is why Zelensky's regime has fascists in it. Such conditions can only be enforced with extreme nationalism and fascistic tendencies who seek to blame other ethnic groups for the bankruptcy of their own nation state. TP, you mentioned the Nazi Death Squads. Did you know that Zelensky's regime rests on Ukrainian Neo-Nazis who openly worship Stepan Bandera (google Bandera, he was a Ukrainian fascist during WW2 and was leader of the OUN-B - a fascist militia which collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust, as well as murdering tens of thousands of Poles).
Both the Russian government and the Ukrainian governement are fundamentally images of each other. The difference is that the Ukrainian government is backed by US imperialism, which aims to use Ukrainian manhood as a weapon to fatally undermine the Putin regime and replace him with a regime which is totally subservient to American interests, and will hand over all the mineral wealth of Russia to US corporations.
As for the rest of NATO, (France, UK, Germany, et al) they are all also imperialist powers, or with aspirations of becoming imperialist hangers on (countries such as Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland etc) and they all understand what the aims of the US are. They are desperate to stay involved, because they want to make sure that they can get a cut of the booty when if and when Russia is opened up to imperialist plunder. But there are no friends among thieves: at any day, any moment, any unexpected event, they will turn on each other.
For TP: if you wish to read about the mineral assets of Russia and how this is a driving force of this war (just like the oil in Iraq), here is a great article:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/0 ... e-m28.html

[roar]

Not a lot incorrect with that post but it doesn't cover the most basic element - Russia invaded Ukraine! The rest is semantics.

[pietillidie]

Both the Russian government and the Ukrainian governement are fundamentally images of each other. The difference is that the Ukrainian government is backed by US imperialism...and will hand over all the mineral wealth of Russia to US corporations...the rest of NATO, (France, UK, Germany, et al) they are all also imperialist powers, or with aspirations of becoming imperialist hangers on (countries such as Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland etc) and they all understand what the aims of the US are...But there are no friends among thieves: at any day, any moment, any unexpected event, they will turn on each other.

So, now you're not just erasing Ukrainian identity, you're also erasing the entirety of European identity and civilisation as well, reducing it to nothing more than an American affordance. Has Vlad been personally tutoring you in totalisation?

It's as if you think your erasure of Ukrainian will, history and identity is made more palatable by taking down the entirety of the European identity with it. But all you're doing is stamping an entire continent - people you clearly know a fraction of eff all about - with American or imperialist triangles.

What a simple world it would must be: there's America, American lookalikes, and pathetic near-corpses kept alive by the Great Satan Vampire.

This is a dangerous extremism you're playing with, and exactly why poststructuralism tossed totalising Marxian narrative decades ago.

You don't stand outside the world; this is the world you inherited and you look far more like it than you imagine. You're as soiled and sullied as everyone else; a recipient and participant, including of imperialism, whatever it really is except exaggeration: partly projected, partly internalised.

Dismissing entire swathes of the planet in one fell swoop as a nothingness - whether a reflection of empire or class, is precisely the point at which imperialism and counter-imperialism meld into a mutually dependent, totalising misanthropy.

Can you not hear how much you sound like Putin or Ugly MAGA America? Listen to the way Putin talks about Ukraine and its history. Are you sure your intention is to parrot that stuff?

I recommend a trip to Cambodia to ponder just one of histories that totalising, mutually dependent, supposedly rival misanthropies have created.

[David]

[Magpietothemax]

Not a lot incorrect with that post but it doesn't cover the most basic element - Russia invaded Ukraine! The rest is semantics.

\
I have posted about this many times, so probably omitted it in this post, but yes, of course that is true. Russia invaded Ukraine because NATO continually expanded eastwards towards its borders, and the last straw for Russia came in 2014 when the right wing Maidan coup backed by the US, with help also from Germany and the UK, brought to power in Ukraine a pro-US regime, which the US and NATO proceeded to arm to the teeth, train its military etc for a war against Russia. The Russian government would not have invaded Ukraine had the US and Ukraine agreed to a treaty guaranteeing Russia's national security. There is some evidence that the Zelensky regime would have done so, but its US backers forbade such a move, because their intention for the last decade has been to encircle Russia and ultimately get rid of the Putin regime, replacing it with a totally docile regime willing to hand over all control of Russian mineral wealth and resources to imperialism without taking much of a cut for itself. The ultimate goal of the US is to defeat China, militarily and economically, but the Biden administration's policy is first to take care of the Russian question before embarking on eliminating its most dangerous rival, China.
When Zelensky refused to sign any such gauarntee with the Russian government, Putin made the catastrophic miscalculation that by invading Ukraine he could place enough pressure on the US and Zelensky to agree to a compromise. Putin did not take into account the possiblity that the US would not only prevent any such compromise, but would instead continually strive to inflame and escalate the conflict, regardless of the risks of nuclear escalation. Now the Russian government is caught in an endless military campaign which the US will continue until the very last Ukrainian, and after that...most likely NATO troops.

[pietillidie]

^So, now my progressive Ukrainian friends seeking to leave the corruption of Old Ukraine behind are really right wing or closet fascists, and as always clueless halfwits dragged around by the nose by those ubiquitous Americans. Not because they really are, but because having zero understanding of contemporary Europe, or care as to its views, and to make yourself feel in control of history and peculiarly righteous, you demand it be so.

And I love this cracker you keep repeating about others stealing Russian resources. On what planet is anyone invading or going to invade Russia, with it monstrous military force and arsenal of nuclear weapons? It's astonishing that even though its Russia that has invaded Ukraine, destroying its infrastructure and stealing its resources, Russia is the real victim here. It's not the real violence you should be worried about, it's the imaginary violence of an extremely unlikely hypothetical future that shpuld keep you awake at night! It would be comical of it wasn't so dissociative.

You should start your own Ministry of Truth.

David, it's exactly the same everywhere at every single scale to more and less destructive extents. People are a mixed bag, as are cultures; for every strength a blind spot can be found. The very modernity that sustains us has its share of ill effects, as we know.

Hence, I always talk about small improvements, because everything is so entangled and you can't get everything right, or be fully right or righteous, or even mostly. Just somewhat more or more than before.

Ricky Gervais had an hilarious set on moral contradiction, with poor little cripple Jimmy being both sadly disabled and a vile little racist that deserves everything he gets

Marxian discourse lives in the imaginary past of grand empires not because anyone thinks empires can teach us much more than the extremely obvious, but as a self-con to avoid the complex present and the dirty, ugly self and its role therein. The equivalent preoccupation among neocons is of course Rome, with suspicions that they are both rooted in self-disgust, one going left and one going right for some reason, like C. elegans (the nematode Chomsky always talks about with only 12 chromosomes, yet we still can't predict which way it will turn).

It's far, far easier to sidestep the failed ratification of the EU Accession Agreement, and what that signifies to young Ukrainians sick to the stomach with the ugly past, and why people would rather live in the EU over the Russiam Empire of Putin's fantasies, and engage in a wankfest over who understands Lenin best instead. Even easier to just reduce the whole lot to a residual of the work of the Great Satan of the Cold War.

This is so reminisce of Iraq and Brexit it's not funny; people tying themselves to the mast of some ideology, rather than engaging in careful judgement. Once ideology dominates the discussion, any sophisticated handle on the matter is lost; that's the part that worries me most, especially with Trump lingering like the foul stench he is.

The present sitation is dangerous and destructive enough. But once it's smothered in extremist hot air and side taking anything, absolutely anything can happen. As with people voting for Brex8t and Trump to stick it to the powers that be, the idea that things can't get any worse so it doesn't matter what ill-disciplined nonsense people promulgate is the most worrisome of all.

This is a very high risk situation that requires intense present concentration and a highly sophisticated, agile engagement with Ukraine.

Speaking of which, I was hoping someone might have something to offer on Ukrainian opinion beyond a basic Google search. I've read a lot of the research to date, but I'm not happy with the quality.

[stui magpie]

Look, Zelensky was democratically elected. The country is under martial law in war time. I'd have Zelensky as leader any day over Dandrews.

The thing I like about Zelensky is when Russia invaded, he was offered to be evacuated and said something like, "I need weapons, not a ride". He stayed and fought.

Putin is an ex KGB thug and runs what is basically a dictatorship like China with elections being a farce. If the USA and EU can help Ukraine kick Russia out, then it's up to Ukraine what they become, but being a puppet of the USA wouldn't seem high on the cards. Why wouldn't they want to join NATO and the EU? Who want's to live under an authoritarian regime like Russia or China?

[Tannin]

The Russian government would not have invaded Ukraine had the US and Ukraine agreed to a treaty guaranteeing Russia's national security.

What utter bullshit. Kremlin propaganda at its finest.

In fact there is such a treaty and Russia and Ukraine both signed it. Ukraine honoured it in full.

Russia gave an absolute cast-iron promise to respect Ukraine's borders but Russia lied. Like most treaties it signs and most promises it makes, it lasted only until Russia felt like breaking it.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E ... hip_Treaty

[Magpietothemax]

The Russian government would not have invaded Ukraine had the US and Ukraine agreed to a treaty guaranteeing Russia's national security.

What utter bullshit. Kremlin propaganda at its finest.

In fact there is such a treaty and Russia and Ukraine both signed it. Ukraine honoured it in full.

Russia gave an absolute cast-iron promise to respect Ukraine's borders but Russia lied. Like most treaties it signs and most promises it makes, it lasted only until Russia felt like breaking it.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E ... hip_Treaty

Just read the Wikipedia page you reference regarding this treaty, which was signed in 1997 and was unilaterally repudiated not by Russia but by the Ukrainian government in 2018. Clearly you have absolutely no understanding of what has happened in Ukraine over the last decade if you think that Ukraine "honoured this treaty in full" . Part of the treaty stipulated:
a "mutual commitment not to use its territory to harm the security of each other." After the Maidan coup in 2014, spearheaded by Russophobic fascists, who were then integrated into the military and state machinery, the US and other NATO countries began sending armaments and military hardware to Ukraine, as well and conducting training programs for the Ukrainian military. Combined with the xenophobic threats made towards the Russian ethnic population in Ukraine, the Russian government drew the only realistic conclusion: the Ukrainian government was being rearmed and trained by the US/NATO and posed a significant threat to Russia militarily.

It is pathetic how some immediately denounce as "Kremlin propaganda" any information which does not conform with the US propaganda that dominates the media.

Read this if you have an open mind:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/0 ... s-j27.html