Western leaders swiftly condemned Putin's move to recognize two separatist "republics" in eastern Ukraine.
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There are three non-NATO countries on Russia’s western border: Belarus, Ukraine and … Finland. Two of those are currently occupied by Russia.
I wonder if we’re gonna see a sharp upturn in pro-NATO sentiment in Finland. I know I would’ve voted against it just 6 months ago, despite Crimea. Now, however, I wish our government would be signing the deal already.
Basically. It’s a kleptocracy, with systemic theft from the masses going to oligarchs with Putin at the top of the heap. Also dangerous is its political structure. In a well functioning liberal democracy, power is diffused with well defined rules around transfer of power. Putin has for decades been operating without someone else there if he dies or retires. It’s why he’s built up a macho image. Putin must be healthy, or there will be political chaos with no obvious successor. In a system with more diffuse political power, the government barely blinks. Case in point: President Kennedy being assassinated had an incredibly minimal effect in terms of some sort of power struggle.
It’s obviously not indicative of the population as a whole, but the Finnish subreddit is inundated with people calling to join NATO immediately. A lot of people saying they’ve changed their minds. The opposition is by far the lowest it has ever been (gallup before today’s news, still mostly opposed to joining) and no doubt a lot of the politicians are thinking the same things, even if only a few are saying it out loud.
Finland doesn’t have a majority of ethnic Russians though. It wouldn’t make as much sense to make it part of Russia. Russia’s actions in the Ukraine are (in a way) democratic.
In what way?
In the way that the people of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk want to be independent from Ukraine.
Even if this is true, it does seem to me like any democratic process was skipped entirely.
there would be no sense in russia going for finland. they already took karelia and the entire population essentially packed up and walked into finland overnight. going for finland? no one’s packing up as they got no place to go, and the rest of scandinavia will be pulled into it as a consequence. it’s asking for an outright war. a war russia have failed to win repeatedly.
At least from my point of view there are two conflicting ideas at work. On the one hand there is Russia’s authoritarian system with all it’s problems that definitely should not spread and lots of leftists rightfully condemn.
On the other hand Russia still has considerable military power and just as the US absolutely did not want nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba (even though Cuba is an independent nation and the US should have absolutely no say in this, at least to their own logic regarding Ukraine) Russia does not want such missiles stationed in Ukraine. The US now claiming Russia should have no influence on whether the Ukraine can join the EU/NATO in the future is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. This is one of the reasons for the strong anti-Americanism.
From this perspective it becomes very clear that expanding the NATO into the east has always meant playing with fire. I absolutely do not want another Cuba-crisis and consider expanding the NATO an unnecessary provocation of the Russians.
Prior to 2013/14 when the Ukraine remained neutral the situation was much more stable and Russia had no reason nor intention to interfere in Ukraine. If the result of Ukraine getting closer to the US/EU/NATO is war, then I do not want it.
I think the fact that this forum is rather small makes it easy for a couple of Russian agents to make it seem like they can speak for leftists here. They seek only to discredit the left and allow anti-democratic corporatocracy to reign.
Generally speaking, the smaller the forum, the less value it has to discredit or use. If it’s small enough to be easy, it’s small enough to not matter.
My bet is on “it’s more important to be anti-American than to be pro-left”.
I feel the same way. But I wish the arguments brought up by these “anti-american first” people were more balanced. And balanced does not mean less anti-american, but just to also keep a critical view on Russia.
An comparison could be with capitalist companies : I deeply hate Facebook. But if it was contested by a new capitalist tech giant on its own market, I would never mindlessly support this new adversary just because I’m anti-Facebook.
Just as I think anticapitalism should critizise any capitalist power, any country as powerful as the US or Russia should also be criticized for this kind of action.
This really has war propaganda vibes. Either you are with us, or against us.
Could it be any other way? Groups/movements/ideologies that aren’t like this have lower survival odds. Thus evolution weeds them out. Self-awareness being the most limited resource in the universe, those same people are quite certain they’re in the right about it, too…
So do you want the copypaste sentiments of 80% USA + West EU non critical thinking Redditors here too?
Of note, this line:
For people who have dismissed accusations that Russia building an excuse for war, is this not at least ominous? This is the final sentence from the Kremlin’s transcript:
Reading over his speech, it’s hard to see him as viewing Ukraine with its own will. Instead, it is merely a breakaway nation that should be subject to Russia’s will.
I’m pretty convinced at this point that a good amount of people on this site that are either Russian/Chinese propagandists, are apologists, or are just in complete denial. Every post about this has someone calling out Western media as fake news, etc, but here you go. Here is the proof. They all look like idiots with their foot in their mouths now.
Ah yes. The brilliant Russo-Chinese geopolitical strategy. Fund propagandists to spread their agenda on Lemmy of all fucking places.
When they can’t prove you wrong on an issue, or even imagine how anyone could disagree with them, they resort to calling you a Russian bot, just like the Democrats do to everyone who disagrees with them. Apparently most of the world is Russian bots 😂
You should be careful throwing around the word “idiot” with that line of argument 😉
It’s not a joint strategy, necessarily. Chinese, I suspect, are simply paid in social credits for displays of fervent nationalism. But it’s certainly cheap enough to pay a room of shills to repeat your talking points of the day. Even on remote outposts like lemmy. For a country with a weak economy and military like Russia, information war is the best bang for the buck.
“social credits” Racist dehumanizing USA propaganda.
Seasame Credits. What else do you call them, race baiter?
Going for insults now, NATO bootlicker?
I think you’re just too dim to understand. You brought race randomly into this. Now you cast NATO as some power to be feared. It’s a defensive pack. Russia casts it as a boogeyman to justify invading it’s neighbors. That would make you a Russian bootlicker.
No, you do not need to fear NATO. Just look away from all the people they killed in Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan… Nothing to see if you just stick your head in the sand.
Putin is the only one fearing NATO. After he saw what happened to Quaddafi.
Finally you admit that NATO is just a bunch of evil murderers
Do you have any evidence that they poison underwear? Because Putin does.
It’s simpler than that. They’re paid nothing. It’s of their own accord. It’s kind of sad.
a self referential comment if I ever saw one
Imagine being a grown ass adult and believing all that. 😂
So, according to you, people of Donetsk and Luhansk don’t have the right to self determination. Interesting position to take given that this is precisely what Minsk protocol states, which Ukraine is a signatory to.
I think Russia needs to butt out of this. No more incursions into Ukraine, no more propaganda about an impending genocide. So far what they have done looks alarming like Nazi Germany’s playbook for the Rhineland. Claim that the ethnic Germans/Russians in a region of another country were under threat, support a separatist movement, then annex that land. And any time you start looking like Nazi Germany in a substantive way, it’s time to start taking a long, hard look at your actions.
It’s not propaganda. Ukraine has been committing war crimes in Donbas for years by attacking water supply and other civilian targets. Meanwhile, comparing Russia today to Nazi Germany is the height of idiocy. Sounds like you’ve been brainwashed by propaganda beyond all hope.
When Russia’s using the same playbook… well, the glove fits. I don’t make comparisons to Nazis lightly.
All this is war. Not good, and both sides should be more careful, but it’s not genocide.
Given that the west installed literal fascists in power in Ukraine you might want to take a seat there bud.
No one has a right to secede illegally in a representative democracy. You don’t just go out and declare, with the full support of a invading force occupying another part of your country, independence.
Go read the Minsk agreement that Ukraine is signatory to. The west overthrew the legitimate government in Ukraine that was democratically elected, and installed a fascist puppet regime. The fascists the west supports have been doing ethnic cleansing in eastern parts of Ukraine.
They did what?
systematically murder ethnic Russian people in the region
So… propaganda is not allowed in the news links but it’s ok in the comments section? Just wondering.
Hmm, Russia Today is reporting about celebrations in Donetsk and Lugansk because of this decision: https://www.rt.com/russia/550172-donetsk-lugansk-recognition-celebrations/ meanwhile western media and leaders as well as other parts of Ukraine are condemning this move.
From what I understand Putins’ decision is not too surprising. Ukraine has cut off the separatist controlled regions. This means for example it does not provide any pensions and apparently it’d be pretty hard to even get into other parts of Ukraine from these areas even if you wanted to. That’s why Russia recently started handing out passports. The percentage of ethnic Russians in this regions is pretty high, so a lot of Russian citizens live there now. With growing tensions and more and more armed conflicts this put Putin into a bad spot. After his previous decisions he hardly had a choice but to protect his citizens. So the first thing they tried was to evacuate them. But only few people actually left for Russia. Thus the current decision.
This is not meant to apologize for any transgressions but merely to state that this was somewhat predictable and I can understand why Putin would act like this.
Something that is being brought up even more frequently now is a full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I do not see the point in that. What’s in it for Russia? I think Putin would be much happier with Ukraine as neutral buffer to other NATO members like Poland. Does the Ukraine have any natural resources? War is very expensive and Russia spends relatively little money on its military.
Ukraine was a neutral buffer before Russia invaded. Seeing Russia dishonor Ukraine’s sovereignty will push what’s left of Ukraine into NATO. So Russia has basically forced NATO encroachment even closer than it was before. And that’s not even counting Finland.
Calling Ukraine neutral after the Western-backed coup of 2014, in which the US candidate became PM and Russian-hating Neonazis got into government is some twisting of facts. The whole Maidan (which was supported massively by Western governments, press and NGOs) was about aligning with the West for fuck’s sake! The invasion only happened after that.
They’ll surely love Russia after getting invaded a second time. If alignment or invasion are their choices, Russia is really pushing them into NATO.
Realistically this is the same kind of situation that happened with Georgia and makes sense if you want to garner some level of legitimacy for your invasion.
Russia nor any country are going to outright say that they want war or that they are invading. So, like the US, you make some shitty pretense to invade, just make sure the reason looks peaceful or for protection.
What is in it for Russia? Political control, influence and resources. Russia’s economy is doing poorly and this is similar behaviour to what has happened with Georgia and Crimea. For the political control, we can typically find that Putin’s domestic situation typically improves when the focus is not on his country’s issues. Approval rating jumps up, people feel safer knowing that Putin is strong on terrorists, etc etc.
Russia’s economy isn’t doing poorly, but you might think that when you guzzle propaganda all day. Russia also gains absolutely nothing by invading Ukraine.
Russia’s economy never recovered from being slapped with sanctions following the theft of Crimea. You can see that both in a dip in their nominal GDP and in a dip in the Big Mac index. As that page explains, a lower index value implies that McDonald’s is pricing their burgers lower to match what local people can pay. The ruble fell against the dollar, so the price of a Big Mac relative to a US dollar fell.
That’s utter nonsense as the article I linked above very clearly shows. If anything, the sanctions forced Russia to start developing its domestic industry making its economy far more robust than it was previously. Russia now also has an open alliance with China meaning that anything Russia can’t produce domestically can be sourced from China. Meanwhile, BRI is creating a huge economic bloc in Eurasia that Russia is an active member of.
I’m also not sure whom you’re claiming Crimea was stolen from given that people of Crimea are ethnically Russian and have overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia after the 2014 coup. Once again, you don’t appear to care about people’s right for self determination in the slightest. It doesn’t matter to you what people who actually live in Crimea want, all you care about NATO’s geopolitical goals. Really telling on yourself there bud.
When your economy is ~60% resources, you’re eco is fragile and honestly, that site doesn’t even support your position. Losing EU and UK as trading partners is going to substantially injure them (it will also hit the EU and UK). Russian economy isn’t as diversified as you might think.
You realize that two minutes of googling would save you from outing yourself as an ignoramus?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271373/distribution-of-the-workforce-across-economic-sectors-in-russia/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235291/legal-entity-revenue-by-industry-in-russia/
Let me reword, if your exports are mostly resources, your economy is fragile. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/14/russias-natural-resources-valued-at-60-of-gdp-a64800
The main exports from Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exports_of_Russia Which is referenced here: https://www.trademap.org/Product_SelCountry_TS.aspx?nvpm=1|643||||TOTAL|||2|1|1|2|2|1|1|1|1|1
Using Exports as the sole measure of the robustness of the economy really tells me that you don’t know much about economics.
Ahh here we go, yes because an economy does fantastic when a huge swath of money get ripped out from it.
Why would Russian economy have huge swath of money ripped out of it exactly? We’ve already established that energy is a small sector of the overall Russian economy. Furthermore, Russia is already building pipelines to China, and with the economic growth happening in China and across BRI, it’s pretty clear that Russia will be able to redirect its exports if Europe decides to commit economic suicide. And of course energy prices are going through the roof right now giving Russia further leverage.
Is it ever true that an “invader gains nothing”? Or are you just (strangely) saying that there is more to lose than to gain?
Everyone on reddit is ranting about how it will be another Afghanistan… but what if it were merely another Chechnya? If Putin believes it to be that, he might well decide to invade/annex.
Ukraine will have strong western support so it won’t be as easy as Chechnya. Although Putin might decide to annex anyway.
Is Chechnya a comparison you want to make? Russia fought two wars over it before successfully subduing them. To this day, there are still suspicions that there were false flag attacks where Russia killed its own citizens to bolster support for the war and bring Putin into the presidency.
Fake news. Russian military support was requested by Donbass republics. This comes shortly after Russia recognizes Donbass people’s republics as sovereign nations. So this is essentially the same as Russian military presence in Syria (also on invitation of the legal government).
As for the Minsk Agreements, they have been broken by Ukraine long ago, and Russia doesnt have any obligations in them. You can read the full text here.
God damn, enough with the bullshit. They invaded Ukraine. Full stop.
That assumes that those are legitimate governments. Does every scrap of land that gets its population riled up by a neighboring country with ethnic ties get to succeed?
Donetsk and Lugansk have been de facto independent for 8 years now, since the US-sponsored, fascist coup in Kiev and subsequent genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine. And whether you like it or not, the republics are now officially recognized by Russia, and will probably be recognized soon by other countries like China. Western politicians will whine and implement their sanctions, but no one will care.
A fact that was not recognized by Russia until a few hours before sending in its troops.
The “coup” where over a hundred protestors were killed by the government? That’s not a coup, that’s mass protests.
I’m guessing you’ve never heard of color revolutions
Of course I have, but just because things didn’t go your way doesn’t mean it’s a coup.
You have to be wilfuly ignorant to not know that this was a coup.
The fact that it was a coup is very well documented. Only fascists deny this.
Ah yes, the classic. Calling someone who disagrees with you a fascist.
When it quacks like a duck and supports a fascist government in Ukraine…
Are you talking about the US funding that specific excluded groups a list of groups with fascist ties?
Meanwhile in the real world
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-u-s-did-not-defeat-fascism-in-wwii-it-discretely-internationalized-it/
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/far-right-extremists-in-ukrainian-military-bragged-about-canadian-training-report-says-1.5631304
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356691143_The_Maidan_Massacre_in_Ukraine_Revelations_from_Trials_and_Investigation
It’s strange that you keep questioning the legitimacy of those governments given that they’re supported by the people of Donbas and are recognized by Minsk agreements which I assume you have not bothered actually reading.
The Minsk protocols were violated by both sides before the ink dried. The agreement has been reduced to a joke and asking Ukraine to hold to them while its territorial integrity is violated is a matter of selective enforcement.
That’s utter and complete nonsense. In fact, Germany and France are insisting that Ukraine starts implementing Minsk agreement at this very moment.
And I’m sure they would be thrilled if they could do so. Germany especially would find it difficult to impose any sanctions with real teeth due to its dependency on Russian natural gas.
Ah yes, the only country here with pure and humanitarian motivations is the US.
It’s strange that you continue to fall for this shit. It’s actually not strange, it’s kind of suspicious, but mostly comical. They could nuke Kiev and I guarantee you’d be on the lemmy post calling it fake news or trying to justify it.
The only thing comical here is how utterly brainwashed westerners are.
Bruh… people can be critical of both the US and Russia, the fact you weirdly uncritical of Russia does expose your bias.
Bruh, US overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine, funded and trained literal fascists there, and is now trying to start WW3, but yeah BoTh SiDeS aRe BaD.
I mean I don’t doubt that the US does that since it clearly has in the past, I just didn’t catch that they did it in Ukraine. When did this happen?
US ran a color revolution in 2014 to install a pro western government in Ukraine. This was a long campaign, and even the guardian reported on it back in 2004 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
and a bit more reporting on recent events from Jacobin https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
Good sources, I appreciate it, for what that’s worth. Although, I’m not sure what an article from 2004 can say about an event that happened in 2014.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/06/03/how-why-us-government-perpetrated-2014-coup-ukraine/
Thank you.
That article uses a misinformation/conspiracy site Washington’s Blog as many of its sources. Do you have anything better?
Learn to read please, if you are going to try and derive what I mean, do it right.
This is funny because you can apply the same logic here with Luhansk and Donetsk but you don’t.
There was substantial opposition to Yanukovych prior to the 2010 election and a pattern of corruption established. Post 2010, Party of Regions literally went after and imprisoned the opposition party leader. From this, you should have at least some skepticism of what that Yanukovych’s represents in this case. It can make for a case that is an attempt to seize complete control of a country and erode its democracy. Mixing this with denying Ukrainian’s people’s support of joining the EU, constant cronyism and corruption and then shooting protesters opposing the government… yeah, ain’t great. Remember, Russia supported this guy, so we can somewhat conclude that Russia benefits from having this guy in place.
Of course, this is going to start leading to people in the country feeling like their government is no longer representing them and protests will likely ensue.
Svoboda and Right Sector? Or are you talking about the current government of Ukraine?
Sure, ironically if you typically invade a country like what Russia did, you are going to spur some serious nationalism and embolden those elements. However, Ukrainian people, as of the most recent election are not necessarily fond of those elements as you can by them practically losing almost all representation in their government.
I’m not going to disagree that the US had trained people who are part of the parties previously mentioned and I am not exactly supportive of this as well. However, Russia sending their own military into another country, also training Ukrainians that are supportive of Russia/Russian ethnostate. No one has clean hands in this conflict, but it’s kinda obvious that Russia is the main aggressor here.
You could only apply the same logic if you completely ignore reality and history. Here’s what Jacobin, a western publication has to say about the events of 2014, so maybe stop trying to rewrite history here https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
Current government in Ukraine is full of extremists an has even integrated Azov battalion, who are unapologetic nazis, into their regular military.
[citation needed]
Stop trying to rewrite history. Russia has never been the main aggressor here, and anybody claiming this is either an utter ignoramus or a liar.
There is nothing really in that article that objects to my argument. So, I don’t know what you are on about. Ironically, by providing this argument, you actually proved my point when you said:
[citation needed].So I guess, have you read the article?
And you have Russian crusaders that are wanting to return Ukraine back to Russia. Ironically, you could just say that Russia is now a hotbed of white supremacists.
There is at least a case with the most recent election that those elements were on the downfall in Ukraine. However, I doubt you want that information to get in the way of your narrative.
Russian funding has been linked to fascist and nationalist parties in other countries: (National Rally, UK Conservative Party, AfD). Sure, I don’t approve of Azov Battaltion and shit like that needs to be removed. However, there is no moral high ground to be achieved here when you when Russia literally does the same thing and is sponsoring RNU in Donbas (which are Russian Neo-Nazis).
Have you?
Ukraine is run by literal Fascists, but yeah ok.
Russia has been the main aggressor now since the past 7 years according to Western fake news outlets. 6 below + current gaslighting attempt.
Dude, this screams of an attempt to discredit all information regarding the matter. Sure, headlines like this need to be considered, however, the information regarding the matter is not discredited because “OMG WEST POSTS ABOUT THIS”.
Well lets examine some events here:
Considering the points above, yes… Russia has been an aggressor for this period of time :)
Just going to tell that there are no “boots on the ground” and Crimea’s invasion has a bit different background behind it. It is not like Putin woke up one day and announced “let’s go play boys!” Also, what is this crap about Donetsk and Luhansk having separatists? If they announced their independence after Ukraine cutting off their water supply and all those shenanigans, why does Ukraine have an issue?
“Providing military equipment to the separatists” is done by USA and NATO countries throughout, and we can discuss Azov Battalion in national military as well.
You can also discuss about the UN resolution vote against Nazism 2 months ago, and why USA always votes “NO” in that vote since the past 15 years.
Yeah… okay, feel free to say more bullshit :) https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/02/20/russias-anti-selfie-soldier-law-greatest-hits-and-implications/
Vague and doesn’t help anything… go on.
Sure, that’s not what I said but go on making stuff up, you’re good at it :)
Well… are they separatists? As in they want their own statehood?
Well, I can see a nation taking issue when another state actor has decided to take advantage a ethnic minority and push them into some kind of crusade. Hence the RNU
Yeah, I’m not going to disagree that this has happened but it shows that Russia didn’t want a peaceful solution that happened to have been the crux of a lot of pro-russian arguments here.
And we can talk about the RNU, come on dude, these guys are neo-nazis as well, for some reason you just want to only apply nazism to Ukraine. Donektsk Republic is Russian imperialist with some serious anti-ukrainian and genocidal elements to it.
The one who is bullshitting is not me. Someone attacked Luhansk first, then Russia retaliated. Russia is not the initiator, and has not entered Ukraine territory, according to Ukraine military https://twitter.com/ReutersGMF/status/1496718865560076288
Posting Bellingcat is proof of intentional dishonesty, unless you do not know their history and background.
Crimea invasion having a different backstory is not vague.
Not even reading rest of your comment. Uneducated and bad faith engagement.
How is it dishonest? it relates directly to how Russia has been actively involved with their military and with boots on the ground from 2014 onwards.
The link you provided I am not disagreeing with, however there are recent reports in Kharkiv that outline their presence.
All that you, Gun, Yogthos have posted have been in bad faith and mostly unsubstantiated shit with usual ad-hominem.
You have been fun though :) I am still looking for most of my points (I do have to reply to an economic one) being refuted properly :)