Once again, the non-revisionist non-reformist internationalist socialist position is to not take sides in a conventional inter-imperialist (read inter-capitalist) war.
Ukraine de facto acts as the proxy of the West, while Russia is a regional imperialist power.
Both are capitalist governments fighting each other over their respective interests, there is nothing proletarian about Ukraine; the international proletariat belongs to no country…Anti-colonial/liberation wars are another topic. Critical support is warranted there, even if it isn’t a proletarian movement fighting them.
All the liberals masquerading as leftists always seem to forget “No war but class war!” whenever it’s convenient for them; so please
eat your veggiesread your theory…“No war but class war” doesn’t mean you cannot fight or support a defensive war.
If it does, it is an irredeemably stupid position.
The non-revisionist, non-reformist, internationalist socialist position can eat dicks.
If there is an imperialist aggressor invading another country, then the MORAL position is to side against the aggressor. Because regardless of how you feel about the governments (which, fuck all governments, so what’s the point in making that distinction?), the civilians will be feeling the brunt of the war.
There is an imperialist aggressor and it is Russia.
The oblasts involved in this war want to join Russia and voted to join in 2014 after the Ukrainians kicked out the Russian friendly government. They voted to join Russia because they feared that the Ukrainian government was going to oppress them for being Russian speaking ethnic Russians. They were right, In the years between 2014 and 2022 they fought a civil war to leave Ukraine and were not allowed to and Russia intervened. Most of the people living there moved to Russia.
The only irredeemably stupid position is the person who just takes into account 2022 and after and not looking at the whole picture. You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
Sorry, I can’t hear you over your staunch adherence to revisionism in favor of authoritarian imperialist powers masquerading as socialist or communist.
And you see zero problems with those elections? No problem with no other country in the world recognising them, no international observers, no voter lists and even with all of that they didn’t vote to join Russia they voted for independence.
But if they voted to stay in Ukraine you would have accepted them?
no international observers
Neither do the US elections, do you accept those?
From my perspective the US and the EU are by far the most evil places on earth that have directly colonized where I live and oppressed the entire world for 400 years and those are the people complaining the loudest. Why should I trust any english speaker that they are in the right or care about anyone or anything except extracting wealth from the rest of us? You people literally have 0 good faith or moral high ground. I don’t view the Russians as more evil as the EU. Europe, including Russia which is part of Europe, is filled with literal devils.
If you think “the EU and the US are BY FAR the most evil places on earth” then you are just delusional and your opinion is irrelevant
You’re so steeped in theory and strategy that you’ve forgotten to defend the universal human right to self-determination. Ukrainians do not consent to being governed by Russia, and that is reason enough for me to side with them.
when you choose the side of non-intervention you take the position of the oppressor. russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine. sure, they’re both capitalist regimes, but one is clearly the imperial colonizer. call me “the liberal” again if you must, but your understanding of political theory is incomplete if you don’t see Ukraine’s self defense as a war of resistance.
standing aside and letting russia win does not bring anyone closer to The Revolution. what brings us closer to liberation is supporting groups like Destroy the Lines and Sibir Corps (which the US refuses to support for being leftist russian groups) that are coordinating with Ukrainian military forces
Russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine.
How do you figure? The civilians in the region that are dying are ethnic Russians who speak Russian and voted in 2014 to join Russia and are dying of the NATO backed Ukrainian policy and “defense”
Israel killed almost 10x as many civilians as Russia has in a much smaller area. That is a genocide. They are erasing the Palestinian people and culture. The Russians are not.
- https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2022/04/14/7339618/
- https://news.err.ee/1608571816/estonia-on-russia-s-actions-in-ukraine-this-is-genocide
- https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/lithuanian-lawmakers-brand-russian-actions-ukraine-genocide-terrorism-2022-05-10/
- https://www.reuters.com/world/canada-lawmakers-vote-unanimously-label-russias-acts-ukraine-genocide-2022-04-27/
- https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/parliamentaryBusiness/orderPaper/seanad/2022/2022-06-01_seanad-order-paper-wed_en.pdf
- https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/kraj/sejm-okreslil-dzialania-rosji-w-ukrainie-mianem-ludobojstwa-i-zbrodni-wojennych/820t6sw
- https://web.archive.org/web/20220421105255/http://www.leta.lv/eng/home/important/9DC82F52-52F6-485F-BF87-E7A5BAD5B75F/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20230502075740/https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/apr/27/russia-ukraine-war-live-russia-pounds-bakhmut-us-and-eu-welcome-chinas-call-with-zelenskiy
- https://www.euronews.com/culture/2024/10/17/council-of-europe-declares-russian-destruction-of-ukrainian-cultural-heritage-genocide
- https://united24media.com/latest-news/osce-assembly-labels-russias-agression-as-genocide-against-ukrainians-980
- https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/05/22/nato-parliamentary-assembly-recognizes-russias-war-crimes-in-ukraine-as-genocide-cherniev-says/?swcfpc=1
- https://web.archive.org/web/20250329194700/https://kyivindependent.com/destroy-in-whole-or-in-part/
- https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/columns/2024/10/15/7479783/
- https://cepa.org/article/morality-shouldnt-get-in-the-way-russias-genocidal-state-media/
Top level summary is that Russia’s killings are indiscriminate of who’s who in Eastern Ukraine, and they are abducting children for the purposes of russification, which are both internationally recognized as acts of genocide.
What is happening in Palestine is genocide on a larger scale with Israel having far less resistance stopping them from indiscriminate killings. We do not need to use one genocide’s scale to de-legitimize claims that another genocide is also a genocide. Genocide in Palestine, Sudan, and Ukraine also do not make the United States actions throughout Latin America over the course of the last 50 years not genocide.
What is happening in the world is happening everywhere. Our best chance at bringing these things to an end is to act against our oppressors everywhere we are and to not try to create false dichotomies. The more acts of oppression you tolerate, the more tolerant you become of oppression until eventually there is no hope of freedom anywhere. We will not be free until every genocide everywhere is brought to a stop and every authority held accountable for its role in this global system of atrocity.
Russia invaded Ukraine. Just like Palestine, it it has a right to defend its sovereignty (albeit Palestine has ~80 years of a right to do this, compared to Ukraine’s ~15).
Remember that working class people are suffering from these capitalist wars. They did not choose this
Edit: Also, how is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine not imperialist?
How is it like Palestine? Did the Palestinians in Gaza vote in 2014 to join Israel like the Russians in Russian speaking Eastern Ukraine did?
If that were the whole truth you would have a point (at least for Donetsk and Luhansk, not all of Ukraine), but the extent to which Russia was involved in the separatist movement calls their popular support into question. It’s not all that different from how the US gives support to dissident groups in countries it’s interested in destabilizing, except in scale.
I think it’s also worth noting that the pro-Russia separatists are far-right extremists, which I think is quite an inconvenient fact for Russia given their “de-Nazification” justification for invading Ukraine.
How is it like Palestine?
Pretty sure I explained it in my comment. Sovereignty.
One invaded the other. One is actively acting like an imperialist power and the other is not.
Mate, the ukranian government is conscripting people. The government isn’t fighting for the people, it’s willing to torture people that would prefer to leave or surrender.
Don’t confuse countries for the people that live in them. If the Ukrainian government hadn’t been bouncing between corruption scandals and supported people leaving who aren’t interested in fighting things would be different.
Governments are not the people and do not represent the people. This is a proxy war bloodbath.
Western Europeans are enthusiastic about it because the thought of reducing the number of Slavs in the world makes them salivate.
This is a proxy war bloodbath.
Who is Russia a proxy for?
In political science, a proxy war is an armed conflict where at least one of the belligerents is directed or supported by an external third-party power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war
The russian federation under Putin is persuing Putin’s own objectives. Ukrain is being supported by the EU, the usa, and protectorates such as Australia.
I think this is beyond debate? If you feel a need to establish consensus on these basic details then please indicate so. If you were merely mistaken about the definition of a proxy war then please, for clarity, say so.
So invading other countries is fine as long as those countries have allies supporting them, on the grounds that it’s a “proxy” war?
That’s exactly what I said. Well done, have a gold star for achieving 7 year old reading comprehension.
Actually subtract that star because you’re too damn proud to admit you were mistaken, which is approximately 2 year old developmental level.
So we’re back where we started, only now you’ve insulted me for not supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia could have ended this at any time by just leaving Ukraine be.
read your theory…
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‘I stand with the Russian people against Putin and the oligarchs, bring your kids home with a quick stop in Moscow. I know damn well some of you fuckers remember how to be communist’ might beat it out.
I’d agree that the current political system of Ukraine is better for the workers there, however the is a conflict caused by the existence of capitalist nations. The soldiers dying wouldn’t fight if they weren’t forced to by their nations. Ukraine should be supported, but only in the sense of supporting a capitalist to get rid of the aristocracy
This was has a lot more to do with imperial domination than capitalism, and framing it as being caused by “capitalist nations” rather than “one specific imperialist warmonger, the invader” is questionable at best.
This is largely, though as you acknowledge not entirely, not a war fought over workers’ rights so much as the right of a sovereign people to choose their future.
Bad phrasing on my part. Russia obviously started this war, however it can only come to this because Ukraine and Russia exist as separate antagonistic nations and not because the people living in these regions hate each other so much that they have to go to war with each other. Russia shouldn’t impose a future on the Ukrainian people and they should be supported in defending their ability to do so, however the Ukrainian government shouldn’t be equated with the future Ukrainians want, it’s still a (partially) corrupt, capitalist government.
ah yeah that checks out, fully agree.
Also in the very basic sense that they’re defending their homes from an invader.
I don’t want this to devolve into a long discussion about democracy in Ukraine, but even though Ukrainian soldiers might be defending their homes, Ukraine as a nation is defending it’s political system. If Ukraine surrendered immediately some people would still have been killed, some houses destroyed and some private property taken over by Russian oligarchs, but Putin wouldn’t have taken every single home of Ukrainian citizens. The Russian soldiers attacking the Ukrainian homes aren’t doing this because they want the houses but because they are forced, or at least brainwashed to do so because the Russian state wants control of Ukraine.
The main support should be of the Ukrainian and Russian people suffering from war, secondary that of Ukraine as a state as it’s current political system is better for it’s people than Russia’s.
Edit: Ukrainian soldiers aren’t actually actually able to attack the people that want Ukraine to be invaded (Putin), the treaties they signed with the western nations to get support forbids them from attacking targets on Russian territory, meaning they have to defend them against their invaders meatshields not against the invaders
I’m afraid there are a lot of historical examples of how things can go very wrong inside the country if the govt doesn’t like some specific group. So even ceding the whole country and becoming a part of
the empireRussia might not have helped muchHow do you explain Bucha or Mariupol?
Do you honestly think people wouldn’t fight to defend their country if not for capitalism?
I think people wouldn’t fight over countries if there weren’t any states
Ok, fine, but do you think people wouldn’t fight to protect themselves and their friends?
But why are they and their friends being attacked? Are those attacking them doing it because they just don’t like them or because they are being told to by a state?
Who cares why, there’s 10 million reasons why.
10 million reasons for one person to kill another maybe, but 10 million reasons for hundreds of thousands of people to fight each other with billions of dollars of weapons that aren’t created by states? I don’t think so, but if you know one please tell me. If you’re asking if I think there wouldn’t be any violence at all in communist or similar society, then no I don’t, but I think none at this scale
Ok John Lennon
Wrong.
This war is purely due to imperialism and the genocidal mania of Putin.
It didn’t make sense for him to invade Ukraine, and supporting Ukraine shouldn’t be done “for capitalism”.
Support for Ukraine should be done because
- Ukraine is a liberal democracy. Russia is a fascist oligarchy
- Ukraine is the victim of Russia’s aggression. Not the aggressor.
So pro Ukraine then.
Amazingly, you can also be against a country *violently and illegally invading another one!
We count that as ukraine
So…pro-Russia
So he supports Victor Von Doom?
Ukraine support doesn’t bother me, that’s not splitting anyone here. Palestinian support, when it’s fervent enough to make Dems vote against Dem candidates, now we have a problem. Domestic issues, when they involve a fascist takeover, are simply more pressing than 70-year-old foreign policy, even if it does need fixing… it has for a long time. We won’t be able to get there if we’re an authoritarian hellhole.
“Yeah genocide is actually OK if it gets me Mussolini instead of Hitler” 🤡🤡🤡🤡
That’s the way you feel. Other people feel that a country in which the political duopoly supports genocide isn’t worth saving. Their opinion is just as valid as yours at the polling place, so if you want to see that nation saved, it’s on you to convince them to vote for your party.
By maybe not having it support genocide.
Hypothetically. The numbers show that genocide almost certainly was not a deciding factor in the election. Continuing to bang that drum, and blame imaginary voters, well, provides some strong hints about why your side lost.
Ukraine is pro-Israel just as much as the US govt… so fuck Ukraine, as for Russians… Stay in your country, you act like assholes to all of your neighbors. Love to the good people that exist in all of these nations.
No war but a class war.
I would support Ukraine if Ukraine didn’t forcefully kidnap it’s own citizens to force them to die for their country either they want to or not.
The way I see it, it’s just two oppressive elites enslaving the powerless.
