Europe is very obviously in no position to fight Russia head on, and only a complete imbecile would advocate for Europe to go to all out war with the biggest nuclear power in the world.
I felt so dumb after discovering about the sabotage of the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements, the Istambul agreement, as well as the EU involvement in financing pro-EU presidents, far right militias and their probable participation in the Maidan aprising. So, the conflict with Russia was engineered by the EU and the US and Russia warned them there would be a response. This radicalized me a lot and after this I couldn’t trust in a single word from a Western newspaper.
Everytime the West tries to paint a conflict as moral struggle against dictatorship, totalitarianism, terrorism or any other BS reason, it’s because it has ulterior material economic or political motives that it’s trying to hide.
Thank you Yogthos to explain in simple words the real motives behind this damned war.
Tell me about it. From my reading, Minsk 1 failed because Russian-backed separatists attacked the Donezk airport and Minsk 2 failed because Russia did not retreat its unmarked soldiers before the 2020 election. But I’m willing to learn if there is any good good evidence pointing the other way.
This is nothing but a narrative. Countries don’t start wars with superpowers based on small rebel skirmishes. They prepared from the beginning to start a war with Russia. They wouldn’t send CIA agents, military officers and wouldn’t train Ukrainian soldiers with NATO weapons, as well as deliberately back down from peace agreements if their intent was to achieve peace.
Likewise, Ukraine kept shelling rebels in Donbass as well as making use of Neo-nazi paramilitary battalions to suppress the rebels, such as the Azov Battalion. But Russia did not enter in the war based on this alone. Their intelligence saw that situation in Ukraine was escalating towards a war.
This argument works both ways. As I’ve pointed out in another comment, throughout the 2010s, Russia was creeping towards Europe and NATO by military conquest. Crimea in 2014, skirmishes in Donbas and Luhansk through 2021, full-scale invasion in 2022. At some point Europe had to say: Until here and no further. They certainly don’t enjoy risking all-out war with a former superpower and major nuclear power, but it’s safer for them to stall conquest in Eastern Ukraine than to wait until Russia has crept up to the Polish border. Appeasement never works, as the Brits have learned in WW2. At some point, you just gotta say “Stop”, even if that means war.
Sorry, but Russia was not in any way creeping towards Europe, but the other way around. First of all, since the dissolution of the USSR (which was also provoked by a coup with the help of Western powers), the West backed materially many separatist groups in the Eastern block and since the Russian federation was in disarray after the fall of the USSR, specially due to the liberal shock therapy that created the current Russian bourgeoisie, a lot of Eastern European countries started joining the EU zone of influence, one after the other. Then there was the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, 5 years after NATO countries started approaching Georgia to join their block. There was also two separatist wars in Chechnya, once again backed by the NATO countries, the last one which ended on 2009.
Then there’s also NATO expansion, which included Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic in 1999, then Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria Estonia in 2004, then Croatia and Albania in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and finally Finland and Sweden in 2023 and 2024, respectively. From 2004 to 2013, many of those countries (which were part of the old USSR and Yugoslavia) also joined the EU and adopted the Euro currency, fiscal policies and a neo-liberal agenda that included a big financialization of these economies, dependence of the Western European industrial powers and no barriers for Western European manufactures. With a few exceptions, most of the workers of these countries saw a worsening of their material conditions and we saw Western capital taking hold of most of the market.
And then we have the conflict in Ukraine, which did not start in 2014, but it was a development of multiple disputes between EU-backed politicians against Russian-backed ones. The orange revolution in 2004 was a dispute between Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, the former pro-EU and the later pro-Russia, the later also winning the elections. After many fraud allegations made by NGOs from… Western Europe and the US, many backed pro-EU groups started calling for protests who then called for new elections. Yuschenko won and Yanukovych conceded defeat. Then again, on 2010, Yanukovych won the elections and called back from the EU integration process trying to get closer ties with Russia. Again, EU took advantage of bad material conditions in Ukraine and backed another color revolution against the pro-Russia president, which was then ousted, and this prompted a response from Russia who took Crimea, which was at the time, immensely pro-Russia. And then we had the beginning of the military tensions between (EU-backed) Ukraine against Russia.
So, in summary, we saw EU and NATO extending their influence in direction of Russia for two decades, backing many separatist groups, which then became integrated to the pro-NATO sphere of influence. So, even disagreeing current Russia capitalist turn, there’s material evidence of expansion of EU and NATO towards Russia, which you cannot find in the other way around.
The devil’s in the detail. As I already pointed out in another comment, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, the Baltics, Sweden, Finland, etc., were not invaded by NATO. They joined NATO. Russia has no say in whether an independent country wants to or doesn’t want to associate with NATO. Russia, on the other hand, invaded Ukraine and is moving the front further and further West since at least 2014. One of these is an expression of the self-determination of the people, the other is a war of aggression. The difference isn’t that subtle, really. If your argument is that it was all a psyop by NATO, then that doesn’t cast a bright light on the concept of a free will and the self-determination of any people, does it? So which people are allowed to self-determine? Only the ones that are against NATO and pro-Russia?
After you spend so much time talking to liberals (and being a liberal myself for much of the time of my life) you start understanding their language, and a fundamental part of it is basically moral relativism. So when billionaires dominates many concessions for broadcasting on TV, radio and the internet, making a monopoly over the mass information transmitted, detaining the lion share of the ad revenue, which is by they way funded by other capitalist conglomerates, then this becomes freedom of expression. If a popular government decides to cease the access of this monopoly and create a state funded communication enterprise, then this is authoritarian. If some group fights in a country for independence in a way that aligns with Western interests, then this group are rebels or freedom fighters; but if another group fights on the other side, against Western interests, then it’s a terrorist organization. If a political party is backed by EU with lots of funding to manipulate the public opinion and steer people towards EU’s interests, then it’s a democratic party that represents the will of the people; but then if the same thing happens with Russian support, then they are Russian pawns or agents. If people do a referendum or an election that supports EU interests than they are free and fair elections, while at the same time elections or referendums that support a pro-Russian or an anti-Western policy, then it’s fraud, all NGO observers of elections raise their concerns, elections might be rigged and so on.
Therefore, your whole point basically relies on this moral relativism. So it takes the agency of the NATO’s most influent members out of the way, so the countries that decided to join it did that by their own free will. Of course having politicians being offered deals, bribes, capital and positions in the Western empire had nothing to do with the decision of those countries. But if Yanukovych was being offered the same to withdraw from the EU agreements and keep bilateral agreements with Russia, then he was a Russian agent and a puppet. It doesn’t matter if there was a referendum in Crimea where the population decided to join the Russian federation, because that referendum was rigged. Separatists in Donbas are also Russian agents and disguised Russian military troops, despite Ukraine having many military officers from NATO offering support and intelligence, no, that is a legitimate concern and support that the West was giving to Ukraine, it had absolutely nothing to do with their material interests.
So this is why liberals can’t be confronted with simple facts, one which is, there have been deliberate advances from EU and NATO towards Russia, and they were supporting some rebelions here and there, extending millitary alliances and economic dependence here and there. But no, this is not to be considered, because liberals are all moralists but their morals are more often than not one-sided.
I hear you and heed your concerns. Pretty much any discussion on this topic I’ve had in this community came down to a bunch of basic disagreements over what constituted legitimate (by the people for the people; grass root; organic) and illegitimate revolutions (sponsored; coup). Basically, I end up bringing up a few peoples with a right to self-determination that the other side doesn’t want to hear about and vice versa. I haven’t yet found a satisfying solution other than reverting back to the post WW2 international order and the UN, which is itself deeply flawed (e.g., veto powers, small security council). That said, even accounting for any information war from the West in Eastern Europe, I just can’t see how both the information war and the military war are not on a whole 'nother level from Russia and her allies. To name one basic fact, few places have as much freedom of the press by law as the West. It feels deeply disturbing to me when a government is so afraid of its own people, who should be the sovereign, that it limits what they can and cannot say and hear.
You bring up an interesting side note that I would like to expand on. I find government-sponsored media deeply suspicious because it’s pretty straightforward how a government could use the power of the purse to influence public opinion. I find it definitely more suspicious of being partial than capitalist media conglomerates, even if they are definitely not pure so to speak. However, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the third option: Independent broadcasting services, like the BBC. It doesn’t rely on government funding but it also doesn’t rely on capitalist funding.
You’re probably right that it would be a stupid idea. On the other hand, it does not feel so much like Europe is choosing to fight Russia head on but rather that Russia is encroaching closer and closer on the European borders every 10 years or so by annexing another part of Ukraine. That was the point I made above:
1994: Give up nuclear weapons, Budapest memorandum, oops, 2014 invasion of Crimea.
2014/15: Give up Crimea, another round of peace talks and agreements, oops, 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now: Should Ukraine give up Donbas and Luhansk and demilitarize to appease Russia? Give it another 10 years and Russia finds a pretense to swallow the remaining Ukraine or make it a vassal republic, which will be greatly aided by their demilitarization. What comes next? The same piecemeal tactic with the Baltics or Poland? Another piece of land every 10-odd years?
Every time Ukraine has appeased Russia, Russia came back to bite it a few years later. And please don’t give me the “NATO is encroaching on Russia” talk: At the beginning of the war, 70-odd percent of Ukrainians were in favor of closer ties with the EU. If one takes self-determination seriously, as a lot of people on this instance seem to selectively do for the self-determination of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, one can’t deny a country to choose its allies free from a threat of invasion by its neighbor, who also happens to be the biggest nuclear power in the world.
Ukraine never had nuclear weapons or the codes. USSR stationed nuclear weapons in Ukraine and Russia is the inheritor state of USSR. And I wonder what might’ve happened in 2014, oh right a western backed regime change that overthrew the legitimately elected government and put literal fascists in charge.
Every time the west pushed Ukraine to keep fighting Russia things got worse for Ukraine. But scum like you doesn’t give fuck about Ukrainians, you’re a parasite cheering on for other people to die for some abstract ideals you don’t actually believe in. If you believed a word of what you said, you’d be signing up for the foreign legion and sitting in a trench. Instead, your just cheer on for other people to die. You’re a piece of human garbage and you have blood on your hands.
You keep bringing up that point but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Sure, they didn’t have the launch codes but they were in the physical possession of nuclear weapons stationed on their territory by the USSR. At the very least, this meant they had weapons-grade highly enriched fissile material, even the possibility of which makes neighboring countries nervous, as we are all learning in Iran. They could’ve disassembled them, reverse engineered them, destroyed them, or whatever, but they chose to give them to the successor state of the USSR for the hollow promise of territorial integrity. They could’ve developed their own nukes, but they didn’t. Instead, they trusted the deal and the security guarantees. For that deal, and for the act of breaking it in 2014 and in 2022, it makes no difference whether Ukraine had the capacity of launching those nukes in the 90s.
Yeah, guess what bud, nobody in the west wanted Ukraine to have nukes either. There was literally no possibility of that happening. They didn’t do it because literally nobody would’ve allowed them to do it. They trusted the west, and the west cynically used them as a proxy. While scumbags like you keep pretending it’s about democracy or some shit.
Welp, there goes the civility. Nevertheless, I wish you a genuinely good day as well as some sense.
As for the actual argument in your comment: Why are you blaming the West for not following through on their security guarantees? A few comments back you had pointed out how stupid it were if they went to all out war against Russia. Why aren’t you blaming Russia for not following through on their security guarantees by, IDK, not invading Ukraine? Double-think…
Edit: Had forgotten to pull apart the quote from the paragraph beneath. Now corrected.
The west never offered any security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukraine keeping nuclear material was never on the table. So, your whole premise is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, Russia was perfectly fine with Ukraine doing its own thing until the west overthrew the government in Ukraine in 2014. The only double-think here is you avoiding the elephant in the room.
They did though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum#Content:
Russia, the UK, and the US agreed that they would respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, not attack Ukraine except in self-defense, refrain from economic coercion, and immediately seek action in case another signatory attacks Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you insist on the Budapest memorandum being meaningless as an argument to defend Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Might as well play diplomacy like up to WW1 and enter wars over coffee and scones. What’s the point of this all if one hegemon just gets to invade their neighbors willy-nilly? If international agreements don’t have any meaning, then why the heck do we even make them? Why did Russia sign the memorandum? Maybe to buy time in their hour of greatest weakness and gather strength to subdue Ukraine 20 years later?
Yeah that applied when Ukraine was actually sovereign before the coup in 2014 by the west. Shock and surprise, Russia was not attacking Ukraine back then.
Ah, but here’s the difference: Finland, Sweden, and the other Eastern European nations weren’t invaded by NATO. They chose to associate with NATO to protect themselves against Russian aggression. Why should NATO turn them down? To appease Russia? Why does Russia get a say in what treaties or agreements their neighbors enter? What gives them the right to invade and bombard a country for choosing its allies?
Poor Russia had no choice but to invade. It’s the only thing they could have done. Nothing else was possible in their predicament. They had no agency whatsoever in this. They were made to go to war by the evil others. People resisting a foreign army on their soil are obviously warmongers. If they had just surrendered they would now be a flourishing beacon of democracy like Belarus. But look what they made Russia do instead. Russia bleeds because of Ukraine’s terrible choices. Poor Russia. Poor poor Russia.
In regard to the western breach of Minsk 1/2, please cite the “openly admitted by top European officials” source. Also, please explain the Minsk 1/2 agreements so that we can understand how the West and Ukraine “broke” them. And did Russia give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees? Istanbul agreement? - once bitten, twice shy.
Also, why would Russia be giving up their nuclear weapons. You’re so deeply confused here. Ukraine never had nuclear weapons or the launch codes. USSR stationed nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine, and Russia became the successors state and inherited the weapons. This was agreed by all parties involved.
Ah yes, everything you don’t agree with is propaganda. It’s incredible how you lib trolls just keep doing these mental gymnastics. But western regimes aren’t even hiding the truth. Here’s no lesser person than the US secretary of state openly admitting this is a proxy war. Here’s The Hill explaining the history of it. But sure you keep on braying about blatant propaganda there.
Fam, WSWS is literally the official online publication of a political organization. That’s like citing the US house speaker on matters of the war in Iran: Of course your answer is going to be colored red, white, and blue. I agree that it’s a proxy war. We’re just disagreeing on who started it and who’s defending against aggression. In my reading, it’s far preferable for the EU to stop Russia’s advance in Ukraine than to stop it in Poland. And they should probably be a bit more serious about stopping it in Ukraine than just sending weapons. It’s ugly already, but it could become so much more ugly if Russia keeps pushing and pushing West.
Comrade, I never said it was offensive, I said it was propaganda. Put real simply: “ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.” Merriam-Webster. 1) It’s the official publication by a political organization, and 2) it does misinterpret/over-interpret quotes, as I had explained further up the comment chain. That’s what I’m saying.
Every piece of mainstream media is just as much propaganda by the same definition, so not sure why you’d single a socialist publication out here. You asked for a source and I gave you one. What is says is factual and correct. Yet, you lack even the minimal intellectual integrity to acknowledge this. Also, somebody openly carrying water for a fascist state is not my comrade.
Europe is very obviously in no position to fight Russia head on, and only a complete imbecile would advocate for Europe to go to all out war with the biggest nuclear power in the world.
I felt so dumb after discovering about the sabotage of the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements, the Istambul agreement, as well as the EU involvement in financing pro-EU presidents, far right militias and their probable participation in the Maidan aprising. So, the conflict with Russia was engineered by the EU and the US and Russia warned them there would be a response. This radicalized me a lot and after this I couldn’t trust in a single word from a Western newspaper.
Everytime the West tries to paint a conflict as moral struggle against dictatorship, totalitarianism, terrorism or any other BS reason, it’s because it has ulterior material economic or political motives that it’s trying to hide.
Thank you Yogthos to explain in simple words the real motives behind this damned war.
Tell me about it. From my reading, Minsk 1 failed because Russian-backed separatists attacked the Donezk airport and Minsk 2 failed because Russia did not retreat its unmarked soldiers before the 2020 election. But I’m willing to learn if there is any good good evidence pointing the other way.
This is nothing but a narrative. Countries don’t start wars with superpowers based on small rebel skirmishes. They prepared from the beginning to start a war with Russia. They wouldn’t send CIA agents, military officers and wouldn’t train Ukrainian soldiers with NATO weapons, as well as deliberately back down from peace agreements if their intent was to achieve peace.
Likewise, Ukraine kept shelling rebels in Donbass as well as making use of Neo-nazi paramilitary battalions to suppress the rebels, such as the Azov Battalion. But Russia did not enter in the war based on this alone. Their intelligence saw that situation in Ukraine was escalating towards a war.
This argument works both ways. As I’ve pointed out in another comment, throughout the 2010s, Russia was creeping towards Europe and NATO by military conquest. Crimea in 2014, skirmishes in Donbas and Luhansk through 2021, full-scale invasion in 2022. At some point Europe had to say: Until here and no further. They certainly don’t enjoy risking all-out war with a former superpower and major nuclear power, but it’s safer for them to stall conquest in Eastern Ukraine than to wait until Russia has crept up to the Polish border. Appeasement never works, as the Brits have learned in WW2. At some point, you just gotta say “Stop”, even if that means war.
Sorry, but Russia was not in any way creeping towards Europe, but the other way around. First of all, since the dissolution of the USSR (which was also provoked by a coup with the help of Western powers), the West backed materially many separatist groups in the Eastern block and since the Russian federation was in disarray after the fall of the USSR, specially due to the liberal shock therapy that created the current Russian bourgeoisie, a lot of Eastern European countries started joining the EU zone of influence, one after the other. Then there was the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, 5 years after NATO countries started approaching Georgia to join their block. There was also two separatist wars in Chechnya, once again backed by the NATO countries, the last one which ended on 2009.
Then there’s also NATO expansion, which included Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic in 1999, then Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria Estonia in 2004, then Croatia and Albania in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and finally Finland and Sweden in 2023 and 2024, respectively. From 2004 to 2013, many of those countries (which were part of the old USSR and Yugoslavia) also joined the EU and adopted the Euro currency, fiscal policies and a neo-liberal agenda that included a big financialization of these economies, dependence of the Western European industrial powers and no barriers for Western European manufactures. With a few exceptions, most of the workers of these countries saw a worsening of their material conditions and we saw Western capital taking hold of most of the market.
And then we have the conflict in Ukraine, which did not start in 2014, but it was a development of multiple disputes between EU-backed politicians against Russian-backed ones. The orange revolution in 2004 was a dispute between Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, the former pro-EU and the later pro-Russia, the later also winning the elections. After many fraud allegations made by NGOs from… Western Europe and the US, many backed pro-EU groups started calling for protests who then called for new elections. Yuschenko won and Yanukovych conceded defeat. Then again, on 2010, Yanukovych won the elections and called back from the EU integration process trying to get closer ties with Russia. Again, EU took advantage of bad material conditions in Ukraine and backed another color revolution against the pro-Russia president, which was then ousted, and this prompted a response from Russia who took Crimea, which was at the time, immensely pro-Russia. And then we had the beginning of the military tensions between (EU-backed) Ukraine against Russia.
So, in summary, we saw EU and NATO extending their influence in direction of Russia for two decades, backing many separatist groups, which then became integrated to the pro-NATO sphere of influence. So, even disagreeing current Russia capitalist turn, there’s material evidence of expansion of EU and NATO towards Russia, which you cannot find in the other way around.
The devil’s in the detail. As I already pointed out in another comment, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, the Baltics, Sweden, Finland, etc., were not invaded by NATO. They joined NATO. Russia has no say in whether an independent country wants to or doesn’t want to associate with NATO. Russia, on the other hand, invaded Ukraine and is moving the front further and further West since at least 2014. One of these is an expression of the self-determination of the people, the other is a war of aggression. The difference isn’t that subtle, really. If your argument is that it was all a psyop by NATO, then that doesn’t cast a bright light on the concept of a free will and the self-determination of any people, does it? So which people are allowed to self-determine? Only the ones that are against NATO and pro-Russia?
After you spend so much time talking to liberals (and being a liberal myself for much of the time of my life) you start understanding their language, and a fundamental part of it is basically moral relativism. So when billionaires dominates many concessions for broadcasting on TV, radio and the internet, making a monopoly over the mass information transmitted, detaining the lion share of the ad revenue, which is by they way funded by other capitalist conglomerates, then this becomes freedom of expression. If a popular government decides to cease the access of this monopoly and create a state funded communication enterprise, then this is authoritarian. If some group fights in a country for independence in a way that aligns with Western interests, then this group are rebels or freedom fighters; but if another group fights on the other side, against Western interests, then it’s a terrorist organization. If a political party is backed by EU with lots of funding to manipulate the public opinion and steer people towards EU’s interests, then it’s a democratic party that represents the will of the people; but then if the same thing happens with Russian support, then they are Russian pawns or agents. If people do a referendum or an election that supports EU interests than they are free and fair elections, while at the same time elections or referendums that support a pro-Russian or an anti-Western policy, then it’s fraud, all NGO observers of elections raise their concerns, elections might be rigged and so on.
Therefore, your whole point basically relies on this moral relativism. So it takes the agency of the NATO’s most influent members out of the way, so the countries that decided to join it did that by their own free will. Of course having politicians being offered deals, bribes, capital and positions in the Western empire had nothing to do with the decision of those countries. But if Yanukovych was being offered the same to withdraw from the EU agreements and keep bilateral agreements with Russia, then he was a Russian agent and a puppet. It doesn’t matter if there was a referendum in Crimea where the population decided to join the Russian federation, because that referendum was rigged. Separatists in Donbas are also Russian agents and disguised Russian military troops, despite Ukraine having many military officers from NATO offering support and intelligence, no, that is a legitimate concern and support that the West was giving to Ukraine, it had absolutely nothing to do with their material interests.
So this is why liberals can’t be confronted with simple facts, one which is, there have been deliberate advances from EU and NATO towards Russia, and they were supporting some rebelions here and there, extending millitary alliances and economic dependence here and there. But no, this is not to be considered, because liberals are all moralists but their morals are more often than not one-sided.
I hear you and heed your concerns. Pretty much any discussion on this topic I’ve had in this community came down to a bunch of basic disagreements over what constituted legitimate (by the people for the people; grass root; organic) and illegitimate revolutions (sponsored; coup). Basically, I end up bringing up a few peoples with a right to self-determination that the other side doesn’t want to hear about and vice versa. I haven’t yet found a satisfying solution other than reverting back to the post WW2 international order and the UN, which is itself deeply flawed (e.g., veto powers, small security council). That said, even accounting for any information war from the West in Eastern Europe, I just can’t see how both the information war and the military war are not on a whole 'nother level from Russia and her allies. To name one basic fact, few places have as much freedom of the press by law as the West. It feels deeply disturbing to me when a government is so afraid of its own people, who should be the sovereign, that it limits what they can and cannot say and hear.
You bring up an interesting side note that I would like to expand on. I find government-sponsored media deeply suspicious because it’s pretty straightforward how a government could use the power of the purse to influence public opinion. I find it definitely more suspicious of being partial than capitalist media conglomerates, even if they are definitely not pure so to speak. However, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the third option: Independent broadcasting services, like the BBC. It doesn’t rely on government funding but it also doesn’t rely on capitalist funding.
O7
You’re probably right that it would be a stupid idea. On the other hand, it does not feel so much like Europe is choosing to fight Russia head on but rather that Russia is encroaching closer and closer on the European borders every 10 years or so by annexing another part of Ukraine. That was the point I made above:
Every time Ukraine has appeased Russia, Russia came back to bite it a few years later. And please don’t give me the “NATO is encroaching on Russia” talk: At the beginning of the war, 70-odd percent of Ukrainians were in favor of closer ties with the EU. If one takes self-determination seriously, as a lot of people on this instance seem to selectively do for the self-determination of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, one can’t deny a country to choose its allies free from a threat of invasion by its neighbor, who also happens to be the biggest nuclear power in the world.
Ukraine never had nuclear weapons or the codes. USSR stationed nuclear weapons in Ukraine and Russia is the inheritor state of USSR. And I wonder what might’ve happened in 2014, oh right a western backed regime change that overthrew the legitimately elected government and put literal fascists in charge.
Every time the west pushed Ukraine to keep fighting Russia things got worse for Ukraine. But scum like you doesn’t give fuck about Ukrainians, you’re a parasite cheering on for other people to die for some abstract ideals you don’t actually believe in. If you believed a word of what you said, you’d be signing up for the foreign legion and sitting in a trench. Instead, your just cheer on for other people to die. You’re a piece of human garbage and you have blood on your hands.
You keep bringing up that point but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Sure, they didn’t have the launch codes but they were in the physical possession of nuclear weapons stationed on their territory by the USSR. At the very least, this meant they had weapons-grade highly enriched fissile material, even the possibility of which makes neighboring countries nervous, as we are all learning in Iran. They could’ve disassembled them, reverse engineered them, destroyed them, or whatever, but they chose to give them to the successor state of the USSR for the hollow promise of territorial integrity. They could’ve developed their own nukes, but they didn’t. Instead, they trusted the deal and the security guarantees. For that deal, and for the act of breaking it in 2014 and in 2022, it makes no difference whether Ukraine had the capacity of launching those nukes in the 90s.
Yeah, guess what bud, nobody in the west wanted Ukraine to have nukes either. There was literally no possibility of that happening. They didn’t do it because literally nobody would’ve allowed them to do it. They trusted the west, and the west cynically used them as a proxy. While scumbags like you keep pretending it’s about democracy or some shit.
Welp, there goes the civility. Nevertheless, I wish you a genuinely good day as well as some sense. As for the actual argument in your comment: Why are you blaming the West for not following through on their security guarantees? A few comments back you had pointed out how stupid it were if they went to all out war against Russia. Why aren’t you blaming Russia for not following through on their security guarantees by, IDK, not invading Ukraine? Double-think…
Edit: Had forgotten to pull apart the quote from the paragraph beneath. Now corrected.
The west never offered any security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukraine keeping nuclear material was never on the table. So, your whole premise is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, Russia was perfectly fine with Ukraine doing its own thing until the west overthrew the government in Ukraine in 2014. The only double-think here is you avoiding the elephant in the room.
They did though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum#Content: Russia, the UK, and the US agreed that they would respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, not attack Ukraine except in self-defense, refrain from economic coercion, and immediately seek action in case another signatory attacks Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you insist on the Budapest memorandum being meaningless as an argument to defend Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Might as well play diplomacy like up to WW1 and enter wars over coffee and scones. What’s the point of this all if one hegemon just gets to invade their neighbors willy-nilly? If international agreements don’t have any meaning, then why the heck do we even make them? Why did Russia sign the memorandum? Maybe to buy time in their hour of greatest weakness and gather strength to subdue Ukraine 20 years later?
Yeah that applied when Ukraine was actually sovereign before the coup in 2014 by the west. Shock and surprise, Russia was not attacking Ukraine back then.
Who exactly is encroaching faster against the other? Russia by occupying parts of ukriane, or EU/NATO by extending multiple countries east?
Ah, but here’s the difference: Finland, Sweden, and the other Eastern European nations weren’t invaded by NATO. They chose to associate with NATO to protect themselves against Russian aggression. Why should NATO turn them down? To appease Russia? Why does Russia get a say in what treaties or agreements their neighbors enter? What gives them the right to invade and bombard a country for choosing its allies?
Sure. It’s our freedom fighters and then the terrorists of the other side. Do people like you never start to think?
Please do tell me when Finland, Sweden, Hungary, the Baltics, Poland, or Slovakia were invaded by NATO.
Poor Russia had no choice but to invade. It’s the only thing they could have done. Nothing else was possible in their predicament. They had no agency whatsoever in this. They were made to go to war by the evil others. People resisting a foreign army on their soil are obviously warmongers. If they had just surrendered they would now be a flourishing beacon of democracy like Belarus. But look what they made Russia do instead. Russia bleeds because of Ukraine’s terrible choices. Poor Russia. Poor poor Russia.
Russia had already tried every other option, over the span of 35 years. So yes, it was the only thing left they could have done.
The material conditions forced them to invade and make more civilians and soldiers, it’s just common sense. Marx told me.
Good job memorizing your propaganda points citizen.
Imperialists like you can’t seem to shake this rapist mentality of permanent victim blaming.
“If she had only dressed appropriately all this could have been avoided.”
“Had she not resisted, he would have just raped her and she’d still be alive.”
“Look what she made him do.”
When you definitely understand what imperialism is.
Because y’all use a definition no one else uses but the club who rejects reality and browbeats anyone interested in it.
If you guys were in 1917 Russia, the Tsar would have won.
Thank you for taking your precious time from huffing gas, to provide your invaluable insights on this subject.
You’re losing and you know it. Try harder halfwit.
In regard to the western breach of Minsk 1/2, please cite the “openly admitted by top European officials” source. Also, please explain the Minsk 1/2 agreements so that we can understand how the West and Ukraine “broke” them. And did Russia give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees? Istanbul agreement? - once bitten, twice shy.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/22/ffci-d22.html
Also, why would Russia be giving up their nuclear weapons. You’re so deeply confused here. Ukraine never had nuclear weapons or the launch codes. USSR stationed nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine, and Russia became the successors state and inherited the weapons. This was agreed by all parties involved.
Correct, under the condition that it didn’t question Ukrainian sovereignty or territorial integrity going forward… guess 20 years are a long time.
Ah yes, everything you don’t agree with is propaganda. It’s incredible how you lib trolls just keep doing these mental gymnastics. But western regimes aren’t even hiding the truth. Here’s no lesser person than the US secretary of state openly admitting this is a proxy war. Here’s The Hill explaining the history of it. But sure you keep on braying about blatant propaganda there.
Fam, WSWS is literally the official online publication of a political organization. That’s like citing the US house speaker on matters of the war in Iran: Of course your answer is going to be colored red, white, and blue. I agree that it’s a proxy war. We’re just disagreeing on who started it and who’s defending against aggression. In my reading, it’s far preferable for the EU to stop Russia’s advance in Ukraine than to stop it in Poland. And they should probably be a bit more serious about stopping it in Ukraine than just sending weapons. It’s ugly already, but it could become so much more ugly if Russia keeps pushing and pushing West.
Oh I’m sorry, I forgot that socialist sources are offensive to fascists.
Comrade, I never said it was offensive, I said it was propaganda. Put real simply: “ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.” Merriam-Webster. 1) It’s the official publication by a political organization, and 2) it does misinterpret/over-interpret quotes, as I had explained further up the comment chain. That’s what I’m saying.
Every piece of mainstream media is just as much propaganda by the same definition, so not sure why you’d single a socialist publication out here. You asked for a source and I gave you one. What is says is factual and correct. Yet, you lack even the minimal intellectual integrity to acknowledge this. Also, somebody openly carrying water for a fascist state is not my comrade.