I’m a communist but not a tankie, and I’m going to state the only “Ukraine bad” take that I believe is legitimate.
Putin’s excuse that he’s “de-nazifying” Ukraine is transparent. He just wants to annex more territory. It’s imperialism. It doesn’t matter for him if Ukraine has Nazis. The truth is, Ukraine does, and Putin has only made it worse, because he doesn’t actually care about the issue as he claims. The truth about the Nazis? The evidence that the Azov batallion used to be openly fascist is compelling. Today they claim to be apolitical, but there’s no such thing. An organisation with such a history cannot be considered non-fascist until it’s actively antifascist. I believe there are neo-nazi elements within Azov that are being kept hidden. I believe the war is giving them political power. Ukraine may survive as a sovereign body by resisting Russia. But doing so by the might of Nazis means losing its very soul. Ukraine was doomed from the start, the deck was stacked against it. I would rather Ukraine be independent and fascist than part of Russia and fascist, because Russia has its own Nazi problem and I don’t want them to become a cohesive body. So I am in favour of helping Ukraine. I would like that help to be leveraged in some way to reduce Azov’s influence while still accomplishing the main goal of resisting invasion.
I’m a communist but not a tankie, and I’m going to state the only “Ukraine bad” take that I believe is legitimate.
Putin’s excuse that he’s “de-nazifying” Ukraine is transparent. He just wants to annex more territory. It’s imperialism. It doesn’t matter for him if Ukraine has Nazis. The truth is, Ukraine does, and Putin has only made it worse, because he doesn’t actually care about the issue as he claims. The truth about the Nazis? The evidence that the Azov batallion used to be openly fascist is compelling. Today they claim to be apolitical, but there’s no such thing. An organisation with such a history cannot be considered non-fascist until it’s actively antifascist. I believe there are neo-nazi elements within Azov that are being kept hidden. I believe the war is giving them political power. Ukraine may survive as a sovereign body by resisting Russia. But doing so by the might of Nazis means losing its very soul. Ukraine was doomed from the start, the deck was stacked against it. I would rather Ukraine be independent and fascist than part of Russia and fascist, because Russia has its own Nazi problem and I don’t want them to become a cohesive body. So I am in favour of helping Ukraine. I would like that help to be leveraged in some way to reduce Azov’s influence while still accomplishing the main goal of resisting invasion.