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.
I’m not disagreeing there. Care to revise your statement that Ukraine was neutral prior to the invasion or are you just going to ignore that?
Neutral in what regard? Russia violated their sovereignty in annexing parts of their territory and in supporting militarily separatist movements. They’ve been forced into opposition by Russia’s aggression.
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.
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/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.
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.
You’re an American, so why don’t you tell me what you gained from the quagmire in Afghanistan?
People of Donetsks and Luhansk are ethnically Russian and they want independence. Weird how westerners only care about people’s right to self determination when it suits them. The leaders of these republics explicitly asked Russia for help after Ukraine failed to abide by Minsk agreements that require Ukraine to give Donbas autonomy.
Stop trying to invent reality.
Ukraine will have strong western support so it won’t be as easy as Chechnya. Although Putin might decide to annex anyway.
“Strong” support? What’s that mean? Sure, the bullies are beating up the nerd, but the nerd will win because you intend to cheer him on from the sidelines?
Should have kept their nukes. Now they’re fucked.
Chechnya
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.
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.
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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.
Didn’t Soviet Union dissolve and get replaced by possibly the worst imaginable version of hard capitalism?
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.
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.
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?
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Propaganda isn’t black and white. I forget where I read it originally, but the most discussion happens on the edge of what’s allowed by the rules - so threads like these will always be full of pros/cons for the network health as a whole.
Of note, this line:
Putin used his speech not only to announce recognition of the separatist republics but to make a broader argument that Ukraine is not truly a separate country from Russia, that the West is responsible for this standoff, and that Ukraine will bear responsibility for any “future bloodletting.”
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:
That raises another question: why was it necessary to make such generous gifts, beyond the wildest dreams of the most zealous nationalists and, on top of all that, give the republics the right to secede from the unified state without any conditions?
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.
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.
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.
ethnic cleansing in eastern parts of Ukraine
They did what?
systematically murder ethnic Russian people in the region
When? Got any links with more detail?
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.
I know of some of the shady people that were supported by the West and the Ukraine.
Could you shed some more light on the war crimes that Putin refers to? Also could you share the evidence that exists?
attacking civilian targets such as water supply is a war crime
For people who have dismissed accusations that Russia building an excuse for war
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.
You are unfortunately right about this and I have been seeing an increasing amount of misinformation regarding this situation plague this site.
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.
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. 😂
“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.
The thing is, your argument is just as thin. There is no point in arguing with a stupid person, because they will just bring you down to their level and win. Which is why you’re not worth it. If you really believe the BS russian propaganda, you’re so far gone it’s not worth it. Russia could nuke Kiev and you would try justify it or call it fake news or something. Take vladdy p’s cock out your mouth.
If you really believe the BS russian propaganda, you’re so far gone it’s not worth it. Russia could nuke Kiev and you would try justify it or call it fake news or something.
Why do you believe Western propaganda this much throughout the thread? Can you not see who is gaslighting since what is now 7 years of this repeated stuff?
photo
Take vladdy p’s cock out your mouth.
You seriously need to take a breather from CIA propaganda. That stuff has made you toxic.
Russia has now started a full invasion, just like the US had warned.
I need that evidence of “boots on the ground”.
Bro, you’re trying to justify/pretend that Russia didn’t just invade a sovereign country. Your opinion is invalid.
You just handwaved 7 years of gaslighting Western propaganda and called my comment invalid opinion, holy shit. You are using r/worldnews tier insults with the other fellow. Even further above you said there is an invasion of Russian/Chinese bots on Lemmy, literally what thousands of Redditors parrot on frontpage daily.
Wow. And what I cited as facts searchable via Google is invalid opinion. Just wow.
Russian invasion of Ukraine is also facts searchable via Google. It doesn’t fucking matter. You’re acting like they are correct in doing so. There is no pretext that allows Russia to invade a sovereign country.
The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it’s quiet
. . . Bob Dylan 1965Fake 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.
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?
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.
but yeah BoTh SiDeS aRe BaD.
Learn to read please, if you are going to try and derive what I mean, do it right.
Bruh, US overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine
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.
funded and trained literal fascists there
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.
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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.
The “coup” where over a hundred protestors were killed by the government? That’s not a coup, that’s mass protests.
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?
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 idea that the NATO boogieman is behind popular protests is a common Russian propaganda talking point. NATO is just not sophisticated enough to engineer a mass uprising like the Maidan Revolution. If they had, don’t you think their newly minted puppet government would have “invited” them in already, just like Russia did in Donbas?
God damn, enough with the bullshit. They invaded Ukraine. Full stop.
How? NATO has claimed Russian troops are in LPR and DPR since 2014. Now they are saying Russian troops are in LPR and DPR. What changed?
Edit: Even the US isn’t calling it an invasion. You’re calling everyone propagandists, but If you’re more extreme on this than the Biden administration… that really says something. Especially since that time they warned us about a “false flag attack” in Ukraine, but when pressed for evidence, they said they wouldn’t share anything.
That is when they invaded. Obama tried sanctions to dissuade Russia then. Biden will try some more. That runs counter to the Russian anti-NATO narrative. But the US is playing “peace in our time”, and we all know how appeasement ends.