this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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Could those CIA and western-intelligence sponsored paramilitaries and political organizations have ever inflicted as much damage to Russia as this war has? Don't get me wrong - intervening to stop the persecution of ethnic Russians in Ukraine by organized neonazis is good and I do think that they had legitimate security concerns about Ukraine basically being turned into a hotbed for fascists, terrorism, and organized crime. I realize I'm not privy to all the information they have access to, but I just don't see the strategic advantage this war has for Russia.
Have you seen the sheer violence and devastation America will bring to the periphery when it dare revolts? Hell, not even revolting, simply just choosing a path that will slightly threaten the interests of private capital in those nations owned by America or even it's allies that cling to previous colonial vestiges like a dying tick? I mean, Chile is a great example. Beyond that, America will install dictators and brutal leaders in nations like that or support them in Indonesia and the Philippines who will gladly purge political opponents or dissidents for them. Previously, in Russia when the USSR fell, America carved out the nation financially. Pepsi was buying Russian warships for debt.
I'm sure you know this, but remarking and looking back on the brutality of what the Empire has done, what would it do now if given the chance? Just for a single moment when it's enemies let it's guard down like Gaddafi?
The strategic advantage is preventing Ukraine from being used as a launching ground for an invasion, or "hotbed" for terrorists or threats to spawn and attack the nation backed by it's major rival and leader of the imperialist hegemony that controls the world.
I have no doubt that Ukraine would have become a staging ground for some future attack on Russia, but would that have actually been worse than this war already is? While the US-backed Ukraine regime might have launched border incursions or terrorist attacks or something, it's hard to imagine the Europeans openly supporting Ukraine if they attacked Russia first.
Instead, because of Russia's preemptive invasion, NATO expanded onto Russia's border with Finland. That seems bad.
Yes it would be very much worse. Genocide in Donbass was already ongoing and Russian intervention thwarted massive AFU assault against DPR and LPR. It would be massacre.
Secondly, Russia somewhat recovered after even the nightmarish 90's, which for US planners mean it was not enough, this time they would loot even nails and most likely aimed for balkanisation. Imagine Yugoslavia but much worse.
Thirdly, the real target of entire endeavour was nor even Russia but China, taking over Russia would means economic, political and military trouble for China, encircling it and probably (or rather certainly looking at last 5 years) also destroying most of its Belt and Road initiative gains.
Finally, Finland was licking boots of every protofash and fash since 1918. It was de facto already NATO member, it changed nothing.
I cannot stress this enough, no matter how you do dislike Russia, its intervention in Ukraine stopped imperialists in their tracks to yet another round in world domination and started an event chain that could potentially lead to demise of imperialist core and quite possibly save us all and planet.
Exactly, thank you.
This has nothing to do with any "dislike" I might have for Russia. My understanding is that Russia has been heavily shaped by the Western-orchestrated collapse of the USSR and the ongoing isolation of Russia to keep it on the periphery; there's very little I can hold against their government without taking that context into account.
Furthermore, this doesn't effect the critical support I have for Russia in the war. Defeating the US/NATO bloc is a good thing, even if I disagree that starting a war was the best way to defend Russia or to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
I just wonder if there was an alternative: give humanitarian refugee status to ethnic Russians and rescue them peacefully for resettlement in Crimea (which is one piece of Ukrainian territory that I understand Russia needed to take in order to defend itself from the rest of Ukraine, and which it took bloodlessly), and then defensively prepare for any aggression.
But this probably comes from ideological priors - I don't understand the connection people have with their land. It's something I've never had. I'm probably trivializing the trauma of moving people around to keep them safe and improve their economic conditions, but I think fewer people would have died or been maimed by becoming Russian citizens proper and defensively preparing for Ukrainian aggression. Even if that came at the cost of dispossession.
This is a horrific proposal. You are literally suggesting that Russia aid Ukraine in its Nazi project of ethnically cleansing the Donbass. This is no different from the faux-humanitarian proposals to "relocate" Palestinians from Gaza, i.e. aid "Israel" in their genocidal ethnic cleansing project.
Therein lies the problem and why you can't see that Russia had no choice. Most people are intrinsically tied to their land, it is their home, it is part of who they are. Just like Palestine is and always will be the homeland of Palestinians and they would rather die than leave it, so the Donbass and Novorossiya is the home of millions of ethnic Russians. They were born and grew up there. Their parents were born and grew up there. They have been on their land for generations and are not going to willingly leave it. And being forced to do so would cause them immense generational trauma just like the Nakba did for the Palestinians.
What you are suggesting would have been absolutely and utterly political suicide for a Russian government to do. It would have been viewed not just in the Donbass but in most of Russia proper as a heinous betrayal of the Russian people. As capitulating and selling them out for the illusory promise of a few more years of peace.
Capitulating to Nazis and giving them what they want does not bring peace. It only emboldens them to go even further.
They did become Russian citizens proper. Russia gave citizenship to all the residents of the liberated regions, and additionally took in millions of people who fled from Ukrainian occupied territory that Russia has not yet liberated. This is a defensive war against the Banderite Kiev regime's aggression against the Donbass, it has been since 2014.
There's a pretty clear distinction here in that Palestinians have no where to actually go. None of the proposed countries could actually handle this level of mass migration. They'd just become a permanent impoverished refugee population and left homeless, jobless, separated from friends and family, and totally reliant on humanitarian aid.
I think Russia actually could absorb the relocated people into their economy. In fact, as you point out, they already have! But it could have been done without the war, even if it was done at the cost of people losing their land. The war certainly doesn't make it easier to handle the population influx.
Yeah I can't imagine it and it's an ideological block that makes me unable to really get it.
I think being alive and healthy and keeping families whole is much more important than land. I don't get it and I don't think I can, I'm so alienated from land that the idea of dying for it when there's other options makes zero sense to me.
In the end it looks like Russia made the strategic choice and is going to win this war, but it came at a terrible cost.
As an immigrant i share your feelings on this, but at the same time i know that most people don't feel as alienated from their land as we do. And we have to acknowledge that we are an aberration as far as this is concerned, and that most people do feel a very strong connection to their land.
Understanding this is not really about any ideological block, it's about being able to put yourself in the shoes of another person and imagine how they think and feel based on their own personal and generational lived experiences. It's a form of empathy I suppose.
Correct, but it's not 90's now, they had spend quite significant effort to change this and dialmat dictate we acknowledge that they are now not only not isolated but one of two main forces driving antiimperialism and global south cooperation. They also, while still remained capitalist, reversed much of the neoliberal organisation from back then.
It's not that i disagree with you, but they did tried everything else first but Ukraine western handlers were pushing for war hard to the point of treating formal international agreements they signed and ratified like empty scraps of paper. Again, they only intervened literal days before AFU planned offensive that would end with a massacre in Donbass.
Majority of Ukrainian citizens who emigrated from Ukraine since 2014, did so to Russia. Russia did exactly what you said.
Again, Russia taken in literal millions of people running from economic and later military violence by UA government. Also it's very similar argument as "why they couldn't just resettle Palestinians to Jordan". People of Donbass clearly decided their selfdetermination in 2014 (same as Crimea). Donbass also got a long history of not wanting to be in Ukraine, Lenin in one of his biggest L's just told them to shut up and suck it up, Stalin did the same in 30's (with more reason though), and same was in 1991 and 2014. They simply don't want to be Ukrainian and have over a century of consistent history of it.
This is also what USSR and later Russia do since 1945 (or really in various conditions since 1800). Needles to say, it didn't worked.
Fair enough, but it is one of the main components of nationalism, arguably one of most important ideological constructs of modern world, and was equally important for millenia before. Probably originated in neolithic sunk cost effort or something like that :)
I also have mixed feelings about that, i definitely do acnowledge what you mention here, but also i do support resettlement in certain situations (like most of WW2 and post WW2 by USSR), i guess it largely depend on situation. USSR did not had any genocidal intent doing that (as lack of Latvians living on the shores of Arctic sea clearly shows), and it was even the opposite - imagine the shitshow in the 90's without post war resettlements of Germans, Poles etc.
The clear distinction here is that Russia could resettle literally everyone, whereas Jordan absolutely couldn't. If the Palestinians were displaced into Jordan they'd be an impoverished refugee class, separated from friends and family, no employment prospects, and be totally reliant on humanitarian aid. I think Russia actually could handle the resettlement without the same material limitations.
It would come at the cost of being dispossessed from their land, but they'd be alive and healthy and their families would be whole.
Resettlement seems worth it, to me. But ultimately you raise the most important point with:
The people have decided they'd rather face death and dismemberment and loss of their families than be dispossessed of their land. I fundamentally don't understand that, but I can try to respect it. Personally I don't think it was worth it and I wish they had chosen differently because I think fewer people would have died, but this is what they chose and I have no choice but to support it.
Besides, it looks like Russia actually did make the best strategic choice. They might just win this thing.
No, that's no difference. You could add Egypt, Syria, etc. Point is, you want to solve the "problem" by exiling undesirable people from the country ruled by nazis. 3rd Reich, Israel, Ukraine, it's the same situation. You want to explicitly appease nazis, i don't know how much more straight i have to say this since you apparently does understand that not every resettlement is equal and the same, but you keep ignoring the base issue here in favour of liberal "nonviolence" and pacifism which ends up actually feeding the nazis.
You can't, though, because that means splitting up families and communities and scattering them across several countries and continents. Plus, even if they were split up, those countries would still struggle to provide them with jobs and housing, they'd still be reliant on humanitarian assistance and be relegated to an underclass of permanent refugees.
This is still very clearly distinct from Russia, where no one would need to be separated because they'd all be in the same country. It really isn't the same situation.
Please don't put words into my mouth, I am not a liberal passivist.
What I think is that fewer people, overall, would have died or been injured or lost family or endured economic hardship by being resettled. I think avoiding war is good, not because violence is inherently bad, but because it has lead to more suffering for people who don't deserve it. Russia could have absorbed everyone into its economy, they'd have had jobs and housing and all the necessities of modern life. I just think they'd have been better off by giving up the land to move farther East than staying to fight.
Make no mistake, I try to respect their decision to stay and fight for their land. I just can't understand it. Land just seems unimportant to me when there are other options (which is distinct from the Palestinians, for the reasons I explained). I am a postmodern subject that has been so thoroughly alienated from land that I can't even imagine caring about it.
But this doesn't come from some obsession with nonviolence or passivism. I still critically support Russia in their struggle against US/NATO imperialism, after all.
It's a moot point anyway, because it looks like the invasion is paying off. This is why I'm not in charge of anything.
Not for me. The media does an excellent job of ignoring or hyperfocusing on whatever it takes to support their narrative.
When Kiev sent military jets to bomb civilians in Donetsk in 2014, did it make headlines in the US? I don't remember hearing a thing.
The CIA can also do a false flag (e.g. Gulf of Tonkin) whenever it pleases, and compliant media would make it the biggest story of the decade. They've been priming the public for years with fake news about Russian covert ops, like Putin trying to hack the energy grid in the US.
Nordstream as an example for your latter point.
I think we'd be seeing a situation similar to the collapsing support for Israel, where despite media manipulation there's been a reversal against Israel and its only getting worse for them. The masses have turned against them and already several European countries have ended arms trade with Israel because the restive masses continue direct actions against the arms supply chain.
A different world where people were as critical of Ukraine as they have become of Israel would be catastrophic to the empire.
Maybe I'm giving the Europeans too much credit.
Israel is on a whole other level.
Yeah, you have a point. Maybe Europeans would have supported Ukraine even if they attacked first, just because they wouldn't have deployed Israeli-level depravity. Israel might just represent the limits of media's ability to manufacture consent.