Truth is simple.
For people in Europe (especially middle/east) russian imperialism is the same thing, as american imperialism to a middle east and countries in the North and South America.
We can all hate russian and USA imperialism, hate the mainstream media, but please don’t use other imperial contry as a alternative :)
Russia is not imperializing Europe, Europe itself is imperialist, and western Europe is especially guilty of imperializing both eastern Europe and the global south.
Of course that’s not true. Russia openly saying, that it wants to rebuild soviet era imperium.
Where Europe is imperializing? Europe independent countries just started EU, economic and politics alliance, just like BRICS. EU is not responsible for the wars (Russia is, i.e. Ukraine, Georgia, Chechen war…).
Neither the Russian Federation nor USSR are examples of imperialism. Neither is dominated by financial capital, nor do either expropriate vast sums of wealth from the global south through unequal exchange and export of capital. Europe does, though, and this is why they are imperialist while BRICS is not. NATO is also responsible for many of those wars, such as the Russo-Ukrainian war, by installing far-right Banderites that began ethnically cleansing Russians in eastern Ukraine, resulting in Donetsk and Luhansk seceding and requesting Russian assistance.
while i agree with your first statement, your point about “far-right banderites” and ethic cleansing are loughable.
Rise of nationalistic ideologies in Ukraine is quite consiqential. It’s a reaction to Russian attempts at gaining political control via puppet figures. Russia reacted to that reaction, Ukraine then reacted to that, and now we have the mess we have. Absolutely moronic, yet here we are.
And ethnic cleansing, seriously? “Ukrainian” and “Russian” are not athnicities. Even cultures don’t differ that much. The only notable difference is the language, except even there it’s not that simple. The more to the east of Ukraine you got, the more russian-speaking people there you’d meet, which is fairly normal, but you’d still meet those even on the western half. I’m not even talking about cities like Odessa where the majority always was and still is speaking Russian. Nobody seem to ever attempt to “ethnically clense” Odessa. I wonder why…
Some aquaintances of mine from eastern Ukraine would also be quite surprised to know that they apparently were “ethnically cleansed”.
The rise in nationalism was empowered by the west to serve their interests. Russian and Ukrainian are indeed unique ethnic groups, and the 13,000 civilians killed by Kiev over the last decade before 2022 is evidence of the oppression of ethnic Russians by Kiev.
From davel’s compilation, again:
- BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
- Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
- The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
- The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
- WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
- Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
- The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
- openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
- Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- Consortium News, 2022: Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev
- Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
- History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
Groups like Azov have been folded in officially. The Kiev regime upholds Stepan Bandera and uses likeness for propaganda. Nazis infest Ukrainian leadership:
The east supported Yanukovych, and that’s why the far-right Banderites couping him kicked off the war.
i’m not saying it wasn’t influenced by the west. It wouldn’t have been successful without the context i mentioned tho. You know, where Russia tried to influence Ukraine and failed.
Also, it’s not like Russia ever tried to de-escalate this, on the contrary, since the Ukrainian revolution against Yanukovich regime, russian outlets haven’t missed any opportunity to portray Ukraine as some kind of a nazi state. It’s kinda natural of people to unite against a bigger enemy, so no wonder that the more Russia screamed about how nationalistic Ukraine is, the more nationalistic it became, with it’s peak at the start of the war.
It’s really a shame, and so fucking embarassing that political forces of the historical regions of Ukraine and Russia never got along.
The fact that modern ukrainian nationalists use ww2 related symbols only proves that, and nothing else. To call them nazis is the same as to call Russian regime a nazi one, as they too use symbolics of nazi collaborationists. What’s really funny is that they use it as a symbol of victory in ww2.
Just for the clarification sake, i don’t indulge nationalism. More over, i hate the very concept of nationality, as it has little to do with reality, and only serves propagandist purposes. And what you’re doing here is defending one group of nationalists by attacking the other.
I refuse to delve into why the so called anti-terroristic operation had started, because we both have no evidence about the actual reasons, just what the news outlets of either side wanted their people to believe. I’ll just say that given that “the west” managed to influence the western Ukraine, it’s entirely not off the table that Russia had their people on the east itself. Especially considering that there’s no linguistic, cultural, nor ethnic barriers to blend in, and the fact that the border between the two coutries was quite easily passable before the shit went south.
edit: Your reasoning for it also doesn’t check out, considering the creation of internal displacement programs Ukraine had created, and humanitarian aid it provided, that is, if by “the war” you mean the territorial conflicts that lasted for eight years, before the official war started.
And if you’re talking about the current conflict, i’m afraid, “the banderites” weren’t the ones who had started it. Belarus wouldn’t have been boasting about the so called “preemptive strike” that Russia landed on “Ukrainian positions” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_now_I_will_show_you_where_the_attack_on_Belarus_was_prepared_from)
Yanukovych took the Russian loan because the IMF loan required austerity measures and the Russian loan didn’t. It wasn’t because of “Russian meddling,” but because the west put literal Nazis in power. The Russian state is run by nationalists, but not Nazis.
I defend nationalism in the context of anti-imperialism, the standard Marxist position. Fanon’s a great read on this. Russia was not and is not ethnically cleansing Ukrainians like Ukraine is towards Russians.
