the problem here is that the average liberal pundit/bot/think tank ghoul think that Putin is an evil mastermind who is manipulating all world events along with China and Iran (and sometimes DPRK and even Venezuela) and that the war in gaza is just part of the evil strategy to distract the west from ukraine
I think the difference here is that Russia is actually winning on the battlefield, and Ukrainian army isn't likely going to be able to hold on much longer. So, there's going to be an Afghanistan style debacle with public already being against the war.
i figure this is one of those issues where you can make that number say different things depending on how you phrase the question. like, what percentage of americans would Agree that "Russia should relinquish its claims to all Ukrainian territory"?
Fuck Americans, they always support the current war during the warmongering stage or right when it begins and they always stop supporting it after immense amounts of people have been killed or had their lives ruined
Honestly, even trying to put myself in the mindset of a 100% "Slava Ukraini!" person, I don't get the opposition to even HAVING peace talks. If Russia gives you shit terms at the talks you can just refuse them, it's not like having talks means you have to capitulate totally, that's called surrendering, not peace talks.
And it probably would have been way more advantageous for Ukraine to have these talks early when US support was more solid and it wasn't totally clear who was gonna win yet.
Ukraine only wanted eastern Ukraine for the ethnic cleansing, so nah. Russia gets to keep what they took. If Z wasn't such a CIA asset maybe he would have negotiated to keep from throwing soldiers into the meat grinder. On the other hand, cocaine for dead soldiers is a pretty good deal.
I think they saw your comment and started to panic, knowing that if they called us tankies they would look owned because of yor prescient prediction. But then clarity cut through their panic and they came up with the most clever, nay brilliant epithet anyone has ever conjured:
Here's an interview with Vijay Prashad, a Marxist scholar who understands the core of world geopolitics, dismantling the idea that Russia-Ukraine is an inter-imperialist conflict: https://youtu.be/pwuatE-3Q5c?t=27m43s
He is very historically literate, being someone who has studied history professionally and applies Leninism to understanding the underlying processes at work. Consider the possibility that you're using terms you don't understand. You won't get very far in describing the world accurately if you don't understand imperialism as Lenin described it in his time, let alone the "hyper-imperialist" system we have today with one supreme world hegemon, which is not Russia or China.
Those countries are defensive powers without imperialist ambitions, Prashad argues. America is the one that has hundreds of military bases across the globe and goes around provoking its designated enemies, such as installing a pro-NATO fascist government in Ukraine. Even if you don't like what I'm saying, like it hurts your feelings or you just don't care, I highly recommend watching the whole 40-ish minute talk Prashad gives in that video, it's a fantastic summation of the world we live in. He also critiques the way a lot of Marxists are analyzing imperialism, so you can't really say his take is dogmatic. Like don't just fuck off back to your own instance without at least looking at the material we're giving you, you might even learn something.
really a shining example of how reflexive anti-violence can be used to justify anything you want with sufficient framing and cut-off points for when you decide to start analyzing events
"well gee whiz, I have started paying attention to this issue from today onwards with an abject refusal to read even a paragraph of history and it looks like Group A has marched in to commit violence against Group B. this must be the exact same as when Group X marched in to commit violence against Group Y a few decades ago and the consensus was that Group X was bad, so therefore Group A is also bad!"
works with Russia invading Ukraine, and indeed Hamas doing October 7th. all you need is some bizarre overoveroversimplification that imperialism = violence in any capacity and you have yourself an extremely confused left-winger who starts supporting Nazi-infested NATO.
a country like Russia can be so committed to finding some kind of peace that they try and negotiate with the West for eight fucking years while the West is visibly piling troops and equipment into Ukraine and bombarding the Donbass with artillery, and yet when things finally snap, Russia is the most bloodthirsty warmongerer on the face of the planet and Putin is personally responsible for every single bad thing that happens for the decade afterwards, up to and including the results of every Western election, even ones in the past. meanwhile, the US invades Iraq on such flimsy pretenses that even the word "pretenses" is an absurd word to use and their global punishment is what exactly? oh, the endless streams of countries sanctioning the US and banning George Bush from entering their countries! oh, no worries though, you and the rest of the liberals opposed it. a decade or two after it happened instead of at the time, of course, but you got there in the end. oh, we're all so enlightened and anti-violence and anti-invasions now. here's a gold star, you fucking weasel.
there's only one cure for this and it's to read a book. luckily, Lenin's Imperialism is right there.