• Grapho@lemmy.ml
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      22 hours ago

      Doesn’t look that sovereign to me, if the US can dictate their foreign policy, funded 9/10 of its media outlets and they pay for their entire military apparatus (with LOANS, no less). That sounds like a satellite state to me.

      Anyway, you can keep plugging your ears and covering your eyes and pretending it hasn’t been explained to you a hundred times that Russia doesn’t need minerals, nor land, nor resources, but an assurance that nuclear capabilities aren’t being deployed along its border. I don’t mind deluded libs, y’all the ones burying the empire after all.

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          19 hours ago

          The US transfered almost the same amount of material as the entire Russian military budget each year of the conflict.

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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        17 hours ago

        that Russia doesn’t need minerals, nor land, nor resources, but an assurance that nuclear capabilities aren’t being deployed along its border.

        I mean if that was the entire point of the war wouldn’t it still be a strategic failure considering the invasion prompted Finland to join NATO?

      • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Ukraine is fighting for its sovereignty.

        Russia's military concerns does not justify it's criminal invasion

        From 2014, the U.S. and NATO began to pour arms into Ukraine — advanced weapons, military training, joint military exercises, moves to integrate Ukraine into the NATO military command. There’s no secret about this. It was quite open. Recently, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, bragged about it. He said: This is what we were doing since 2014. Well, of course, this is very consciously, highly provocative. They knew that they were encroaching on what every Russian leader regarded as an intolerable move. France and Germany vetoed it in 2008, but under U.S. pressure, it was kept on the agenda. And NATO, meaning the United States, moved to accelerate the de facto integration of Ukraine into the NATO military command.

        In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming majority — I think about 70% of the vote — on a peace platform, a plan to implement peace with Eastern Ukraine and Russia, to settle the problem. He began to move forward on it and, in fact, tried to go to the Donbas, the Russian-oriented eastern region, to implement what’s called the Minsk II agreement. It would have meant a kind of federalization of Ukraine with a degree of autonomy for the Donbas, which is what they wanted. Something like Switzerland or Belgium. He was blocked by right-wing militias which threatened to murder him if he persisted with his effort.

        Well, he’s a courageous man. He could have gone forward if he had had any backing from the United States. The U.S. refused. No backing, nothing, which meant he was left to hang out to dry and had to back off. The U.S. was intent on this policy of integrating Ukraine step by step into the NATO military command. That accelerated further when President Biden was elected. In September 2021, you could read it on the White House website. It wasn’t reported but, of course, the Russians knew it. Biden announced a program, a joint statement to accelerate the process of military training, military exercises, more weapons as part of what his administration called an “enhanced program” of preparation for NATO membership.

        It accelerated further in November. This was all before the invasion. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed what was called a charter, which essentially formalized and extended this arrangement. A spokesman for the State Department conceded that before the invasion, the U.S. refused to discuss any Russian security concerns. All of this is part of the background.

        On February 24th, Putin invaded, a criminal invasion. These serious provocations provide no justification for it. If Putin had been a statesman, what he would have done is something quite different. He would have gone back to French President Emmanuel Macron, grasped his tentative proposals, and moved to try to reach an accommodation with Europe, to take steps toward a European common home.

        The U.S., of course, has always been opposed to that. This goes way back in Cold War history to French President De Gaulle’s initiatives to establish an independent Europe. In his phrase “from the Atlantic to the Urals,” integrating Russia with the West, which was a very natural accommodation for trade reasons and, obviously, security reasons as well. So, had there been any statesmen within Putin’s narrow circle, they would have grasped Macron’s initiatives and experimented to see whether, in fact, they could integrate with Europe and avert the crisis. Instead, what he chose was a policy which, from the Russian point of view, was total imbecility. Apart from the criminality of the invasion, he chose a policy that drove Europe deep into the pocket of the United States. In fact, it is even inducing Sweden and Finland to join NATO — the worst possible outcome from the Russian point of view, quite apart from the criminality of the invasion, and the very serious losses that Russia is suffering because of that.

        https://chomsky.info/20220616/

        The US is after the minerals within Ukraine. Russia has already gained the major resource of land. Both have interests to expand their sphere of influence, both have taken advantage of Ukraine for their own ends.

        You can strawman all you want, but as a leftist I will continue to criticize the imperialism of every empire. It’s not hard to be consistently anti-imperialist.

        • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Ukraine is fighting for its sovereignty.

          I’ll believe this when they attack the US.

          You can strawman all you want, but as a western leftist I will continue to criticize actions against US interests. It’s not hard to be consistently pro-US imperialism.

          Ftfy.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          6 hours ago

          It’s not hard to see the role played by NATO expansion and aggression.

          When NATO deposed Gaddafi it proved it is not a defensive alliance. When it couped Ukraine and installed an ally it became an existential threat. How could Russia look at an aggressive military alliance expanding toward its border and not take precautions?

          • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            I agree, main reason I made the quote that long. That doesn’t justify the invasion, especially since it only justified Europe’s need for a defensive pact, one the US is quick to exploit which the quote mentions. A people fighting for sovereignty will get weapons to fight back by any means possible, which the US is exploiting for its own ends.

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          19 hours ago

          Russia was literally invaded three times and lost millions upon millions of lives because the border with Ukraine is indefensible. That’s why Napoleon invaded Russia through it. It’s why the Third Reich invaded Russia through it. And it’s why Russia’s national security requires Ukraine to be a neutral country that NATO is not operational in. What NATO was doing in Ukraine absolutely justifies Russia’s actions. NATO simulated an invasion of Kaliningrad with Ukraine. It flew B-52s in exercises in Ukraine. It was literally building and exercising it’s logistics chain to establish nuclear first-strike capabilities. That’s been clear since the early 90s when Clinton duplicitously told Russia Ukraine would remain neutral while asking his own generals to draft a plan to include Ukraine in NATO. This is literally the definition of Russian national security. Ukraine needed to remain neutral and establishing a nuclear transnational military presence unaccountable to any sovereign nation or any nation’s people with an ambition of nuclear first strike capabilities lead by the USA that explicitly and publicly reserves the right for a nuclear first strike is exactly the opposite of remaining neutral.

        • m532@lemmygrad.ml
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          20 hours ago

          How to be consistently antiimperialist in any conflict: kill the yanks and their lackeys

          • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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            2 hours ago

            We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports. - Mao Zedong

            Its comically simplistic but i can’t think of a single case this is wrong in regards with US imperialism.

        • Grapho@lemmy.ml
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          21 hours ago

          Yeah, the state with the largest landmass by far in all of Eurasia desperately needs the land of a tiny state, more than it needs the manpower required to take it.

          Absolutely deluded

          Also, Chomsky has never seen a US war he couldn’t find a way to justify. Even then, that entire quote is him listing all the times the US instigated this war and prevented peace. I wipe my ass with his opinions on what should’ve been done, he always seems to find a leftist sounding justification to follow the state department line.

          • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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            17 hours ago

            If you think Chomsky has justified any US war you are delusional. And yes, Russia’s interest is in expanding access to the Azov and Black Sea at the very least.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            19 hours ago

            This is why we need understand imperialism in the Leninists sense and not in the liberal sense.

      • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        So, by this logic, Post-War Japan was not a sovereign state.

        How a country must operate during wartime versus peace is extremely different. And the UK in WWII also issued bonds and took debt. Were they no longer sovereign?

        That part of your argument is ridiculous. Ukraine is an independent nation with its own sovereignty and territorial authority.

        • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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          2 hours ago

          If X country has military bases in Y country, that Y country is not a sovereign state. Both japan and sKorea play baseball for a reason lmao.

        • Grapho@lemmy.ml
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          21 hours ago

          It absolutely wasnt lmao, it was literally occupied. How is this hard for y’all?

          What’s more, long after occupation ceased on paper, the US had such an economic, military, and diplomatic stranglehold on Japan that they bailed out the US and killed their own economy in the process in the early 80s

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    No Nobel for you Don until you also negotiate protection for the rocks.

    Nice to see lives protected. /s