

Ukraine in 2020 was nowhere near the state of Syria in 2025. This is a totally illegitimate comparison.
Ukraine in 2020 was nowhere near the state of Syria in 2025. This is a totally illegitimate comparison.
I said “one of”. If you can’t recognize the reality that the Soviet Union was looted by the people who currently form Russia’s oligarchy then we can’t have a conversation because you are completely in another reality.
Small threat is relative here. If you think that a fringe paramilitary is a threat on par with multiple countries’ conventional militaries, then you are a moron.
They were planning this in the first place, with them wanting a justification for increase. SMO was a response to that. I already addressed this.
Planning does not equal doing. Trump’s notion of increased spending among NATO members was literally laughed at when he suggested it in his first term. The SMO changed the equation for Europe and made them willing to do it when they previously weren’t.
It literally has not. They were already primed, in governance and acting out political violence. Literally before the Ukrainian conflict they were used as forces against insurgents in a genocide of Eastern Ukraine. This was pointed out in the copypasta I sent.
While Ukraine did have those tendencies prior to the SMO, remember that Zelensky was initially elected on a platform of ending the Ukranian Civil War and making Azob stand down. While he had failed to do this, it nevertheless showed that the Ukranian people did not broadly have the thirst for violence that the far-right Azov battalion had - but the SMO changed this equation too, linking far right nationalism and fascism with self defense in the minds of the Ukrainians. Instead of being de-nazified, the SMO accelerated Ukraine’s fascist shift, turning it from a nation with a radical foreign-backed far right fringe to a nation with a radical foreign-backed far right majority.
ALL OF THOSE THINGS THAT YOU LISTED ARE A BIGGER PROBLEM NOW THAN THEY WERE BEFORE THE SMO AND NOT ONLY THAT BUT THE CONVENTIONAL WESTERN MILITARIES ARRAYED AGAINST RUSSIA HAVE GROWN IN SIZE IN DIRECT RESPONSE TO THE PERCEIVED THREAT OF RUSSIAN AGGRESSION.
Do you think that the American invasion of Afghanistan reduced the number of anti-American paramilitaries in the world? Because the exact same thing happened here - a big invasion to stamp out a small threat only managed to galvanize resistance against the big invader. Who would have guessed given how many times this exact scenario has played out in history.
Nothing in this copypasta addresses my arguments, which are: a) the military forces at the command of NATO have massively increased as a direct result of the SMO and b) the amount of Nazis in Ukraine’s military and government have also massively increased as a direct result of the SMO. Regardless of whether or not the invasion could be justified, it has been a failure in all respects save for territorial acquisition.
The fact that you would even post this completely irrelevant copypasta that doesn’t address what I’m saying indicates that you’re not actually interested in arguing about this, you’re debating a liberal strawman that only exists in your head and not the communist right in front of you.
If Putin hadn’t invaded Ukraine, it would’ve been a launching ground for an invasion into Russia or forced submission.
With what army? Nobody wanted fund their militaries prior to the SMO, the SMO is what created what is currently the largest threat to Russia’s security.
nationalizing Wal Mart
Socialism with American Characteristics
If Putin hadn’t invaded Ukraine, NATO would be laughing off Trump’s demand to increase military spending just like they did the first time. Hell, considering how much more power Trump is weilding this time around, that could have directly lead to the US leaving NATO as he has often threatened to do.
However, Putin’s invasion completely reinvigorated the desire of other countries to be in NATO, turning the demand to increase spending from a silly political whim to a credible ultimatum. No, it isn’t solely Putin’s fault, but the SMO played directly into the American empire’s hands.
Russia pushed back the Azov battalion, but now every other NATO military is increasing spending and multiple other countries’ militaries have joined it. You have to be huffing serious amounts of copium to think that the SMO has been an overall benefit to Russia or the people in Donbas or anyone except the military contractors on both sides of the conflict.
Oh yeah and the Azov Battalion is now the Azov Regiment and Ukraine’s military and politics are more Nazi than they’ve ever been. Territorial gains aside the SMO must be evaluated as a failure according to its stated goals of denazifying Ukraine and improving Russia’s security.
Putin’s invasion has reinvigorated NATO to a degree not seen since the Cold War ended. Ten years ago Germany’s military was an international joke - they were putting broomsticks on their tanks to simulate having machine guns because the political will to actually fund it just wasn’t there, but now they’ve massively increased spending and they’re not the only one. While Ukraine’s military capacity has been taken down as the SMO was intended to do, the total military strength arrayed against Russia has only increased thanks to multiple new countries joining NATO and the much-more-credible demand from the US that the previous membership increase spending.
Back before the war started, the consensus on the left was “he won’t do it because it’s obviously a terrible idea”. We were wrong about the first part, but history has vindicated the second.
dastardly Putin didn’t allowed the western imperialists to loot and balkanize Russia
Only because Putin is one of the people who looted the Soviet Union himself.
If it ends up sticking it’s pretty much 100% Putin’s fault.
Death Stranding is a game that grows on you real slowly. If the second is anything like the first, then that’s the difference right there.
OP mentioned CK, AOE, and Civ - I think W&R would work about as well as any of those three. The Steam Deck’s got the touchpad mouses.
commie game
Have you played Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic? One of the most Marxist games ever made along with Vicky 3. It’s pretty intimidating but it has a lot of difficulty features so you can start with just the basics and ramp up at your own pace.
RetroArch
You can actually re-enable this in the Steam version by changing a cfg value, that said if you’re already on Linux there’s no reason to use the Steam version when your distro’s app store almost certainly has it already.
Has anyone out there made a dedicated downloader/launcher for abandonware? I bet something like that to get all of the private servers, widescreen hacks, and so on in one convenient place would be cool as hell.
You keep repeating things that I’m not contesting, as though you think that they run counter to my argument. Putting US support for far right extremists in caps lock doesn’t change the fact that Russia’s Special Military Operation also massively empowered those extremists and reinvigorated NATO as a global military alliance.
Oh and Russia’s moves in Ukraine started with the takeover of Crimea. That military move can be rationally defended as the counterreaction to it from the west was relatively small (the area on the graph you helpfully circled), but the full-scale invasion cannot be defended on the same grounds because it sparked a much larger response (the area to the right of what you circled).