Here’s how Ukraine was being reported by the West before the war.
Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.
Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march. A neo-Nazi battalion in the heart of Europe
If you whitewash NAZI POGROMS just because you want to beat Russia, fuck you. Siding with far-right fascists to defeat far-right fascists doesn’t make you the good guy. There is no lesser of two evils here.
If you dismiss any criticism of Ukraine as Russian propaganda, you might want to ask why the rest of the world, including the West, was concerned about Nazism in the area and then suddenly changed their tune only after the war started.
We should be getting both sides into peace negotiations, not prolonging the bloodshed and providing Nazis with illegal cluster bombs
I often see criticism of Ukraine lumped in with Russian justifications for invasion, in which case, the war is also warping your views.
The US got heat from other supporters of Ukraine for that even. Russia is also using them. Further cause to support peace negotiations.
Especially because the actual reason Russia invaded wasn’t over any concern about ethnic Russians in Ukraine (that’s literally one of the oldest bullshit excuses for war) was to prevent NATO from being on it’s borders, and now Finland and Sweden have joined, so Russia’s already lost the geopolitical battle. All they’re fighting for now is dirt.
Ah yes, I’m sure that’s why
sent exactly 1,488 panzer tanks to 
Must just be a coincidence that white supremacists and nazis all love those numbers
I often see libs consider the most luke warm criticism of Ukraine or NATO as being support for Russia. It sucks.
Russia portrays its “military operation” as being because of common and well known issues that the left has with NATO, but it was their invasion that tipped public opinion in Finland and Sweden to apply to join, so Russia has already lost in that respect.
oh yeah, so called “public opinion” is definitely crucial to liberal democracy and not just easily shaped by bourgeois media when class interests dictate. great analysis, very map-coloring brain. meanwhile you ignore things like Zelensky talking about leaving the Budapest memorandum or the imminent large-scale offensive against DPR and LPR just prior to the invasion
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/02/the-buildup-to-war-in-ukraine-february-13-2022.html series continues until Feb 22
The Baltics have been in NATO since 2004, so Russia already had NATO on its border. Plus Poland on Belarus’s border. It’s not about having NATO on their border in general, it’s about having NATO in Ukraine specifically. Finland and Sweden joining means nothing.
But Ukrainian bombing of the Donbass absolutely was a factor as well. For 8 years Russia tried the diplomatic route to get them to stop, but despite signing agreements, Ukraine just ignored them and kept bombing anyway.
The baltic route to invading Russia is a lot more difficult than the Ukrainian route. Ukraine was always the “red line” for them because of the topography, and the closeness to moscow. Also they were pissed when the baltics joined. The brits declassified that informal promises were made to Gorbachev (ugh…) to not expand NATO eastward in March 1991 if he dissolved the USSR. Of course these informal promises weren’t in writing and were never kept. the USA denied they were ever made, but luckily the brits declassified
Really no one should be shocked that an informal promise wasn’t honored. If a legally binding treaty can still be ignored by a sovereign power, informal promises are always worthless and no one should be pointing to them and going “but they promised!”
Yes. Gorbachev was a clown who got clowned upon. Still, I think it’s worth mentioning, because it reveals that the West was always willing to be deceptive about NATO expansion, and what the role of NATO actually is (i.e. it is not a “defensive” alliance but a reactionary alliance of imperial core countries to protect the superprofits afforded by imperialism and neocolonialism)
I mean, it is literally a defensive alliance if only because if one country is attacked, the others are legally obliged to treat it as an attack on them. It is then also an alliance of Imperial core countries (it was after all, founded in response to the Warsaw Pact).
It is indeed worth mentioning, but I don’t think it’s worth framing it as some sort of public promise that was walked back.
It was NOT founded in response to the Warsaw pact. NATO was formed in 1949. The Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955. The Warsaw pact was founded in response to NATO. NATO was building up West Germany economically less than 10 years after the fucking holocaust. The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 and was told “no, you aren’t democratic enough.” But they had no problem letting West Germany in while integrating “former” nazis like Adolf Heusinger into their command structure.
less than a third of NATO countries were admitted to NATO through some kind of democratic referendum. It was almost always the unilateral decision of the given country’s bourgeois class, rather than something the people themselves were consulted on. In the cases where democratic referendums were held, it was often in countries that had just been balkanized (former Yugoslav countries, for example), or countries that were just at the outskirts of NATO and were therefore pressured geopolitically into choosing whose “sphere of influence” they were under: Russian federation, or USA. When a nation is compelled under duress to pick sides like that, and a class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the one that usually ends up making the decisions, I doubt the alliance can reasonably be called “defensive.” Its borders keep expanding to encircle and balkanize nations whose main “crime” was being socialist Once Upon A Time. NATO expansion is marching us towards WW3. It is an expansionist and aggressive alliance that merely uses Article 5 to appear defensive and Democratic, while trying its hardest to constantly provoke wars and lay claim to natural resources.
Is the following something a “defensive” alliance does?
They’re only upset about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO because of the fact that the Baltics were able to join. If Putin had amassed enough political capital and military strength earlier, they probably would have intervened militarily there before they could join too.
Nothing is so one-sided. It’s not like portions of Ukraine still under Ukrainian control and not separatist control weren’t also getting bombed in turn. You could see it from Google Maps back in like, 2018. It’s not like the damage magically ended at the trenches and was only on the side controlled by the separatists.
I mean if you’re getting shelled from enemy territory then the way you stop it is by shooting at the enemy artillery in enemy territory. Do you not support the right of Ukrainians in Donbas to defend themselves?
They were fighting against the wholesome Banderite Nazi government of Ukraine. There is no sympathy for them.
Do you not support the rest of Ukraine’s? And what about all the people in the Donbass that relocated to parts of Ukraine still under control of Kyiv? After the separatists took power there many people went to western Ukraine. Do those people not have a right to one day return to their homes?
Ukraine could have stopped their war against Donbas at any time. In fact they were legally obligated to according to the Minsk agreements that they signed. Ukraine had no legal or moral right to continue attacking Donbas after they signed a ceasefire.
Not a lot of people went to western Ukraine. Most people went to either Russia or other parts of eastern Ukraine. Western Ukraine is pretty far away from the conflict.
With all ceasefires, both sides claim that the other violated it. I have no reason to give the Donbas separatists the benefit of the doubt anymore than I do Ukraine. It’s not like either side is openly communist, Russia isn’t some left wing workers state anymore, it’s not like they’re trying to reverse the economic and political changes of 1991, only the borders.
For a self-styled Marxist, you don’t seem to appreciate the idea of states being historically progressive or reactionary beyond “is it socialist or not?” Starting in 2014, Ukraine started moving in the direction of ethnonationalist policy. Palestine isn’t socialist, but I think socialists usually understand that if they are going to give one side benefit of the doubt, it’s the insurgency trying to resist the supremacist military trying to dominate them.
Do you think only Ukraine violated the agreement? Why is on them to honor it when the rebels weren’t?
People in the political minority in Eastern Ukraine went to Western Ukraine so they’d be in the majority, in the period between the ouster of the Kremlin-prefered leadership in Kyiv and the rebels getting organized. This was in the news back in like 2014, so it’s likely been buried in the more prevalent discussions about the Minsk agreements and the subsequent invasion of the wider country.