In this exclusive interview, Joti Brar tackles some of the most pressing debates facing the global Left today.______________________________________________S...
It’s revolutionary in the sense that it inflicts a heavy defeat on the imperialists and severely depletes their arsenals. Already the conflict has greatly accelerated the global transition to multipolarity, encouraging Russia but also other countries in the global south that have seen how fickle of a partner the West can be, to reorient, develop alternative trading networks, and reduce their dependence on institutions and financial mechanisms controlled by the imperialist West.
It also destabilizes Europe, one of the two main centers of Western imperialism, politically and economically. This takes pressure off of revolutionary movements in the global south and opens the door to anti-NATO and anti-EU forces in Europe to take advantage of this defeat to agitate for breaking free of these institutions of hegemonic imperialist control which are directly responsible for the severe crisis many European countries now find themselves in.
There’s also another aspect to this which is that the breakdown in trade with the West forced Russia to start developing economic ties with the Global South. Developing countries are now directly benefiting from Russian resources and technology. Russia helping Niger build a nuclear reactor is a great example of this dynamic. So, while the West being weakened forced to pour their remaining resources into a futile war, the rest of the world is enjoying an improved economic situation as a result.
In certain circles, there have been attempts to paint the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as a war between two imperialist countries, the United States and Russia. Similarly to the above Chinese example, this is incorrect.
Unlike the western powers, Russia does not have any capital monopolies that control the world market or supply chains. Russia having Gazprom and an extraction industry doesn’t mean they are imperialist. The essence of imperialism is monopolistic on a global scale, which is precisely why Russia is not imperialist, not whether they have capital generally. A perfect example of monopolies that share the world amongst themselves is the West, specifically the United States in their control of the WEF, IMF, World Bank, and UN Security Council, allowing the western powers to enforce this dominance through jingoistic foreign policy, embargoes, and hindering the development of other countries. Neither Russia nor China has anywhere close to this level of global power through finance capital.
Russia lacks finance capital and division of the world’s resources. It only has 4 of the top 100 corporations in the world and 6 of the top 500. 82% of Russian exports are raw materials, including 58% oil, 11% metal, and 6% food. In 2017, Russia imported $106.2 billion worth’ of machine goods and only exported $12.8 billion. Russia does not have any of the top 100 corporations in terms of capital export, and most Russian capital export is capital flight to tax havens. Russia only controls 0.7% of the world’s wealth and has much less wealth per adult than the United States ($8,843 vs $336,528). Russia has intervened militarily in other countries such as Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria, but not to seize natural resources like imperialist countries do.[8]
Note: This doesn’t mean Russia is run by anti-capitalists. It just means they are not acting in an imperialist way thus far. When people here talk of support for Russia, they usually say “critical support,” i.e. something like: support them insofar as they act in an anti-imperialist manner, but don’t take the rest of it for granted as being on the side of the working class.
As far as I’m aware, much of the burgeoning multipolar world is not explicitly anti-capitalist. China is explicitly run by communists, but even it is not trying to scold other countries about their capitalism, so to speak, as far as I know. This makes a kind of sense if you consider it from the standpoint that China and others are shifting the balance of power largely via trade relationships. If AES states were to all say “capitalist bad” and refuse to deal with them, they would cede power over trade and become easily isolated and encircled.
The shift away from western hegemony is not clean and simple, but it is necessary to support sovereignty and self determination in countries that would otherwise face “regime change” and subsequent hollowing out from the west. So far, Russia seems pretty consistent on supporting sovereignty against that brutality, in spite of being run by capitalists, given its ties with AES states and others who just want self determination in the face of the western empire. Given their capitalist leadership, I suppose one could ask if this some kind of long game opportunism, so that they can turn it into their own predatory relationship down the road? But that’s speculative reaching next to the realities of what is going on right now and those countries they are dealing with are plenty capable of analyzing the relationship as they go and keeping an eye out for malign evolutions in it.
Russia did indeed nearly make a deal with Ukraine in Istanbul before the west told Ukraine that they wouldn’t get security guarantees if that happened. From that point on it became an actual war that Russia is currently winning. The fact that you think the war is about territory shows that you have absolutely no clue regarding the subject you’re opining on.
Meanwhile, Russia successfully reorienting its economy away from the west shows just how irrelevant the west has become now. Russia’s economy is now growing faster than any western economy. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68823399
я не из калининграда@lemmy.ml (not a native english speaker, I believe)
i do not support the current administrations internal actions, as capitalism has brought nothing but injustice, suffering, poverty, crime and corruption. but i absolutely do support its foreign policy, especially regarding the ukrainian question. the putin government has evolved to become one of the most effective anti-imperialist forces on the planet and even if you ignore the terrible nature of the terrorist zelensky-regime one has to be grateful to our military for fighting the biggest enemy of mankind, america.
so lets detail the happenings that led to the current situation:
(it may be important to note that the current russian administration pushes a slightly different narrative due to sadly being a right wing state)
banderite collaborators parading in front of nazi officers the banderites (see picture), members of the fascist “organization of ukrainian nationalists” led by stepan andreyevich bandera were a gang of rapists and murderers who collaborated with the invading german hordes and assisted them by conducting acts of terror against civilians. It is important to note that popular support for them was close to zero. after the victory of the heroic red army, the majority of those parasites fled to the west, predominantly to canada. they received funding from american and british intelligence agencies, which were more than happy to welcome “former” nazis into their own anti-communist ranks. another subset of the banderites remained in the ukrainian ssr and conducted a campaign of terror and sabotage against the civilian population. their bloody deeds were supported by the cia and its european puppet agencies through the so called “operation aerodynamic”.
spoiler
referendum on the preservation of the ussr. its results were ignored by the anti-communists
After the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the ussr, the leaders of those fascist gangs were glorified by the ukrainian far-right, with support from the cia. efforts to further their “rehabilitation” were primarily directed by nazi expatriates in canada. outlets such as voice of america portrayed them as “heroes”. (aerodynamic, some of these were manufactured in the U.S under Operation Mockingbird like a lot of U.S state dept. bullshit)
election before cia intervention. this division between neonazi northwest and pro-russian southeast is visible to this day
in 2004, the west sabotaged the ukrainian presidential elections and installed their puppet, viktor andreyevich yushchenko, through a color revolution. he was a terrible leader, not only dismantling the remaining aspects of the ukrainian economy and managing to make life even more miserable than it already was, but also granting “hero of ukraine” status to banderite leaders and holocaust perpetrators stepan bandera and roman iosifovich shukhevich.
(not adding picture of 2014 ukrainian nazis since you have already said you believe in that)
in 2014, america and the west orchestrated another coup, this time not even bothering to hide the involvement of neo-nazis. the new regime perpetrated unspeakable atrocities against the russian population, whom it consideres “subhuman,” as well as against ukrainian anti-fascists. in odessa alone, 39 people were burned alive in the local trade union building.
those developments led to the revolution in the predominantly russian populated donbass-area and the creation off the donetsk and lugansk peoples republics, as well as the referendum in crimea that led to the peninsula finally rejoining russia. from 2014 till 2022 the majority of humanitarian aid to the donbass republics came from the cprf.
the reason for the smo is the ukrainian western-aligned nazi regime violating the minsk accords by refusing to demilitarize, trying to join the fascist nato-block and murdering russian civilians for years on end. the russian government showed itself extremely lenient, to lenient even, as any sensible politician would have staged a military intervention much earlier. if you need further proof for the tyrannical nature of the kievan regime just look at the fact that zelenskiy has banned all opposition parties in his country, refuses to hold elections and effectively rules as a military dictator. furthermore he has outlawed the russian language, made any negotiation with the russian state illegal and is currently selling whatever is left of his country to the highest bidder. combine all this with the fact that the west and its puppets need to always be opposed due to them being a cancer of humanity and you’ll get a pretty good picture of why to support the russian military.
In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.
Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.
Did you actually read anything of what was said in the thread i just linked? Have you read the resources that were provided there, such as: https://mronline.org/2019/01/02/is-russia-imperialist/ ? Seems like you didn’t. You continue to argue based on a false premise.
Did you listen to the video in this post? Have you actually taken the time to understand what this conflict is about? Here are some more resources you can use to educate yourself: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9212334
Yes I did. You keep posting the same stuff proving western influence in Ukraine sure this is true yet you still fail to respond to my point that Russia is not representing any form of a proletarian struggle against bourgeois influence. Yes it struggles against western bourgeois influence BUT it does that by replacing it with IT’S OWN bourgeois influence! What does it have to do with anything anti imperialist (which means opposition to EVERY foreign bourgeoisie)?
Opposition to imperialism and colonialism is revolutionary and progressive even when it comes from bourgeois forces because it opens the door to proletarian revolutionary forces. Marxist-Leninist theory is very clear about this:
The primary contradiction in the world today is not between workers and peripheral capitalist states like Russia, it is between hegemonic Western imperialism and those resisting it. It is the struggle against neo-colonial subjugation, super-exploitation and underdevelopment.
The biggest global barrier to proletarian revolutions and national liberation worldwide is US and European imperialism.
Russia is allied with or providing aid to every existing socialist or anti-imperialist state. They are directly arming or otherwise supporting the countries that are most acutely struggling against imperialism and colonialism, from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, to Mali and Burkina Faso, to Iran and the DPRK.
But beyond of all that, Russia simply does not fulfil the criteria of the Leninist definition of imperialism, especially not when taking into account how imperialism has changed over the past hundred years:
Stalin talks about national struggles not inter-national struggles. While yes a bourgeois movement can be anti-imperialist it also has to be fighting for the sovereignty of its own country not for foreign soil.
While this war produces some anti-imperialist outcomes, they’re only a secondary effect caused by the nature of inter-imperialist wars where both imperialist sides weaken eachother.
The core nature of this war is only anti-imperialist as far as the class conscious proletariat of each side fights against the imperialist aims of its own state (and their hegemons in the case of Ukraine).
Russia is not waging this war to free Ukrainian people from capital and imperialism as it might claim (if so why is Russia not fighting capitalism within itself?). It’s waging this war to extend the sphere of influence of its own bourgeoisie, hence it’s imperialist despite the side effects
Every war waged between capitalist states (with the exception of national liberatory struggle) is an imperialist war. Funnily enough applying Stalin’s ideas in Foundations of Leninism to the current situation makes the Ukrainian population opposing both western and eastern imperialists the anti-imperialist forces in this war, even if they are influenced by bourgeois ideology (this of course excludes pro-nato (and nato funded…) elements)
It’s waging this war to extend the sphere of influence of its own bourgeoisie, hence it’s imperialist despite the side effects
I swear it’s like you have read absolutely none of the myriad of sources that have been provided for you. None of the serious analysis about this war or its causes supports this infantile view of the war, not even the imperialists’ own internal strategic analysis. Everyone (except the blinded western masses who still consume the western liberal mainstream media’s ridiculous propaganda narratives) understands that this is about Russia’s vital security concerns being trampled and its very existence as a state threatened by NATO expansion. Russia’s people understand this, Russia’s enemies understand this, and Russia’s global south allies understand this. That is why Russia is waging this war.
Every war waged between capitalist states (with the exception of national liberatory struggle) is an imperialist war.
First of all that is overly reductive.
Second of all, for the people of the Donbass this is a war of national liberation. I would seriously suggest that you start listening to what the people actually there on the ground say rather than judging from afar conditions which you do not understand. The people in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics had been begging Russia to intervene for the whole period of the 2014-2022 war that the fascist Kiev regime, which was installed after the Western orchestrated Maidan coup, was waging against them. They were the ones who had to live under bombs, bullets and shells, and when Russia finally launched its long overdue intervention in 2022 those people celebrated.
You can also watch interviews on the street with people from that region. There are thousands on Russian media, but if you don’t trust them search for independent journalists on YouTube such as Patrick Lancaster, look for some of his older videos where he interviews locals. Search for other independent journalists who have covered the conflict and have spoken to locals. Or you can watch one of the documentaries that others have recommended on the Ukraine war megapost.
There are plenty of resources available for you to educate yourself. If you continue to refuse to do so there is no point in continuing this conversation.
Funnily enough applying Stalin’s ideas in Foundations of Leninism to the current situation makes the Ukrainian population opposing both western and eastern imperialists the anti-imperialist forces in this war, even if they are influenced by bourgeois ideology
There are Ukrainians on both sides of this war. It is not “the Ukrainian population” which is choosing to wage this unwinnable war against Russia on behalf of NATO just so that the imperialist West can weaken one of its main rivals, it is a neo-Nazi terrorist regime which is brutally oppressing the Ukrainian population, imprisoning and torturing and murdering dissidents, and forcefully abducting Ukrainians off the streets to send them to the trenches as cannon fodder. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. This regime is not merely “influenced by bourgeois ideology”, they are outright Nazi worshippers who celebrate WWII Holocaust perpetrator Nazi collaborator war criminals as their “national heroes”. That is who Russia is fighting, not the people of Ukraine.
If you think that Stalin’s writing supports siding with literal fascists who are fighting an imperialist proxy war to ethnically cleanse Russian speakers off of their own land, you are out of your mind.
It’s revolutionary in the sense that it inflicts a heavy defeat on the imperialists and severely depletes their arsenals. Already the conflict has greatly accelerated the global transition to multipolarity, encouraging Russia but also other countries in the global south that have seen how fickle of a partner the West can be, to reorient, develop alternative trading networks, and reduce their dependence on institutions and financial mechanisms controlled by the imperialist West.
It also destabilizes Europe, one of the two main centers of Western imperialism, politically and economically. This takes pressure off of revolutionary movements in the global south and opens the door to anti-NATO and anti-EU forces in Europe to take advantage of this defeat to agitate for breaking free of these institutions of hegemonic imperialist control which are directly responsible for the severe crisis many European countries now find themselves in.
There’s also another aspect to this which is that the breakdown in trade with the West forced Russia to start developing economic ties with the Global South. Developing countries are now directly benefiting from Russian resources and technology. Russia helping Niger build a nuclear reactor is a great example of this dynamic. So, while the West being weakened forced to pour their remaining resources into a futile war, the rest of the world is enjoying an improved economic situation as a result.
none of this justifies support for Russia
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jul/26.htm
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4114631
Russia can both oppose western imperialism and be imperialist itself is it too hard to comprehend?
Napoleon was both a monarch and subjugated other monarchies. Just because he overthrew european monarchies doesn’t mean he was anti-monarchy
Anti-european monarchy sure but not anti-monarchy in general
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism
Note: This doesn’t mean Russia is run by anti-capitalists. It just means they are not acting in an imperialist way thus far. When people here talk of support for Russia, they usually say “critical support,” i.e. something like: support them insofar as they act in an anti-imperialist manner, but don’t take the rest of it for granted as being on the side of the working class.
As far as I’m aware, much of the burgeoning multipolar world is not explicitly anti-capitalist. China is explicitly run by communists, but even it is not trying to scold other countries about their capitalism, so to speak, as far as I know. This makes a kind of sense if you consider it from the standpoint that China and others are shifting the balance of power largely via trade relationships. If AES states were to all say “capitalist bad” and refuse to deal with them, they would cede power over trade and become easily isolated and encircled.
The shift away from western hegemony is not clean and simple, but it is necessary to support sovereignty and self determination in countries that would otherwise face “regime change” and subsequent hollowing out from the west. So far, Russia seems pretty consistent on supporting sovereignty against that brutality, in spite of being run by capitalists, given its ties with AES states and others who just want self determination in the face of the western empire. Given their capitalist leadership, I suppose one could ask if this some kind of long game opportunism, so that they can turn it into their own predatory relationship down the road? But that’s speculative reaching next to the realities of what is going on right now and those countries they are dealing with are plenty capable of analyzing the relationship as they go and keeping an eye out for malign evolutions in it.
@yogthos@lemmy.ml
Russia did indeed nearly make a deal with Ukraine in Istanbul before the west told Ukraine that they wouldn’t get security guarantees if that happened. From that point on it became an actual war that Russia is currently winning. The fact that you think the war is about territory shows that you have absolutely no clue regarding the subject you’re opining on.
Meanwhile, Russia successfully reorienting its economy away from the west shows just how irrelevant the west has become now. Russia’s economy is now growing faster than any western economy. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68823399
The World Bank just reclassified Russia as a high income country https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/world-bank-country-classifications-by-income-level-for-2024-2025
я не из калининграда@lemmy.ml (not a native english speaker, I believe)
i do not support the current administrations internal actions, as capitalism has brought nothing but injustice, suffering, poverty, crime and corruption. but i absolutely do support its foreign policy, especially regarding the ukrainian question. the putin government has evolved to become one of the most effective anti-imperialist forces on the planet and even if you ignore the terrible nature of the terrorist zelensky-regime one has to be grateful to our military for fighting the biggest enemy of mankind, america.
so lets detail the happenings that led to the current situation:
(it may be important to note that the current russian administration pushes a slightly different narrative due to sadly being a right wing state)
banderite collaborators parading in front of nazi officers the banderites (see picture), members of the fascist “organization of ukrainian nationalists” led by stepan andreyevich bandera were a gang of rapists and murderers who collaborated with the invading german hordes and assisted them by conducting acts of terror against civilians. It is important to note that popular support for them was close to zero. after the victory of the heroic red army, the majority of those parasites fled to the west, predominantly to canada. they received funding from american and british intelligence agencies, which were more than happy to welcome “former” nazis into their own anti-communist ranks. another subset of the banderites remained in the ukrainian ssr and conducted a campaign of terror and sabotage against the civilian population. their bloody deeds were supported by the cia and its european puppet agencies through the so called “operation aerodynamic”.
spoiler
referendum on the preservation of the ussr. its results were ignored by the anti-communists
After the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the ussr, the leaders of those fascist gangs were glorified by the ukrainian far-right, with support from the cia. efforts to further their “rehabilitation” were primarily directed by nazi expatriates in canada. outlets such as voice of america portrayed them as “heroes”. (aerodynamic, some of these were manufactured in the U.S under Operation Mockingbird like a lot of U.S state dept. bullshit)
election before cia intervention. this division between neonazi northwest and pro-russian southeast is visible to this day
in 2004, the west sabotaged the ukrainian presidential elections and installed their puppet, viktor andreyevich yushchenko, through a color revolution. he was a terrible leader, not only dismantling the remaining aspects of the ukrainian economy and managing to make life even more miserable than it already was, but also granting “hero of ukraine” status to banderite leaders and holocaust perpetrators stepan bandera and roman iosifovich shukhevich.
(not adding picture of 2014 ukrainian nazis since you have already said you believe in that)
in 2014, america and the west orchestrated another coup, this time not even bothering to hide the involvement of neo-nazis. the new regime perpetrated unspeakable atrocities against the russian population, whom it consideres “subhuman,” as well as against ukrainian anti-fascists. in odessa alone, 39 people were burned alive in the local trade union building.
those developments led to the revolution in the predominantly russian populated donbass-area and the creation off the donetsk and lugansk peoples republics, as well as the referendum in crimea that led to the peninsula finally rejoining russia. from 2014 till 2022 the majority of humanitarian aid to the donbass republics came from the cprf.
the reason for the smo is the ukrainian western-aligned nazi regime violating the minsk accords by refusing to demilitarize, trying to join the fascist nato-block and murdering russian civilians for years on end. the russian government showed itself extremely lenient, to lenient even, as any sensible politician would have staged a military intervention much earlier. if you need further proof for the tyrannical nature of the kievan regime just look at the fact that zelenskiy has banned all opposition parties in his country, refuses to hold elections and effectively rules as a military dictator. furthermore he has outlawed the russian language, made any negotiation with the russian state illegal and is currently selling whatever is left of his country to the highest bidder. combine all this with the fact that the west and its puppets need to always be opposed due to them being a cancer of humanity and you’ll get a pretty good picture of why to support the russian military.
[Query: Do communists have to support Russia?]
from @davel@lemmygrad.ml
Also, Ukraine really does have a fascism problem and has for a long time, and the coup government has materially supported it.
from [@muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml] https://mronline.org/2019/01/02/is-russia-imperialist/
Did you actually read anything of what was said in the thread i just linked? Have you read the resources that were provided there, such as: https://mronline.org/2019/01/02/is-russia-imperialist/ ? Seems like you didn’t. You continue to argue based on a false premise.
Did you listen to the video in this post? Have you actually taken the time to understand what this conflict is about? Here are some more resources you can use to educate yourself: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9212334
Yes I did. You keep posting the same stuff proving western influence in Ukraine sure this is true yet you still fail to respond to my point that Russia is not representing any form of a proletarian struggle against bourgeois influence. Yes it struggles against western bourgeois influence BUT it does that by replacing it with IT’S OWN bourgeois influence! What does it have to do with anything anti imperialist (which means opposition to EVERY foreign bourgeoisie)?
Opposition to imperialism and colonialism is revolutionary and progressive even when it comes from bourgeois forces because it opens the door to proletarian revolutionary forces. Marxist-Leninist theory is very clear about this:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm
The primary contradiction in the world today is not between workers and peripheral capitalist states like Russia, it is between hegemonic Western imperialism and those resisting it. It is the struggle against neo-colonial subjugation, super-exploitation and underdevelopment.
The biggest global barrier to proletarian revolutions and national liberation worldwide is US and European imperialism.
Russia is allied with or providing aid to every existing socialist or anti-imperialist state. They are directly arming or otherwise supporting the countries that are most acutely struggling against imperialism and colonialism, from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, to Mali and Burkina Faso, to Iran and the DPRK.
But beyond of all that, Russia simply does not fulfil the criteria of the Leninist definition of imperialism, especially not when taking into account how imperialism has changed over the past hundred years:
https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/03/02/is-russia-imperialist/
https://classconscious.org/2025/06/03/is-russia-an-imperialist-power-revisiting-lenin-in-the-21st-century/
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/why-russia-and-china-are-not-imperialist--a-marxist-leninist
https://www.ir-press.ru/2025/08/24/russia-not-an-imperialist-country/
The Russian economy is still more akin to that of a neocolonized global south country than to one of an imperialist country.
Unless your definition of “imperialism” is just “when country does things outside of its own borders”, Russian imperialism ended in 1917.
Stalin talks about national struggles not inter-national struggles. While yes a bourgeois movement can be anti-imperialist it also has to be fighting for the sovereignty of its own country not for foreign soil.
While this war produces some anti-imperialist outcomes, they’re only a secondary effect caused by the nature of inter-imperialist wars where both imperialist sides weaken eachother.
The core nature of this war is only anti-imperialist as far as the class conscious proletariat of each side fights against the imperialist aims of its own state (and their hegemons in the case of Ukraine).
Russia is not waging this war to free Ukrainian people from capital and imperialism as it might claim (if so why is Russia not fighting capitalism within itself?). It’s waging this war to extend the sphere of influence of its own bourgeoisie, hence it’s imperialist despite the side effects
Every war waged between capitalist states (with the exception of national liberatory struggle) is an imperialist war. Funnily enough applying Stalin’s ideas in Foundations of Leninism to the current situation makes the Ukrainian population opposing both western and eastern imperialists the anti-imperialist forces in this war, even if they are influenced by bourgeois ideology (this of course excludes pro-nato (and nato funded…) elements)
I swear it’s like you have read absolutely none of the myriad of sources that have been provided for you. None of the serious analysis about this war or its causes supports this infantile view of the war, not even the imperialists’ own internal strategic analysis. Everyone (except the blinded western masses who still consume the western liberal mainstream media’s ridiculous propaganda narratives) understands that this is about Russia’s vital security concerns being trampled and its very existence as a state threatened by NATO expansion. Russia’s people understand this, Russia’s enemies understand this, and Russia’s global south allies understand this. That is why Russia is waging this war.
First of all that is overly reductive.
Second of all, for the people of the Donbass this is a war of national liberation. I would seriously suggest that you start listening to what the people actually there on the ground say rather than judging from afar conditions which you do not understand. The people in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics had been begging Russia to intervene for the whole period of the 2014-2022 war that the fascist Kiev regime, which was installed after the Western orchestrated Maidan coup, was waging against them. They were the ones who had to live under bombs, bullets and shells, and when Russia finally launched its long overdue intervention in 2022 those people celebrated.
Start by watching a few of the videos on this channel by a native of Mariupol: https://youtu.be/SuZxW7-JKCk
You can also watch interviews on the street with people from that region. There are thousands on Russian media, but if you don’t trust them search for independent journalists on YouTube such as Patrick Lancaster, look for some of his older videos where he interviews locals. Search for other independent journalists who have covered the conflict and have spoken to locals. Or you can watch one of the documentaries that others have recommended on the Ukraine war megapost.
There are plenty of resources available for you to educate yourself. If you continue to refuse to do so there is no point in continuing this conversation.
There are Ukrainians on both sides of this war. It is not “the Ukrainian population” which is choosing to wage this unwinnable war against Russia on behalf of NATO just so that the imperialist West can weaken one of its main rivals, it is a neo-Nazi terrorist regime which is brutally oppressing the Ukrainian population, imprisoning and torturing and murdering dissidents, and forcefully abducting Ukrainians off the streets to send them to the trenches as cannon fodder. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. This regime is not merely “influenced by bourgeois ideology”, they are outright Nazi worshippers who celebrate WWII Holocaust perpetrator Nazi collaborator war criminals as their “national heroes”. That is who Russia is fighting, not the people of Ukraine.
If you think that Stalin’s writing supports siding with literal fascists who are fighting an imperialist proxy war to ethnically cleanse Russian speakers off of their own land, you are out of your mind.
No you didn’t quit lying