• @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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    2 years ago

    Of note, this line:

    Putin used his speech not only to announce recognition of the separatist republics but to make a broader argument that Ukraine is not truly a separate country from Russia, that the West is responsible for this standoff, and that Ukraine will bear responsibility for any “future bloodletting.”

    For people who have dismissed accusations that Russia building an excuse for war, is this not at least ominous? This is the final sentence from the Kremlin’s transcript:

    That raises another question: why was it necessary to make such generous gifts, beyond the wildest dreams of the most zealous nationalists and, on top of all that, give the republics the right to secede from the unified state without any conditions?

    Reading over his speech, it’s hard to see him as viewing Ukraine with its own will. Instead, it is merely a breakaway nation that should be subject to Russia’s will.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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      02 years ago

      So, according to you, people of Donetsk and Luhansk don’t have the right to self determination. Interesting position to take given that this is precisely what Minsk protocol states, which Ukraine is a signatory to.

    • Olive
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      02 years ago

      For people who have dismissed accusations that Russia building an excuse for war

      I’m pretty convinced at this point that a good amount of people on this site that are either Russian/Chinese propagandists, are apologists, or are just in complete denial. Every post about this has someone calling out Western media as fake news, etc, but here you go. Here is the proof. They all look like idiots with their foot in their mouths now.

      • @gun@lemmy.ml
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        12 years ago

        Ah yes. The brilliant Russo-Chinese geopolitical strategy. Fund propagandists to spread their agenda on Lemmy of all fucking places.
        When they can’t prove you wrong on an issue, or even imagine how anyone could disagree with them, they resort to calling you a Russian bot, just like the Democrats do to everyone who disagrees with them. Apparently most of the world is Russian bots 😂
        You should be careful throwing around the word “idiot” with that line of argument 😉

        • It’s not a joint strategy, necessarily. Chinese, I suspect, are simply paid in social credits for displays of fervent nationalism. But it’s certainly cheap enough to pay a room of shills to repeat your talking points of the day. Even on remote outposts like lemmy. For a country with a weak economy and military like Russia, information war is the best bang for the buck.

        • Olive
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          -22 years ago

          The thing is, your argument is just as thin. There is no point in arguing with a stupid person, because they will just bring you down to their level and win. Which is why you’re not worth it. If you really believe the BS russian propaganda, you’re so far gone it’s not worth it. Russia could nuke Kiev and you would try justify it or call it fake news or something. Take vladdy p’s cock out your mouth.

          • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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            -22 years ago

            If you really believe the BS russian propaganda, you’re so far gone it’s not worth it. Russia could nuke Kiev and you would try justify it or call it fake news or something.

            Why do you believe Western propaganda this much throughout the thread? Can you not see who is gaslighting since what is now 7 years of this repeated stuff?

            photo

            Take vladdy p’s cock out your mouth.

            You seriously need to take a breather from CIA propaganda. That stuff has made you toxic.

            • Olive
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              12 years ago

              Bro, you’re trying to justify/pretend that Russia didn’t just invade a sovereign country. Your opinion is invalid.

              • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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                2 years ago

                You just handwaved 7 years of gaslighting Western propaganda and called my comment invalid opinion, holy shit. You are using r/worldnews tier insults with the other fellow. Even further above you said there is an invasion of Russian/Chinese bots on Lemmy, literally what thousands of Redditors (80% US + West EU) parrot on frontpage daily.

                Wow. And what I cited as facts searchable via Google is invalid opinion. Just wow.

      • @ahtoms@lemmy.ml
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        -12 years ago

        You are unfortunately right about this and I have been seeing an increasing amount of misinformation regarding this situation plague this site.

    • @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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      12 years ago

      Didn’t Soviet Union dissolve and get replaced by possibly the worst imaginable version of hard capitalism?

      Basically. It’s a kleptocracy, with systemic theft from the masses going to oligarchs with Putin at the top of the heap. Also dangerous is its political structure. In a well functioning liberal democracy, power is diffused with well defined rules around transfer of power. Putin has for decades been operating without someone else there if he dies or retires. It’s why he’s built up a macho image. Putin must be healthy, or there will be political chaos with no obvious successor. In a system with more diffuse political power, the government barely blinks. Case in point: President Kennedy being assassinated had an incredibly minimal effect in terms of some sort of power struggle.

    • Ninmi
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      12 years ago

      It’s obviously not indicative of the population as a whole, but the Finnish subreddit is inundated with people calling to join NATO immediately. A lot of people saying they’ve changed their minds. The opposition is by far the lowest it has ever been (gallup before today’s news, still mostly opposed to joining) and no doubt a lot of the politicians are thinking the same things, even if only a few are saying it out loud.

      • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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        12 years ago

        Finland doesn’t have a majority of ethnic Russians though. It wouldn’t make as much sense to make it part of Russia. Russia’s actions in the Ukraine are (in a way) democratic.

        • @sibachian@lemmy.ml
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          12 years ago

          there would be no sense in russia going for finland. they already took karelia and the entire population essentially packed up and walked into finland overnight. going for finland? no one’s packing up as they got no place to go, and the rest of scandinavia will be pulled into it as a consequence. it’s asking for an outright war. a war russia have failed to win repeatedly.

    • @stige@lemmy.ml
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      02 years ago

      I think the fact that this forum is rather small makes it easy for a couple of Russian agents to make it seem like they can speak for leftists here. They seek only to discredit the left and allow anti-democratic corporatocracy to reign.

      • @DPUGT2@lemmy.ml
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        02 years ago

        Generally speaking, the smaller the forum, the less value it has to discredit or use. If it’s small enough to be easy, it’s small enough to not matter.

        My bet is on “it’s more important to be anti-American than to be pro-left”.

    • HMH
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      02 years ago

      What I’ve been wondering is why are (some) leftists defending Putin?

      At least from my point of view there are two conflicting ideas at work. On the one hand there is Russia’s authoritarian system with all it’s problems that definitely should not spread and lots of leftists rightfully condemn.

      On the other hand Russia still has considerable military power and just as the US absolutely did not want nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba (even though Cuba is an independent nation and the US should have absolutely no say in this, at least to their own logic regarding Ukraine) Russia does not want such missiles stationed in Ukraine. The US now claiming Russia should have no influence on whether the Ukraine can join the EU/NATO in the future is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. This is one of the reasons for the strong anti-Americanism.

      From this perspective it becomes very clear that expanding the NATO into the east has always meant playing with fire. I absolutely do not want another Cuba-crisis and consider expanding the NATO an unnecessary provocation of the Russians.

      Prior to 2013/14 when the Ukraine remained neutral the situation was much more stable and Russia had no reason nor intention to interfere in Ukraine. If the result of Ukraine getting closer to the US/EU/NATO is war, then I do not want it.

  • HMH
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    12 years ago

    Hmm, Russia Today is reporting about celebrations in Donetsk and Lugansk because of this decision: https://www.rt.com/russia/550172-donetsk-lugansk-recognition-celebrations/ meanwhile western media and leaders as well as other parts of Ukraine are condemning this move.

    From what I understand Putins’ decision is not too surprising. Ukraine has cut off the separatist controlled regions. This means for example it does not provide any pensions and apparently it’d be pretty hard to even get into other parts of Ukraine from these areas even if you wanted to. That’s why Russia recently started handing out passports. The percentage of ethnic Russians in this regions is pretty high, so a lot of Russian citizens live there now. With growing tensions and more and more armed conflicts this put Putin into a bad spot. After his previous decisions he hardly had a choice but to protect his citizens. So the first thing they tried was to evacuate them. But only few people actually left for Russia. Thus the current decision.

    This is not meant to apologize for any transgressions but merely to state that this was somewhat predictable and I can understand why Putin would act like this.

    Something that is being brought up even more frequently now is a full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I do not see the point in that. What’s in it for Russia? I think Putin would be much happier with Ukraine as neutral buffer to other NATO members like Poland. Does the Ukraine have any natural resources? War is very expensive and Russia spends relatively little money on its military.

    • @ahtoms@lemmy.ml
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      02 years ago

      Realistically this is the same kind of situation that happened with Georgia and makes sense if you want to garner some level of legitimacy for your invasion.

      Russia nor any country are going to outright say that they want war or that they are invading. So, like the US, you make some shitty pretense to invade, just make sure the reason looks peaceful or for protection.

      What is in it for Russia? Political control, influence and resources. Russia’s economy is doing poorly and this is similar behaviour to what has happened with Georgia and Crimea. For the political control, we can typically find that Putin’s domestic situation typically improves when the focus is not on his country’s issues. Approval rating jumps up, people feel safer knowing that Putin is strong on terrorists, etc etc.

        • @DPUGT2@lemmy.ml
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          22 years ago

          Is it ever true that an “invader gains nothing”? Or are you just (strangely) saying that there is more to lose than to gain?

          Everyone on reddit is ranting about how it will be another Afghanistan… but what if it were merely another Chechnya? If Putin believes it to be that, he might well decide to invade/annex.

          • @uthredii@lemmy.ml
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            32 years ago

            Ukraine will have strong western support so it won’t be as easy as Chechnya. Although Putin might decide to annex anyway.

          • @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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            12 years ago

            Chechnya

            Is Chechnya a comparison you want to make? Russia fought two wars over it before successfully subduing them. To this day, there are still suspicions that there were false flag attacks where Russia killed its own citizens to bolster support for the war and bring Putin into the presidency.

        • @ahtoms@lemmy.ml
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          02 years ago

          When your economy is ~60% resources, you’re eco is fragile and honestly, that site doesn’t even support your position. Losing EU and UK as trading partners is going to substantially injure them (it will also hit the EU and UK). Russian economy isn’t as diversified as you might think.

        • @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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          -12 years ago

          Russia’s economy never recovered from being slapped with sanctions following the theft of Crimea. You can see that both in a dip in their nominal GDP and in a dip in the Big Mac index. As that page explains, a lower index value implies that McDonald’s is pricing their burgers lower to match what local people can pay. The ruble fell against the dollar, so the price of a Big Mac relative to a US dollar fell.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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            22 years ago

            That’s utter nonsense as the article I linked above very clearly shows. If anything, the sanctions forced Russia to start developing its domestic industry making its economy far more robust than it was previously. Russia now also has an open alliance with China meaning that anything Russia can’t produce domestically can be sourced from China. Meanwhile, BRI is creating a huge economic bloc in Eurasia that Russia is an active member of.

            I’m also not sure whom you’re claiming Crimea was stolen from given that people of Crimea are ethnically Russian and have overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia after the 2014 coup. Once again, you don’t appear to care about people’s right for self determination in the slightest. It doesn’t matter to you what people who actually live in Crimea want, all you care about NATO’s geopolitical goals. Really telling on yourself there bud.

            • @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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              02 years ago

              That’s utter nonsense as the article I linked above very clearly shows.

              The article shows Russia’s currency sliding in value. It dipped sharply following the annexation of Crimea, began a recovery, and then dipped sharply with the pandemic. So yes, the sanctions absolutely hurt their economy.

              If anything, the sanctions forced Russia to start developing its domestic industry making its economy far more robust than it was previously.

              This is true, the sanctions did have that effect, at least regarding making it resilient to sanctions. This is an effect we’ve seen in other economies under a heavy sanctions regime (Cuba, Iran) where they’ve developed a more internally resilient economy at the cost of overall efficiency. All that said, there are plenty of levers that the West has left to pull. If Russian oligarchs start having their London real estate confiscated, you can bet words will be had with President Putin.

              • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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                12 years ago

                The article shows Russia’s currency sliding in value. It dipped sharply following the annexation of Crimea, began a recovery, and then dipped sharply with the pandemic. So yes, the sanctions absolutely hurt their economy.

                Wait till you find out what happened to the rest of the economies in the world after the pandemic. Sanctions created a temporary inconvenience for Russia, but the long term effect is clearly positive since re-industrialization and self reliance will serve Russia much better going forward.

                l that said, there are plenty of levers that the West has left to pull. If Russian oligarchs start having their London real estate confiscated, you can bet words will be had with President Putin.

                You’re once again showing your lack of understanding of the subject you’re discussing. London confiscating the wealth of Russian oligarchs directly helps Putin since it forces the oligarchs to keep wealth in Russia where it’s subject to Russian laws. What the west would be doing is helping Russia ensure that the wealth isn’t being siphoned out.

    • Ukraine was a neutral buffer before Russia invaded. Seeing Russia dishonor Ukraine’s sovereignty will push what’s left of Ukraine into NATO. So Russia has basically forced NATO encroachment even closer than it was before. And that’s not even counting Finland.

      • @sasalzig@lemmy.ml
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        02 years ago

        Calling Ukraine neutral after the Western-backed coup of 2014, in which the US candidate became PM and Russian-hating Neonazis got into government is some twisting of facts. The whole Maidan (which was supported massively by Western governments, press and NGOs) was about aligning with the West for fuck’s sake! The invasion only happened after that.

        • @ArchimedesTesseract@lemmy.ml
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          -22 years ago

          They’ll surely love Russia after getting invaded a second time. If alignment or invasion are their choices, Russia is really pushing them into NATO.

          • @sasalzig@lemmy.ml
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            22 years ago

            I’m not disagreeing there. Care to revise your statement that Ukraine was neutral prior to the invasion or are you just going to ignore that?

            • @ArchimedesTesseract@lemmy.ml
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              -22 years ago

              Neutral in what regard? Russia violated their sovereignty in annexing parts of their territory and in supporting militarily separatist movements. They’ve been forced into opposition by Russia’s aggression.

    • @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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      32 years ago

      That assumes that those are legitimate governments. Does every scrap of land that gets its population riled up by a neighboring country with ethnic ties get to succeed?

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        22 years ago

        It’s strange that you keep questioning the legitimacy of those governments given that they’re supported by the people of Donbas and are recognized by Minsk agreements which I assume you have not bothered actually reading.

        • @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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          22 years ago

          The Minsk protocols were violated by both sides before the ink dried. The agreement has been reduced to a joke and asking Ukraine to hold to them while its territorial integrity is violated is a matter of selective enforcement.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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            02 years ago

            That’s utter and complete nonsense. In fact, Germany and France are insisting that Ukraine starts implementing Minsk agreement at this very moment.

            • @pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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              -22 years ago

              And I’m sure they would be thrilled if they could do so. Germany especially would find it difficult to impose any sanctions with real teeth due to its dependency on Russian natural gas.

        • Olive
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          -12 years ago

          It’s strange that you continue to fall for this shit. It’s actually not strange, it’s kind of suspicious, but mostly comical. They could nuke Kiev and I guarantee you’d be on the lemmy post calling it fake news or trying to justify it.

            • @ahtoms@lemmy.ml
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              12 years ago

              Bruh… people can be critical of both the US and Russia, the fact you weirdly uncritical of Russia does expose your bias.

              • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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                22 years ago

                Bruh, US overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine, funded and trained literal fascists there, and is now trying to start WW3, but yeah BoTh SiDeS aRe BaD.

                • @ahtoms@lemmy.ml
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                  12 years ago

                  but yeah BoTh SiDeS aRe BaD.

                  Learn to read please, if you are going to try and derive what I mean, do it right.

                  Bruh, US overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine

                  This is funny because you can apply the same logic here with Luhansk and Donetsk but you don’t.

                  There was substantial opposition to Yanukovych prior to the 2010 election and a pattern of corruption established. Post 2010, Party of Regions literally went after and imprisoned the opposition party leader. From this, you should have at least some skepticism of what that Yanukovych’s represents in this case. It can make for a case that is an attempt to seize complete control of a country and erode its democracy. Mixing this with denying Ukrainian’s people’s support of joining the EU, constant cronyism and corruption and then shooting protesters opposing the government… yeah, ain’t great. Remember, Russia supported this guy, so we can somewhat conclude that Russia benefits from having this guy in place.

                  Of course, this is going to start leading to people in the country feeling like their government is no longer representing them and protests will likely ensue.

                  funded and trained literal fascists there

                  Svoboda and Right Sector? Or are you talking about the current government of Ukraine?

                  Sure, ironically if you typically invade a country like what Russia did, you are going to spur some serious nationalism and embolden those elements. However, Ukrainian people, as of the most recent election are not necessarily fond of those elements as you can by them practically losing almost all representation in their government.

                  I’m not going to disagree that the US had trained people who are part of the parties previously mentioned and I am not exactly supportive of this as well. However, Russia sending their own military into another country, also training Ukrainians that are supportive of Russia/Russian ethnostate. No one has clean hands in this conflict, but it’s kinda obvious that Russia is the main aggressor here.

      • @guojing@lemmy.ml
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        -12 years ago

        Donetsk and Lugansk have been de facto independent for 8 years now, since the US-sponsored, fascist coup in Kiev and subsequent genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine. And whether you like it or not, the republics are now officially recognized by Russia, and will probably be recognized soon by other countries like China. Western politicians will whine and implement their sanctions, but no one will care.

    • Olive
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      02 years ago

      God damn, enough with the bullshit. They invaded Ukraine. Full stop.