What is a “hybrid warfare campaign against Europe?” Russia is not at war with Europe, except through Ukraine, which NATO is supplying heavily. This sounds like a divergence in analysis, rather than facts.
As for Russia starting the war, no, the West did in 2014 when they backed the Banderite coup. The civil war has been going on since then, and Russia joined in 2022. The war was avoidable if the west had not provoked it, and Ukraine would be better off had the west not supported the coup.
What is a “hybrid warfare campaign against Europe?”
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of hybrid warfare? Or do you not recognize its validity as a descriptor?
In any case, let’s get even more basic and factual. Here is an example, again from Denmark, of hostile behavior from Russia. Do you agree that these events have taken place?
If we extend the war back to 2014, do you agree that after Russia chose to join the war in 2022, which had until then claimed on the order of 15.000 innocent working class lives, the war escalated to immense scales of violence, with on the order of a million working class casualties?
We don’t need to agree on the exact numbers, I just want to see if we agree more or less on these facts.
If we are being honest, western Europe has been waging hybrid warfare (and occasionally hot warfare) against Russia since World War I. Russia has been defensive since it pulled out of World War I, and occasionally has helped anti-colonial wars of resistance since then. As for Ukrainian national identity, it is very much real, but at the same time it isn’t homogenous across all of Ukraine, hence why the more Russian Donbass area ran into conflict with west Ukraine.
The war has killed many people, yes, and my question to return to you is if you believe Kiev has the right to ethnically cleanse the Donbass region because fewer people would die that way.
If we are being honest, western Europe has been waging hybrid warfare (and occasionally hot warfare) against Russia since World War I.
This sounds more like analysis than fact - does that mean you acknowledge the factuality of the report I linked? Yes or no?
As for Ukrainian national identity, it is very much real, but at the same time it isn’t homogenous
Again, that’s your view, but the fact is that Vladimir Putin has fundamentally challenged the concept of Ukrainian nationality. Is this true, yes or no?
The war has killed many people, yes
Good, here at least we can agree on a fact.
Do you believe Kiev has the right to ethnically cleanse the Donbass region because fewer people would die that way.
I reject the dichotomy that either Russia invaded, or Donbass was ethnically cleansed. This is not a fact, this is speculation.
As you mention, nations are rarely homogeneous, but the resulting conflicts can be handled many different ways that doesn’t murder a million working class people. See for example the modern solution to the German-Danish border.
But to be clear, no, I don’t believe anyone has to right to ethnically cleanse anywhere, and I don’t believe anyone has the right to invade another country leading to devastating war. Not Ukraine, not Russia, not America, not Israel, not anyone. I assume you agree?
I’m not sure if everything in the article you linked is true or not. I believe some of it may be, and I believe it’s erasing European aggression against Russia, which we know is ongoing. Regarding Putin challenging Ukrainian identity, sure. However, the question of ethnic cleansing isn’t about a future possibility, it was what was already happening before Russia got involved. Kiev committed repressions against ethnic Russians, and the Donbass region is highly Russian.
It sounds like you would have rather the ethnic cleansing continue, and that you don’t believe Donetsk and Luhansk have the right to ask neighboring states for support.
I think this makes it hard for the Ukrainians to stop fighting. I think the statements of Putin makes many suspect that surrender in this war could lead to the erasure of the Ukrainian nation. Does that make sense to you, or is that nonsense?
It sounds like you would have rather the ethnic cleansing continue, and that you don’t believe Donetsk and Luhansk have the right to ask neighboring states for support.
Not at all. Sorry I gave you that impression. My fight is that of the working class everywhere to be free of oppression and war. I simply reject that asking for support must necessarily lead to a large scale invasion and the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
But if you disagree, and that disagreement is not based on counterfactual speculation, which factual events of ethnic cleansing would you point to as justifying this scale of death and destruction? I’m not saying there wasn’t ethnic cleansing, but I think it’s easier for me to reconsider my view if I know exactly what you are referring to.
Russia is reciprocating Europe’s aggression and hostility that has been going on for over a century. Europe is not at threat by Russia unless they make Russia a threat.
As for the idea that Ukraine is to be erased, there’s no actual evidence for this. Russia has been consistent with their aims to annex the 4 oblasts, and for NATO neutrality. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want the world’s largest imperialist military alliance to get off of your doorstep.
Russia is reciprocating Europe’s aggression and hostility that has been going on for over a century. Europe is not at threat by Russia unless they make Russia a threat.
But doesn’t this end up as a rubber band argument excusing all aggression from Russia? If the view is that the Russian navy has full justification to be aggressive to the Danish navy due to the overall aggression of Europe since WWI, how should the Danish navy react? Simply stand down when threatened in home waters and hope that Russia does not apply its justification for further aggression?
As for the idea that Ukraine is to be erased, there’s no actual evidence for this.
Well, as we agreed, there is evidence that Putin does not recognise the Ukrainian nation as separate from the Russian nation. And there is evidence that Putin will go to military extremes to bring ethnic Russians back under Russian statehood. If the current war ends, Russia annexes the four oblasts, and Ukraine is not allowed to join a military alliance guaranteeing their nation state sovereignty, why should the Ukrainians (based on this evidence) expect Putin to not return and bring the rest of Ukraine under Russian rule? Do you think Ukraine should be under Russian rule?
If your claim is to support the working classes, then you should support an end to the war.
I absolutely do. But I think current conditions make it very difficult for Ukraine to surrender, and I’m not sure (based on the above) that such a surrender would bring future peace to the region. I think all workers would be left better off if Russia pursued other avenues than invasion to realise their goals.
The repression against the Donbass is well-documented, but censored in the west to justify support for the fascist regime in Ukraine.
Again, I’m not challenging whether it happened, but if you could bring up a specific factual example we could agree on (ideally in text format), that would be super helpful for the future discussion.
The aggression is coming from Europe, which wishes to re-imperialize Russia like they did in the 90s. That’s the goal of Europe, and so Europe should stand down. Russia has nothing to gain by aggression besides reciprocating and trying to deter Europe from launching yet another war of attempted genocide and colonization like in the 40s.
Secondly, Russia has no reason to want to annex Ukraine. Why would they? The war was provoked by the west installing a Banderite regime that began ethnically cleansing its Russian ethnicities, if the war ends with either a less fascist regime or a rump state for Europe to deal with, both are fine by Russia as the problem is solved.
Russia did explore all avenues to avoid war. The Minsk agreements both failed, and Russia waited 8 years to join the civil war, when Kiev had dramatically accelerated shelling of the Donbass and had amassed a large number of troops to “finish the job,” so to speak. And I did leave sources in the form of a documentary, but if you want text, here’s a bunch compiled by @yogthos@lemmy.ml:
In May 1990 speech Secretary General Manfred Wörner said “The very fact that we are ready not to deploy NATO troops beyond the territory of the Federal Republic gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees.”
This shows 2 things:
As we already knew NATO had told the Soviet Union although that it would not move further East than East Germany
They understood full well that NATO moving East was seen as threatening by USSR given the promise not to do so was a “security guarantee” for them.
What is a “hybrid warfare campaign against Europe?” Russia is not at war with Europe, except through Ukraine, which NATO is supplying heavily. This sounds like a divergence in analysis, rather than facts.
As for Russia starting the war, no, the West did in 2014 when they backed the Banderite coup. The civil war has been going on since then, and Russia joined in 2022. The war was avoidable if the west had not provoked it, and Ukraine would be better off had the west not supported the coup.
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of hybrid warfare? Or do you not recognize its validity as a descriptor?
In any case, let’s get even more basic and factual. Here is an example, again from Denmark, of hostile behavior from Russia. Do you agree that these events have taken place?
Do you agree that Vladimir Putin challenges the very existence of a Ukrainian nation?
If we extend the war back to 2014, do you agree that after Russia chose to join the war in 2022, which had until then claimed on the order of 15.000 innocent working class lives, the war escalated to immense scales of violence, with on the order of a million working class casualties?
We don’t need to agree on the exact numbers, I just want to see if we agree more or less on these facts.
If we are being honest, western Europe has been waging hybrid warfare (and occasionally hot warfare) against Russia since World War I. Russia has been defensive since it pulled out of World War I, and occasionally has helped anti-colonial wars of resistance since then. As for Ukrainian national identity, it is very much real, but at the same time it isn’t homogenous across all of Ukraine, hence why the more Russian Donbass area ran into conflict with west Ukraine.
The war has killed many people, yes, and my question to return to you is if you believe Kiev has the right to ethnically cleanse the Donbass region because fewer people would die that way.
This sounds more like analysis than fact - does that mean you acknowledge the factuality of the report I linked? Yes or no?
Again, that’s your view, but the fact is that Vladimir Putin has fundamentally challenged the concept of Ukrainian nationality. Is this true, yes or no?
Good, here at least we can agree on a fact.
I reject the dichotomy that either Russia invaded, or Donbass was ethnically cleansed. This is not a fact, this is speculation.
As you mention, nations are rarely homogeneous, but the resulting conflicts can be handled many different ways that doesn’t murder a million working class people. See for example the modern solution to the German-Danish border.
But to be clear, no, I don’t believe anyone has to right to ethnically cleanse anywhere, and I don’t believe anyone has the right to invade another country leading to devastating war. Not Ukraine, not Russia, not America, not Israel, not anyone. I assume you agree?
I’m not sure if everything in the article you linked is true or not. I believe some of it may be, and I believe it’s erasing European aggression against Russia, which we know is ongoing. Regarding Putin challenging Ukrainian identity, sure. However, the question of ethnic cleansing isn’t about a future possibility, it was what was already happening before Russia got involved. Kiev committed repressions against ethnic Russians, and the Donbass region is highly Russian.
It sounds like you would have rather the ethnic cleansing continue, and that you don’t believe Donetsk and Luhansk have the right to ask neighboring states for support.
Fair. But if some of it is, it goes at least some way towards explaining why Europe feels threatened by Russia.
So is Europe in a hybrid war with Russia? Or is the aggressive naval behaviour described actually defensive without reflecting a state of conflict?
I think this makes it hard for the Ukrainians to stop fighting. I think the statements of Putin makes many suspect that surrender in this war could lead to the erasure of the Ukrainian nation. Does that make sense to you, or is that nonsense?
Not at all. Sorry I gave you that impression. My fight is that of the working class everywhere to be free of oppression and war. I simply reject that asking for support must necessarily lead to a large scale invasion and the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
But if you disagree, and that disagreement is not based on counterfactual speculation, which factual events of ethnic cleansing would you point to as justifying this scale of death and destruction? I’m not saying there wasn’t ethnic cleansing, but I think it’s easier for me to reconsider my view if I know exactly what you are referring to.
Russia is reciprocating Europe’s aggression and hostility that has been going on for over a century. Europe is not at threat by Russia unless they make Russia a threat.
As for the idea that Ukraine is to be erased, there’s no actual evidence for this. Russia has been consistent with their aims to annex the 4 oblasts, and for NATO neutrality. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want the world’s largest imperialist military alliance to get off of your doorstep.
If your claim is to support the working classes, then you should support an end to the war. If NATO had not decided to provoke the war, and harvest Kiev for money and raw materials, then this war never would have happened. If the USSR had not dissolved, then this war never would have happened. The repression against the Donbass is well-documented, but censored in the west to justify support for the fascist regime in Ukraine.
But doesn’t this end up as a rubber band argument excusing all aggression from Russia? If the view is that the Russian navy has full justification to be aggressive to the Danish navy due to the overall aggression of Europe since WWI, how should the Danish navy react? Simply stand down when threatened in home waters and hope that Russia does not apply its justification for further aggression?
Well, as we agreed, there is evidence that Putin does not recognise the Ukrainian nation as separate from the Russian nation. And there is evidence that Putin will go to military extremes to bring ethnic Russians back under Russian statehood. If the current war ends, Russia annexes the four oblasts, and Ukraine is not allowed to join a military alliance guaranteeing their nation state sovereignty, why should the Ukrainians (based on this evidence) expect Putin to not return and bring the rest of Ukraine under Russian rule? Do you think Ukraine should be under Russian rule?
I absolutely do. But I think current conditions make it very difficult for Ukraine to surrender, and I’m not sure (based on the above) that such a surrender would bring future peace to the region. I think all workers would be left better off if Russia pursued other avenues than invasion to realise their goals.
Again, I’m not challenging whether it happened, but if you could bring up a specific factual example we could agree on (ideally in text format), that would be super helpful for the future discussion.
The aggression is coming from Europe, which wishes to re-imperialize Russia like they did in the 90s. That’s the goal of Europe, and so Europe should stand down. Russia has nothing to gain by aggression besides reciprocating and trying to deter Europe from launching yet another war of attempted genocide and colonization like in the 40s.
Secondly, Russia has no reason to want to annex Ukraine. Why would they? The war was provoked by the west installing a Banderite regime that began ethnically cleansing its Russian ethnicities, if the war ends with either a less fascist regime or a rump state for Europe to deal with, both are fine by Russia as the problem is solved.
Russia did explore all avenues to avoid war. The Minsk agreements both failed, and Russia waited 8 years to join the civil war, when Kiev had dramatically accelerated shelling of the Donbass and had amassed a large number of troops to “finish the job,” so to speak. And I did leave sources in the form of a documentary, but if you want text, here’s a bunch compiled by @yogthos@lemmy.ml:
NATO expansion
not one inch east declassified https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16116-document-05-memorandum-conversation-between
Documents reveal Clinton forced Yeltsin into signing NATO-Russia pact https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/documents-reveal-clinton-forced-yeltsin-into-signing-nato-russia-pact/
In May 1990 speech Secretary General Manfred Wörner said “The very fact that we are ready not to deploy NATO troops beyond the territory of the Federal Republic gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees.”
This shows 2 things:
https://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1990/s900517a_e.htm
fascism
maidan coup
war crimes
negotiations
misc sources