Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance! To make this easy you can do an instance block at Settings > Block Tab > Scroll to bottom > Input “lemmy.ml” and apply
And consider donating to individual instances instead.
Check the megathread for more!
The truth is a lot more nuanced than this, though. Elements of what he says have a decent amount of supporting evidence, namely:
However, all this is not to say that Russia was therefore justified in its illegal invasion of Ukraine, of course. And the extent which you can claim that the 2014 uprising was a CIA coup, or that ethnic Russians in the Donbass were being persecuted by far-rigth Ukrainian ultranationalists is definitely debatable.
The problem is that the Russia-Ukraine tends to polarize people into one of two camps, both of which paint their preferred side as the forces of good fighting against the forces of evil.
Sources:
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
https://www.salon.com/2023/07/08/they-lied-about-afghanistan-they-lied-about-iraq-now-theyre-lying-about-ukraine/
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/cia-ukraine-russia/
Yeah I’m going to call the fascist invading a country bad and the people killing the invaders good. It is polarizing because one side is being killed for no reason other than Putin’s lust for more territory.
If you had read any of the sources I provided, you might see that there’s more to this conflict than just a simple land-grab.
Oh yes. It’s also a child kidnapping and civilian butchering genocide. Look at Bucha.
Only a fool would see it as anything other than a waning power trying to assert itself on a former colonial possession.
The Ukrainian people have the right to self determination.
Simple or not, it is a landgrab, it’s bright as day, there’s zero justification for it.
🥾👅
Are we really getting into Euromaidan conspiracies now?
Funny how Russia perceives a defensive alliance as a direct threat. It couldn’t be because they’ve openly made insane statements like questioning the sovereignty of the Baltic states, which they regard as rightfully Russia’s, or… you know… invading multiple fucking neighbors and annexing their territory.
“Ukraine would have welcomed genocide if only the US and NATO weren’t egging them on!” is such a fucking bizarre position.
Jesus fucking Christ. Any other Russian talking points you’d like to mindlessly circulate?
If you see NATO as a defensive alliance I have a bridge to sell to you.
That’s literally its fucking purpose. NATO as a treaty organization has no other functions than defense and standardization. Everything else is a question of the choices of individual countries. Fuck man, even at the height of the Cold War NATO countries were out supporting opposite sides of conflicts.
I don’t really know what kind of boogeyman org you think NATO is, but I might suggest listening less to campists.
It certainly is towards Russia directly. Are you seriously suggesting NATO would start an aggression against Russia?
And are you suggesting any of the countries that have joined NATO did so hecause they were coerced by the US and not because they were really desperate of being in an alliance to protect against Russian aggression? On the other side the Warsaw Pact nations were desperate in being in there because they were longing for Russian protection, right. I guess thats what those tanks in Prague and Budapest were for too.
Anyhow even if you follow Russian propaganda, the aggression against Ukraine directly caused another NATO enlargement. That would not have happened without that aggression. So either Russia es lying about its motivation or actively working against its own security goals.
So instead of engaging with these ideas intellectually or producing counter claims, you automatically dismiss them as “Russian talking points”.
Thanks for so beautifully illustrating my point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
Sorry that you want fucking bizarre ideas like “Euromaidan was a far-right coup”, “Russia was just really concerned about minorities!” and “Trump was never favorable to Russian interests!” taken seriously, bootlicker.
And funny how you ignore the actual points I brought up in refutation, but I guess the innate desire of all of Russia’s enemies to submit to imperialism and genocide is an axiom of your worldview.
Funny how you call me a “bootlicker” and make loud pronouncements about my assumed worldview, when I expressly did not claim to support Russia nor the invasion of Ukraine.
Like I said, dare to question the orthodox, black-and-white view of this conflict and it quickly devolves into shouting and name-calling.
“I just spread blatantly untrue Russian talking points in support of their war aims, I’m not actually in support of them! 😭”
Boot leather taste good, buddy?
Still no response to the actual points I raised either, despite your whingeing about me bringing up that your sources were all common and blatant propaganda canards.
…
God forbid I hear your opinions on the very reasonable war aims of that Hitler fellow back in 1939. Wouldn’t want to see things as just ‘black or white’ after all.
Maybe imperialism and fucking genocide is bad?
No, of course not. It’s the Ukrainians who are wrong. And the West was clearly puppeteering them into defending themselves.
Sorry that you want to spread pro-genocide talking points and be treated with asspats instead of disdain. Maybe go find a circle of like-minded pro-genocide types, like a Zionist forum, for example.
Well we agree on this, at least.
To your points, as far as I could make them out:
“US interference in Euromaidan is a conspiracy theory” - Public actions and statements by U.S. officials during Maidan (Victoria Nuland meeting protesters, leaked Nuland–Pyatt call discussing preferred Ukrainian political figures) are evidence of U.S. diplomatic involvement and attempts to influence the post‑Maidan government. Also, the new goverment formed close ties with Western intelligence agencies, including creating CIA bases in Ukraine to coordinate activities against Russia and various training programs for Ukrainian commandos and other elite units.
“NATO is merely a “defensive alliance” and not a credible threat to Russia” - NATO forces have been used to further western imperialism (which you claim to be against, no?) in places like Libya and Afghanistan. Structurally, it ensures that European members stay subservient to Washington and broadly fall in line with US foreign policy. The addition of multiple countries like Poland, Finland, Hungary and the Baltic States were obviously seen by Russia as signs of encroachment beyond NATO’s original mandate.
Clearly we don’t, as you consider Ukraine’s resistance to its territory being annexed and its people genocided to be the function of NATO puppeteering.
“It’s debatable whether it was actually a CIA coup!” and “The literal US ambassador to Ukraine discussing the political situation with the assistant secretary of state” are fucking miles away from each other, but that kind of motte-and-bailey argument is the bread-and-butter of far-right bootlickers.
NATO is absolutely a credible threat to Russian imperialist ambitions.
Western Imperialism is when the UN approves a no-fly zone in an uprising against a brutal dictator, and the more the UN approves it, the more Imperialism it is.
You mean the only time in NATO’s history when Article 5 was fucking invoked? Jesus Christ.
Fucking what.
Yes, how dare those countries desire a defensive alliance against the possibility of foreign intervention. Russia will have to invade multiple neighboring countries to show them how baseless their fears of invasion are!
It astounds me the level of bootlicking campists are willing to engage in.
It really is astonishing. Leather must taste great when it is non American I guess.
They are russian talking points and have been since this shitshow started.
Their state-owned TV has been parroting these for years at this point, in between unsubtle threats about nuking shit and straight-up lies about more or less anything conceivable.
If you can’t admit that or are ignorant enough to not realise it, you’re not really bringing anything worthwhile to this discussion.
Let’s be real – Both sides deploy propaganda to suit their own ends. Dismissing any evidence I’m putting forth as “Russian talking points” is just as fruitless as Tankies dismissing you guys as “NATO shills”.
It’s odd to me that left-leaning people readily acknowledge that the US/CIA has meddled extensively in many parts of the world, and has either overthrown (or helped to overthrow) sovereign nations across pretty much every continent, but when it comes to Ukraine suddenly the idea becomes unconscionable.
It’s a bit different when you live an hour from the Russian border and have friends and/or family directly involved in the war.
Unless that’s your reality, too, and you actually understand Russian and their general attitude towards anything west of them, you maybe, just maybe, are missing a few things here.
As for the CIA or US fuckery in general I think we all know they’re just about everywhere. Ironically, it’s probably a bit different now since the US are losing their soft power quite quickly, either by design or sheer idiocy.
I freely admit I’m no expert on the region, and I’m not claiming to have the full picture of the situation on the ground there.
I’m just advocating that we do our best to avoid binary type thinking when it comes to geopolitics, particularly when it involves Russia and the US/EU bloc.
I’ve lost four friends to this war so far. Two were actively fighting in the volunteer forces and hence knew what they signed up for. The other two very much didn’t.
While the third was a random drone into his apartment, what the russians did to the fourth one I can’t consider human by any standards whatsoever.
I also indirectly lost my father to this shit. He married a Russian a few years before the war and suddenly started saying the very same things you were writing here. She’s from northern Russia but still supports the war and Putin to this day.
There’s more, a lot more, but I don’t particularly feel like writing more since it gets very personal. Just wanted to give some perspective.
That’s just awful, I’m genuinely saddened to hear that. Thank you for sharing.
You are already biasing the picture by just pre-assuming that the US and the EU are the same or rather the EU is just a puppet of the US. This makes it a bit odd though that the US is employing similar propaganda against the EU as Russia does and openly supporting the very same anti-EU political movements in the EU, that Russia supports.
Who says it’s just a land grab? Putin’s vision of the world is the KGB vision of viewing America as an all encroaching entity pulling the strings and Russia being the true successor of the USSR, seen as a competing superpower balancing out that influence with its own. His ambitions are also thoroughly imperialist and revolve around the idea of rebuilding the Soviet Union. Beyond that, it’s also the most trivial dictator politics: manufacture enemies to distract the population from its real problems. Waging wars is a logical extension of cracking down on minority groups domestically as a way to stay in power.
Riddle me this. Why did Russia move it’s troops from Finland (NATO) border to Ukraine. If NATO is such a threat?
Prioritizing immediate military goals over long-term posturing, I would imagine. Putin has to focus everything on winning the war.
Setting up a long-term deterrent against a newly expanded NATO in the north is a secondary goal that can wait.
So, “NATO expansion” ain’t really an issue. Copy.