President Biden on Thursday asked Congress to approve $20.6 billion in additional funding for Ukraine, as that country’s military struggles to achieve a decisive victory in its counteroffensive against Russia.
In a letter to lawmakers, the White House Office of Management and Budget asked for $13 billion in new military aid and $8.5 billion in additional economic, humanitarian and security assistance for Ukraine and other countries affected by the war. The White House also is seeking more than $12 billion for disaster relief and other emergency domestic funds, including hurricanes, as well as tens of millions of dollars to boost pay for firefighters on the front lines of the wildfires that have hit many parts of the country. In total, Biden is asking Congress for about $40 billion in new spending.
The funding tied to the war in Ukraine — now nearing its 18th month — is likely to prove the most controversial item. The United States has already directed more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, including more than $40 billion in direct military assistance. That is more than any other country. Biden has vowed that the U.S. government will support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” but Western allies face difficult questions about the state of the war effort, with Ukrainian forces bogged down the east despite new Western weapons and training. “The administration is requesting supplemental security, economic, and humanitarian assistance funding that would support Ukraine, as well as countries and vulnerable properties worldwide impacted by Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine,” Shalanda D. Young, the White House budget director, said in the request. Senate leaders of both parties are expected to support the president’s request. Scores of far-right members in the House of Representatives have made clear that they would oppose any new funding to Ukraine, but a large majority of Republicans still want to ensure that some money is sent to aid Ukraine and NATO allies, particularly ahead of a blistering winter that could slow the counteroffensive even more. “What you hear from lawmakers is: Yeah, we should support this. But there are some already saying ‘no,’ and some saying, ‘This can’t go on forever,’ which is a reflection of the American public,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank.
Ukraine’s government faces a budget deficit of about $40 billion for this year, but that is likely to be mostly covered by aid from Europe, the United States and other organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, according to Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But that does not resolve what the Ukrainians will do to make up the deficit next year, should the war continue. And tens of billions of dollars in damages to critical infrastructure has gone unrepaired, including for Ukraine’s electrical grid and hospitals. The World Bank has estimated rebuilding Ukraine after the war could cost as much as $350 billion. “There’s still a question mark of what the state of our economy will be next year. If the situation is more or less on the same level as now, we could be required again to need the same budgetary and financial support,” Ustenko said.
Beyond the immediate deficit, Ukraine’s government has an estimated $750 billion in direct economic costs from the war, which could be as high as $1 trillion if indirect costs are added. Ustenko added that Western allies should start transferring billions in frozen assets from Russia’s central bank to Ukraine. Some experts have raised questions about the legality of such a maneuver. “This money should not just be coming from our allies,” Ustenko said. “This money should be coming from the frozen assets of Russia. They have to compensate us. Kremlin is fully responsible for all damage. Therefore even from the point of view of justice, that is very important.” New Russian attacks on Ukraine’s grain exports are compounding the economic challenges. Moscow’s forces have attacked grain storage facilities in July and August, following Russia’s decision to terminate a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain by sea during wartime. Grain is one of the major Ukrainian exports and a key source of revenue for its government, said Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT who has studied the economic impact of the country’s grain industry. “Putin is playing at the levels of billions of dollars, all trying to convince the West it’s not worth their while to stay with the Ukrainians long enough to evict the Russians from Ukraine,” Johnson said.
It is unclear how the House will handle the Ukraine funding request. The GOP-controlled chamber is already bracing for a major fight over government spending when Congress returns in September, as far-right members continue to push for significant budget cuts. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) vowed in June that he would not support any supplemental funding, saying aid for Ukraine should go through the regular appropriations process. Asking to tack on Ukraine funding to a must-pass funding bill would likely only inflame the House Freedom Caucus and its allies further — and they’ve already expressed willingness to shut down the government in pursuit of spending cuts. Republicans can only lose four lawmakers within their ranks to pass legislation through their slim majority without Democrats’ help. Two people familiar with the current thinking among Republican members of the Appropriations Committee, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss legislative strategy, believe the supplemental request would best be tacked onto another must-pass item: the yearly flood insurance reauthorization program, which could put pressure on Republicans to go along with it rather than deny aid to states affected by disasters this summer.
They are just going to keep throwing billions at Ukraine while Americans starve on the street. What a depraved country. Despicable.
They aren’t throwing billions at Ukraine, they are throwing billions in public funds straight into the hands of the bourgeoisie who are the true intended recipients
all while ukraine’s state-owned industries and infrastructure is being privatized and auctioned off to foreign buyers (they even have a website!)
I feel like I’m going crazy as an elder millennial because this stuff used to at least be hidden behind some wall of “plausible deniability” and now it’s just out in the open, and STILL libs are just blindly following along like this is the best possible outcome. Libs piss me off so much because they pretend like they care and virtue signal anti-war stances but ultimately throw up their hands and say what can we do other than bomb those “orcs” and punish the people living under a brutal dictatorship, but also they 100% support the war so it’s ok if we laugh at teenagers dying.
I mean come on “privatization.gov.ua”?! Tell me you want to strip and exploit a nation, without telling me you are a neoliberal piece of shit.
The term has been so whitewashed that regular people think it’s a good thing nowadays. I would bet 9/10 people dont even know the term was coined in Nazi germany.
term was coined in Nazi germany.
Wait, what? Tell me more, please?
AFAIK it was not the Nazis who used the term but it was coined by anglophone observers to describe Nazi economic policy.
While on the subject, this band deserves to be more well known in this community: https://youtu.be/v-ceaPlNXsw
Remember they see privatisation, even the outright robber privatisation, as an unconditionally good thing - in the liberal dogma private will be always better than public. They don’t have to hide anything here.
I agree, but I think what has changed is that they at least spun it as “investments” or “innovation” or some other bullshit in the past. Now it’s just, here’s a war torn country selling off its public assets to fuel a never ending meat grinder. Even YOU can get in on this great investment opportunity. Have you ever wanted to own one of the largest titanium mining companies in the world? What about a factory conveniently located on the Black Sea? They used to be state owned and the profits benefited the people, but in this once in a lifetime opportunity you can have them for pennies on the dollar because their government owes billions of dollars in foreign debt.
Have some self respect and at least lie to the peasants like you used to.
I remember when Obama promised to pull out of Iraq and shutdown Guantanamo because that’s what the base wanted. Then everyone made excuses and forgot about it and it was never mentioned again. Now those same people are all “we must destroy every last one of those orcs and their families”. There has been a noticeable Overton window shift in the prevailing anti-war/pro-war opinion in the West over the past 10 years, even above and beyond the ridiculous levels it was at then.
And when it comes to privatization, it’s not so much that it’s a good thing even, they’ve dropped that charade, it’s that it’s the only thing that we can even conceive of or consider anymore. Why would we want the government running things? We all know government isn’t capable of doing anything. Ours sure isn’t, we made sure of it.
Because most of “aid” is not aid as in ‘gift’, but audcas in ‘loan’.
Ukraine is in huge debt right now and is getting worse. War, many dead, destruction and huge debt as cherry on the top. This vking into EU and nato bussines is too costly.
I might push back on that a little bit. While the US is depraved and has its priorities upside down, US public might not be paying for/much towards the resources sent to Ukraine. I’m thinking of Michael Hudson’s interview:
Military spending may account for 12% of the year’s budget, but 100% of America’s foreign debt is attributable to increased military spending.
The question that I don’t have an answer to is whether the Ukraine money counts as military spending.
If not, I would imagine, still, that it’s part of a process whereby the US public will become wealthier for sending the money to Ukraine; foreign aid like this is one of the tools for unequal value transfer. The US ‘investors’ will get their money back and more (eventually) and they’ll use this to pay off enough of a portion of the US public to keep them quiet and on board.
Shit like this is what puts me in an accelerationist mood sometimes. This charade can’t go on much longer, for the sake of the planet. No more bribes. Let’s hope the Global South can continue to strengthen the pace of breaking their chains. Let the world sanction the US and it’s vassals. It’ll be ugly for us. Our imperialism will turn inward even moreso, but the mask of decorum will be completely stripped off.
100%. This shit hits hard when we have a mountain of domestic issues to fix. When do we stop being world police?
Given how much we let billionaires steal through not paying their fair share… we could make adjustments and take care of both plus more.
fair share
Social imperialist dead giveaway
Many Americans are starting to see that wasteing this money is not in the interests of the working person
Unfortunately this idea appears to be seeping through nationalist lens, not a socialist one
Working person.
Yes, you are correct. Sorry.
🥰
More than a few, thank God.
A lot of people got very rich from the war over the past two years, and I imagine that’s one of the major reasons it’s still going.
Helping the poors sounds nice, sweetie, but how will we pay for it? 
God please someone kill Zelensky already.
Like that would help. If anything it will give the Nazis a fresh martyr and an excuse to go even more ham (don’t ask how, I’m sure they’ll think of something)
Incredible meme
There are about 80 million unexploded bombs in Laos that were dropped there illegally (and immorally, ofc) by the United States during their war of imperial aggression. Those bombs have killed about 20,000 people since the end of the war and continue to kill about 50 Laotians each year, and ~40% of those are children.
Obama committed a whopping $90 million to help clean up those bombs; but IIRC the Trump admin cancelled even that frankly pathetic effort. The bombing of Laos was a horrifically evil act that no one of good conscience can say anything other than it’s the US’ fault and the US’ responsibility to clean up. We can’t even muster the pocket change to prevent the social murder of Laotians but we can fund orders of magnitude more to give Nazis money to fight a losing cause.
Not to mention sending them cluster bombs and depleted uranium which will kill and main Ukrainians for decades too.
Tens? At this pace it’s going to be hundreds of billions.
This makes me fucking sick. Hawaii gets a couple million in disaster relief while Ukraine gets anywhere from 20-100 billion a pop.
I saw a post about this on twitter from this guy:
It seemed related so I thought I’d share.
Unpopular opinion here but i feel like we need to either completely back out of this new cold war or go full world police and kick Russias ass.
go full world police and kick Russias ass.
least genocidal liberal
This is amazing, not even a “sure america bad but everyone else is worse!” liberal, this is a “america is a defender of freedom and democracy” liberal
Anyways,
completely back out of this new cold war
Yes , and to go further dismantle the 800+ military bases around the world while you’re at itI’ve literally never been called a liberal before and it’s happened twice in this thread. I think I just lost a piece of my identity.
you’re not in kansas anymore, you’ve wandered into communist territory
both “liberals” (in the American sense of the word) and “conservatives” are libs in our eyes, you both are the sheepdogs of capital
libs in marxist ideology are those that only ever argue on the (non messurable & non Touchable) Superstructure. plane . while (often times because of finacial privledge , forgeting or denying the "Base relations " (the Messurable and Touchable things ) …
Lets take Russias means of production. They’re wasting it.
Imagine being a country with so much money then when the old enemy invades a future allied country and starts killing civilians you don’t want to give aid to help innocents.
It’s not like America couldn’t pay for something like free healthcare and send vital aid to a country in need. They easily could, it’s not one or the other. It’s not like there was healthcare before the war.
The question to ask yourself is if this is really helping innocents. Is it really helping innocents to sent the weapons that will be used to kill more civilians, that will prolong the war and multiply its damages, that will subject tens, even hundreds of thousands more conscripts to the horrors of trench warfare?
That’s up the the Ukrainian people.
When an aggressor comes to them starts capturing their land, property, destroying their families and committing genocide. Should we send them support to defend themselves. Absolutely for the good of humanity. People will die yes, the Ukrainians understand that I they have clearly chosen that they would rather deaths than be subjected by the russian again.
Otherwise what’s to stop countries commuting horrific crimes unopposed?
deleted by creator
This all started because Shitkraine wanted to ban Russian from being taught in schools, which is discrimination, so the people fought back. This is Ukraines fault
Absolute lol. The president’s first language is Russian.
But making a country speak it’s own language in schools instead of an occupiers language is absolute no reason for war and genocide.
‘Occupiers’ language, lol
I’m swiss, around 30% of the swiss population speaks french mostly, if the german speaking part of switzerland voted to ban italian or french or rumansh from being spoken and discriminated against them would they fight back against italian occupiers in ticino? How about those dastardly roman occupiers in Grisons, or the french occupiers in the romandie would switzerland be justified in killing off 35% of its population to ‘decolonize’?
The Ukranian government decided that 30% of their own population was foreign and would no long have any rights, they aren’t settlers they aren’t occupiers because a ton of them have been there for generations because nations and nationalism is an incredibly new concept and as a result a ton of nations that aren’t psychotic have all kinds of ethnicities in them. Your thinking literally leads to the kind of shit that went down in Yugoslavia log off.
Nobody was occupying anything when the fascists couped the Ukrainian government and started discriminating against Russian-speakers.
Even if you view the invasion as a terrible and unjust thing, calling it genocide is ridiculous.
also it absolutly devalues actuall genocide , it is such a primitiv act in has to be pointed out , what a moronic and selfdefeating claim…
its just tells everybody about you , how you willfully hystericlly and mad you run with the Mob … it marks you as a deeply unserious person. But its functionally understanable , if you grow up beeing bathed 24/7 in this cartoonworld , yo know , where all your "You have shittalk license go wild " Offical Enemy (China , Iran , Rusia , Muslims ) "longs for the System that imprisions the most , kills the most , invades the most and Preaches the Most about the proper way to live while keeping its citizens less valued then Medicine and dying on the streets… if you have a Audience like that , WAR just dont cut it no more it must be GENOCIDE ! , Soon Genocide 3000 ! while 2022 - Today is most “Certainly” a Genocide , i presume this here is not “Genocide”. what says the Hysteria Algortim of yours ?
please study these two maps ? do People with Rights live in both parts of Ukraine or is one part subhuman ?
EDit: Forgot the Article , Duuuh… - On Ukraine’s De-Russification Policies -
The ukranian people have been held hostage by the us for a while now.
enemy invades a future allied country and starts killing civilians
Ukraine has deliberately been killing civilians since 2014, I’m so tired of this dumbass narrative.
Out of curiosity, why is this self-proclaimed leftist community so pro-Putin, when Putin is a crony-capitalist, imperialist, right-wing autocrat? Just because he’s anti-western?
I’m not pro-Putin and I don’t think most others here are either. At best you could say we critically support what Russia is doing. The keyword here is critical, meaning we recognize the same attributes you are giving to Putin and Russia and we don’t support those. But we do support his current actions vis a vis NATO.
We are communists and we support communist revolutions and communist states.
However, historically, any communist/socialist revolution is quickly besieged and attempted to be destroyed by the Western powers, currently being led by the USA. The US has achieved global hegemony through economic, intelligence and military power projection. So yes, weakening NATO and the US mechanisms of global hegemony do align with our own goals. I guess you could call this “anti-western”, but it’s a vague definition that leaves out a lot of context.
Furthermore, we recognize that Russia is not the cause of this war. The US organized a coup in Ukraine and installed fascists in government with the express intent of provoking Russia into a proxy war as a means of weakening it (famously Adam Shift said in Congress before all this got started, during Trump’s first impeachment over denying arms shipments to Ukraine: “we fight Russia over there so we won’t have to fight it over here”).
When the coup was not enough to provoke Russia, the Ukrainians started bombing East Ukraine and caused Russia to annex Crimea in 2014. A peace accord was signed then which stopped further war (the Minsk Accords) and guaranteed the rights of Russian speakers in East Ukraine. Then Ukraine disregarded this agreement and resumed the bombings in 2016. Before this, Lindsay Graham travelled to Ukraine and met with Azov Battalion leaders, and anticipating a Hillary Clinton victory in US elections told them (on video) “this is the year of offense”.
Finally, when that also was not enough to provoke Russia. NATO tried to induct Ukraine. The Russian response to this (military intervention) is understandable, since that would mean complete encirclement by a specifically anti-Russian alliance.
And lastly, Ukraine is run by Nazis and we won’t support that.
Sorry for the long response, but I hope it answers your question.
While we may fundamentally disagree on the war and its justifications, I do appreciate your thoughtful response, and it does actually answer my question, thank you.
crony-capitalist
Saying this makes no sense, all Capitalism is “crony”
pure pleonasm
Because Putin, autocrat that he is, is still less bloodthirsty than the US.
Ukraine could’ve been a non-issue, even mass genocide supporter Henry Kissinger agrees on that. The US is more of a destabilizing force than Putin could ever hope to be. Ukraine would not have happened without US imperialism poking the bear since 1991. No one like Putin here, but the US getting involved is objectively the worse shit that could happen because it directly prolongs suffering and creates more situations like Ukraine in the first place.
So when imperialist autocrats decide to violently invade another country, the people who live there should just roll over and accept it in order to not prolong suffering?
No, they should have accepted the first peace offering that Putin offered and Zelensky wanted to accept before his western, corporate overlords told him how things are going to be. This could have ended peacefully in February or March 2020, or anytime in the preceding 7 years since the NATO coup in 2014, but no, western corporate and US interests had to have its blood offering to the capitalists gods. Now people are being snatched off the streets and sent to the frontlines to die needlessly and potentially leading to world wide destruction with Africa and Taiwan in the mix. Oh no! What about the poor shareholders? This is a proxy war, just like the last, and just like the next between then USian, NATO, Western “rules based order” where the global south fully submits themselves to western corporate interests, and a growing BRICS alliance for a more peaceful and mutually prosperous future.
tl;dr if you live in the “west”, like I do, then we are the baddies
There had been 8 years of civil war in Ukraine during which Russia acted as a middleman for negotiations. Both times agreements were reached (Minsk I and II), Ukraine completely reneged on them just days later and started shelling the Donbass again.
And now Banderites pretend that they’re just poor victims as if Putin woke up one day and thought “what if I invaded Ukraine”. Give us a break.
Calling Russia imperialist is an appeal to emotions. There’s only one imperialist bloc in the world and the US is at the top of it, and Russia nowhere near it.
So when imperialist autocrats decide to violently invade another country, the people who live there should just roll over and accept it in order to not prolong suffering?
NOOO, you have to die for the US Imperialist Autocrats! Don’t just recognize that both options suck! Your deaths would be so profitable for our shareholders.The only options are being a US puppet or Russian puppet. If the US decided not to interfere then Ukraine could’ve been pseudo-independent and the war could have been avoided. Your country crosses lines in the sand and then acts surprised when there are consequences. You don’t give enough of a shit not to destabilize these regions because it’s all theatre for you.
decide to violently invade another country
Half a million children died in Iraq. Was the price worth it? I think yes, coz obviously those children didn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes.
The parallel to Iraq is exactly my point. I’m very anti- bombing kindergartens, and it doesn’t matter who’s dropping the bombs.
So what was the solution after so many years of Ukrainians bombing Ukrainian kindergartens in the run up to this war? (Which was not enough to provoke Putin into a war, btw.)
What would the US do, if China or Russia formed a hostile military alliance with Mexico or Canada, and put ABMs on our border? I think we would destroy those countries right? And rightly so, because you can’t threaten the US.
Watch what Chomsky had to say 8 years ago, and how he predicted the war correctly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ni3j1mhU5M
Also, If you are commenting in good faith and If you really want to know what’s going on in Ukraine read this https://www.sott.net/article/466340-Retired-Swiss-Military-Intelligence-Officer-Is-it-Possible-to-Actually-Know-What-Has-Been-And-is-Going-on-in-Ukraine
The source is not mainstream but it contains top citations.
If what the mainstream media was telling, were the truth, then I’d also be wearing the blue and yellow flag on my lapel along with you and shouting Heil Bandera and would advocate for unlimited funding of Ukraine. Unfortunately, almost everything you hear in the msm about Ukraine, is a lie.
I presume you are american? Then why dont you focus your energy on american policy you have a say in? Why not be as outraged at the us military in syria, sanctions on iran, the war in yemen or arming the baku regime, etc.
Is it because you actually dont have a say and in reality the us is as undemocratic as russia?
Russia is not imperialist.
Every time the question comes up of how much ‘aid’ to send Ukraine, the real question for Ukrainians is, ‘How much will we have to give up when the US comes back for its repayments?’
The US isn’t giving anything away for free. It’s hidden in plain sight. Ukraine can have some aid but the implied promise is for the contracts to rebuild $1tr worth of damage. The contractors aren’t going to rebuild those hospitals unless they’re privatised to let the parasites keep leeching off Ukraine forever. They didn’t steal enough when they did this to Ukraine the first time in the 90s.
It’s the surplus capital absorption problem. There’s not much to invest in in the US. The investors know that much of Sillicon Valley isn’t backed by anything real and there’s very little industry to invest in. Those billionaires lining up to buy US bonds to fund ‘aid’ to Ukraine are just looking for some productive assets. Those assets exist in abundance in industrial capitalist countries (and socialist countries and especially industrial capitalist ex-socialist countries).
This is what imperialism looks like. So it’s either ‘roll over’ to Russia and end the immediate war or ‘roll over’ to the yanks and let them loot the place regardless. There’s no option under the current leadership where Ukraine gets to extricate itself unscathed. The leadership made its bet on what turns out to be a shit hand. Now its left with shit choices but its got to take one; but it is a choice – ‘stopping the war’ is not a neutral position as it entails starting a cold war with the west. There’s no ‘rolling over’ about it.
If it were my loved ones dying in Ukraine, I know what option I’d take. I assume you’re nowhere near the battlefield or the fallout to be able to suggest that ‘not prolong[ing] the suffering’ is somehow a bad thing. It’s not a video game. These are human beings being killed and whose lives will be ruined even if they survive.
You don’t sound very curious for someone who started a line of inquiry with “out of curiosity”
They aren’t.
It’s just a
habit, like starting posts with “um” or saying “I like it that/it’s funny that” when being enraged about something.I was being passive-aggressive in response to their passive-aggressive comments in order to highlight the behavior. I come from generations of WASPs, I’m not putting up with bush league passive-aggressiveness.
Lucille from Arrested Development tier WASP?
Less alcoholism than you usually see in WASP families, replaced by leftover boomer-hippy health fad nonsense. But yeah, you’re not that far off.
I guess I’m just trying to understand what I see as the cognitive dissonace of a leftist rooting for modern-day Russia’s invasion of a neighbor, and this is clearly the place to ask.
Below is a statement released by the folks who run the (excellent and well-curated) news megathread on hexbear:
First and foremost, this site and the news megathread’s user base are not a monolith, and there are frequent discussions about who to support and to what degree. Nonetheless, we nearly universally acknowledge that the West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core, both militarily through wars of aggression and coups, and economic means, giving them unpayable loans, imposing austerity, and applying sanctions to keep these countries in permanent debt peonage. These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.
We do not, as a site, have an official line regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a wide variety of viewpoints are represented in discussions. This includes many users with varying degrees of support for Russia, which some people may find confusing or objectionable. To understand this perspective, it is essential to understand two things: the historical context that led to the invasion, and theoretical concept known as “critical support.” Critical support means that we acknowlede and recognize a nation’s flaws, and do not uphold it as an example to emulate, yet we believe that the nation’s success is in alignment with our goals. While Russia may be a capitalist country, it is still a thorn in the side of the modern imperial order, but on the other hand, whle Russia may be a thorn in the side of the modern imperial order, it is still a capitalist country.
Understanding the war in Ukraine requires understanding that neither history nor the war began in February 2022, the Ukrainian government has been at war with its people since 2014. The Maidan protests started with many legitimate grievances but were heavily backed by western funding and support, especially to the right-wing groups that overtook the movement and accomplished the coup of the Ukrainian government. The people whose democratically elected candidate had just been removed by the western-backed coup were unhappy and many did not recognize the new illegally appointed government as legitimate. This group was especially prevalent in the eastern part of Ukraine and formed the basis of the separatist movement (always referred to as “Russia-backed separatists” in western media). The new government in Kyiv attempted to suppress the separatist movement with its army but the army refused to start shooting their own countrymen. This led the Kyiv government to turn to far-right paramilitaries like Azov, Aidar, C14, Right Sector, and Donbas battalion in order to attack the people of Donbas, these paramilitaries were later folded completely into the Ukrainian military. Crimea was spared this fate as it was annexed by Russia and didn’t have to deal with 8 years of war. Multiple ceasefires, including Minsk 2, were brokered by Russia and European nations and signed by the Ukrainian government but were then simply ignored and the shelling of Donbas continued for 8 years. While Kyiv was waging war on its own countrymen with far-right paramilitary groups it was also promoting the far-right within itself. Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and genocidal murderer, was made into a national hero. His birthday was made into a national holiday and the street near the Babi Yar monument, a monument commemorating the largest Nazi massacre in Ukraine, was renamed in his honor. Far-right people were placed in high positions in the military and police. Politicians ran under the slogan “Military, Language, Faith”. Official use of the Russian language was suppressed, despite it being the majority language among eastern Ukrainians. The Ukrainian people still desired peace with Donbas and Zelensky ran as a peace candidate, however after he won he refused or was unable to stop the the shelling of Donbas. In 2022 Russia recognized the Donbas Republics as sovereign states, Ukraine responded by further escalating their artillery attacks on the Donbas Republics, Russia responded with the invasion of Ukraine.
This is a fairly coherent position. You can disagree with the specifics if you think there are errors or omissions, but if you accept the premise, you can see that there isn’t really any dissonance. There is a fair bit of nuance and discussion about the approach to this argument, and that can be confusing. Ultimately, the war is a gigantic shit sandwich that everyone hates, so arguing about which part of the sandwich is the worst is often not that productive.
The main takeaway, if nothing else, is that there are very few self-described leftists who are pro-Putin, and any support for him is through several layers of support and opposition to a variety of other things. There is a very strong and coherent argument from many parts of the political spectrum against something like sending an indefinite stream of weapons to Ukraine, and if all you can see in those arguments is pro-Putin apologia then I don’t really know that there are going to be satisfying answers here. The dissonance is real, but you’re the one suffering from it. The leftists taking this position are comfortable with it, because in aggregate it holds water. That’s basically the universal experience on the left. Everything sucks, but it makes sense.
Why would this be the place to ask? This isn’t a group for answering basic questions about the fundamentals of US and Ukrainian aggression against the Russian people
Leftists are not pro putin, they’re anti Ukraine for obvious reasons.
Why do you interpret being against the war as being in support of Putin?
That’s a fair question. It just seems to me like there are 2 ways for the war to end (Putin stops invading, or Putin achieves his war goals, crushes all opposition, fully occupies Ukraine, and destroys it as an independent state), and everyone here seems to only be anti-war insofar as rooting for the latter.
But why do you think Putin’s goal is to occupy Ukraine? Did you hear that from him or from western media? For the record, here’s what he had to say when the war started.
I hope you listen to the full speech. I know that it’s biased towards Russia, but don’t you think it’s important to at least know where the other side is coming from? Refusing to engage in diplomacy is what brought us here to begin with.
Do you honestly think the current situation will ever lead to Ukraine winning? Their counteroffensive failed miserably. Prolonging the war won’t magically make them regain their lost land. It’ll only kill more people.
And for this question see this post 😁
The US isn’t interested in charting an end to war. Also like, pretty much all those words could apply to the US as well. The only right path here is to seek deescalation and peace. Prolonging the war does nothing but kill more people, further destabilize the region, and line the pockets of war profiteers.
We are not leftists, we are communists
We are not pro putin. We think putin is a pansy lib who bent over trying to aleas the west for years and refused to take action until he had no choise causing the current mess. He should have invaded ukraine in 2014 after the obama coup when the ukranians had no army instead he tried to negotiate with entities that only understand the language of force for 8 years while they armed ukraine.
Im particularly outraged that the russian aa in syria does not fire at israeli jets and at russian companies going along with un and us sancitions in the past.
But if putin looses and like the pansy he is he does not fire the nukes its going to be disastrous for the rest of the world. Its going to embolden the god dammed yanks to do whatever they want.
“Crony-capitalism”
You mean “capitalism,” right?
