I was arguing with someone in the V**shite subreddit because I’m a masochist. That was the first time I’d ever heard the term “little green men.” Apparently, not knowing who these guys are disqualifies me from having an opinion on Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, so I’m trying to learn. Who are these people? Did they do something awful and genocidal that I’m not aware of? Or is this person just talking out of their ass?
In my research, I encountered more of Stalin’s infamous deportations, namely that of the Crimean Tartars to the Central Asian SSRs. It seems downright ghoulish to me that he would do that, especially given the death and suffering it caused. Is anyone familiar with the rationale behind these deportations? Is it not as bad as it seems, or is this a black mark on his record? If it’s a black mark, how do we make sense of that while still upholding Stalin’s legacy?
And of course, whenever Russia comes up, the radlibs and the anarchists all flock together to insist that Russia is a colonizing, imperialist power. I’m aware that imperialism is something pretty specific, and not something that Russia can be rightfully accused of. Even so, I have to admit that I’m not fresh on what DOES count as imperialism. Will someone elucidate this for me?
Thanks in advance.
In fact Russia at the time did just about whatever it could to sabotage the Donbass rebels, they attempted to stop people from Russia going to volunteer to help the Donbass rebels and even pressured the DPR forces into retreating from numerous cities that they had already managed to take over like Mariupol.
This resulted in violent reprisals by forces of the Kiev regime in these places. Nazis like the Azov battalion came from Western Ukraine, murdered, raped and tortured with impunity any real or suspected rebel collaborationists, and anyone who had supported the idea of referendums for autonomy in the regions that rejected the Maidan coup.
Moscow forced the Donbass republics into the Minsk agreements after they had just inflicted a crushing defeat on the Maidan regime at Debaltsevo, which robbed the rebels of all momentum and gave Kiev the time to be re-armed and trained by the West, to reform and expand their army integrating highly ideological Nazi units in such a way as to ensure that there would be no more defections like in 2014/15.
Why would Russia simultaneously engage in these alleged covert activities while everything else that they did undermined the same cause that they supposedly were instigating or fabricating?
The reality is the Russian government was very reluctant for a very long time about the idea of further secessions from Ukraine after Crimea, and you will hear this from lots of people in the Donbass who felt left abandoned by Russia and were waiting for eight years for some real help. And even that likely took a lot of political pressuring of the timid liberals in the Kremlin from the likes of Russia’s communists and other supporters of the Donbass.
The entire theory of the “little green men” makes no sense and directly contradicts the available evidence and the testimonies of the locals.