Are they stupid?
Yes
Because it is politically impossible. Any retreat is seen as treason, and moreover they fear that any visible setback will jeopardize the continued financial and material support by the West.
Militarily it makes absolutely no sense to remain in such a disadvantageous position, it hasn’t for weeks if not several months. But this conflict is peculiar in that one side is extremely obsessed with and dependent on symbolic acts.
They claim that they stay there to delay Russia’s advance until Ukraine’s long awaited counter-offensive comes that will magically turn the tide, but meanwhile the resources that were supposed to go into that offensive are instead being used up faster than they can accumulate them just to keep feeding into this shrinking salient.
Probably because Bakhmut is of major strategic importance. If the Russians take, they’ll be able to start conducting attacks on several other locations.
Probably speaking to the choir here, but Russia has had Bakhmut for several weeks. I’m not entirely sure what NATO gains from allowing thousands of soldiers to walk into a slaughterhouse. Are they really worried about the consequences to public perception if they “admit defeat?”
Yes. Because they are 100% dependent on external material support, the way that their situation is perceived has real material consequences for Ukraine.
The thinking is that if it takes sacrificing fifty tanks to maintain the perception of successful resistance that may get them a hundred more to replace them.
So far their math seems to be wrong. It doesn’t look like they’re coming out ahead. Also the trained manpower they are losing is even harder to replace.
But the second line of thinking behind sacrificing huge amounts of manpower and materiel just to hold on to a few more square kilometers for a few more weeks or months is that they hope that eventually something will magically materialize that will turn the tide.
Either a regime change in Russia, or a direct intervention by NATO is their dream scenario. Or somehow managing to beg and grovel until they get enough stuff together that they can pull off a counter-offensive, though what they hope to achieve with it apart from maybe reviving the enthusiasm in the west by showing success and keeping the grift going for a few more months is anyone’s guess.
Because they a) can’t reverse the larger trend of slowly losing the war of attrition, and b) if they are hoping to humiliate Russia by taking some territory and thereby trigger some sort of political crisis in Moscow i think they are mistaken, in fact that would more likely cause Russia to escalate even further and take off the gloves entirely, especially if the moderates now in charge are replaced by some actual hardliners.
Ukraine seems to. They have to present some kind of perceived victory to keep the foreign military aid coming.
Why doesn’t Putin just make Russia into the USSR again? It was more successful as a state…Is he Stupid? /s
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Who even knows with this war anymore? We’ve been looking at this exact map for almost a year now, moving pixel by pixel. Both sides crying about muh meatgrinder, how it’s super duper strategically important for the other side yadda yadda.
We can’t get a clear picture from the ground and I’ve long stopped putting too much stock in either side’s explanations. We’ll see in retrospect what happened.
Till then this dumb fucking battle will keep chewing through working class people from both sides for some random as backwater in Donbass. And then we’ll watch some more tens of thousands get slaughtered for Chasov Yar & Seversk and then Kramatorsk & Slavyansk and on and on.
this is the honest comment, what do we really know? workers are dying over bourgeois territorial control. does anyone here actually know someone from Donbass? like do they feel liberated yet as their homes lie in further ruins? wonder how they’ll get their lives back together after losing their economic/industrial center and their families through an entrenched DMZ border threatening nuclear standoff.
Thanks comrade. I feel like many people especially online, even from the ML spectrum, have fallen into this sports-team mentality, totally detaching from the horrific nature of this war.
That’s not to say both sides are the same, etc etc. We all know the causes of this war.
Still, we’ve seen the frontline move like 2km in a few selected places in the past 6 months and witnessed tens of thousands dying for it. How’s that cause for celebration from anyone? It’s fucking awful and senseless and certainly not proper for any principled communist to cheer this carnage on. An entire region of Ukraine is being rendered inhospitable for decades to come. Its people are displaced or fed into the meatgrinder. And for what exactly? To fight the “pedophile, gay satanists” in the West? To fight “Mongolic orcs” in the East? Dogshit.
And for what exactly? To fight the “pedophile, gay satanists” in the West? To fight “Mongolic orcs” in the East? Dogshit.
This is a reductionist framing. Communists everywhere are watching this conflict with bated breath because we want to believe the US war machine is on the outs. We want so badly to believe that the encirclement of China is a failure, that the US will not be able to continue to dominate the next century through military force nor through economic force. We interpret the conflict with much the same motivations that we interpret the dedollarization movement.
Communism is still fragile. Losing China to the West through war or through subversion would be a set back that would take decades, if not a century or more, to recover from. Emotionally, we are attached to the US losing this proxy war because of its implications for the future of global communism.
It has nothing to do with good vs evil, with dehumanization of the sides, nor with sports fanaticism. Sometimes it gets expressed in those ways, because of culture and psychology and because we’re on the socials, but these are aesthetic buffers to protect our psyches from the acknowledgement of the fear that if the US is triumphant here, then there will be darker times ahead of us and if the US fails here, and they don’t launch nukes, then there’s a chance they’re decline will be fast enough to avoid significant armed conflict with China and some of us may live to see a new stage of global human society.
Yeah nobody is denying the importance of this war. What is not important and improper for principled communists to do is reproduce the bourgeois propaganda regarding this conflict from either side, same as dehumanizing and detaching from the material reality of this god awful war by falling victim to liberal sports mentality and virtue signalling.
The people dying on both sides in Ukraine are our working-class brethren. And they’re not dying to fight imperialism or advance the interests of the working class - though that could be a welcome side effect of the conflict. They’re being fed into this meatgrinder to further the interests of two bourgeois sides duking it out for their own material interests. It’s gross and vulgar how we’ve given in to the alienation from this conflict.
Yes, US and European imperialism declining and losing in this conflict is preferable to the opposite. That doesn’t mean we have to celebrate the gruesome deaths of thousands to move the frontline a few hundred feet this or that way. Our job as communists has to be, among other things, to bring back humanity and fight the alienation of people under capitalism. Leave it to priviledged libs in their ivory towers to cheer on war and misery from afar, larping as participants from their comfortable suburban homes.
I understand the motivations you’ve outlined, but as communusts we have to be better.
The people dying on both sides in Ukraine are our working-class brethren. And they’re not dying to fight imperialism or advance the interests of the working class - though that could be a welcome side effect of the conflict. They’re being fed into this meatgrinder to further the interests of two bourgeois sides duking it out for their own material interests.
Donbas republics have been fighting the colonization of Ukraine since 2014, so fuck outta here with that. The Russian bourgeoisie is against the war, why? Because they’ve been trying to join the Western Imperialist order for decades now. Not fighting Imperialism, what the fuck would you call what the US did to Ukraine? What they did to Libya? What they tried to do to Syria? It’s not Imperialism if the target has a bourgeoisie?
There’s zero evidence that the Russian bourgeoisie or some usurper trying to take their place has any monopoly pressures guiding it into annexing Donbas. Donbas is insignificant in food production, and Donbas industry has been a carcass since the collapse of the USSR. These people live off of pensions from dead jobs. It just doesn’t compute that this is an inter-bourgeois conflict. It does compute that this is a colonial struggle as Donbas is taking up arms against the puppet state which has been privatizing land, devaluing the currency (lowering the cost of labor, and the value of pensions), cutting health benefits, etc. And Ukraine is not just an economic colony, it is stuffed with the empire’s weapons and the remnants of the Red Army. It is an offensive bulwark aimed at Russia. It’s entirely suspicious that a supposed bourgeois conflict is benefiting one country specifically, the Imperial Hegemon, at the expense of Europe. The contradictions of this Colonization effort are allowing the rest of the world to review their relationships with the USA and China, only because Russia is defeating the Ukraine colony can these developments take place.
It just doesn’t compute that this is an inter-bourgeois conflict.
It is literally a conflict fought by thoroughly bourgeois states on all sides. That literally makes it inter-bourgeois. Like what’s there even to discuss about?
Russia isn’t some benevolent anti-colonial people’s liberation power. There is an element of anti-colonial struggle in Donbass. Or at least there was. But that’s not what this stage of the conflict is about at all. It’s not Donbass fighting against Western Ukrainian dominance anymore, it’s Russia fighting NATO. It’s an entirely different conflict at this point. If there was no class interest, Russia wouldn’t be doing it. Posing anything else is literally a rejection of class analysis and Marxism in general.
Not to mention this mischaracterizes the Donbass struggle itself severely. The Donbass Republics were literally praised by Russian nationalists for their extreme libertarian character. They’ve not been “People’s Republics” for a long time and much of the basis of the 2014 conflict was contradiction within the Ukrainian bourgeoisie - part of it leaning more Russian, the other more Western.
It’s entirely suspicious that a supposed bourgeois conflict is benefiting one country specifically, the Imperial Hegemon, at the expense of Europe
It isn’t though. It’s literally the Russian bourgeoisie’s struggle to survive from international subjugation. It’s not a people’s struggle in any way at all. (Though that doesn’t mean it can’t have positive side effects for the working class) Russia isn’t a proletarian state, it’s a bourgeois state and therefore necessarily operates in the interest of the class it exists for. Contradictions within the Russian bourgeoisie do not negate this at all.
The contradictions of this Colonization effort are allowing the rest of the world to review their relationships with the USA and China, only because Russia is defeating the Ukraine colony can these developments take place.
Yes, nobody’s denying that. But that’s not what this war is being fought for. WW1 allowed the rest of the world to renew their relationships with the colonial powers and many of the real anti-colonial people’s liberation struggles of the 20th century could only take place due to the fallout of that conflict. That doesn’t mean WW1 wasn’t inter-bourgeois and neither does it mean that’s what the war was fought for.
And just to reiterate: None of this means that somehow a Russian victory - whatever that even means - couldn’t have positive ramifications for the working class especially in the global south. Nobody’s denying that. That doesn’t mean it is our war or somehow makes the absurd violence in Ukraine any less tragic or awful or the celebration of a couple blocks more for one side or the other any less gross.
The existing bourgeois state doesn’t negate the reality of a liberation struggle. Through the struggle the bourgeois state must be shed if it is not able to protect the nation. Frankly if one camp of the bourgeoisie decides to defend the nation that doesn’t mean a liberation struggle isn’t underway, it just means it has not developed to the point where the bourgeoisie should be tossed aside. Every Liberation struggle has had a split bourgeoisie.
If there was no class interest, Russia wouldn’t be doing it. Posing anything else is literally a rejection of class analysis and Marxism in general.
The bourgeois state isn’t absolute, this is something we like to forget it seems. The bourgeois state exists within a delicate balance of the state acting in class interests, and the strength of the state. This situation the Russian population is overwhelmingly supportive of the Donbas, as noted by the Communist Party, so if the state failed to defend Donbas, it would have looked too weak to defend Russia. This would have put the state itself into crisis. Does this mean a section of the bourgeoisie is fighting for its own existence, yes of course, but this doesn’t mean they haven’t been pushed into a concession by the toiling masses.
Not to mention this mischaracterizes the Donbass struggle itself severely. The Donbass Republics were literally praised by Russian nationalists for their extreme libertarian character.
Evidence? How could it possibly be more “libertarian” than Ukraine proper which cut social spending across the board and privatized land for an IMF deal. I’m sure Donbas pensioners captured the government buildings for their Libertarianism, talk about ignoring class interests.
We live in times where things can get much worse, so we fear far more than living horrors. We fear what has happened in the past and what is primed to happen again. This goes, one way or another, for communists, liberals, and fascists alike. The war must end because of the toll it is taking on the world, but it will continue because the die is cast. Even if peace talks and mediation prevails the structures that fostered this conflict will likely remain and the sentiments that the conflict has exacerbated will not relent. I’m afraid there is no rhetoric, and no disposition, that can stop things from getting worse and we don’t have the social infrastructure to try if it could. Indeed, we are no longer crossing the brook by feeling for the stones because the waters have risen much too high.
To fight the “pedophile, gay satanists” in the West?
Come on, how is it not obvious to you that the US is trying to colonize Russia? Do you know what happens if Russia loses this?
It doesn’t matter how reactionary the leadership of Russia is, Russia as a country will always be a target for Colonization by the Atlantic empires. The Russian nation’s path for survival is anti-Colonialism, therefore anti-Capitalism, therefore Socialism.
how is it not obvious to you that the US is trying to colonize Russia
Who’s denying that?
This war, however, isn’t being fought to protect the Russian working class from colonization, it’s ultimately being fought to ensure the Russian bourgeoisie’s ability to exploit the Russian working class.
That’s still preferable to US domination, but it’s not anti-colonialism and it’s honestly fucking wild to see people, on a ML forum, lumping real people’s liberation struggles of the past century together with this fucking war. Russia isn’t Vietnam, Jesus Christ.
The Russian nation’s path for survival is anti-Colonialism, therefore anti-Capitalism, therefore Socialism.
That’s vulgar materialism at best. History isn’t deterministic and socialism most definitely isn’t an inevitability at all. There’s many different ways a nation can attempt to resolve contradictions within the global system.
Russia used to be socialist, its path to survival actually used to be real anti-colonialism. It collapsed anyway into the reactionary bourgeois state it is today.
It’s not vulgar materialism. At this stage in history Russia has no other option than alliance with the developing world, led by China. With China comes industrialization and socialization of labor which will necessarily invoke class struggle in the countries it develops with. Any nation that seeks to develop its productive forces is faced with Finance Imperialism which seeks to permanently freeze the development of all countries. Can development opposed to Finance Imperialism develop itself into monopoly Imperialism? This is what I doubt, and which obviously has not occurred yet.
The Russian bourgeoisie, the Oligarchs, are opposed to the war. The United Russia party was pushed towards intervention from the bottom up.
Further, you said you do not deny that the US is trying to colonize Russia, but then you say Russia’s actions aren’t anti-Colonial. How does this make sense? Serious question, looking at the Russian intervention in Syria, do you think that was not anti-Colonial? Do you think Syria isn’t under threat of colonization by the US? Is fighting against that attempt not anti-Colonialism?
and thank you for finally saying it. I agree this fascination is like sports. so many seem to know more about Ukraine War - SMO than their local struggles, struggles they can directly improve. imagine what we can do if we just let our brains not be occupied by things beyond our control
