Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Aurelius2]

This is one of those weeks where decades happen.

Yup. Whether Prigozhin wins or loses, there is going to be a very different constitutional order in Russia after this plays out.

I can kinda see this turning to a Warlord Era for Russia.

[Aurelius2]

This is one of those weeks where decades happen.

Yup. Whether Prigozhin wins or loses, there is going to be a very different constitutional order in Russia after this plays out.

I can kinda see this turning to a Warlord Era for Russia.

That could be nice…

I guarantee you a warlord era will be much, much worse for Russian civilians than even Putin's rule, but I suppose your delusional dreams of a communist revolution that will never happen are more important than what actually will happen.

[Aurelius2]

The absolute best outcome is that Putin bloodlessly deposes Shoigu to placate Prigozhin, and puts Gerasimov or someone in his place. The fact they're talking makes me a bit more hopeful than before that there will be some sort of negotiated resolution like that. As much as I despise Putin, the world does not need a nuclear-armed country with no state capacity (look at Pakistan for a much milder version of how this is dangerous), and I don't see how Russian state capacity recovers if this drags on. At the same time, I don't see how Putin saves face even if this comes to a relatively bloodless resolution. What stops some other oligarch or warlord from doing the same thing in a month?

[Aurelius2]

PSOL, don't make me run out of brainlet wojaks.

[Aurelius2]

The guy who runs the War_Mapper twitter account is taking a vacation for the next couple weeks. Who should I follow for territorial control updates until then?

[Aurelius2]

If reports are accurate and the Ukrainians have in fact broken through the Verbove line, I'd imagine that their next goal is to break through the last of the three lines at Romanivske, giving them a relatively clear path to roll along a path parallel to and behind the lines all the way into Tokmak.

Around the beginning of August I was starting to worry the counteroffensive was going nowhere. An advance to Tokmak would prove me wrong big time and this is one of those cases where I'd love to be wrong.

[Aurelius2]

I don’t get why G20 or every single group has to mention Ukraine conflict even when it’s out of their sphere of action.

Discuss this at the UN or create a forum specifically for the Ukraine War, where a bunch of 3rd countries + both Russia and Ukraine are invited to participate.

No, Russia should not be invited to forums on the naked war of aggression it launched. Third Worldism is a malignant cancer.

[Aurelius2]

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/jewish-group-demands-apology-after-mps-honoured-man-who-fought-for-nazis-1.6575593
Might as well post here, seems the entire Canadian parliament stood up and clapped for a possible Nazi collaborator from Ukraine who now lives in Canada.

I am firmly in support of Ukraine and as things stand I'm on fully board with continuing to fund them for at least another couple years. If there is one thing that would make me get tired of them, it would be pushing literal Nazis on us and expecting us to cheer for them. It's one thing to overlook groups like Azov recognizing that they are a tiny, tiny fraction of the Ukrainian resistance and that focusing overly on them creates a sort of tempest in a teapot. It is a very different matter to haul out actual WW2 Waffen SS troopers and expect us to mindlessly cheer them on. I'm not sure whether it was Zelensky or Trudeau or some shlt-for-brains MP who ginned this up, but whoever did has some serious apologizing to do. This is madness. And furthermore, shlt like this just legitimizes nonsensical Russian propaganda (nonsensical because Russia is crawling with Nazis itself).

I've read Bloodlands, I'm very aware of the destruction the USSR had wrought in Ukraine in the years leading up to WW2 and I genuinely do get why a non-Jewish Ukrainian would get to the point where they saw the Nazis as the lesser evil. WW2 in Eastern Europe was a horrifying, brutal place. That does not mean we need to actively cheer these people on though, especially when you look at the massacres of Jews and Poles they engaged in. Furthermore, this guy was part of the SS. That means he wasn't just some dude who got enemy-of-my-enemy brain and (understandably) wanted to shove it up the ass of the folks behind the Holodomor. The SS was an all-volunteer organization recruited specifically from among hardcore Nazis. This guy was a deeply ideologically committed Nazi. This is disgusting and shameful for everyone involved.

[Aurelius2]

I will take a sort of middle path here. On the one hand, saying that "there’s some level of truth in what Russia says about Ukraine" is hyperbolic, Russia's claims about Nazism in Ukraine are exaggerated, deranged, insincere, and most of all hypocritical. Russia has no leg to stand on when criticizing another state for cultivating far-right forces or antisemitism. But also, you cannot respond to every issue Ukraine has with far-right ideology and historical memory with "Zelenskyy is Jewish" or "Wagner is Nazi."

Ukraine has a far-right problem, Ukraine has a problem with how it remembers World War Two and the Holocaust. This is also true of more or less every state in Europe. It is not necessarily more true in Ukraine. In Russia for example, the way Nazism is conceived is very problematic. When discussing Nazism and Nazi crimes in Russia, focus is paid only to the "anti-Russian" nature of Nazism, and not crimes such as the Holocaust or Nazi antisemitism. This creates a lot of issues, to the point where Russian perspectives on Nazism don't actually condemn mass violence against civilians, but only see it as bad when it is done against Russians (which is obviously bad, and Nazi crimes against the Russian people were enormous, but you see my point). Russia also has a huge far-right problem and has cultivated far-right forces in its fighting ranks, which I have elaborated on previously. Latvia is another state in Europe with a similar problem, with great debate on the memory of the Latvian SS legions which fought the Soviet Union, with many Latvians proclaiming them as national heroes. This obviously should be condemned, but this debate in Latvia does not make Latvia a Nazi state.

Ukraine has this problem too. Now, in this case, the SS-Galicia Division is not honored by the Ukrainian state in any way whatsoever, and there is no substantial contingent in society outside of Galicia seeking out honor for the SS, but this problem can be seen in how Ukraine remembers UPA and OUN-B. These radical Ukrainian nationalist sects led by Stepan Bandera fought the Soviet Union for many years and committed horrific atrocities against Jews and Poles. In Ukraine, there are many who see Bandera as an anti-Russian patriot, there are streets and neighborhoods named after him and his lieutenants. During this time of war with Russia, respect for Bandera has gone up. This is very very bad, and should be condemned. There are also many far-right formations in the Ukrainian military that have arose since 2014, but unlike Russia I think Ukraine has done a lot more to depoliticize and deradicalize these units. And it should be clear that Zelenskyy is not at all a supporter of far-right nationalism, nor does he hold misguided beliefs on Ukraine's past, after all he is a Russian-speaking Jew, not a Galician ethnic nationalist.

Russia's claims about Ukrainian Nazism are nonsense genocide propaganda, but we shouldn't be afraid to discuss Ukraine's issues with historical memory and far-right sentiment.

Not to mention Bohdan Khmelnytsky being widely considered another Ukrainian national hero. The man was responsible for one of the most brutal pogroms against Jews (and Poles too) in history.

None of this justifies Russia's blather about "denazification". At the same time I'm not going to do what certain denizens with double digit IQs have been doing, and whatabout or make excuses for Canada's parliament honoring a literal Waffen SS Nazi. I have too much self respect to cross certain lines.

Like I said in a previous post, Eastern Europe in WW2 was a f**king brutal mess and I can easily see how after the Holodomor a gentile Ukrainian could get to the point they see the Nazis as the lesser evil. But the Waffen SS, an ideologically recruited shock trooper organization, was not even your ordinary Wehrmacht trooper (not to suggest I'm buying into the clean Wehrmacht myth, which I am not).

Random tangent, I am actually surprised we haven't seen any whataboutery from the Hunka apologist/"buh Zelensky is Jewish" types comparing Bandera and the OUN to Finland's situation in WW2 and going all "but no one cares that Finland did that!!!". Of course, the key differences would be that (1) unlike Bandera's goons the Finns did not commit atrocities, and IIRC the Finns protected their Jews and other minorities from Nazi repressions, (2) they did their best to keep the Nazis at arms length from what I understand (I may be wrong on this one), broke off the alliance as soon as possible, and even fought a little-known war against the Nazis when the Nazis refused to leave Lapland, and (3) that yes, this is still a somewhat controversial topic.

As to your point about the common, warped Eastern European conception of Nazism, I've long figured that something similar to that is how you paradoxically end up with Russian Nazis. Such creatures would seem paradoxical but when your conception of Nazism is "people who genocided their enemies" rather than "people who saw Jews and Slavs as racial inferiors and thus sought to wipe them out" it is much easier to see how a despicable Russian who seeks to massacre, say, Jews and Ukrainians, would arrive at such a self-identification.

[Aurelius2]

Russian government: "We ArE vErY cOnCeRnEd AbOuT nEo-NaZiS iN tHe UkRaInIaN gOvErNmEnT."

Meanwhile people defending Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

In terms of WWII history, I am fairly revisionist, and while I still lean toward being more pro-Allies than pro-Axis. I am fairly empathetic to the Axis point of view.

More Ukrainians died in Stalin's genocide of Ukraine, which killed 3.9 million Ukrainians in the Holodomor, then Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union was just as evil as Nazi Germany. Stalin is the same evil dictator as Hitler.

I'm on record supporting Operation Unthinkable - it's a shame we didn't continue eastward and roll over the commies to liberate Eastern Europe and break the shackles of communism - so I am entirely consistent here.