Ask Lemmygrad

the end of the USSR was a disaster

I take China's stance: please let's fucking talk this over because we're only doing more harm right now

But for this war to end Ukraine has to stop being outright nazis in service of imperialism. We need organizing of armed dissidence inside Ukraine. We need conscripted soldiers fragging their imperialist commanders stat

Russia is currently fighting a war is with a client regime that US installed in Ukraine after overthrowing the democratically elected government in 2014. I generally agree with the reasoning for why Russia decided to start a preventative the war that Mearsheimer gives here.

While Russia has a reactionary capitalist regime, it is acting as a bulwark fighting against US global hegemony right now. NATO has been forced to devote practically all of its resources to the proxy war and this created room for the Global South to finally start shaking off western hegemony. We are seeing a major global realignment happening with countries moving off the dollar and BRICS rapidly expanding.

The war has also derailed US plans for containment of China, and it's clear that China is taking advantage of the additional time that Russia bought it. I expect that by the end of the war we will likely see the reverse moment of when USSR collapsed, and US led capitalist world order became dominant. This time around, it will be the capitalist order that crashes, and it will be replaced by socialist one led by China.

Do I support innocent civilians dying or workers being sent to fight and getting killed? No. Do I support stamping out of Nazis? Yes. Russia has a right to security guarantees on its border which the west has continually undermined for the last 30 years. Ukraine is being use as pawn to destroy Russia and Russia made the ugly decision of striking back. I welcome the downfall of NATO.

War is a rich man's game, and this one is no different.

Putin is a reactionary, that isn't in question. He's not going to bring any benefit to the workers of Russia. The only reason he's popular is because he brought stability after the Soviet Union was taken out behind the barn. After that happened, they had Yeltsin, a drunk, incompetent disaster of a person and a politician. Putin's a far better alternative.

He started this war to protect the interests of Russia as a political entity, which does not include Russian workers. NATO has been aggressive towards Russia because the United States' empire has no tolerance for anyone not playing ball with them, even if they're capitalists themselves. This war has nothing to do with denazifying Ukraine (more on that in a moment), it's entirely about preserving the interests of Russian national capital.

On the end of Ukraine we have Zelenskiy, who is all too happy to throw Ukrainian men into the meatgrinder to get in good with NATO and other liberal alliances. Ukraine has a history of radical nationalism (and by proxy naziism, given the proclivities of many "national heroes" of the country to be bedfellows with the NSDAP and related people/orgs) which provides a good reason for Putin to start this mess.

Make no mistake, this war is the same as any other: a way for powerful, rich men to play chess with real human lives to boost their ego and their buddies' interests. There is no benefit for any working person to be found in the war itself or in the victory of either side.

Yes, there are nazis in Ukraine. No, this does not justify slaughtering tons of working class lives (most of whom are not even nazi-adjacent).

Being anti-war is the only stance one should take. No war but class war.

USA is controlling ukraine's government. They want to kill as many ukrainians and russians as possible. They must be stopped. Also, boris johnson prevented peace talks. To hell with him.

there was this story i read a long time ago about an american soldier in iraq, talking to an iraqi interpreter who is smoking a cigarette, the american asks him why they were fighting each other (iraq and kuwait) despite them looking the same, dressing the same and, speaking the same language.

so the interpreter takes a long drag of his cigarette, (something along of the lines of) "they'll keep killing each other until they get tired of it and go home."

i may have gotten the countries wrong, but I know I got the general main line of the story remembered.

I'm new to lemmygrad, but i think that the general principle of Marxists Leninist is to liberate the working class. Then I think everything else breaks into strategies and etc which of course people have different stances on like moves in chess

some liberals feel putin is to blame, some people say nato expansion, and some lads are saying the 2009 recession was never properly dealt with - that we are now facing the contradictions of capitalism in the form of war.

at the end of it all, the war sucks and most likely foretelling of more conflicts (and subsequently more suffering)to come. (regardless the way the media wants to frame the war, it is the people who suffer)

Here is an article about it from ProleWiki, which is associated with Lemmygrad and has some of the same admins.

I'd point out that Ukrainians and Ukrainian government aren't Nazis, but they did have a paramilitary wing that is very much Nazi-inclined.

Still, that wasn't the reason for the invasion.

The entire conflict is that ugly battle between West and East, one in which West generally has an upper hand, but Russia as a more East-inclined force has a very strong interest.

Neither of the sides care of actual people on the ground, only of their superiority. And the Ukrainian government wants to remain in power, which is why they don't really try to regulate the situation either.

I too back China here - let's stop the hot war and take some time to figure it out. Yes, Russia will most likely have some territorial gains, but losing already-unstable Donbass that tried to join Russia for years is a small price to pay to stop the enormous bloodshed no civilian is interested in.

After that, the rest of Ukraine can get the protection of NATO to avoid the repeat of this scenario.

The first gulf war is an interesting thing to look at. Saddamn told the US state department he would invade Kuait because they were cross drilling into Iraqi oil fields and we're traditionally a 'part of Iraq'.

State department said we don't care

Of course, they did care and used that as cassus belli to attack Iraq and 'contain' Saddam which was the original intended consequence.

The war in Ukraine is the same. The neocons in the US have wanted Ukraine to open it's markets to blackrock and Goldman Sachs forever. They helped foment the coup and selected Ukrainians president. They knew Russia would invade if Ukraine started the process to join NATO.

The US wanted this war. It was a trap for Putin and because he is an idiot he fell for it. The goal is to weaken Russia , sell us LNG to Germany at 200% markup and flood Lockheed and Raytheon with billions of dollars. It's a win win for the US because no American boots on the ground they get to fight Russia via proxy until the last Ukrainian.

I'm totally against the war and old enough to understand the only way it ends is with a negotiated settlement.

well, most people here support Russia and Z.

The main enemy is at home. Not our war. Should be ended asap if possible at all. Funding the arms monopolists creates incentives for war and is historically much of the base for fascism, not a way to peace.

But it also offers some much needed breathing room for the global south by depleting Western imperialism militarily, economically, politically and financially. The weakening of the dollar system being the most important development in this (imo).

Think that sums it up for me at least.

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/687025

You can check out this post from about a month ago with a lot of good analysis and discussion in the comments.

As long as the US continues to exist in the form it's in, it will either be at war or in a proxy war and people will be dying.

Big picture is, if Russia and Ukraine make peace, the US will start a new war somewhere else by invasion or proxy immediately afterwards.

So I'm not 100% on board with the sentiment that the war must end at any cost. We don't get peace if the war ends if it means the US will just kick off another one.

War is bad. But any scenario that diminishes US hegemony and its ability to wage war (whether that's in a peace treaty or in ongiong conflict) is preferable, because we'll never have peace in this world while those warmongers in DC are allowed to continue.