This is the only reasonable argument, but I know rabid liberals frothing at the mouth over more dead Russians don’t want to see it.

Still, for those who are still reasonable in their goals and ends, and the outcome they actually want to see, there’s only one solution.

The argument on the pro-UA side is that Putin has the “choice” to just up and leave Ukraine at any time. I’ve written before about why he doesn’t – not after all the sanctions, not after all the resources and troops committed. NATO/Europe will not say “alright you’re a good sport mate, we’ll drop the sanctions and pretend this whole thing never happened, deal?”. There’s a “warrant” out for Putin at the ICC, what makes anyone sincerely believe things can go back to where they were before for Russia?

It should hopefully be clear that the people calling for Putin to just “leave Ukraine” know they’re not being reasonable. These are some of the same people who also cheer when Ukraine gets new weapons to kill more Russians with. The goal for this segment is not peace, it’s actually to prolong the war.

I’m addressing the reasonable side, however, who might have been inadvertently taken in by this psyop. I mean, isn’t it weird how NAFO suddenly popped up everywhere and got media coverage? After they’re doing the exact same thing as the Lithuanian elves (because elves fight against orcs) did back in 2014, and it turned out the “elves” were NATO?

Saying Putin can just leave Ukraine is impotent rage. Yeah, sure, I’m just gonna give him a quick call. He really cares what some westerners think about his war, especially now that he has to contend against NATO intervention. I’m sure we can totally convince him he’s being a total nerd if we just yell about it on Twitter.

So if you actually want peace, what’s the reasonable solution?

Organise locally, petition your government to stop sending money and weapons to Ukraine. Organise and protest for a peace deal. I know it’s probably not what you want to hear.

But these weapons prolong the war. Just earlier today I saw a video of an APC full of 8+ Ukrainians get obliterated by a missile strike. Where did they get that APC do you think?

Do you want Ukrainians to stop dying? Me too. The most pragmatic way, the only one towards which we can actually do something, is to protest against our governments sending equipment that prolong this war.

Otherwise you have to realise this war is going to be fought to the last Ukrainian. Do you really think it’s weakening Russia in any lasting capacity? The fighting is happening in Ukraine. Ukraine has been losing population consistently since 1990 (a whole fifth of it lost, mostly, to emigration). What exactly is weakening in Russia? It’s Ukraine that’s being destroyed and will need to be rebuilt. It’s Ukraine that’s losing their population by the thousands. It’s Ukraine that’s shooting depleted uranium bullets on their own soil.

What you’re advocating for, when you advocate to prolong this war, is to kill every last Ukrainian and turn their country into a wasteland. The UA army is even using depleted uranium bullets now (courtesy of US and UK), which have polluted the land when they were used in Iraq. This is backed up by data, right? Depleted uranium has data behind it, it’s not speculation.

The reason the war is being prolonged is because it makes a lot of money to the military-industrial complex. It makes a lot of money to corporations due to the inflation. A blackrock affiliate said on hidden camera recently that when Russia blows up a grain silo, the price of wheat goes up. War is a great business opportunity, always has been. And then when Ukraine will need to be rebuilt, it’ll make Blackrock a lot more money.

But I’m not sure who they will rebuild the country for if there’s no one else left to live in Ukraine.

My solution is the only one that makes sense. Any other is purely impotent and just venting frustrations, not effecting any actual change.

  • Flax@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    So basically, your solution is appeasment and just let Russia steamroll Ukraine and start biting at Poland’s feet? Let’s give them part of Czechoslovakia while we are at it. Yeah no. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦

    • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      True, there’s one other pragmatic solution you can do, which is to join the foreign legion in Ukraine.

      I don’t think it’s a very sensible solution if you value life, but you do you.

    • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Slava Ukraini is what the Ukrainian Collaborationist Schuma force yelled as they assisted the 3rd SS division in exterminating everyone in my ancestors village.

      I hope you eat shit and die Nazi.

      • Kettlepants@lemm.ee
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        I’m sure some of them also said “fuck this shit”. But those who today say “fuck this shit” aren’t Nazis either. Your logic is unsound.

        A more specific slogan, such as “heil Hitler” or “death to Jews” would certainly be abhorrent and extremist today, but the usage and implicit meaning of “Ukraine Heroes” has likely changed. The phrase is a clarion call. Context is everything.

        I’m sorry to hear about what occurred in your ancestors’ village. But I’m not sure you can make the leap that people using a multipurpose catchphrase today are of the exact same political persuasion as those who used it 80 or so years ago.

        • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          “Multipurpose catchphrase”???

          That’s what you call a war cry used before the OUN committed some of the most vile warcrimes of the Second World War? You are an absolute ghoul.

          Also you have no goddamn clue what the Schuma or Hewies were do you? “Fuck this shit?” They gleefully committed those exterminations, razing over 600 villages and committing hundreds of thousands of murders and rapes. The Schuma numbered 300,000 ARMED UKRAINIAN MEN ASSISTING THE SS. That’s a lot of people that didn’t say “fuck that shit” huh?

          Also “your logic is unsound”???

          You being a moron and not understanding the concept that phrases and slogans have different meaning in other cultures that aren’t your own isn’t “unsound logic”, that’s you having the worldview narrower then a pinhole. But it’s very easy to be arrogant and ignorant, so I don’t blame you.

          But I promise you that for decades before this war, going to Poland, Belarus, the Baltics, Southern Russia, Romania, or Ukraine and saying “Slava Ukraini” would get the absolute shit beat out of you by anyone in earshot. It is on the same level as “Heil Hitler”.

            • Soviet Snake@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              The phrase first appeared at the beginning of the 20th century in different variations, when it became popular among Ukrainians during the Ukrainian War of Independence from 1917 to 1921.[1] The response “Glory to the heroes!” first appeared during the Ukrainian War of Independence or later in the 1920s among members of the League of Ukrainian Nationalists.[2] In 1930s it became widespread as a slogan of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN),[3] as well as Ukrainian diaspora groups and refugee communities in the West during the Cold War.

              The League of Ukrainian Nationalists (Ukrainian: Леґія українських націоналістів, romanized: Legiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv or ЛУН, LUN) was an Ukrainian nationalist organisation created in Poděbrady on 12 November 1925 out of three groups, the Ukrainian National Alliance, the Union of Ukrainian Fascists, and the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine.

              The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; Ukrainian: Організація українських націоналістів, romanized: Orhanizatsiya ukrayins’kykh natsionalistiv) was a Ukrainian nationalist organisation established in 1929 in Vienna, uniting the Ukrainian Military Organization with smaller, mainly youth, radical nationalist right-wing groups. The OUN was the largest and one of the most important far-right Ukrainian organizations operating in the interwar period on the territory of the Second Polish Republic.[17][18]

              The OUN was mostly active preceding, during, and immediately after the Second World War. Its ideology has been described as having been influenced by the writings of Dmytro Dontsov, from 1929 by Italian Fascism, and from 1930 by German Nazism.[19][20][21][22][23][24] The Organization pursued a strategy of violence, terrorism, and assassinations with the goal of creating an ethnically homogenous and totalitarian Ukrainian state.[23][25]

              From Wikipedia.

    • Black AOC@lemmygrad.ml
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      Nice nazi dogwhistle there, cracker; should we fly you and yours upside down when Ukraine’s counter-offensive fails? Take your ass home to whatever lib instance you registered with. Anything is better than letting western-funded fascism fester on the planet; and that you don’t see things that way tells me exactly who you are, what you are, and whose water you carry.

      • Kettlepants@lemm.ee
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        It would appear the concept of Leninist ‘patient education’ is lost on yourself.

        Another maxim: you catch more flies with honey than you do with shit.

        I share your frustration but your language serves only to widen the divide between those who get the reality of things and those who have been brainwashed by the Western media. They are victims too, in a way.

        • Black AOC@lemmygrad.ml
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          Nah, the concept isn’t lost on me; I just wasn’t put on this earth to waste my breath educating the sons and daughters of settlers. If some poor lost liberal really needs someone to pat their head and rub their tummy for getting the bare basics right, there’s other people for that. Until these crackers stop killing my brothers and sisters, and I start seeing them put themselves in the way of this country’s killer pigs, that will never be me.

    • ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      So basically, your solution is appeasment and just let Russia America steamroll Ukraine Iraq and start biting at Poland’s Afghanistan’s feet? Let’s give them part of Czechoslovakia Iran while we are at it. Yeah no. Slava Ukraini Death to America 🇮🇶

      • marcoprolog@lemmy.ml
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        I am honestly confused, so please don’t take this too negatively, but it seems to me that you’re making the point that what the USA did in Iraq was terrible (which I agree to), but using that as an argument that Ukraine should just take more or less the same treatment from Russia?

          • marcoprolog@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            I’m sorry, but I don’t see how that’s relevant to the point. If we make this analogy, with how the invasion of Iraq by the USA was bad, why should we treat the invasion of Ukraine by Russia differently?

            • RedFortress@lemmygrad.ml
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              Because the USA is still heavily involved in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The same USA that destroyed Iraq is now pursuing its interests in another region of the world.

            • misterslime12@lemmygrad.ml
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              The USA has global hegemony right now, while Russia doesn’t have the economic capacity to be a hegemon. The USA has been bombing and destroying countries for its entire existence and is currently using Ukraine to try to do the same to Russia. It is powerful enough and dangerous enough that nearly any action that opposes US hegemony is a good thing for the rest of the planet. It’s already caused enough damage that it is now fundamentally an existential threat to humanity.

              In this lens, who does it make sense to support? Russia, who has repeatedly asked NATO to not expand eastwards after its application to join NATO twice got rejected, or Ukraine, who had a US-backed coup back in 2014 that was unpopular enough that Crimea and the Donbass voted to leave Ukraine? A coup that replaced the democratically elected pro-Russian government with an anti-Russian one who has been shelling the Donbass for almost a decade. The Ukraine border is geographically the hardest for Russia to defend (which is why they aren’t particularly worried about Finland joining NATO), a weakness exploited by Operation Barbarossa. Which side has Azov again?

              We support Russia because we support any and all actions that bring an end to the war in the Donbass as soon as possible. We support them because it was Ukraine who violated the Minsk agreements, proving that they can’t be trusted to not push into Russia and extend its shelling of russian-speakers in the Donbass into the entirety of Russia as soon as they somehow won against Russia. More importantly, Russia losing would mean it at best becoming a puppet state to the US and at worse being balkanized. Both outcomes would be objectively bad for China and every country that currently depends on Russia to resist US aggression (Cuba, Iran, Syria, everyone currently being sanctioned etc.).

              We don’t support Russia because we think it’s good or is a worker’s paradise. We support it because supporting US-backed Ukraine is objectively the wrong position to take. You can’t ignore a nation’s national security concerns and not expect them to react violently when said concerns are violated.

              • Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                Liberals have such a hard time thinking in anything other than a black and white moral lens when it comes to the adversaries they’ve been conditioned to hate, yet they reserve a bunch of grey space when it comes to their own history and figures, even as those same living figures continue to commit horrendous atrocities in the name of capitalism.

                Like you said, recognizing that the US is the greatest terroristic hegemon on Earth at the moment means that Russia losing this war would objectively be bad for the future of the global south and socialism at large. If Ukraine becomes a NATO state and Russia becomes further balkanized, these “progressives” will never get their wish for the uncorrupted socialist paradises they fantasize about. Acknowledging that means subscribing to material reality, not because we “stan dictators” of whatever the fuck. It doesn’t mean we like that two countries who essentially used to be siblings are forced into a meat grinder. We want it to end and we recognize who the real aggressor is.