Stylistillusional [none/use name]

Yes, Putin is popular because he is a crucial part of the state. After the shitshow that was the 90s, his name is synonymous with stability. You quite literally have to be an extremist to want to put that stability on the line. Even if you’re not fond of him, you have to recognise there’s no safe, viable alternative. There’s no way that the people most invested in the Russian state would let anyone else take the presidency without Putin’s consent.

In that sense the elections are fake: they’re not letting anyone else near the Kremlin no matter what. As opposed to the US where you’ll have two fake options.

Personally I think it’s weird to reject electoralism in the US/West and then to start defending Russian election results as ‘real’ because Putin is popular. You’re still playing the liberal game of electoralism.

Oops, wrong thread but close enough.

Generally I’ve been able to compartmentalise my insanity when reading mainstream sources pretty well. But with Gaza I just can’t take it. Even though Isreal is openly run by genocidal far-right ghouls, the idea that maybe their intention is to do ethnic cleansing doesn’t even get entertained. Eventhough they mostly agree that taking Hamas out militarily can’t be done. Do they think the Isrealis are stupid and don’t know this?

I’ll here people go on about how dangerous and crazy the Iranians and their ‘proxies’ are because they are fundamentalists. Motherfucker, that’s Isreal, that’s the US too. Israelis are literally using genocidal bible quotes to justify their actions. Maybe, just fucking maybe they want to do ethnic cleansing.

People that used to go on about how horrible the Russians were for bombing civilians will now call Isreal’s actions ‘impressive’. Fucking imperialist pigs.

I swear to God, this place is the only one I can stomach to visit for updates without it cometely ruining my day.

A lot of these settlements have either contracters or the IDF directly providing security. So the idea that Hamas could have broken out of Gaza and just found all the soldiers neatly in their bases seems unbelievable. The IDF is an occupying force, not a European military where it’s just some dudes with their thumbs up their asses in a barracks near some nature reserve.

Ultimately we can’t know how Hamas leadership told their soldiers to behave. But they do have a clear incentives not to condone the killing of civilians: they want to capture hostages and use them as leverage. They need to create the expectation that these hostages are treated fairly and can be returned safely so that it is entirely up to Israel whether it wants those civilians to die.

Tragically, civilians always die in wars. Both sides always propagandise this to claim that it is the other side that is just killing civilians as policy. The facts however, are abundantly clear when it comes to the question of which side shows the greater disregard for civilian casualties.

Blowbaguette

There’s going to be a ceasefire when neither side feels they can afford to make anymore gains on the ground. Both Ukraine and Russia aren’t interested in that right now. If that continues, I don’t believe Trump has any capacity to force a deal. I’m not a big understander of the American system, but it seems like congress could keep arms flowing to Ukraine with Trump in office. So even just cutting off supplies to Ukraine might be too much effort for Trump.

But that seems like the only viable option: cutting off Ukraine and just giving Russia what it wants. Which is still a hard sell for Trump. Especially if most of the people around him will pressure him against it.

If the war in Ukraine has progressed to the point where both sides are ready to make a deal, I don’t think it matters who’s in the white house.

Hey, you got to have something to do during meetings.

When it’s the US/West doing something there’s all this room for ‘nuance’ but when it is Bad Country it’s suddenly clear-cut good vs evil.

I go in at night and upvote everything, but by the next day they’ve redownvoted the whole field again, sometimes stacking their downvotes on top of eachother.

I mean, if Ukraine didn’t put pressure on Kherson the Russians would have happily stayed. Russia made mistakes and Ukraine capitalised on them. ‘You only won because I wasn’t really trying’ is a weak excuse. It takes two to tango.

Not that I don’t agree with your analysis overall. But I don’t think you have to be completely blinded by ideology to come to see that you have made gains when you were able to stretch Russia’s resources (which are highly constrained politically), and to try to recreate that in the future. Even if you know the chances of succes are low, are you not going to try given that you have just received a bunch of weapons and training?

Supposedly training will take 6 months. So maybe somewhere next year, but not unlikely near the end of that year, or the beginning of the year after.

Doesn’t seem likely that the war will be over by then. I still feel that it is a possibility the US will try for some sort of ceasefire and make Ukraine receiving F16s conditional on a ceasefire. At the same time, the problem remains of how to maintain an F16 fleet for Ukraine. Where are they going to fly from? Is NATO going to try for allowing Ukrainian F16s to take off in NATO territory and drop their payload in Ukrainian airspace? Especially if neither Russia or Ukraine feel much for negotiations.

My sense of the mood in Europe is that Russia has failed to escalate when Ukraine attacked Crimea, started droning Moscow, and now when it comes to testing the Russian blockade in the Black Sea. They are slowly escalating because they think Russia is unwilling or unable to respond.

Although there is more talk of a failed Ukrainian offensive, there is still an ambient sense that Ukraine is on the winning hand. Because they believe that Russia is running out of options.

Tbh, I rarely even have to check someone’s pronouns when commenting because using someone’s hyperlinked username is clearer anyway (which is why there is no other explanation than transphobia to want to deny others the ability to display their preferred pronouns).

But now pronouns allow me to quickly tell whether someone is a hexbear comrade.

I started following this site from the beginning, but somewhere along the way I just sorta lost interest. The content wasn’t that engaging too me after a while. I remember it as being mostly dunking on American politics and culture war stuff.

The war in Ukraine brought me back because I wanted an online space that wasn’t in complete denial about the Western role in the conflict and/or deeply reactionary. This site didn’t let me down.

I much prefer engaging with discussions on (geo)political developments with people I disagree with as a matter of degrees, rather than the rabid liberalism on other sites. Eventhough people on this site still say some pretty silly things sometimes, I take it in good faith. As much as I love me some internet drama, it is a breath of fresh air to be able to talk about current events from a socialist perspective without it devolving into a discussion on which 20th century ideology is the real true socialism.