The General Russia Thread

Oh nah I dont think it was either. Hitting some suburb buildings on the outskirts seems a waste and not really Ukraine's style. I just don't think it was a false flag operation. So I think the Russian corps are the guys behind it.

May be pro-Ukrainians acting independently from the Ukrainian state. Or an arm of the Ukrainian state using a front group for deniability reasons.

Objectively speaking, I am not sure that these incursions have much practical value.

Practical, yeah, not so much. But they're good for lowering morale and causing apprehension.

Every personnel that was to be sent to secure their border region is one less sent into Ukraine.

Every personell send to harass border regions is also not send for say, counteroffensive. But this is a discussion for a different thread.

Except the people attacking the border region are probably not actual Ukrainian soldiers. So they wouldn't be part of the counter-offensive anyway.

Is taking part in counteroffensives against their religion? Not to mention that they are not attacking on foot with hand-made weapons.

Edited by Smeagol17 on Jun 2nd 2023 at 12:02:47 PM

What does religion have to do with anything? The point is that the people attacking the border regions are not Ukrainian military forces.

So no, the counter-offensive isn't losing people to these attacks.

Against My Religion

"The Freedom of Russia Legion has been described as "operating under the umbrella" of Ukraine's International Legion. Russian opposition politician Ilya Ponomarev also claimed the unit to be acting as part of the Ukrainian armed forces. Ukrainian officials said the Freedom of Russia Legion operates as part of Ukraine's "defense and security forces" while it is inside Ukraine, but acts independently if it is outside the country."

Edited by Smeagol17 on Jun 2nd 2023 at 12:07:58 PM

So not the kind of people they'd actually send to the battlefield in a counter-offensive.

If they are all have been sent to Belgorod by then, then of course they wouldn't be able to take part...

Edited by Smeagol17 on Jun 2nd 2023 at 12:13:43 PM

It doesn't really matter that they won't be helpful for the counter-offensive, the number of people necessary to launch a raid is always smaller then the number needed to defend from it. Because the attacking side can choose the time and place to attack and thus can do more with less but the defenders have to defend every possible target.

Thus in this sort of situation the Russians would have to allocate more troops then the Ukrainians just to keep their territory safe, making this operation most likely a net-positive for Ukraine.

That. I mean, that's the entire philosophy behind guerrilla warfare tactics. Plus, the fact that they are very likely Russian citizens fighting the Russian government on Russian soil should have... interesting effects on Russian morale.

They need to be careful, though. The classic mistake is to attack the civilians, thereby alienating them. No insurgency can hope to succeed without civilian support. Stick to military targets, guys.

This depends on “raid on what?” If it is a raid on a soft target, then sure. But they are mostly civilian. If you plan to launch a raid on a military base and do serious damage, than it starts looking different.

As were the Chechen separatists . They didn’t get much support from the wider society outside Chechnya, and I doubt those people will get much sympathy from Belgorod citizens.

You may be right on that score.

About russia and their right wing extremist:

"There's a quote from Fidel Castro - perhaps self-admitting knowing the man - 'left-wing extremism breeds right-wing extremism, and vice versa.' "

I dont know if castro said this but if he said it, as a venezuelan can said is true to a very degree: when you have a ideology that is rigid, pro militaristic, have a us vs them mentality and see expansion of ideology with expansion of state power as one of the same, well.....you are not going to create a moderate or liberal left state, isnt? one can said it become a right wing with left cloths but that would be symplistic and kinda whitewashing of their soviet own faults but in the end a regime like that would eventually fill up of kleptocratcs and what is left conservatives in power.

If anything Putin manage to shift them to right wing is really easy because ti give them what they wanted: a narrative that allow them to get power and prestige without having to eve put the pretense of left ideas and made russia nationalism more palpatable than this weird ass comu-russian nationalist they got. or in short "is about us, saving russia from everyone else".

"you would expect countries that got out of an unpopular right wing dictatorship to have a strong left or far left presence, but i haven't heard of such a thing."

Kinda and kinda not, what you get are wariness of the previous administration and everything it represent, did the nazis eliminate far rights in germany? no but it put a very cap on the kind of thing they can said. granted it can also go the other way with a lot of "we did nothing wrong" and so own and on.

It was in his 600-page autobiography. He wrote as much as he talked.

The Nazis absorbed or sidelined the far-right in Germany, including the monarchists and iirc, a German party supporting Italian fascism.

On you mentioning conservatism within left-wing thought, there's a reason why tankies are increasingly called fascists in red paint.

Old habits are always difficult to break without both revolutionary change and a strong rule of law.

I repeat that every russian I've known is some flavor of anti-communist and incredibly cynical - almost disparaging - of Marxism-Leninism and Soviet government. General consensus is that social benefits were good but I've seen them mock the entire Soviet Union as a concept. There's a reason why Metro has communists and Nazis duking it out in a 'let the children fight' sense. Putin has made fun of Lenin and called Ukraine an artificial creation of his three times now.

But Putin and co can't help but play up the Soviet Union because in the end, fighting and winning on the largest battlefield in human history does a lot for russian nationalist mythology, and they are nostalgic for the feelings the Soviets envoked - power, feared by many, and an undisputed giant on the world stage.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Jun 5th 2023 at 11:22:38 AM

it remind the article you send about a muslism who went to iran and how it afect his religion for the worst and warn that in a way, what he saw was fake piety at best an a cynical disregard at worst.

Is kinda what totalitarism does as general thing to the belive it draws, it corrodes them into....this. must russian probably understand that soviet marxism is probably a doomed phisolophy that will forever be remind so but.....well, is hard not to see the greatness of the country that bleed the nazi the most and emerge bigger player for that. Is every bit of nationa mythos as the conquer of america.

I will said what putin did was simply to russify it.

The poor guy is still a Muslim after all that iirc, wherever in Latin America he's going back to.

Back on topic: Putin has simply tapped into memories of the Russian tsardom, nostalgia for the power of the Soviet Union, and Russified it. He is committed to a republic because it is convenient, but he is free to act like unquestioned autocrat like the Tsars (who were all suspicious of constitutionalism) and Stalin (the Soviet autocrat, everyone else actually had checks.)

This translates to incredibly bizarre shit where Chernobyl was denounced as a false Western narrative to make Russia look bad, despite the series criticizing the fatal Soviet stagnation and monolithic bureaucracy that collapsed the empire in the end. You'd think that'd be something they'd get behind, but no.

Plus Putin throwing jabs at Ukraine for both being Nazi and a creation of Lenin. Ironically fulfilling the attitude tankies take in supporting him, as well as their expectations of him. At least for the ones who are outright NazBols, and that ideology was born out of Russia post-Soviet collapse.

Sure he was still a muslim but his perception of is own faith probably got shaken and is less inocent(or naive) and he found a lot of people the same, a phenomena you can see repeat again and again, a opresive, corrupt or badly syste create contempt or cynism in the whole process, is why many latinos are so anti comunism for example, the rise of directly suport in open revolution in left spaces(and a sort of dismissal of biden and other center left) and hell maybe you can see protestatism as the same movement.

I call it ideological weariness.

but to return on topic, I think we often ignore the fall of the union happen in 1991, barely 30 years away, for older mileenials and zoomers the union is mostly a thing of the past but for folk sightly older it it may happen yesterday, it also show a somewhat alienation on how russia feel about the union than others(if I remenber ukraine ban soviet symbols) im not surprise Putin a former KGB in east hermany pretty much seen to look the soviet union as sort of federation that russia pull along and just sorta happen to be left but overlall nationalistic and deeply anti nazi.

National mythos men, they are a wonderfull drug

There's a Latino joke that Latinos will vote in a caudillo every thirty years if the economy is doing bad and young people are protesting.

On top of the national mythos is the list of grievances he had. The West fucked Russia by making them take on the same disastrous neoliberal privatize-the-fuck-outta-everything-fuck-social-services-fuck-the-poor model except worse due to Yeltsin's economic incompetence. Legitimate grievance. The rest, though - belief that the Soviet military campaigns in WWII were ignored or dismissed in the West, belief that Russia was treated with contempt all the time, that the West was encouraging ethnic separatism (aka former colonies y u no come back)

Then he had fifteen years of people hyping him up as the next Peter the Great. And then he compared himself to Peter the Great. By the time he invaded, he was convinced that he could not fail because he had bought so into his own hype he believed it was reality.

I do not see Russia getting out of this anytime soon without some version of a Stab-in-the-Back myth.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Jun 5th 2023 at 2:33:31 AM

Wonder who would be the so called stab.

Either the "westernized traitors", LGBT+, or one of their many ethnic minorities (if not all of them). Or just pull a russo-germanic classic and blame the jews.

Or a mix of all of the above, and all of course referred to as nazis

Edited by jdeo1997 on Jun 5th 2023 at 7:17:29 AM

“Beliefs that the West fucked Russia by letting them take on the same disastrous neoliberal privatize-the-fuck-outta-everything-fuck-social-services-fuck-the-poor model except worse due to Yeltsin's economic incompetence”

Replace “letting” with “making” - that’s the standard mode of international financial institutions - and that’s exactly what happened. And Russia’s living standards, health, and life expectancy (along with their international position and prestige) plummeted because of it.

It was a very, very ill-judged decision on the part of the West, and a big part of why Russia is now the way it is. Humiliated and impoverished former empires tend to shift hard towards the right wing. The US deliberately rebuilt Germany and Japan after WWII to avoid that kind of situation. Britain and France didn’t go far-right-nationalist in response to the loss of their empires because the loss of their empires largely coincided (around the 60s) with their standard of living going notably up as they recovered from WWII. (And in the case of France, because de Gaulle prevented a coup. You could argue that Brexit is a delayed response to the loss of Empire in Britain.)

Having/letting looter capitalists buy up Russia piecemeal was - while I’m sure the US found it ideologically satisfying - a very, very bad mistake.

Edited by Galadriel on Jun 5th 2023 at 2:16:37 AM

Yeah, it's weird to list that as a wrong belief. The West did do that.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 5th 2023 at 2:16:59 AM