This is just a reiteration of what we’ve already seen in the russian empire and in the USSR

Comparing the Russian Empire and the USSR is the most ahistorical thing you can possibly do. During the Russian Empire and for all of history before that, Ukraine was a people without a nation. Oppressed, without representation, without borders, without a right to education or even learning to read in their language.

The Bolsheviks, with their first constitution in 1917, granted the right to self-determination and secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire, which Lenin referred to as “the prison of peoples”. Quite literally after Poland seceded in this legal fashion, the Polish government decided it wanted to return to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth borders, and proceeded to unilaterally invade Ukraine and part of modern Belarus. It was the Red Army of the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, that fought off the Polish invasion and established a lasting Ukrainian People’s Republic for the first time in history.

This wasn’t without controversy: while Lenin argued for the right to representation and to a Ukrainian Republic within the USSR, others like Rosa Luxembourg argued for a united, more homogeneous sort of socialist soviet nationality that outgrew former nationalisms. It is partially thanks to Lenin that Ukraine ended up having its own borders, administration and representation.

I know what you’ll say: “but Holodomor! Genocide against Ukrainians!”. The famine of the USSR was a sad and unintended consequence of bad policy during the collectivisation/dekulakization process of the early 30s. Millions of people died both within Ukraine and without it, especially as well in Central Asia and southern Russia. As bad as it was, and as avoidable as one can argue it may have been, there’s simply no evidence of any intent of attack towards Ukrainian people, it’s not precedented by anything similar, and it’s not followed by anything similar in the entire history of the USSR.

In those decades and the ones to come, Ukraine would obtain and solidify its own nationality, people would for the first time obtain generalised literacy in their own language, the right to study in their language up to university level, a majority of publications (both journalistic and literary) in Ukrainian, and the very next president of the USSR Nikita Khruschchyov would be Ukrainian.

Attempting to construe a history of oppression of Ukrainians in the USSR is nothing but fictitious, anti-communist and russophobic propaganda, meant to create a divide between Ukrainians and Russians. There are clear geopolitical reasons to do so, and there are clear reasons why Ukrainians are very much afraid or simply hate Russians, because of the modern proto-fascist state that the Russian Republic has become. But creating a line between this capitalist country, the socialist USSR, and the feudalist Russian Empire, is simply an attempt to divide Eastern Europe further and to push Ukraine towards the EU and away from Russia. This point can be argued for without resorting to russophobic and anticommunist myths. We’re smarter than this.

it’s surrender

That’s generally what happens when, you know, you’re losing a war.

If Russia withdrew their troops, there would be peace immediately

That’s technically true. However, Russia uses military force in its sphere of influence for a reason, not solely because Putin bad (which he is, I’m a commie and Putin is fascist-adjacent at best).

Russia, like all big capitalist countries, wants to secure a sphere of influence in which it can do easy trade, influence the politics, and generally have support from these countries. The US does this for example with western Europe through NATO, and with less diplomatic methods by supporting coups and invading other countries. China does this through economic trade and through massive investment projects. Russia is in a weak position internationally, barely recovered economically from the dismantling of the USSR, and it’s surrounded by former soviet republics very much in a similar plane (barely economically recovered from the 90s crisis as a consequence of the dismantling of the USSR).

These post-soviet republics, such as Ukraine or Georgia, adopted capitalism (as Russia did) in a very quick and disorderly fashion, and the resulting oligarchs and capitalist owners ended up fumbled in a mix of pro-russian and pro-european/US positions.

The EU and the USA both exert pressure on these countries to try and bring them to their side. Being economically and politically stronger, they can use trade, diplomacy, intelligence and economic means to alienate these countries front the Russian sphere of influence. Russia, in a more precarious and weaker economic and political position, simply doesn’t have the means to maintain the diplomatic, economic and intelligence means to maintain these countries aligned to itself.

The war in Ukraine, much as the interference in Georgian and Romanian elections by the EU, mustn’t be understood as a struggle between freedom and oppression. It’s sadly just a struggle between two capitalist empires, namely Russia and US/EU, fighting for the control of smaller countries that they want aligned to themselves.

Once Russia doesn’t have the means to economically, diplomatically and through intelligence, to influence its former sphere of influence into staying by its side, the only option left is the military route. The US and the EU know this, and they keep trying to mess with Russia’s sphere of influence for gains to their empires. The reality is that there is no good side and no bad side: it’s just struggle between opposing empires.

So yes, technically if Russia withdrew its troops, there would be peace. But this peace would mean that firstly the surrounding regions around Russia, and Russia itself, would become colonies and vassal states of the western world. It wouldn’t mean “freedom” for Ukraine, as we can see by the exploitative contract for the minerals of Ukraine that the US offers. If you think the EU will offer something substantially less exploitative towards Ukrainians, you’re wrong.

Ukraine, sad as it is, as long as it remains a state between empires, will suffer the effects of both. And only socialism in Europe and Russia can offer a meaningful response to this.

Point systems that prevent you from air travel or entering other provinces because you dared criticize the almighty government

That’s… just not real… Your understanding of Chinese policy comes from curated western sources with vested interests in putting a dystopian and totalitarian understanding of China and its government in our countries’ people (we’re both westerners). There are systems in place to prevent certain convicted criminals from freely moving around there country, but that has little to do with criticising the party.

Regardless, big data on traffic doesn’t imply knowledge about the particular vehicles and drivers inside said vehicles. You’re just going ahead and assuming “dystopian control of people” because it’s China.

So let’s push for ramping up the military industrial complex in Europe instead?

The horrible and dystopian part for the comment above yours is the fact that it happens in China, which is ontologically bad and oppressive

Your take is that changing traffic management is a violation of human rights?

What’s your solution to that

And yet. All of this feels like a seismic shit prefacing going to war

And what’s the solution to that? Further militarization of the US and Europe? Or diplomacy and negotiations?

China’s government isn’t exactly known for beating people to death. The cops murdering a given ethnicity at astonishing rates is an american thing.

You see what you’re doning though? You’re starting from the assumption that the Chinese government is murderous and genocidal, and any evidence presented to you simply can be disregarded.

People don’t claim that they forcibly placed 1 million Americans in Area 51 though

Everyone in China has a smartphone, as you probably known people pay 90% of the time using QR codes with WeChat or Alipay. It’s not believable that there isn’t footage of the “horrendous concentration camps” plastered all over western media, if there was any footage, we’d be exposed to it nonstop

That was enough to find a link to the poll. Thanks!

Thing is: kinda? With Palestine you were able to find new footage every day of innocents being exterminated, there’s never been even remotely anything compared to that in Xinjiang

1 in 5 black men in the US above 35 have been in jail, the numbers aren’t even close in Xinjiang, no matter the source you use. Reeducation camps in a (so far very successful) war against terrorism =/= genocide. Go watch Little Chinese Everywhere (Chinese travel vlogger) videos on Xinjiang, especially in Kashgar, judge for yourself whether a genocide is going on there.

Countries with more parties such as those in Western Europe are also electing fascists. The answer doesn’t lie in more parties. China has a majority party and it doesn’t get people doing the Sieg Heil

Could you spare a link to that 29%? I’m curious

“Diplomacy dies”

What diplomacy has there been for the past 3 years of war?

We are workers as a class, not consumers, we work way more than the wealthy whereas they consume more. Our power resides in labor organising, unionisation, and mutual aid, not in consumption.

Neither of those were consumer boycotts though