His plane has crashed and he’s on the passenger list, but it’s not proven yet that he was on the plane. He’s the person, who faked his death in the past.
It seems like oddly coincidental timing that Russia also officially relieved Surovikin as head of the airforce today (he still hasn’t been seen since the mutiny): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/23/russia-removes-sergei-surovikin-as-head-of-aerospace-forces
Not saying he’s definitely dead, but I doubt this is him faking his own death so much as him slipping an assassination attempt if he’s alive.
Ah yes. The general who the Kremlin said was “resting.” Nothing ominous about that.
Death is the ultimate rest
Agreed, coordinated take down of Prigozhin and his allies.
I heard it played out exactly like the opening scene from Dark Knight Rises, too.
i want to get a hug from Tom Hardy too.
It would be extremely painful
for you
You’re a big guy
For you
I remember it was such an awesome opening in imax
It was an awesome opening in a public park restroom too
There were 10 people on the plane (3 pilots, 7 passengers) but they only recovered 8 bodies…
THERE’S A CHANCE HE’S ALIVE!
North Koreans going to Ukraine was a psyop. They were actually hired by Prigozhin to go to Russia and resurrect him after tricking everyone he died
If he manages to wiggle out of this one I will lose it I swear haha.
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They expect
oneeight of us in the wreckage, brother.the fire rises
Oh thank god!
Imagine blowing up a $5M Embraer just to fake his own death - and kill others in the process.
I’m sure Putin’s chef had money lying around, but burning all that cash sounds a little desperate to me.
Raise hands if you’d rather die for realsies to save $5M in expenses
That’s not what I said.
Impressive Russia was able to push an entire plane out of a high rise window.
If only America knew about this trick before 9/11
It was Novichok-ing the tires…
Aren’t airplane “accidents” more of a traditional CIA method? Not saying it was them, but from Putin I would expect poison or window.
Or maybe this is how Prigozhin decided to disappear. He may be on a beach in the Caribbean drinking a piña colada for all we know.
It’s funny how nobody actually believes this was an accident.
Maybe it was Homelander.
Torrijos and Roldos instantly come to mind.
they put polonium-210 in the engines
Hexbear and default lemmy libs coming together to laugh at prigozhin getting merced is so goddamn funny lmao.
Literally the no more brother wars meme
No more half measures, Vladmir
Never get on board a helicopter, and never go on board a plane if you just pissed off a guy famous for offing his political enemies. Come on guy, that’s politics 101.
Seriously, have none of these guys listened to Rachel Jake’s podcast?
come to think of it don’t try and fail to kill putin no fucking way that works out
#JesusNut
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I’ve never seen tankies and libs ever so united in celebration.
It’s as if leftists do not actually like Putin or any of the other ghouls on the Russian side, but are instead critical of NATO and willing to consider NATO opponents as rational actors instead of cartoon villains.
I oppose NATO over other Ghoulish countries because it’s a greater threat to the world right now.
How is it a threat to anyone outside of Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
You can also find similar examples for Africa and Asia.
The Cold war ended more than 30 years ago.
I think Iraq is a fair point. The rest are weak sauce as fuck for a variety of reasons that I’ll not trouble myself to enumerate.
That said, I myself was never onboard with the US invasion of Iraq or our long time presence in Afghanistan. They were both bullshit and never would have happened had it been up to me.
Russia is a country run by cartoon villains. Can you not picture Shoigu sneaking up behind someone with a large round bomb that says ACME on it, only to discover that the fuse has been accidentally lit by a soldiers cigarette?
I think most people of the left or right can see the situation for what it is. However Russia is obviously crafting messages to appeal to those on the extremes. When you see people on the hard left screeching about Ukrainian Nazis or advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at. When you see people from the hard right screeching about Ukrainian immigrants or the cost of the war vs America / Europe first then you know they’ve been gotten at.
As for Prigozhin, I think most people, even Russians are glad that he is dead but for different reasons. Seems clear that Putin murdered him for his disloyalty but nobody in Ukraine is going to mourn his loss for the spent force that is Wagner.
People think Ukraine has a Nazi problem because western media was shouting about it from the rooftops for a decade before the invasion. Then they only whispered it if they mentioned it at all but they kept on posting pictures of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi insignia plastered on their faces or their equipment. Or photos of politicians with a portrait of Bandera on the wall above their desk. The gullible liberal journalists didn’t even know what they had to censor out at the start of the war.
Unlike libs, the ‘hard’ left didn’t start looking at Ukraine on the date of the invasion and they didn’t wipe their memories clean of the historical context. A conspiracy involving Russian propagandists isn’t needed to explain this.
Neither are Russian propagandists needed to explain that racist westerners are going to be racist against immigrants and refugees, wherever they’re from.
Ukraine has had a far right problem but lots of countries do. Doesn’t mean it’s more than the fringe as it is in other countries and it’s CERTAINLY not a credible talking point or justification for war to invade a sovereign democracy. And the stupid part is that this shit still goes onto today, even to this comment where you attempt to justify it.
The collective west does have a Nazi problem, it’s acute in Ukraine.
Ukraine has been getting shelled for over 8 years now, it’s been the Ukrainian government doing it, and that specifically has been what provoked the invasion.
It’s just observable reality, idk what’s so hard about remembering events from a few years ago for liberals
Svoboda having one seat in the Rada kind of acute?
As far as general patriotism is concerned sure that’s on an all-time high in Ukraine but guess what, that kind of stuff happens if you get invaded. Which started in 2014, don’t forget that, and Ukraine has been under hybrid attack from Russia since at least 2000, the 90s being only a brief respite from centuries of colonialism and that only because Russia didn’t know WTF it was doing.
The important part is the type of nationalism you see. And that’s much closer to the likes of the SNP than to Nazis.
“general patriotism” I see swastikas, things that sub in for swastikas, iron crosses, and totenkopfs.
You can fuck right off with the “centuries of colonialism” that’s literlly the west repackaging its own history to accuse others of.
I thought you guys were the ones who said that portions of a country can unilaterally vote to leave and its okay. That was what you lot pulled with Serbia, why does it suddenly no longer apply here?
You mean they’ve been fighting Russian backed separatists that were trying to join their regions with Russia
If they want to live under a totalitarian regime they were always free to move to Russia themselves
Ah yes the ever popular “they should have self deported instead of getting ethnically cleansed”
How come you guys were okay with kosovo ‘voting’ to leave Serbia, but suddenly this is a bridge too far?
Do you realize how sociopathic this sounds? Are all separatists deserving of being bombed by the country they live under? Would you say the same to the people of Yemen, or Palestine or Ethiopia? “You’re being bombed, so just leave”?
they were always free to move
Word for word right-wing talking point
If they want to live under a totalitarian regime they were always free to move to Russia themselves
This is literally just “if you hate
americaukraine so much, go back to your own country!” repainted as a liberal viewpointShould the Bosnian Muslims just have gone back to their own country to avoid being murdered by right wing paramilitaries too?
Careful not to let your MAGA hat fall when you yell at the clouds.
What does totalitarian mean?
Doesn’t mean it’s more than the fringe
I guess you didn’t pay attention. Whenever they post pictures of Ukrainian soldiers there’s a good chance that you will see a Totenkopf or a Black Sun badge. When western news interviews lesser known Ukrainian politicians, there’s a good chance that you will see a Bandera portrait in the background.
The rise of the ukrainian far right has been well documented in western media before the invasion. Hell, google “Western media before February of 2022”
a sovereign democracy[Citation needed]
In fact it’s neither sovereign, since the US couped Ukraine in 2014, nor it is a democracy, but an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country. The contrast with Russia lies in the absence of a single pivotal leader like Putin, and they fully adhere to Western interests.
This doesn’t make the invasion “good” as in “Aragorn is a good guy”. The NATO encroaching makes it understandable. Which is completely different from “good”. Understandable means that there is some kind of rationality at play. Which means it was probably preventable. Which means that some kind of solution is to be had. Hopefully…
spoiler
"Then came Russia’s invasion. Within months, many of these same institutions had plunged into an Orwellian stampede to persuade the West that Ukraine’s neo-Nazi regiment was suddenly not a problem.
It wasn’t pretty. In 2018, The Guardian had published an article titled “Neo-Nazi Groups Recruit Britons to Fight in Ukraine,” in which the Azov Regiment was called “a notorious Ukrainian fascist militia.” Indeed, as late as November 2020, The Guardian was calling Azov a “neo-Nazi extremist movement.”
But by February 2023, The Guardian was assuring readers that Azov’s fighters “are now leading the defence of Mariupol, insisting they have shed their previous dubious politics and rapidly becoming Ukrainian heroes.” The campaign believed to have recruited British far-right activists was now a thing of the past.
The BBC had been among the first to warn of Azov, criticizing Kyiv in 2014 for ignoring a group that “sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.” A 2018 report noted Azov’s “well-established links to the far right.”
Shortly after Putin’s invasion, though, the BBC began to assert that although “to Russia, they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group,” the Azov Regiment was being “falsely portrayed as Nazi” by Moscow." link
Sorry but this is utter bollocks.
bollocks
I see the cognitive dissonance is kicking in for you. Hopefully you will recover, and you’ll read western mainstream narratives more critically.
How funny is this bit though?
"The BBC had been among the first to warn of Azov, criticizing Kyiv in 2014 for ignoring a group that “sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.” A 2018 report noted Azov’s “well-established links to the far right.”
Shortly after Putin’s invasion, though, the BBC began to assert that although “to Russia, they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group,” the Azov Regiment was being “falsely portrayed as Nazi” by Moscow."
They suddenly became not-nazis in February 2022? But they kept the wolfsangel? Was BBC spouting Russian misinfo in 2014? Or was it a Russian time travelling double agent who wrote all those articles for prominent western papers about the concerning rise of neonazis in Ukraine? If they are so fringe, why are they giving them so much airtime?
oh, okay, good talk
I don’t know what you think I’m trying to justify. You said:
When you see people on the hard left screeching about Ukrainian Nazis or advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at.
I explained that the ‘hard left’ has been concerned about Nazis in Ukraine for a long time. You can understand that communists are going to keep a close eye on countries that ban communist parties. Yes other places have a far right problem too. Communists keep an eye on reactionaries elsewhere as well but it’s hardly germane to a conversation about the circumstances of a war in Ukraine, is it?
It’s not the historical “concern”, it’s the constant parroting of Russian talking points by useful idiots on the far left. “Oh look at these Nazis [showing picture from 2014]”, meanwhile Ukraine is actually a pluralist democracy and has a professional / conscript army fighting an invasion. They’re not Nazis in aggregate or even substantially. It’s sort of shit I’m obviously referring to.
pluralist democracy
Pluralist democracy is when you seize power through force and then ban opposition parties.
The pictures I’m taking about have been taken and shared since the invasion. This is not ‘historical’ in the sense of pre-dating the invasion.
In any event, if the people you’re talking to are discussing reasons for the invasion, the salient facts are the ones that pre-date the invasion. Nobody had the benefit of being able to see facts or pictures taken after the invasion before it occurred; these newer details could not have factored into the equation beforehand. Which may explain (I have no idea because you’re talking in the abstract and not providing receipts) why people would bring up the (highly relevant) historical context.
Ukraine is under martial law. Eleven opposition parties have been suspended. The communist party was banned and it’s assets seized. This is not what democracy looks like. It is in no way pluralist. Maybe you have a different definition of pluralist democracy than I do.
Will things improve after the war? It’s hard to say now but considering that Ukraine went after the communist party eight or more years ago, it’s unlikely. The fate of ‘pro-Russian’ parties depends on who wins the war. They’ll either be demonised or praised for being ‘right all along’. You can guess how the narrative will be rewritten, either way.
Unfortunately, the aftermath of this war will be terrible for years. That outlook is even bleaker if Ukraine loses with any kind of quasi-military intact. They are now even more heavily armed than before, they will be pissed at losing, and they will be more battle hardened than ever. So even if Russia wins, the political landscape will look different throughout the region, but it’s unlikely to become a pluralist democracy. (Please notice the ‘ifs’ in this paragraph, I have made no prediction as to who will ‘win’.)
You can refer to whatever you like. You are imputing motive on people for saying things you don’t like. That does not mean that the imputed motive is the real motive. Some people have a more nuanced take on the war than you are willing to accept. Having a nuanced understanding of a complicated issue requires an understanding of as many factors as possible.
Looking at a process (e.g. war) in all its relations (internal, historical, political economic, to start with) is the basic Marxist approach and yet is alien to the liberal/bourgeois approach, so I understand if this is unfamiliar to you. If you want to see whether communists do this kind of thing with any other topic (it’s literally every topic) please pick up almost any Marxist text. Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ is a good example of this ‘historical materialism’.
I don’t want to impute motive to you, so I’ll just say that I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to erase or apologise for the fact that Ukraine had and has a Nazi problem. Nobody that I know of is claiming that the Nazis are in control of every state civil or military organ. Usually, the claim is that the yanks funded anti-Russian, pro-west separatists and the Nazi militias to provoke Russia. Read that how you will.
most people of the left or right can see the situation for what it is
I couldn’t disagree more. In this thread I have someone telling me Ukraine is currently pushing Russia back despite the front not moving appreciably for nearly a year now. It’s also common to hear Putin described as a mustache-twirling villain who just woke up one day and said “I will conquer the whole of Ukraine in three days,” a take similarly detached from reality.
advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at.
You do realize that in order to minimize (working class) casualties some kind of peace deal needs to be signed? And in order to sign a peace deal first there needs to be a ceasefire? The sooner the ceasefire starts, the better.
Are you saying that western politicians torpedoing any kind of truce and/or peace deal is “Russian misinfo”?
spoiler
Russia and Ukraine may have agreed on a tentative deal to end the war in April [2022], according to a recent piece in Foreign Affairs.
“Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
The news highlights the impact of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to stop negotiations, as journalist Branko Marcetic noted on Twitter. The decision to scuttle the deal coincided with Johnson’s April visit to Kyiv, during which he reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to break off talks with Russia for two key reasons: Putin cannot be negotiated with, and the West isn’t ready for the war to end.
The apparent revelation raises some key questions: Why did Western leaders want to stop Kyiv from signing a seemingly good deal with Moscow? Do they consider the conflict a proxy war with Russia? And, most importantly, what would it take to get back to a deal?
JACQUES BAUD: * In fact, in my book I mention only Ukrainian sources, and Ukrainian sources said explicitly that Boris Johnson and the West basically prevented a peace agreement. So that’s not an invention from some Putin partisan here the West; that’s also what the Ukrainians felt. And you had a third occasion when that happened, that was in August, when you had this meeting between [Turkish president] Erdoğan and Zelenskyy in Lviv. And here again, Erdoğan offered his services to mediate some negotiation with the Russians, and just a few days after that Boris Johnson came unexpectedly in Kiev, and again, in a very famous press conference he said explicitly, ‘No negotiations with the Russians. We have to fight. There is no room for negotiation with the Russians.’
the cost of the war
Should we ignore the significant human and economic costs of the ongoing war and the support for the military-industrial complex? Why? Is this some kind of noble war against Sauron or what?
You do realise that a peace deal / ceasefire which involves Ukraine giving up land, sovereignty or anything else is horseshit being pushed around by useful idiots? And who is feeding the far left with this crap? Russia because of course they are. And you only have to look at prior deals by Russia to see how believable any peace would be do. Or ask Yevgeny Prigozhin how deals work.
You do realise that a peace deal / ceasefire which involves Ukraine giving up land, sovereignty or anything else is horseshit being pushed around by useful idiots?
The counteroffensive failed spectacularly, even western sources admit this.
How many more people you want to send in the meat grinder?
Here’s an idea: call a ceasefire and let the diplomats negotiate, and let’s see what happens. Let’s see what actual ukrainians want after a few months of negotiation. Maybe Boris Johnson should fuck off. At least people are not dying until then. Outlandish, I know.
And who is feeding the far left with this crap?
Now this is qanon level conspiracy theory. I am against war between capitalist nations in general. On one side you have an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country, and on the other side you have an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country.
Since I live in a NATO country I criticise NATO more, since they are the ruling class above me and there’s enough criticism of Putin around here anyway.
As far as deals go, US/Ukraine isn’t trustworthy either. The Minsk agreement was bullshit. What happened to nord stream btw?
Yeah no-one is against a peace deal at this point. Just against the one where you let they totalitarian agressor win. Anyone who knows anything about history knows you have to stop those kind of regimes at the earliest possible moment.
Russia has won, though. They have taken the separatist parts of Ukraine and cannot be removed. So the choices are:
- Keep grinding poor Ukranians into hamburger and go to the bargaining table later, with a weaker position; or
- Go to the bargaining table now and get the best deal you can.
Here’s the kicker: Assuming Russia is willing to negotiate a deal, would it honor that deal? It did, after all, guarantee security in exchange for Ukraine relinquishing its nuclear weapons, and it broke that commitment.
Ukraine has very good reason to believe that Russia would only use a deal to stop the war as an opportunity to build its strength for another invasion, later. There’s strong evidence that it’s not the capture of separatist territories that is Putin’s goal, but the denial of Ukrainian as a distinct cultural identity, and to prevent it from aligning culturally with the West (even leaving aside the issue of NATO).
If you think the enemy won’t honor a deal, and won’t stop its aggression long-term—and Ukranian leadership has said that that’s exactly what they believe loudly and often—what’s the incentive to negotiate for a ceasefire?
On your first point: Russia’s argument for why they have gone back on the security exchange for Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament is one of the very same arguments NATO uses when claiming that they never promised russia that they wouldn’t expand NATO east of Germany… The US either lies, and denies making the promise (they did) or they say that they promised the soviet union, which is not the same thing as Russia. Ukraine had a discontinuity in government in 2014: this is something they and the EU acknowledged officially during Ukraine’s application to join the EU… So idk if the government of Ukraine today is a distinct entity from the political formation in the immediate aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, but that is what Ukraine and the EU have said as much.
Your first point in your second paragraph is something that could be said of Ukraine/NATO just as well. If anything, Ukraine has completely expended its reserve of weapons and now relies on a dwindling supply of old weapons from NATO… it may have just gone through a 3rd army in this last offensive… if anything a peace agreement would give NATO more time to arm Ukraine for another time when they decide to break the peace agreement… This isn’t based on speculation or a belief that Ukrainians are dishonest (unlike most speculation about Russia) because this is exactly what Angela Merkle said Minsk I & II were for: to use a peace deal to give NATO time to arm Ukraine for war… In order for peace to be achieved, both sides are going to have to accept some sort of good faith. If that can’t be done then more people will continue to have their lives thrown away.
They could not be removed from Afganistan either. Until they were.
Ukraine can grind up Russian conscripts and free their country inch by inch if they have to.
Meanwhile the rest of the world can help continuing to destroy the Russian economy as best as we can
The Soviets weren’t removed from Afghanistan any more than we were – they left because they lacked popular support and kept taking losses (because we were arming terrorists who would go on to do 9/11, but I’m sure that type of blowback won’t come from arming Ukranian neo-Nazis!). The parts of Ukraine Russia is occupying largely wanted to leave Ukraine before the war even started. It’s not the same scenario.
Even your best case scenario is “fight a bloody stalemate until one side runs out of troops,” which is incredibly destructive to Ukraine even if they win, and of course they won’t, because the smaller country that can’t just sit back behind extensive defenses isn’t going to win a bloody stalemate.
Yeah no-one is against a peace deal at this point
Great, call a ceasefire now.
Just against the one where you let they totalitarian agressor win. Anyone who knows anything about history knows you have to stop those kind of regimes at the earliest possible moment.
So you are against a peace deal? You do know that the fabled ukrainian counteroffensive has failed completely? How many more regular ukrainians should die in hopeless counteroffensives?
Btw it seems like you don’t know what totalitarian means. Actual academic historians tend to avoid this term since the seventies.
The Ukrainians are the ones who can decide if and when they want to surrender. They are gaining ground every day and have all the time they want to kill as many invaders as they want. Let’s see how many men, women and money Putin is prepared to waste before he eventually retreats, Afhganistan style
I’m sorry, are you the same person I’ve been talking to? Because it seems like you haven’t actually read anything I’ve written.
The Ukrainians are the ones who can decide if and when they want to surrender.
Western politicians actively sabotaged peace talks. Read previous comments for sources.
They are gaining ground every day
This has no basis in reality. Even overly optimistic western sources have admitted the failure of the spring counteroffensive.
have all the time they want
How can you be this wrong? They have limited manpower and more and more soldiers die every day. Every week spent warring is a huge burden on their economy.
I’m not gonna answer you again since you are completely out of touch with reality. Even prowar western journalists are more careful with their wording.
Ghouls can be rational actors without not being ghouls.
If a ghoul’s fundamental values involve control, domination and power, doing everything they can in a bid to control a strip of land recently found to have plenty of energy natural resources would be a rational action from their point of view, even if it involves provoking immense suffering upon millions of people. You don’t get to say that US presidents’ actions can only be explained by the hubris of people and systems that want endless growth and control, but Putin’s actions cannot.
If NATO has historically sucked, but countries surrounding the country led by that ghoul rationally feel the need to protect themselves, it’s logical they’ll want to join NATO.
The question here is why you’re far more willing to accept the rationality of Putin than the rationality of his victims when they legitimately ask for NATO’s support to defend themselves, and instead attribute them the category of sheep easily manipulated by NATO rather than accepting their autonomy and sovereignity to make their own decisions.
You don’t get to say that US presidents’ actions can only be explained by the hubris of people and systems that want endless growth and control, but Putin’s actions cannot.
This is the start of a cogent argument but it needs to be followed through.
The flip side of the coin is that you don’t get to accept that “US presidents’ actions can … be explained by … want[ing] endless growth and control” and reject any notion that it would use Ukraine to secure endless growth for itself. This may not be you. But it follows logically for those who understand that the US/NATO is the greatest threat to world peace.
If profit drives Putin, why Ukraine and not another neighbour who hasn’t been courting NATO and accepting western money, weapons, training, etc since at least circa 2014? The answer is because the US chose Ukraine to provoke Russia.
If profit drives Putin, why Ukraine and not another neighbour who hasn’t been courting NATO and accepting western money, weapons, training, etc since at least circa 2014? The answer is because the US chose Ukraine to provoke Russia.
Well, there’s really no reason to use hard power on any country that hasn’t been courting NATO. You can just use soft power (Belarus, Kazakhstan) in that case. Precisely when this ceases to work and a country does starts approaching Russia’s rivals, Russia appears to employ their military power (Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine).
Good points. Soft power seems to have been starting to work in Ukraine, too, until Maidan in 2014. For me, the key thing is ‘approaching Russia’s rivals’.
On the one hand, Russia’s not going to like that. On the other hand, if we accept that Russia exercising soft power in e.g. Belarus and Kazakhstan means hard power isn’t necessary – they’re already within its orbit/under it’s wing – then when e.g. Ukraine approaches the US and turns away from Russia, the US has already effectively taken control of Ukraine before Russia invades. Albeit through soft power.
And that throws a different light on the civil war in which Ukrainian militias are shelling ethnic Russian Ukrainians for being ‘separatists’. Because it means it’s being supported by Russia’s arch-rival, the US, a country well known for such destabilising and provocative antics, as the recent history of West Asia attests.
The Donbas separatists were already well supplied, and the Crimea was already well invaded, by RU, well before the West really started pouring support. I hope this sheds a different light on things for you
I have no idea what timeline you’re working with. The US was meddling in Ukraine since at least 1994. This ramped up in 2005. It supported a coup in 2014. Then the civil war started. The US was involved from before and throughout.
You seem to live in a fantasy timeline where Putin didn’t invade Georgia for the same reason
I’m glad you’ve brought that up. Because it, too, suggests that Russia invaded Georgia for the same reason: yank meddling and provocation:
Though Georgia is located in a region well within Russia’s historic sphere of influence and is more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, Bush nevertheless launched an ambitious campaign to bring Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Russians, who had already seen previous U.S. assurances to Gorbachev that NATO would not extend eastward ignored, found the prospects of NATO expansion to the strategically important and volatile Caucasus region particularly provocative. This inflamed Russian nationalists and Russian military leaders and no doubt strengthened their resolve to maintain their military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. …
Amid accusations of widespread corruption and not adequately addressing the country’s growing poverty, Saakashvili himself faced widespread protests in November 2007, to which he responded with severe repression, shutting down independent media, detaining opposition leaders, and sending his security forces to assault largely nonviolent demonstrators with tear gas, truncheons, rubber bullets, water cannons, and sonic equipment. Human Rights Watch criticized the government for using “excessive” force against protesters and the International Crisis Group warned of growing authoritarianism in the country. Despite this, Saakashvili continued to receive strong support from Washington and still appeared to have majority support within Georgia, winning a snap election in January by a solid majority which – despite some irregularities – was generally thought to be free and fair.
Now where have we seen that kind of thing
before—I mean since?Bush was also involved in provoking Russia in Ukraine, btw, before his eventual successor went ahead and pulled the same stunt again, knowing what the result was in Georgia:
In remarks likely to infuriate the Kremlin, Bush said Ukraine should be invited during this week’s Nato summit in Bucharest to join Nato’s membership action programme, a prelude to full membership.
He also said that there could be no deal with Moscow over the US administration’s contentious plans to locate elements of its controversial missile defence system in eastern Europe.…
Bush said after talks … in Kiev[:] “I strongly believe that Ukraine and Georgia should be given MAP [Membership Action Plans], and there are no tradeoffs - period.”…
Germany and France are leading opposition from within the EU to such a move, arguing that it would needlessly antagonise Russia and provoke a new crisis between Russia and the west. …
In central Kiev, several hundred protesters defied a court ban and shouted anti-Nato slogans in Independence Square, the focal point of the 2004 pro-western “orange revolution” protests, which swept Yushchenko to power. A few thousand protesters were massed in the square today ahead of Bush’s arrival. For many Ukrainians, joining Nato is not a priority. Only 30% of respondents in the former Soviet state support the move.
Who knows why Germany and France changed their tune by the time it came to Ukraine a few years later? We know why Ukrainians wanted the yanks to gtfo; they saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want to be sacrificed for US goals. Unfortunately, corrupt officials sold the people out.
Turns out it’s hard to point to a war that doesn’t have grubby US fingerprints all over it.
So country wants to leave Russian SOI: arm local separatists, wait until country intervenes, then send in military and push for regime change. #noimperialism
I don’t know what you think I’ve been trying to say. And I don’t know what you’re trying to say.
It seems they also have a tendency to consider NATO as cartoons villains. Also, tankies are not the average lefties, they are at the extreme of the left.
It seems they also have a tendency to consider NATO as cartoons villains
If NATO did not want to be considered cartoon villains, they shouldn’t be so cartoonishly evil.
Thank you for confirming.
You seem to be under some kind of belief that people should be ashamed of an accurate assessment of NATO, and that it is some sort of mistake to stand by it. This is weird
NATO does more good than ruZZia for the world
What good does it do? When was the last time they did good? The current Russian state and NATO can both burn as far as I’m concerned.
Wait so are tankies anti-NATO? All leftists are anti-NATO lmao
Tankies are more specifically pro-dictatorship and pro-oligarchy so long as the countries claim to be Communist.
gaddafi was sodomized to death with a knife. i can hardly think of a more cartoonishly evil organization.
Was that decided by NATO?
You’re saying that the NATO bombings and the NATO-backed rebels had nothing to do with it…? He was fleeing a NATO air strike.
Yes. Gaddafi was also certainly killed based on French intelligence, and there is substantial evidence that the men who assassinated him were French assets. Part of the reason, apart from the broader geopolitical aim of annihilating a country which wanted to engage in the construction of international monetary and commerical systems outside of the orbit and control of the American petro-dollar, Gaddafi had essentially bribed Sarkozy at a certain point and was holding this over the latter’s head (Sarkozy is infamously corrupt). See:
- https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/021012/gaddafi-executed-french-revelations-libyan-agent
- https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/french-secret-service-killed-gaddafi-sarkozys-orders-reports
- https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20121001-french-spy-killed-kadhafi-sarkozys-orders-papers-claim
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210759/Gaddafi-killed-French-secret-serviceman-orders-Nicolas-Sarkozy-sources-claim.html
- https://www.euronews.com/2018/03/20/sarkozy-in-libya-case-what-does-it-all-mean-
Hegemon’s have to rule by fear. Read any bloodsoaked page from the history of the Roman Empire. Fear is best instilled through unimaginable atrocity. What do you think the rulers of the rest of Africa and the Middle East thought after they saw how Gaddafi, head of the most prosperous (per-capita, quality of life, standard of living, etc.) state in Africa, ended up?
By his people, yes. Not sure what that has to do with NATO or even why that was a bad thing.
Funny and horrific ends for genocidal dictators is overall a good thing.
Yes, what could NATO-funded rebels and NATO bombings have to do with the brutal execution of a man fleeing both.
Sexual violence isn’t funny.
“Cartoon villain” here means “a villain who is just intrinsically evil and does evil things as a result.” Contrast this with real people, who generally have material or ideological motivational for the actions they take.
The left views NATO as evil not because it’s full of cartoon villains, but because it is an organization that consciously, due to material and ideological motivations, chooses to immiserate the global south for the benefit of its constituent countries’ ruling classes.
Define tankie
I use it similarly to what is described in this Wikipedia article, in particular the last paragraph of the introduction is what disturbs me the most with some Lemmy users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Lmao who tf is
endors[ing], defend[ing], or deny[ing] the crimes committed by [notable] communist leaders such as … Pol Pot[?]
Famous tankies Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and Noam Chomsky.
The last paragraph quotes fucking Ross Douthat, come on now
Lots of terms need defining. “Illiberal” just means not capitalistic, which yeah that’s all leftists. What is authoritarian? Usually a definition that gets thrown around applies more to capitalist countries vs those listed.
So it’s just a western communist that supports non Western communist projects? 🤔
I love it when liberals use ‘illiberal’ as a criticism. Begging the question much? Of course we’re illiberal we’re anti-capitalists!
Don’t whisper it in hushed tones as if we’re being shy about it and might be embarrassed. Liberalism is the cause of so much misery in the world I’d be more embarrassed to be called a liberal.
The best of it is that even liberals accept that liberal society is atrocious; they just throw up their hands, claim that it’s the only option, and benefit decadently from the system while the world burns as if nothing could or should be done about it. The nerve.
someone who uses tankie is almost always someone who claims to be a socialist but has not read marx
what’s a wool coat worth motherfucker 
It’s essentially cope for them not just supporting “nominally” socialist countries because their stance is one of anti-imperialism. Iran should have nukes.
Isn’t Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Russo-Georgian war imperialism? I still don’t get them, except being blinded by their hate of USA’s war crimes, which I can understand, but it still seems like an irrational conclusion to become a tankie. They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.
the Russo-Georgian war imperialism
Wait, are you saying Saakashvili has done an imperialism? Because even western/EU reports have confirmed that Georgia started that war, not Russia.
They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.
“From 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 30 July 2023, OHCHR recorded 26,015 civilian casualties in the country: 9,369 killed and 16,646 injured”
Almost 10 thousand civilians killed is horrible. But compare this to Iraq: it’s less than the first month of the war in Iraq, and no US politicians was tried for war crimes. Maybe you should ponder this factoid.
If you live in a NATO country maybe you should demand Blair and Bush to be tried for their war crimes. If you live in the west you should spend more energy of criticizing the ruling class above you.
“supporting or refusing to criticize” This is a made up leftist. Per definition there is no leftist that uncritically supports a right wing capitalist country.
Marxists, following Lenin, define imperialism as the monopoly of finance capital. Not as a synonym for ‘conquest’, ‘annexation’, ‘empire’ (not that I’m saying all three necessarily apply to Russia in Ukraine—a conclusion on that isn’t relevant, here).
When US (Anglo-European) finance capital dominates the world through the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and petrodollar, supported by a network of however many hundreds of military bases, all paid for by it’s vassals and enemies due to said dominance, there’s little to no room for anyone else to even consider being imperialist.
We can discuss that if you like. I’ll likely need others to chip in. I’m not proposing that I have all the answers. It’s not something with a clear answer. But we can’t have the debate at all unless we agree on common definitions and frames of reference. Otherwise it feels as though liberals simply do not understand what’s being said. It’s just talking past one another, where one side has a coherent definition and framework and the other side… doesn’t.
I’ll let you decide whether you can honestly say you have a theoretically sound concept of imperialism depending on how much dedicated literature on imperialism you’ve read.
There’s a concept called “critical support”, which most “tankies” are practicing. You have criticism of a side but its the lesser evil so you support it despite your criticism. You won’t hear much of that criticism publicly though because that’s counterproductive.
Like if I want the US to recognize the DPRK as a sovereign state so we can at least begin discussing Korean reunification, why would I bother mentioning my criticism of Juche?
You’re in a thread with half a dozen comments like “wow libs and tankies are celebrating this?”, followed by a bunch of “tankies” explaining (again) that they do not actually like modern Russia.
The general “tankie” position is that the people of Donbas, who mostly do not want to remain part of Ukraine, will not stop suffering attacks without Russia fighting Ukraine off. Russia does not seem interested in siphoning resources from or subjugating the people of Donbas, as they did not the people of Crimea, who merely became Russian citizens. This is very different from US carpetbombing for oil.
I assume that means you haven’t read “Left-wing” communism, an infantile disorder by Lenin.
Fuck it, one struggle
He died so the lemmy community could heal 🕊
It’s kinda beautiful actually. He and 9 others died so that 253 people would stop bickering for 37 minutes 😭
😌
No one likes mercenaries after all.
big emojis
“prigozhin got whacked lmao”
We from neither are also pretty whelmed by this turn of events
He already mentioned liberals
Nobody even knows what people who say that mean. By context it seems to imply moderate right wingers or some “enlightened centrists” which ironically will also join the choir of calling people that. Just trumpist lingo “woke/lib/commie/feminist bad”
I dunno, this seems good for Putin to me. But I’m not an expert in geopolitics and war…
Eh, it’s debatable. He had already shipped Wagner off to Belarus and folded the Wagner troops into the Belarus military, so Wagner was pretty effectively de-fanged at that point. The only thing Putin gained by this was sending a message to anyone else that decided to stand up to him, although if anyone still didn’t understand that Putin tends to assassinate people who displease him they haven’t been paying attention since like 1980 when Putin was still actually KGB. This is very on brand for Putin, although it is a bit novel to apparently go with airplane “crash” rather than his usual standbys of poisoning, “falling” out of windows, or tripping down flights of stairs/elevator shafts and landing on bullets.
On the other hand, it does make Putin look scared and weak that he felt the need to assassinate someone who he had already effectively defeated, without needing to fire a shot at that. I still wonder how he pulled that off. He must have either had some seriously damning dirt on Prigozhin, or else made him one hell of a deal to get him to about face and march right out of Russia. Maybe Putin just straight up threatened to nuke him if he got any closer to Moscow and he decided not to try to call Putin’s bluff.
It’s a lemmy special
I’m gonna sound like a fringe conspiracy theorist here, but you guys, What if this was no random accident? What if someone intentionally made the plane crash? But who? And why?
Guess you could say the plane was denazified.
Why?
Because Prigozhin was a Nazi.
Are you sure? Never heard that before.
Dmitry Utkin (who was also on the plane) is definitely a nazi, and Wagner has a lot of links to far-right elements in Russia. Wagner itself is supposed to reference Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer
so Prigozhin is definitely in bed with nazis but idk anything about his actual beliefs
Richard Wagner
Also the guy Nietzsche ghosted because he couldn’t stand his antisemitism.
…sorry random association the first existentialist gets maligned all too often. “Talks about nihilism and how it needs to be overcome == nihilist”, yeah sure.
https://redsails.org/kriegsideologie/ https://redsails.org/losurdo-und-telepolis/
I spam redsails but it’s such a convenient site. I read The Gay Science as one of my first philosophy books, but I completely turned around because of Losurdo
The antimodernism thing is like the least charitable take one can have on Nietzsche but at least it’s not one that’s based on his sister’s stuff.
Some quick thoughts:
His stance on democracy has to be understood in the context of its days, much less developed than now, and in the Kaiserreich also very much class-based, ruled more by mass psychology than consideration of what actually good politics would be – on both sides, though I won’t deny that the nobles and bourgeois of course needed their wings clipped. At the same time he’s very much an elitist in the sense of, erm, personal improvement, sees the need for the individual to transcend the forces acting around them and develop their own path as sublation of everything, contrast that with the political forces in parliament being not even close to that but simple thesis-antithesis with no sign of actually starting to go beyond that and you have an easy case for “Nietzsche simply didn’t believe in the process democracy”.
To all this he prefers “hierarchy” [Rangordnung]
Is that really the term Anglos use as a translation. “ranking” or even “precedence” might’ve been a better choice. Honestly just translate it literally: “Rank order”. In any case and I won’t dwell on it: Nietzsche always describes these rank relations as in flux, not set in stone, and makes fun of tying it to inheritance. I don’t see him at odds with Bakunin, here, who will readily bow to the authority of the bootmaker.
At the same time he warned of the dangers of not having such a thing, of insisting on some moral-metaphysical notion of inviolable human equality, and we just recently had the opportunity to see that kind of thing in action: I’m speaking of the masses of people unwilling to bow to the authority of virologists and epidemiologists, going “nu-uh I did my own research”, meaning they read some bullshit blog somewhere. Nietzsche himself might’ve rather thought about the Jacobine terror and stuff.
Overall, when reading Nietzsche I recommend starting with Thus spake Zahatrustra, as a work of philosophical mysticism, get to grips with what it means for the individual mind, and interpret the rest in that light, and specifically consider whether he might not have framed a lot of things very differently had he witnessed Nazi Germany.
A parallel which comes to mind here is Plato, who likely would be similarly at odds with the modern scientific method as Nietzsche is with the democratic process, stressing the importance of intuition as to not de-humanise the process: Are we, as peoples, really engaging in democracy, or do we let a system of mass psychology rule us?
Lastly, my psychological armchair: Was he someone who often felt alone in a crowd? Yeah, probably. Clowns to the left, jokers to the right.
You in bed with Nazis, you’re a Nazi. Don’t matter if you’re a true believer or just grifting.
The guy with nazi tatoos is not Dmitry Utkin, they don’t look like the same person.
everything I can find on Utkin says he was into Nazi and pagan shit, and that the name Wagner came from him
1: It’s based on one photo that doesn’t even look like him, this is how he really looks like, compare the 2 photos:
- The wagner name is grasping on straws, he was a famous composer, it doesn’t definatively prove that Wagner is nazi.
Thug for hire is more like it. And now Wagner is exporting it to Africa, thugging it up for dictators, military or otherwise.
Probably because of this:
Dmitry Valerievich Utkin … was a Russian army officer. He served as a special forces officer in the GRU, where he held the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is alleged to have founded the Wagner Group
According to several news outlets, Utkin is an admirer of Nazi Germany and has multiple Nazi tattoos, including Schutzstaffel (SS) insignia.
The tattoos are visible in multiple public photos.
Putin’s propaganda is that the invasion of Ukraine is to denazify Ukraine. Basically any of his violent action is justified by calling his enemies Nazis and referring to the Soviet war against Nazi Germany (same as when the USA call others terrorists). So if he shot the plane, it’s because it had Nazis. Top comment may support this way of thinking.
No, it’s because Prigozhin was a Nazi. No more complicated than that
He is/was despicable as the leader of mercenaries ready to sell their services to any authoritarian regime, but I don’t see clear relationship with Nazism, do you have sources? It seems weird to me that a Nazi would accept to work for African juntas for example.
I find it weird that the former liberal consensus was that Wagner was effectively a Nazi PMC group but now I guess it isn’t?
that consensus evaporated as soon as he staged his coup, all the libs lined up behind him immediately
When this is your internal narrative
If you think I follow the ideology a specific movement, I’m afraid to tell you I don’t. So I’m not sure what the former liberal consensus was. The Wikipedia article (generally consensual, I guess) does mention that a sub-group in particular is: the Rusich unit. It seems ironic that Putin pretends to fight Nazism by using Nazis, unless the goal is that they self-destruction, but I guess that’s a fantasy.
Putin never said he sought to annihilate Nazism in general, at least not that I know of. He said that among his goals is to denazify Ukraine, which I believe is true simply because the Ukrainian Nazis are his most hardliners opponents there. He does also crack down on Russian fascists when they become inconvenient to him (like darling of the west Navalny), but I don’t think he ever claimed to be an antifascist.
copied from above
Dmitry Utkin (who was also on the plane) is definitely a nazi, and Wagner has a lot of links to far-right elements in Russia. Wagner itself is supposed to reference Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer
so Prigozhin is definitely in bed with nazis but idk anything about his actual beliefs
Both can be true at the same time, with the caveat that actual Nazis aren’t called Nazis in Russia but nationalists, patriots, suchlike.
But in the end Prigozhin might not have been a Nazi – in the ideological sense – but simply a crook. You don’t really need a racist or such ideology to build a colonial empire in Africa, plain ole criminal mindset suffices.
Nazis are called patriots in Russia
Gets even better when you realize it’s a German writing that
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Putin’s propaganda is that the invasion of Ukraine is to denazify Ukraine.
No that’s Biden’s propaganda. Putin only mentioned it along with a laundry list of reasons. But besides, Ukraine’s ultranationalism is heavily based on Nazism.
His laundry list of reasons including gay/trans Ukrainian super soldiers and other such nonsense?
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ugh please go back to
If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later
should’ve remembered this simple rule
honestly how could you be stupid enough to get on plane w/ that guy? this was the single most predictable event of the entire conflict.
“Plane crash” lol
They literally blew his nazi loving ass out of the sky.
Well the plane did crash against the missiles sent towards it.
I am shocked I tell you. Who could have predicted such an accident
- never get in a helicopter (or other small aircraft)
rest in piss ye won’t be missedMy bad guys, first day on the anti-aircraft guns
