bump cause I don't have a good answer tbh

Compare NATO expansion to Russia's borders since the USSR collapsed, then tell me again who's the invading force.

I've seen how the US behaved in Iraq, Afghanistan when it came to civilians, and how 'Israel' is now. That's what indiscriminately killing civilians looks like. It's categorically not how Russia has been conducting itself.

If anything the people who sided with the Russians have been far more on the receiving end of violence towards civilians, and I think that's why I find it a lot easier to not support the Ukranian government. Those are supposedly 'its' civilians yet it's been shelling them for years, and only stopped because Russians made them stop.

When I say I don't support the Ukrainian resistance, I don't mean I would like the Russian army to mow down Ukrainians. It is rather an acknowledgement of the historical realities that are ignored by mainstream Western presses, namely:

• NATO is an imperialist military and intelligence alliance that exists to preserve American hegemony.
• NATO and the US want to weaken and destroy Russia. Since they have not been successful in doing it from within like they were with the USSR, they are enacting a policy of encirclement by having more and more European countries join NATO which allows them to have a tangible military presence very close to Russian borders.
• Ukraine is currently a Western ally only because of the US-backed coup Maidan coup that removed the existing government and installed pro-US leaders in their stead. Armed neo-nazis played a significant role in this colour revolution.
• Areas like Lugansk, Donbass which do not accept the outcome of this coup have been targets of military aggression from Ukraininan neo-nazis. They have been shelling these regions since 2014 and do not mind targeting civilians.
• Ukraine and NATO have tried their best to not reach any sort of peace agreement. Minsk agreements were done in bad faith as Angela Merkel admitted. Zelenskyy campaigned on a platform of seeking peace with Russia for his presidency but allied with neo-nazis upon assuming office.

Because of these points, there is no positive peace to be achieved in the region by cheering for a war and supplying arms to Ukraine. They are fighting a proxy war for NATO to weaken Russia militarily, economically and diplomatically. The best solution would be to seek peace and ceasefire agreements between Russia and Ukraine. Despite what the Western media says about the Russian leadership, a deal like this is definitely possible. The only problem is that Russia will likely stipulate that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO and that they be allowed to keep at least some of the conquered territories. This demand is not as outrageous as Western media would lead you to believe. The conquered territories are already Russian-speaking and sympathise with Russia. They have also been targets ethnic repression like legislations to prevent them from speaking Russian. Ukraine's Western masters are not interested in peace anyway so the war rages on. But the narrative that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked and that they are trying to conquer territories because they are an imperialist force following a Duginist doctrine is maliciously incorrect. It is really baffling why Westerners hold this point of view there is no evidence to support for this except for allegations of vague ties between Putin and Dugin.

Some people say "Russia could just leave if they wanted to". This implies that positive peace can be achieved if they stopped the invasion. But this does not remove the element of the existential threat that they face from an expanding NATO encirclement.

To sum it up, I don't support the Western narrative of Ukraine being a smol bean victim of an unprovoked invasion. I support peace that is positive and that can only be achieved by removing Western meddling from the region.

On the other hand, Israel's expansion is a naked quest for territory and removing Arabs from the region. There isn't much common with the Russian invasion of Ukraine here. It is easy and straightforward to support any uprising that resists settler-colonial genocide.

"support" or lack thereof from the other side of the world is mostly meaningless, except if it can move the needle on US government policy.

I dont want the US to send weapons to ukraine, as US interests there are not in helping ukraine win (it seems unlikely that they really could even with an endless flow of weapons), but in hurting russia via a prolonged quagmire of a war that will continue to kill conscripts, civilians, etc. all along the way and empower fascists. Western interests are the reason there wasn't a chance at diplomatic peace much earlier in the war

similarly I don't want the US to send weapons to Israel, where they will be used to ethnically cleanse palestinians and defend their apartheid state from any regional opposition.

Saying that ukraine and palestine are the same is honestly almost offensive in how reductive and inaccurate it is. An oppressed people struggling against settler colonialism and genociders is not the same as two bourgeois states fighting over territory, even if one is bigger.

Also, Hamas became what it is today because of israel's support, to delegitimize the palestinian cause, whereas neonazis in ukraine are not a russian creation, but empowered in large part by the US in euromaidan

I think that being against the US sending weapons abroad is the bare minimum for someone on the anti-war left

There is no Israeli population endemic to Palestinian territories that Palestinians are repressing. There is no polarity in Palestinian society between favoring Israel and favoring other Arab countries. There are no Palestinians who speak Hebrew as a first language, or vote for pro-Israel parties, or have several generations of relatives who are full Israeli citizens.

The situation in Ukraine has all of these. It has a closely overlapping history with Russia that goes back hundreds of years, resulting in many people in Ukraine who have considered themselves more Russian than Ukrainian, who have most of their families on the Russian side of the border, who vote for regional or devolution parties, who speak Russian as a first language.

As we like to say, history didn't begin in 2022. It includes 2013-14, 1991, 1954, and 1922.

The invasion of Ukraine and the occupation of Palestine are not comparable except for in the vaguest, most remote, and least significant of terms. If you want an analog for Palestine, look at Artsakh.

Ukraine has a right to defend Ukrainians against aggression from Russia, but it does not have the right to take away its ethnically Russian citizens' rights to self-determination. If you use an argument like "internationally-recognized border", not only are you decontextualizing and prioritizing a coincidental line in the dirt over social trends, you are denying about 9 million people one of the most basic of political rights.

The only ideologically consistent view here is hatred for the us and “the west” as they like to say. Reasons will be found or made up as needed to justify whatever position is against the west.

My personal easy answer to this is

1. I do not support or oppose Ukraine existing as a state nor Russia existing as a state. I have no opinion on their borders or if there should be/will be new formal states created in the region after the conflict there ends. Why? Because I don't give a shit about lines on a map especially lines drawn by westerners post-Soviet collapse and rigidly enforced by westerners. Just because those lines exist does not mean Ukrainians nor Russians agree with them. Is it my (our) duty/right/whatever to question people living there? (No)

2. following with 1), since I don't support either state, I seek only a peace agreement and immediate end to hostilities there to end further loss of life and potential to draw the region/world into a WWI imperialist war. People being dead, whether they call themselves Ukrainian or Russian, is bad in my view. And celebrating the deaths of young Russians, as the liberal press did for over a year and a half now, is as gross to me as it when they celebrate Palestinian deaths (obviously Israeli and Ukrainian deaths are bad too- these are mourned in the press/western world though, thus why I move on quickly. I won't keep "disclaimering" this.)

3. NATO is the Nazi side (literally. Read about it if you're unaware!) and should never be supported by anyone even remotely "on the left."

And

4. More of a side note: I sympathize deeply with both Russians and Ukrainians, populations that have both suffered greatly to the Nazis and then the Americans more recently with the Soviet collapse and power vacuum.

These countries are, in my outside opinion, cousin countries, maybe even siblings. They share so much in common; their languages are hardly different.

I think of them as like the former-Yugoslavian countries (Balkan posting at 9am?). Bosnia i Herzegovina and Serbia and Croatia and Montenegro, etc. all share a commonly understood language broken down only by ethnic boundaries. It's honestly sad, and I really mean sad like you should cry to see and think about it, what the US and allies have done to former-Yugoslavian states and former-Soviet states like Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainians were sold a false promise that if they betrayed their sibling nation and leaned towards NATO that they'd be offered membership- an obvious lie.

Meanwhile, the Russians have long been the outcasts of Europe, treated like lessers by the Western powers. And that tradition continues on with the dehumanizing of Russians and elevation of Ukrainians in the Western consciousness.

I want this to end immediately. I don't want further war between these countries that serves absolutely no one except weapons contractors and those who seek to destabilize the Eastern European general region. Not helping Ukraine is not supporting genocide or supporting Putin or whatever. It's forcing an end to the war. Those concerned more with map lines than human lives disgust me (not directed at OP, just in general).

The NATO weapons and money for Ukraine ensures only that more people die and more of the built environment is destroyed, so that it can be rebuilt as shittily as possible with Western loans. This is a win-win for the ruling class of all countries involved, even Russia. Public funds are laundered to weapons manufacturers and the post-war economy of Ukraine will be of course be overseen directly by IMF/World Bank/Wall Street, with permanent austerity imposed on the population and a US business-friendly collaborator government full of assorted beneficiaries of the Western "aide" and propaganda (Azov) who will sell their people and resources out for pennies on the dollar.

Just thinking about it logically, I don't believe that some border regions of a border region are worth displacing and in many cases completely altering the futures of millions of people. Refugees across Europe, who in some cases won't integrate well and can be turned in scapegoats ("terrorists") for future CIA activity.

because Ukraine is supported by the US and Palestine is not. whatever the US does is by definition evil and wrong, so I will oppose it

Death to America

simplest explanation is that i oppose the american military industrial complex at every stop. wherever they want to make money, i am against it. they are not good people, they just want to make money off of death.

Ukrainian voted to de-escalate normalize relations both before the Maidan coup and in voting in Zelensky.

Now the Ukrainian state is forcing millions of Ukrainian people to die in order to prevent it's far-right government from being replaced by a far-right government.

It is the same suicidal nationalism as WW1.

Palestinians are fighting to not be killed under genocide i.e Manifest Destiny for Indigenous Americans, or Slavs and Jewish people under Lebensraum and the Holocaust.

In real terms, what would an unconditional surrender look like for a Palestinian person vs a Ukrainian person if even all of Ukraine was absorbed into Russia?

I do support the Ukrainian resistance, the militias of the Donbass and the people of Crimea have been resisting since the western-backed Nazis overthrew the government in 2014

the palestinian resistance, and indeed the palestinian people, do not want "peace." what they want, and what they deserve, is liberation, that is, freedom of movement, the right of return, economic security, and real political representation. the "peaceful" occupation of palestine means the destruction of palestinian villages by settlers, IDF patrols and checkpoints, starvation and disease caused by blockades and rationing of food, water, and medicine, and within "Israel," relegation to second-class citizenship and legal eviction from their homes.

ukrainians want peace. they want a return to being a mostly functional country in which they can live and move freely, an option which has never been offered to palestinians. this will be achieved by ending the war, which will be achieved by diplomacy, not more weapons. the continuation of the war is being forced on the working class by the apathetic governments of both sides and the meddling moneymen of the imperialist west.

Russia and the Ukraine crisis: The Eurasian Project in conflict with the triad imperialist policies, By Samir Amin

Going to quote the most important parts, I recommend reading the entire article.

The current global stage is dominated by the attempt of historical centers of imperialism (the U.S., Western and Central Europe, Japan—hereafter called “the Triad”) to maintain their exclusive control over the planet through a combination of:

• so-called neo-liberal economic globalization policies allowing financial transnational capital of the Triad to decide alone on all issues in their exclusive interests;
• the military control of the planet by the U.S. and its subordinate allies (NATO and Japan) in order to annihilate any attempt by any country not of the Triad to move out from under their yoke.

In that respect all countries of the world not of the Triad are enemies or potential enemies, except those who accept complete submission to the economic and political strategy of the Triad... In that frame Russia is “an enemy.”

After the breakdown of the Soviet system, some people (in Russia in particular) thought that the “West” would not antagonize a “capitalist Russia”—just as Germany and Japan had “lost the war but won the peace.” They forgot that the Western powers supported the reconstruction of the former fascist countries precisely to face the challenge of the independent policies of the Soviet Union. Now, this challenge having disappeared, the target of the Triad is complete submission, to destroy the capacity of Russia to resist.

The current development of the Ukraine tragedy illustrates the reality of the strategic target of the Triad.

The Triad organized in Kiev what ought to be called a “Euro/Nazi putsch.” To achieve their target (separating the historical twin sister nations—the Russian and the Ukrainian), they needed the support of local Nazis.

The rhetoric of the Western medias, claiming that the policies of the Triad aim at promoting democracy, is simply a lie. Nowhere has the Triad promoted democracy. On the contrary these policies have systematically been supporting the most anti-democratic (in some cases “fascist”) local forces. Quasi-fascist in the former Yugoslavia—in Croatia and Kosovo—as well as in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, Hungary for instance. Eastern Europe has been “integrated” in the European Union not as equal partners, but as “semi-colonies” of major Western and Central European capitalist/imperialist powers. The relation between West and East in the European system is in some degree similar to that which rules the relations between the U.S. and Latin America! In the countries of the South the Triad supported the extreme anti-democratic forces such as, for instance, ultra-reactionary political Islam and, with their complicity, has destroyed societies; the cases of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya illustrate these targets of the Triad imperialist project.

Therefore the policy of Russia (as developed by the administration of Putin) to resist the project of colonization of Ukraine (and of other countries of the former Soviet Union, in Transcaucasia and Central Asia) must be supported. The Baltic states’ experience should not be repeated. The target of constructing a “Eurasian” community, independent from the Triad and its subordinate European partners, is also to be supported.

Ukraine and Palestine are not equivalent at all. If you want to make crude analogies, it's closer to this:

Gaza Strip = Donbass

Hamas and other Palestinian militants = Donbass separatists

Israel = Ukraine (or post-Maiden Ukraine if you want to be more pedantic)

Hezbollah or Iran = Russia

The equivalent of the IDF bombing Gaza is the Ukrainian army shelling the Donbass. If Hezbollah were to invade Israel from the north and be within walking distance from Tel Aviv, that would be the equivalent of Russia invading Ukraine and reaching the outskirts of Kiev. If Iran were to launch missiles at key locations in Israel, that would be the equivalent of Russia launching missiles at key locations in Ukraine.

And this isn't even considering that Israel is a settler colony, and we should always support the downfall of settler colonies regardless of whether they're in the right for a particular situation. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are settler colonies. At best, you can argue Crimea is a Russian settler colony because the tsar ethnically cleansed Crimea of Crimean Tatars, but neither Ukraine nor Russia are interested in establishing an independent Crimean Khanate, so it's just two groups of eastern Slavs fighting over a peninsula that neither group is indigenous to.

Are Palestinians back by the most powerful miltary in the world?

Have you seen what Norman Finkelstein has to say about Russia? He actually did an interview with Chapotraphouse a while ago that I thought was extremely interesting, though I don't entirely agree with his interpretations and I wish he'd find a more delicate way to talk about the race issues that Obama exploited for his career.

I still think of Putin in mafioso terms, but Dr. Finkelstein's reading is not without justification.

Oh, as a complete aside that I don't think is actually pertinent to arguing the Ukraine issue either way, Russia significantly does want to denazify Ukraine, not because of any sort of principled commitment to antifascism or whatever (no such thing exists in the Kremlin), but because the Ukrainian Nazis are the most diehard Ukrainian nationalists in this whole situation and eradicating them makes the political project of [negotiating with/subjugating; take your pick, I don't care] Ukraine much, much easier. Now, there will certainly be an uptick in Russian Nazis in Ukraine if Russia succeeds, but it won't be a nearly comparable magnitude or have comparable implications to Ukrainian Nazis (e.g. the Banderite cult having free reign to indoctrinate Ukraine and The West with literal Nazi propaganda). Russian Nazis, like all Nazis, should be at the very least reeducated, and killed whenever necessary for removing them from power. I believe Russia winning does mean fewer Nazis running around, but mainly because of ending that "Banderite indoctrination" thing and not the killing of Azovites in particular.

I’m not going to read through all my comrades’ responses since I pretty much know what they’re gonna say, I just hope no one is attacking you because this is a legitimate question to ask and seems in good faith.

I think it’s more accurate, and might be easier to understand our position, if you think of the Russia-Ukraine war as more of a Russia-US proxy war which, unfortunately, a lot of Ukrainians are now stuck in the middle of. Most folks on hexbear are not pro-Russia, but because in this conflict (and at this point of history) Russia represents multipolarity as opposed to US, western hegemony, many of us have taken up pro-Russia positions to varying degrees.

Another point is that the war could really be said to have begun in 2014, or at least that’s when the lead up to this conflict began. And so from 2014 until now Ukraine has just been a pawn, with western governments using it to erode Russian influence. I think many of us see the us as ultimately hoping to make Russia a us vassal state along with the rest of Europe. So Ukraine has really just become this geopolitical chess piece in a great power war. Of course Russia using the region as a geopolitical pawn to further their interests is also not great, but because Russia in this instance is doing so as part of the drive for greater multipolarity and to chip away at US domination, and really when you get down to it as a defensive measure against US expansion, we tend to take that side.

Although I think saying we take Russia’s side is a bit disingenuous since, when you get through all the Ukrainian Nazi jokes, there is the acknowledgement that a lot of people are now caught in the middle of this great power conflict. However we don’t squarely put the blame on Russia for that, and Russia’s goals - multipolarity, the chipping away of US hegemony - broadly line up with ours, and also countries which we do support, eg. China, Cuba, Venezuela, have taken up this position.

why does the us state department support ukrainian resistance but not palestinian resistance? it's basically the same answer but inverted

Now why can't the same logic be applied to Ukraine?

Ukraine doesn’t even support Palestinian resistance. Why should I care about a movement and government that stands with and are inspired by the genocidal Israeli forces? Ukraine could easily win some diplomatic points and confuse leftists by standing in solidarity with Palestine and condemning Israel and comparing them to evil ruskies, but they don’t. Why? Well:

It’s like saying “why do you support Vietnamese resistance but not Khmer Rogue resistance?”

Finkelstein himself has commented on this case and has in fact taken the position you question. He actually makes the most radical version of this case that I've seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu9LJ8OAUBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98aeggkK34I

I would argue people in general have no conception of what US foreign policy actually is or how the present iteration connects historically, once you begin to sketch that picture the pieces begin to fall into place.

I'd ask the same question back to you, but replace Ukraine with the LPR and DPR. Liberals had absolutely nothing to say of the thousands of civilians in the Donbass murdered by the NATO installed Ukraine regime since 2014. I don't know what they expected to happen, just like I don't know what Israel expected to happen by continuing their occupation and genocide of Palestine