I hope so. It's about damn time, tbh.

And to preemptively respond to all the libs who might see this comment and proceed to shit a brick: Russia "winning" this was inevitable from the very beginning. The sooner it is finished, the sooner this particular meat grinder, which was started, exacerbated, and perpetuated by fascists and their NATO backers, can finally be ground to a halt.

Edit: I guess I should have put this in the lemmy.ml worldnews crosspost, since I don't think libs tend to stumble into the hexbear news comm much anymore.

Ukraine is the country under attack

Yes, the Nazi-run Ukrainian government started attacking the Donbass region of Ukraine in an attempt to ethnically cleanse that region of the majority Russian-speaking population. Fortunately, Russia eventually entered into that civil war on the side of those people.

supporting the nation that is a direct victim of imperialism is preferable

Then you should be supporting Russia, since it is the country opposing the imperialist US/NATO (which I hope you have a better understanding of, given SeventyTwoTrillion's response to your other comment). Ukraine is being privatized and sold off for pennies to western the Bourgeoisie even when those same western interests have blocked all attempts at peace at every turn, perpetuating the war as long as they still have Ukrainians to sacrifice.

even if that involves the lesser evil of alignment with the US military.

lol. The US is the greatest evil here, the evil that couped Ukraine's government in 2014, who has funded neo-nazis there since even before, who has stymied peace over and over, and indeed is the main reason this war even started.

No, critical support for Russia is anti-imperialist.

I didn't write the following, but it is a good summary as to why it should be the position of Marxists and leftists in general to critically support Russia especially with respect to the SMO. It was a response to someone else naively saying they just didn't like war in general and this war is just one capitalist state fighting a proxy war against another. While it's understandable to feel that way, given the amount of propaganda we're force-fed in the west, it is not materialist and it is completely failing to see the bigger picture. The person who wrote the response is @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net.

and this struggle is between two capitalist empires which both want to do more capitalism, so there's no benefit to either side winning

I keep seeing this take cropping up in online Western leftist circle and to be very honest, I always consider this to be the laziest takes on war for people claiming to be on the left.

This is no different than saying that there is no difference for the left when it comes to whether the North or the South wins in the American Civil War because neither of them was socialist. Well, would it surprise you that Marx wrote an entire collection of essays just on analyzing the American Civil War?

To quote Lenin from his Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War”, October 1 (14), 1914:

For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.

Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.

In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.

We can write entire essays about the war in Ukraine, and it is anything but “a war between American and Russian capitalists”.

For one, if this is about Russia expanding its capital, why is the Russian Central Bank doing everything it can (including rate hikes and devaluing the ruble) to undermine Putin’s effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the face of unprecedented sanctions, and directly aiding the Western imperialist cause? If anything, it is stifling the expansion of Russian capital.

Such narrative crumbles at the slightest inspection of what is actually going on within the Russian political and economic structures, and points to a more fundamental division that Michael Hudson had pointed out regarding the conflict between finance vs industrial capitalism.

And we’re not even getting to the wider geopolitical implications of the war in Ukraine yet - what does it mean for Western imperialism? The anti-colonial struggles of the Global South? The effects on global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) and the efforts to decouple from such oppressive structures (which is what de-dollarization is all about).

We have to ask ourselves, what would a fascist victory in Ukraine mean for left wing movements in Eastern Europe? What could the total subjugation of Russia - a country that has large scale military equipments, raw resources and minerals, and agricultural products - to Western capital mean for the anti-colonial movements in the Global South?

Leftists who refuse to apply a materialist and historical method to understand the world’s events will inevitably fail to see the underlying currents of the global state of events, and as such they cannot predict where the world is heading and will not be able to position themselves to take advantage of the impending crisis.

After all, it was WWI that resulted in an explosion of socialist movements within the imperialist European states, why? Because the socialists back then actually combined theory and practice (what Gramsci referred to as praxis) to take advantage of the predicament.

Have you even been following the war at all?! ive seen 4k videos of Russia bombing Ukrainian Civilians for months now

Russia has been extremely restrained in destroying Ukrainian infrastructure, especially in the first year of the war. It has also made strong efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Considering it wants to incorporate the zones where there is the greatest conflict into being part of the Russian Federation, it's not like this is surprising either. I'm sure this sounds shocking or ludicrous to someone who has been closely following along, and I do take your word for it that you have. But there is a very good reason for that. To explain:

I have also been following the war extremely closely since the beginning, including from countless telegram channels of people on the ground on both sides in addition to official outlets and what I've seen is a massive amount of ridiculous false propaganda spewing out of Ukraine's official outlets that the west eats up and repeats without question, often amplifying the false parts and making up even more. It is to the benefit of both the current Ukrainian rulers and the west to make this propaganda, so I'm not saying Ukraine is doing this to the west, I'm saying they're both complicit. Yes, I've seen plenty of propaganda from Russia too, obviously, but it is nowhere near the same scale or level of outright lying about what's actually happening on the ground, not because Russia is somehow above all that (it's definitely not) but because it has far less need for such false propaganda. (It is also arguably not as good at propaganda as the West which has the most developed propaganda apparatus in the history of humanity).

There is material reasons behind all of this. Ukraine relies almost entirely on NATO countries for its ability to wage war, this is not in question. It therefore needs to sell that war as not only just, but winnable - and whatever you you think of how just it is, it is definitely not winnable in terms of taking back the currently occupied regions let alone Crimea. That will simply never happen. NATO also has a vested interest in Ukraine winning this war, and in many ways is NATO's proxy war, so it also has an interest in pushing this propaganda on the people of its member nations. However, Russia has ramped up production of its war machine (and is highly self sufficient despite what some western propaganda might say about them having to fight with shovels lol) and importantly is not dependent on other countries to wage this war. It doesn't need to sell this war internationally and It doesn't even need to sell this war to the Russian populace who already broadly support it. Hence the large difference in amount and severity of false propaganda. If you have been following the war closely, but you have been relying entirely or mostly on Ukrainian, Western, and NATO information (which is understandable because it's really all you get offered in the west), you have been closely following a massively lopsided story being told to you by someone who isn't just distorting fact, but outright lying.

Since you specifically mentioned bombing of infrastructure, here is one example I just happened on in a different thread today. It's from the New York Times, which has been one of the cringiest large network liars throughout the conflict, but even here they are making an admission that what was claimed to be Russian attack was actually Ukraine itself. This happens all the time but usually admissions aren't made or are done very quietly so everyone believes the first story of "look at how horrible Russia is!" My suspicion is that admissions like these are starting to happen more often because there is beginning to be a shift in the narrative and propaganda as it becomes increasingly clear how unwinnable this is for Ukraine and NATO is beginning to look to pull support.

NYT: Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy

From their original article:

A Russian missile strike in Kostyantynivka that killed at least 17 and injured more than 30 others was one of the deadliest in months.

There are tons of other examples of this, but I don't currently have access to the laptop I saved all my sources on. Anyway, the reality is that you are being lied to constantly about the crimes Russia is supposedly committing, at the very least, the severity of them. And it's helpful to understand why.

I know I'll get called a Russian bot/shill for pointing these things out. Whatever. I have no love for Russia. Fuck Putin and the reactionary Russian government. But I really do despise the intensity of misinformation I've been witnessing and how it gets repeated by genuinely well-meaning people around me (I'm in the west too) who only have access to lies that are perpetuating death and human misery.

but Russia hasn't been able to get the kind of [material] support from its allies that Ukraine has

It hasn't needed to. Ukraine wouldn't be a functional state at all by this point were it not for the tens of billions of dollars in aid as well as all the military equipment slowly depleting the west. Russia on the other hand, has been doing quite well in holding it's own economically despite the sanctions and in holding the literal defensive line against all the NATO weaponry. It's a nonsensical comparison to make.

It's so fucking funny when the geopolitics understanders who have been drip-fed NATO propaganda state the clear opposite of reality and think they made an insightful comment.

Russia has all but won the military conflict, as has been made clear by this utter failure of a "counteroffensive." Russia is doing better economically than before the SMO, despite the supposed economic wunderwaffen sanctions that only backfired and hurt NATO countries. Russia has only gained support by most of the rest of the world and has showed the global south that the US/NATO are indeed paper tigers. Russia has all the leverage now. So yes, for Russia to compromise right now would be bad for them because they don't need to compromise, they can keep going as they have been and eventually have their demands met, or Ukraine/NATO can recognize they've lost and make a bid for peace by acquiescing to Russia's demands before more lives are needlessly lost.

Ukraine on the other hand will be crippled for decades regardless of how things pan out. Ukraine is now deeply indebted to Western countries, has already had all national assets sold off, has had a major chunk of its working-age population killed or maimed, and is beholden to a fascist, nazi-worshipping government.

As for Germany, yeah they have been working to the end of hobbling themselves for decades too by allowing their remaining industrial capacity to be completely gutted, kowtowing to their US masters that bombed their infrastructure to prevent them ever again getting oil from 'The Bad Country,' they have irreparably removed nuclear power as an option even as they're facing an impending energy crisis (in large part because of aforementioned no-oil-from-bad-country), and are right now also sliding towards right wing populism.

So what big boy books do you like to read, then? Give us your top recommendations.

I do think there might be a few out there who may actually be self aware enough to rightly fear that engaging with Marxist theory could shake the foundation their ideology rests on.

edit: To be clear, I don't think our bandario here is one of them.

definitely using the isle of man flag as a cowardly substitute for the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging flag

So basically neo-nazi? Why am I not surprised.

I actually wonder how many people who have read Marx did so before they were 20. If any of the rest of you all were delving into Marx that young, that's impressive. Let's just say I was a bit older than that before I did. I wish I shared your experience, Commiejones (joke as it may be). but I feel more like learning theory is the equivalent of putting on the They Live glasses, and if anything, it might have given me a few early grey hairs.