gnuhaut

There was plenty of evidence that this was the likely outcome of this offensive months before it even started. Why tf did they go ahead with it anyway?

I remember discussing the Russian advantage on reddit back in January, including them building defensive lines and the general imbalance in equipment, especially artillery and ammo, as well as the fact that Russia had caught up in troop numbers by that point. I had western sources for these numbers.

You wouldn't believe the level of hate and name-calling I received for pointing this out and saying they should negotiate. But apparently I was the one spewing propaganda.

No communist thinks that Russia is still communist. The critical support for Russia among some communists (me included) has to do with them fighting western imperial expansion/domination, and that Russia winning (or rather: not losing) would weaken the US empire and give breathing room to socialist and anti-colonial movements worldwide, since the US empire is the no. 1 threat to those movements. If US/EU supremacy on the international stage were broken, the US would have a much harder time isolating, toppling, or sanctioning socialist or anti-imperialist governments. If Russia loses and gets broken up or economically ruined, that would be proof of imperial power and scare other countries into caving to western demands. These countries would also lose Russia as a potential ally and trade partner.

The other major interpretation among Marxists (and there's been a lot of debate about this) is that both sides are imperialist, and the correct stance in this conflict is revolutionary defeatism (as Lenin preached in Czarist Russia, or Rosa Luxembourg did in Germany during WW1). In this logic everybody need to fight and overthrow their own bourgeois governments and stop the war (i.e. Russian workers should undermine the Russian government, while Americans need to fight the US government), since the working classes of those countries shouldn't fight each other, but rather fight the capitalists in their own countries. Slogan: No war but class war.

How is that supposed to work?

They looked at all that and still concluded that Georgia attacked first, and did not attack preemptively because they were threatened.

It's a EU report, it's not pro-Russian. If anything, I'd be biased against Russia. Yet they still conclude that.

in order to murder innocent civilians and commit countless war crimes

You think they do this "in order to murder innocent civilians"? Like this is the end goal? They just love murdering so much. And you base your political opinions on this genius analysis?

This will happen and marginalized groups like illegal immigrants, the homeless, and the disabled will be effectively excluded. Poor people are going to have their finances controlled even more. This will cause deaths.

No you're not. You are comparing this conflict with one of the worst campaigns of genocide in human history. You're up-playing it.

So they're just evil madmen? Well that explains it. A job well done. Maybe you've watched too many movies?

Well, I tried. You'd rather downplay Nazi mass murder then back down, do you? Get fucked.

You're just throwing those terms around aren't you?

You don’t understand what imperialism means. US/EU capital is looting and exploiting the former socialist block and controlling it through western capitalist media, NGOs, military bases and coups. That’s imperialism. The Russians preventing Nazis from doing ethnic cleansing along their border and demanding not to be threatened with a gun to the head is not imperialism.

And if you think Russia is fascist (I don't think it is, but reasonable people might disagree), what do you think about Ukraine? The Ukrainian state funds and arms Banderite groups and promotes Banderite ideology, which is a straight up fascist, racist, ethnonationalist, Neo-Nazi ideology. Those people think Russians are Mongol Asiatic Untermenschen, and the Ukrainian state promotes that. The Russian government does not promote this sort of ethnonationalism.

If Putin is such a Nazi, where's the ethnonationalism? You do know that Nazis believe in racial supremacy?

The regime in Kiev also jails and murders their opponents, and how is that relevant to whether Putin is a Nazi? The Nazis weren't the only ones who did that.

You're removing all meaning from the word Nazi if you call Putin one. He doesn't believe the same shit as the Nazis, and he hasn't done any crimes as heinous as the Nazis'.

Yes, the US cultivates influence groups that then, at the right time, take over real protests involving actual people with actual grievances, as a cover to carry out coups. They have done this many times. They do this because they want to loot and exploit countries for cheap labor and resources, and in this case, also to put a whole army in Russia's face.

Some questions about your explanation: He just wants to be dictator? Why? Who's backing him and why? Why would he be so stupid as to shoot at the protestors?

Have you ever seen that documentary about the failed coup to overthrow Chavez, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"? Private pro-coup TV channels told everybody the pro-Chavez protestors started shooting at the opposition, which was the mainstream narrative at the time. This was used as justification to oust him (temporarily). But the documentary filmmakers (which happened to be there filming at the time) show that it was snipers shooting at both pro- and anti-Chavez demonstrators.