- Ukraine says it has liberated four villages in the south-east, calling these the first settlements won back from Russia since Kyiv’s counter-offensive began
- On Monday morning, officials reported that “the national flag is once again waving” over Storozhove, in the Donetsk region
- A day earlier, footage showed Ukrainian troops celebrating in Blahodatne and Neskuchne - and a minister said nearby Makarivka was also taken
- The settlements are relatively small - and Moscow is yet to confirm any retreat
- The Institute for the Study of War backs up Kyiv’s claims, saying Ukraine captured “multiple settlements” along the frontline over the weekend
- On Saturday, President Zelensky acknowledged that the long-awaited counter-offensive was under way
This is such a brain dead take. The state of Russia did not launch a war of aggression at the behest of a dictator to maintain a tenuous grasp on power.
The US, the only country to ever use nuclear bombs against an opponent, who used them against civilians, decided to build a transnational nuclear military. They called it NATO. It is accountable to no citizens. It is accountable to no democratic body of any nation. It is accountable to the hegemonic power of the US. Instead of the US building an empire in Europe to project its force against Russia and China, it built this new thing, this never before seen thing. It is a military that supervenes national borders and national sovereignty. It occupies Europe without oppressing those that it occupies. And it has always been and forever will be directed at controlling Europe against all that threaten the interests of the US, including European nations. Specifically, it is directed at Russia, just as the Third Reich was, which is why NATO was built after the fall of the Third Reich and staffed with “former” Nazi officers at all levels of the organization.
This transnational nuclear force has been deploying nuclear capabilities in a never ending march to completely encircle Russia for the past several decades. Through the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the US finally had a right-wing government that would support the continued expansion of this transnational nuclear force aimed directly at Russia. Russia has been strategizing about this possibility since NATO was formed and we know this because A) Russia was invaded TWICE by Western countries through the Ukraine border, the most recent one being the Third Reich and B) as the USSR was being dismantled all leadership on both sides was very clear about how important it was that Ukraine not be militarized against Russia. We know that the US has been strategizing since the 1990s on how to militarize Ukraine against Russia.
So when the Russian state finally intervenes to stop the expansion of the transnational nuclear military that draws direct inheritance from the last fascist regime that invaded Russia through Ukraine, it is the height of clownishness to attribute the invasion to “Putin hates queer people and thinks he’s Adonis and also is a ruthless dictator that lives only to kill and be rich”. Your analysis doesn’t even reach the complexity of a 17 year old explaining the drama in the WWE.