the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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It's never simple but it is a land grab. De facto - Russia didn't have it before they sent in the troops.
I'm not willing to sacrifice any. I don't like imperialism whether by NATO or Russia. I don't like how Ukraine was run before the invasion. I don't like that my country, USA, is funding wars around the world but this situation isn't as simple as US bad, Russia good. Russia is the obvious aggressor here again Ukraine though.
How much Russian aggression is the right amount?
Russia did have parts of Ukraine, and those parts were then couped in 2014. But of course, history goes further than 2014 - both countries have wrestled for it for over a hundred years. I don't know my medieval history, but I do know that Ukraine was mostly under the rule of Russian royalty from the 1700s onwards.
I would say the turning point, and when medieval history becomes contemporary was when the Russian Revolution took control of Russia from the Tsars. The White Army (Tsarists, enslavers of peasantry) then retreated to Ukraine and collaborated with other Empires of the day to attempt to reinstall themselves as rulers of Russia.
They continued to attack the Russian revolution, so war was waged against them in Ukraine to get rid of them. Other peasant groups fought against them too. The first World War complicates things, but The White Army's remaining forces eventually lost. There's more wrestling for the land between Anarchists and Communists and European capitalist forces. The Makhnovist Anarchists eventually were defeated or subsumed by Bolsheviks, and Ukraine joined Russia as a republic.
The next change of leadership comes with Nazi Occupation.
Nazis waged war against Russia from Ukraine and has collaborators. The Nazis eventually lose, and the USSR takes control of the region again to de nazify it. In this time after the war, the CIA arms Nazis and spreads right wing propaganda in the region through operations such as Bloodstone and Red Sox.
Time goes by, and the Soviet Union collapses. Ukraine becomes fully autonomous for the first time in about 200 years. The west continues to use Ukraine as a bulwark against now capitalist Russia, in an attempt to make sure Russia doesn't become a global power again and disrupt their hegemony. From here on out it's capitalist warfare between Russia and Ukraine/The West. Russia tries to stake it's claim in certain Ukrainian lands where there is a Russian ethnic majority and independence movement. Then there's crisis in 2004, and then eventual derussification policies lead up to the 2014 western backed coup against the Russian majority regions by way of installing a puppet leader.
So who really has a right to it? I don't take either side, but I do think that the Russian regions will be more prosperous if they are taken back by Russia. Ukraine post war will be a total wasteland of western 'development' - there will be no social safety net and it will be full of Nazis.