A small story of Russian slave raids on Ukraine - my cousin's wife's family, from Mariupol, have been 'evacuated' to Russia. First they were sent to Taganrog, then Rostov, now Khabarovsk in the far east. No one tells them why they're being sent, for what reason,
or what they'll do once there. Just an endless, inhuman bureaucratic system forcefully shipping slaves wherever it desires. We don't know how to get them back to Ukraine or how to help them in Russia - just waiting and waiting to hear a scrap of news off a borrowed phone call.
It is inconceivable to me that this is happening in the 21st century, in the civilized world. What will they made to do? Shipped off to a kolkhoz as free slave labor? Loyalty camp? GULAG? How will they ever get home?
Russia must be defeated. Moscovia delenda est. There is no other moral, or hell, even practical response to this sort of mass abduction. Nothing but the utter defeat of the fascist regime in the Kremlin. By any means necessary.
I am so tired. My cousins and my aunt are fighting. My best friends are fighting. Some of my family have already lost their house. Now others have been kidnapped - they may be distant relatives, but they are still relatives.
And then smug motherfuckers sit thousands of miles away and smirk and say 'Why don't you surrender???'
You piece of shit. You fucking human debris.
Nothing matters, in the world, than the defeat of the fascist Reich. Fucking nothing else. Don't believe me? Come to Ukraine
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I hate the Russians for forcibly conscripting Donbas men to go and die against Ukraine. But I really struggle to understand - why die to Ukrainian guns, when you could turn your weapons against your occupiers? They clearly care nothing for you. I don’t really get it.
I read an account of supposedly an orchestra being forcibly conscripted. According to it, they all died at Azovstal. Why? You may die if you shoot up the commissariat - but isn’t that better than dying for no reason, for people that hate you and see you as literal slaves?
I just don’t get the mentality of slave-soldiers. They’re not fighting for a cause - they know their lives are literally not theirs and their human will is leashed to a master. So why not kill the master the second you get the chance to?
The problem with pie-in-the-sky ‘anti-imperialist’ takes is that the Russian-Ukraine war is ridiculously simple from a leftist standpoint - it is an anti-fascist war. There is no complexity needed. Fascists are attacking us, wanting to literally wipe us out. Simple.
In fact, this basic leftist take analysis is so simple, that anyone muddying the waters is 100% attempting to forgive and whitewash fascism. Making them collaborators - at best.
I feel like I’ve written this tweet at least five times by now, and I clearly need to keep repeating it. Ukraine is an anti-fascist force repelling and destroying the world’s largest outright fascist power.
The current war, in the regime's eyes, is justified by two things - Ukraine's "Nazism" and an eventual war with the 'The West' - the US and EU (but mostly the US.)
I'll explain both justifications and what they reveal.
1) "Nazism": as I pointed out about the RIA piece, Russians do not define Nazism as the rest of the world does. In this case, Ukrainian Nazism (despite a Jewish president, lack of Nazi party or repressive laws) is because the Russians believe/say -
If you are a Western citizen, sitting at home, looking at pictures of Ukraine, and feel helpless in the face of your cowardly, do-nothing politicans - here's what can and should do:
Exercise your democratic rights. Organize with other people that feel the same way, and start planning letter-writing campaigns, attend local town halls and party conferences, stage demonstrations and protests, call your constituency's office.
Make it clear that your reps ass is on the line if they don't support Ukraine, or are unwilling to push the government on that issue. Write and submit opeds to local and national papers, run social media 'name-and-shame' campaigns for local companies still operating in Russia.
There cannot be, fundamentally, a peace deal in this war. Russia will never, ever accept anything less than the annihilation of the Ukrainian state, and we, as Ukrainians, will never accept being annihilated. Period.
That’s why this will not lead anywhere, and the Kremlin isn’t dampening hopes - it’s literally the same thing it did during the fucking bilateral summits - it restates its initial positions in different ways, and the Western press reacts as if its becoming more ‘reasonable.’
In reality, nothing has changed on the Kremlin’s side! They’re still lying about the exact same bullshit they lied about wanting in the beginning - demilitarization, neutrality, denazification. These aren’t real demands, understand. This is an excuse to leave a Ukraine that will
While much of the Russian invasion has made no sense to me (why the fuck are you trying to do hot air drops onto a contested LZ miles away from any possible support as stage 1 of the kinetic invasion?), think I’ve figured out at least one thing:
Why the fuck the Russians are seemingly getting lost, in the modern era of fucking smartphones?
Well, as it turns out, it seems that much of the money the Russian military had allocated for secure comms and encrypted radios has been squirreled away onto dachas and villas.
As a result, while on paper, these systems exist, in practice, their existence is piecemeal at best and many units are relying on civilian radio freqs and their personal smartphones. However, their phones all have Russian SIM cards, which means no internet in Ukraine (no roaming)