I am new to Hexbear and was wondering what the instance's general opinion is on the Russian Federation. Do we regard it as imperialist or anti-imperialist and support it?
To me it looks like you said you were new to Hexbear, not that your account was new. Why did you feel the need to lie about this?
Tell him he's confused China with the CIA because of their shared letters. Explain to him about the CIA smuggling cocaine into the US and inventing crack. First explain this to him earnestly and then increasingly patronizingly each time you meet him and he gets started.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released a report this year (2024) finally saying that it was actually ISIS that did the chemical attack in Marea in 2015. So just under a decade to finally admit to something that was obvious. I guess you just need to wait a few more decades until they find out who did the rest of the chemical attacks.
I was just reading about this the other day: Like Bernie wants to stop resourcing Israel, some US politicians had a condition that Azov would not be assisted. But apparently the Pentagon got that overruled
I think that was way before Israel's current massacres. Congress banned providing direct support to Azov in 2015 and then unbanned direct support in 2016 under pressure from the Pentagon. There might have been another attempted ban after that, I don't remember. Even when the ban was in place it's not like it was hard to get around, they just had the Azov guys join a different battalion for the duration of the training (and wear long sleeves).
No, you skipped the whole thread. There's nothing cool about nazis. They're a plague to everyone. When invading countries and when infighting against the invaders.
That's great, so you would you agree that the US should stop providing money, training, and weapons to Ukraine and its Nazi (and Neonazi) paramilitaries?
By the way, here's a source of Zelensky saying it's "normal and cool" for people to think that Stepan Bandera is a hero:
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/6768
"The Waffen-SS is a bad look for Germany, even though they fight against Russia's judo-bolshevik forces"
Did the fact that Zelensky and the entire Canadian Parliament give a standing ovation to a Waffen-SS member cause you any sort of ideological dissonance? Or do you agree with Zelensky that its "normal and cool" for people to support Nazi collaborators?
Then again, Donbas backed by fascist Russia and Ukraine having neonazi groups fighting each other, anti-fascists can't support either. Mathematically considering, Russia's invasion succeeding would promote more fascism to spread. What would prevent them or others in the future?
Which Donbas neonazi groups are you talking about? The only one I'm familiar with is Rusich group, which consisted of 30 or so guys. That's less neonazis than you find in single US marine battalion. The other example I can think of is that one Senior Lieutenant who wore the R3ICH operator skull and a valknut while receiving an award. There's been back and forth on that guy and if those patches were looted. The R3ICH skull in particular is heavily associated with the Ukrainian military's neonazis and is sold by the same company that makes Zelensky's famous green clothes, Zelensky himself has been photographed with his bodyguard prominently displaying the R3ICH skull. It was a bad look for the Lt. either way but he's still just one guy.
Donbas is part of Ukraine. "Russia going home" doesn't mean they just retreat to areas where they already removed a significant portion of the Ukrainian population and replaced them with Russian sympathizers
You know I've never heard about this. The line I usually hear is Russia has brainwashed the Ukrainians there into becoming "Russia-backed separatists". How much of the population of Donbas has been forcibly removed and are there any reputable western media sources where I can read more about this?
There has always been a non-military solution... Russia can go the fuck home and stop trying to invade other countries.
Wouldn't that just lead to the citizens of the Donbas Republics being forced to fight alone against Ukraine and its remaining far-right paramilitaries?
"I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy." -Stalin
Ukraine, however, is not innocent. Fascism has considerable influence in the country, including not only far-right paramilitary groups, but also senior government officials who have (through official channels) praised Stepan Bandera, a genocidal Nazi collaborator. The current Ukrainian regime came to power in the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and promptly shifted alignment towards NATO while banning any party that opposed the shift. Many Ukrainians (especially those in eastern Ukraine) opposed the shift, but due to this political repression, they had no option to work within the system to express their opposition, and so they declared independence, which then led to the Ukrainian shelling of Donbas. In response to this crisis, a ceasefire was established and the Minsk II agreement was signed between the separatists and the government (with Russia and Switzerland as observers) - but Ukraine violated the ceasefire and resumed bombardment of civilian targets, which is what prompted Russia to answer the separatists' request for military assistance. While a range of viewpoints are represented here, we agree that having an informed perspective on this (or any) conflict requires an understanding of the historical context, and that context is often absent from the reductionist, one-sided narratives presented in Western media.
This paragraph needs to be reworked. Saying Ukraine is not innocent is probably a bad start, you should at least say the Ukrainian government or even the western-backed Ukrainian government if you wanted to be spicy. The government did a lot more than praise Bandera. Shifting alignment towards NATO is awful abstract.
Here's my attempt, which is probably going to be too spicy for the libs.
Understanding the war in Ukraine requires understanding that neither history nor the war began in February 2022, the Ukrainian government has been at war with its people since 2014. The Maidan protests started with many legitimate grievances but were heavily backed by western funding and support, especially to the right-wing groups that overtook the movement and accomplished the coup of the Ukrainian government. The people whose democratically elected candidate had just been removed by the western-backed coup were unhappy and many did not recognize the new illegally appointed government as legitimate. This group was especially prevalent in the eastern part of Ukraine and formed the basis of the separatist movement (always referred to as "Russia-backed separatists" in western media). The new government in Kyiv attempted to suppress the separatist movement with its army but the army refused to start shooting their own countrymen. This led the Kyiv government to turn to far-right paramilitaries like Azov, Aidar, C14, Right Sector, and Donbas battalion in order to attack the people of Donbas, these paramilitaries were later folded completely into the Ukrainian military. Crimea was spared this fate as it was annexed by Russia and didn't have to deal with 8 years of war. Multiple ceasefires, including Minsk 2, were brokered by Russia and European nations and signed by the Ukrainian government but were then simply ignored and the shelling of Donbas continued for 8 years. While Kyiv was waging war on its own countrymen with far-right paramilitary groups it was also promoting the far-right within itself. Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and genocidal murderer, was made into a national hero. His birthday was made into a national holiday and the street near the Babi Yar monument, a monument commemorating the largest Nazi massacre in Ukraine, was renamed in his honor. Far-right people were placed in high positions in the military and police. Politicians ran under the slogan "Military, Language, Faith". Official use of the Russian language was suppressed, despite it being the majority language among eastern Ukrainians. The Ukrainian people still desired peace with Donbas and Zelensky ran as a peace candidate, however after he won he refused or was unable to stop the the shelling of Donbas. In 2022 Russia recognized the Donbas Republics as sovereign states, Ukraine responded by further escalating their artillery attacks on the Donbas Republics, Russia responded with the invasion of Ukraine.
Good heavens that's long. It's probably not usable but I wrote it so I'm going to post it. I didn't even mention the massive post-coup privatizations, Victoria Nuland directly selecting the prime minister, or Ukraine's finance minister becoming a Ukrainian citizen the same day she became the finance minister (she was US-born).
To me it looks like you said you were new to Hexbear, not that your account was new. Why did you feel the need to lie about this?