Personally, I don’t support either Ukraine or Russia, I see Ukraine as harboring nazis and they should answer for their crimes in the Donbas. However, when Russia invaded Ukraine I saw it as an imperialist invasion for Putin to conquer Ukraine. After He annexed the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, this became a very blatant imperialist invasion. Secondly, I found this post, which talks about the Russian capture of Bakhmut. I was suprised about the number of people who supported Russia. Am I wrong here for not supporting Russia? I would love to hear you opinions on this matter.
Russia’s economy doesn’t have the characteristics of an imperialist power, therefore the wars they wage cannot be explained by a vital need to export capital. If Russia cannot be systematically described as a country that needs new ventures to avoid collapse just like the US and Euro empires, therefore we need to find another explanation.
The liberal explanation for the war in Ukraine is simply that Putin is a psychopath who loves having power and killing people. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that one.
The Russian side explaination is that Ukraine was being used as a proxy power by the US and that letting it be armed and solidified politically would allow the US to pressure Russia into giving up sovereign state economic rights. That explains both why the communist party (even if they have faults) AND the Russian bourgeoisie united on that subject.
Given that the Russian bourgeoisie is ultimately commanding the operation, looting and other ways of making money should be expected after their victory. But that doesn’t mean that Russia had a vital need of doing this to avoid collapse.
Mostly agree, but we shouldn’t forget that expansions and war do not only happen in the highest stage of capitalism to avoid collapse. They happened before imperialism, so imperialism isn’t necessary to wage wars for material/financial reasons.
Napoleonic France wasn’t imperialist in terms of the developmental stage of capitalism, it was expansionist, militaristic and warfocused anyway.
Edit: Not saying Russia is like Napoleonic France obviously
Russia is not even imperialist in the liberal sense, the annexed territories were formerly Russian, are inhabited by Russians, were incorporated into Ukraine by administrative decisions and tried to detach themselves from Ukraine at least three times since 1918. That’s clearly liberation.