- 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
ITT: Russian sympathisers coping
It’s good news; though, nothing spectacular like the earlier offensive. It’s to be expected though, the muscovites have had time to build up those defences.
Hopefully the exodus from Reddit will help drown out the authoritarian-worship here.
Yes, my Russian-sympathizing friends. You can certainly classify the actions of Russia and China as imperialist & bad too, and it will not detract from the imperialist & bad stuff the US or “the West” has done. Most humans can walk and chew gum at the same time, you can too!
Edit: My first downvote here! Looks like there are indeed some people who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time :P
Muh both sides!
What do you understand the word “Imperialist” to mean?
Wikipedia’s first paragraph is:
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing not only hard power (economic and military power), but also soft power (cultural and diplomatic power). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire.
Russia (and the Soviet Union) has had multiple rounds of imperialism throughout its history. Slicing bits off Ukraine and its continued occupation of parts of Georgia in the modern era certain counts as expansionism. It also exercises cultural power by using state controlled Russian-language media to influence both domestic and foreign populations.
Thanks for that, I was too lazy to respond to him. Glad someone else brought the receipts
Unfortunately receipts aren’t any good to someone who hasn’t achieved reading comprehension
Somebody who’s achieved reading comprehension would know that there are many theories of imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_imperialism
It’s shit like this that makes this one of the hardest wars to follow. Before that, it was Syria.
The Russian commanders, who were wrong to invade, have learned a lot since the initial invasion. It’s the same reason that Assads army was much better after they lost a lot of their soldiers. When you have a lot of your army die, on average, the ones remaining are the ones who managed to stay alive who, again on average, are now much more experienced combat troops.
The Russians did exactly what Ukraine did during the Russian offensive. They pulled back behind their minefields, and then used artillery to drop more mines on the assaulting force that was in the process of clearing mines. This was the same tactic that the Ukrainians used to great success that caused a bunch of Russian tanks to be blown up in columns in Vulhedar.
Remember, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. If the basis of your view of why you think a given side is losing is because you don’t like them, then you aren’t actually interested in the war. Just in cheerleading your team.
Honestly, I can’t understand the strategic goal of how the Ukrainians are running this particular offensive. It truly seems to be to spend as much Ukrainian blood to secure western financial and logistical support. Not to actually gain territory they can hold. At least, that’s my best guess with articles like this in the American media: Politico
you know it’s possible to ‘dislike’ Russia and at the same time know that they will completely overpower Ukraine, right? you’re letting your hatred for Russia blind your understanding of military power and strategy
Anyone that “knows” they will completely overpower Ukraine apparently stopped paying attention to reality many years ago. They’ve been proven to be incapable of it.
oh cool, i’ve found the military understander. so what is Ukraine’s strategy here? What does victory look like for them?
In weapons, ammunition, and soldiers Russia outnumbers the AFU, as assessed by any reasonable expert. Russia sees this as a special military operation, not a war. They are comfortable being conservative with their resources and not committing too many at once (which is what they’ve done so far). Even with this restraint, they are killing Ukrainian soldiers at a higher rate than Russian soldiers are dying. Russia has an army, including reserves, of around 2million soldiers.
Look I hate seeing young men sent into a meat thresher because they are serving the interests of NATO and capitalist interests. I wish the AFU had the courage to not waste the lives of their soldiers and come to the negotiating table so that no more lives are senselessly wasted
I wish the AFU had the courage to not waste the lives of their soldiers and come to the negotiating table so that no more lives are senselessly wasted
What’s to negotiate? Russia has seized Ukrainian territory. Ukraine wants it back. There’s nothing for Ukraine to concede.
The only side “wasting” lives here is Russia, if they’d just go home the war would be over. Ukraine’s not going to try seizing any Russian territory.
i am once again urging you to understand that the war began in 2014.
the LPR and DPR regions are ethnically russian. they were living peacefully until 2014 when their political parties were disbanded and they’ve been systematically shelled by ukranians every day since 2014. minsk 2 would have reintegrated Donbas with Ukraine with some protections for its minority population, but Ukraine didn’t even implement the first step. zelensky was elected on a platform of ending the war, but when he tried Azov told him they would rather coup his government than stand down. at some point when negotiations are broken down the only thing any organization has left to do is resort to violence, which the Russian state did when it felt threatened enough by NATO (which if you’ll recall spent months warmongering prior to the invasion start) to justify the risk.
Of course, the people of the Donbas were just sitting there peacefully doing nothing when all of a sudden the Ukranians started shelling them. That was the start of the military action, silly me. Good thing all those vacationing Russian soldiers happened to be there a the time to defend them.
In 2022 it also just happened that russia was hosting possibly the largest military excercise in recent memory right on Ukraine’s border when the situation turned too menacing. Good they happened to have all those cruise missiles ready as if they hadn’t acted, russia would have been wiped out or something…
Occam’s razor cuts well on the two “possible” viewpoints of this war.
First is that big country sees an opportunity to capture land from a smaller one. In multiple stages between 2014 and 2022. A very limited amount of assumptions that can explain what is happening…
Second presumes that all the occupied areas secretly wanted to be a part of russia, nato is threatening russian territory while not being present, non affiliated soldiers with russian (but not russian) equipment occupy areas, a jewish president turns out to be in charge of a genocidial nazi regime that just has to be replaced with a peaceful one, and finally all of this is best achieved by a 3 day (actually 476) special military operation that has a goal of achieving something, but nobody actually knows what.
Funny thing is what you sarcastically said is very close to what happened. I think you should be part of reddit legion on Ukrainian frontlines.
That’s the most tankie shit I have read in a while. I don’t get how anyone with a modicum of humanity can go out of their way to defend the war of aggression Russia is waging against the people (mostly civilians!) of Ukraine.
You seriously need to stop living in your tiny bubble. The shit you are spewing is just sad and you probably don’t even get why what you say is awful.
So I sincerely ask you to either become a better person or just stfu.
Stop, you will make them cry back to lemmygrad!
The “Muscovites”?
Russians, without any double meanings that Russian sympathizers could jump in and say “aha, racists!” or “aha, russophobes!” over.
The two places in Russia that aren’t pro-Ukrainian war, are Moscow and St Petersburg.
Putins powerbase is sort of the equivalent to Trump or Erdogan. The people in the larger cities don’t like him, but the rural areas love him.
He is a Russophobe. Report him.
Russophobe because he’s antiPutin and anti-invasion? Tf you smoking tankie
You are the one sniffing, projecting neofascist.
Sure, you just keep gargling Putin’s cock and calling everyone else fascists. lmao. I’m a Marxist. Proud anti-imperialist. Full-on America-bad here. But I’m not going to defend a literal authoritarian dictator and an obvious war of aggression. You 🤡
Why do you libs always go with the homophobic insults?
Lmao sure. Keep simping for the dictator that literally locked up Pussy Riot and LGBTQ folks for existing. Your projection and false concern bullshit doesn’t work for people with more than two neurons to rub together.
If you are a proud anti-imperialist Marxist, I am Karl Marx and strip you of your Marxist label right now. You are a weasel and a grifter, and a useful idiot of genocidal Anglo empire.
In a few days you weasels will experience horror, if you think this is too much. And your brain will either be dewormed or you get contained in some obscure Lemmy instance, or go back to Reddit, the CIA hometown.
Pretty sure that describes pretty much the entire planet now.
Anglosphere != the whole world. Anglosphere is like 10-12% of the world’s population controlling 85-90% of the world’s news media.
The only coping here is coming from people who think that the fact that Ukraine hasn’t even reached the first line of defence in over a week is some kind of a stunning success. To give people some perspective, here’s what western media said Ukraine would have to achieve in the first day in order to succeed https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/18/ukraine-russia-war-counteroffensive-attack-bakhmut-himars/
Slava Ukraïni!
Heroyam slava!
Quit reddit behavior please. This adds nothing and is not at all useful.
I’m just expressing my hope they will succeed and liberate many more villages and cities, in the most succint way possible. And they will succeed.
You just said ‘glory to the heroes’. Which heroes are you wishing glory to? Cause that saying has a history that you are apparently unaware of.
The ones right now (not 70 years ago) defending their country (aka the Ukrainians) from imperialists (russians) who are shelling civilians, kidnapping children, castrating soldiers, raping women. YHave you been keeping up?
Frankly, if the Germans were invaded, it wouldn’t excuse starting to use a phrase the traditional Nazi’s used, even if the people invading were monsters. In the same way that the swastika is an appropriated symbol, but no longer represents that because something came along that carries far more … historical weight, shall we say.
If someone invaded the South of the US, I would not be okay with the US starting to use wildly well known confederate slogans.
Also, you just said the Russians are the heroes you were referencing that were defending their country from imperialists who are doing all that bad stuff. I know that isn’t what you meant, but that is what you said. Might be worth an edit, if you care.
undefined> Also, you just said the Russians are the heroes you were referencing that were defending their country from imperialists who are doing all that bad stuff. I know that isn’t what you meant, but that is what you said. Might be worth an edit, if you care.
Ah, yes, I meant the russians are doing the evil things.
no they won’t lol
Just things fascists say while they murder Poles and Jews.
you’re super and are loved… No need to be the token edgemaster 5000 here.
This was literally what Bandyerites, i.e. fascists that assisted the Nazis and did ethnic cleansing all on their own, used as a rallying cry.
Context is important for meaning.
The nazis used a salute one French painter imagined the Romans using. In the United states kids used to make the same salute to pledge allegiance to the flag. This doesn’t make the american kids (nor the Romans) nazis. Becouse the context matters.
Context is important. The people in Ukraine who started making that a thing again now were, for the most part, all direct descendants of the Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, who are now erecting statues to their Nazi father/grandfathers.
I wish this war hadn’t started. The Russians were wrong for invading, but the amount of white-washing of literal Nazis because the Ukrainians are reframing their national identity away from the USSR and Russia is absolute dogshit. The people who used that saying were bad. The people trying to make it a thing now are directly related to those bad people, and don’t want them thought of as bad anymore.
All of the justifications people are using now are the same justifications used by assholes promoting the lost cause myth about the civil war.
all direct descendants of the Nazi collaborators in Ukraine
literal Nazis
That’s the same sort of twisted interpretation of history that I see out of Republicans in the US. The Democratic Party used to be the party of slavery and the south, so they’re practically all slavers today! Black people just laugh at them and continue voting Democrat in droves.
Bad analogy. Better one would be if the Democratic party started to put up statues to Jefferson Davis because the Democratic Party members who were children/grandchildren of Jefferson Davis wanted to re-rehabilitate the image of Jefferson Davis.
I promise you that if the Democratic party started trying to retroactively white wash the confederacy, or specific subsets of the confederacy, in the same exact way the Ukrainians are, that the people that were oppressed by the Democratic Party would no longer vote for them.
so if i understand correctly, you’re saying it’s ok to do this salute today as long as I’m saying I’m doing the Roman one, not the Nazi one?
Nah dude sorry, context does not matter if the phrase/symbol has been used for fascist terror. That salute (and the phrase above) has been used for fascist ends. It’s done and can no longer be used
Ukraine doesn’t really win anything. This is the third Army they are wasting. Too bad for the Ukrainian conscripts.
Third army? Did the other two go somewhere?
correct, they have reconstituted themselves twice over and there’s hardly any elements left of their prewar jäger, mountain, airborne etc. divisions.
Today our troops captured a two-room apartment with kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. They have succeeded in retaining two-thirds of it despite fierce counterattacks by the enemy.
You might have the wrong city. Mr prigo was originally hailing those successes in bakhmut.
Ukraine doesn’t really win anything. This is the third Army they are wasting. Too bad for the Ukrainian conscripts.
Bunch of Redditors hete getting stoked for this war to be down to the last Ukrainian.
I can’t wait for the “blackout” to end so they can go back to huffing cope and baying for blood on r/ukraine again
You want russia to win? Not enough rape, castrating, stealing children, shelling appartment blocks for you?
the thing you bloodthirsty redditors don’t understand is, the only correct position on this war is hoping it ends as soon as possible. I hope peace talks can be established, and we can all move past this with as few people as possible being shoved into the woodchipper. I am not pro russia, and I’m certainly not pro ukraine. The only correct position is anti war, anything less is baying for blood.
I have little trust that an “end” that leaves Russia occupying a large portion of Ukraine will last. It’s a message to Russia’s leadership that invasions will be rewarded. First Georgia, then Crimea, then Ukraine more broadly. Make some allegations about a Russian minority being persecuted and it’s time to roll in the tanks! That’s probably a large reason why Europe has been willing to arm Ukraine to the teeth: to send a message that the West is serious this time after wimping out in the case of Georgia and Crimea.
I understand this is a positive news in the first week of the counter offensive, but to me - it makes me feel depressed.
It makes me look at the size of Ukraine and the occupied areas. There are thousands or probably ten thousands of occupied settlements and villages. Reporting 5 of e.g. 18.000 liberated… it is positive, it is a news, it makes me depressed looking at the scaled of what lies ahead in this war to get Russia out of Ukraine.
The thing I am hoping for and expecting, that this is not a continuous speed. In the past, we have seen Russian lines disintegrate, troops flee in civilian clothing and the front lines moved tens of kilometers within a single day.
Hopefully russia crumbles from within. They are doing everything possible to show that this is a battle between “good” and “evil” - the destructin of cities, kidnapping children, rape, castration, civilian deaths from distance and in person.
This will not happen. The reason that you think that is due to the fact that this is the most propagandized wars I’ve ever seen from personal experience. That heavy amount of propaganda is flowing both ways.
Basically, everything you just described is the natural consequence of war. That’s not excusing the Russians, but acknowledging that there are always examples of everything on that list on both sides in basically any war. It doesn’t matter if one side causes much more of those things than the other side when it comes to propaganda. All that matters is that both sides have done it. Then, the Russians use that to make their own propaganda. Which they’ve done. The Russian population honestly also believes that this is a war of good vs evil, too. To be clear, I’m not saying that it is, just that the Russian population, fed Russian propaganda, believe in this war.
The end result of all of the above words is that the unrest in Russia at this point is due to Russians being unhappy that Putin isn’t more aggressive. If Putin is replaced in a coup, the person that replaced him will be more aggressive against Ukraine, not less.
undefined> Basically, everything you just described is the natural consequence of war. That’s not excusing the Russians, but acknowledging that there are always examples of everything on that list on both sides in basically any war. I
Except the Ukrainians aren’t intentionally striking civilians, raping, killing soldiers who have surrendered, castrating soldiers - we would have heard about it from the russians (though anything they release has to be treated with suspicion).
The russians appear to want to be labelled as “evil”.
And so they will be, except by russian sympathizers, whether they admit it or not.
The Ukrainians have explicitly struck civilians. They’ve accepted responsibility for some of them and lied about some of the others where the US’s intelligence agencies believe that it was the Ukrainians. Fuck, in the recent discord leaks, we discovered that our security agencies don’t even know what the truth is with Ukraine because we don’t really have intelligence assets with the Ukrainian side, and we know that the Ukrainians lie to us about a lot.
Who used an unwilling suicide bomb to take out a strategic bridge? Who attacked a NATO countries infrastructure in an act of war? Who used a car bomb against a Russian, I don’t know, unpopular political figures daughter? The car bomb intentionally killed civilians, and did so intentionally in a civilian area. Dugin is, within Russia, right now, effectively only a pro-war blogger. He doesn’t have political power. He also doesn’t even have the ear of powerful people, really. But killing him(who was the likely target), a civilian, was apparently worthwhile for the Ukrainians. He and his daughter were civilians.
For the other stuff, the Russians absolutely are saying that that is happening. I agree with you that those claims, coming from the Russians, do need to be treated with skepticism. But you are wrong that the Russians aren’t claiming the Ukrainians are doing those things. They absolutely are. The fact that you don’t think they are making those claims makes me wonder where you are getting your information from.
So, the worst crime the Russians committed was starting the war. All of their other crimes follow from that first crime. Without it, none of the others would have happened. That is because war itself is evil. It makes good people do horrible things. Don’t even think about what it makes bad people do. Every side in every war, has done, and will do what you are saying the Ukrainians haven’t done. They have. I’m not saying it is official policy, but that probably isn’t true, even for the Russians.
The Russians don’t want to be labelled evil. Do you really think that? NO ONE THINKS THEY ARE EVIL. HITLER didn’t think he was evil. No. The Russians don’t think they are evil, and they don’t want other people to think that either. Saying that doesn’t require any knowledge about this war, just knowledge about human nature. You want to think they’re evil? That is entirely fair. But if you actually believe they think they’re evil, that is just stupid.
To be clear, I’m not a Russian sympathizer. As said above, the Russians committed the largest crime possible by invading. Everything else came about because of that. I am a war nerd. It is something I find interesting. Part of the problem with the fucking propaganda for this war is that it makes actually finding out what is happening the most difficult to follow of all of the wars in my lifetime. It also leads to just stupid fucking opinions, like if someone says the Ukrainian offensive is going poorly means that that person is a Russian Sympathizer. Being morally right doesn’t mean that everything you do is effective.
An area amounting to about 6 km by 6 km. Still an excuse for cheerleading and manufacturing consent for escalation. One of the villages is like 6 houses.
It’s funny how with certain folks its always the fighting back that’s the escalation, never the original aggression…
Oh yeah the original aggression. Which one?
Your head is so far up your own propaganda I can’t even tell what you’re trying to say here.
Western liberals keep ignoring anything before 2022 in order to create a black-and-white narrative. This leads them to the conclusion that they’re fighting absolute evil and so any means are justified no matter how many people will die, and how dangerous and even counter-productive their actions.
Nah. I don’t see Russia as absolute evil. And there are plenty of means the west does not consider justified. Nobody I know falls into either of these categories.
I don’t want Ukraine to kill poor Russian sods but as long as Russia kills poor Ukrainian sods I think it’s only fair if they get to shoot back.
Most of us just want Russia to go home and let Ukraine be Ukraine.
This is such a simplistic view of the war. The civil war started because the country already had internal fault lines, and was pulled in different directions by Russian and Western meddling until it broke. The invasion was just the latest in a series of escalations. Nothing about this war is in the interest of the people living on the battlefield, they got duped or forced into fighting each other. Encouraging them to fight on is messed up.
Edit: I’d also like to add that Russia seemed quite willing, prior to the invasion, to have a compromise in which Ukraine would be neutral. The US especially clearly wasn’t interested, insisting instead on its own supremacy, in which no opposing or neutral countries are to be tolerated. To this end they also supported the worst elements of Ukrainian society, ultra-nationalist Banderites, which they had been doing since the end of WW2.
never the original aggression…
Ah the Maidan Coup, ya the Ukrainians shouldn’t have done that, you’re right
How dare the people rise up against their rightfully-installed rulers and decide they want someone else. What did they think this was, a democracy?
Yanukovich, while definitely corrupt, won in a fair democratic election that was judged free and fair by international observers… The coup overthrew a democratically elected leader. He was not appointed by anyone.
I guarantee you it means something to the residents of those six houses.
It’s easy to lose track of individual humanity at the scale of a war, but this victory is the one these people will always most remember when they think of the tide turning. Their lives are worth something.
Doesn’t change the fact the the suMmEr OfFensIVe is going horribly lol
Real life is not like the movies
The summer offensive that has been going on for what? One week? Looking at how fast Russia gained ground in bakhmut, vuhledar, and avdiivka, this offensive is going swimmingly
I would save this comment and get back to you when the offensive has crumbled, but something tells me you and all the other Reddit libs currently swarming this website will have long crawled back to daddy Reddit by then ;)
E: Uh oh, seems like I’ve angered le epic reddit army! Whatever shall I do?! I know, I’ll just wait a month or two until 80% of the accounts in this thread are long dead :3
@[email protected] The fact that this instance often bans people for countering your imperialist world-view created a bubble where you might think it’s the libs that you speak out against. In reality it’s not only radicals that you write of but it’s also our comrades, long time antifa, anarchist and communist militants that are dying fighting back against yet another imperialist incursion into CEE from Russia. No amount of western ignorance, privilege and lack of education will stop us from struggling for our right to self-determination, solidarity with the refugees from Ukraine and all victims of this invasion or the broader struggle against a centuries long oppression of our peoples. With regards, from admin of one of the first lemmy instances.
Reading this made me very sad for you. Good luck.
If everyone else is a “reddit lib” then that makes you a rightwing raving loony, which, according to your comments, may be accurate.
it literally took 1 day for the cia and nafo freaks to overrun lemmy world news…
Maybe you’re just discovering what the median opinion of the mainstream public looks like?
I don’t think the person you’re responding to has the capacity to realize anything except their own delusions
so much projection
TIL iam a CIA freak
People that call themselves communists but support Putin make me sick.
Nice straw man, nobody actually says that.
