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But what about Ukrainian self determination? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

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So Ukraine has turned into a shit show with on the one hand Russia and on the other hand the US and EU. It is clear that Ukraine is merely a pawn in their chess game. This is clear to me.

I try to make it clear to my surroundings too but one question keeps coming back to me whenever it comes to peace talks: what about what Ukrainians want? Should they accept a split in their country with Russia seizing captured land?

I noticed that I do not have a clear answer to this and I wanted to see some input from you guys. Peace talks should imo be the goal as it would be the end to a bloody conflict and it would further (even if slightly) reduce risk for a bigger war. But it is also clear that Ukraine is just a pawn in those peace talks and everything will be decided between the US and Russia. Is it realistic to acknowledge Ukrainian interest in this? And if so, to what extent can leftist support said interests?

Thank you in advance for your answers. It might make it easier for me to go against the warmongering that has been going on lately, and to prevent people close to me from falling for it.

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[–] cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't agree at all that Ukrainian nationalism is the opposite of self-determination. The actual Ukrainian self-determination supporters begged for Russia's help.

I totally understand that alot of Ukrainians are/were violent, dangerous, white supremacist NATO-bootlicking, evil nutjobs. But it's important to remember that Ukraine has been systematically psychologically collectively been abused and gaslit by decades of Nazi-Aligned Terrorist Organization propaganda.

I don't think (I'm not saying that you think this, I'm just elaborating) that you can blame Ukrainians completely for the crimes of their government, even though there is alot of truth in that.

And unlike Israel, Ukraine has millennia, or at least multiple centuries, of history before it was part of Russia. Even though yes, Ukraine was often considered to be Russian territory.

I think that Ukraine has a right to exist, unlike Isn'treal, and I don't view Ukraine as an inherently settler-colonialist project, and there is a very real different, albeit similar in alot of aspects, than from Russian culture.

I won't shed any particularly heavy tears of if Ukraine ceases altogether to exist, but I really don't think that the high-jacking and colonialist appropriation of actual Ukrainian nationalism should justify the claim that Ukraine is inherently as artificial as Israel.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Just to clarify, i put "Ukrainian nationalism" in quotation marks because i don't believe that it is that which it claims to be, not in the broader sense of the national interest and self-determination of the whole of Ukraine. It is a strictly Galician supremacist ideology that is rooted in ethnic hate not just for Russians, Poles, Jews, but also and nowadays in large part directed at other Ukrainians who are considered the "wrong kind" of Ukrainians.

It cannot possibly represent self-determination when it historically prostrated itself before Nazi Germany, the genociders of slavs, and now before the Western imperialists whose only interest in Ukraine is to plunder, subjugate it and use it as a battering ram against Russia.

Ukraine itself is not artificial, just like Switzerland isn't artificial despite being a patchwork of different languages and ethnicities, but the ethnically and linguistically homogenous Ukraine whose sole national essence is to be the antithesis of Russia - which is how the Ukrainian project is envisioned by this "Ukrainian nationalism" - is artificial and ahistorical.

And i am very much not blaming all Ukrainians for the crimes of this ideology and this regime, in fact as i have just stated, i think Ukrainians are the primary victims of this ideology and regime which in collusion with the western imperialist powers has stolen their self-determination and their future from them.

But unfortunately i don't think Ukraine as it has existed for the past 100 years can continue to exist anymore. I think that this "Ukrainian nationalism" has irreparably broken it and the best outcome for the Ukrainian people now is either re-absorption into Russia, or a division wherein Russia takes the majority Russian speaking parts and the rest become something akin to Belarus.

Breaking free from the toxic ideology of "Ukrainian nationalism" and from the clutches of the western imperialists is the only way they can have a real prosperous and peaceful future. I know we would all like to turn back the clock to the Ukrainian SSR but that's just not going to happen.

[–] RomCom1989@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

I just think of it as Greater Ruthenia

[–] cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

You have very fair points, and I'm 99 percent sure that you didn't mean what you said literally, but more so the overall sentiment, and I figured this was moreso what you meant.

I mostly agree.

I would like to see the Ukrainian SSR come back, but alot of things would have to change first.