this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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GenZhou
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One thing that I learned here is that imperialism has a much stricter definition than what we're used to in general parlance among liberal places you might have discussed before. This too threw me, I think sometimes people get bogged down on correcting the definition and not the meaning behind it though.
From the outside it looks like russian apologia, but I think it's about keeping the meaning of the words and not diluting them until they're meaningless.
People will say that Russia is not imperialist, because by the definition used here, it's not. And to a layman that sounds like they're saying Russia didn't invade Ukraine. Of course, they did. It's just by the definition used, the invasion wasn't imperialism.
I think Putin, maybe Russia in general, genuinely considers that land as belonging to Russia. I disagree personally. They invaded and made excuses for it but ultimately, he thinks it belongs to Russia. It's aggression, it's invasion, but not necessarily imperialism because it's not about robbing the place blind but about claiming a land and people that he thinks belongs to Russia.
Meanwhile the US wants to make sure Ukraine doesn't side with Russia, because the US wants to plunder the natural resources of Ukraine for their own profit. That's imperialism.
Unfortunately quite often when you say Russia is imperialist the response will be "no they're not" but doesn't explain why they're still bad even if it's not imperialism. They're still a bourgeois capitalist state and despite what they might say their interests are not in the working class' interests.
Also for what it's worth, if the US, and NATO, and all it's influence disappeared overnight, being a bourgeois capitalist state Russia would almost certainly try to fill that imperialist void. It just hasn't got the money or power to do so with NATO active. I guess you could say the war is imperialist Vs wishes they were imperialist.
No. You continue to operate on the basis of the false Western narratives surrounding this conflict. There are enough sources on this post by now which clearly show that land seizure is not what this conflict is about and not Russia's primary motivation. This conflict is about the existential security threat perceived by Russia as emanating from NATO presence in Ukraine, as well as about the rights of the ethnic Russian population of the Donbass and southern Ukraine.
For eight years from 2014 to 2022 Russia made every effort to try and restore the Donbass to Ukraine by resolving the conflict via the Minsk agreements. If Ukraine had abided by those agreements rather than attempting to take the Donbass by force, and if the West had taken Russia's security concerns - which Russia repeated over and over for decades - seriously, Russia would not have had to recognize and subsequently annex the Donbass republics.
Ukraine then had another chance to avoid further loss of territory in 2022 with the Istanbul negotiations. Russia was prepared to end the conflict and restore everything but the Donbass republics to Ukraine in exchange for serious commitments on neutrality, denazification and demilitarization. The West instead promised Ukraine a blank check if they pulled out of the negotiations, which they did. This resulted in further permanent loss of territory for Ukraine.
At no point in the history of this conflict has Russia behaved as if their motivation was to take land from Ukraine. This extends even to how they militarily handle the SMO, prioritizing attrition of Ukraine's forces over taking territory, because it's not the territory that they want. Their primary goals remain Ukraine's neutrality, denazification and demilitarization. But the other response is right, this is not the post for this discussion. Please study the sources provided on this post and if you still wish to have this debate open up a separate post for it.
As a friendly reminder:
If you are looking for a discussion that focuses on the topic of "Is Russia imperialist", I recommend you to open a new post in c/asklemmygrad. That topic warrants a discussion and I am pretty sure comrades will join in to explain their point of view. However, in this post, we risk to derail it from its intended purpose.
You’re mostly right, although I would like to add that resistance to NATO is in the working class’ interest, even if Russia isn’t acting on behalf of the working class (which it isn’t).