this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Collecting sources for introductory post: NATO and the war in Ukraine (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml to c/genzhou@lemmygrad.ml
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The goal of this post is to collect a list of useful sources regarding NATO in general, as well as the context of the war in Ukraine, to be used to educate new leftists or anyone else who needs it.

If you comment, please include sources as well as a brief description of each source's contents. Ideally, use bourgeois sources that the average Western "left-leaning" liberal would consider trustworthy to highlight changes in reporting over the years.

This post will be gradually updated as new comments appear, and will then be pinned to this community. (This will probably take a while, but you can still direct people here to look at the sources in the comments.)

Post so far

2014 US-backed coup

Nazism in Ukraine

Government oppression of Russian-speaking population

Genocide in the Donbas

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Sources contributed by:

  • /u/davel@lemmygrad.ml
  • /u/itspostingtime@lemmygrad.ml

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[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

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.