The Ukrainian Counteroffensive Has Ended

The situation is more complex than the media presents it as. The conflict started in 2014 when the Ukrainian government was coup'ed and banned opposition parties, causing seccesionists to rise up in eastern Ukraine. The involved parties signed a cease-fire agreement, but Ukraine violated it by bombarding cities in the disputed territories. Russia sent troops in in response, at the request of the separatists.

We don't write off the Russian narrative as baseless, but we do have a range of opinions about the conflict, aknowleging that historical context. Personally, I believe that there were (and are) diplomatic solutions that would minimize loss of life but they are being ignored, in part because of domestic pressure from far-right groups in Ukraine, but mostly from US pressure to have a conflict for the sake of the military industrial complex.

The sooner Ukraine loses the less Ukrainians die. We aren't nationalists so we don't value national sovereignty(at least inherently).

Among other reasons.

I can't and won't speak for every hexbear, but I personally want the war to end as soon as possible. The failure of the counteroffensive to make any actual gains, far under-performing the expectations of most Russia-optimistic commentators (by Russia-optimistic, I mean people who think that Russia is on the trajectory to "win" the war) just goes to show that Ukraine is not going to be able to achieve its war aims. The only thing that could change the trajectory at this point would be full NATO entry into war, which would begin WWIII and be quite likely to lead to nuclear war and the subsequent deaths of billions of people.

Given that Ukraine isn't going to win, then the only thing that is going to end the war is a negotiated settlement. That settlement would have to concede to Russian war aims, since again, they're winning. Those aims seem to be the recognition of Russian territorial gains in the war, as well as a neutral status for Ukraine (de-militarization/de-Nazification have been dropped.) I think pro-Ukraine commentators would call this a defeat for Ukraine, but in my view this is the best deal that Ukraine could plausibly get at this point. There's simply little remaining equipment that NATO is willing to give away that Ukraine is capable of deploying. For example, the F-16s are 9+ months away from being deployed, and I don't see how a handful of old fighter planes are going to make any difference going up against the most sophisticated anti-air missle systems in the world.

So, reality checks for NATO, Ukraine and the western press are good, because the alternative is throwing away more life for zero return.

Short answer: We don't want Russia to win we just want USA and NATO to lose.

You seem nice enough, I'll tell you. It's personal for me. I have family back in Donbas. Ukraine has been at war with Donbas for 9 years now. There were repeated peace agreements that Ukraine signed, Minsk, Minsk 2, and the Trilateral peace agreement in 2020. None of them were upheld. Ukraine kept shelling Donbas for 8 long years, they sent in their right-wing paramilitiaries to terrorize the areas with separatist sentiments that hadn't managed to break away., I liked Zelensky when he was campaigning for an end to the war on Donbas. I watched him visit the paramilitary groups on the front to tell them to stop shelling Donbas, where he gave his "I am not some loser" speech. They didn't stop and he didn't do anything to them, he continued to provide shells for them to shoot at Ukrainians. When Russia acknowledged the Donbas republics as states, Ukraine responded by once again intensifying shelling. Russia then responded by invading Ukraine.

Every day the Ukrainian state still functions they are rounding up their own citizens to send to the trenches to die to Russian artillery. Peace or a collapse of the Ukrainian state would put a stop to this. Russia offered peace terms back in March, Ukraine responded by dragging one of their own negotiators into the street and shooting him in the head. Later Zelensky made it illegal to negotiate peace with Putin. NATO and the Ukrainian government have decided to fight this war until the last Ukrainian. I can hope for peace terms, but it just seems so unlikely. So I'm rooting for the central Ukrainian state to collapse, it would be the best outcome for the Ukrainian people.

My most controversial position is that I'm in favor of Russia annexing Ukrainian territory. The US and the IMF have provided Ukraine with a ton of cash and equipment, place Ukraine greatly in debt. They're going to take this debt out on the blood and flesh of the Ukrainian people. I'm worried that it's going to the harshest round of privatization and "shock therapy" that the world has ever seen. It might be worse than Ukraine in the 90s after the Soviet Union fell. The more people that can be spared from that the better. Hell if Putin had the balls to annex Donbas back in 2014 we might not be in this situation. I was jealous of Crimea for getting to join Russia instead of being shelled for 8 years. I know that Russia was more vulnerable to sanctions back in 2014 but it still hurts. Peace would be preferable but again, Ukraine has done everything possible to make negotiations impossible.

Maybe I'm wrong and the US, NATO, and the IMF will forgive all debts and Marshall plan Ukraine into a first-rate economy. I just think that's very unlikely.

It’s very simple: we are leftists whose only position in this war is to support whichever side that is more beneficial the survival of working class movements.

NATO/Ukraine winning means the resurgence and victory of fascism in Eastern Europe and Russia, it means replicating what Ukraine has done to its own people (banning socialist and communist parties, persecution and murder of labor activists, rise of violent fascist gangs, mass privatization of public utilities to foreign capitalists, and the inevitable neoliberal shock therapy being perpetrated in the region to impoverish the working class as if those countries haven’t suffered enough). Essentially, a repeat of post-Soviet Russia shock doctrine in the 1990s. The Western media literally have been salivating on the prospect of collapsing Russia’s economy with their “sanctions from hell” as though collective punishment is going to stop the war somehow.

As much as we criticize Russia for their problems, it is nowhere near as severe as the fascism problem in Ukraine today, which is being actively promoted and glorified by NATO and Western media. For one, the Communist Party of Russian Federation is still the second largest political party in the country, despite them not being as radical as we’d like them to be. Meanwhile, Ukraine is actively decommunizing the country to erase its own Soviet legacies.

On a higher level, though, we as Marxists see this as the ultimate clash between neoliberal finance capitalism (represented by the US) and industrial capitalism (represented by China). As followers of Marx’s thesis, we believe that industrial capitalism remains most viable path towards socialism. The Russia-Ukraine War is thus a proxy war between two systems: Ukraine representing the expansion of finance capital led by Washington into Russia to ultimately weaken the rise of China; and Russia which is resisting the encroachment of Western capitalism and is being increasingly pulled into the sphere of Chinese socialism.

To put it quite simply, we see that neoliberalism represents a dead end where fascism is the imminent outcome. Western imperialism winning will truly doom the Global South for they will be the first ones that will be sacrificed to the gods of free market as the global capitalist system crumbles from within.