Western media have finally change course. They are now admitting that the much promoted Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed. In fact, the acknowledge that it never had a chance to win in the first place.
The Hill, the Washington Post and CNN now agree that the Ukrainian army will never achieve its aims.
western MSM has a rare encounter with reality!
That makes it difficult for the Biden administration to get Congress approval for $24 billion in additional 'aid' to Ukraine. It does not make sense to pay for a cause that is evidently lost.
b seems overly hopeful regarding the rationality of US congress, but i think hes right- why would we throw more money at them, US politicians have made it clear they do not support bringing Ukraine into NATO if they do not win this conflict. of course, US politicians are prone to lying and misleading
Nothing has come from the 'peace conference' which Saudi Arabia arranged on Ukraine's behalf
lol. lmao even. props to big dog MBS for trying
Despite the onslaught of bad news the Ukrainian army is still trying to take Russian positions in the south and east of Ukraine. But it simply does not have enough in men and material to break through the lines.
Even if they would manage to get a local breakthrough there are not enough reserves to push for the necessary follow up. Just one of the NATO trained brigades has still been held back. All others have been mauled in their various deployment zones.
nothing has changed it seems
In the northeast around Kupyansk the Russians have started their own offensive which has the Ukrainians on the run. Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of the area
But Kupyansk is a Russian city and people refuse to leave.
show this to the libs claiming Russians are committing genocide in the regions they capture. curious that these civilians are content with Russian occupation when you believe what western media claims
The Russian campaign is slowly speeding up. As the Ukrainian Strana.news reports (machine translation):
Also in Ukraine, it is recorded that from Kupyansk to Bakhmut, Russia has increased the number of attacks.
"Over the past month, the total number of attacks in the Kupyansk, Limansky and Bakhmut directions has grown significantly. In July, during the week there were 6-6.5 thousand attacks, during the last week-9 thousand attacks, " - said the representative of the National Guard Ruslan Muzychuk.
According to him, the Russian Federation does not experience "shell hunger".
Aviation is also actively used, and over the past few weeks, more than 50 air attacks have been taking place every day, and sometimes more than 80.
That is bad news for the Ukrainian side which lacks the reserves to counter the Russian onslaught. There are also less weapons coming in from the West. F-16 fighter jets will be delayed for another nine months due to training issues. Tanks and other material are in short supply.
these supply issues sure bode well for the west’s performance in WW3
Strana also report of an interview with a knowledgeable Ukrainian soldier (machine translation):
Continuing the topic of the situation at the front, an interesting interview was given by a Ukrainian sniper fighting near Bakhmut with the call sign "Grandfather". On the air of political scientist Yuri Romanenko, he was introduced as Konstantin Proshinsky (this is a pseudonym).
The fighter spoke in detail about his vision of the situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Russian army.
Mobilization. In his opinion, it is conducted incorrectly. Recruits are sent to the front who have never been trained, and they are often over 50 years old and with a whole bunch of diseases.
No rotation. The soldier says that "the same brigades" are fighting at the front, and people are not taken out of the front line for six months or more. Whereas by Western standards, they can be kept in a war zone for no more than three months.
Behavior of mid-and high-level commanders. According to Proshinsky, many of them are trying to arrange a "mini-Stalingrad" on the positions, forcing them to go into frontal assaults on well-fortified Russian positions.
The Russian Army began to fight better.
Proshinsky believes that Russia has not yet used much of what it has against Ukraine.
The soldier thinks that the Russians will not move from their positions and that a stalemate peace like in Korea would be the end result.
UAF in real dire times— recruiting the elderly, poor logistics, engaging the enemy at inopportune times, and Russia has yet to waver
I believe that to be wrong. Russia's aim is to liberate at least the four regions that it has claimed for itself. For political reasons it can not stop before that is done.
Should the Ukraine continue to fight after that, Russia is likely to set new aims and take more land.
more editorializing, but it doesnt seem unreasonable. i thought Russia would stick to its original goal of Donetsk and Luhansk, but if Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are receptive to Russian governance, it would be foolish for Russia to give them up
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.
I mostly agree that Ukraine isn't completely innocent or a martyr in this conflict, but they are defending themselves from an invader, and I don't understand why the pressure to stop is on them and not the invader here
What diplomatic solutions do you think could be reached? From what I understand wouldn't the only thing Russia would accept is being able to keep all the stuff they annexed?
What diplomatic solutions do you think could be reached? From what I understand wouldn't the only thing Russia would accept is being able to keep all the stuff they annexed?
Yes, at this point I think that's looking like the most plausible end to the conflict, regardless of whether we keep throwing people into a meat grinder for the next 20 years or not. Ukraine's stance is that they won't consider any territorial concessions at all, including Crimea which they haven't controlled since long before the conflict started. I don't think that's realistic.
There were better options for Ukraine that would've avoided this outcome. If they'd upheld the cease-fire, if they'd allowed them to have a voice in a democratic process, maybe if they'd given them some kind of status of an autonomous zone. But with all the bridges burned at this point, the options are considerably narrower.
As for Russia, the thing is even if they withdrew, that wouldn't necessarily settle things because there's still Ukrainian seperatists. I didn't agree with Russia's intervention, but I'm not sure what they could've done differently to stop or prevent the shelling of Donbas. You could argue that they're just a Russian proxy, but a lot of people there do have cultural ties to Russia, and if the support isn't genuine, then why did Ukraine feel the need to ban the opposition parties? And you could just as easily say that the Ukrainian government is just a US proxy.
Ultimately, I just don't trust the same politicians and media that lied us into Iraq to present an honest account of things, or to have the interests of the people at heart. Even if Ukraine was able to reclaim Donbas, and even if we say it'd be good if they did (which considering their inability to get along, I'm not sure of), I just don't think it's worth the cost.
If they don't seriously win I don't think Ukraine can keep the no concession stance for much longer. But of course so many lives will be wasted until that point... Many of which are conscripts.
I really hate that there isn't an easy solution to this, war really sucks. Thank you for being patient and respectful with me though.
Ultimately, I just don't trust the same politicians and media that lied us into Iraq to present an honest account of things, or to have the interests of the people at heart.
You are definitely completely right on this. I've been hesitant to believe all the horror stories and narratives they've been spewing, but at the same time I don't think we should be any more favorable to what Russia says...
I totally agree with you there. Sometimes people here can get a little too pro-Russia for my tastes, but generally there's skepticism towards sources from both sides, while a lot of places are more one-sided and uncritical (towards one side or the other). We believe that multipolarity is a good thing for the world (especially for developing countries), but also Putin is not a socialist and sucks in various ways (transphobia for example). He's the enemy of our enemy, no more, no less.
But yeah war sucks, and I'd like it to end as soon as possible, in a way that lasts, regardless of where the line gets drawn. I wish it were possible to return to the ceasefire arrangement, or to return to before 2014 when Ukraine was more neutral and everybody got along. They're both capitalist countries so the whole thing's kinda dumb and at the end of the day, I just want everybody to be able to go home to their families.
but they are defending themselves from an invader, and I don't understand why the pressure to stop is on them and not the invader here
Donbas has been defending their homes and their right to speak their native language for 8 years. Russia is not invading Donbas they have been invited. Russia is trying to stop a civil war. When western nations have assisted one side in civil wars in places like The Congo in the 60s or Yugoslavia Somalia and Haiti in the 90s they called it peace keeping.
Unfortunately Ukraine has refused to stop fighting even when faced with insurmountable odds and the USA and its vassals have given them the false hope that they could win. Had nato stayed out of the conflict Ukraine would have surrendered a long time ago likely well before the referendum on joining Russia. The DPR and LPR would have been free nations not part of Russia but seeing that the entirety of the western world was against their peaceful existence as an independent state they held a referendum on joining Russia.
TLDR: Its really not an invasion when the people of the occupied territory want you there.
I don't really know how to verify if what you're saying is true, so sadly there's not much I can argue... I will say Russia isn't only occupying or does only want to annex the Donbas, they want almost the entire south of Ukraine
Should the defenders of the DPR and LPR be forced to only fight on their own territory? If Russia's army doesn't push out of Donbas then all the collateral damages happens to the place they are trying to defend. "the best defence is a good offense."
The way to win a war is to kill enough of the enemy's soldiers that they are unable or unwilling to continue fighting. Russia is just going where Ukraine's army is. The more Ukraine resists and refuses to let the people of eastern Ukraine choose their own path the more of Ukraine is going to be occupied.
I guess I see where you're going tactics-wise but they didn't just occupy, they straight up want to annex all of the land they took, and they would have probably also annexed kherson and kharkiv if they didn't retake them first. And I don't think it's right to blame them for resisting that, given how crippling losing all of that land would be, and how many Ukranians that don't want to be a part of Russia will lose their homes or become second class citizens if Russia gets their way
I guess I see where you're going tactics-wise but they didn't just occupy, they straight up want to annex all of the land they took, and they would have probably also annexed kherson and kharkiv if they didn't retake them first.
Those areas will likely be annexed and I am betting Russia will take Odessa too. The majority of Ukrainians east of the Dnipier are Russian speakers. Before 2014 the number of Ukrainians who said Russian was their mother tongue was consistently polled around 40%. Again this was a civil war between Ukraine's Banderites and Russian speaking Ukrainians. If Nato and Russia never got involved the DPR and LPR would have probably gained their independence and split the country in 2 on the same line.
Russia spent 8 years trying to negotiate a settlement peacefully and Ukraine used that time to build up their army and never implemented any of agreed measures. Putin didn't want a war NATO did. "The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this time to become stronger" -Merkle.
In the weeks leading up to Russia's involvement Ukraine's army ratcheted up its attacks on Donetsk. Russian was goaded into action. They were given the choice between 2 bad options, invade, or let Ukraine kill civilians that share Language, cultural, and Family ties with Russia.
Say someone is kicking a dog and you say "stop it." They keep kicking it so you get in the way and despite you saying "be chill, lets talk this out" They now want to fight you so they can go back to kicking the dog. All their friends show up pushing them to fight you. They just wont stop and even if you are giving way more than you get you get hurt. Wouldn't you feel like you should take the guys other dogs as well as the one he was beating?
Russia repeatedly said that extending NATO to their backyard would be a step too far. We (Bill Clinton) promised (Gorbachev) we wouldn't do that. Then we did. Remember when we put missiles in Turkey then the USSR responded with missiles in Cuba? Thankfully, JFK & Kruschev were able to avoid Armageddon.
Crimea had been Russian since Catherine the Great. Kruschev gave it to Ukraine, then part of the USSR. Crimea is Russia's only warm-water port. It's essential to their defense. Its population is largely Russophones, by Russian design. They voted, by referendum, to join Russia.
Lastly (at least for now), modern borders between European states are just that--modern. They've moved over time, and some of that time isn't in the distant past.
a. While Russians and Ukrainians are culturally and linguistically different, and eastern and western Ukrainians are culturally and linguistically different, they are also similar. They all claim descent from the Kievan Rus.
b. Poland and western Ukraine used to belong to the same principality. Poland's stance toward Ukraine is becoming increasingly belligerent.
c. Wikipedia is so accessible. It has a wealth of info on history in that part of the world. We'd do well to begin to comprehend it.
I don't really understand why the blame and expectations are on them... Why tell the defender to stop defending themselves and not the attacker to stop attacking?
We don't want them to lose, we want the war to end. At the moment, that would mean ending in Russia's favour. Ukraine has been propped up by the west since last year. Without American money and weapons, they would already have collapsed. A staggering number of people have fled, and hundreds of thousands of men have come back from the front with life-changing injuries, which means their economy is going to really struggle for the next few decades. The West will have to pull out eventually, and then Ukraine will have to sign some peace agreement which likely won't be in their favour. However, continuining until the West says "enough is enough" (and after Iraq and Afghanistan, who knows how long that will be) will force more people out of the country and deplete the working population inside the country even further. What does Ukraine have to gain by sticking it out?
In that case, I'm not sure you do understand. They will never get the Donbass or Crimea back (at least not during this conflict); every Ukrainian death that happens now is happening for no reason, and is actively going to make their recovery harder. I'm saying that by packing it in now, they'd be cutting their losses. Do you think losing now would be worse for them than losing further down the line, when their population has been further depleted?
Well... Russia wants to annex far more than just the Donbass, basically all of the south. Less lives would be lost short term, but long term they'd be just as crippled and if they lose they'd be forced to not accept aid or join any spheres other than Russia's... so they'd either have to become another Belarus or recover all on their own, and without any more protection Russia would be allowed to interfere all they want
Also there are a lot of Ukranians in what Russia wants to annex that do not want to be a part of Russia, who also doesn't have a history of treating ethnic minorities very well... They'd get the choice to leave their homes and become refugees or become second class citizens
Can't you look at Crimea to see how Russia is likely to treat Ukrainians in annexed territory? The biggest complaint I've heard from that area is that Russian passports issued in Crimea aren't being recognized by western countries. That's not really Russia's fault.
Crimea is mostly Russian though, from what I understand thanks to centuries of colonization and a couple Tatar expulsions across Russian history, so I'm not sure if they'd behave much the same in a majority Ukranian area
If there is a legit vote on if they want to be part of Russia or not, like everyone makes sure Russia can't interfere with the vote in any way, and the regions still vote to stay a part of Russia, I would respect that
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.
I think I get your point, thank you for explaining
I'm concerned about the long term of the result you'd want though... from what I understand most Ukranians don't want to be part of Russia, and they don't want to annex only the majority russian speaking regions - I don't want all the people living there to become second class citizens or be forced to leave their homes and become refugees
Also, do you think there's a way for Ukraine to be truly neutral? Wouldn't they just be dragged into Russia's sphere of influence if they can't "join the west" instead? After all no more protection would just open them up to further interventions, right?
Finland maintained neutrality and sovereignty in its domestic politics throughout the cold war despite neighboring the USSR and having joined the Axis powers. A "finlandization" of Ukraine is certainly possible (and is probably the best that Ukraine is going to get). All states are influenced by other nation-states, so a post-war Ukraine is going to have both western and Russian influences to various degrees. What Russia finds a provocation is NATO military forces in Ukraine.
Again, I feel for those who have lost their homes in the war. However, the war could be ended today on the negotiation table, or it could be ended 12 months later at the negotiation table and the only significant change will be that even more Ukrainians have lost their homes.
I'm not saying that this is a good or happy situation, but I think that it's the reality of the situation.
I think Finland was only really able to pull that off precisely because they resisted a Soviet invasion really well though, in comparison what Russia would be able to take from Ukraine would be far larger and more devastating, it's almost the entire south of the country... The devastation is already immense and it'd only get worse. Plus if Ukraine is banned from accepting western aid in recovering, then they can only really turn to Russia, so the end result isn't really neutral at all... I don't think they ever had the economy to recover from this alone, much less losing so much land and people
However, the war could be ended today on the negotiation table, or it could be ended 12 months later at the negotiation table and the only significant change will be that even more Ukrainians have lost their homes.
That is definitely true when you put it like that... War really sucks...
They’re responsible for the worst atrocities committed since 1945, including not only shielding perpetrators of the worst atrocities between ~1933 and 1945 from prosecution, but rewarding them with status, money, and influence. The US and its NATO lapdogs stand with their feet on the throat of the global south, preventing them from developing and threatening their hegemony, as well as actively exacerbating climate death through capitalism.
The US and it’s NATO lapdogs are responsible for the position we find ourselves in at this moment: staring down the barrel of climate death and hastening to pull the trigger because it will affect our bourgeois masters the least and the last. The only way to liberate humanity is to overthrow the US led “rules based” hegemony.
I’ve run out of time to tie this into the Ukraine conflict due to real life intruding on my posting habit. Hopefully a comrade can pick up my keyboard as I fall, lol
I'm not a big fan of the US and NATO myself and they meddled in my country too... I just don't really see how Russia is any more preferrable as a hegemon or why innocent people deserve to die and suffer in order for this to happen when, realistically speaking it will only be an annoying inconvenience to them
Russia isn't really capable of being a global hegemon, and a multipolar world is better for the periphery who can play the major powers off each other.
I just mean I don't really see how them being more powerful will benefit anyone more than the status quo, nor why that would make so much death and suffering worth
Basically multiple competitors means that they'll have to offer other nations more favorable terms, and other nations can not have to worry about US sanctions as much.
The Russian Federation, you don't gotta hand it to them. But liquidating tens of thousands of conscripts in order to preserve the Ukranian state as currently constituted, while the state cracks down on Communists and Anarchists, dismantles unions, bans opposition media and political parties, and operates under martial law is nothing worth defending either. The people would genuinely be better off if the Ukrainian state conceded. If negotiations were carried through to completion over a year ago. Great power conflicts between rival capitalist nations are not an effective site of struggle for proletarian revolution, no matter how you slice them. It would be ideal if people stopped getting killed.
The status quo is gone. Changed irrevocably. The outset of the kinetic war, and the resulting economic war have imposed permanent changes in global geopolitics and the economic system. We are left only with the potential outcomes. The NATO victory, where the global imperial hegemon succeeds in making one of its key adversaries geopolitically irrelevant, or the NATO failure, where a different reactionary capitalist state prevails, but the concentration of power in the imperial core wanes. Ukraine is left a smoldering crater littered with landmines and unexploded ordinance which will take generations to recover - regardless of the outcome.
It is a truly fucked up situation, but the vast majority of the English-speaking Internet seems to be inundated with pro-Ukranian war propaganda, and at the very least we have been skeptical of the viability of this war effort from the outset. In a lot of places, simply commenting on the apparent state of affairs has been branded as defeatism and propaganda. I think in general, we aren't excited about the prospect of the Russian Federation, as currently constituted, becoming more powerful - but embracing the United States and its allies to see it punished is not a viable path either.
We don’t have to worry about Russia becoming “more powerful” because the only way they can achieve that under the current climate of unprecedented sanctions is by abandoning neoliberalism and adopting socialist policies. If they manage to overcome that, and that’s a big if, then they are already on their way towards socialism, so it doesn’t matter much to us leftists anyway.
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.
I am really sorry to hear about your family, and I can see why you'd resent Ukraine so much for doing such awful things
I can see your point more clearly and I honestly can't think of anything to argue against you... I guess the only thing I can say is, Russia doesn't have a history of being very nice to its minorities, and all the Ukranians living in annexed territory will probably become second class citizens, I don't really think their lives would be much better, most would probably try to flee and only those who failed to or were pro-Russia before the war would stay
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.
I don't really have a way to verify if all of what you said about Ukraine is true, but if it is true, then I think you're mostly right
I just don't really see why Russia is much better than the US, they're both capitalist olligarchies, and what Russia hasn't done that the US has is more out of a lack of power to do so than any ideological refusal, the world under Russia wouldn't really be any better to me, especially not for all the Ukranians that would be forced to become refugees or live under the annexed territories, Russia doesn't have a history of being particularly nice to their minorities after all
I do agree that if Ukraine gets its way leftism in Ukraine will be mostly dead, though it may resurface if the living conditions are really awful after the war which they most certainly will be, I don't really know much to make a reasonable guess
A slightly unrelated question, is China really socialist to you?