I’m not sure what’s going on over there, but half the time I see a post from there or go into a comment section and it’s just…bad. Like old reddit the_donald bad. Constant trolling, etc. You TS just really bad vibes. I’ve been blocking the communities as they come up, but I’m not sure what else I can do.
Fair enough! I’ll just leave you with this:
You do have to wonder, yeah, is it their choice? Countries like the US, Russia and China can make “choices” but in geopolitics I’d say smaller countries like Ukraine kind of don’t. Maybe they can choose to be in Russian-sphere or EU-sphere, but they certainly can’t choose to be neutral. The powers that be: the US as the global hegemony, and Russia, the local regional hegemony are going to try their best to make those choices for them. It’s real bad
Genuinely I think Zelensky had promises made to him by the US/NATO about how much support he was going to get which the US reneged, and the far-right elements of his government and military he’s not able to control- so even him I don’t think has much choice. I do have (limited) sympathy for the guy. I think most people on Hexbear share a similar understanding, it’s def not a chauvinistic pro-Russia thing. Esp given how transphobic the Russian state is, you’re not going to see any touting of that as a good thing on hexbear.
So in your opinion, what would a good alternative have been? If Ukraine had simply said “here ya go” and became part of russia, then what? Russia stops there? They finally begin to become the global opponent that can defeat the usa and institute communism? Because last I checked, Putin help execute a bunch of those back in the day, and he seems to currently be the one in charge. I’m being genuine by the way, I just can’t comprehend how leftist folx can endorse like, a strongman leader who makes a show of invading another country?
I’m not the one you were talking to, but I think most Hexbears would prefer to see a negotiated settlement of some kind that brought an end to the war, one that also stopped the killing of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine that has been ongoing since 2014, and precluded Ukraine joining NATO (because Ukraine joining would complete NATO’s encirclement of Russia, something that Russia has been seeking to prevent for decades now, and which would dramatically increase nuclear tensions). I don’t think any Hexbears actually like Putin at all, and even “endorse” is an awfully strong word. And certainly no one thinks Putin’s Russia is going to institute communism. We just oppose the Western party line on the war, which gets us cast as pro-Russia (due to black-and-white thinking) when we’re totally not.
The standard Western position, by contrast, comes across to us as bloodthirsty, calling as it does for an extended conflict which will indefinitely prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people. The West seems eager to spend Ukrainian lives for the sake of suppressing a geopolitical rival, not for humanitarian reasons but for economic ones, and so we stand against that.