We are lucky to be alive at this moment. Generations to come will look back to this time in which we live when everything changed radically. We are in a watershed moment where the fundamental geopolitical plates of our world are shifting. Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ will be seen as the most significant of all the movements which precipitate, engender and facilitate the greater movement that is still to come.
NATO's purpose is re-invigorated, and strengthened with the promise of Finnish and Swedish NATO membership. Whilst Germany is borrowing money to arm the Ukrainian and re-arm, the Swiss are sanctioning Russian institutions, and much of the EU (including the ex-Warsaw pact states) are pouring munitions and hard currency into Ukraine whilst housing their refugees.
The Russia army, navy and air force has been greatly humiliated, as the Oryx vehicle casualty list keeping expanding, the formerly fearsome VDV reduced to a punch line, westerners laugh at logistical problems, and more and more lost territory is being explained away by Russia's apologists as feints.
No amount of concern trolling over the Azov battalion is going to distract from the atrocities committed by invading Russia forces. Invading a eastern European state, committing actions that mirror the einsatzgruppen in Bucha, whilst advocating for cultural genocide looks more like Nazism to most. The only it isn't is if one exclusively looks at it through a post-colonialist lens, viewing Bucha as an extension of the legacies of Tsarist and Soviet colonialism. https://web.archive.org/web/20220404091828/https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
It also is clear there is no western liberal totalitarianism. It is merely the big alternatives are just not that good. Russian ultra nationalism, for all its overly macho parades and recruitment adverts, can't even do a blitzkrieg against a smaller poorer neighbour. The central appeal of reactionary autocracies is their military prowess. Without that they are nothing...just ask Tsar Nicholas II. Meanwhile "socialism with Chinese characteristics" can't even made a decent vaccine (as the lockdowns show), is getting into a middle income trap (unlike South Korea, Taiwan and Japan) and is deeply dependent on exporting consumer goods to the west.
What war were you looking at?
NATO's purpose is re-invigorated, and strengthened with the promise of Finnish and Swedish NATO membership. Whilst Germany is borrowing money to arm the Ukrainian and re-arm, the Swiss are sanctioning Russian institutions, and much of the EU (including the ex-Warsaw pact states) are pouring munitions and hard currency into Ukraine whilst housing their refugees.
The Russia army, navy and air force has been greatly humiliated, as the Oryx vehicle casualty list keeping expanding, the formerly fearsome VDV reduced to a punch line, westerners laugh at logistical problems, and more and more lost territory is being explained away by Russia's apologists as feints.
No amount of concern trolling over the Azov battalion is going to distract from the atrocities committed by invading Russia forces. Invading a eastern European state, committing actions that mirror the einsatzgruppen in Bucha, whilst advocating for cultural genocide looks more like Nazism to most. The only it isn't is if one exclusively looks at it through a post-colonialist lens, viewing Bucha as an extension of the legacies of Tsarist and Soviet colonialism. https://web.archive.org/web/20220404091828/https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
It also is clear there is no western liberal totalitarianism. It is merely the big alternatives are just not that good. Russian ultra nationalism, for all its overly macho parades and recruitment adverts, can't even do a blitzkrieg against a smaller poorer neighbour. The central appeal of reactionary autocracies is their military prowess. Without that they are nothing...just ask Tsar Nicholas II. Meanwhile "socialism with Chinese characteristics" can't even made a decent vaccine (as the lockdowns show), is getting into a middle income trap (unlike South Korea, Taiwan and Japan) and is deeply dependent on exporting consumer goods to the west.
As the people of r/NCD say; "cope and seethe".