cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5554417
Nazi Germany confronted its crimes only after military defeat made denial untenable. Russia, by contrast, continues to equate victory with moral legitimacy. Without a clear and undeniable defeat, there is no sense of guilt—and without guilt, no basis for reflection or reform.
This is unironically why I want them to get their shit utterly kicked in. I am really tired of the beautiful places and people of Russia being oppressed, indoctrinated and ruined by a violent criminal kleptostate that has genuinely ruined their lives and futures and simply convinced a large number of the ones that matter that “the West” did it, while actively designing their economy to create masses of peasants fit only for the war machine they plan to inflict on the rest of the world.
And yes, I realize they claim much the same about us. Fuck that. I don’t buy it, not nearly the amount of it they’re selling at least. We’ve done plenty we should be ashamed of, we’re not perfect, but the fact that they’d almost all rather live here in “the west” than there tells us that we can’t have gone too far wrong. The Russian Federation needs to die, and the lands formerly called the Russian Federation need to be rebuilt into something we can coexist with. We’ve seen that happen from a conquered and subjugated vassal, but they must gradually return to strength, not looted and colonized like a prize but shown how to find Russia’s rightful place as the leader they clearly so desperately crave to be on the world stage – as a leader, like Germany is now. This will not happen through military means, not with nuclear weapons in play, but the economic and political efforts to topple their regime and protect the formation of something better are necessary and must continue. We have often failed terribly at nation-building in the years since the end of WW2, to the point that it seems we are now reluctant to ever again try, but that is not a good excuse not to try nor to not try to learn from our mistakes and do better. The stakes are very high, we must try, and I desperately hope we can do better.
This is what russian “liberals” don’t understand. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
While Navalniy’s team nominally rejected support for the annexation of Crimea after the full-scale invasion, they continue to broadly support imperialism, albeit they tend to watch what they say when not speaking to other russians.
That being said, this doesn’t always work.
Navalnaya at an EU conference in 2024:
Finally, there are those who advocate for the urgent “decolonization” of Russia, arguing to split our vast country into several smaller, safer states. However, these “decolonizers” can’t explain why people with shared backgrounds and culture should be artificially divided. Nor do they say how this process should even take place.
And a “shared background and culture” is why you killed 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya, including a ballistic missile strike on a busy market?
There are some far more important reasons that the Russians should lose in Ukraine, besides that it would probably be good for the Russians.
Russia planning to attack NATO is a clear sign Putin needs this over and done with, to keep his life he can’t lose in Ukraine though, but if he loses to NATO actual, he be able to wrangle it as not his fault.
