People take PCs, jewellery, and smartphones with them when fleeing. You usually leave the toilet behind.

The last years of the Donetsk conflict have seen double-digits civilian casualties. There were about 2000 in the first year, then there was exponential decline.

Have you compared recent pictures of Donetsk with Mariopol or Bakhmut? I'll give you a hint: One is still standing. If Ukraine wanted to it could easily flatten Donetsk, it's in artillery range. A million Russian-speaking inhabitants, if Ukrainians are so genocidal why don't they just go for it?

Russia killed more civilians in the first months of the 2022 invasion that died overall in Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. A fuckton of those Russian-speaking (like in e.g. Mariopol). Russia abducted more children than died in the "people's republics".

In other words: Shut the fuck up with your "Ukraine is shelling Russian-speaking Ukrainians" bullshit. Either you're severely misinformed, or a straight-up Putin bot.

And with that in mind: Do you seriously think that the proper way to react to an invasion, an invasion which comes with near uncountable human rights abuses and disregard for the civilian population, to react to that with "Oh, since you're asking so nicely Russia, here, have a cookie"? No. Fuck that, fuck you, and fuck everything you believe in.

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I'm not sure that made sense even in your mind.

Imagine thinking that retort makes sense.

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Ukraine turned into the most corrupt country in Europe, and things have only kept getting worse.

Ukraine and Russia both did. One of them is making efforts to get out of that swamp.

I find it rather telling that of all the things you found weak retorts for, you completely left out the "More petrorubles for the kleptocrats" part, and how GDP is not a proper measure of the wealth of a people, at least in any even remotely leftist sense.

Ask Tuvans without access to electricity, running water, heck even a fucking gas station, how wealthy they are. Yet they're not even counted as poor in the official statistics as the way poverty is counted in Russia is highly regional: If you're poor in Moscow you count, if you're infinitely worse off in the periphery you don't.

That is why you see Russian soldiers -- primarily from the periphery as joining the army is the only way to make any money as there's no actual jobs -- looting toilets. Fucking toilets. Back in WWII it was water faucets. Nothing the fuck has changed in that regard.

If you think that Putin is "draining the swamp" then you're no less naive than your run off the mill Trumpet.

(Side note, speaking of WWII: Remember that Soviet flag on the Reichstag picture? That's of a Ukrainian. Taken by a Ukrainian).

You expect me to pay for an article from a neolib shitstain outlet?

Have another neolib shitstain outlet, this time for free: https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-economy-brain-drain-labor-shortage-workforce-exodus-capital-flight-2023-9

The truth is that it's all quite hard to measure as Russia is lying about its economical figures (they make no sense whatsoever) and going via secondary indicators is possible, but also frought with uncertainty. But two things really stand out: a) investing in a war you're losing is GDP flushed down the drain, b) they're cut off from any advanced technology at even half-way reasonable prices, c) massive brain drain, there's also d) report of very excessive inflation when it comes to food.

If they manage to raise GDP by exporting more oil or whatnot -- that's raising GDP. It's not actually doing the country any good. More petrorubles for the kleptocrats.

But all that is rather besides the point. Russia, alongside with Ukraine, did a lot of stuff wrong in the 90s. Look at Estonia or e.g. Czechs (if you want to keep it among Slavs) on how to do it... nah, not right, but definitely better.

Ukraine then managed to turn around, develop an actual civil society and clip the wings of the oligarchy, Russia didn't. That is what I mean with "perfectly capable of messing up on their own". It's also the reason for the war it's a matter of regime stability: There's plenty of family ties between Russia and Ukraine, if Russians see that Ukraine can escape the yoke of the kleptocrats then they could start to believe that they, too, can do that.

Russia does not need the west to weaken it, comrade, it is perfectly capable of doing that on its own!

And lead, famously, isn't a heavy metal. And neither is copper (used for jacks)

No no Ukraine is only allowed to eject invaders with the most pure tungsten rounds.

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It doesn’t matter what purpose a protest vote has if it’s advancing nazi agendas and change in society. People don’t need to be nazis to be influenced by nazis.

They're not Nazis. Or, differently put, dismissing them as Nazis plays right into the hand of Nazis: Protest voters have a reason they're protesting, there's things that other parties aren't addressing, haven't been addressing for ages, and those voters are pissed.

And you'd understand that if you actually, once in your life, went to a bar and talked to actual blue collar folks, instead of having your head up your own ideologically pure ass. You know, workers. The guys you're supposedly fighting for.

The current failure of the government isn't necessarily even policy -- it's primarily communication, and not signalling an actual turning point. The new heating law does not bankrupt poor homeowners, but they had the genius ideas of having drafts that didn't even include mentions of financial aid. Sure heat pumps are cheaper in the long term but first you have to be able to afford the investment, and many poor home owners don't.

That kind of stuff is what really worries people -- that they'll lose the little economical stability they do have, lose the little property they do own., as the saying goes, Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral. The FDP doesn't care in the first place, the Greens have to be reminded by the SPD (Greens aren't a left party as such) but would not block, either, and the SPD has its head far enough up its own image of itself as worker's party that it's not talking to actual workers before setting policy. Vanguard blindness in a sense.

Inflation? Well, it's not too bad. Some relief would be good, if you can't get that past the FDP just do what the French do and bully supermarkets. Not much to bully when it comes to the discounters but it's also the sentiment that counts.

Asylum? Actually, that's not the issue the issue is housing. An issue they're working on and as the previous government really fucked it up it's slow to start (actual lack of building capacity) but again, communication is shit. Berlin's SPD trying to sabotage the expropriation of landlords doesn't help, that is the exact shit that pisses off the east. At the same time they're co-responsible for the situation as is as they failed to put pressure on the CDU in the Merkel years.

In short: The issue isn't the people being Nazis. The issue is the people being to the left of the government but Die Linke not being an option, either, the east already tried that and I don't mean the GDR times. Three decades of unification and the federal republic is less social then before that's straight up their fault. People have the impression that the party cares more about random sexual minorities than workers, and yes it's true, of course you can, should, and must do both and people wouldn't mind, issue is they didn't do anything for workers.

Remember how fascism is a failed revolution? That right there.

Pogroms and mass exterminations have been common since the start of the war.

[citation needed]. Well you don't need to find those for Russian atrocities those have been well-documented. Show me a Bucha committed by Ukrainians, I'll wait. Show Russian soldiers who were castrated as POWs.

You’re not an anarchist, you are a nazi and it is blatantly fucking obvious that you’re here playing games and being a silly fuck.

How convenient of an opinion for you.

Why should we still play the old war game? How do realists decide which country is a poker chip and which is a player (one area where US and European realists differ btw: In the European view, Russia is not a player)? What do you do if a country doesn't want to be a poker chip? Can you really ignore internal forces, can it all be boiled down to power politics? Why stick to a theory that was completely blind-sided by the end of the cold war and after that argued to subsidise the east so that it can continue?

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Because there's people living in those countries.

Go on, write a letter to an imaginary 6yold niece of yours in Mariopol explaining why it's better that she lives in a mafia-run police state, than for Ukraine to decide its own fate.

Also, states generally refuse to be poker chips, and they have all right to do so. Thus, by insisting that they be, you invariably create conflict.

Watch that Kraut video. It's not my responsibility to educate you.

Turchynov? You can say a lot of things about him especially that he's conservative, but not that he wouldn't be a democrat. But who was interim wasn't important in the first place as then there were elections.

Those were won by Poroshenko who was rather heavy-handed in the east, also socially conservative, which made people (for one or both of those reasons) vote for Zelensky -- an ethnic Russian, running on a "let's try to be friends" platform, but not one of those "let's just bend over for Russia and let the Kremlin rule the country" people, either.

Those are all descisions of the Ukrainian electorate. To imply that that was all the US reeks of conspiratorial American exceptionalism. Believe it or not things happen without the CIA having their dirty fingers in it.

Bigger than oligarch-owned news station and media empires?

First off, you said "common", and yes there's definitely more of those than big media empires. Secondly, when it comes to impact, yes, I'd also say that they're having a relatively larger impact. RT can't even operate over here the institutional stooge of Russia over here is the AfD. To a lesser degree, Die Linke but they managed to deadlock themselves into arcane pseudo-pacifism, "Oh Ukraine should be helped but we shouldn't send weapons because we're Germany", the ultimate old guard new guard compromise.

Can you name some of these bought or individually manipulated small content creators?

It's kinda hard I don't want to say names because a lot of them might also be useful idiots. Like at least half of the tankiesphere on youtube, I have no way to tell whether Hasan has been groomed by Russia or is simply being an idiot on his own accord. If you look at the post history of random accounts commenting with Russian lines on youtube they very much look like bots.

Another rather more prominent example would be Elon Musk. He's definitely been worked over by Russia. Merely getting cold feet over starlink is one thing, suddenly using language such as "Lenin's mistake" in relation to Ukraine is a dead give away of direct exposure to Russian brainwashing. As to the rest of the platforms I wouldn't really know I don't frequent those.

The pattern of influencing is well-documented, though. There's a reason that "Russian bot farm" is a term (one of the first things that Ukraine blew up in Moscow, btw).

No it’s called a sphere of influence

You say that as if geopolitical realism was the truth to end all inquiry, the insight to end all history.

I appreciate the sentiment but I don't want to see what certain states will be up to if they don't have the federal level to keep them in check.