Traffic on the single bridge that links Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea and serves as a key supply route for the Kremlin’s forces in the war with Ukraine came to a standstill on Monday after one of its sections was blown up, killing a couple and wounding their daughter.
The RBC Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge, with Russian military bloggers reporting two strikes.
RBC Ukraine and another Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda said the attack was planned jointly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian navy, and involved sea drones.
I’m not saying it wasn’t Ukrainian territory. I’m saying that the presence there was 100% russian military because it was functionally operated as their military port.
This is precisely why there was no battle over it, no deaths, no nothing. Just “this is russia now” and continued operation of it as they always had but with different flags.
I’d much prefer a non-war lens of the place and how cool it is. Most people in america hadn’t even heard of it until the annexation, it’s very unfortunate.
I don’t think calling it the early stages of this war is quite accurate but it’s not really that important and kinda gets into unnecessary semantics. The war probably wouldn’t be happening if the Minsk agreement had been kept. Russia were never going to let Crimea go because they needed it as a military port but they avoided Donetsk and Luhansk up until the Minsk agreement failed. If they had taken these regions in 2014 it would have been a breeze for them as Ukraine had no military to speak of, which is why the civil war was fought by the nazi volunteer batallions (azov, right sector, etc etc). Ukraine’s military was ramped up between 2014 and 2021. They did not really have much of anything until the 2016 Stategic Defense Bulletin followed by the State Program for the Development of the Armed Forces (2017-2020). In 2014 the military was only 90k active personnel with over half being civilian staff.
We’d all prefer a non-war lens of Crimea. You’re right, it was a cool and interesting place, and hopefully still will be when the war is over.
But Russia has no say over whether another country’s territory will be used as Russia’s military port. The fact is, Ukraine was amenable to hosting Russia’s military there, so long as Russia didn’t try to actually own the land, but they’ve forfeited their right to use it now.
Ultimately, Russia’s military will be ousted from Crimea along with the rest of Ukraine, and that will be that. Had they never annexed it or escalated to open warfare, they would still be operating there freely today, with a much friendlier Ukraine happily hosting them.
I uhh. Don’t share your optimism or actually care who runs it, I only really care that the people I know there remain safe. For them and for myself the flag be waved around is somewhat meaningless compared to the human impact of all this nonsense, particularly because some of my socialist friends are gone now. With that said I don’t see Crimea changing hands again, nor does anyone I have spoken to currently in Crimea. I might change that assessment if the counteroffensive ever actually sees the first line of dragon’s teeth but so far it’s been completely underwhelming. Everyone also sees the deployment of clusterbombs as a “let’s salt the earth so it’s worthless to them” move rather than anything that will change the counteroffensive’s prospects.
Russia chose all of this.
No one else. Russia.
And?
And so it is on Russia to leave. You bring up Russian laws like the Ukrainians are not sovereign. They gave their own laws. You know what else was legal? The Holocaust was legal under German law. That didn’t make it right. I hope you can understand that this is why people consider Russia a fascist state right now and yes, it does matter. Your arguments are textbook fascist and you should take that into serious consideration.
You’ve missed the point. They can’t, because the law prevents it.
Don’t mistake that for a value judgement about those laws because it’s not. I am just acknowledging the political reality, which is something you categorically have to do in order to reach a conclusion in these matters.
You can call me a fascist all you want but the only person between the two of us that is supporting more bloodshed is you and your nationalism. I’m not a nationalist.
You literally don’t know what fascism is and I challenge you to define it. Then we can determine if I’ve missed the point. Fascism is always legal. It is always backed by law. It must be by definition or it seeks to be. If your society cannot stop an ethically motivated war that you started because the law prevents it, that is fascism.
Fascism is a reaction to leftist power in any given country it arises in. That’s why we call them reactionaries.
Fascism occurs when leftist growth in a country grows to the point at which it threatens to overthrow the bourgeoisie’s ruling class power. When this threat arises the bourgeoisie fund ultranationalist elements within nations in order to build a force that can be used for ultra-violence in the pursuit of killing off the leftist threat.
Fascism differs depending on national character. Fascism in Germany was not the same as fascism in Italy or fascism in Spain, Chile, Japan or India. But it often has certain characteristics of ultranationalism and the supremacy of certain groups, but not always. Ultimate fascism is anything that it has to be in order to get power and use ultraviolence which is why describing it in absolute terms is difficult. This is why fascism is more aptly characterised by what it is in reaction to rather than anything else.
In short. Fascism is like the white blood cell of capitalism, it arises when the “infection” of socialists threatens to overthrow it.
When the “infection” is over, it then ends, morphing back into regular capitalism. We can see that this occurs by looking at the countries where fascism was not defeated, where fascism won. In both Spain and Chile fascism did not become something unique from capitalism, it is a part of capitalism, and when it had eradicated the threat of socialism it was then changed by its ruling class back into neoliberalism, which is a more efficient means of wealth extraction from the population.