1. “Offensive” was autocorrected to “official”

Okay so it’s just a straw man then. Can you have this conversation without inventing things for me to defend?

2. Russians did not destroy infrastructure because they hope to use for themselves (the fact that I have to explain this makes me think engaging with you is a waste of my time).

Are you sure? Russians also have a cultural connection to Ukraine, particularly the Kievan Rus. There is/was also a need to manufacture consent for invading a “cousin”. Also, how do you discount them simply being less brutal than the NATO countries that have consistently done far, far, far worse to their targets?

It seems you’d like to avoid the reality that Russia has been so much less brutal. After all, this flies in the face of the (usually racist) narrative about the invasion, which seems to have successfully indoctrinated you into a belief in simplistic camps of good vs. bad. You sure do seem to suffer under the childish illusion that if I push back on the anti-Russia nonsense out there I must be offering a defense of invasion, like I support it. In reality, this is so beside the point that I have never said anything remotely like this, but it is inconceivable to your propagandized worldview that anyone would be doing anything other than being for team A or team B rather than looking at a greater context.

That’s the difference between a war of invasion and the mindless bombing the USA likes to do in whatever conflict they get involve in on the other side if the globe

I already gave the example of Iraq, which was two full invasions and a horrific sanctions regime.

Typing on phone is annoying, so my messages get a bit terse. But your whole rant previously is about how bad the Ukrainians are.

No it wasn’t.

OK, sure. I have not much interest in that. But, how does that justify the Russian attack?

See what I mean? You’re limited by your ideology to conceive only a team sports understanding. You can’t imagine that I would (correctly) describe UA from a critical perspective without being pro-SMO. Not only that, you seemingly can’t imagine there being anything else to care about. Only this one thing enters your mind, lol.

I don’t think my framing has been that myopic to leave so much room for interpretation, though. I am pushing back on false imperialist propaganda narratives that have successfully misled those in imperial core countries and among sycophants for those countries. The wider problem is imperialism itself, which first undermined the Soviet Union and contributed to its destruction, then dismantled Eastern Europe, killing tend of millions, and finally isolated Russia et al from the imperial spoils, giving them the third world / peripheral treatment. Capitalist Russia was forced into its current position as paraiah by pushing back against this and attempting to reestablish itself as an independent power (national bourgeois interests) rather than an exploitation factory for the US, UK, Germany etc (intentional bourgeois interests). And in response, it has received a new cold war treatment of isolation and maximum pressure from the groups drawing from the literal legacies of literal Nazi staffing and ideologies and pogroms.

If you want to understand the point of this, aside from the value in not being constantly wrong about geopolitics, it is that you should fight to end this regime of maximum pressure, exploitation, and militarism that your own country, whatever it is, likely either supports, (proximally) benefits from, or has significant movements attempting to do so. I would hope that being consistently wrong and having to literally make things up about what I’m saying to make your arguments easier would be the impetus to become informed and start pointing the right fingers and doing the right work in your own local context. Or maybe just not saying things until you’ve done research?

How is any of this Ukrainian nenonazi stuff relevant?

All of it. The imperialist narrative tries to paper over the coup, the ethnic cleansing, and the nature of the civil war that are proximal root causes of the invasion. The timing and quantity of shelling in Donbas is conspicuous just prior to invasion. So is the Western imposition on killing negotiations right after invasion. These things are all tied together - who funded the neonazis? Why are they in military command? Where and when did they become organized? It all comes back to imperialist projects.

Russia was never under threat from Ukraine.

This is absurd. You don’t think NATO encroachment and a civil war on the border is a threat? What world do you live on?

Even if literal-Hitler was reborn there, how is bombing Kiev helping anyway?

Hitler was just one guy. Naziism was born of the conditions and politics of Germany and its capitalist class, a lashing back against the left that took great inspiration from US empire and genocide.

Anyways, why bomb Kiev? At first, to try and force early contrition and negotiations of a Minsk III type deal. Guess who put a stop to that.

Authoritarian governments LOVE wars

This is a dog whistle for political miseducation. All governments are authoritarian. This includes yours. Many people forget this because they accept, or are ignorant of, where that authority is directed and who has to accept the violence. What is more authoritarian than pushing a coup in UA, for example? Perhaps your government helped with that. Either way, every state is authoritarian.

it gives them an enemy, it gives them power, it gives them a mean to get rid of political opponents.

If the bourgeois that dominate a country don’t want a war, it won’t happen. The main impetus for war is usually a geopolitical struggle that has, at its base, ruling class interests. Russia is a direct threat to the piece of the pie that Western imperialists want for themselves. They want to own and sell, for example, Russia’s oil. They want to have control over the people, resources for which they contend with Russia. Similarly, instability and extraction from countries near Russia benefit the imperialist project but hurt Russia (e.g. Syria). This is a constant and dominant aspect of capitalist geopolitics. They do not let you rest or develop independently. You will be destroyed if you are not aggressive in opposition. There is a massive graveyard of countries that failed to do so sufficiently.

Russia plays a role as a country isolated from the international capitalist pie that faces constant and extreme pressure to become that aforementioned extraction target by international capital. Its international actions are grounded in a reaction to this: the interests of its national bourgeoisie that would aspire to be international were they allowed into that fold.

So we can either believe Putin a philanthropist ready to sacrifice bravely his troops for no benefit but the de-nazification of a nuke-free, not-in-nato country, or we can recognise this as just a pretext for grabbing land (supported by the preservation of infrastructure).

Obviously there are other, more correct ways to think about this aside from this Great Man Theory false dichotomy.

Oh and that part I wrote about authoritarian governments loving war applies to Russia just as well by the way.

I assumed you were applying it exclusively to Russia.

After all of this, if Russia is in it for no personal benefit but a moral victory, why are they not withdrawing? After all they have supposedly nothing to gain by continuing the war, since they don’t intend to occupy the country?

Like I said, Russia initially wanted to force a Minsk III, as evidenced by its actions. The Western controllers of UA, who gladly support its Nazi militaries, prevented this. The RF then had to choose between withdrawal with no gains or an attempt to maintain a status quo invasion, occupying the Donbas and further pushing for contrition. This is, further, in the context of the West using their financial nuclear options on Russia (and really, the economies of Western Europe as well) and utterly failing to directly damage Russia, and in fact subsidizing it via higher oil and gas prices on oil they were still easily selling. The status quo was comparatively tolerable. There is the additional outcome of the long attritional war strategy they have undertaken, which is the effective demilitarization of UA over time due to lack of manpower, materials, and economic base. This accomplishes a similar goal to exclusion from NATO. The territory of the Donbas additionally buys a buffer zone from NATO and access to coastal oil reserves.

In short, Western actions made the current trajectory the most favorable one for Russia to head in.