Hey, comrades. I am new to lemmygrad and find it odd that there are so many marxist-leninist defending a war of agression started by an oligarch, possibly the richest man in the world. I get that you want to say that NATO is a source of evil on the global stage, but in this particular case you are defending Putin, a warlord, who has invaded many of his neighbouring countries and has stated plans to continue his campaign for megalomanial reasons.
No war but class war. Enabling an autocrat fascist oligarch does not do anything to counter the bad stuff done by NATO and the community should take a firm stand against the use of war for the sake of satisfying the dreams of a tyrant.
This is not a troll post or anything to that extent. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I think it needed to be said.
Russia is not in decline, at the moment it is on a trajectory toward regaining its former status as a superpower. The economic war launched by the West against it has backfired and has only made Russia stronger, as a result of sanctions Russia has reoriented its economy and strengthened its domestic capacities.
The kinetic war which was launched by NATO against Russia through the use of the Ukraine proxy has led to a reboot of much of Russia’s dormant military industrial capacities, an expansion of the Russian military, and is giving Russia invaluable experience in what it means to fight a war with modern technology.
This is a fight against the unchecked global hegemony of the US empire. It is no coincidence that the global south has overwhelmingly aligned with Russia. Russia and China are the leaders of a global anti-hegemonic coalition that is growing by the day. Neither of the two for the time being shows any intentions of replacing the US. Both are heavily pushing multipolarity.
And if any one fact more than anything else should tell you that you should support Russia in this conflict it is that the DPRK does so. Throughout its entire history the DPRK’s track record on global conflicts has been spotless. Do you really thing you know better than the world’s most successful communist parties, the CPC and the WPK, not to mention Russia’s own KPRF?
Russia is in decline though, economically and demographically speaking. Their economy is for the most part based on export of resources, largely gas and oil. Although they are making great profits due to OPEC and the war inflating the oil prices, they have not many options to transition their economy when oil and gas becomes obsolete, which will happen at some point in the future. As for right now, their population pyramid is not suggesting some major economic boom incoming, rather a multitude of problems which we always observe in capitalist societies with declining populations.
EDIT: Also, I do not align my views blindly after DPRK nor anyone else. Having read, and agreed with, so many socialists stating the need to educate and think for ourselves, I find this point odd. It is just a tautological statement to say that DPRK is always right.
The Russian economy has proven to be far more robust and resilient than the West assumed, who thought that the all out sanctions assault would be enough to collapse it. It has withstood this assault better than almost anyone expected, including many Russians and the Russian government itself. This points to the Russian economy having been severely misunderstood and underestimated. It is clear that the simplistic caricature of the Russian economy being a hollow one based primarily on raw material export has proven to be false.
Russia has a significant and growing industrial base and this is what has enabled them to prosecute the current conflict on both the economic and military fronts so effectively. Russia’s real industrial economy by some estimates actually surpasses that of any European country and rivals that of the US despite a nominally far lower GDP. This is because most of the West has lost its manufacturing base and turned into hyper financialized economies.
There is good indication that in conjunction with its BRICS partners the Russian economy is only going to accelerate its growth in coming years now that it has freed itself (thanks to the ill advised sanctions imposed by West) from the albatross around its neck which was its dependence on the West preventing Russia from developing its own domestic alternatives. The growth of multipolarity which this conflict has accelerated has enabled the entire global south to be able to start doing the same.
As for demographic issues, this is not unique to Russia, the West’s demographics are no different, and in fact this is a phenomenon observed in all sufficiently advanced economies. We hear the same fearmongering about demographic doom when it comes to China as well. For sure this is something that needs to be taken into account but it is not as catastrophic as it is often made out to be.
Of course China and Russia are different in that one is a socialist state and the other is not, so we can expect that China will be better able to respond to the challenges that this presents, but i don’t see any predictions of demographic collapse of Europe (except from fascists who fearmonger about white replacement) so why should we apply a double standard when it comes to Russia?