Saw a news article about how Ukraine has the second largest oil reserves in Europe, implying that the whole conflict is an “energy heist” especially since most of these reserves lie in and around the Donbass region.
That being said, would this fall under the ML definition of imperialism? An oil war, in this case the Russian government fighting a war for largely private energy interests, would consitute exportation of capital as I see it.
Finally, while I’m not saying Russia comes even slightly close to the greatest perpetrator of state terror since wwii (us/NATO), it’s possible that the conflict may be an imperialist one, and if I’m misunderstanding the ML definition some clarification would be more than welcome.
Every country has resources but that doesn’t mean that every war is imperialist.
The ML definition of imperialism describes how a capitalist economy eventually develops to the point where industries must exploit people beyond their country’s borders in order to maintain profitability. That is, building factories, mines, plantations, etc. on foreign land and forcing the natives to become their wage laborers (or slaves).
Russia isn’t doing this to Ukraine and they couldn’t even if they wanted to because they’re not at that stage of capitalism yet. They’ve been capitalist for barely 30 years and have been struggling to maintain sovereignty that entire time.
This war is mostly about NATO encircling Russia and using Ukraine as a strategic pawn to threaten them militarily. Remember how the Cuban Missile Crisis started because the US put nukes in Turkey? Well now they’re trying to put nukes in Ukraine so you can imagine how Russia feels about that.
Btw oil isn’t capital. Oil rigs and refineries are, though.
Thanks, solid analysis too.
The thing is , this war was already continuing for 8 years and the Russian side tried to make peace with Ukraine this whole time. I don’t think that Russia is doing it out of some noble intentions , but it doesn’t really add up with “they just went there for oil” narrative. More so , it was the Ukrainian side which showed it’s unwillingness for peace , violating Minsk agreements by continuously bombing Donbass regions.
Honestly a huge part of the context that’s totally “forgotten” by the western media.
