I wouldn’t. I’ve had my comments on this matter silently removed from threads–as in, not even showing up in the modlog-- before (and have had them removed completely, a problem I will remedy below shortly), on this particular post from a month ago:

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/190301

Notice how links to specific comments I’ve made don’t work; they revert back to the top-level post:

• https://lemmygrad.ml/post/190301/comment/133934
• https://lemmygrad.ml/post/190301/comment/162495
• https://lemmygrad.ml/post/190301/comment/132721

But I’ll happily explain, again, why I think this is an imperialist war on both fronts:

From Lenin:

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.

But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;

(2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy;

(3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;

(4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and

(5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.

Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

Both NATO and Russia meet these five features handily.

1. Russia has monopolies across its industries. Gazprom in particular plays a decisive role in economic life.
2. Russia’s banks and industry, like all capitalist countries in the 21st century, are deeply intertwined. Russia has a financial oligarchy.
3. Russia is involved, to the tune of hundreds of billions net positive, in international capital investment. Raw statistics from the Bank of Russia can be found here. And this is just the “official” activity, disregarding other forms of capital “outflows” (i.e., oligarchs funneling money out of the country) that you may or may not classify as “capital investment” elsewhere.
4. Russia’s oil and gas companies have common interests with the oil and gas companies of NATO. Russia supplies a quarter of Europe’s oil and half of its natural gas. When large fossil fuel resources were discovered off the coast of Crimea, Ukraine did not have the capital to extract those resources itself. Ukraine turned to western oil companies to assist in the extraction. Russia eventually muscled its way to the table with its annexation of Crimea to ensure it would get its slice of the pie.
5. The current conflict in Ukraine has Russia protecting one of its spheres of influence directly, with raw military power.

Counter-arguments so far mostly boil down to variations on changing the names of things and thinking that changes the things themselves (something Engels warned us against):

• “NATO is bigger than Russia” - True and irrelevant. That Russia is an upstart imperialist with less in its coffers and NATO is the reining champ does not change the imperialist character of Russia’s behaviour.
• “Russia is not big enough to be imperialist” - False. Russia’s GDP floats around 10th in the world year-over-year. The notion that it is a victim of imperialism, that it is on the periphery rather than the core, is ludicrous. And Lenin did not specify a threshold precisely because a threshold would imply that the same behaviour can both be imperialism and not be imperialism; a contradiction.
• “That’s not foreign finance capital; it’s capital flight” - Whether capital is exported directly via the Bank of Russia, or indirectly via tax havens, the class relations between Russia’s proletariat and its capitalists remain the same. The relationship between Russia’s oligarchs and those it subjugates across the world remains the same. The notion that capitalists, addicted to growth, are merely parking hundreds of billions of dollars in Cyprus or the Cayman islands or any other tax haven, and not investing it elsewhere, strains credulity.
• “We must establish a multi-polar world” - True. Russia, being a capitalist and imperialist antagonist, cannot be allowed to become that second pole. That pole must be taken up by China, the only country that has even a snowball’s chance in hell of saving humanity from the crash course it’s currently on.