One Ukrainian democratic socialist’s opinion on the war

1. Ukraine still has the right to defend itself from the Russian invaders.However,I'm pretty concerned with the existence of the Azov Battalion and other far-right groups in Ukraine.Not to mention the discrimination towards refugees of different ethnicities.

2. Long live Ukraine! Continue the revolt against imperials wherever and whomever!

3. The Ukrainian needs a proper microphone. A terrible sound quality losses the delivery of the message.

4. LOL. A huge smile on my face for the most part of the video
   I understand that his opnion is based on wrong and fairly selective information, but don't throw tomatoes at interviewer. I think this interview is brilliant, not in the matter that this is right point of view, but as to see what Ukrainian and collective west goverment does to a not very educated regular people. It's absolutely awful and full of hypocrisy, but hey, IT'S THE REAL OPINION (and the only one allowed there) of most of the Ukrainians that are still there.
   So don't try to internalize his worldview, just enjoy the zoo!

5. 314 up vs 448 down votes.
   Bro, it looks like even your, mostly American, audience don't support you on this one.
   America delenda est.

6. This is one of the few contributions on RNN on Ukraine that is in line with basic reality. The response to Ukraine war is an indelible stain on the international left. Siding with a fascist regime that attacked a peaceful neighbor because that regime opposes the West is inexcusable.

   Venezuela was strike one, Ukraine is strike two. If the international left supports one more fascist regime, it's lights out.

7. Can someone help please? I’ve recently turned to socialism and I’ve noticed the big publications treat Zelenskyy as a war propagandaist. Ok fair enough, and to be anti-war is obvious but how are is Ukraine supposed to defend itself. I’m finding no answers on this at all. Zelenskyy has to do something, Russia is much much bigger than Ukraine… I clicked this video to get better insight but I’m not finding anything yet.

8. oh brother….democratic socialism is…..socialism…..a corrupt, economic philosophy and there's nothing democratic about it

9. Poor guy, he must talk what they told him to tell or he will end up on Mirotvorets list.

10. Well that was really disappointing. Why would the real News Network be putting out this crap? Not so trustworthy after all.

11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQc6mJ7u8gQ

12. It really seems as if Zelensky campaigned on a platform of giving more liberties to Russian speakers to use Russian in schools and the like, but then he got really influenced by the more right nationalist forces, and then the context of the war has a rally around the flag effect where people who may have criticized the government before just shut up and follow it, and these Kononovich brothers got locked up as a result of a sort of moral panic about anyone who publicly calls themself socialist or communist within Ukraine. I saw some commentary by a South African communist who claimed the votes in the Donbas were 100% valid, that people wanted to leave and join Russia, but I see the argument that those votes cannot be trusted in people can be in a lot of cases bullied or coerced into voting to join Russia, because lots of groups, including socialists in Russia, have criticized United Russia for manipulating elections. And there is the issue of Great Russian Chauvinism, which Lenin warned of. Putin is claiming Ukraine is an invented nation, and both he and Zelensky are acting like they are the legitimate heirs of the medieval empire called the Kyivan Rus, which was founded by Vikings, and was neither Ukraine nor Russia at all. And Russians and Ukrainians are fighting over Crimea but up until not that long ago most there were Tartar Muslims, not even Slavs at all, so both groups are claiming they have this long ancestral claim to a land that spent more time as the Crimean Khanate than as Russia or Ukraine. I don’t like arguments that frame things as if Putin had to do this because he didn’t, or arguments that just overlook the fact that yes, some reactionary stuff has really gone on in Ukraine, like banning left political parties, and there was war in the Donbas since 2014, as others said. It seems crazy that so many claiming to be progressive would be okay with Kyiv telling people they must be Ukrainian whether they like it or not, and also crazy that others saying they are socialists would be okay with, for instance, Russia controlling really divided areas, in terms of attitudes towards nationality and ethnicity, and in those areas forcing people to only speak Russian in schools and government. Neither side can force the other side to just assimilate. It’s not okay. Russia is clearly the bigger power here, and went way out of line with doing stuff like claim Ukraine is an invented, or fake nation. It’s not, and people’s rights to be Ukrainian need to be respected, but by the same token people cannot be forced to stop identifying with the Russian language if that is the language they are most comfortable in, grew up with, and are attached to. It seems as if the UN could oversee some sort of fair and square, heavily monitored vote, to let regions decide what they want to do ultimately, but the problem is there is no international support for that. The various parties involved all seem to be hellbent on some sort of total victory, all visions of which are out of touch with the cultural and historical complexities of places like Donbas or Crimea.

13. I live in Brazil and know lots of leftwing people here, including some who go to congresses associated with political parties, where socialists from other countries sometimes attend. A few years ago some friends of mine attended one such congress in Rio de Janeiro, and there were two men there from a socialist organization from Ukraine. They're widely referred to as the Kononovich brothers, and they opposed a lot of privatization schemes in Ukraine. Everyone they met here says they were not Russian or Belarussian agents, but Marxist activists, who opposed neoliberalism in Ukraine, but did not want Russia to control Ukraine, but these guys are in prison now, accused of being Russian agents. Now a lot of people are sort of split about what to think, since it's hard to rally people who are in Marxist organizations to support Zelensky if he is criminalizing such organizations in Ukraine. It seems as if a lot of people are just adopting the stance that they support neither Putin nor Zelensky, and that Brazil is too poor a country, too far away, to be involved in what is going on right now, and they're really worried about NATO expansion because NATO has a nasty history in Libya, and Brazil's ex president Dilma Rousseff wouldn't vote to approve of intervention there by NATO and as a result got punished by the Obama administration, which wiretapped her, obtaining information about the state oil company Petrobras. Then there is the issue of BRICS, which was set up at a time when Russia was not doing what it is doing right now, based on the idea that it could be used to free semi-peripheral countries from being so controlled by the IMF and World Bank. I know the left here at this point is against Putin, but strategically it seems as if people are confused about what to support, and a major problem is what appears to be real persecution of leftists in Ukraine. I know whatever happens then gets picked up by propagandists who claim the whole war is about "denazification", and they spin facts around to make an unjust war appear justified to some, but I was just wondering if anyone on here knows much about actual repression of leftists in Ukraine? Also, what about the issue of language? I read an Al Jazeera article that said kids from the Donbas who are fleeing violence and get put in foster care in the West of the country are getting put in homes where they are told they must speak Ukrainian and they must study in Ukrainian even if they are more comfortable with Russian. The pretext of defending Russian speakers is clearly disingenuous, a ploy, to wage a war of aggression, but how do Ukrainian leftists approach this issue of language and culture? Would socialists in Ukraine, for instance, defend a federal system, as Chomsky has suggested at one point? What would people think if there were some sort of internationally monitored vote that was not rigged, for regions to decide their ultimate fate? I'm just throwing some thought out there, since this war has really divided the left up around the world and many do not know what to believe since a lot of information seems to either be coming from very nationalistic Ukrainian sources that are not discussing some aspects of what has gone on, or from very biased or slanted sources that are framing things as if NATO is solely to blame, as if Putin is innocent. This interviewee says he's socialists, so I wonder what he thinks about the criminalization of Marxist organizations within Ukraine, or about US backing of the Euromaidan movement? It's not a question of whether the US supported it or not. The US supported it. I don't think it means Putin was right to attack at all, but it seems as if, as others on here said, some major details are left out of this discussion, but nonetheless I would imagine the interviewee would be against the criminalization of communism in Ukraine. I would be interested in seeing his comments on that.

14. The guy has no difference with the Ukrainian gov on the war, he's just complaining on its social politics. That's pure social-patriotism. He has nothing to say about NATO's présence, about the repression against national minorities, about Crimea… Really awful.

15. Russia did what it eventually had to with no other good options left to it.

16. OOOOOOOF this guy screams of everything bad about democratic "socialists" i'm less than 1 minute in and he's already coming out of the gate sounding like some dork on CNN/CBC/BBC. fuck off.

17. Ukraine the nation is being used like an abused child, USA are full in, literally leveraging "the dream". I expect laughing with Joy parties are being held in the Pentagon and Langley, bring your own Swiss bank account.

18. What about the outlawing of left political parties in Ukraine?!? This guy serious??

19. Dude is a fraud. Not a socialist.

20. Ask him how leftists, socialists, and feminists were "welcomed" during euromaidan. They were all beaten up by right sektor thugs

21. Talks about Chechnya under Yeltsin not Russia under Putin. If Ukraine was serious about this conflict they wouldn't have taken the US billions of softening up before Maidan and its manipulations by the US to get Ukraine against Russia. The ethnic Russians had legitimate concerns and Ukraine doubled down and legistlated to remove Russian as a national language among lots of other things to basically piss off the ethnic Russians. Then the violence started and Azov ran amok and thats a fact. If Ukraine was a democracy, it would have tried to find a way to accommodate all its citizens. You have to remember that when the Soviet Union broke up about 25M Russians were left outside of Russia in satellite countries, it was never resolved. This young man is naive, I know Ukrainians too and this is BS. Why didn't Ukraine 'fully' implement Minsk 2 agreement? Perhaps clause 10 was a problem for the US? – 'All foreign forces and mercenaries to leave Ukraine'.

22. At 44 seconds the Ole "it was supposed to be over in 3 days" came out and that is when I determined that the BS pile is high with this dude and no further listening is required. Downvoted for all the lies.

23. utter shit.

24. like every young man who has spent the last 10 years of his life playing computer games, he has no idea what's going on in Russia or even his own country, If he survives the war or nuclear exchange his Prime Minister is trying to provoke he will watch and learn the truth when the next episode of Oliver Stones untold story of American history aires.

25. I'd love to see the dislikes on this one

26. and what has Zelenski done to the Ukrainian left?

27. He is totally confused and not seeing the bigger picture, he thinks Ukraine is still sovereign and not run by Washington, God help him, also I'm wondering why he isn't off fighting, is he underage or disabled ? 🤔🙏

28. Zelensky's puppet.

29. In former USSR "left" concerns itself mostly with restoration of Russian Empire and anihilation of ethnic minorities. You literally cannot see any difference between Russian "communists" and hard right neo fascist Empire recreators. Both groups have Russian Empire as their priority.

30. Ukraine has banned all left political parties and siezed their assets. They have delegitimized trade unions and forbidden collective bargaining. The government has a hit list of people anywhere in the world who speak out against the war. Do you think they allow would an actual socialist to operate within their borders?

31. Are you joking ??

32. We proudly thank Orcraine for its war on our Civil Rights with the "authority" it pretends its decree has, of 21 May, 2015, abolishing basic Human Rights for "enemies."

33. It is not enough to be a leftist. One needs to care about all people, even if they are of Russian nationality, living in Donbas. A historian should understand that once a government denies human rights to one group (eg. to speak one's own mother tongue), it will not hesitate to deny human rights to other groups too. Which has happened by dismantling social rights of all Ukrainian people… The irresponsible government, which obviously doesn't care about its own people, is bringing suffering to ALL people of Ukrainie, no matter what nationality! Nationalism doesn't lead anywhere, in the Balkans, we know this from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 90s. And of course, we SHOULD start talking about the attitude of the West, especially the USA foreign policy! We've seen what USA has done all around the world, and we are watching now how it is using exactly the same tactic in Taiwan – preparing for the next proxy war with China! Of course we should care because this only leads to the third world war! WE WANT PEACE, NOT WAR! NO TO NATIONALISM – WE ARE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD!
    P. S.: I admit I've also been deceived by the war propaganda machine in March, but then I've noticed some strange things, and made an effort to make a research and educate myself on this matter. The war narrative has many cracks, we just need to look closely and search for truth.
    P. P. S.: Being a pacifist doesn't mean supporting Russia, or any other world power! A pacifist knows that wars, and agression in general, are not the way to solve problems! Please, don't misinterpret my response!

34. Disappointing that you call yourself 'real' news. More like real propaganda. How he sits there in his blue and yellow background already makes me cringe.

35. This guy is full of it 🖕. How can you broadcast under The Real News Network when you're repeating after CNN & NBC.👎

36. I thought this was THE REAL NEWS NETWORK so you mean you take a Ukranian and bolster anything he has to say just like the other thousand news networks do and ignore the REAL STORY. Odd how that works. Take one side and ignore the other and call it NEWS. Seems more like propaganda

37. I saw the support for Assange, subscribed. Saw this garbage and unsubscribed. 60 seconds. Go take your boosters.

38. There is no justification for the invasion of a sovereign state, all leftists are for an immediate ceasefire and peaceful resolution of the conflict, preferably by complete withdrawal of Russian armed forces to where they were before 2/2022. Every leftist should support sovereignty of the Ukrainian people, especially if one remembers that USA and Britain in the first 3 days of the war pressured Zelensky to surrender. However, this man by no means makes a progressive leftist critique of the war. There is no mention of the Meidan events and everything that happened after 2014. There is no mention of the NATO summit in 2008 and the pressure of the USA for Georgia and Ukraine to enter NATO (imagine having no context for interantional politics and war apart from "Putin is crazy"). Finally, the worse part in my opinion is his analysis on what the progressives in West states should do. In so many words, he suggests that the popular movement should pressure for the West to provide more weapons for the "total victory" of Ukraine. This is not a socialist point of view, this is nationalism and a blatant support of the military-industrial complex.

39. What Starodubtsev says that he wants, now, he already had before his fellow pro-west and anti-Russian separatists overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2013/2014. Before the so-called Maidan, a 4 month long insurrection in the nation's capital city, Ukraine was already a sovereign country that had a democratic government which represented all the people of a fully intact Ukraine… People were outraged by the January 6 insurrection in our nation's capital city, a one day insurrection. If Trump's insurrection had succeeded, it would have torn the country apart, but we supported that behavior abroad in Kiev. THAT is what got us here with this war, and now we should escalate? Compounding the original error until the nukes start flying. NO.

40. The interviewer is absolutely delusional. It is best he spends time writing fairy tales for children.

41. Important questions were not asked: How about the oppression and daily bombing of the oppressed ethnic Russian minority in Donbass, the south and the east, by the Kiev regime (backed by the NATO terrorists) for the past 8 years ? What about the Kiev Junta regime passing legislation banning Russian language, Russian schools, Russian culture, and even suggesting they are not real "native" ukranians and should leave. This is persecution of the oppressed. It was done by the Kiev Junta regime with the full support of the NATO terrorist bloc. This guy talks like he is a victim, But he supports a fascist, nazi controlled regime led by Zelensky.

42. In a country that has 50/50 russian/ukranian population 99% supports the same view, smells like straight bs

43. I just unsubscribed!

44. 40 bio weapons Labs later….

45. Is this some kind of joke? Not very funny.

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