Putin is a conservative, a right winger, a nationalist, a capitalist pig, you name it. I won’t deny it. But calling him a fascist is not knowing what fascist is about.

Also, I have no problem in saying Russia is not democratic. As long as you don’t use it as an argument to justify any attack against Russia or Russians, since no place in the world is actually democratic.

Sorry, but nothing you said is uncommon in your democratic countries

Use a loophole to run for a third term of presidency by becoming prime minister.

Macron used a loophole to do a very unpopular retirement pension reform bypassing congress.

Rewrite the constitution during your third term to remove your term limit.

Didn’t know amending the constitution or re-writing it was anti-democratic. Then no democratic country would ever pass this test.

Jail your political opponents.

Like Ukraine did? https://apnews.com/article/europe-ukraine-arrests-business-government-and-politics-f50da684fab61add42348d276482477c

Or like Germany is doing right now?

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/germany-crackdown-israel-gaza-jewish-activist

Assassinate critics.

Learn about COINTELPRO.

Only allow approved opposition to run.

Ukraine again:

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/21/why-did-ukraine-suspend-11-pro-russia-parties

Brutally crush any democratic protests.

Can you not see what is happening right now to anti-genocide protesters? Also what about Odessa massacre?

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/the-odessa-trade-union-massacre-ten-years-later/

Force government employees to vote for you.

AFAIK, vote is still done in secrecy in Russia.

Start a war to rally support for yourself.

Like, the Iraqi, Lybia, Afghanistan and Iran wars? Or Yugoslavia?

Take lots of weird, shirtless, old-man photos.

I think you have some kind of kink with Putin, why does this have anything to do with being democratic or not?

TLDR;

That said, the points you listed are not uncommon in any democratic countries. Unless you say that no country is democratic, therefore I will agree with you. Neither Russia nor any other country in the West or in any part in the world is actually democratic.

People need to understand what fascism is before calling everyone a fascist. I have no love for Putin and I think he is a piece of shit, but he is no fascist.

It’s impossible to exclude the US, EU and NATO involvement from the whole conflict, including the Maidan coup. Since before 2014, the region was already under a geopolitical dispute. One side (the Ukrainian right) who assumed the government were very much pro EU, ousted the more neutral president and made illegal all opposition parties. So it’s not a matter of whether you like Russia or not, this is a geopolitical conflict.

I think neutrality just means that they won’t payroll the US military industrial complex directly. Aside from that, Austria stays together with the other nations of the Western block.

You should definitely elect better leaders. If something is consensus in all so called “democracies”, is that everyone thinks everyone else need to elect better leaders. The majority of the working people, which comprises the majority of population of most (pseudo-)democratic countries are mostly unsatisfied with their governments. This is occurs repeatedly and consistently in all liberal democracies, with a few exceptions. If there’s something all liberal representative democracies look alike is that most people don’t feel their interests are being represented by their government.

There’s a reason why this happens in all capitalist societies. Note that it’s not an individual issue and the reason is not lack of education and stupidity, as people often say, as even well educated individuals do bad voting decisions. This is a social and systemic issue and it’s not a coincidence.

I won’t tell you why, I want you to think about it. Then tell my why this happens.

The leaders in Europe are all financial capitalists who invested a lot of capital into US financial system. Even if European people face hunger tomorrow, their assets are secured at US banks. For this reason, they don’t care whether they sign deals that are unfavorable to the European people.

This is a very naive reading of the Ukraine-Russian conflict. First of all, the conflict actually started in 2014 when Russia reacted by annexing Crimea after president Yanukovych was ousted following the Maidan uprising (which was carried out with EU/US support). Since then, there have been many skirmishes between Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatist groups in the Donbass region, before Russia escalated the conflict in 2022. You should know that Crimea and Donbass are regions of a Russian ethnical majority, and these people didn’t support the Maidan uprising.

Secondly, I am tired of people (especially liberals) which talk about laws, agreements and treaties as having some kind of supernatural power to stop things from happening. It’s as if treaties, laws, agreements and commitments were never broken in real life, as if there was a supreme mystical power that bounded every party to commit to them.

Ukraine is not under NATO in all but paper. Its troops were trained by NATO countries, they are being supplied by NATO countries, there are mercenaries (and clandestine troops) from NATO fighting in the frontlines, the intelligence provided to Ukraine is from NATO countries. Not only that but the top NATO members are overseeing all Ukraine political decisions. Ukraine is not in NATO today because NATO countries never wanted to be directly involved in the first place and just wanted that Ukraine and Russia to bleed each other for their benefit.

Today NATO is actually a means to make all members fund the US military industrial complex, and provide other material and human resources to US, Germany, France and UK imperialist adventures. To this day NATO was never used as a defensive alliance, but NATO was always used in offensives against other countries. If Russia was weak like Afghanistan, then I’m sure NATO would have advanced in full force, like they did after the 9/11 attacks.

Sorry fella, but you need to judge a government by the policies it applies, not simply to the form it takes.

This over attachment to the form makes up many smug liberals who are often unpoliticized, misrepresented by the very representatives they elect, which only do the bidding of powerful lobby groups tied to the financial sector.

The liberal voting system, along with the multi-party system, hasn’t been capable, for a long time, to guarantee that people’s voice are being heard. The people in the West, for a long time, is holding this smug attitude as if they were the pinnacle of civilization, when in fact they are the biggest fools and jesters of the world who are constantly squabbling against each other and persecuting minority groups while they are being robbed blind by equity, rent, taxes, interest rates, and having their jobs being moved to other places.

So, yeah, Niger maybe a dictatorship of a military junta but they are taking the steps of getting rid of their Western parasites, the same people that make your life harder at each passing day, while you are complaining about they not being pure enough or for not conforming with your stupid idealization of how government systems should work. Stop being a fool and instead of arrogantly complaining and diminishing their actions, go read something organize and do something productive. Stop being a fool, for god’s sake!

If Poroshenko wants to coup Zelensky, I think we’ll see even more Nazi shit up in the Ukrainian top bureaucracy.

Trump is sometimes so stupid that it gave the Brazilian left a political gift.

The US will never admit their F-35 got shot. They alleged a few F-35 fell into the ocean after defensive maneuvers done by a carrier. Note that this happened at least twice.

Yep, they would need both fighters and AEW&C to make AEW&C effective. But if they at least have more modern jets, deploy their anti-air defenses strategically and use radar tricks to hit F-35 then they would be able to tick the scales a bit. But this depends on how much Iranian air forces are used to these tactics and are used to the more modern equipment.

https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-rebuilding-iran-air-defence-hq9b

Iran would actually need airborn early warning and control (AEW&C) to effectively defeat F-35 fighters with anti-air defenses. But if Iran were to deploy a few J-10C that were used by Pakistan, they would at least put an obstacle in acquiring air superiority in Iranian territory, since the jets would not be able to maneuver freely in Iranian territory.

Let’s keep in mind that J-10Cs are 4th gen as well. But I think Iran would be able to replace their old fleet with newer J-10Cs as quickly as Pakistan did with their older jets.

Oh, and I forgot to add, China, Russia and Iran didn’t even use their top tier missiles yet.

Yup, and today missiles can have satellite guidance. So, not only precise, but it is also smart enough to avoid some routes with heavy anti-air defenses.

US missiles are hypersonic just because AngryCommieKender said so.

Exactly. Hype based capital investment.

Israel is an invading country currently performing the biggest live-streamed genocide in recent history. They don’t care about international law or what people in the rest of the world think. So their boarding or attack of the freedom flotilla does not care about reasonable use of force.

It’s not the first time the flotilla is intercepted by Israeli forces. A few months ago a ship from freedom flotilla was sunk by Israeli drones, with some of the activists that are currently on board in the Madleen (such as Thiago Ávila). But it’s the first time a high profile activist like Greta Thunberg is joining their initiative.