Memes

That’s reasonable. I personally knew a lady who was beaten, imprisoned and starved for a week by the morality police for forgetting her hijab at home though. I struggle to think of a context that would justify that.

Who said you have to justify it? Can you give a link and quote of the person who tried to make you?

This was many years ago though, as I understand it the morality police and their systematic human rights abuses were largely unofficially abolished in 2023 after mass protests.

Human rights discourse is fraught and almost always extremely national chauvinist, racist. But yes there has been a moderation.

The new wave of protests from this year were largely about inflation and cost of living, as far as I understand. You don’t get to thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries via effective crowd management.

I'm not sure what this means.

In order: yes, yes, yes, and also yes.

Then you are wrong.

My opinion is that the primary motive of the original war, which they honestly thought they could get done in 3 days, was primarily to expand the workforce due to their crippled demographics

Well yes not ending the war after that 3 days, which was an option for Ukraine but rejected by their masters, would have been the way for Ukraine to not be destroyed as a country.

Unfortunately for Ukrainians, they have been sacrificed and their country ostensibly sold on loan. Russia did indeed hope they would choose to not do that.

But who knows what you mean by "crippled demographics", the demos were not particularly different in Donbas. Also why ignore the history leading up to it.

while simultaneously scoring an easy propaganda win domestically, giving a black eye to the US and EU, and get a hold of the rare earth minerals which were being prospected in eastern Ukraine at the time.

Actually none if that is imperialism except maybe the rare earths but that's really not an inherently compelling argument on its own because all land has value, but not all invasions or annexations are imperialist. Russia was not exactly hurting due to lack of rare earths. They were hurting from being slowly isolated from European markets and from a war zone on their border. 8 years of neo-Nazis shelling ethnic Russians in Donbas after Euromaiden and you're speculating it was rare earths?

It also didn’t hurt that before they bombed it, the area was relatively industrialized. Due to the incompetence of authoritarians in general and their inability to admit defeat (just look at the US in Iran today if you want a 2nd example), they are forced to keep going to save face no matter how pointless it is and how many people die.

Material forces constrain what "authoritarians" can do in this way, this is naive fantasy speak about how nation states operate. In reality, the refusal to do Minsk III is what set the stage, it is a recognition that a hard break was sought by Ukraine's masters and no negotiation would be forthcoming that even had the pretense of another agreement to fail to meet the conditions of. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline is a good example of the break being sought. With Ukraine off the table for a political negotiation, that left only the establishment of an ongoing material dynamic: demilitarization by force, annexation of Donbas, surviving a new economic status quo.

Speaking of the new economic status quo, Russia fared well despite the various financial nuclear options leveraged against them. This was probably a surprise to their neoliberal bankers, but the base reality of the situation made sustaining it appealing.

Take your pick. Saber rattling with Taiwan,

That is stoked by the West and there are no new developments on that front that aren't the US trying to escalate via moving yet more military assets there. Or China moving ships across waters right in between the mainland and the island slightly more often or with a slightly different exercise.

You call this making threats?

encroaching on the Phillipine’s maritime waters

I guess if we are being vague about what encroaching is okay. Building up and claiming various contiguous waters in the south china sea that would have otherwise been international waters and continuing to dispute long-disputed claims to some islands.

You call this making threats?

skirmishing with India and Pakistan on their border

Name them and let's see what the big deal is. PS, is it threatening.

I see every other day here references here to Ukrainian Nazis, Russian self-defense, etc.

So what? This doesn't respond to what I said at all.

As an Eastern European who’s heard second-hand from refugees what’s going on in detail, I hope you can understand why that’d piss me off a little.

I don't care what pisses you off.

PS you skipped over 75% of what I said.