What do you think about comparisons between the Afghan Soviet war and the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

I've seen a lot of pro-Putin advocates saying that the US is pursuing the same strategy it used against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. They site how CIA funding supposedly gave rise to Al Qaeda and that now far right groups in Ukraine are getting US funding and will cause problems in the future.

As for the video, I find what was said at 10:15 quite ironic because this was after the Sino-Soviet split; the US wasn't the only one to fund the Afghan insurgents (and have that policy to come back and bite us in the ass).

in my opinion, there are comparisons to be made BUT the way pro-Putin advocates phrase it completely whitewashes the Soviet Afghan War. It was a brutal conflict that saw 1.5 million afghans dead. As for giving rise to Islamic extremism, when compared to Soviet atrocities, CIA funding was but a drop in an ocean of blood. So yeah, if you're slaughtering people left and right you're damn right we'll give the people your fighting weapons to make you pay for it.

The mistake made in Afghanistan wasn't supporting the rebels, it was not following through by helping the country to rebuild after the war. Time will tell if the US has learned from that harsh lesson.

[Lord_Saddler]

Well, the Azov battalion and similars in Ukraine are quite much a white version of ISIS, so the US is doing what we know the US does.

I only guess how much time it will take for the Ukro extremists to find out they're just pawns and turn themselves against the US like Al Qaeda and many other US-sponsored terrorist groups did at some point in the recent history.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

Is this war an insurgency between Russia and these extremist groups?

Nope, the Ukrainian army stopped their attempt to conquer their country dead in its' tracks and continue to fight long after everyone thought they would've been overrun.

[Lord_Saddler]

This war started in 2014 if you don't know.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

Yeah, but it was a frozen 2016-2022.
And in the first half most of the fighting was done by these radical groups. Now they're a drop in the bucket with the Ukrainian army doing most of the fighting.

[Lord_Saddler]

Oh, okay. Ukraine violated the ceasefire every single day since 2015, but the conflict "was frozen." Sure.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

Yeah because the pro Russian separatists were responsible for most of the violations. Ukraine was just shooting back.

[Lord_Saddler]

"Ukraine was just shooting back."

You're such a liar, you definitely have no honor.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

Russia never wanted the Minsk accords implemented; they just wanted an excuse to nab the industrial/resource rich Donbass.

[Lord_Saddler]

Show proof, dear liar.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

Here:
www.osce.org/.../table_ceasefire--2022-02-20.pdf
Most of the ceasefire violations were explosions recorded in government controlled areas.

[historectomy]

honestly western funding definitely gave rise to multiple extremists groups and i am sure some may be an issue but to be fair every major power has done this multiple times, china has, russia has, Europe ruined the middle east, and the us stomped on it after

[Curmudgeon]

I will give you one big difference:

The covert funding of Afghan rebels was a great move in terms of Realpolitik, because it bled the Soviet Empire dry.

Now, on the other hand, we have the rather feckless USA support of untenable Ukranian positions. A move which is, if anything, *strengthing* the Putin regime, from soaring commodity prices in Russian's favor, to the weakening power of the almighty US Dollar due to wartime currency inflation, to a Russian nationalism making Putin, if anything, more popular at home.

And that Russian nationalism? it is a backlash against the Ukranian nationalism that was persecuting ethnic Russians within the on-paper Ukraine. The areas that Russia has "taken"? They *did not* conquer them; they were *invited in* by ethnic Russian supermajorities in those areas, ethnic Russians unhappy at - and backlashing against - the hyper-nationalistic turn that ethnic Ukrainians have taken in recent years, which has led to ethnic Ukrainians metaphorically pooping all over the ethnic Russians.

And this Ukrainian hyper-nationalism is totally understandable, as the Soviet system was pooping all over them for decades. But that wasn't the fault of the average Ethnic Russian, who was just a pawn in that whole system too.

Mistreatment of ethnic Russians in the Crimea, Donetsk, Donbass, and other regions in the south and east of the on-paper Ukraine was what was the impetus for Russian intervention to begin all this. Even Boris Yeltsin, the most pro-American leader Russia ever had, was bluntly clear that mistreatment of Russians in places like the Crimea, where they had and have lived for centuries, would be grounds for a war. And Boris Yeltsin was regularly smeared by his political opponents as an American puppet - gee, does that sound familiar?

When the Soviet Empire fell apart, the former Soviet "Republics" that emerged as the de jure successors were NOT drawn with the various nationalities in mind. Indeed, often they jumbled nationalities together in Stalin's "divide and rule" policies. And this internal squabbling to the point of shooting war is going on in most former "Soviet Republics":
1. Armenians vs. Azeris with horrifically jumbled borders between those two nations ,

2. Uzbeks vs. Tajiks vs. Kyrgyz in each of those three "Stans" with muddled boundaries,

3. Romanians vs. Russians vs. Ukranians in Moldova.

It is one thing to take out an unjust agressor, but it is quite another to involve oneself in somebody else's ethnic or tribal conflict. Somalia, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan 2.0 should have taught the USA this.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

"Untenable"

Ukrainians have taken 50% of the territory Russia took since Feb/24/2022. And in case you forgot, Russia moved their troops into the separatist republics on February 24th and then forced their way into the Eastern and Southern parts of Ukraine. This war isn't being fought because the people of East Donbass want to be part of Russia; it's because the rest don't. The Ruble's value went up due to smoke and mirrors but now it's shit against the USD.