When I first started reading+talking about Donbass I used to be of the opinion that when necessary it could be reasonable. hell, strategic even. Tactical, if you will. To, in certain contexts, decouple Russia from the conversation of Donbass and permit it to be had on the terms of the west. Goes without saying that westerners are russophobic on instinct, western liberals often even more so. If it gets them through the door, if it gets them acknowledging the humanity of Donchané, then like anything’s worth trying, right? Effective outreach and all.
Like. No, no, for suree. We don’t gotta hand it to Russia. But can we all agree that what’s being done to Donbass and her people is bad? Surely we can all agree on this, that Donchané like all peoples deserve sovereignty and safety on their own land and over their resources and a life where bending the knee to a regime that has routinely expressed that it views them as subhuman or burying their children are not their only options. Like surely. If we can agree on that, then you can #totally support Donbass without supporting Russia if you want. We can pretend that’s a coherent position to hold.
I’ve long since come to see that actually, no u cannot. Like quite literally. Not only because russophobia is incompatible with supporting Donchané; these are a people experiencing genocide carried out under the banner of ‘derussification’, racialised and rendered ungrievable by their perceived-or-actual proximity to Russianness, to easternness. And if your first instinct is to spend all your time trying to distance them from Russianness so that they might become deserving of your empathy, then rather than reject it u have already conceded the central premise of that project. You are looking for a way to ‘support’ a people without retreating from the ideological grounds of the neo nazis slaughtering them. It is an unserious undertaking, you’re not actually supporting shit.
But also because like. All that aside. That distinction only survives as long as we’re talking in the abstract. Eventually any “Russia=bad Donbass=good” angle is going to make impact with like. Reality. With the actual material conditions that determine whether Donchané get to continue existing as a sovereign people or be genocided and what’s left of them subsumed into a western-aligned political project that wants a land and its resources cleansed of its ‘undesirable’ people. And at that point it just ceases to be defensible. Because once we’re talking about what actually keeps these people alive and capable of exercising that sovereignty in material reality faced with literal nazis, extending that to Russia becomes unavoidable. Becomes the only logical conclusion. Not because Russia is just beyond criticism (I mean it is 2 me😍🤍💙♥️ but different strokes & all that), but because there is no version of reality in which Donbass survives that does not have to contend with the reality of who is actually defending it and it’s never going 2 be the west. As valiant and steadfast as the people’s militias are, and they are and have been; there is no people’s militia or liberation force on earth that should be expected to indefinitely withstand a military armed 2 the teeth, funded, trained and politically backed by the whole of the imperial core and its effectively bottomless NATO pockets on its own. As Sibay pointed out, one of the reasons we are not looking at death tolls reminiscent of Gaza, apart from the obvious differences in geography and population density, is because Donbass is not fighting this war alone. How many more civilians would be dead had it not been for the Donbass Dome neutralising something close to over 50k UAVs since its deployment? How many more dormitories would’ve been levelled as the teenagers inside them slept? How many more children would’ve been buried if the people of Donbass had rejected Russia’s support to remain perfect victims in western eyes?
There will just come a point where u have to decide whether your solidarity extends to a people’s actual survival or only to the aesthetic of supporting them without extending any support to anyone the US Department of Homeland Security told u were icky evil and inconvenient.(<- Apply that outwards in perpetuity in all contexts 4ever tbh.)
Much in the same way u cannot meaningfully support Palestinians while ‘condemning Hamas’, their right to armed resistance, you cannot support the sovereignty of Donbass while condemning the only external power materially defending that sovereignty.
You cannot support a people while condemning their means of survival.
