I'm not sure how to write this without it sounding like ragebait or a fed post.
But why do most fellow Marxists critically support Russia today?
I can understand having seen Russia as a potential temporary ally or a necessary power that can stand against US / NATO hegemony over the globe. In short I can understand it from a strategic standpoint.
But what about morals of this?
To explain I've seen seen Russia as a necessary potential ally in the past too. But that has changed with the Ukraine war and concurrent events in Russia.
The way I see it, even with a CIA coup, a full scale invasion of a country still isn't justified. It's bordering on insanity in my mind to start such a war. The way the war and conscription is handled in Russia is also highly critiquable. The way people who fall from grace, also "fall out of windows" too.
The other major event that made me doubt Putin more was part of the leaks that happened with Navalny's death. Specifically the revelation of how Putin spend hundreds of millions not just on a palace like so many corrupt leaders and dictators do, but essentially what amounts to an own private town.
This is what lead me to believe that Putin devolved into insanity and paranoia from what he used to be, a calculated sensible dictator.
With all this in mind, why should we offer critical support to Russia instead of Ukraine?
Yes you can argue that Ukraine has been taken over via a pro-western coup regime, but they're still not the aggressors in the war.
I find it morally questionable to support an aggressor in such a clear scenario. And purely strategically speaking with how Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, I find their military capabilities not great either for any conflict with NATO.
Do any of you have any moral reasoning to critically support Russia? Or do you support it out of strategic reasons despite moral objections?
Russia is not imperialist: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism#Russian_%22imperialism%22
Having some global influence and a capitalist model does not automatically mean you fit the definition of imperialism. You could try to argue current Russia might have the potential to become imperialist given the right circumstances, but short of them losing their sovereignty to the western empire and becoming a puppet state (and therefore only imperialist in the sense that they are part of the west's empire), that seems like a snowball's chance in hell. Russia is currently an important actor in a newly forming multipolar world, which is in direct contradiction to having monopolistic capitalist power. And it is "socialism with Chinese characteristics" China, with its fast-moving advances, increasing mutually-beneficial ties with other countries, and powerful forces of production and supply chains that is the dominant force in that multipolar push for sovereignty and self-determination, not Russia. So even if Russia were trying to do some kind of 5d chess maneuver to become a global imperialist power, they would have to go through China to do it, which is where some of their most significant support comes from.
There just simply aren't the conditions there, as far as I can tell, for Russia to independently develop into the kind of domineering power that the west has had, part of which was built on the tendrils of colonialism created over hundreds of years and then further developed on the advantageous technological and productive position that the US was in, in post WWII; and those US conditions were owed in part to it suffering so little damage to its own country while other places, like the USSR, suffered incredible losses. Russia is again suffering losses for fighting against the puppet/proxy state Ukraine and its neo-nazi and NATO-backed fascist elements, so that they don't get NATO knocking at their door, coming for them next. This is not some easy war that simply wins them territory and resources, and loses them little. You don't have to like Russia's leadership at all to recognize that this is a part of the ongoing existential fight for sovereignty against a brutally expansionist western empire. It was the west that invaded the USSR in its beginnings, it was the west that sought to destroy the USSR and successfully did so. It was the west that couped Ukraine. It was the west that sabotaged peace deals between Ukraine and Russia. The same west that has been doing constant wars, coups, economic sanctions, and other forms of waging war against the entire world for decades, killing millions, just in post-WWII. Not even counting the damage done via colonialism if you go back further. Any attempt to make equivalent Russia and the western empire is nothing short of the most high grade, top of the line BS, and most likely comes from western imperial sources who are trying to flip the script.
Critical support means what it sounds like. It means you support but with caveats, not that you give unthinking support. It means you recognize that the world is not a Marvel movie, but instead has complex contradictions and factional crossovers. That it is not made up of perfect victims and cartoon villains, but of varied peoples and cultures who don't all have the same interests, and you have to engage with and navigate that in order to develop toward global communism and a world free of imperialism. You can despise it all you want, but you still have to engage with the realities of it in all its messiness.