I'm just making sure we're all on the same page about not machine gunning children.
I'm honestly shocked that this even has to be said here, let alone that apparently so many really aren't on the same page that machine-gunning children is both wrong and unjustifiable.
And again, that's exactly what the fascist apologists for the dropping of nuclear bombs on innocent Japanese civilians say.
"I can't imagine getting upset over something like child murder." I almost put in one of the disgust emojis here but it felt like it was too light-hearted for the disgust I'm actually feeling right now for people I used to think of as comrades.
Fuck you. Killing children is never necessary. If you can't understand that, I don't know what else to say.
the enforcement of authority of the proletariat must be carried out agaisnt the former oppressors.
Children were never the oppressors you fucking ghoul! You remind me of the goddamned apologists for the US nuking Japan "anything done in the name of furthering the goals of my side, even deliberately to innocent people born in the wrong place at the wrong time, may seem icky but thems the way it is. I'm just being practical." Not only does the argument rest entirely on a possibility of what might happen, it's completely unjustified regardless.
but you shouldn't be hoping for something that prolongs the war./
lol, what do you think I'm "hoping" for? Stating the fact that Russia can easily do what it has been doing indefinitely (but Ukraine cannot) has nothing to do with my hopes.
So is using a map of the countries supporting Ukraine to insinuate that the all the other countries must therefore be on Russia's side.
No one ever did any such thing, just noted that support comes in many forms other than military equipment, which Russia has mostly already covered for itself, even if it buys drone parts from Iran. Unlike Ukraine which now relies wholly and entirely on outside help for all of its material need. You changed the goalposts for what "support" means to make it sound like only military equipment counts as support, which is foolish because it isn't what Russia needs. You're just trying to move the goalposts all over the place to make it seem like you have some kind of valid point, but you don't. Even if countries are not sending unneeded tanks, Russia still has plenty of support all over the world, mostly from countries who rightly recognize this as a struggle against the imperialism of the US and NATO which is beneficial to any anti-imperialists (including any actual leftists, even though so many western "leftists" drink deeply of their overlord's propaganda).
but Russia hasn't been able to get the kind of [material] support from its allies that Ukraine has
It hasn't needed to. Ukraine wouldn't be a functional state at all by this point were it not for the tens of billions of dollars in aid as well as all the military equipment slowly depleting the west. Russia on the other hand, has been doing quite well in holding it's own economically despite the sanctions and in holding the literal defensive line against all the NATO weaponry. It's a nonsensical comparison to make.
It's so fucking funny when the geopolitics understanders who have been drip-fed NATO propaganda state the clear opposite of reality and think they made an insightful comment.
Russia has all but won the military conflict, as has been made clear by this utter failure of a "counteroffensive." Russia is doing better economically than before the SMO, despite the supposed economic wunderwaffen sanctions that only backfired and hurt NATO countries. Russia has only gained support by most of the rest of the world and has showed the global south that the US/NATO are indeed paper tigers. Russia has all the leverage now. So yes, for Russia to compromise right now would be bad for them because they don't need to compromise, they can keep going as they have been and eventually have their demands met, or Ukraine/NATO can recognize they've lost and make a bid for peace by acquiescing to Russia's demands before more lives are needlessly lost.
Ukraine on the other hand will be crippled for decades regardless of how things pan out. Ukraine is now deeply indebted to Western countries, has already had all national assets sold off, has had a major chunk of its working-age population killed or maimed, and is beholden to a fascist, nazi-worshipping government.
As for Germany, yeah they have been working to the end of hobbling themselves for decades too by allowing their remaining industrial capacity to be completely gutted, kowtowing to their US masters that bombed their infrastructure to prevent them ever again getting oil from 'The Bad Country,' they have irreparably removed nuclear power as an option even as they're facing an impending energy crisis (in large part because of aforementioned no-oil-from-bad-country), and are right now also sliding towards right wing populism.
Putin broke the Minsk Agreements, huh? 
Anyone who wants to can go find out the truth of that claim and they will find that it was Ukraine/NATO that broke the agreements which is literally the reason it came to war. This was admitted to openly even by Angela fucking Merkel, who said they only drafted the agreements to buy time for Ukraine to build up more arms and continue antagonizing the Donbas.
I didn't write the following, but I think it is an excellent summary as to why it should be the position of Marxists and leftists in general to critically support Russia specifically with respect to the SMO. It was a response to someone saying they just didn't like the war in general and that it's just one capitalist state fighting a proxy war against another, similar to what you're saying. While it's understandable to feel that way, it is not materialist and it is failing to see the bigger picture. At the very least, I just think it's something you might consider. The person who wrote that response is @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net and I hope they don't mind that I am quoting them here (if so, I'll delete).
Edit: I'm putting it below a spoiler tag because it is longish and a little OT. Sorry about that, I'm tired.
spoiler
and this struggle is between two capitalist empires which both want to do more capitalism, so there's no benefit to either side winning
I keep seeing this take cropping up in online Western leftist circle and to be very honest, I always consider this to be the laziest takes on war for people claiming to be on the left.
This is no different than saying that there is no difference for the left when it comes to whether the North or the South wins in the American Civil War because neither of them was socialist. Well, would it surprise you that Marx wrote an entire collection of essays just on analyzing the American Civil War?
To quote Lenin from his Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War”, October 1 (14), 1914:
For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.
Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.
In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.
We can write entire essays about the war in Ukraine, and it is anything but “a war between American and Russian capitalists”.
For one, if this is about Russia expanding its capital, why is the Russian Central Bank doing everything it can (including rate hikes and devaluing the ruble) to undermine Putin’s effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the face of unprecedented sanctions, and directly aiding the Western imperialist cause? If anything, it is stifling the expansion of Russian capital.
Such narrative crumbles at the slightest inspection of what is actually going on within the Russian political and economic structures, and points to a more fundamental division that Michael Hudson had pointed out regarding the conflict between finance vs industrial capitalism.
And we’re not even getting to the wider geopolitical implications of the war in Ukraine yet - what does it mean for Western imperialism? The anti-colonial struggles of the Global South? The effects on global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) and the efforts to decouple from such oppressive structures (which is what de-dollarization is all about).
We have to ask ourselves, what would a fascist victory in Ukraine mean for left wing movements in Eastern Europe? What could the total subjugation of Russia - a country that has large scale military equipments, raw resources and minerals, and agricultural products - to Western capital mean for the anti-colonial movements in the Global South?
Leftists who refuse to apply a materialist and historical method to understand the world’s events will inevitably fail to see the underlying currents of the global state of events, and as such they cannot predict where the world is heading and will not be able to position themselves to take advantage of the impending crisis.
After all, it was WWI that resulted in an explosion of socialist movements within the imperialist European states, why? Because the socialists back then actually combined theory and practice (what Gramsci referred to as praxis) to take advantage of the predicament.
lol, they didn't even know it's called "whataboutism." smh. Must be a new recruit.
It is simply demonstrable reality, I don't need anything more than that.
The classic "I know you are but what am I?!" response is all that the westoid propagandists like this person (or NATO bot?) can muster. "Nuh uh, I'm not fake news, you're fake news! Oh and you're boring. Nyeah." Especially now that this farce of a counteroffensive has completely failed, it's getting harder for them to hold up their embarrassing facade of lies. This is all clear to anyone who actually has even a little bit of understanding about what has been happening in real life, on the ground, exactly as the Ukrainian in the OP image is also telling us.
I don't know, if the marxists or anarchists I work with irl ever said that kind of shit, I wouldn't work with them anymore (and we have discussed the topic). Simple as a that. Personally, I'm an atheist and haven't come up against any contradictions between my leftism and my morality or humanism. But if religion is what it takes for people to recognize that killing kids because of some hypothetical future scenario is wrong and will never be justified, then I say keep the churches full.