Sometimes it’s difficult to find a good argument against blindly siding with Ukraine against Russia, so I’m wondering what to say next time some NATO worshipper orders me to fulfill my daily NATO worship quota or else he’s gonna cancel me on twitter dot com or whatever. What are the facts?

For one, I don’t believe Ukraine belongs to Russia and I don’t want to be excusing Russian war crimes, let’s get that out of the way. I don’t want to make those kinds of arguments. For two, I also don’t want to say that Ukraine should cede all ground, let Russia take over (assuming that’s what they want to do), and only help the refugees who fled to us and do nothing else. (Also, I’m not sure what to make of Donbas and Crimea. It was indeed weird that NATO did nothing when the latter got annexed, but now…?)

Three, I’m wary of “future predictions”; I don’t want to predicate my stance on the matter on the possibility that Russia’s war effort will eventually falter and things will get back to normal anyways. Opinions akin to this do not seem very thought-out to me. Something similar goes regarding the Ukraine corruption and Nazis arguments. Yes, these issues are real, but it doesn’t seem to me like they justify letting Ukraine be invaded by someone who doesn’t seem to be doing it for those reasons in particular.

And lastly, if I should accept the idea that NATO is fundamentally bad because it is the muscle of the Euro-American empire, rather than just marginally bad due to whatever bad thing it’s currently doing in regards to the Ukraine war (again, highlight what exactly it is), then what about those “NATO is just a defensive pact” arguments? Who exactly can and cannot join NATO, who are its enemies, what are its motivations, etc?

I’m hearing a lot of comparisons between Russia and Nazi Germany where I live (I’m Czech). They compare the way both have expanded, were initially tolerated, but then they expanded too much and war broke out. They compare Hitler and Putin and their “Lebensraum” vs “vulnerable borders” and call both bs. BS because Germany had enough space, and because Russia isn’t the only nation with vulnerable borders, yet they’re the only ones complaining.

What do I even say? At this point, my entire opinion amounts to “war is bad and the fighting should stop”, which, despite how much I’ve learned over the past year, seems awfully uneducated.