It's entirely possible to speak English as a first language and despise the British. Same as it's absolutely possible to speak Russian as a first language and absolutely despise the Muscovy.

Ireland has nothing to do the history here and there no equivalency.

Okay, so you're not going to engage in good faith with the actual subject, do the reading, etc.

There are records of imports and exports between Britain and the Nazis too. The difference being that Europe saw a huge profit potential by convincing the Nazis to attack the Soviets. Whereas the Soviets, without allies, needed to industrialize extremely rapidly to develop the capacity to fight the Nazis, and needed the time and space to accomplish it. The trade agreement gave the Soviets a little breathing room by have some leverage over resource-starved Germany.

If the other Europeans had been willing to form a defensive alliance against Germany, that never would have been necessary. But Stalin's warnings were ignored because the Euros falsely assumed that the Nazis lebensraum would be satisfied if they opened the door for the conquest and extermination of the Slavs, which is delusional. The Euros, Britian in particular, had deep economic ties to the 3rd Reich -- so did Amerikkka, so they saw a German invasion of the Soviet Union as an opportunity for new markets and to make the line go up.

If the Euros chose to ally with the Soviets against the Nazis in the beginning, that agreement would have saved Europe from Nazi conquest. Instead, actual history is much uglier and, unfortunately, credit goes to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

I know the revisionist nonsense the west teaches, I consume mountains of western media and history literature. If you are sincere about the subject, please take the time to read/watch/listen to material which may be new to you.

See matey I've no interest in "winning" the conversation. I just bait you in hope you'll drop gems like this one: "The origin of the Ukrainian nationalist groups/movement was started by Poles living in western Ukraine before WW2."

This is hilarious 😁

I'll tell you something – go to Ireland, walk into a pub in say Derry and proclaim that everyone speaking English as a first language must be English and a loyal subject of Charles. Hell, try that in Glasgow 🙃

Content of Ribbentrop-Molotov is now widely known including the then secret clause that regarded "zones of influence" and put Finland and Baltics in the Soviet one. Volume of Soviet exports to Reich is a publicly available information. The fact that Hitler needed the raw materials so much that he agreed to transfer an unfinished Admiral Hipper class cruiser to Soviets even as Barbarossa was being planned ain't a secret either.

When you talk about WW2 be sure to remember that from 1939 to 1941 the Soviet Union was an ally of 3rd Reich and the blitzkrieg in France was running on Soviet fuel.

This is a very common misconception. It's a piece of propaganda heavily promoted by the nazis and anti-communist west. It deserves it's own discussion entirely, but essentially:

Hitler hated the "judeo-bolsheviks" above all things. He hated Communism, REAL socialism, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Slavic people and Jewish people and conflated them all as one group. Hitler served capital, just as all the other European governments did, which is why the British ignored all of Stalin's letters requesting to form an alliance against Germany in the 1930s before Hitlers invasion plans of all Europe could take place. Chaimberlin saw the opportunity to get Hitler to go East and attack the Soviets for them (again), which is why the Euros sold out Czechoslovakia -- the Soviets destruction would have opened up many new markets and capitalist plundering.

Because the other European countries refused to ally with the Soviets, Stalin made a TRADE AGREEMENT with the Nazis to buy time so they could build up a military that would be capable of confronting the Nazis. Stalin knew they were going to be betrayed. The Soviets were preparing for not IF, but WHEN, Barbarossa happened.

Remeber too, the the Soviet Union DEFEATED the Nazis. If Stalin had NOT enacted Molotov-Ribbentrop, Europe and Western Russia would Nazi territory today. You should take the time to familiarize yourself with the actual history, it's quite fascinating.

https://tankie.tube/w/cfJswkaaaM892TcszD8WdW
https://tankie.tube/w/etfie9r66jt9MYJkpK4m4n
https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/foreign-policy-before-ww2/
https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Domenico-Losurdo-Stalin-History-and-Critique-of-a-Black-Legend.pdf
https://prolespod.libsyn.com/63-the-stalin-eras-an-introduction-1878-1917 (Listen to entire Stalin Era series)

I don't rely on Russian sources. I primarily rely on western media sources and some people I personally know or have interviewed from Ukraine who fled between 2016 and present.

I've been following the events in Ukraine closely since 2011, and the western media reporting was a lot more honest about the situation prior to 2022. I watched and read hundreds of articles from extremely pro-EU, pro-NATO, pro-US western media outlets saying over and over again that Ukraine had a neo-nazi problem and the US was pushing Russia's final red lines with NATO expansion and nuclear brinksmanship. There were so many warnings that this would lead to war, while most Amerikkkans refused to care and couldn't point to Ukraine on a map before 2022. I know because I was one of the people ringing the alarm for 8 years.

Here's one from 2018 published in the Atlantic Council of all places, written by a CIA guy who works for USAID, which is a CIA cutout:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headline/

Nothing I said before is "verbatim"; I draw on my own knowledge. You made a bad assumption and dishonest assertion.

A coup doesn't imply assassination. Yanukovych was democratically elected, but the US didn't like the results. See: Venezuala. The Maidan Coup was a color revolution that collapsed support for the Yanukovych government by letting nazis shoot protestors (and police) from rooftops and windows, then blaming the killings on Yanukovych. Those nazis were part of the Maidan leadership. Even the Estonian FM admitted that at the time. The President abdicated and left because he had lost support and was in danger. The US picked Poroshenko, the new leadership coalition, and the interim leadership. It was a coup.

Ukrainians DO have a national identity

To some degree, but do you support the Ukranian ultra-nationalist / neo-nazi ideological version of that? The origin of the Ukrainian nationalist groups/movement was started by Poles living in western Ukraine before WW2. The maps getting redrawn in the prior decades and Nazi nationalist ideology filtering into Poland had a bad effect on some people there.

The majority of Ukraine is ethnically Russian. Ukrainians and Russians had seen each other as brothers and sisters of the same people. It was only very fringe nazi collaborators and neo-nazi groups that thought otherwise before 2014. We both know Azov are nazis, so let's not engage in pretending otherwise.

They don't need no rotten western imperialists to tell them that.

No idea who you're talking about here.

The so called "coup" was Yanukovych signing an agreement with the opposition, in presence of foreign diplomats including Russian, then scarpering to Moscow.

Ukrainians DO have a national identity. They don't need no rotten western imperialists to tell them that. Some are nationalists most are not but very few would consider themselves any kind of Russian. Azov in the beginning was organised by supporters of Metalist Kharkiv - Kharkiv being a russophone city, owner of the football club at the time a prorussian oligarch and supporters themselves friendlies with Spartak Moskva. They still had no doubt what side they were on.

When you talk about WW2 be sure to remember that from 1939 to 1941 the Soviet Union was an ally of 3rd Reich and the blitzkrieg in France was running on Soviet fuel. Literally.

The sarcasm isn't necessary. But, there are a lot of resources on this channel to give a better understanding of how and why this conflict began. Please consider spending some time going through the videos if you're sincerely interested in the subject.

The appropriate starting point for westerners -- Americans in particular -- is asking when DIDN'T you get lied into a terrible war that killed millions?

The question of self-determination is not really the issue, and that argument has it's own contradictions. If Amerikkka respected Ukranian self-determination they would not have staged the 2005 color revolution couped the Ukrainian government in 2014 for resisting western imperialist capture.

The 2014 coup installed the Banderites / neo-nazis who were shooting police and protestors alike. Nazi collaborator groups (OUN-B, OUN-M, Azov, Right Sector, etc) who are obsessed with some fabricated idea about having a superior race and national identity, got incorporated into into the new government the US handpicked, and began an ethnic cleansing campaign of Russians in Eastern Ukraine, starting after the Maidan Coup.

Civilians were being killed in the Donbas. Azovites were shelling markets on Saturday mornings, planting car bombs, sniping civilians walking down the street, bombing hospitals. Poroshenko not only let this happen, but began writing anti-Russian laws, like erasing history and banning the Russian language. Arresting communists. Banning any items from the Soviet Union or Red Army and doing warrantless searches of peoples houses.

This is why Crimea, the DPR and LPR held referendums to rejoin Russia. For many reasons, protection among them.

Remember that Zelenskyy ran for office on a platform of ending anti-Russian racism, the Azovite terror campaign and restoring peace to Ukraine, but did nothing of the sort once elected. Remember the trips Zelenskyy took to Donbas to end the conflict? Zelenskyy admitted he had no plans to keep with the Minsk agreements, either.

The whole time Russia was calling the issue a humanitarian crisis. If this were purely an conflict of "self-determination" (and it's not) then you should respect the desire for ethnic Russians to not be murdered by neo-nazis who are still pissed off they lost WW2 to the Soviets.

[explain how Russia] doesn't ever do imperialist things.

Sorry, that isn't even a serious question. Some of the western media is spreading that line, but ask yourself again how trustworthy those institutions have been with regard to other US-sponsored wars. You can't trust CIA stenographers to do your thinking for you, even it does seem more convenient.

Also, I would recommend reading Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitialism" so you have a better understanding of what imperialism is and is not.