It looks like we need to unpack what the phrase critical support actually means. Communists don't look at the Russian Federation and imagine the Soviet Union, nor does nobody think Putin is building socialism. The support is a strategic judgment about the global balance of forces, rooted in a materialist reading of where the primary contradiction lies rather than having anything to do with Russia's internal character.

The primary contradiction in the world is a bloc conflict between Western imperialist states, led by the United States, and the Global South. Western imperialism is the system that enforces economic extraction through debt, sanctions, military bases, trade rules, enabled by dollar's reserve status. It's the force that has strangled development in the Global South and consistently prevented any alternative path of development from gaining traction. As long as that system remains unchallenged there can be no space for experiments in socialism or even genuinely sovereign capitalist development that could later be transformed. That makes breaking Western hegemony a prerequisite for any meaningful change going forward.

Russia currently acts as the main military force directly challenging American led unipolar order. While it's not doing it for communist reasons, their push against NATO expansion and efforts to build alternative financial and trade architectures with BRICS are objectively opening fractures in Western dominance. Russia bogs down NATO in Ukraine and exposes the limits of Western power which, in turn, weakens the imperialist camp creating room for left movements to grow around the world.

So when communists say they critically support Russia, we are not endorsing Russia's internal political system, its capitalist class, nationalist ideology, or its treatment of workers and leftists inside its borders. Our support is conditional and tactical, extending only as far as Russia acts as a counter hegemonic force. The moment Russia pivots toward trying to carve up the world with Western powers or becomes a new oppressor of weaker nations in a way that simply replaces current imperialist hierarchy, that support goes away. Communists are internationalists who see the current moment as one where the central task as weakening the main enemy.

I'll use a historical parallel to help make this all more concrete. Communists critically supported the Allied powers against nazi Germany during the second world war even though the Allies were capitalist imperialists themselves, and just as is the case with Russia today, no one mistook Churchill or Roosevelt for being socialists. The point was that fascism represented the most aggressive and immediate threat to the working class and to the possibility of socialist advance. Today, that threat happens to be Western imperialism with its endless hot wars along with economic warfare against the rest of the world. And the scope of critical support is about actively disrupting Western imperialism.

We live in a world where the US and its vassals can dictate terms to everyone else, and breaking Western hegemony leads to one with more possibilities for mass movements and resource sovereignty creating more room for socialist organizing. Russia's resistance helps crack that door open, and that's why it makes sense to make tactical alignment on one particular axis of struggle while maintaining full independence on all others which is what giving critical support is.

No, no communist thinks the RF is the Soviet Union (or RSFSR, which was the specifically Russian part of the USSR). What communists understand is that the Russian Federation is currently strategically aligned against imperialism, and is a strong ally of socialist countries, due to inherited political ties and capitalist encirclement. Communists support a revolution in Russia to overthrow the nationalists and reinstate socialism, but not on western terms.

Lemmy.ml is broadly federated, so anything that suggests Ukraine may not be winning the war is down voted by people from Lemmy.world, etc.

i recognize that the US is rapidly enshittifying people’s economic situation these days

Since it's inception through it's long campaign of perpetrating, funding, and backing colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism across the periphery.

I've got a story of 500 trucks waiting in line to feed people in a concentration camp but the West blocking them from entering.

Here's a meme from the front page today

The only reason people withold criticising those countries on some issues is because the West will use that as a pretext to genocide them. It's like discussing "how to improve the Jewish community" during the Holocaust.

Those things can wait until the countries have finally liberated themselves from Western imperialism. Without that they'll never be able to take any serious steps before being moved back to the start.

Coincidentally that's also the reason most Westerners are conditioned to constantly talk ill of those countries. They have to liberate Iraq Afghanistan Syria Libya Iran

An excellent article about this pertaining the Middle-East: Arabs and Muslims: The Real Victims of Modern Antisemitism

Yes, some communists do support some of that but not because of ideology but for a strategic reason, the part of "overlooking everything else" is completely bullshit.

Hence why you won’t ever see them talk ill publicly of Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, etc.

Press X to doubt.

You won't see communists to that much because liberals already do that endlessly for all the wrong reasons.

That "communist" 'friend' either never heard of critical support, or vastly misunderstands it.

I generally support Russia. And Ukraine. Because the more resources spent on the pointless war the fewer resources can be spent internally in those countries to resist popular revolution.

It's not overlooking the bad that either government does, it is simply supporting them and the actions they perform that happen to align with the wider goal of global revolution.

You can explain why you think it's baffling. I don't think it's pointless

How familiar are you with Marxism-Leninism?

I edited my comment to elaborate a bit more, probably while you were typing your response.

Regardless, Communism != Russia. That was my point.