Russia is acting in Ukraine essentially the only way it’s been allowed to, in order to maintain its sphere of economic and diplomatic influence around it, it has been essentially forced by the imperialist west to engage in warfare.

Once you remove the moralist pretensions and blame gaming, what you are saying is that Russia is acting in anti-imperialist self-defense.

The fact that Russia is in a geopolitical position opposed to the west, means that, in a general sense, the fight is anti-western imperialism.

You can stop there. This is correct, which is why the correct revolutionary defeatist course is to critically support Russia.

It also can be described as Russian capitalist imperialism though, it’s not for the goodness of its heart that it’s engaging in this struggle against the west, it’s for the sake of the profits of its capitalists.

“goodness of their hearts” more moralist idealist nonsense and failure to understand Revolutionary Defeatism. You are not a marxist, this is not marxist analysis. It’s moralizing and blame gaming. Intentions do not matter. Actions do.

That’s not nearly enough reason, as a westerner, to go throw your body into the meat grinder for a country actively oppressing its minorities, its women, and its LGTBQ. There’s plenty more ways you can engage in anti-imperialism such as donating money to Cuba or time in mutual aid. I don’t see how that’s a chauvinist point of view: I can recognise that the west is actively worse than Russia in terms of imperialism (even if only by the fact that it holds more geopolitical and economical power), and that there are way more effective and less morally reprehensible ways of anti-imperialist struggle.

Imperialism is the primary contradiction. The same exact argument could be made for Rachel Corrie going and dying under Israeli bulldozer treads to protect a “capitalist” and “reactionary” nation of Palestine.

Palestine doesn’t deserve support because it’s a communist project (it isn’t). It deserve support because it’s anti-imperialist and de-colonial. Same goes for Russia. Your position is chauvinistic because it holds a double standard, one where you “both sides” and do nothing instead of doing your duty because the “enemy” is one you personally hate (because of decades of anti-Russia brainwashing that makes it an “exception” (this “exception” is the root of your chauvinism, treating Russia different than you would any other nation under American imperialist attack).

the arrogance of chauvinists is eternal

Cuba and Vietnam are both at peace, not currently engage in any hot war. Russia and DPRK are not, they are fighting at this moment, murderous Nazis with drones and tanks.

You are a chauvinist. It’s that simple. You oppose the official policies of AES like DPRK and think you know better than the people fighting Nazis. Arrogant sheltered westoid brat. Some people actually have to live in the places targeted by your murderous empire, it’s not theoretical to us. We die and fight so you can feel guilty sitting around doing nothing and lecture us that we’re just “dying in a meatgrinder for no reason” as we get bombed non-stop or have fascists installed in coups in our governments. You know in Donbas millions of civilians lived through 8 years of artillery shelling and sniping by Nazis right? This like totally doesn’t factor into your equation at all. So many good people died fighting for the people of the DPR and LNR. I find that western leftists have a complete blind spot for Russians and people in post-soviet countries and don’t extend solidarity to them in any way. Fighting on our behalf is just “throwing your life away” because let’s face it, we’re not humans worth sacrificing for in your eyes.

Also why is your support of DPRK critical? I fully support DPRK. Its foreign policy is immaculate, and they consistently have the correct position on almost every single global affair. They are true allies of the oppressed who show solidarity as they are supposed to. You should learn from their example.