Biden says he's now convinced Putin has decided to invade Ukraine
cnn.com
cnn.com
Edit to more directly prod discussion: do you think this will actually happen? On what scale? And if it does, what might the impact be? Will I actually care a few years from now?
How can Biden know what Putin is thinking, all the time, and yet utterly fail at influencing him?
Why would Putin adopt strategies straight from Alex Jones (crisis actors and false flags? Those things aren't real)
Russia has been conducting the same military exercise on UA boarder for more than a decade. Why the panic now?
Why did Ukraine remove the Russian language from government and civil service? Russian Ukranians aren't to blame for Putin.
Why did Ukraine vote in a TV comedian for president, at such as precarious time?
Why do we call Ukraine democratic, when Zelensky shut down 3 TV stations and imprisoned a political rival?
Why do we welcome all ex soviet states to EU or NATO but not Russia?
Why would you expect Russia to be happy having NATO expand through the old USSR and right to it's border?
Why is all the governments and media acting like this would be just another Iraq, or Afghanistan war? When Russia has nuclear supremacy, super nuclear, supersonic's and has threatened to use them if NATO reaches its boarder.
Why are the people of Donbas fleeing to Russia now? If Putin is evil, and shelling them, and Kiev are wonderful saints, why are they fleeing to Russia and not running away from them to the loving arms of Zelensky?
For example, how many TV stations has Russia shut down? Oh, all of them which dare to criticise Putin. Is this reason to now invade Russia?
Yeah... read about "Canned Goods" in the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Those things are in fact real, at least some of the time.
> Russia has been conducting the same military exercise on UA boarder for more than a decade. Why the panic now?
Because Putin is saying that if we don't refuse to admit Ukraine to NATO, forever, then Putin is going to have to resort to military measures. ("It's your fault I'm beating you up!") And because it's at the same time as the exercise in Belarus, and the exercise in the Black Sea. And because there seem to be considerably more preparations for really using the troops this time around.
> Why do we welcome all ex soviet states to EU or NATO but not Russia?
First, we didn't, either to EU or to NATO. Both have entrance criteria; not all countries meet them. (Ukraine, for instance, doesn't at this time.) Second, specifically about NATO: They want into NATO because they want protection from Russia. Russia keeps wanting to play "realpolitic" and "spheres of influence", and everybody else in the neighborhood is sick and tired of being on the receiving end. They want out of Russia's sphere of influence; NATO is a good step toward that.
Yes I remember his "the apprentice" TV show, it wasn't very funny.
Ukraine voted for Zelensky for two reasons:
1. He is not a radical, his message was conciliatory, he can represent both east and west. He is a Russian-speaking Jew, so that’s rather removed from Ukrainian nationalism for example.
2. Demand for new faces, same old oligarchs/career politicians didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Also Zelenskiy is more of tycoon/ media executive, not just a comedian.
Russian language was removed from the government in 1991, everyone is bilingual in Ukraine, language is a talking point only outside of Ukraine. Again, nobody is strict about that, people use whatever language they want anywhere, except for official documents.
One thing certain about wars is that they never go as planned. WW2 being the biggest example.
Lets entertain ourselves with following scenario:
Russian fighter-bombers wade into Polish airspace running away from Ukrainian airforce, and launches a missile in anger at Polish MiG.
Poland president then instantly calls art. 5. What happens next?
An art.5 invokation in no laughing matter. If the US will render it hollow, NATO falls apart in an instant. It would not be like art.5 invokation by Bush: the circumstances are completely different.
Even before Trump, NATO's fundamentals been squeaky. Allgedly, US has secret arrangements with core NATO countries to renege on honouring art.5 if invoked by Turkey.
If the above is indeed true, then there us no wonder why I felt that EU started entertaining the idea of "EuroCorps" right around that time.
The impression I get from what I know is that Putin is the sort of person who really could push the button, if he felt it would help him somehow, but I'm not sure to what extent I can trust my sources.
Yes, it could be bad. But it would take time for NATO to mobilize a substantial force. Things could cool a bit in the meantime.
Maybe, we'd see some skirmishes in the air. Maybe NATO would enforce a no-fly zone like it was done in Libya?
Probably, it would start a new cold war, where the west increasingly isolate Russia.
Ironic, since Russian fear of being surrounded and isolated by NATO is often cited as the Russian motivation.
This whole thing is stupid. It'll only make Russia more poor. Which is why I suspect they won't invade.
> do you think this will actually happen? On what scale?
Personally, given the suspicious non-participation of Russia in the Munich Security Conference starting tomorrow, the evacuation of people from the occupied territories, the suspected pipeline explosion in Luhansk and the car bomb in Donezk earlier this day, it is not unreasonable to believe there will be either a major incident or an outright invasion rather sooner than later.
> And if it does, what might the impact be?
Immediately? Rising oil and gas prices. European gas storages are on record lows, and the winter is not over yet. It's not clear yet if the pipeline that has been hit today is oil or gas - if it's gas and it's one of the pipelines supplying western Europe, us Germans are fucked because there is no real short-term alternative to Russian gas and 16 years of Conservative and 8 years of a bought-off Social Democrat government (1998-2006 chancellor Schröder has been a high profile lobbyist for Gazprom) have not done anything to reduce our dependence on gas for heating.
>Will I actually care a few years from now?
That depends on how far this mess escalates. If it's a full blown war or a world war, we will all care for the next decades. If it's just another skirmish, the situation might not change that much from a global perspective.
Will this actually happen? Yes. It will start within a week. Personally, I'm leaning toward Sunday or Monday.
On what scale? Russia has 190,000 troops on the border. That's a huge scale, if they all come. (It could be even more than that, if Belarus joins Russia in this.) The US has said that it is not going to go to war over Ukraine, so it shouldn't turn into World War III. (I say hopefully, but with less certainty than I would like.)
How much of Ukraine will Putin try to take? I suspect, as much as he thinks he can get with the consequences still being acceptable. No, I don't know how much that is. It may depend on how stiff a resistance Ukraine puts up.
What might the impact be? Almost impossible to say. A bunch of people are going to die - thousands, at a minimum.
But I also don't think that Putin will occupy the whole of Ukraine. There are additional difficulties with doing that.
False flag ops seem to have started. The following days seem to be critical on the "future" of the r. invasion. We'll see how propaganda will work this time.
It's failing in the West, for the most part. The US is doing a good job shining the spotlight on the BS Russia is doing.
Within Russia? It may be more effective; I don't know.
United States since the Trump presidency still hasn't restabilized to the point where marshalling an international intervention is going to be practical. We're in a state where there's so much divisiveness at play, supply chains are in chaos, and we haven't adapted to a more domestically focused manufacturing regime in which we can't be dorked with through collusion direct or indirect with China.
The U.S. of today is a very far cry from the U.S. that has actually stood as a deterrent to Russian aggression previously.
As far as what happens if they do go after Ukraine? That will signal a potential rekindling of Russian in general. They won't be satisfied sharing a border with a NATO member, so Art 5 may very well be tested, but even if so, it will likely be half-hearted enough to end up a Pyrrhic victory for NATO, which instead of galvanizing the alliance, only serves to further destabilize and divide member states.
Now, how this changes things Stateside? I'm not sure it will. The old alliances aren't as strong as they once were, and it will depend largely on what the populace has the stomach for.
Sadly, I didn't mishear and Biden does now believe Putin will invade.