Russia turning more and more into North Korea.
> He claimed that "There is no Ukraine", adding that "coercion to fraternal relations by force is the only method that has historically proven its effectiveness in the Ukrainian direction. I do not think that some other will be invented
The “there is no Ukraine” quote is exactly what Putin said in the speech he made at the start of the week, the one where he discussed history and the general situation on those lands. Also, mentioning “brotherly violence” as the only solution to the Ukraine situation, two years before this week’s invasion, is highly revelatory. It made me more at ease, to be honest, I realized that Putin is not “crazy”, he’s just following through a system and a doctrine that had been put in place years before. It might be a bad system, a bad doctrine, but we’re not at the mercy of a single person whose mind was negatively affected by the pandemic (as the Western press is sometimes alluding), the invasion doctrine had already been in there for some time, and is not a creation of only Putin the man himself.
The Ukrainians have been independent long enough that "crazy" seems to be a reasonable adjective to apply, for the following reason: Putin seems to think that Ukraine will join Russia, rather than launch a years-long insurgency in the best case (let alone win the war in the worst case, apparently).
Ideology only works if you can pull it off. Otherwise, is the world really mistaken for attaching labels like "unhinged"? Almost every fanatic believes they're acting for good reasons. They pretty much have to believe it by definition.
Consistency doesn’t absolve delusion. People have believed in transgender space alien conspiracies for decades. That doesn’t make them sane.
> whose mind was negatively affected by the pandemic (as the Western press is sometimes alluding)
Nobody serious claims this.
Putin is doing what every despot does. Consolidation among cronies leads to inefficiency, inefficiency to slower growth. Falling quality of life leads to a doubling down on consolidation, weakening the country, but only in ways that will manifest later (requiring bolder grabs). It’s a classic death spiral totally independent of the pandemic.
Going back to Putin, I was trying to say that there is not only one person that is behind the recent events, a “despot”, apparently there’s an entire Russian administration apparatus that thinks the same (hence why I linked to that Wikipedia page).
False comparison. Russia’s real GDP per capita has fallen 30% in the last decade [1]. This is true in no EU member.
> what happens if a democracy cannot provide for sustained economic growth?
It typically fails. Particularly if every one of its neighbors is meanwhile delivering quality of life gains.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-d...
This [1] page shows the yearly drops more clearly. But I think most importantly is that as the US (and increasingly everywhere in the world) emphasizes, GDP/capita often is a poor measurement of how the people themselves are doing. Here [2] is a graph of the change in real wages [2]. That is better than most places in the EU and is continuing upward in spite of ever more sanctions.
The big question is what impact the current wave of sanctions will have. And how that will jive with what may be persistently very high oil prices.
The sinister thing is that Step 1. is done very slowly over a long period of time, and can be sold as various pleasant sounding ideas such as "brotherhood and unity," becoming a modern melting pot nation like the USA where everyone is equal, etc.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Kosov...
- the book "Foundations of Geopolitics ": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
- its author and "philosopher" Aleksandr Dugin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin
A crazier version of North Korea indeed.
I would certainly like to see Ukraine prevail, but by what measure is he losing the war? Ukraine is a large country, and moving through urban centers takes time.
He isn’t losing, but his strategy clearly failed. He attempted blitzkrieg. Paris fell without resistance [1]. Kiev’s will remains unbroken.
Furthermore, Putin has failed to achieve air superiority. He’s bogged down in urban warfare. All of which gives the West time to grow a pair.
[1] https://judymccarver.com/2017/07/a-timeline-of-nazi-occupied...
By any measure, this is one of the fastest and most aggressive sieges of all time. It is comparable to the speed of Desert Storm or Iraq, and those were mainly driven by air power. The land troops needed to drive straight in desert, not in a combination of urban hills in winter.
I've been watching this, and frankly given the high number (>dozen) of verifiably false claims made by Ukraine, it would not surprise me if they are losing badly.
In our hyperconnected world, we forget how "fast" things seemed to people without the internet.
[1] https://twitter.com/bazaarofwar/status/1497408494995218432
That line carries their supplies.
You're right that things move fast. Gas runs out fast too, when you're running your tanks 24/7. Sure would be a shame if Ukraine's air force blew up the fuel trucks that they're expecting to come refill them.
And you're also right that Ukraine may be losing badly. But that was the default assumption. Everything I've seen in the last day has made me rethink. If the Russians can't even knock out Ukraine's internet, can they really take and hold Kiev?
Russia doesn't need this line to carry supplies along the border. They can just carry them on the other side of the border (through Russia or, if we're talking further west, through Belarus).
> Ukrainian troops defending Chernihiv region blew up 56 tanks of diesel fuel that were being transported by a Russian military convoy
Inbound troop transports too, not cargo from what I read.
Putin's credibility is what is at stake here, not the absolute speed of the invasion. The double crossing at the negotiation table last week had only a few hours of shelf life, that gave them an advantage but that has already been eroded. The supply lines are quite long and the roads leading South are littered with abandoned columns of Russian vehicles. Already Chechen troops have been put into play.
My guess is that even though in an absolute sense this is developing very fast that on a relative scale it failed on several key objectives and that those failures are starting to add up.
Internal support for this war is already wavering - see the video of the Russian security council meeting -, it won't take much in terms of deviation from Putins plans as communicated to his lieutenants before his own position becomes untenable. And that can't come soon enough because at the moment that is the only way forward that is still left to us without major bloodshed.
I have a tendency to believe our western media's over expression of news stories that make it look like the Russian forces are having a hard time.
I can't place my finger on it (maybe I just am afraid of the worst) that we need to be told things are worse for the "enemy" than they really are to avoid sentiment that causes WW3. The spark has been lit in my eyes.
Me too, here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9A-u8EoWcI
> I have a tendency to believe our western media's over expression of news stories that make it look like the Russian forces are having a hard time.
Well, they are certainly not having an easy time, casualties are mounting, some troop transports have crashed, the most reliable estimates about casualties on the Russian side that I've seen are now approaching 1,000, which if true would be extremely high already. But wars aren't typically won or lost in a day and Russia has far more resources than the Ukraine has. But indirectly, whether Putin wants it or not he's already fighting the West.
> I can't place my finger on it (maybe I just am afraid of the worst) that we need to be told things are worse for the "enemy" than they really are to avoid sentiment that causes WW3.
What you and I are told doesn't really matter. What matters is:
(1) what happens in Putins inner circle
(2) what happens in the security council
(3) what happens in the Whitehouse
That's where the decisions are made. Ukraine is going to do what they can but they are only able to hold out for so long.
> The spark has been lit in my eyes.
You probably meant the fuse, but yes, it has been lit.
Would you be willing (for the education of myself at least) express some of the more egregious false claims? I am a layman in this stuff so I just go with what media has to say, so I’m curious what I a layman am likely misinformed about.
The reality is, Russia has failed to take any objectives. It does take time to move through urban centers -- but that's exactly the wrong thing to do. The correct decision would be to destroy Ukraine's air force, and then move in. That didn't happen.
So when the Russians moved in, they discovered that their supply lines were extraordinarily vulnerable. There are several videos circulating of Russian convoys being out of gas. Again, I was suspicious it was propaganda.
What changed my mind is the fact that even Ukraine's internet is still up. Not only is Russia failing to take objectives, but they're failing to even damage Ukrainian infrastructure.
Combine that with a Ukrainian leader who is a hero (in the classic Greek sense), and Putin is facing a stiff headwind.
It's too early to tell. The next several days will be key. But it no longer feels impossible for Ukraine to win -- which implies that Russia would therefore be in the process of losing.
Some references:
https://twitter.com/IntuitMachine/status/1497328895577796618 A column of destroyed Russian vehicles
https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/14973041438364549... An analysis of why victory isn't out of the question
[0] https://twitter.com/Manifestor4/status/1497162095762288672/p...
[1] https://twitter.com/jqkennedy17/status/1496793895040008192/p...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/russia-china-nikolai-patrushev-vlad...
https://mobile.twitter.com/akheriaty/status/1497835354933526...
Answer: multiple potential reasons = it’s complicated
Personally I don't know the region to get to form my own opinion. Does Russia has any powerful separatist movement? Can public opinion impact the government? Can the west actually harm the Puttin supporting elite enough to divide them? Those are all relevant and I don't know the anwser to any of them.
I know Rep. Dan Crenshaw is unpopular on HN but he recently interviewed [1] Jon Huntsman Jr, the former ambassador to both China and Russia.
He is not only a product of the inhumane ideology that drove the USSR, he embodies it. You can see it in his disregard of human life, in his placing of the crushing powers of the state over individual freedoms.
It's also the ideology of the PRC, and NK indeed. It's simple: communism needs dictatorship to survive and it attracts and enables the most powerful dictators: madmen and psychopaths.
It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the original commenter was trying to associate Putin's actions with those of North Korea and therefore the Soviet Union.