It plummeted pretty hard right after the war started.
Seems familiar...
Even up until the tanks started rolling in did Europe not even consider the possibility of invasion to be real. Just last Monday was the Ukrainian President asking for calm and not to overreact.
Wondering when a Russian oligarch says “you know what I think we’d be better off without this guy alive.” Putin, not George Lucas.
Pearls before swine. The prequels were a work of art, expanding and deepening the meaning of the originals.
And I think that Putin has clearly demonstrated how much more powerful the state is than the oligarchs (anywhere, not just Russia). Look up what happened to oligarchs who opposed Putin. See, e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky
I get that doesn't fly in an totalitarian state, but it seems like a far-cry from being an outright revolutionary like a Navalny. Man's got an interesting perspective from which to tweet about this whole mess (wish Twitter had an auto-translate feature rather than clickityclicking one by one).
One unsettling thought is that Putin intentionally did this, and realized that this would happen -- and doesn't care.
The other unsettling thought is that China might be able to prop them up through this. Us disconnecting Russia is a massive opportunity for them. China even abstained from voting on the world stage when everyone was condemning Russia's actions.
So it's possible that external forces are giving Putin a picture of, "go through with this, and we'll come out of it strong together."
Reference: https://jamestown.org/program/chinas-voting-behavior-in-the-...
It was secured after hours of negotiations between the Chinese and the US.
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-vetoes-un-security-acti...
https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-ukraine-attack-forces-...
P.S. I am not your "buddy".
Probably a psychopath, doesn't mean he is mad or crazy.
Russia has terminal demographics. Russia’s borders as they are today are impossible to defend let alone with a soon to be rapidly shrinking military. If they don’t take regions they can defend far easier with few troops then they never will. Russia has been invaded enough times across the North European Plain and Hordelands and they have a long memory, and at least the leadership has little conscience. I can’t read Putin’s mind either, but, perhaps he figured Ukraine would roll over and the US and Europe wouldn’t do anything.
But Putin was exactly right that NATO will not respond militarily. And he is exactly right to think NATO was delusional and did not expect him to invade.
What are you talking about? Since months NATO countries were talking about that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. Where do you see delusion?
If you look at what NATO actually did, it’s very difficult to take them seriously. They bluff on a near constant basis, especially about Russia. But, realize they weren’t sending any troops to Ukraine because they are too arrogant to even believe their own claims. Also, Biden refused to reassure Putin that Ukraine was not invited to NATO. If they were so confident of a Russian invasion but they were still so willing to be petty and stubborn, then blood is on their hands all the same. It simply doesn’t add up.
Of course they never actually believed Iraq had WMDs either, but did that matter? If anyone knows how this works, it’s Putin. If you didn’t notice, he accused Ukraine of manufacturing WMDs in his invasion announcement speech. Does that mean he actually believes it? No. He was mocking the eternally hypocritical lying Western elites. He knows how they operate and he knows others know how they operate, and he operated accordingly.
I do realize that.
> ... because they are too arrogant to even believe their own claims.
No. I'm afraid you got this backwards. The NATO countries quite literally removed their troops from Ukraine instead of sending in new ones precisely because they believed that Russia is going to invade.
During an invasion if there are NATO troops in Ukraine said troops would engage with the Russian troops. This can lead to an escalatory spiral and we end up with a nuclear confrontation. This is why what little NATO troops there were in Ukraine were withdrawn.
> If you look at what NATO actually did, it’s very difficult to take them seriously.
I'm sure NATO is very worried about you not taking them seriously. What exactly are you expecting from them?
> If they were so confident of a Russian invasion but they were still so willing to be petty and stubborn, then blood is on their hands all the same.
That's twisted again. The blood is on Putin's hand and the Russian state's hand.
Uh, no, they pulled their troops training Ukraine’s forces out because they did believe their own claims. As they stated many times alongside saying Russia was going to invade, they were not going to commit troops to fight such an invasion (or even to evacuate their own citizens) because they have no mutual defense treaty with Ukraine and did not wish to escalate any invasion of Ukraine into a World War.
If they hadn't believed Russia would invade, their troops would have still been there when they did.
NATO has anticipated an invasion for years (making it less likely to happen or succeed is why they’ve been heavy backers of Ukraine's massive defense buildup over the last decade), and the US administration particularly has been calling out this invasion long before it launched.
The US is a net exporter of oil. Some say it's a temporary effect of COVID, but the switch happened in November 2019, before COVID hit, and if you look at the graph, net imports have been in a decade long decline.
> This notice reveals without a doubt that Biden is willing to deploy U.S. troops to Ukraine.
You here:
> But Putin was exactly right that NATO will not respond militarily.
So, if the US deploys troops to Ukraine you think NATO will not respond? I can't really follow you.
It sounds like he is stuck in the past and fighting battles in the past and nightmares in his head that don't even exist.
there’s no sense in attempting to understand putin’s motivations. the KGB/FSB are number one with regard to disinformation and confusion. every armchair geopolitician will have their own pet-theory about the motivating factors for the aggression on ukraine.
in time, we’ll find out, i’m sure. the best anyone can do right now - if at all possible - is to help those displaced from ukraine, and put pressure on our politicians to invoke tougher sanctions on russia.
as tough as it might be for all the regular humans, i’m happy to see russia cut off from SWIFT.
Russia is wealthier than Ukraine whether you go by total GDP or GDP per capita and whether you go by nominal GDP or GDP adjusted for purchasing power. Just looking at the maps at the tops of these next 2 pages was enough to verify that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
The Cold War is simply over, but the Putin regime does not really seem to have understood it. International commerce despite of military-political differences is the only sustainable way forward. China knows this, and Russia should take a hint.
I've found the first 25mins of this conference by professor John Mearshimer https://youtu.be/Nbj1AR_aAcE
I smell bias.
And his proposal, for Ukraine to be a kind of neutral zone, was not for Putin, it was for the USA and Ukraine.. so that Ukraine could survive as an independent country.
Mearsheimer is West point graduate and air force officer... His biases are if anything pro USA.
He still does not address the issue that by remaining neutral Ukraine has a very high chance of becoming a puppet state to Russia.
If he's not biased his thesis is incomplete.
I watched the the start of the video, apparently a country simply being allied with the west and the US is an "existential threat" to Russia.
Ukraine or Georgia are not going to invade Russia after joining NATO, they simply don't want be a part of the next Russian empire dreamt up by a tyrannical regime.
This has now come to pass, a Russian puppet government lost power in Ukraine, Putin saw his power slipping away and invaded.
And NATO is supposed to be the aggressor and the cause of this?
They don't have Ukraine.
What's the cost of this to Putin? Think about it carefully -- for Putin himself, there is more or less only an upside.
1. China unfortunately is choosing to side with Russia. Realistically, we can't do much to interfere with trade between China and Russia. That means that sanctions that we're going to impose will have less of an effect.
(I hope this doesn't read as political flamewar, since it's my intent just to state the facts.)
2. I am rooting for Ukraine, and I think they have a chance at victory. But the reality is that the battle is far from over. And in the worst case, if Putin loses, he still has the option of employing a tactical nuke as a last resort. My point here is that even in the worst case for Putin, he still believes he can win, no matter what.
I'm hoping that Putin will lose, and does try to use a nuke, because that seems the most likely path to Putin finally being assassinated. But until that moment comes, we're witnessing the outcome of an unhinged person who is also acting rationally. (Both can be true simultaneously.)
I mean... Does anyone else remember the time (2004/5?) Putin stole a $25k Superbowl ring from a Patriot just because he knew he could get away with it (notably, while also observing "I could kill someone wearing this")? This is pretty much the same exact thing on a broader scale.
https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2020/09/1...
The global community should no longer stand open belligerence like this and I'm glad we're cutting them off from the world. Let's see how long they last in financial isolation.
It's too bad that the story that @Pornhub blocked Russia was fakenews, as that would have been hilarious.
In Germany our freshly elected politicians are making fools of themselfs calling out for Putin to return to the negotiation tables... they say "we are waiting for you mister putin"... while he thinks "keep on waiting then, ill have my way with eastern europe"
Yep, you see this with MH17 (which I think was an accident, but the communication afterwards was not), Russian athletes cheating brazenly etc.
Some of their state owned banks have suspended financing of Russian resources purchases [1]
And they really disliked Russia's declaration of the independence for the separatist regions in Ukraine. As a country with several separatist regions (including Taiwan), China simply can't agree with with the concept that an external country can declear one or more of it's regions as independent.
[1] https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/chinese-stat...
Much appreciated.
That doesn't end (nor start for that matter) with a nuke. You can bet Russians (and basically anyone alive) would prefer the scenario where he remains their autocrat than one where he triggers their apocalypse if not everyone's.
Hope I'm wrong to believe in mutually assured destruction, and hopefully we won't get to test the theory at all.
Eastern Ukraine is Russia's Sudetenland.
However, in terms of a "buffer zone", strategic geography; leading to a nation that's "self-sufficient in terms of resources and territory". In my view, annexation of Crimea fits that strategic idea more than to believe that it was an ideological move to regain long-lost land.
Plus, with 40% of the world's grain export, Ukraine is a fertile target for Russia.
Russia also exports food, so it doesn't really need a "breadbasket" region. Ukrainian heavy industry (which is mostly in the East!) is a more lucrative prize. But there's really no economic justification for a grab for the entirety of Ukraine. Donbas alone would be a net sink for a very long time.
There's plenty of (internal) political reasons, though. Especially if you accept that Putin really believes the tripe that he is saying about Russia and Ukraine, which I'm increasingly convinced is the case.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sweet%20water
> : a sugar solution
> especially : one obtained by recovery of waste sugar during refining
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/swee...
He is looking at the west build a fortress around Russia through NATO. Look at US reaction to Cuba and now imagine Cuba having a 100x more tactical and strategic geography in relationship to the US.
Months ago Russia asked that Ukraine and Georgia be excluded from NATO. We ignored him. A better approach would have been to negotiate and demand that they become permanently neutral countrys. Now we're here. Yes Putin owns all this bloodshed but it is naive to say that we the west did everything to avert this situation.
Russia literally signed Ukrainians independence in 1991, although they didn't have much room to despute that.
Ukrainians wanted deeper ties with Europe in 2014 and now they are literally fighting for it.
NATO explicitly mentioned that no countries are allowed that have border disputes, that's why Russia started a gray zone war immediately after in 2014.
And now they are in full war mode, trying to force their will on a country that wants to be a democracy with the 2nd democratically elected president.
Biden wasn't even elected president in 2014 and Yanukovych ( who got overthrown) was literally a member of the Russian communist party, born in Russia. And not at all democratically elected as you are suggesting.
That is all known history.
The Maidan movement might have had public support, but behind the scenes EU and US actors were definitely jockeying to choose who to support. There are documents and even intercepts showing that. And after the world stopped caring, the new regime turned out to be not particularly less corrupt than the previous one - hence Ukrainians voting in complete outsiders like Klitschko (a boxer) and Zelenskiy (a tv comedian), who in turn sold out very quickly too to various interests. Zelenksiy is balls-out pro-NATO, but without this war he risked being thrown out, after his offshore funds were found in one of the various PanamaPapers-like leaks. He managed to lose pretty much all political capital and support he had in a matter of months, and his Nato obsession was seen as a bit humiliating really.
> NATO explicitly mentioned that no countries are allowed that have border disputes, that's why Russia started a gray zone war immediately after in 2014.
That has more to do with those regions being largely Russophone, and the Ukrainian government being too weak to regain control over them. If that was the only obstacle to join the Alliance, don't you think Zelenskiy or his predecessors would have just renounced them? Surely that's a price worth paying for a permanent security upgrade for the rest of the country.
No, the reality is that even the alliance never really wanted Ukraine to join. There are already enough members to contain Russia militarily if needs be. Same goes for the EU, which is already pretty big with 27 members and stalling pretty much all requests for further accession (not just Ukraine but Serbia and others too). But dangling carrots in front of people is how you make them do your bidding, so such requests are never formally rejected, just stalled forever.
> Ukrainians wanted deeper ties with Europe
Putin likely doesn't care about that, he cares about the leverage Ukrainians have over the precious Gazprom product that helps him stay in power.
One of the reasons that Putin now picked a war, was that joining NATO/EU was now anchored in the Ukrainian law - https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-amends-constitution-to-cem... . Occupying those areas would immediately halt any possability to enter the NATO, which is what Putin wanted to prevent.
Are you sure those areas are still as Russophone as you think? As far as i'm aware, it dropped after the gray zone invasion, eg. https://news.gallup.com/poll/180110/ukrainian-approval-russi...
By coïnsidence, the occupied territories were also nearby the Black Sea. Which was very important for Russia's naval fleet.
I do think that you are mistaking the importance of Ukraine for Russia (otherwise they wouldn't have gone to war). They gave Ukraine their autonomy, which they already couldn't deny fyi, in the expectation that they wouldn't go away from Russia. Which was at the time a reasonable expection ( puppet governement + many Russia/Ukraine relatives on both sides). I wouldn't underestimate the will to fix those "historic regrets" for a dictator.
Either way, Russia is already (partially) moving it's attention to Asian gas exports instead of Europe. So I'm not convinced that keeping Ukraine ( and going to war for it) would make much sense on a long term plan, if it's gas related.
Nordstream II was already outside of Ukraine influence and now it's probably totally broken.
Edit: The POV of Turkey might be aligned with what i think:
https://warontherocks.com/2022/02/what-russias-new-reality-m...
> Sanctions against Russia wouldn’t work. They only postpone problems. It is better to listen to other side and understand their strategic concerns. Russia feels threatened by NATO. Putin wants to redraw borders and renew strategic alliances 30 years after the USSR’s collapse.
That's your point of view. In practice, a proxy war can be beneficial for a nation-state. Obviously it won't benefit the proxy-state's own citizenry, but hey, they are not your voters! Look at the actual effects: the world is now economically bombing Russia, Biden was weak and now gets to look tough, and if you try to take a nuanced stance you'll be booed from the room.
> How do you explain that?
I might be wrong but IMHO the point really isn't NATO membership, but dropping American objections to NordStream2. Everything else was just stuff thrown on the table as a negotiable chip.
realistically China+Russia is that threat to the West today
And probably reinforced the idea of a EU defense system as well. The EU can't rely on US military support indefinitely, particularly since that support may vanish at the whim of the American voters.
It was built to provide collective regional security, in large part by binding the Western powers, who have frequently had disputes and divisions progress to war among themselves, together in an alliance wherein that would not occur. The USSR was a major immediate concern at the time NATO was formed, but regional security concerns did not evaporate when the USSR did.
Every country in Russia’s position would do the same, or have already. You already mentioned Cuba, for China it would be Hong Kong.
In case of US, it would be a too long list of attacks of sovereignty whether through war or subversion.
You realize that US was incredibly close to nuke Cuba? Lucky for both US and Cuba, Cuba is an island so blockade was possible.
Now imagine Cuba having land border and is positioned on coast between DC and NYC.
Russia has land borders with several NATO states, so I don't see how the Cuba comparison is relevant.
Wouldn't it be more similar if the Cuban missile crisis had taken place in Quebec or something? Or would that still have been better tactically and geographically better for D.C., than a NATO Ukraine is for Moscow? Terrain looks a lot easier there.
I don't think this holds up to scrutiny for a few reasons. Ukraine was not invited to join NATO, Zelensky's government fearing the escalation of Russia's incursions into the East started the process of asking for admission last June. Russian units have been operating in the East for years, and they took Crimea. If you read Putin's speech from early this week he laid out a revanchist case for recapturing old Soviet/Russian Imperial territory. He even laid claim to the whole of Ukraine, failing to note that the western portion only became part of the USSR because of WWII and had previously been part of other political entities. He's been carving up neighbors for years, so it's no wonder that the neighboring state might want to join NATO.
Ukraine is an independent country and can decide who they want to ally with, clearly it's not Russia.
He got pissed off when Ukrainians elected a leader that was not a puppet of Russia. Now he is exacting revenge because he doesn't have a tacit Russian territory like with Belarus any more.
When Finland and Sweden decide they need the defensive advantages of NATO is he going to invade Scandinavia too? Should they be force to be "permanently neutral" as well?
The gas pipelines. Gazprom is a key element of his kleptocratic rule. I don't think it's a coincidence that he waited so many years to "solve" the Donbass, but a few months after it became clear that NordStream2 will likely never become operational, suddenly he went balls-out. From a security standpoint he could have simply deployed in the key regions and dared anyone to fight back, like Erdogan has done over the Syrian regions he wanted to annex. Instead Putin is trying to take the whole thing, because he wants to control the pipelines all the way.
If it costs more, well damn that's the price for freedom I guess right now, still acceptable given circumstances.
I've been saying it for years, also here repeatedly - Russia and its current 'leader' is by far the biggest threat to European free western society we value so much here. Even the most stubborn and russia-invested ones are getting the memo now.
Without Russian energy supply Europeans will be heating their houses with freedom. And European industry will also be using freedom as fuel. There is no alternative to this in any foreseeable future.
And, as I mentioned the other day, I at least would be positive to sell at a lower prices to friendly countries in Europe until we get this situation under control.
They absolutely have. That's why they declared independence in 1991.
> Working Ukranians have been fed up with the EU’s mingling in their governmental affairs and favorable towards Russia.
This is simply 100% nonsense. "Working Ukranians" have been employed en masse by Western European companies, with more joining every year. There is a small minority in a relatively small region of Ukraine that was favorable towards Russia, but even those have now decided that Russia is not their friend. Note that these are what you would call 'Ethnic Russians' and even for many of them this has gone way too far. People want peace and stability, not war.
> Of course that will no longer be the case now.
At least you realize that.
> Realize the West stoked this war even if Putin started it.
On the contrary, Putin would have had this war, because his country is failing and he wants to look successful and strong, rather than preside over the bankruptcy of his country. Ironically, that's exactly where it is headed now, the number of friends remaining is pretty close to zero, we'll count Lukashenko for 0.5 because he relies on Putin to stay alive.
What the West did was too little, arming Ukraine further and stationing troops there earlier would have precluded this war.
I agree that stationing troops there earlier would have almost certainly prevented the war, but that would have required NATO to see beyond its own arrogance for once, and if that were possible then the situation wouldn’t have come that far to begin with.
That said, preventing wars by flooding the globe with American military bases is a definition of insanity that hasn’t exactly worked out so far. I think you may want to reconsider the logical conclusion of your proposal.
I think you are underestimating Ukraine severely. It is roughly at the level of Romania or Bulgaria.
> But, just like with Afghanistan, the American media coverage of that group would have you believe nobody else lives there, which is ridiculous.
I don't need American media coverage for countries that are much closer than America to learn about them. It's closer than the typical holiday destination from here.
> I agree that stationing troops there earlier would have likely prevented the war, but that would require NATO to see beyond its own arrogance for once, and if that were possible then the situation wouldn’t have come this far to begin with.
The prevailing idea at the time was not to provoke Putin, which retrospectively was the mistake that made this possible.
> That said, preventing wars by flooding the globe with American military bases is a definition of insanity that hasn’t exactly worked out so far. I think you may want to reconsider the logical conclusion of your proposal.
Those bases are in large part there because the countries themselves want those bases there.
everybody is trying to get putin "back" to the table, they dont realize he already memorized what is on it and is not interested in anything that is being offered there...
there is a russian playbook from 1997 that putin might be playing by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con... it's outlining a possible version of russians geopolitical long game
Also, mr P managed to do what the US hasn't achieved - make Germany put a ridiculous amount of money in the defense budged - exceeding the 2% of the GDP that was asked by the US in the past.
Every way you look at the current situation it is undescribably stupid and dumb, I don't care about "super sekrit intelligence information", the backlash from the US and the EU to the Ukraine invasion is incredible and continues mounting up. All that mr P can hope right now is that he doesn't end up in jail for life at the end of this whole debacle.
(I don't have a proof of course, ymmv, and all that...)
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foundations_of_...
I think Russia agreed with China to pull this wild experiment off with invading Ukraine in order to see how far US and its allies are willing to go to sanction Russia and to see if two of them(Russia and China) can survive and prevail together. This mentality "me against the world" is extremely irrational from diplomatic and economic point of view but it can work out because Russian and Chinese economy can complement, synergize and eventually survive and live together. Russia has 6,400 nuclear warheads—the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world so no way anybody can compete with them militarily. Also they have $600bn+ in national reserves in USD, gold and other assets so this vast amount of sanctions won't hurt them at least not in the short term. Btw Taiwan could be next.
It's irrational. As simple as that - just irrational.
Not to say there aint no 6400 warheads. They, you know, require maintenance. 640 100kt range maybe.
All those discussions about morals, mistakes and the descent of sanity are beside the point.
Sanity (Oxfod, 2nd def) :
>the state of being sensible and reasonable
Morality is indeed besides the point, I just added it as I feel dirty suggesting he's rationale 3 days after invading Ukraine without amending the idea.
As for mistake, I think speaking of a political mistake is relevant if we should consider your explanation wrong, i.e. he's sane/rational autocrat whose invasion backfired more than expected, should that be the case.
I think we agree on that.
Narcissist, certainly; immoral and corrupted, most likely; but still possibly rational [0], I see no reason they'd be de facto irrational despite how I feel about them. Born autocrats (or born in a line of succession) are a different story, but I'd argue it would even be unlikely for a commoner to ascend to absolute power without starting off as a rational, calculated and intelligent person (tho ofc not impossible, there are obvious cases). Not that there is any guarantee they'll necessarily remain so, seems unlikely after years or decades being surrounded by sycophants.
Feel free to disagree.
0: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ...
Survival breeds sycophants, ...
Shit, why am I reciting stuff from 8th century BC here?
Or do you have secret information that Nato would overnight change its rules to allow countries with disputed borders to join?
The problem with Ukraine seems to be that it was a successful democracy on the border of Russia and that due to the historically close connections between Russia and Ukraine, Russians could easily see themselves in Ukrainians.
Ukraine was getting armed to the teeth, and with good stuff from the West. Russia had to react before it’s too late.
Keep in mind Russia shares border with many successful democracies from ex-Soviet block, I can’t see how that can ever be an argument.
You know why they were getting armed, don't you?
Because that fellow in Kreml kept financing terrorists in Donbas so they could shoot down airliners and shell kindergarten, right?
Well, I mean, he's 69. It's not that unusual to go downhill at around that age, and he's been acting very oddly RE covid.
From the below on response was "$130 bln is gold, kept in Russia. $60 bln is renminbi, kept in China. All the rest - in G-7 countries"
Seems fluid and not totally clear the details yet. But from the below FT reporter. article is slightly vague since sanction rules are still being written. But on Twitter they wrote clearer that those assets will not be accessible.
---
A US official declined to say if the US would sanction the central bank by adding it the Treasury’s “Specially Designated Nationals” list, which Fishman described as “the single most impactful sanction that you could apply to Russia, and you could do it with a stroke of the pen.”
“It would render a sizeable chunk of their foreign exchange reserves unusable overnight,” Fishman said.
"The move would ban US entities from dealing with the central bank, which would mean that everyone would be “skittish about moving any assets on behalf of the Russian central bank”, he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/073a37d5-4daf-49ed-b5bc-a4682ef1a... https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1497705581817253889
That means cutting off Russia from CIPS, the Chinese payment system akin to SWIFT.
Failure to do so will make China an accomplice and could thus face sanctions as well.
So the pressure is mounting on China to declare who they support. Being neutral is not an option here.
No-one will be able to cut them off even if they side with Russia openly.
China sells $2.5 TRILLION per year to other countries, half trillion to USA
USA would collapse if China stopped selling here.
So if China wants to support Occident they will do it indirect and the same will go for US/EU: they will not ask China directly to ban Russia but more suggest that China should not be very active to support Russia.
It's probably not the best way to treat China like Belarus, a middle ground is better for all.
You underestimate how much threat a hostile neighbor poses.
Putin knows this. His enemies are weak and fighting runaway inflation. They do not have the appetite for war.
Putin will not tolerate having another enemy on his border. I presume he also expected for Ukrainians to capitulate faster. He has been demanding for Ukraine to remain Kremlin friendly or at least neutral since 2014.
As far as geopolitical YOLOs go, it was a decent bet. He took Crimea with little pushback, I presume he expected he could oust Zelenskyy swiftly or at least return Ukraine to a state of neutrality with little meaningful fallout from a weak West.
A video you should watch which elucidates why Putin is hostile towards a potential EU/NATO candidate being right at his doorstep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Wowza. That aged like milk. Really glad this guy didn't have a hand in our foreign policy. His apologist attitude towards autocrats is pretty gross too.
"I believe he is sowing divisions in The West that will manifest over time. If he is smart he will sit back and continue to pull levers as he has over the past year or so, and in the end ... he will get what he wants." - John Mearsheimer 2022
https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/21/us-impose-new-sanctions-ami...
Yep. I didn't know who John Mearsheimer was an hour ago, now I actively dislike him. Pretty impressive how consistently he's been wrong about Putin and his intentions over the years.
(2) The sanctions have tons of carveouts and are still toothless. We need more.
(3) Russia /has/ been sewing divisions in the West. Politics are extremely polarized in the US in part do to Russian troll farms. Have you seen this nonsense? https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1497613102765907968
(2) Agreed. Keep an eye on Russian currency markets come Monday. Between removal from SWIFT and freezing central Russian bank assets, significantly painful sanctions are ramping up. The conflict has only been ongoing for 4 days.
(3) Agreed. It's ridiculous.
"Putin again is much too smart to do that... what Putin is doing is he's basically in the process of wrecking Ukraine and he's telling the West in very simple terms you have two choices: you either back off and we go back to the status quo ante before February 22 2014 where Ukraine is a buffer state or you continue to play these games where you try and take Ukraine and make it a Western bastion on their doorstep in which case we'll wreck the country."
23 min mark: https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=1388
Either the Russian's gets the regime change they want or they will continue to wreck Ukraine. They have no desire to own the country.
I'm glad previous adminstrations didn't put stock in his ideology.
It's a matter of threat management. Even if you know that the guy who's pointing the gun at your head isn't going to fire it, you'd prefer him to stop, or at least throw his gun. Once NATO will have cornered Russia with ultrasonic missiles, then the NATO's ultimatums will have much more power.
I'm against war, and I don't think personally that opting for an aggressive behavior toward our neighbors will wage peace. The US has a very long history of bombing every possible threat on the globe, either economical or military, so I guess your question is quite moot if you think a bit more about it.
Given this background and a certain lack of empathy and sense of right and wrong, from Putin's perspective the past actions appear reasonable. He successfully prevented Ukraine from joining NATO and the EU and involved it into a useless war in the Donbas region. Now things weren't moving on from this point and the situation in the Donbas region was a constant source of concern. So he apparently decided to "solve" the Donbas problem once and for all, perhaps as part of his legacy, and miscalculated. From a pure military perspective the decision might seem reasonable. Ukraine's military is badly outnumbered and still has not much of a chance in the long run. He probably thought it's going to be a quick rush into the capital, installing a puppet regime, and he's done. Western military analysts thought the same.
Why he's been so extremely fixed on keeping Ukraine out of NATO can probably only be explained with his KGB background and the corresponding mindset. There are superficial justifications, it is a prima facie reasonable standpoint of Russia to be against this, but nevertheless Putin seems to be fixated on this in an abnormal way. It is clear that NATO membership of Ukraine would not pose a threat to Russia. However, you could just as well ask why Putin hasn't diversified Russia's economy, made the country a close ally and trade partner of the EU, and helped turning mother Russia into a prospering modern democratic state. This wouldn't have been hard, Russia has all the potential you could imagine - rich of resources, longstanding integration into Europe, excellent scientists and engineers (before the brain drain). The answer is probably that Putin is a paranoid poison murderer and filthy rich ex-KGB officer who came to power more or less by accident. He's simply not good presidential material. Normally this isn't a problem (most presidents aren't), but when a "president" becomes a dictator and is surrounded by Yes-sayers in an information bubble it certainly is a problem.
The TLDR is, Russia was shit before Putin came to power, and now, Russia is not shit for average Russians. Putin gets credit for that.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/763/the-other-mr-president/...
As far as what is and isn't what's valuable, you're ignoring the ideological dimension. Putin's favorite philosopher is is Ivan Ilyin, whose take on politics was basically Eastern Orthodox fascism. Ukraine itself, to Russian nationalists, is the single largest chunk of land that is "rightfully theirs". If Putin can pull the invasion off, he'll be a hero with that crowd.
Northern Europe is still wide-open terrain, but if can get control of the Baltics and eastern Poland, he can constrict land invasion routes to the bottleneck between Kaliningrad and Slovakia. Getting control of Kazakhstan (which, not coincidentally, is also suddenly awash with Russian troops) would similarly give him the ability to dominate other formerly Soviet countries and put mountains between Russia and invasion from the south.
But maybe underestimated the entire cost… how in lock step NATO and other nations would be.
Even if victorious, he seems to have underestimated the Ukrainians.
I think he expected a VERY quick victory, that doesn’t seem to be on track so far…
Militarily I have no idea why they haven’t established air superiority or even softened up the opposition for a while before committing to a ground war….
The reason people are saying platitudes about solidarity while watching people die from a safe distance, is because the nuclear threat is credible.
And the nuclear threat is credible, because the leader appears crazy or at least inexplicable.
As long as everyone else is not that crazy and cannot appear so, MAD is inoperative.
So in that case, why not take over the world? It just has to be in small enough steps that none of them justifies nukes individually. That's it, that's the constraint.
The war propaganda right now is incredibly dense from both sides, and each side sees only their side. But no, he's not a crazy person, he's the leader of Russia making a play.