Ivan Krastev on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

Ivan Krastev on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

spiegel.de

120 pointsivank26 comments

This is a fantastic interview. Full of incisive observations, eloquently presented. Along the lines of this historically contextualized analysis I can also recommend the PBS Frontline interviews with Julia Ioffe [0,1] which are similarly captivating and insightful.

0: https://youtu.be/kSNo2FPQDQw

1: https://youtu.be/b1HWNcLDK88

Great resources. Thanks for sharing.

PBS is always a pleasure for the mind.

Really great stuff, just watched and loved both... have any other other recommendations?

> Or that the attack on Kyiv began with the destruction of the television tower just as NATO attacked the television tower in Belgrade in 1999?

No, an attack on the tower[1st March] happened after the most significant attacks[26th Febrary] on Kyiv.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_offensive_(2022)#26_Febru...

I suspect the implication here is that this was done because the initial attack took longer than the expected three days of easy haul. It was a reaction meant to send a message, but I don't know, such a thing should probably have been clarified by the author.

https://archive.is/mpyvH

We don’t know what will happen in Russia after Putin, or in Europe, which currently finds itself in a romantic phase. But we shouldn’t make the same mistakes as in 1989. Back then, we thought the East would change dramatically, but not the West. Now, Russia is going to change dramatically. But so will we.

This quote seems insightful to me. Germany suddenly realising that the road to peace through mercantilism won't work with the modern Russian state is the biggest change in foreign policy I've seen in the last 30 years. It's significance and suddenness will be noted as a real turning point in Europe. As will Germany deciding it is time to re-arm.

> Germany suddenly realizing that the road to peace through mercantilism....

I'm pretty sure what he is saying is that Europe and Germany have realized that the road to peace through free markets won't work and that they are returning to a mercantilist/socialist approach - both by strengthening the bonds between government and business, and by using business and trade restrictions as a weapon.

Germany realized that for sure, but the meaning is different: The period of peace enforced due to loosing the war is over. All good things count up to three like the colors in the flag.

The interview is packed with insightful statements. Eg:

  I think the strong sanctions from the U.S. have less to do 
  with saving Ukraine. America is more strategic than it is 
  emotional. By imposing the sanctions, they want to save 
  Taiwan by showing China the price of an intervention.

I wish he'd spoken a little more about Taiwan, though maybe it's outside his area of expertise. America wants China to side against Russia, but it would be convenient for China if there were the precedent of Russia annexing Crimea.

> I think the strong sanctions from the U.S. have less to do with saving Ukraine. America is more strategic than it is emotional. By imposing the sanctions, they want to save Taiwan by showing China the price of an intervention.

Not really. Here's an insight, if you will

What happens now is a straight result of your action. But, what will happen in the future - is an implication of your current action - and that's interpretation of Taiwan invasion for China

I think that's a bit common knowledge to anybody watching this space: state department types are basically obsessed with protecting Taiwan, as a subset of the whole China-US rivalry thing (that they are also obsessed with).

A big pillar of the neurosis over the issue is that China is reaching the point where the US would have a great deal of difficulty stopping them. So the whole concept of deterring China from military action is not so much about convincing them they would lose, tactically, but rather that the sanctions/global pariah status would be so apocalyptic that they would wish they had lost.

Everybody who has entertained that line of thought would see Ukraine as a golden opportunity to prove to an audience of one (Xi Jiping) that trying something with Taiwan would be a terrible idea. Also, while sanctions hurt both sides, Russia is a pretty small global player, so it's way less painful to use them as an object lesson, than to entertain the possibility of doing the same kind of mutual economic bloodletting with China.

Taiwan seems entirely different to me. The US isn't reliant on Russian exports for anything. They are reliant on both Taiwan and China continuing to produce pretty much everything.

I don't think it's possible for the US to ban imports from China in any meaningful way and any financial sanctions would have too many US companies at risk.

It's in the US interest to decrease their direct reliance on Taiwan simply from a risk management sense. You can see this happening now with investments in chip foundries coming back to the US and to a lesser extent Europe.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with Trevor Noah's comedy angle that the location and colour of the people involved in Ukraine have elicited a much more emotional response than somewhere like Syria, but there is an element of truth in it.

> They are reliant on both Taiwan and China continuing to produce pretty much everything.

I think security-apparatus people don't really think like this. A good example is Australia's recent falling out with China. Australia is one of the most China-dependent economies in the world, and the dependency is not particularly reciprocal. Australia exports ores, and China can ultimately pay more for ores from elsewhere without a huge economic hit. Yet, because of the Australian security zeitgeist, we've seen a stream of fairly bellicose and occasionally unwise statements from Australian representatives, which have resulted in the ever-sensitive Chinese going completely ballistic and imposing sanctions.

To give an example of how nutty military types will get if you leave them in a room together, I've heard people openly discuss and advocate war with China[0], in order to maintain US hegemony. From a security perspective, economics is for donkeys, and humans are collateral damage - their job is to enhance their state's strategic position.

If they take over the state apparatus, well, look at what Russia is doing. Anything can happen.

> Trevor Noah's comedy .. location and colour

To be honest, I think that was explicit. Look at how the EU is responding to the refugee crisis.

[0] https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/destined-for-war-can-... (this character Oriana Skylar Mastro is both obviously an dangerous imbecile, is regularly publishing in magazines like foreign affairs, and is an employee of the US military).

I think it's certainly true that people are keeping Taiwan in mind with regard to this, but I think you're underestimating the risk of nuclear conflict, and the specter of larger war in Europe. The US certainly has more than Taiwan on their mind here.

By the accounts I've read, EU were the ones who rallied around harsher sanctions that surprised even US, after getting emotional over Zelensky address. Policy makers forget that they are watching a literal professional performer to the point that west may have escalated themselves into corner that prevents de-escalation. It's... West Wing foreign policy, that may either be strategically sound or disastrous. Here's a recent essay by Tanner Greer, who also writes a lot about Taiwan, on how distinctively non strategic US thinking is, frequently distracted by moral imperatives than well reasoned strategic consequences [0]. EU may be learning this lesson the hard way as well, with increasing sentiment of US unwillingness to goto bat for UKR. Especially among Eastern states that outright wants to send NATO peacekeeping mission in URK in recent days.

With respect to Taiwan, if the lesson Xi/PRC learns from this saga is the price of taking Taiwan is eating sanctions as long as she has enough nukes to deter foreign involvement, then PRC would be incredibly pleased. Reality is export as % of GDP has been declining for last decade to the point where PRC is approaching US levels of economic "isolation". PRC losing most western export is ~10% of GDP... a few years of growth. Frankly if you told Xi that's the price for reunifying with TW, he would call it a bargain. Also for PRC, "annexing" Crimea is not a precedent for TW, a renegade Chinese state part of ongoing civil war, there's no international sovereignty violations involved, hence PRC being very vocal how UKR is not TW... West likes to emphasis UKR is not TW as well, but for different reasons. The real lessons will take months/years to unwind, in the meantime PRC is building a lot more nukes and planning for Grozny instead of "special operations".

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/opinion/ukraine-russia-wa...

Honestly, I think the West has significantly more to lose from sanctions on China similar to those currently in place for Russia, than China. And China knows it.

At this point the only way Taiwan survives is by quickly and covertly acquiring nuclear weapons. Imperialists everywhere have been emboldened by Putin's actions

Good insightful interview.

I suggest people listen to Putin's old/new long-form interviews on Youtube (in particular from Vesti's Soloviev) to understand his motivations. You don't have to agree with it but it is most necessary to understand where he is coming from if we are to solve the current and future problems with Putin.

The following two quotes from him gives you some insight;

* In a Vesti interview (2014?) he says something like Do we actually need a World without Russia? He simply will not allow Russia to be demoted to a third-rate and insignificant country and will use any means necessary to prevent it.

* In the Feb 24, 2022 address he says this; The Paralysis of Power and Will is the first step towards complete Degradation and Oblivion. We lost confidence for only one moment, but it was enough to disrupt the balance of forces in the World. This tells you everything you need to know about his mindset starting from the fall of the USSR.

The West's propaganda has been so successful that most people don't even try to find-out and understand the Russian pov. It is also the case that the current Ukraine conflict is a result of the geopolitical game between NATO/US/EU/UK and Russia where while the latter is the naked aggressor, the former is equally to blame for using Ukraine as a pawn, full-well knowing what the consequences would be. The result is a) the overt devastation/suffering of the Ukrainians which will soon be followed by covert devastation/suffering of the Russians once the sanctions start to bite b) the increase in the instability of "World Order" in all Economic, Financial, Political and Military aspects. Every country on the planet will be affected in one way or another.

It's not about NATO as much as it's Putin's wet dream to restore the Russian Empire. This isn't even something new: if you, and many others who talk about "understanding Russia" (btw, there is a term for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putinversteher) were paying attention in the past 20 years - just like most of Eastern European and Baltic countries did - you would understand why this argument is funny. Actually, it's not funny - it's becoming increasingly annoying to hear it repeated. And it's not a surprise it mostly comes from pro-Russian countries like Serbia, Hungary, and India.

This is just annoying "Gaslighting" and nothing more. Geopolitics is way more complex than such simplistic viewpoints. Here is one of my previous comments with links to some enlightening reading material: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30559136#30565003

There are a lot of countries particularly in Africa, Middle East and Asia who have gone on record saying they understand the Russian pov without condoning it. Everybody knew something bad was going to happen if NATO and Russia kept up their tit-for-tats with the 2014 Crimean annexation being the biggest red flag in the sequence of events. NATO/US/EU are fully to blame as much as Russia for the current suffering of the Ukrainians (and the Russians).

This is an incredibly interesting article that everyone interested in Putin's state of mind will enjoy

Edit: I made a list of some assertions made so I can cross check some of them:

- The West doesn't understand that Crimea is Russian

- His messianism comes from being in power for 20 years in an authoritarian state, nobody dares to contradict him

- He's created a system, he's become the system himself, and he can’t imagine that the entire country doesn’t reflect that

- He can’t imagine there being anybody who could be an adequate successor

- He has to solve all problems himself for as long as he is alive

- Putin believes Russia isn't a country in the standard sense; it is a kind of historic, 1,000-year-old body

- He's very intelligent and quick, forthright, confrontative. Sarcastic when speaking with someone from the West

- Obama put women in charge of Russia policy. He thinks that an intentional attempt to humiliate him

- He is obsessed with the hypocrisy of the West

- He wants to teach the West a lesson. He wants us to know he can do the things we do too, even if he hates us for it

- He is outraged that the annexation of the Crimea has been compared with Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938

- He thinks all and any enemies of eternal Russia must be Nazis

- He is constantly speaking of betrayal and deceit

- Western media has contributed to creating a false image of Putin

---- they say that Putin is corrupt

---- they say that Putin is a cynical gambler, a trickster

---- they say that Putin is somebody who is extremely strategic and tactical

----(Article describes why these are wrong)

- He really believes what he says

- He's obsessed with what happened to Gadhafi. He wasn't supposed to become president again after Medvedev, but did so to prevent that from happening to him

- Putin and the KGB didn’t understand why The Soviet Union collapsed overnight without a war, without an invasion. It was their job to protect it. They failed. He has a strong feeling of guilt

- He sees this as reunification of Russia and Ukraine, like East and West Germany

- He's become the father of Ukraine. By his actions he vastly magnified Ukrainian national identity

- Now, he finds himself in a situation that we know from Russian literature, when the father says to his son: I have created you, but now I must kill you

- The myth of the Soviet Union and the heroic fight against the Nazis is not, in fact, embodied by Putin, but by Zelenskyy

- The Russian elite was perhaps taken by surprise to an even greater degree than we were in the West. And I think that

- The American government’s radical approach of making its intelligence information public helped to destroy Putin’s narrative that Russia is a victim

- Our world has changed. We used to be in a postwar world, now we are in a prewar world

- Ukrainians are even prepared to let their own state founder as a way of gaining an identity

- It is a situation like in the 19th century. Russia as a classic imperial power. And Ukraine in an anti-colonialist fight against it.

- He believes that Russia needs the men and women of Ukraine to survive in the new world. Population decline is hitting Russia hard. It’s not about the territory of Ukraine, but about the Ukrainian people.

- It is said that he has been strongly influenced by the memoirs of General Anton Denikin, one of the leading officers in the White Army, which was defeated by the Bolsheviks in the civil war of the 1920s. In the speech in which he declared war on Ukraine, Putin also attacked Russia’s Soviet legacy for the first time. Lenin, he says, was the one who created Ukraine. It was the speech of a nationalist, of an anti-Bolshevik.

- If Putin yields, it’s over for him. So, he has to escalate in order to force the Ukrainians to capitulate

- Putin managed to put an end to Swedish neutrality and German pacifism. He triggered solidarity and resilience in the West

- Whatever happens, and this is why it’s all so interesting: There is no path back to the way things were. Things are the way they are. And we don’t know where it will lead us.

- By imposing the such strong sanctions the US wants to save Taiwan by showing China the price of an intervention

- The world of globalization and free trade, in which the economy was only interested in bottom lines and not in politics, will soon be over

- Russia is going to change dramatically. But so will we

> Russia isn't a country in the standard sense; it is a kind of historic, 1,000-year-old body

Without Ukraine under control this is reduced to a mere 300 years (since 1721).

> - Now, he finds himself in a situation that we know from Russian literature, when the father says to his son: I have created you, but now I must kill you

Actually that's a quote from ukrainian author (Gogol) depicting historical events in Ukraine in Taras Bulba [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Bulba

Your summary/points looks as if the things listed are the authors view when hr is rather ascribing those views to Putin. E.g. whether Crimea is Russian, Ukrainian or something else will get you the same diverse answer as the questions what Tibet or Kashmir belong to. It depends on whether you ask a nationalist/revisionist Russian, a Ukrainian, a Crimean Tartar, a French politician, etc.

I was attempting to describe the assertions of Ivan Krastev

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