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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Business Insider says 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine.[1] That leaves the central Russian government very vulnerable to its own internal separatist movements, of which there are rather a lot.[2]. Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Estonia, and the Gulf of Finland. An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe. Something to think about.

There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip to trade for Ukraine's own territory. There's nothing but farmland and mountains. Which is why this war is so stuck.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/97-of-russia-army-in-ukraine...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatism_in_Russia

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Last time I checked there was more than 1 million in internal forces (militia, rosgvardia, troops, probably some others). They are armed, trained specifically to suppress and loyal. I (looking from the inside) highly doubt that they will change sides unless they stop receiving paycheck. Of course, some regions are a bit special in this respect but they are not in the central Russia.

What is the mood regarding the war in your social circle? How often do they support it?

Zero war support across friends/colleagues but maybe up to 30% support on the streets (taxi drivers, cashiers, mechanics, neighbors, ...). In small cities there shall be more supporters (less Internet, more TV).

I really doubt it's "zero". I've quizzed many many people I had connections with and literally all of them support the war up to some extent. The most common opinion is "we shouldn't have started this but we should win this war and take over Ukraine and Poland". It would be really strange to count such opinions as "anti-war".

Poland too, huh? Have they thought through the implications of that one?

Well, I may speak for hours about my observations.

Essentially they are sure that noone would vouch for Poland (also for Baltic countries). I've been shocked that well educated people, like software engineers, scientists, etc easily repeat the narrative of various propagandists and, moreover, they say that these are their own conclusions.

Please, do.

War on NATO, Russia loses quickly or we all lose if nuclear war.

That doesn't prevent their propaganda from saying what they say.

The people are convinced that NATO won't hold up to its promises.

Re nuclear weapons. I really doubt that this shit is still functional.

> I really doubt that this shit is still functional.

Ohh how I wish I could believe that. Once you have the fissile material together my understanding is that it's not that hard to actually build a bomb. The success rate of countries that have decided to start a nuclear program is pretty damn high, and through all those years of nuclear testing, there weren't a whole lot of duds that I know of.

There are a lot of designs that are a lot trickier to set off. Do we know how many of each design Russia has in service? It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the simpler ones had been replaced by higher yield but more fragile ones.

Ed: rockets, targeting, etc are also tricky failure points.

Anyway, I agree it's not a great cause for optimism. It would only take a couple of them going off to give the world a bad time. If nothing else they're dirty bombs.

Did Poland think through the implications of hosting an AEGIS missile system (thanks to the US unilaterally withdrawing from an arms control treaty)? I’m sure the Kremlin was going to believe that was to protect Europe from “Iranian and North Korean” missiles. What a joke.

> I've quizzed many many people I had connections with and literally all of them support the war up to some extent.

I would have reconsidered my approach to making connections if that happened to me :)

If you’re on HN in Russia, writing perfect English, you are no doubt part of a certain class.

1) I'm an asperger and my ability to build social links is severely impaired

2) I'm not in touch with these people anymore though I've tried to reach everyone I was able to and get their opinions. My conclusion is: the propaganda is extremely effective. People there easily pronounce self-contradictive statements and easily turn to aggression.

Agree, propaganda makes wonders. But the people from "my circle" just don't watch TV (and that's not surprising given that ~40% of people in Moscow or Saint-Pete don't watch TV). I completely acknowledge that "my circle" does not represent general population and I wrote it in the original post.

Don't they see how immoral it is to take over countries against their will? Are they just bad, immoral people?

That's not entirely a fair summary of the situation. The Ukrainian separatists asked for Russian help:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-allies-step-up-sanct...

Some people have questioned the legitimacy of that request and of the breakaway governments, but a Washington Post poll in 2021 found that over half of the respondents from those breakaway republics wanted to join Russia and only 12% wanted to rejoin Ukraine:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/12/new-surve...

I think it's an accurate summary.

The separatists are under Russian control. The Russian army has been fighting alongside them since 2014, when they invaded Donbas.

In the 1991 referendum, voters in Dontesk and Luhansk overwhelmingly voted against being part of Russia. Per your source, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas, 75% want to be part of Ukraine. In the Russian-controlled part of Donbas, 57% want to be part of Russia.

First point, why such stark difference? I think it's because Russia is very good at propaganda and they exercise it heavily in areas under their control.

Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil. They don't care about the people in the separatist republics, that's just a marketing spin that almost everyone can see through. It's about imperialism, revenge, power. Putin has been planing to absorb at least Belarus and Ukraine since a very long time.

After all, Russia invaded the non-Russian controlled parts of Ukraine, which, per your source, are heavily against joining Russia.

Even if some parts of Ukraine wanted to join Russia, it wouldn't give Russia the right to annex the territory.

I'm curious why you have this view, what's your background - nationality, ethnicity, feelings about the West? (I'm from the Czech Republic.)

> The separatists are under Russian control.

I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice.

> In the 1991 referendum...

A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?

> First point, why such stark difference?

An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.

> Second point, this changes absolutely nothing about my claim that what Russia did and is doing is completely immoral, pure evil.

If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.

> I'm curious why you have this view

I'm from the US. We are, first of all, a nation founded by "separatists", who also fought against other separatists to remain a single nation. I think each separatist cause needs to be evaluated on its merits, but in general (when something like slavery isn't involved) I think the people of a smaller region should be free to leave a larger nation if they wish. If I didn't believe that, I'd have to apply for British citizenship.

And the US is also a nation that's done exactly what Russia is doing, many times. We nearly started a war because Russian weapons were too close to the US (in Cuba), just as Russia demands that Western weapons stay out of Ukraine. And we've invaded many nations on pretexts weaker than Russia's in this war. If we accepted those actions as precedents, they would justify Russia's actions in this war. Everything I hear seems to be tinged by a bit of an "it's only OK when we do it" attitude, so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia.

And perhaps also for Ukraine. Ukraine has even demanded the return of Crimea, where even in 1991, only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia. After all that's happened, do you think Crimea really wants to return to Ukraine?

My ideal solution would be a fair and binding vote on separation for all the regions in question, but I know no party would accept that.

> I think this dehumanizes them. They chose to become part of Russia and the fact that they have mostly become part of Russia doesn't erase that choice.

Does not dehumanize at all. Ukraine fell into political turmoil similar to January 6 riots in the US, and Russia used intelligence operatives to instigate further violent riots, quickly invaded parts of Ukraine taking advantage of the confusion, and established a military occupation. The so-called separatists were directly funded and supported by Russia in the earliest days, and then under the full control of the military admin after tanks rolled in.

As I've told before, the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed the same when they were investigating whether Russia is responsible for MH17 shootdown, which happened on occupied territories. Since Russia had full control, ECHR found them responsible.

Locals have had as much freedom to choose their future as Parisians in 1940.

You've conflated two different issues. The ECHR has ruled (and I think they're right) that Russia is in control of the region.

That tells us nothing about whether the people of the region want to be part of Russia.

For that, we have to look to polls, like the one I cited, which tell us that the people living in the region do support Russia.

Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.

The so-called separatists don't represent the people no matter how you approach them. In the earliest days, they consisted of local thugs, the kind of people who come out just to destroy something at protests. Then intelligence operatives like Igor Girkin were quickly installed to direct the violence against Ukraine and its institutions in a controlled way to achieve Russian goals, and then regular armed forces took over. At no point did it have anything to do with people and their will.

Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions where people can get murdered for publicly supporting some of the answers. I wonder what Parisians in 1940 would've answered if they got a phone call asking if they wanted to be a part of Germany - while people were disappearing.

> Which isn't that surprising, considering that the elected President they supported was driven out of office by a revolution. That kind of thing would make anyone question their democracy. If you must compare it to Jan 6th, it's as if the Jan 6th riots had lasted for weeks and at the end, the President preferred by the rioters took over.

Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament. It's as if Congress had voted Trump out of the office after January 6th riots, Trump fled abroad and some unhappy Trumpers stormed further goverment buildings, and then Mexican army rolled in to support "separatists" and occupied Arizona and Texas, and then Mexican intelligence operatives cosplaying as independent freedom fighters asked Mexico to annex Arizona and Texas into Mexico.

> Nor would I put much value on polls conducted in conditions...

That's a fair point - polling is difficult and unreliable in a contested region - but what other evidence can we look to?

Perhaps this: "an occupation against a hostile local population requires far more soldiers than a peaceful occupation of territory" as we've seen recently when Russia occupied regions not controlled by the separatists.[1]

And the Russian forces in the separatist regions before 2022 were far from sufficient to hold the regions if the local population had been hostile, especially with Ukrainian forces also fighting them.

> Yanukovych was removed from the office by the parliament

This isn't accurate. "On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych ...left the capital for Kharkiv, saying his car was shot at as he left Kyiv, and travelling next to Crimea, and eventually to exile in Russia."[2]

Then, because he had fled, "the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him from his post...on the grounds that he...effectively resigned."[2] He was not impeached.

It's more accurate to say that he was driven out of office by the riots, a fact that Parliament merely recognized.

(Also, your analogy to Jan 6th makes no sense, because in any such analogy, the rioters have to end up with the President they want, just as they did in Ukraine.)

1: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/01/politics/ukraine-assassinatio...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych

The same kind of resistance as described happening in Kherson in the linked article happened in LNR and DNR too. Eventually Russian forces abandoned Kherson not because of local resistance, but because of military factors. Kherson garrison was too close to the frontline and couldn't be protected from HIMARS strikes. If you are trying to use the fact that Russian forces were not driven out of LNR and DNR by local civilian population as an evidence of their views, then I don't find that convincing, because driving Russians out has required grueling coordinated military action even in those regions of Ukraine where the support for Ukrainian independence is universal without any doubt.

The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism, seizing the oppurtunity that internal turmoil offers. The specifics of that turmoil are largely irrelevant.

> The same kind of resistance as described happening in Kherson in the linked article happened in LNR and DNR too.

Do you have sources for that? It's the first I've heard of it and I'd like to learn more.

> The key part is Mexican army invading Arizona and Texas under the pretext of separatism

Ok. Then to use an analogy that actually happened, perhaps the US invading Cuba under the "pretext" of separatism from Spain?

Or the US sending the navy to Panama to support its independence from Columbia (in exchange for the canal zone)?

Perhaps the best analogy is the Mexican-American war, in which the US took Texas (already de facto separate from Mexico but still claimed by them) and other territory from Mexico.

Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?

Some examples notable enough to have Wikipedia articles:

* Arsen Pavlov, bomb in elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsen_Pavlov

* Alexander Zakharchenko, bomb in cafe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Zakharchenko

* Mikhail Tolstykh, rocket lauched at his office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tolstykh

* Aleksey Mozgovoy, car bomb and ambush with machine guns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksey_Mozgovoy

Resistance mostly takes the form of hit-and-run attacks and sabotage against infrastructure. Here's a 2019 video of DNR communications facility being blown up: https://medium.com/dfrlab/blast-highlights-mgb-detentions-in...

The video was posted on social media with the following message:

> This was done with the goal to draw attention to the inhumane torture in the basements of the MGB. Cruel treatment and tying wires with electric current to peoples’ extremities in the “people’s” republics has become the norm. The people of the Donbas must protest against torture, or the fascist republic will remain unconnected.

The very effective use of long-range weapons against targets deep inside occupied territories has also been attributed to intelligence provided by locals.

Like with Kherson, we can expect detailed stories after LNR and DNR are liberated and it's safe to reveal what went on and how it was accomplished.

> Anyway, what's the point of this analogy?

The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with separatism. Whatever seeds of that may have existed in the first days, they were hijacked by Russian intelligence services and armed forces very early to prepare the stage for military invasion and occupation. The treatment of representatives of occupied territories as independent leaders even as late as of February 2022 (when they supposedly called Russia for help) is unsupported by facts. You can stage such "separatism" anywhere in favorable conditions when police and armed forces are overwhelmed and won't react fast enough.

> I think this dehumanizes them.

No. I said they were under Russian control. Not that they're not human. The invading army is under Putin's control, that doesn't imply they're not human (although they regularly commit inhuman acts).

> A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?

The poll is heavily skewed by Russian propaganda in areas under their control.

> An obvious explanation would be that only the areas where enough people wanted to leave Ukraine were controlled by the separatists.

First, area of control is primarily determined by military, not civilians. Second, why would there be such a stark difference in opinion within Donbas? Doesn't make any sense.

> If you mean that it's never moral to support separatists, I disagree completely.

I don't mean that, it depends on the specific situation. But the separatists are just a distraction, it's not what this war is about. Russia invaded the area which was against joining Russia, simply because Putin wanted to subdue Ukraine. He couldn't care less about the separatists, they're just a tool. In fact, he brutally crushes actual organic separatist movements (Chechnya).

> so I feel that this war is about power and imperialism for the US as much as it is for Russia

You feel wrong then. What Russia is doing is bordering genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr...). The US is doing everything to help them. If Ukraine succeeds and becomes a prosperous liberal democracy, it would make the alliance of liberal democracies stronger and the US would benefit from that. That doesn't change that it's mostly right to help Ukraine.

Russia is effectively a dictatorship run by a psychopath who kills his opponents and uses mass torture to achieve his goals. The US is a democracy whose current leadership has a normal level of empathy.

> only 54% wanted to be separate from Russia

That's a majority... In any case, the annexation by Russia was wrong and should be reversed. After that, there may be talks about independence and a proper referendum.

> My ideal solution would be a fair and binding vote on separation for all the regions in question, but I know no party would accept that.

What are the regions in question?

Should the about 25k of civilians murdered by Russia in Mariupol be automatically counted as votes against joining Russia?

> A lot has happened since 1991. Don't you agree that a poll from 2021 is more relevant now?

What 2021 poll is that? I am aware of the ones in 2014 and the one in 2022, both of which could be described as meaningless Russian shams, and totally irrelevant .

2014 sham: https://www.thebulwark.com/what-really-happened-in-ukraine-i...

2022 sham: https://www.voanews.com/a/voting-ending-in-sham-annexation-p...

The poll I linked just a couple posts up, by the Washington Post.

This one? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/12/new-surve...

Paywalled, described as a "survey" in the headline, so not actually a poll. Why pick that specific one?

Disable JS to bypass the paywall.

I picked this one because it's one of the few I've seen that seems the least bit trustworthy. If you know of a better one, I'd be happy to read it too.

I don't really understand how such a poll can be considered legitimate or humane. From the news articles I've read since the 2014 separatist movement happened, the majority of people in that region left. So how can you have a poll where you say everyone agrees with you when you've driven out all the people who disagree?

> Free Ingria […] has potential

No, it's a toy movement.

> There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip

Transnistria could play precisely that role.

The Russians have shown that they don't care about holding territory in the short term, see Kherson withdrawal, etc. They are only focused on attrition and minimizing their own casualties. If Ukraine goes into Transnistria it will not force Russia to capitulate.

> “They are only focused on attrition and minimizing their own casualties.”

???

That’s errr... going poorly.

https://meduza.io/amp/en/news/2023/02/17/close-to-15k-russia...

An investigation via open sources by the BBC and Meduza (an anti-Putin media outlet based in Latvia) has confirmed the deaths of about 15k Russian soldiers since the start of the war, and estimates the true number to be up to 60% higher.

What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?

The sources I'm seeing that say 200k include injuries. Combined with your source on actual deaths, that puts injuries:deaths at around 10:1, which sounds right.

Yes like I said... err... that’s going poorly.

> An investigation via open sources by the BBC and Meduza (an anti-Putin media outlet based in Latvia) has confirmed the deaths of about 15k Russian soldiers since the start of the war, and estimates the true number to be up to 60% higher.

Where do you get the estimate of the true number? Your cited source only has the count of the named individuals identified, not anything corresponding to your claimed total KIA estimate. (Also, the investigation was published, as you linked, by Meduza, but conducted by the BBC and Mediazona, not the BBC and Meduza.)

> What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?

Who else (besides sources with opposite biases, like official Russian sources – who haven’t provided casualty estimates since September) would have the kind of information necessary to make a meaningful estimate? (Also, the most commonly cited figure, which is sourced to the UK Ministry of Defense, is “up to” 200,000 casualties, with 40,000-60,000 KIA, not 200K+ KIA.)

But even if we go by that confirmed-by-name count as the full count of KIA, it roughly matches the Soviet KIA in Afghanistan, which was instrumental in the collapse of the USSR, so, going quite badly.

> They are only focused on attrition and minimizing their own casualties.

The former, yes. The latter, no.

> If Ukraine goes into Transnistria it will not force Russia to capitulate.

A Ukraine invasion of Moldova would result in Ukraine being forced to capitulate by the sudden collapse of all outside support.

I suppose Ukraine supporting a Moldovan effort to push Russia out of Transnistria might be a thing that could happen without that consequence, but it doesn’t seem like something likely to happen while Ukraine is busy fighting Russia over Ukraine.

Isn't Transnistria legally part of Moldova? Russia can't trade that away against Moldova's wishes, and even if it was to try , it would be against the international law that made the invasion of Ukraine and annexing its territory illegal in the first place.

International law is for client states.

Don't really see Transnistria as remotely useful as a bargaining chip. Sure it's propped up by Russia and would eventually be integrated into Russia under Putin's wildest imperial fantasies, but it's not Russia, its people mostly aren't Russian and I'm not sure it's all that valuable either.

All a Ukrainian invasion of Transnistria would do is give Putin's claims about Ukrainian aggression some veneer of legitimacy and annoy Moldova, which doesn't want to see something which is constitutionally part of their territory fought over and then bargained back to Russian control...

>its people mostly aren't Russian

They basically are. They speak Russian and act like Russians. I doubt they'd mind being annexed.

I've recently read that only about 30% identify as Russians.

Yeah, the largest ethnic group. The largest ethnic group in California is Latinos. What's the issue?

I think your assumption that people who say they're ethnically non-Russian are basically Russian and would be ok with annexation by Russia is wrong.

What is that thought based on?

>They basically are.

They don't have russian passorts. How can they be russians?

> They don't have russian passorts.

You clearly are not familiar with how things work in Transnistria.

I'm from around that region so I'm quite familiar.

Just because Putin says those people are Russians so he can claim some clay, doesn't make it a fact.

Sure some are ethnically Russian, but that doesn't make them Russian citizens of the Federal Russian Republic.

They are Moldovan citizens. Transnistria is a rouge separatist nation that's not internationally recognized and only exists on paper because Russia is a nuclear power which has troops and weapons there and Moldova is too weak to do anything about it.

> I'm from around that region so I'm quite familiar.

Not sufficiently familiar then.

"It is estimated that about 250,000 out of 500,000 people living in Transnistria hold Russian citizenship."

That's as of 2020, "passportization" has continued since then.

https://warsawinstitute.org/russia-hands-passports-diaspora/

If France were to give french passports to a lot of Germans in a particular region of Germany, that region doesn't magically become a French asset/territory.

Transnistria is literally controlled by Russian armed forces…

Which are there illegally as they occupy the territory of the sovereign nation of Moldova.

Case in point, no other UN nation recognizes Transnistria or Transnistrean passports. Transnistrean citizens travel with Moldovan passports.

You are missing the point, it's still an asset under Russian control, whether you like it or not.

But Transnistria has between 360k - 475k ppl (from Wikipedia). Plus everybody want Romanian passport (which is not that hard to get if you are Moldovan) - due to UE free movement ...

All I'm saying is Transnistria is de facto a Russian asset.

Uhm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passportization ?

> Transnistria could play precisely that role.

Transnistria isn’t part of Russia and Ukraine isn’t going to take it from Moldova.

> Transnistria isn’t part of Russia

It is controlled by Russia.

> Ukraine isn’t going to take it from Moldova.

What is that based on?

> It is controlled by Russia.

And Ukraine obviously supports the Moldovan government’s opposition to that condition, but Ukraine isn’t going to unilaterally invade Moldova to fight Russians while its got plenty of Russians in Ukraine to deal with.

Why are you so certain? Have you heard of the Cobasna ammo depot? It would be mutually beneficial to Ukraine and Moldova if Ukraine were to gain control of that depot and then cede back to Moldova.

It would be like gaining control over an unstable nuclear reactor.

https://www.arnika.org/en/hotspots/moldova/the-largest-illeg...

Cobasna is a huge problem in waiting but it's not an urgent problem.

The real solution is for Russia (as the Soviet Union's biggest successor state) to handle the cleanup and reparations when the region is handed back to Moldova.

> Business Insider says 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine.[1]

The UK defense minister said this. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-64634760

> vulnerable to its own internal separatist movements

Frankly, you have no idea about what's actually happening there. All these "movements" are nothing and the only potential sources of real separatism are the regional governments. Though there are multiple measurements in place to make that impossible.

I would be more worried about the Caucasus's. Chechnya is run by a dictator with Putin's backing. I have a feeling that Ramzan Kadyrov will have the be very careful moving forward. I can't imagine he's well liked in Chechnya.

> Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Estonia, and the Gulf of Finland. An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe.

Most successful independence movements are based on some kind of distinct ethnic/national/cultural/religious/linguistic identity. “Ingria” is a historical term, coming from a time several hundred years ago when the area was ruled by Sweden and populated mainly by Finnic and Baltic peoples. However, the vast majority of its current population is ethnic Russian, and the Finns and Balts are now only small, highly assimilated minorities. The vast majority of its population don’t identify as “Ingrian”. That does not seem like a successful basis for an independence movement.

I think the most likely place for renewed separatism is Chechnya. Not right now while Kadyrov and Putin are so close, but if something happened to one (or both) of them, or if they had a falling out, it could easily start again. And spread to Dagestan, Ingushetia too, maybe even the entirety of Russia’s North Caucus region-in most of which ethnic Russians are a minority. An Islamic separatist movement is likely to find international support and funding from the Islamic world.

Obviously you’re not a fortune teller, but I’m curious of where you think Tatarstan falls into this, given it’s a majority Muslim republic too.

Well, it’s a lot more plausible than “Ingria”, given it has a distinctive language/culture/religion. On the other hand (1) it is some way from an international border, making successful separatism less plausible (unless, of course, the border were to somehow move closer); (2) ethnically, it is over 50% Tatar, with a Russian minority of about 40%. Assumably the Russian minority would oppose separatism, with great potential for inter-ethnic violence, genocide, partition, etc. By contrast, Chechnya is over 95% ethnic Chechen.

Russia is a military state. They have about a million of police and other military forces inside the country.

And internal separatist movements are so tiny you can handle them with 1/1000 of the force they have.

They also thought they could take Ukraine in about the time it took Hitler to blitz into Poland.

That is an assumption.

It's the hypothesis that ascribes the least idiocy to Russian military command, compared to, say, deliberately wading into a multi-year attritional struggle. As much we may think they're fools, they're probably not that stupid.

> deliberately wading into a multi-year attritional struggle

I don't understand how people expect anything different here. Even the US with all it's superpower fanciness spent years in Iraq and decades in Afghan. I am also skeptical over that whole "my opponent is more stupid than me" attitude. We can already see how people made fools of themselves spelling Russia's haste economic demise, while Russia is expecting an economic growth now according to the World Bank.

Idiocy would be setting unrealistic expectations and treating this like a computer game, when a well-fortified Ukrainian army at the Donetsk border (that Zelensky was inspecting a few times in 2021) would somehow de-spawn or vanish in case Russia would hastily take Kyiv.

Actually there's more than just that one way of being an idiot and having unrealistic expectations. Wishful thinking springs eternal, on both sides clearly.

What does that mean? Is the US a military state?

Yes, quite obviously yes, I would have thought. All imperial states are military states aren’t they?

No to your question, i wouldn't call 19th century GB a military state. But the US is one, i would agree.

Would it surprise to learn that among the worlds nations the US ranks 76th in the number of military personel per capita? North Korea is #1 with 306 military personel per 1000 citizens. The US is 6.3/1000. The US is sandwiched between Namibia (#75) and Belize (#77).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

Its also #22 in military spending as a percentage of GDP. However the US is #3 in per capita military spending.

  > An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe. Something to think about.

The absolute irony of this line of thinking.

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