UK ‘must prepare for sudden collapse of Russia’ | Hacker News Reader

UK ‘must prepare for sudden collapse of Russia’

thetimes.co.uk

16 pointsjdmark15 comments

TLDR: breathlessly portraying Putin as losing his grasp on power without new information. PS: it was 8,000 troops behind Prigozhin not 25,000 as misreported earlier. Prigozhin is exiled to Belarius, but Belarius is a satellite of Russian power. Putin is likely going to clean house (assuming events are what they seem), but it's far from clear what actually happened inside of Russia at this point, and what we've been told has already been shown to be false information. The chances of getting objective data from Western media sources in situations like this is effectively zero - it's a combination of clickbait to sell ads and disinformation. I'm going to wait and see with an open mind.

Good comment. Another weakness of Western commentary: people write novels about what they'd _like_ to see happen in Russia, then submit them as the new baseline. (So much effort really, for nothing.) And if we've learnt anything, things in Russia never seem to turn out as one might _like_ them to.

Russia internal politics makes Game of Thrones look like a playground spat; I've heard it's nearly impossible for intelligence agencies to know exactly what's going on among all the power plays and backstabbery, let alone any sort of media agency

>and what we've been told has already been shown to be false information

What do you mean exactly?

>It’s in my post.

So apart from opinions about what might happen in the future (that can't really be called "false information"), just "8,000 vs 25,000" discrepancy?

But that also can't be called "false information" as "25,000" is what Prigozhin publicly said he has, and that was correctly reported as such, and "8,000" is an estimation from "UK security sources" as I understand.

It is a cultural tradition of the UK government to never be prepared for anything. This is the principle of muddling through because everything always works out alright in the end, so there is no point worrying about it.

Armando Iannucci gets it spot on in The Thick of It: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the-thick-of-it

Benefit of being an island. Always suck early in the war and then ending it with a treaty that is positive for you. Let your allies pay with blood.

This is a good example of pointless advice - pointless because depending on how you interpret it, it's only either trivially pointless or actually bad advice.

e.g.

"It's important that the UK government prepare for the collapse of RU Fed because it's a possible, extremely bad event. Planning should be updated and maybe a little contingency put aside."

Errr yeah. And no one should have to tell you that.

"Sunak should put the 3rd Division on boats and starting sailing them to Estonia. Move King Charles into a bunker. Somebody read the manual for how the nukes work. etc"

Obviously also a bad idea.

"Well ackchully they should take appropriate and reasonable action somewhere in between the two"

Yeah well obviously that's trivially true as well.

Question for the room: what should the West be doing here?

In the context of 'sudden collapse of Russia' in general? Probably just make sure back channels to whoever has control/custody of Russia's nukes are available. The west's primary goal should be ensuring the safety, security, and non-use of Russia's nuclear (and whatever WMD) arsenal in the event of collapse.

Beyond that, I don't think there's a lot the west can actually do? Attaching western support to any one would probably completely de-legitimize them as an immediate post collapse player.

I can't presume to say what anyone should be doing but I would expect some oil companies to be lining up, ready to get in there before the existing lines freeze up in the permafrost should the pumps stop.

I would imagine mainly containment; make sure the collapse of Russia stays in Russia and that you don't end up with black market tanks in Poland or a warlord seizing mines in Kazakhstan.

>black market tanks in Poland

Why would that be a problem? plenty of museums to take them in, might get handy like last year when we sent >300 modernized tanks to UA.

> or a warlord seizing mines in Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is independent for over 30 years now

Same thing they did when the USSR collapsed. Basically, make sure the nukes don't end up in the hands of a bigger monster or they're not sold to rogue states/organizations.

Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperative...

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