A Bugatti car, a first lady and the fake stories aimed at Americans
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The West can push back. Here's a 2023 list of separatist movements within Russia.[1] Most of these are small and weak, but with outside support, pieces of Russia might be destabilized. St. Petersburg/Leningrad oblast has potential, because it's close to Europe. With Finland and Estonia both in NATO, access to St. Peterburg is available. The Russian military is rather busy with Ukraine, and there might not be enough troops available to quickly suppress an internal revolt.
[1] https://www.aalep.eu/major-secessionist-movements-russia
Discrediting Putin online will have zero effect on Russian politics.
Discrediting Putin online will have zero effect on Russian politics because the people already know he's shit. The issue is that a.) they can't do much about it, and b.) many actually support the invasion.
I'm not even sure if he made a difference about Brexit vs. Johnson.
The list is interesting as the base for the scission of Russia once the West wins the war, though.
A far more enticing scenario would be a second Wagner Group Rebellion...one that was competently organized and lead, and successfully replaced the current regime. Putin most certainly remembers how disinterested both his citizens and his military were in opposing the tiny, ragtag Wagner Group's march toward Moscow.
Anybody who posed any sort of real threat has been murdered either by throwing out of some high windows or just whole family with kids slaughtered for show.
People in the west don't grok how downtrodden russian population is, for centuries, cca continuously. Thats why democracy didn't work there, people let wolves do whatever they wanted since nobody understood that you actually have to stand up to them, so we are where we are. Military comes from the same population, just worse characters.
There ain't no easy solution that we would like. They are not rational now and I don't think they will be till puttin' dies, and who knows what other clown will take the helm. They don't keep sharpest most rational folks at top levels, and next guy won't be somebody from lower ranks.
No, I don't particularly expect it to happen. But Russia has a long history of revolutions when things (especially wars) were not going well for the current Czar / General Secretary / whatever.
> There ain't no easy solution that we would like.
True, for the big picture. But my comment was in response to user Animats saying "The West can push back." (About the article, on Russian fake news operations targeting the West.) If pushing back is the game plan, then "what does Putin most fear?" is an excellent basis for the pushback strategy. Ideally, he'd pull the plug on his fake news, because the pushback was too scary.
I'm not sure you necessarily want to fight fire with fire?
So you can fight back, but you don't need to necessarily copy your adversaries tactics.
IMO on Ukraine they should have said invading a basically peaceful democratic state to grab its land is unacceptable and we'll support Ukraine winning and taking their land back with whatever weaponry necessary. Instead of the wishy washy, no real goal, drip feed some weapons to get a stalemate where Russia keeps some land. Why still no f16s two and a half year in? Why can't Ukraine hit the airfields they are bombed daily from and so on? Why won't the US govt say they'd like Ukraine to win? Even if they don't, just saying it would be a good tool to scare the Russians into better negotiations.
Russia is not going to come apart, especially not areas close to the capital. And if it did, you would have thermonuclear weapons in the hands of rando’ nobodies.
He will get Republican support for the war in Ukraine and shore up his presidency. And if it is found out that he did it, suffenly this law will be unpopular with republicans and get overturned! Win-Win-Win!
You have to be absolutely delusional to believe St Petersburg would be seceding. It's arguably even more imperialistic than than Moscow itself, and it is managed by the staunchest Putin loyalists (Current governor, Beglov, is a full-on militarist and Putin lieutenant since the 90s).
This sort of hybrid warfare does not work in non-free societies. No, the strategy that works is shipping Ukraine a series of rocket artillery with gradually increasing range to target oil infrastructure in the interior. Oh, and sanctions that actually prevent military engineering, such as on machine tools.
(edit: if you actually want to peel territory off Russian control, you could start with the satellite states in the caucasus, or the weird Russian exclave in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria )
>> Sakha: Sakha or Yakut separatism seeks the creation of an independent Yakutian state. The primary cause of Yakut separatism is economic exploitation by the federal government.
Tell me you never looked at the map without telling me anything.
> Most of these are small and weak, but with outside support, pieces of Russia might be destabilized
Ah, yes, when the Free World (tm) doing this it is the Right Thing (tm). It's only when whose untermenschen not from the Free World (tm) is doing exactly the same then it's totally not the Right Thing (tm).
> With Finland and Estonia both in NATO, access to St. Peterburg is available. The Russian military is rather busy with Ukraine, and there might not be enough troops available to quickly suppress an internal revolt.
I wouldn't even bet my pumpkin latte what if Russia would 'support from the outside' some separatism movements you would scream bloody murder.
It's always fascinating to see people actively inciting a war, while comfortably sitting an ocean away from any consequences.
A) inhumane
B) violation of all proclaimed western values
C) mad dangerous
Sadly it seems this is Putin's goal as well. What we are seeing is looking more and more like a mass genocide of Russia's undesirables by means of Forever War, with any further territorial gains as a nice bonus. And with all forms of dissent ground into the dust, and a global market more than happy to keep buying his oil, he can continue at this pace indefinitely.
Indefinitely meaning at least his lifetime of the next 10-15 years. It doesn't take much skill to manufacture rifles and artillery shells.
Probably there will be some uneasy truce reached in that time. But in the end this war will most likely look a lot like Iran-Iraq: ~1 million total military dead over ten years with no meaningful gains on either side.
The war indeed has no clear endpoint, and claiming that ‘Russia is hurt, that is good’ is not a replacement for having a plan. One must consider casualties on the Ukrainian side, and they should not be in vain. This is how you end up with a debacle like Afghanistan.
Re. Genocide I think it’s unhelpful to muddy the water.
Russia is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state. It’s made up of ethnic and religious republics - for example Chechnya is Islamic. Some of these ethnic groups don’t like each other.
Putin does not allow talk of ethnic cleansing or similar because it will open the door to internal conflict and would be the beginning of Russia falling apart.
Look at the tone in the press for internal consumption, both in Russia and in the certain western supported Middle Eastern country.
Use google translate, for example:
https://www.vesti.ru/article/4029512
And then compare it with the tone of this, written by a minister of national security:
Isn't it obvious that the West, particularly the US, as their decisions are most influential, does not want to fully push back? By "fully" I mean desiring Russia's collapse. That’s why, even after two years, they haven't provided jet fighters (yet), nor have they permitted the use of their weapons to target Russia more extensively (only on borders with Kharkiv after 2 years of war). Actions speak louder than words. This behavior is clearly reactive, enough weapons are provided to maintain the status quo, ensuring that Russia does not advance further, but not enough for Ukrainians to alter the current situation on the battlefield. If the US wanted to, they could supply Ukraine with enough weapons to defeat Russia on the battlefield. But that’s not the goal, it’s not about Ukraine winning, but about not losing and preventing Russia from winning. A complete defeat of Russia is contrary to US interests, anarchy and chaos in a nuclear state would be far more dangerous, especially given that regions like Tajikistan have significant potential for terrorism (consider how ISIS started). Such a scenario would likely push Russia closer to becoming a Chinese vassal, which is against US interests.
If you believe that a genuine democracy could emerge from that chaos, then you don't understand Russia at all. The deep state there is as entrenched, if not more so, than Putin, and it holds enough power and influence to prevent any truly democratic force from emerging. There is no real opposition left after Navalny's death.
> A network of Russia-based websites masquerading as local American newspapers is pumping out fake stories as part of an AI-powered operation that is increasingly targeting the US election, a BBC investigation can reveal.
> A former Florida police officer who relocated to Moscow is one of the key figures behind it.
> It would have been a bombshell report - if it was true.
> [...]
I had to do a double take before I realised that the emphasised paragraph was referring to the following text yet-to-be-read and not to the preceding opening paragraphs.
> The following would have been a bombshell report - if it were true.
It's quite believable, especially on a platform where you scroll mindlessly.
But if you look for the bit online, you will not find it on the official TV channel website because it never happened.
I'm used to my gov and American propaganda, but they are rarely faking the whole thing, mostly selectively presenting a certain truth or point of view.
That's new to me: completely fabricated, sophisticated facts and media.
We prefer "democracies" because we can covertly influence their elections.
Our democracy is not good either. We still hold elections on Tuesdays, an inconvenience to many. Why not on a Sunday like everyone else? We have just two political parties, no third-party candidate is ever going to get elected.
The USA is far and away the greatest propaganda engine the world has ever seen, and it hasn't been close since the cold war was raging. We push out our ideologies and force the normalization of American culture onto half of the world. Looking at a globe it's actually harder to find a nation that isn't a client state than is.
The lumbering, outdated regional power that is the current Russian state wishes they could wield propaganda a quarter as well as America.
Only blaming Russia for all of it is just another way they win this propaganda/hybrid warfare, you don't take seriously the grievances of the "other side" because you feel it's all just fueled by Russia. It isn't, those grievances and problems are real, they've just been amplified and twisted, and by getting worn down of how much vitriol is spewed from whatever is the "other side" to you it works. It makes you emotionally tired and wanting to fight back by spewing your own vitriol, there's no more conversation, only stupid discourse, the division only grows from there.
Do you not also think the West understands how Russian society works and how it can be broken?
I find it interesting how we're ignorant of our own propaganda activities in other countries. For example, in the UK we have a dedicated army unit [1] that:
> uses social media such as Twitter and Facebook to influence populations and behaviour [which is] involved in manipulation of the media including using fake online profiles
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom)#...
No Western countries has attack and annexed a country within idk 60 years?
Authoritarian societies and dictatorships are much harder to influence, let alone break, because they're glued together by fear and the media in them aren't reporting freely. The West also has barely any influence on North Korea. Russia is also well-guarded against foreign influencing campaigns. There is no equivalence between Western countries and dictatorships in that respect.
Maybe not completely annexed, but we did attack and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.
There's also a prisoner's dilemma aspect where trying to be the de-escalating party just makes you lose.
That's not what I get from conversations with Ukrainian friends who were there protesting so please provide me proof they were manipulated by the US and EU to stage a coup against a government they didn't like (aka a Russian puppet).
We have cancer and you want to ignore it because we also have diabetes, that's a weird stance.
As a member of the EU, it's only logical to be more worried about Russia crossing the Ukraine border than American propaganda.
The risk the US lose their head and decide to attack the EU is nil.
The risk Russia decides that they want to restore the USRR if the Ukraine invasion is a success is plausible.
Is it going to happen? We don't know.
But we don't want to find out.
As an American, I wish we’d stay out of the Ukraine war. The Ukrainians have actual Nazis. And no, that isn’t “propaganda.” The Russians were wrong to invade but the Ukrainians aren’t any more righteous.
But it isn’t my problem — tens of billions of American tax dollars are going to Ukraine with no accountability. In the U.S., open borders policies have led to the rape and murder of a 12 year old girl in Houston, along with many other high profile violent murders by illegal aliens who should have been blocked from entry and deported.
Trump wanted $5 billion for a border wall — Democrats said “we can’t afford that” — and then promptly send $100 billion to Ukraine when Biden’s elected.
I am not arguing for a border wall, but it’s curious how “we can’t afford it” but found plenty of billions to support a country with whom Biden has a financial history. The profound quickness with which the left wing in the U.S. started displaying Ukrainian flags and hashtags ought to be studied. The Ukraine propaganda machine took American money and spends it to convince Americans to give more money. Astounding how clever that was.
Ukraine can’t win this war and I’m tired of paying for it. If they want to keep fighting, then they can keep funding it.
Also it has been empowering the opposition against the dollar. The US cannot support a 34 trillion dollar debt if fewer countries use the dollar.
Indeed, the analogy is obvious. Just like the Afghanistan Wars were a waste of lives, money, and morale for its invaders —USSR (1979-89) & USA (2001-21)—, so is the Ukrainian War being the same kind of waste for the invading Russia (2014/2022-...).
Now the Ukrainians are disintegrating. We will never give them any billions of dollars to fix their country. We will dump them and it is Russia's problem now.
We are erasing any information that we instigated the 2014 events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
And 10's of thousands of Ukrainian dead and wounded, lives and families destroyed, is a small price to pay for American hegemony.
The USA also has actual Nazis.
> But it isn’t my problem — tens of billions of American tax dollars are going to Ukraine with no accountability. In the U.S., open borders policies have led to the rape and murder of a 12 year old girl in Houston, along with many other high profile violent murders by illegal aliens who should have been blocked from entry and deported.
It is your problem, the destabilisation of the world by allowing countries to take over swaths of others' territories is going to be your problem, it's not immediate but will be your problem if it's not contained.
You know who else also rapes 12 years old? Your own citizens, inside their homes, their grandpas, their uncles, their dads, sometimes even their moms, those are the majority of cases of abuse of minors, not the boogeyman of immigrants.
The worst social malaise of the USA is this unbounded individualism, as if you do not care about others but just "me me me". It's just a stupid and infantile way of thinking, unfortunately it's so pervasive in your society that you lose sight of any bigger picture, what matters is "me me me" and that blocks any rational thought outside of the sphere of your small and broken egos.
The last century or so has actually been pretty peaceful, and it has been precisely due to the world not tolerating this. If they succeed it will compromise that peace and I promise you everyone will suffer.
The best thing is for the whole world to have a defense-only pact, requiring everybody to band together and defeat any aggressor.
(the US has also long ignored what Russia has been doing in Syria, despite that being a contributor to the middle east polycrisis)
Next, Ukraine is not waste land, but an important source of grain that is feeding large parts of the world. If those would come under control of Russia, it would lead to a lot of political influence. Russia (and China) are already getting more and more control over countries in Africa. The greatest growth of population and wealth is taking place in Africa at the moment. If those markets are lost to the East it will have a negative impact on the economy of the US.
There must also a reason why the US is dragging this war on. The US in the past year has been very slow to deliver certain weapons systems (such as the F-16) and putting restrictions on the use of certain weapons systems (such as the restriction that military targets further away than 100 km (60 miles) from the border of Ukraine may not be hit). Although the F-16 is delivered by a coalition of European countries, the US had to give an export permit, and the US also has delayed the training of Ukrainian pilots. All these delays have permitted Russia to gain win on the battle field.
There are even people who believe that the US government does not want Ukraine to win, because the war is causing so much damage to the economy of Russia.
> There are even people who believe that the US government does not want Ukraine to win, because the war is causing so much damage to the economy of Russia.
The US has absolutely, cynically, benefited from this war. It could have been stopped diplomatically, the US made no secret they believed Russia was preparing for an invasion. It was either calculated or pussyfooting, in my opinion.
no - you have no idea what you're talking about search for VVX post invasion speech on YT - it's about an hour long - in full - the insanity is clearly on display there
otherwise yes - on all your points above, but the current rasha leader counted exactly on lack of all of those steps - similarly as before/after annexation of crimea
(and even after some limited physical display of western armed forces support would have happened that wouldn't have stopped him IMHO - this is based on extremely bad intel about overall mood towards invaders/occupiers of common ukrainians and his own mad delusion)
By agreeing to Russia's demands for a "friendly" regime to be installed in Kyiv, and that Russia be allowed to annex whatever regions of Ukraine it set its fancy on.
Would you have been in favor of such a "solution"?
Because in the vast majority of cases, when someone posts some version of "The US/West could have prevented this war if they wanted to" (or "It could have ended with the March 2022 negotiations") that's exactly what they mean (territorial concessions), either tacitly or explicitly.
But of course I'll take your word that this wasn't the sense you were intending.
As to what you're now saying:
For one that doesn't like a diplomatic solution, but an overtly military one.
More importantly, the Budapest Memorandum doesn't establish that the US has any "commitments" to come to the aid of any of the 3 countries (BY, UA, KZ) should they come under attack (and Russia would never have signed it if it did). It merely asks that the signatory powers respect the newly established sovereign status of these countries; to refrain from using force or economic coercion against them; and to not nuke them, please. And that the signing powers will consult each other in situations that pertain to these commitments.
That's why the language was specifically chosen to read "Security Assurances" and not "Guarantees". The latter implies a commitment to some kind of a military response, like NATO's Article 5. But the former does not.
You can still maintain the position that the US/UK should have done something different in 2014 or 2022 -- but the simple fact is, there was no commitment expressed in the Budapest Memorandum which required them to do so. And this is probably the main reason they ultimately did not.
This, and a perfectly reasonable desire not to stumble into a direct and intrinsically risky confrontation with their main nuclear rival. Or a protracted / large-scale conflict of any kind with no clear signal of public support.
> This, and a perfectly reasonable desire not to stumble into a direct and intrinsically risky confrontation with their main nuclear rival
But now the situation is worse, a hot proxy war. By making an agreement with Kiev before the war it would have been Russia who needed to avoid a confrontation.
> For one that doesn't like a diplomatic solution, but an overtly military one.
It might be closer to gunboat diplomacy, but rather that than the senseless loss of life we've had since then.
The thing is -- the response you're retroactively advocating here (aggressive brinkmanship) would have been by definition a major gamble. And it does seem that you're basically assuming that the "dice" would have turned up your way.
Whereas most likely the US/UK mindset was: "Yeah, it could go our way, if we went that route. Or it could trigger a nuclear escalation, either as an intentional response from their side -- or a purely accidental one. The odds for this are quite high -- at a bare minimum 10 percent, according to our analysts, though some say the risk is far higher."
The current situation has a recurring risk of escalation also, of course -- though objectively a far lower one.
I don't think they were thinking about a long-term proxy war at the time (as they generally thought Ukraine would be simply overrun if not defended). But we can be very sure they were thinking about the categorically more important issue of avoiding response that could trigger a nuclear escalation -- especially in very short term.
It has its share of fashy types, but very few "actual Nazis" in fact.
Meanwhile the U.S., Canada, every European country, and Russia of course all have a solid contingent of the exact same kinds of folks -- probably in greater proportion than Ukraine.
And no, that isn’t “propaganda.”
It is a masterpiece of propaganda -- in the sense that the Nazi issue is wildly, ridiculously distorted and overblown as applies to Ukraine. And has precisely zero bearing on why the war came about and what should be done about it.
Yet for some reason, it's literally the very first item on your list when you think of why the U.S. should ditch Ukraine and let Putin have his merry way with it.