Vladimir Putin dialed up the president of France earlier today to let him know about Russia's plans for Ukraine:
Vladimir Putin has told Emmanuel Macron that Kyiv’s “refusal to accept Russia’s conditions” means “the worst is still to come” in Ukraine, saying Moscow was aiming to take “full control” by diplomatic or military means, according to the Elysée.
....Putin – who initiated the call – repeated that Moscow’s objective was the “neutralisation, demilitarisation and de-nazification” of Ukraine, the official said, adding that Macron had responded that Putin was making a “major mistake” that would cost Russia dearly over the long term.
"Full control." That's clear enough, isn't it?
That response is horrible for the Ukraine people. I suspect, similar to the US/the west's struggles against the Iraq insurgency, that Russia will learn a painful lesson.
Its just a sad and needless loss of life and treasure.
"Full control" means:
1) Many dead Ukrainians, and
2) Terrified citizens in other Russian neighbors who know they're next.
The myth of Putin is debunked once and for all .
Putin has been regarded as a tactical mastermind, a brilliant player in the game of international politics.
His not !
He didn’t get anything right this time
This Ukrainian business has been a disaster and it has been the result of a dictator who only is listening to yes-sayers .
.The Ukrainians wasn’t longing to be saved by their more advanced relatives up north.
.Europe wasn’t a group of backsliding degenerated nations at odds with each other , wasn’t a group of countries that could be set up against each other.
.All the € he had spent in order to finance anti democratic groups and extremist parties all over the continent in order to destabilize Europe was of no help at all
.NATO wasn’t a train wreck.
.Biden wasn’t suffering from dementia.
Russia are having to many nukes but the armed forces are in disarray.
When we finally are starting to see through all the lies is it obvious that Putin has destroyed Russia. The Russians will need decades to pick up the pieces before they can restore their country.
… we mustn’t let him destroy Ukraine also
A comment by a Swede
Putin definitely miscalculated, I think. But's he also not one to admit mistakes and change course. He's just going to double down on destroying Ukraine. He'll destroy Russia too in the process, but since when do dictators really care about the countries they rule?
Bingo! to both jte21 and sturestahle.
Russia apparently deployed about 200,000 troops for the attack on the Ukraine. The Ukrainians say they've already killed over 5,000 of them. In land war, there are usually four wounded for each death, so if the Ukrainian body count is correct, Russia has already lost an eighth of the total invading force, counting dead and wounded. If the remainder get bogged down in street fighting in the ruins of Kyiv, Russia may not have an army any more.
"Putin has destroyed Russia. The Russians will need decades to pick up the pieces before they can restore their country."
Of all of the thoughtful comments I have read on this page, this one seems to me to stand out in its truthfulness. How it plays out is of course not known to me or anyone, but I think it will be a long, slow, drawn out process. We should not expect instant results.
Russia has a long history of autocratic rulers, many of them corrupt. What is different in this case is the extent to which the world is connected via technology, as are individual Russians. I think this might not bode well for a leader leading his people straight back into the dark ages.
There are Ukranians on the phone with Russian friends and family and they are as impervious as the most hardcore Q-Magas. I don't know how many are like that but there's only one thing to do to deal with them.
In the interconnected world every country shares a border with every other country, one of the things that makes someone like Putin, and other maniacs of the Dark Ages, paranoid so they try to pre-emptively cause as much harm all around them as they can.
As I said, hopefully, one of his rich friends will hand him a gun, nozzle first and that will be the end of Puti. One can always wish when things get this bad.
For anyone interested in what it looks like when the Russian military wants to take "full control" of something, this might be educative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%931995)
Ukraine is many, many times larger than Chechnya, with a small, but professional army, so this will be utterly catastrophic for both sides. And unlike Yeltsin, Putin's not going to be looking for a face-saving retreat on this one.
History isn’t a circle, more like a spiral (inward or outward being the glass half-full question) but I have to wonder if today gives some idea of what the late 1930s were like.
Here’s hoping the next step is a boycott of Russian energy. I’m sorry if Europeans have an energy crisis and I’m sorry if Americans have one too along side a recession. But it’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to get ugly.
Then, of course, comes 10 million plus refugees and, perhaps, a grinding war which completely destroys Ukraine. So sad.
And then Trump becomes President! Goodness gracious.
Compared to committing our troops in battle, dealing with higher energy prices is a very small price to pay.
If only people would start to wonder if buying that big new SUV was really such a good idea...
An all-electric SUV sounds like an increasingly good idea.
(yes, I've read the numbskull argument, it's still going to need less petroleum than anything else).
I see gas is up about 50 cents in the last week. Oh boy.
No war for oil? Say it ain’t so! Here I was thinking oil is the only thing worth fighting for.
The problem with America is Americans. If we had had the same population during World War II we would have lost catastrophically.
I’m probably not going to lose my job in a recession since I’m an essential worker, but a recession would be worth it. Easy for me to say.
If Finland and/or Sweden applies for NATO membership, their application(s) should be fast-tracked, just so no one can doubt that Putin has committed a massively stupid own-goal. But even if NATO does not move any closer to Russia’s borders, Europe has never been more united against his plots and meddling.
If the Russian economy deteriorates enough, it might be worth suggesting to the Kaliningrad Oblast that they conduct a referendum on independence, and offer sanctions relief as an incentive, if they demilitarize. At the very least, it would be a nice bit of ratfvcking. On the chance that they accepted, the threat to the Baltic states and Poland would be greatly reduced.
True. It's also kinda worth noting -- and to my surprise, I've never seen it noted though it seems to be folk wisdom that "NATO expansion" was a key irritant for Putin -- that if Putin does take control of Ukraine, he will have added (I believe) 3 new NATO members to Russia's borders. To say that more simply, Ukraine has 4 NATO members on its borders, and 3 of them would be new to the list of NATO members on Russia's borders. So if his justification is to reduce NATO's challenge to Russia, it's a strange way to do it.
Update. Ok, sorry, I'm wrong about the above. I was treating Belarus as if was part of Russia, and counting its border with Poland as a border with a NATO country. So actually, if Putin takes control of Ukraine all the way to its western borders, he will have added 4 new NATO members to the list of NATO members that border Russia -- Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
I hope I'm right about that. My geography sucks...
I don’t think it’s wrong at this point to count Belarus as a Russian federal subject; we won’t see the Russian troops ever leave it.
Good point. The ‘security concerns’ sophistry of course was always a lie; NATO or anyone else was never going to attack a nuclear power. If Putin doesn’t think that his nuclear arsenal will protect him, he might as well give them up, or at least re-start arms-reduction talks.
Kaliningrad is a military base, not an "ordinary" [if that word means anything is Russia] Oblast.
Quite true. It is also home to around a million people, who are going to suffer along with all other Russians as the country is slowly strangled economically. One large subgroup are retired military. One expects them to be supportive of Moscow, but when it can’t pay their pensions …?
The Russian missiles and long-range radar installed in the last decade have no doubt raised its priority as a target in the event of a nuclear exchange. I doubt the locals were consulted about that.
"Putin . . . repeated that Moscow’s objective was the 'neutralisation, demilitarisation and de-nazification' of Ukraine,"
God, autocrats are stupid. Ukraine was already pretty neutral, and all of Europe was "de-nazified" way back in 1945 (seven years before Vladi was even born). I guess this nazi nonsense plays well with other Russians who have been drinking the same firehose of horseshit the Kremlin has been marinating in for the past two decades under Putin, but the fact that Putin doesn't seem to understand or care that _Frenchman Macron_ wouldn't be laboring under such ridiculous Russian fantasies and therefore would regard "de-nazification" as little more than a bewildering joke is pretty telling.
A few right-wing, ultra-nationalist groups were active in the 2014 Maidan revolt that sent the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich packing. Putin, furious at the humiliation of his toadie, used the presence of a few skinheads at demonstrations to suggest that the whole protest was being led by a massive neo-Nazi movement that had effectively siezed control of the Ukrainian government and was bent on destroying ethnic Russians (hence claims of an impending "genocide" being bandied about Russian media).
Oh, I know--like every stupid Kremlin fairy tale, there's some real thing that provided the inspiration. That doesn't mean that anybody who hasn't spent a decade getting their mind warped by Russian media is going to find the claim anything other than farcical.
That's what's weird--if Putin didn't believe the nonsense, you'd think that he'd yell at Macron about something Macron would find relevant, instead of repeating laughable nonsense about latter day Nazis. French people know a thing or two about what real Nazis look like, after all, and Putin should know that.
But I guess he doesn't. That's why I say autocrats are stupid. No human is clever enough or has the informational bandwidth necessary to actually run a country successfully; any who try are either fools at the outset, or fools by the end--they succumb to epistemic cloture and the mind-warping effect of believing their own hype.
One hundred percent correct.
Putin’s focus on maintaining a buffer of
neutralized countries on his borders seems like a very 20th-century way of thinking. For one thing, however far west he pushes the buffer, that’s where his new effective border is. For another, it’s not 1939, when the idea of putting more distance between the panzers and you might have made more sense. Nowadays, it would be more likely that the war would start with a cruise missile through your window.
There seem to be two competing narratives out there.
A) Putin is concerned about actual military encroachment by NATO.
B) Putin loathes the idea of big chunk of the former USSR transforming into a westernized, democratic model, because of the potential of such a development to undermine his own authority.
I think "B" is the bigger concern for Vlad. Nobody with a working brain cell, Putin included, thinks there was every any possibility whatsoever that NATO would launch a Barbarossa-style attack on Russia. The West isn't suicidal, and Putin knows it.
Notwithstanding the non stop punditry (otherwise known as speculation).
My speculation is this is a whole different ball game than Chechnya, Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
It appears that Ukraine already had a modern military, although not as large as Russia's.
It appears that the rest of the world is basically putting no limits on the aid they are willing to send to Ukriane.
If mean, if that aid includes hand carryable anti-tank and anti aircraft weapons, and presumably anti-tank includes anti artillary ......
Well, doesn't the defending country have a crazy tactical advantage?
I mean, what do I know, but a gigantic Russian convoy on one road, nicely teed up for 40 miles or whatever? If the US and its B-52s were active that would be 40 miles of rubble by this afternoon. If its sitting there long enough won't the Ukranians use a few tons of dumb dynamite to just seal off all the roads?
I don't know, and because western intelligence services are not going to actually share any of this we won't know until after the fact.
We will learn a lot of things as this plays out, but one of them, which was already hinted at in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that modern superpowery-type weapons are designed to counter act other superpowery-type weapons, like any chess game.
The Ukranians seem super motivated to fight, and as long as they are given weapons to do so I don't think I would find being a Russian soldier in Ukraine that great of an assignment.
The Taliban and the Iraqui militias got nowhere near the weaponry Ukraine is going to get.
I guess we will see.
That aid definitely includes portable and highly sophisticated anti-armor missiles with very high kill rates. A lot of Javelins and NLAWs (British anti-armor) were delivered, more are being supplied, and even Sweden(!) is shipping a lot of equipment (and their anti-armor missiles are also well regarded). Anti-air is also being supplied.
From an article in the Daily Kos, it looks like Ukraine soldiers are now starting to turn attention to that big Russian convoy outside Kyiv - some of which looks to have gotten in big trouble with mud - and in a way that indicates they were not doing proper tire rotation and replacement. Or basic maintenance. In heavy vehicles, whether tracked or tired that's just asking to become a pedestrian, and pretty quickly too.
A lot of the narrative I've seen suggests things are going very badly indeed for Russia. But my sense is one conspicuous exception is the NY Times. Their reportage to my eyes mostly reads fairly pessimistic with respect to Ukraine's chances.
Maybe the Times is wrong. But I wouldn't bet on it. And I've seen zero evidence that the power of the state is being substantively challenged in Russia domestically*. Today the Times reported that things will get far more difficult for Ukraine if Russia continues to consolidate its gains on the Black Sea coast (thereby cutting off much of Ukraine's access to the outside world). Also, hopes in the West to the contrary, I'm seeing virtually no daylight between the Putin and Xi regimes on Ukraine. The latter might be irritated by Russia's antics, but they're doing a pretty good job blaming everything on the United States and NATO, and there doesn't appear to be the slightest chance they're willing to put serious diplomatic or economic pressure on Putin.
My fear (and really, I fervently hope I'm proven incorrect) is that the absolute best we can hope for is that Ukraine can maintain its independence via an eventual off-ramp for Putin that allows him to keep significant territories in eastern Ukraine, combined with a pledge to refrain from NATO membership. I think the greater probability is that the country is annexed into Russia, perhaps with a fig-leaf of sovereignty (similar to how the republics were structured in the Soviet Union).
*This is key, for obvious reasons.
I wonder what other people on this thread think of John Mearsheimer's (and others) take on this, that basically this is the US's fault for ever acting to push NATO eastward starting back in the 90's.
It seems wrong to me but I'm no expert on Russia of Eastern Europe or NATO .
I think saying "this is the US's fault" is a vast overstatement. I think a reasonable statement might be "the casual attitude of the US government regarding expansion of NATO to Russia's borders was a contributing factor to the current Russian paranoid reaction about NATO."
Of course, paranoia itself is not our fault. That's an attribute of a seriously dysfunctional mind-set. Which Mr. Putin seems to display at many opportunities.
He's full of it. Russia isn't invading Ukraine because of NATO - they already have NATO right on their border with Poland. They're invading because Putin thinks Ukraine is the property of Russia and should be at best a satellite state governed by pro-Russian rulers (like Belarus).
Every argument has some assumptions built in.
Whether NATO's expansion has anything to do with anything requires some heavy assumptions which I haven't seen anyone seeking to blame NATO address.
First of, let's start with "So What?" It appears Ukraine has never cared, then or now, that Poland is part of NATO, so why is it assumed that Russia should be assumed to have valid concerns over NATO in the first place?
All NATO expansion means is that Russia would not be able to do what its doing right now if Ukraine was a member of NATO.
I mean, on what basis does Russia have a right to be concerned about its rights to invade.
By the way, this is against the background of NATO never having invaded either Russia or a Warsaw pact country.
Placement of missles is already routinely discussed.
No, this has to do with some re-assembling the former Soviet Union by force, and Russia's (Putin's) position that it (he) has a right to do that.
The going theory is that after Saddam and Qaddaffi he was scared it was going to be him. Not really about Russia at all.
The only thing even remotely valid criticism is that NATO failed to truly consider how expansion would look to Putin. Not that expansion was wrong, but they failed to accurately assess the consequences.
I am one who is currently enamored of the Mearsheimer critique. There seems to me to be nothing so simple and so obvious as that a powerful entity needs to be either accommodated or displaced, and no one is suggesting the latter, as we're talking here about a nuclear power with a large conventional force to boot. A "sphere of influence" is something Americans should understand, fer Chrissake, with our Monroe Doctrine and all.
But that advice was relevant 30 years ago, when people thought history was over and that the ineluctable historical law of Russo-European conflict had been repealed. Why no one thought to replace the Warsaw Pact and adjacent states with a great de-militarized neutral federation, or some such -- I wish I knew. Finlandization is nobody's first choice, but if it dials down deadly conflict, what's not to like?
Now, as Mearsheimer points out, the Ukrainians have been led down the garden path, only to find themselves in the briar patch, and God bless 'em they're going to fight for their freedom. Well, I do hope God blesses them: the only acceptable option now is some sort of Ukrainian victory. But even a week ago, Putin was demanding (if I'm not mistaken) only that Ukraine foreswear NATO membership. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT? Or lop off a few eastern states. Something to accommodate a malignant revanchist power. Well, like I suggested, this line of thinking has steadily declined in salience as things have changed over three decades.
But if (as) things get worse, let's all remember that this needn't necessarily have happened. One can't foresee every wild card, such as a paranoid leader for instance, but it seems to me to be always better to start by getting the structural elements right. Now, as we face a rising China, we find ourselves not only mired in Europe, but engaged in a scheme that couldn't be better designed to drive Russia into China's arms! Worse than a crime, this was a blunder.
To accept such a thing would have been to leave Ukraine under permanent threat of invasion with no recourse, it was Ukrainians who rejected this, not anyone who 'led' them to it.
Being Finland wasn't an option because of Putin's stated interest in recovering what he imagines are the lost parts of Russia's natural sovereignty, Ukraine being the biggest and most important part.
'To accept such a thing would have been to leave Ukraine under permanent threat of invasion with no recourse"
But that's where they are now. A deal would have to have been made whereby: Russia gets some sense of security. The US gets peace in Europe. And Ukraine/East Europe gets some domestic latitude in exchange for giving up some military and foreign policy options. Don't know if it could have been done, but it drives me crazy to think no one tried.
Putin has said and will say a lot of things to pretty up what is fundamental to a more or less lawless international order: security is paramount. This is the essence of the so-called "realist" school, as I understand it. This painting of Putin as crazed monster is fine for present motivational purposes, but don't assume it trumps more realist power-balance factors.
"But even a week ago, Putin was demanding (if I'm not mistaken) only that Ukraine foreswear NATO membership. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?"
Well, it depends. If Ukraine said "we never want to be part of NATO," I guess that's fine, although query whether or not it's cool for Ukraine's choices to be dictated by a foreign dictator's demands, but fair enough.
If Putin was demanding that the NATO countries renegotiate their founding charter such that Ukraine couldn't be admitted (upon request from Ukraine and unanimous assent by the other NATO nations) or else he'd conquer Ukraine, that's fundamentally illegitimate.
Given that Ukraine was *not* trying to join NATO, and NATO membership was neither imminent or certain, I'd also suggest that Putin's claims that it was NATO encroachment forced him to become an imperial conquistador are horseshit. If it wasn't NATO, it would be some other nonsense (like fighting phantom Nazis).
I stopped short of calling the "just admit you're not going to join NATO" argument as ridiculous as it is, but now I can't resist.
I've been alive for the entire end of the Soviet Union, and there has been no time where NATO, or a NATO country, attacked either Russia or, for that matter, any of the former parts of Russia.
Its probably also true that NATO, as an entity, has actually never even acted as "NATO" (the Iraq coalition, for example, was not NATO) but I'm too lazy to check.
So for Putin to say the problem is NATO expansion, well I can only think that the only reason he thinks that's a "problem" is that NATO membership prevents him from just invading the country.
I mean, that's not an argument against NATO, its kind of an argument in favor of it, especially if you are anywhere near being invaded.
Arguably, we gave Russia way, way too much leway, by letting it descend into a mafia state in the first place. Which has nothing to do with NATO.
Agreed. Russia's NATO argument is basically an argument that it's legit to invade and conquer a neighboring country because it might someday enter a treaty with another country that you might not like.
Russia has plenty of tools to entice Ukraine to not joint NATO--Russia could enter into a dense pact with Ukraine, condition prosperity-enhancing bilateral trade on Ukraine's foreign policy stance, forge tighter cultural ties based on common history and culture, etc. The point is that Russia isn't interested in doing that, because Putin isn't interested in Russia acting like a real country instead of a gangster-kingdom.
The West never pointed a gun at Ukraine and said "join NATO or else!" and the irony is that is exactly what Russia is now doing.
I think it's wildly over-stated to assume Putin would invade whether or not Russia's 'legitimate' security demands were met. Who knows how much independence Ukraine might have enjoyed in a Finlandicized scenario, but perhaps enough to avoid the horrors that bear down on it now. I don't have all the details, but there was a gradual ramping up of Western shenanigans over the decades, for instance Trump arming the Ukrainians while Obama had been careful not to. Mearsheimer goes over all of this in detail and concludes that Putin had acquiesced to the whole caboodle until noises were made about Georgia and Ukraine eventually joining NATO.
Please don't think I'm saying Putin's shenanigans weren't orders of magnitude worse than ours. We'd all like to see the expansion of liberalism around the globe, but by military means? I just have a sense that liberalism will flourish in peace more readily than in war. And we don't know where this will end. This may have long-term consequences in our coming agons with China.
But like I said, this is all a criticism of past decisions. For now, we do all we can for the Ukrainians.
How does a nuclear power with thousands of warheads, ICBMs, and nuclear SLBMs have legitimate security concerns?
Not an expert, but I assume they are similar to ours.
Nonsense on stilts. Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons; John Mearsheimer should know what MAD means. Nor has NATO ever had enough strength in conventional forces to invade (Conventional wisdom is that an attacker needs several times the assets of the defender to successfully invade). There has never been a NATO threat to Russia, nor ever will be.
Well, to be fair, the NATO countries have a combined GDP north of $40 trillion. To sub-$1.5 trillion in GDP Russia, that ought to warrant a little bit of caution.
Maybe if the Russian economy was run on the up and up, instead of a kleptocracy, the GDP might improve. Sure, the superyacht builders might suffer, and London property brokers, but . . . .
Yup. And there's the rub--Russia can be poor and backward with a dictator in charge, or it can be wealthy and advanced with a more democratic government, but it can't be both. Putin has made his choice; the terrible thing is that he has made that choice for 140 million Russians (to say nothing of another 40 million Ukrainians), too.
Yes, the risk to Russia is not that it is invaded, but that it becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the EU.
Russia seems to be opting instead to become a Chinese client state, so in many ways it's playing a bad hand rather poorly.
All you NATO nay-sayers: what do you think the US would do if Mexico or Canada joined a Chinese or Russian military alliance -- one specifically created for the purpose of constraining US power? The history of US intervention and rat-fcking in the Western Hemisphere is sufficiently known. Spheres of influence are real and for all practical purposes considered "legitimate", especially our own.
I won’t dignify an absurd hypothetical with an answer. It is absurd because Mexico and Canada benefit enormously from trade with their wealthy neighbor; the thought of aligning with a distant, unstable power with a third-rate economy would never cross their minds. There is no parallel with Russia - it has no carrots, only the stick of military threats. I was looking recently at the Wikipedia list of countries by GDP per capita, and was surprised to see how poor Cuba remains sixty years after becoming the client state of the USSR/Russia on our doorstep.
I don’t know who considers spheres of influence legitimate; I don’t. Most of our interventions in Central and South America have been I’ll-advised and effected little change in the long term at the cost of much human suffering in the short term. Many were driven by commercial, not national interests
Well the US has considered one such sphere legitimate as long as it has touted the famous Monroe Doctrine. It doesn't matter about those difference you cited between Canada and whoever: the fact remains that the US would never countenance such a thing. And we didn't. After a certain point, all the Latin Am interventions were justified by Cold War considerations -- ie., national security. Wrongly, mind you, but nevertheless.
Know who else believes in spheres of influence? China. And we're just starting to realize what we're up against over there. You can sneer at SoI, but you got to do it with a gun in your hand 'cause that guy over there believes in them. In his sphere anyway.
My point is that this all could perhaps have been done differently. Bush the elder reportedly went out of his way to soothe the angry bear when it was deposed from its super-power perch. Too bad subsequent US leaders didn't show the same degree of wisdom and circumspection.
I think Cuba counts as ‘countenancing such a thing’.
Too bad Putin couldn’t show a modicum of wisdom.
"what do you think the US would do if Mexico or Canada joined a Chinese or Russian military alliance -- one specifically created for the purpose of constraining US power?"
Is the U.S. a repressive gangster-state autocracy in this scenario? And is the threatening military alliance largely democratic, economically productive, and full of countries that are nice places to live? Because, honestly, that's important context for thinking about the answer.
I don't think anybody here is struggling with why *Putin* would invade Ukraine--Vladimir, as an autocrat, is threatened by neighboring countries where people a lot like his people have the ability to vote corrupt politicians out of office. It's more that people don't view Putin's willingness to murder thousands and throw the world into turmoil in pursuit of furthering his stranglehold on the Russian state is a particularly legitimate value.
We all, as believers in liberalism, assume we see things as they are and ought to be, and I'm not about to change my position in that regard. But we might be criticized for never seeing how the other side feels. Plenty of Russians don't see Russia primarily as a gangster state, but as home. And they've grown accustomed, over centuries, to seeing that attention must be paid. It's not right, but it's there, and here we are. Many, Putin included, predicted that this would happen if more deference wasn't paid. I just don't see that this was all necessary. And we don't know how bad this is going to get.
Alternate facts.
"Many, Putin included, predicted that this would happen if more deference wasn't paid."
Setting aside the inanity of citing as an apparent insight Putin as a predictor of what Putin would do, I'm not sure what you are asking--how much bowing and scraping do the free people of Europe owe a dictator? How many Ukrainians must live as subjects to a foreign conqueror?
Again, maybe had US and Euro leaders been nicer to the president-for-life-who-poisons-people-in-other-countries-and-who-rose-to-power-by-blowing-up-Russian-apartment-buildings-and-blaming-it-on-Chechnyans-Putin, sure, he might have only invaded part of Ukraine. Or maybe only kept the parts he already stole. But that's ignoring the reality that the vast, vast majority of the moral agency here rests with the man who has, of his own accord, sent ~100,000 soldiers and countless tanks, planes, ships, rockets, and bombs into a different sovereign nation to murder people until he gets his way.
This wasn't a situation of escalation on both sides, or of two powers blundering into a tragic war that cooler heads could have prevented. Putin wanted to do this, and he did it. He waited until the Olympics were over so as not to embarrass China, but there was no effort by Russia to reach a diplomatic solution here. There could have been. There still could be. The onus really is on the people doing the shooting to stop.
Putin doesn't have the moral or legal authority to attack a sovereign nation and destroy its government (and butcher thousands) because he's displeased with geopolitical developments driven by third parties.
That's nuts. At best, they'll be spending a lot of money to prop up and protect some pro-Russian crony as President who will have little control over his own country outside of territories where there are Russian troops. At worst, it will be a bleeding ulcer of an occupation, with neighboring countries openly backing the insurgency with shelter, weapons, and money.
I think he could well have deluded himself that Ukraine would capitulate after a brief period of fighting. He has after all occupied Belarus without a shot being fired.
The EU and US should offer $50K for every Russian and asylum to every soldier, $100 for sergeant, $200K, and upward who defects while in Ukraine. It would be worth the money. Drop hundred of phones and pick up locations.
Saw yesterday that's exactly what Ukraine is doing, they're offering every Russian soldier who surrenders without fight $54,000.
I think they could make that offer all at once to the entire Russian army and they might suddenly have an entire army of defectors.
What do Russian soldiers think of it when they see a violent war in front of them and behind them a group of mobile crematoria to incinerate their remains after they've died to the government can claim it never happened and they never existed?
The West can make that entire army a far better offer!
I bet it would be cheaper for everyone (including Russia) than a war. Hell, we should do that for every dictatorship.
It may be "I know nothing" talk, but a lot of those p.o.w.s are saying that they were were told they were on military exercises, ordinary movements, and then the bullets started flying.
Not exactly a Crispin's Day speech.
Thanks a lot, Rudy, Paul, and of course, Donnie. For keeping Congressionally appropriated military aid away from Ukraine, for showing that the United States (under that former guy) did not have Ukraine's back, for getting rid of a perfectly good and competent ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. Thanks for trying to break up NATO and at least estrange the United States from it. You three (and many more from the Republican side of the aisle) made it clear to Good Ol' Vlad that he could invade Ukraine with impunity.
I know this doesn't help Ukraine any, but I just had to type it.
They'd say your welcome because that was the point
TFG has suddenly decided that Putin's invasion is a holocaust while patting himself on the back for having supplied the missiles that made Ukraine's resistance possible. Leaving of that little bit of blackmail over whether Ukraine would get the missiles without "doing a favor" for TFG. TFG is always ready to stick a shiv in a friend, current or former, don't matter/
TFG has suddenly decided that Putin's invasion is a holocaust while patting himself on the back for having supplied the missiles that made Ukraine's resistance possible.
Can't say this bothers me in the least. We've all long known Trump is an amoral, predatory, sociopathic, lunatic-mafioso. Exactly like Vlad.
What bothers me is that not one Republican voter in fifty will register displeasure at the ballot box.
(At least that's how I'm guessing this goes down in November.)
No, because everyone has decided that giving into nuclear blackmail is the way to go.
We decided many decades ago that the existence of nuclear weapons puts certain kinds of Western military action beyond any reasonable risk assessment. Nothing new. The same calculus applied in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). Neither of which were NATO members. I hope the same calculus now applies to non-NATO member Taiwan, too, although this opinion seems to be unpopular in Western circles.
But if Vlad makes a move on Estonia or Poland (or Xi lays a finger on Japan), then yes, we may finally get the nuclear war you seem intrigued by. I mean, at the end of the day no surefire strategy or technology (ABM systems aren't reliable) exists that can prevent a dictator from starting Armageddon if they are sufficiently determined to have one. But the key component of reducing the odds of Armaggeddon has long been: maintaining clear lines—this is what America's mutual defense treaties are for—as to what constitutes a nuclear casus belli, and what doesn't, for Washington.
(To be sure there are arguments to be made for including more countries in US security guarantee treaties; but by definition this increases the number of territories around the world that constitute a nuclear tripwire for the United States.)
Puti only cares about Puti. People, Russians or otherwise be damned. Hopefully, one of his rich friends will get to him, with a gun, and it will be over. They won't tolerate this for long. The rich must have access to their toys and their money.
Biden said he wasn't looking for regime change in Moscow. Putin may not leave him a choice.
Huh. I recall saying the same thing the other day. Putin's speech from over a week ago told you what you needed to know about the man and his true goals. The only thing that is shocking is how few people understood this and accepted that he was actually going to push to reassemble the USSR. Moldova gets it. They just applied to join the EU. Expect Sweden and Finland to apply for NATO membership this month.
This is the choice someone -- his generals, specifically -- will have to make. I made this point a few days ago, too.
As I previously commented, this time the sanctions are different -- targeting the RCB was a huge deal. RCB can't stop the freefall of the Ruble. Most Americans really do not appreciate what Biden has done.
It's time for the UN to vote on the establishment of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. Not that the vote will pass, so much that it requires Russia to vote against a peacekeeping force and for the whole world to see this. It will give any action, specifically by US and Europe, the imprimatur of the free world to save Ukraine from genocide.
According to Bloomberg news of about 4 hours ago, the ruble worth a bit under a penny. A couple of other things that also came out in Kos indicate that Russia's international bank had about half it's considerable funds offshore - and that's been frozen. Sberbank stock down 99.7%, stock exchange still shut.
BTW, what Russia is doing right now is genocide, but, intelligence has revealed that Putin is planning to scale that up with mass executions in Ukraine -- https://twtr.in/3I3B
It's now or never. I tell you, this is Putin's signal that he values Ukrainian lives at zero; they are mere instruments or encumbrances to his goals, pointing to his willingness to use any means necessary, specifically tactical nuclear weapons.
The US took full control of Afghanistan and Iraq to Democratic liberal cheers. Now they complain when another nation acts American.
The US didn't mass execute Afghanis or Iraqis. The US didn't carpet bomb entire neighborhoods. The US didn't restrict who Afghanis or Iraqis could vote for.
You're full of shit.
The U.S. is also not led by a gangster-king entering his third decade in power who labors under some sort of idiotic idea that he is the fulfillment of a prophecy to rebuild by force some medieval empire that never actually existed.
I fully admit (and said so vociferously at the time, and since) that the U.S. attack on and occupation of Iraq was immoral and wrong. But this is much different. This is analogous to if George W. Bush was _still_ president of the U.S., personally or through proxy owned every major media outlet in the country, had killed or cowed all the opposition out of Congress whose sole remaining activities were to gleefully pronounce their subjugation to the President, and if Bush routinely gave speeches about how the greatest geopolitical tragedy of all time was Canada's victory in 1812 preventing colonial expansion northward, and that by god he was going to fix it, and then invaded all of Canada on the bullshit pretext that he was fighting bloodthirsty Nazis in Ottawa instead of murdering peaceful citizens.
That's almost psychotically stupid.
Liberals were the most loudly opposed to both those stupid things.
Democrat liberal, please.
Yep, I remember the mass protests by Republicans when Hillary and John Kerry launched the invasion of Iraq (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld? Goosedat has never heard of them).
What Putin shows with the words "full control" is that he no longer has the illusion that Ukrainians want to be liberated from the hated West by their Russian brothers. It has to be pushed down their throats.
Semantics, but if such language is used domestically Russians may wonder: why do we need full control of a nation that loves us?
I have to admit I'm stumped that Russia went to the trouble of setting up this huge rainy day fund in a way that could be interdicted.
“Nice financial center you have there in New York. Would be a shame if anything were to happen to it. Do you really want to keep those sanctions in place?”
If the latest news in the Guardian is accurate, the Russians appear to be shelling a nuclear power plant.
I mean, WTF??
I suppose I will learn that either this is an exaggeration or you can't actual cause another Chernobyl by means of artillery but I would have left nuclear power plants off the to-do list myself.