In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard Zbigniew Brzezinski did say that if Europe went to war again it would start in Ukraine.
Some choice quotes:
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
“However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”
> “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
He claims that without any proof. This maybe would have been true in the 19th century given the technologies for war and power at that time.
But we have the 21st century now. Why should the Ukraine be so important? Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine? Russia is the biggest country with the most sources of raw materials. It has the most nuclear weapons. It has a huge fleet. It is feared by all of its neighbors.
But that all doesn't matter nowadays. Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy. And Russias GDP is as big as Italy. But invading Ukraine wouldn't help Russia to increase its GDP.
And that is why what Zbigniew Brzezinsk writes is outdated nonsense. Everyone who believes that still lives in the 19th century.
It would be easier to take your opinions seriously if they weren’t contradicted by events happening right now; events which match Brzezinski’s “outdated nonsense” from the 90s perfectly.
You could very well be correct, perhaps the leaders of these countries are living in the 19th century. But the fact that the current leaders of Ukraine, USA and Russia are acting in line with/on these older assumptions makes them relevant still today.
Also there’s plenty of information backing up his claims in the book, you’re welcome to go read it. It’s an excellent window into the way geopolics is rationalised, written by one of the people who have shaped it!
The Mongols didn't need an economy to create chaos and conquer most of Eurasia. Babylon was conquered by Macedonia, Constantinople fell to the Turks, and Rome to the Vandals. Mixing up economic power with willingness to bleed for a mythical cause is a mistake. Also, who needs an economy when you can just have a big army and take booty? Definitely not Russia.
This is not the modern-day version of USSR vs USA. It's the modern version of the Mongol Horde vs Civilization. (No offense to current Mongols; you guys are cool).
Ukraine has excellent farmland. Russia has their own local economy and can produce most of the things they need just with their direct neighbors. French cheeses, American-branded phones, and Italian cars may be too expensive for the Russian economy, but the Russian government doesn't care. Close-enough products can be had for a fraction of the price.
Thinking of things in terms of raw GDP is what is getting the west into a total mess. For years now people have said Russia won't do anything and couldn't possibly be a threat because their GDP is so low. China will never be a major player because their GDP per capita is so low.
But that's, frankly, stupid. People in Switzerland pay $20 for a sandwich. People in Vietnam are paying $0.75 for a sandwich that tastes twice as good. People in China are getting locally made phones with the equivalent of US pocket change and riding high speed trains for the cost of a slow and janky NY subway trip. GDP means absolutely nothing outside of international trade within the global sphere. GDP didn't help America beat Afghanistan, one of the absolute poorest countries on earth. It didn't help them beat North Korea or Vietnam either. They still haven't succeeded in removing communism from poverty-stricken, bottom of the barrel GDP Cuba. If Russia decides to keep moving into western Europe, their GDPs mean nothing. Seizing that land just means Russia gets all of what those countries have, forever, without the high price tag.
GDP isn't motivating angry dictators to invade. They're doing it because they can.
Side note: you've used the old-fashioned (and Putin-favoured) english nomenclature for Ukraine as "the Ukraine" in the first sentence, and the Ukraine-preferred nomenclature in the second.
This is actually the crux of the issue in two sentences. Ukraine is a sovereign state, but Putin politically asserts it is merely a territory they control, harking back to a pre-WWII time; Ukraine was a territory regularly divided up and under the control of different neighbouring states as a bargaining chip, gift, settlement, or conquest.
This is I guess why Brzezinski talked about it as it was and as it is. Ukraine used to be passed around and fought over as a set of territories without a home. Post WWII, it is a nation state and its existence as a nation state historically perturbs its neighbours, most notably Russia.
Ukraine still has all the geographical significance it had. It's the second-largest country by land mass in Europe, it is fertile (a nearby breadbasket, geopolitically), it is also mineral rich, etc.
So Brzezinski wasn't wrong to say it was still a source of conflict, a prize, but now being an independent nation state it has the right to defend itself and enter alliances. That makes it a risk strategic point -- even perhaps a pivot -- in a future conflict.
> Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine?
If Russia is to (re)build an "empire", it needs Ukraine to do it, for all the reasons above.
Bold to say Brzezinski wrote nonsense, though. Good for you: put yourself out there as an international statesman.
Russia’s GDP is 25% smaller than the U.S. State of Texas.
It sounds like a joke but it isn’t.
Texas GDP is $2.0 trillion.
Russia GDP is $1.48 trillion.
Most of Russia’s GDP is selling oil and gas which is one of the reasons Putin is able to do this now. Through higher oil prices he’s amassed a war chest of $631 billion in foreign currency reserves that will enable him to weather sanctions. That along with the friendship treaty with China giving them a market to sell their oil and gas and sanctions will prove fairly toothless.
This is all assuming you share an underlying rational with the leader of Russia, which you don't. Putin obviously doesn't care about having a good economy or making life better for the average Russian. He cares about making himself look strong and maintaining power, and showing strength. In the long run Russia is going to hurt over this, but that's not what Putin cares about.
Ukraine has gas reserves that seem to be mostly untouched because of regional turmoil and therefore a temporary inability to get that gas out of the ground.
> Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy.
Lol being a world power was never about the economy, it had always been about military strength. Americans might think that they are a superpower because they have one of the largest economies in the world, but that’s being totally small-minded and missing the fact that the reason why their economy is that big in the first place is that the purpose of economies is to power the military with networks, talent, and money.
So many commentators did not live through post-USSR 90s to completely miss the mentality and culture which shapes Putin's decisions.
First, you need to understand values of a person, then their goals, then their methods to achieve the goals. 90s in post-USSR countries were a relatively free environment (from state prosecution) and it naturally selected for individuals which wanted as much power as possible and were willing to take it. For these individuals power is given only to those, who are powerful enough to have it, and must be taken from those, who are not powerful enough to keep it. If you are having your power, than it is moral for you to keep it until you don't.
This way of thinking is not something new or unique to post-USSR 90s - we as humanity have lived with this way of thinking for millennia and our thinking gave birth to countless empires and kingdoms. Those, who were powerful enough to be emperors, also had a right to be. Those, who challenged them in their power, would be new emperors, if proven powerful enough, otherwise would be painfully killed, their property and wives taken and their name forgotten. Let's call this mentality a "Cult of a Warrior". When you are living in this mentality, nothing is worse than feeling shame of abandoning your ideals or friends; you must be a truthful Warrior of the Cult until you die. But in the same time you can freely take anything you like which does not already belong to any of your friends, because if somebody is not powerful enough to fight you, than this person is not worthy of keeping this thing in the first place.
Some of us (humans) during a course of time have countlessly discovered and rediscovered that people can be treated as equal in principle, independent on their physical/economic/political power. This arrangement led to a more productive economic environment where zero-sum-game of Cult of a Warrior changed to a positive sum game of "Everybody Must Be Soft Cult". Also less overall human suffering is kind of cool, but economy thing is always first. In Everybody Must Be Soft Cult power over people can be used only with great care, everything is governed by a bureaucracy and no-one is unwilling to take too much responsibility for any action. This Cult uses a strong moral system to prohibit each of its members from using too much power on the others and those, who do not accept this system, are gradually punished with worse and worse strikes of punishment each time to learn their lesson. At the end, those individuals, who do not understand the reason for given punishment (its always abuse of power over others), are brought to death or exiled. Welcome to the Western civilization as we know it.
So let's go back to Putin and Ukraine. If we accept as an axiom that Putin is an adept of the Cult of a Warrior, then we can make the following conclusions:
1. Putin sees himself as a Chief Warrior of his tribe and therefore has factual and moral power to make any decisions for his tribe as he likes it. I will call him the "Chief Warrior" from now on.
2. The Chief Warrior sees that as time goes on, more and more fellow members of his tribe are turning from Cult of a Warrior to the Cult of Everybody Must Be Soft. From a point of view of a Warrior nothing is worse than to convert yourself to an Everybody Must Be Soft person. Worse is only when your children convert to Everybody Must Be Soft Cult and become all PC and LGBTQ drug loving hippies. No Warrior wants that to their children.
3. So from the Chief Warrior point of view he (in the Warrior cult its always he) does not have any choices at all regarding what to do with his life and how to guide his tribe next. First of all, he must save the tribe from this fucking Everybody Must Be Soft epidemy which is happening right now and must do so ASAP.
4. To save the tribe from Everybody Must Be Soft epidemy it must be separated from the source of the illness in the first place. That means economic and information blockade. All key technologies and industries must be developed in house, all external communication must be ceased, the nation must be quarantined until it find its Warrior soul again. Also its awesome if some of the most active bad blood from the Everybody Must Be Soft movement emigrates in the process.
5. So how to turn a course of a nation of 100+ million people, rapidly integrating from 1990s into Western economy and system of values? It is not so easy. You nee some help from your opponent in doing so. Remember Eastern martial arts - it takes less power to use your opponent against himself, then to do everything all by yourself? So you need to use Everybody Must Be Soft system of punishment to get yourself excluded and expulsed from its system. Economic sanctions is the name for it. For all sanctions the national economy will get a strong hit in the short term, but will become independent from the Everybody Must Be Soft economic system in the long term. Everything, which does not kill us, makes us stronger - said a fellow Warrior (or something like that) once.
6. How to get economic sanctions from the West? Everybody Must Be Soft always punishes for abuse of power, so we must show it to them. Crimea in 2014 was a nice start and we also reminded our fellow Warriors that our soul of the Warrior is not lost yet to the illness, that the times are turning. Also have to make internal reforms regarding freedom of speech, independent news media and political parties to smoke out all the Everybody Must Be Soft elite, so that this liberal pus comes out of an ill body of the Warrior which always has been and always will be Russian Empire, or Russia as it is simply called right now.
So what can people from Everybody Must Be Soft Cult can do to gain advantage in this fight? First of all, get their heads out of their arses and imagine that some people from another culture living on another continent might think differently than they are regarding fundamental ways of living and morality. Take some LSD and watch Chinese martial arts movies for Christs sake if you have so limited imagination.
Second, launch a program of giving free Western university education to Russians with a condition of returning back to their shitty dictatorial country as it is right now and starting improving something in this regard. Subsidize creation of Russian voice-over for all Western movies, give free English language classes to people over 30 and overall increase cultural transfer to people living currently in Russia. To kill Putin you have to convert all these people into the Everybody Must Be Soft mentality.
Third, in NO CASE create any new economic sanctions to Russia and repel all the old ones. Going the sanctions route would be like giving the Chief Warrior exactly what he wants on a silver plate. Give large amounts of aid to Ukraine to compensate for inconvenience of having a bully neighbor at the same time.
Fourth, either Everybody Must Be Soft Cult wins by converting everyone over, or it dies from hands of the Great Russian and Chinese Warriors who are getting stronger in the meantime.
PS. Sorry for my grammar and typos, not a native speaker.
Also slightly edited regarding grammar/typos.
I think the Sanctions/No Sanctions debate is mostly moot. North Korea has been in the status of pariah state for decades and hasn't bent an inch. Compare that to China for whom we gladly swept the Tiananman Massacre under the rug, respected their sovereignty, made them a top trading partner and they have also not bent an inch. And we have hosted thousands of Chinese grad students at our universities. They are also watching the events in Ukraine right now and thinking "Why not Taiwan?" Modern dictators have learned very well the propaganda game. "We're rich because our enemies fear us" or "We're poor because our enemies are mistreating us" both work pretty well.
Thank you, this is a very useful model of the philosophical differences between Russia and the west since the fall of the soviet union and provides some quality food for thought about how to change the direction geopolitics are going with the resurgence of strongmen across the globe.
I have traveled to Ukraine and Russia several times, dated a Russian briefly, then a Ukrainian, worked with Ukrainians in DC for several years, learned a bit of Russian and Ukrainian along the way... One of the things that I did not anticipate at first was the shared philosophical heritage with the west - my Russian ex-girlfriend's favorite book was Seneca's Letters to Lucilius, for one random example. For another, take a visit (in better times) to the Hermitage in St Petersburg and notice how the museum honors greek/roman philosophy and empire as much as any western museum.
The philosophical position upon which this country was founded - the rise of what recon517 is calling the "Everybody Must Be Soft" philosophy - has only been a dominant force recently, really only coming onto stage in the 20th century. It is not what has ruled the world for the majority of our 6,000 years of civilization and there is no guarantee that it will continue to do so. The idea that those who take and keep power by whatever means have a moral right to it is not new. I recently finished reading Xenophon's Anabasis (aka The Persian Expedition), and this philosophy seeps through just about every page as the Greek army lays waste to anyone not deemed of benefit to them, even fellow Greeks. Xenophon was a close friend of Socrates, remember.
Xenophon addressing the army, Anabasis book 6:
"As long as you stay together united as to-day, you will command respect and procure provisions; for might certainly exercises a right over what belongs to the weaker."
My point with all of this is 1) we have more shared history than you might think, and 2) that if you enjoy the fruits of an equality mindset over the fruits of a winner-takes-all mindset, then do not take it for granted. Its dominance in politics is not guaranteed, at home or abroad.
Live it, understand it, be it, calmly share it, never force it. We cannot win this war of ideas by treating it like a war. The irony is that in the end it is far more powerful to cooperate than to take, but the success rests upon preventing individuals from concentrating and exercising that power.
My two cents, another imperfect model for consideration.
What do you suppose makes it so impossible for a soft cult politician to recognise a warrior when they see one? Because warriors seem to have no problem seeing the other way around.
The Americans had their noses rubbed in it for 20 years in Afghanistan, only to see the warrior Taliban spring right back up overnight. I can’t imagine a more effective wake-up call than that.
It would have been better if they had just called Gorbachev and asked if invading Afghanistan could ever work or they should just drop it. He has the experience and I’m sure he would have been happy to share it.
Perhaps, but the way the last cold war ended was by economic collapse. The warrior cultists needed somebody feeding and arming them, so they needed an economy, and their economy wasn't up to the task. I'm pretty sure the folks pushing the sanctions understand this.
Also, you could choose more neutral labels. The point of the egalitarians isn't that people should be soft but that people have rights even if they can't defend them. And really Putin believes this too, he just ignores this when convenient. He isn't okay with harms done to Russia when it was weak. If he really accepted this warrior ethos, he would think they were perfectly fine. Russia couldn't defend its interests, so it deserved whatever it got.
A neutral term for might makes right is kraterocracy. "Democracy" doesn't quite capture the alternative, but will do. Perhaps "egalitarianism" is better.
Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily.
If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much.
If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO).
The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss.
But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss. Which means that they might actually believe the risk of NATO intervention is low.
How could the risk be low without some kind of collusion or hidden knowledge (hidden from us common folk)? Are "they" ("the global elite", "the military industrial complex") all "in it" (profiting) together? Is Russia just suicidal? If (when?) Russia loses out, how do they react?
I think the risk of direct NATO military intervention is very low, due to Ukraine not being a member state. As the Nato secretary said, they will support Ukraine, but made it clear the security guarantees are only for allies.
"I think also that we need to realize that Ukraine is a highly valued partner. We support them with military support, with political support, with the cyber defences, with equipment. Different Allies provide different types of support.
But when it comes to NATO Allies, we provide absolute security guarantees. Meaning that we make it absolutely clear that an attack on one Ally will trigger a response from the whole Alliance. One-for-all. All-for-one."
Not only is Ukraine not a member state, but Russia is a military power and NATO countries have a very low appetite for war (which is good so long as there are other options for resolving conflict).
>I think the risk of direct NATO military intervention is very low
I agree the military intervention risk seems low, but what about economic intervention? Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia?
Additionally, Russia has a significant nuclear arsenal. The word on the tweets is that NATO going head-to-head with Russia would mean two significant nuclear powers fighting directly, making a significant risk of escalation. (NATO contesting air superiority over Ukraine would mean launching attacks on Russian air defenses over the border, for example.)
> As the Nato secretary said, they will support Ukraine
With words.
EU has also supported Ukraine with words recently.
I've seen ads on the telly making an emotional statement that "Ukraine is Europe".
Europe as a continent does not exist: it is a small corner of Asia. Eurocentricism needs to stop. This us-vs-them game needs to stop.
This invasion is terrible for normal people, Ukrainian (bombs), Russian (sanctions) and everyone else (instability, high prices). It could have been prevented if the "west"/NATO was not "pulling on" (arming) Ukraine. The NATO already have plenty places to make bases on Russian border.
See what happened to Cuba. The US/NATO also do not like bases on their border. They should have understood Russia also does not like that.
But then I believe NATO is more into the business of war then the business of peace.
> But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss. Which means that they might actually believe the risk of NATO intervention is low.
Or they see it like Poker as an "all in" move. Either lose now on their own terms in Ukraine or eventually they lose anyway as Ukraine joins NATO and Russia's nuclear advantages are "neutralized". Meanwhile there's the chance NATO may not intervene so take the risk...
The “all in” move was when they suggested they NATO not meeting their demands to permanently commit to excluding Ukraine and withdraw allied forces from Eastern European members of NATO was an aggressive act pushing them to war in Ukraine. When NATO didn't fold, they either had to invade or show the Putin regime as a paper tiger, which is a mortal blow for an authoritarian regime.
They spent many years on efforts to weaken governments of the West and relations between them for the purpose of doing something like that and having Western unity collapse. Maybe they misjudged and thought that would pay off.
Russia recognized weakness and appears to be correct about that. The head of the German army just confirmed they are not prepared! Google translation and source below.
"In my 41st year of peacetime service, I would not have believed that I would have to experience another war.
And the Bundeswehr, the army that I am allowed to lead, is more or less blank. The policy options we can offer in support of the Alliance are extremely limited.
We all saw it coming and were unable to get our arguments through to draw and implement the conclusions of the Crimean annexation. That doesn't feel good! I'm eaten!
NATO territory is not yet under direct threat, even if our partners in the East feel the constantly growing pressure.
When, if not now, is the time to put the Afghanistan mission behind us structurally and materially and to reposition ourselves, otherwise we will not be able to implement our constitutional mandate and our alliance obligations with any prospect of success."
> Russia recognized weakness and appears to be correct about that. The head of the German army just confirmed they are not prepared! Google translation and source below.
> Among the failures: none of Germany’s submarines is operational, only four of its 128 Eurofighter jets are combat-ready and the army is short dozens of tanks and armored vehicles needed for NATO missions.
> In addition, troops are short on the basics: body armor, night vision gear and cold-weather clothing.
> The situation is so dire that 19 helicopter pilots from Germany’s Bundeswehr were forced to turn in their flight licenses because of a lack of training time.
> The reason: not enough helicopters for the pilots to fly.
The risk of US/UN intervention should be high, because that was the quid pro quo for Ukraine to abandon its nuclear weapons in the Budapest Memorandum.
No country with nuclear weapons is ever going to give them up again. No security assurances will be seen as sufficiently reliable.
The risk of NATO direct military intervention barring an attack on NATO is very close to zero. (Increased material support for Ukraine could happen, but that doesn’t have the same impact.)
Economic response by the Western powers (not through NATO, but independently and through the EU and other institutions) is already happening and certain to escalate.
> But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss.
Anthropomorphizing nations can be misleading. The risks born by the nation are largely not born by the people committing the nation to a particular course. “Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
From what I heard recently, Russia has two benefits:
1. Tactical - chokepoints are a major element of military tactics, and I guess there's a spot that leaves Russia completely defenseless with wide-open spaces if it doesn't own Poland and Ukraine.
2. Wheat - apparently, Russia owns quite a bit of the market, and Ukraine would carry another minority.
With that in mind, I see this entire thing as a coercive and brutal M&A, but with people's lives being destroyed instead of just their long-term career plans.
I had this mind as I wrote up my post but didn't mention it because I didn't consider the nuclear option as a serious option. Or maybe I'm just optimistic/delusional.
But how would the nuclear option play out?
Here I am, a Russian oligarch. I ordered the Ukrainian invasion because I bet that NATO wouldn't intervene because of my nukes. But it turns out I was wrong and NATO is pushing back my invasion.
It's an horrific idea, but what if Russia does not stop after invading Ukraine? What if they aim to "liberate" Moldavia, Bulgaria, Serbia and encircling Romania?
After all, Putin told 2 days ago he wants NATO out of Romania and Bulgaria:
NATO can easily deny Russia using first strike nuclear attack.
Without centralised command issuing computerised targeting info, it will be for missile officers own initiative to launch them, fully knowing from what they learned in the military academy that an uncoordinated launch will likely be futile.
USA missile defences in Arctic, and North Pacific can guarantee intercept a dozen uncoordinated launches, if what Raytheon says is true.
The idea is to use bribery and propaganda to destabilize Eastern Europe countries until puppet governments rise to power or can be installed, while holding Central Europe at bay through leverage on natural resources. Make deals with Germany and ignore the US and UK.
Basically, take over Europe and break up NATO. Military action is the backup plan when the above coercion fails.
Well, all of this has gone down the drain now, hasn't it? Because this tactic requires enough elements within the targets to go along with it and call for appeasement and understanding. The Russian government has shown its true colours today. People who were on the fence have switched sides now against Russia. No excuses anymore.
Even Finland itself came out of Finlandization beginning thirty-plus years ago, so it's doubly ironic that Putler at least partly succededed in bending much of the rest of Europe to something similar since. The main culprit in falling for this is, AFAICS, Germany; from about the Schröder administration and onwards.
Economically I'd say the oligarchy is so wealthy and diversified in Russia that it doesn't hurt them that much. Russia does have much to gain in this and yeah it could lose some money. It's a shot across the bow for western political alliances. Let's hope it stays that way.
World War II was suicidal for Germany too, that was part of how it happened, sane observers knew it was idiotic for them to start a war and assumed it wouldn't happen as a result.
Putin is Slobodan Milošević with less hair and a nuclear arsenal. Milošević was clearly a clever man but what was Milošević's end game? Did Milošević expect to die in a cell in the Hague?
Much can be said about the causes and effect (invasion of Ukraine) and Russias motivation.
If you look at this with Russian eyes there is much history to give cause.
From the promises of no NATO expansion in the 90s, to Russias (perceived) bad treatment by the west.
To the Wests unwillingness to accept Russia's need for security (from the russian perspective).
In essence Russia has chosen a Ukrainian hill to fight on, and that hill is no more eastward expansion of western powers/alliances or unions.
The more direct initiation of this conflict was the EU which was to enter into an Association agreement with Ukraine in 2013.
When the signing of this agreement didn't go through you had the Euro Maidan protest in Ukraine and the Russian puppet government where thrown out as a result. In response to this Russia backed 2 break out regions in the east of Ukraine and annexed/claimed Crimea with sevastopol(navy base).
So the endgame here, no matter the cost it seems is that Russia defines Ukraine to be in its sphere of influence and will not accept any encroachment by western powers - so Putin is basically saying back off.
Georgia also tried to align itself more towards the west and agreed to become a NATO member and the Russian response was resolute back in 2008 as well.
Obviously there might be a number of other reasons, this is just what I have gathered over the years and I am by no means a expert.
I find the rationale for Russia's aggression fuzzy at best, but I think to view this as a Russia versus NATO or Russia versus Ukraine is, perhaps, less helpful than it first appears.
In short, I suspect this may be Putin's way of applying pressure to Russian elites. The actions proceeding from him appear desperate (i.e. the brazen assassination attempt of Nalvany) and suggest that Putin feels much less secure than his strongman portrayal suggests.
This war achieves something Putin lacks hegemony over, restricting the lifestyles and wealth of Russia's nomadic elite (and especially their assets). Elite members of Russian society will almost surely be targets of Western sanctions. This may secure Putin and his cronies and ensure a desirable transition of power by kneecapping potential contenders of the Russian throne (for lack of a better word). No doubt western sanctions will be leaky and allow some elites through relatively unscathed, but it may restrict their latitude of choice sufficiently.
I think this is Putin versus the elites. Elites who may be feeling comfortable usurping Putin and installing someone pliant to their interests. Putin may be simply reminding them of what he is capable of.
I suspect Ukraine was selected due to the presence of a large minority of citizens neutral or proponents of Russian rule. Other former Soviet states seem much more reluctant to be Russian subjects. I think Russia is simply conquering territory of peoples who will not oppose its rule.
Perhaps Putin is insane, or delusional, but evaluating public actions without knowing what went on behind closed doors feels too rash.
First I've read of this line of thinking. The rational makes sense and nothing seems glaringly wrong with this scenario. To your last point I believe it's also that it secures his corridor to Crimea and will secure the three pipelines that run through Ukraine. Supply of gas is a point of leverage Putin has on Europe. Securing the channels for it and also of the second largest source of reserves (Ukraine's) furthers to solidify that point for him.
>" Elite members of Russian society will almost surely be targets of Western sanctions. This may secure Putin and his cronies and ensure a desirable transition of power ..."
I don't understand this. Putin and his cronies are the elite. And by extension the children and other extended family of those cronies are the elite. That's what the oligarchy system is.
There is 0% chance that NATO intervenes military, even without the fact that Putin basically told the world that any country that intervenes will be nuked.
Regarding economic sanctions: yes Russia will suffer from them, but the thing is that it is impossible to know how high Putin values the prospect of dissolving Ukraine into Russia, so it's pointless to try to reason about it (not that I'm saying you shouldn't).
Putin is 70 years old. He might just feel like he hasn't done enough with his life and decides to go all in, who knows?
People on HN tend to be in denial about the current state of the world, but I don't think Putin is.
We're already starting to see some food shortages across the globe due to climate change, this will only intensify. Together Russia and Ukraine produce 29% of the worlds wheat exports. As climate change worsens food will become as big of a concern as oil.
We are also running out of oil, and not for the naively optimistic reasons most people hope. We're not getting "greener" we're depleting resources and oil still runs economies.
If Russia secures Ukraine they will also secure a place in the end game of civilization, radically altering the power dynamics of the EU.
The point of all this is there is a lot more at stake here than people realize (or are willing to admit). Russia has a lot to gain by control of Ukraine, and therefore can also justify tremendous risk. They have a powerful nuclear arsenal, and are likely more willing to use it than ever before.
MAD only works if you have a future that nuclear war risks throwing away. People that understand energy and climate understand that these things are going to very rapidly change the world stage. All of our futures are at risk, and the time to secure a spot is now. People on HN might be deluded in to thinking "this is fine" but I very much doubt Putin shares this naivete.
On the other end of all this, NATO countries have lived in relative security for a long time. They are still largely terrified of nuclear threat and I believe many of them don't fully realize the situation we're in. Liberal democracies likely have plenty of people in power that really believe Germany is near a truly green future.
I absolutely believe Putin is willing to go nuclear if necessary and I do not believe NATO is really ready to go nuclear in return. I don't believe the US would immediately attack Russia even if Russia wiped Paris off the map, because doing so would guarantee we are all wiped off the map. There is a risk asymmetry here which weakens MAD and give Putin a lot of power, especially if his immediate goal is simply to take Ukraine.
> I don't believe the US would immediately attack Russia even if Russia wiped Paris off the map, because doing so would guarantee we are all wiped off the map.
France also has nuclear weapons, estimated as the fourth largest stockpile in the world. Even if the rest of NATO were to hesitate Moscow would already have been hit unilaterally by the french in retaliation. No one is going to fold here.
> The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss.
I don't think they saw the risk as high. Crimea was their 'soft-launch' to test the waters and find out what would happen. Answer - not very much. Effectively they invaded and took over a country and everyone tut-tutted and did nothing about it. Given that, I'm assuming that they didn't think the international reaction would be as strong as it is.
Obviously they miscalculated, but if the whole thing had been over in 48 hours with little resistance would it have been as strong as it is now or would there have been an effective shoulder shrug like there was about Crimea? I don't think it would be the same, but I believe the conflict being dragged out has made the reaction worse (well done Ukraine).
Putin, as a dictator, doesn’t necessarily respond to the same voices and lobbies that an American administration would. Sure he’d like Russia to be economically stronger, but his own situation will always be fine so it’s hard to care about a few sanctions. Territory and USSR’s old glory though, that talks to a dictator.
You also have to think that this plan was started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. There was no going back from that point on. Ukraine was only growing stronger and angrier at Russia. You either assimilate them, or withdraw. The latter is not very Russian. So it is possible that the Russian gov also saw this move as inevitable not to lose face after what they started 8 years ago, and they will now suffer the consequence of western sanctions.
What is sad really, is that China doesn’t give a fuck.
> What is sad really, is that China doesn’t give a fuck.
They give loads. They are watching from the sidelines, committing to nothing but learning a lot, and thinking about how they will proceed with Taiwan and the bits they like in South-East Asia.
> Sure he’d like Russia to be economically stronger, but his own situation will always be fine so it’s hard to care about a few sanctions.
Mussolini certainly didn't expect to be hanging by his toes either. Stalin didn't expect someone close to him to dose him with warfarin. Hitler didn't expect to be cowering in his bunker, ending with blowing his brains out. Gaddafi didn't expect the rebels to capture and shoot him. Saddam didn't think he'd end up hiding in a rat infested spider hole and then hung by his adversaries. And so on.
I don’t know where you’re drawing such an assumption from.
Russia has repeatedly invaded its non nato neighbors for years (including Ukraine!) with zero military response from NATO.
Would NATO have the upper hand militarily? Yes, sure. Does NATO have the political will to incur that level of cost? No.
This isn’t “globalist” conspiracy, there is just no appetite for it at any level of society in nato countries. Not in France, not in Germany, not in the US.
There's no country like Russia that is accepting such high risk. Russia is a dictatorship. It's Putin taking risks to settle old scores that he feels weren't addressed when the Soviet union collapsed as a way to distract from Russia's severe internal problems.
Putin sees the west as weak. Germany has a new leader. France is about to have elections. The UK is still dealing with Brexit. The EU is fractured with Poland and Hungary and has no out. The US is so divided that a previous president is encouraging Putin to invade and the current president is likely to lose the House and the Senate very shortly.
This is the perfect time if you believe the west is weak. The problem is that what's next on the menu (maybe after Moldova? But that's not very tasty, sorry friends!) Are all NATO members.
And.. Putin lives in the echo chamber you create when you're a dictator who regularly throws people out of windows to their death. He might decide it's time to test NATO. And that's world war territory.
But you'll always be lost if you assume there is a them. There's no them. There's Putin. Read his speech from last night, this thinking and desires are very clear.
> "The US is so divided that a previous president is encouraging Putin to invade"
I've started hearing this a lot this morning and I don't see where Trump actually said this. From what I can tell he's blaming the current administration for allowing this to happen and saying that Putin is brilliant for taking advantage of Biden and outsmarting him. Seems like he's primarily calling Biden inept rather than encouraging Putin to go further.
Exactly what Putin's always maintained: that Ukraine joining NATO is a red line, so they're preventing Ukraine joining NATO.
> The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss.
The risk of NATO intervention is exactly zero. NATO hasn't done shit except attack random non-NATO countries (Serbia, Libya, Syria, etc...). What did they do when Turkey invaded Cyprus? Nothing.
US-led NATO is sacrificing Ukraine in order to get at Russia, the real question is why getting at Russia is so important? Ukraine could have joined NATO in the 1990's, or 2008, or NATO could have given them a guarantee of security. But no, instead the EU and NATO rolled out some long road-map and antagonized Russia along the way.
Hell, why didn't the west try to integrate Russia when Gorbachev and Yeltsin were amenable to the idea? Or when Putin was trying to increase cooperation with GWB's US government before the Color Revolutions?
Edit - for those downvoting me, it's obvious the west sold-out Ukraine. They forced Ukraine to leave an economic cooperation union with Russia in order to have more European integration (Yanukovych wanted both FYI) but didn't provide a road-map to join the EU, they sold them on NATO membership but without any actual guarantees, etc... Why isn't the west defending Ukraine?
Edit2 - also Joe Biden is useless. What was the point of all his warnings? What was the point of every western country pledging to "support" Ukraine? Now the news is talking about Biden announcing "sanctions". No real support. What's the point?
It already was the case since 2014, NATO wouldn't accept a country which isn't at peace because they'd be forced to intervene and that would mean a war between Russia and NATO, Russia didn't need further intervention for that
I thought this part of Putin's address on the 21st was surprising and interesting if true
> "Moreover, I will say something I have never said publicly, I will say it now for the first time. When then outgoing US President Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000, I asked him how America would feel about admitting Russia to NATO.
> I will not reveal all the details of that conversation, but the reaction to my question was, let us say, quite restrained, and the Americans’ true attitude to that possibility can actually be seen from their subsequent steps with regard to our country. I am referring to the overt support for terrorists in the North Caucasus, the disregard for our security demands and concerns, NATO’s continued expansion, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and so on. It raises the question: why? What is all this about, what is the purpose? All right, you do not want to see us as friends or allies, but why make us an enemy?"
Putin probably views it as a price tag. The cost of invading is lower than the benefits of invading.
One benefit is that China (supposedly) approves of this invasion. So it's possible that the sanctions won't have as much of an impact as they otherwise might've.
As others have pointed out, there is no risk of NATO retaliation due to Russia's nuclear arsenal. If China also reduced the risk of sanctions, then the net result is that there's very little downside for Russia to invade.
If we want to make a difference, we need to think of ways to make it a net loss for Putin to invade. Right now it's a net benefit.
Hm. I'm not sure it's as rational of that. Do the benefits of invading really pay off? Sure, the slow escalation over the last two months have made it possible for Russia to get a preview and understanding of what the sanction cost etc is.
Maybe he views it as a price tag but in a different way - it has a cost, but what use is resources/money if you can't use it to do what you want? I.e it has a big cost but it's how we wants to use the resources he has at hand, no matter the bottom line.
What Russia is doing is a defensive move. Russia wants to ensure the safety of its people, not to expand its land. Sadly the majority of all this disturbance is because of USA manipulations... It's not their first time (Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, ...) and I doubt it's the last time.
I think the only thing that makes sense is Putin's unchecked power (inside Russia) has essentially made him not give a damn anymore. He's rich and powerful and reaching end of his life. He might be physically ill - we don't know. And this is his chance to try to rebuild the USSR consequences be damned.
His power outside Russia seems largely unchecked as well. He still has Crimea and he's probably only a few years away from having another powerful political ally in the US White House (which I'd argue is worse than having an ineffective opponent).
Russia has predicted that the wests sanctions will be mild because they depend on Russia for oil and wheat. Everyone is more afraid of a recession than of future wars. Are they right? Would you be willing to risk your retirement investments from your faang jobs to sanction Russia? Or do you think it’s worth the cost to help discourage future military actions? Honestly curious what individuals think here
>If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO).
This is extraordinarily unlikely. Nuclear Weapons are in the mix which in my opinion closes the possibility of any actual confrontations between Nuclear Armed nations. I don't think any of the involved partied are actually suicidal so this doesn't seem a possible endgame.
The risk of a NATO military intervention is non-existent. Biden said it explicitly.
Wrt economic reprisals, Putin probably did the math and found it acceptable. They might be kicked out of SWIFT, they will probably get closer to China.
> Putin probably did the math and found it acceptable
I assume military belligerence, aggression is about domestic political power moves. Meaning, in this case, Putin's calculus gives more weight to tightening his grip on Russia than any economic impacts.
--
IIRC, studies have shown that economic sanctions empowers the hardliners. The hardships impacting the citizens drives them to embrace the hardliners more. Also, the sanctions expand their internal domestic inequity.
So while I totally understand the European and US response to Russia -- what else are they gonna do? -- the cynic in me knows it'll prove counter productive long term.
Nor do I support military involvement. That option is even worse.
"The stability of the EU’s energy supply may be threatened if a high proportion of imports are concentrated among relatively few external partners. In 2019, almost two thirds of the extra-EU's crude oil imports came from Russia (27 %), Iraq (9 %), Nigeria and Saudi Arabia (both 8 %) and Kazakhstan and Norway (both 7 %). A similar analysis shows that almost three quarters of the EU's imports of natural gas came from Russia (41 %), Norway (16 %), Algeria (8 %) and Qatar (5 %), while over three quarters of solid fuel (mostly coal) imports originated from Russia (47 %), the United States (18 %) and Australia (14 %)."
Exactly. Things have not gone very well in Russia in recent years. Average people getting poorer. Many casualties in Covid after population has been going down already for longer time. Russia's economy being pretty small internationally if you take the size of the country into account.
Putin just wants to move domestic attention away from all the misery that people will hold him reponsible for. Now war will dominate the agenda. And if someone complains about life getting worse, it's the war, not the incapable president.
I think this is merely an attempt to regain territories that Putin and Russian leadership see as "theirs". These are territories that were previously part of the Soviet Union or Warsaw pact and before that were part of the Russian empire. This is an old and deeply seated belief about what they consider their traditional sphere of influence. This likely includes nations like Poland and Finland which were under the thumb of Russian hegemony until recently in historical terms.
However not all of these nations are within their grasp because many have joined NATO since the fall of the iron curtain. The ones that haven't have mostly been for the most part brought back within Russian influence through political manipulation. Belarus is a good example. The leadership there a little more than proxies for the Kremlin. Ukraine was like that until 2014 when its people chose self determination and overthrew their Russian puppet. This invasion is the result. If Russia can't have its puppet states through non-violent means then it will take them by force.
most likely Putin and his cronies are too isolated from reality, i.e. the information they receive is filtered/doctored to fit whatever they expect. Not dissimilar to the kings of old, or Dictators like Hitler, or Fidel
Sociologist Greg Yudin explained what the leadership might think in an article[1] (he wrote the same on Facebook in Russian on January 19).
TL/DR: Putin and the exKGB elites are dissentful of the cold war lost to the US, see NATO as a direct threat (even though military generals don't think it is), and the internal dissent with Putin seems to them inspired from abroad. They were shocked by Libyan rebel and by the Ukrainian in 2014. Of course, the only thing they do is brute force, and every step they make only makes the conflict more real.
Regarding the common folk, here's a survey[2] from December or January. TL/DR: they accepted the propaganda's POV that it's all the West's fault. When shown evidence of earlier military build-up, they'd suggest it was fake news.
IMHO the only logical explanation is either that Putin is truly delusional (which doesn't seem very far fetched if you saw his 1h speech/theater) or he wants to reinstate a soviet union'ish government (just consider how he dealt with oligarchs that didn't comply with him)
It is the right timing for Putin as he is betting NATO, Europe and the US will not intervene due to their recovery from the pandemic, as their (and global) weak economic situation can worsen.
War means higher oil prices due to decreased supply, lifting the Russian economy (60% of its exports), while if the US intervenes it will mean further supply chain disruptions and higher inflation - as seen in 1980s: oil price spike, gov. overspending.
Putin is testing the new administration, while China is watching on the sidelines over Taiwan.
Sanctions (by US, Europe, Japan etc rather than NATO) are going to mean Putin supporters can't spend their money in Paris, London, or New York, their companies (and Russia) can't sell bonds on the international money markets, and (possibly in the future) sell oil and gas to the west. If things got nastier then Russia could be possibly be cut off from SWIFT and the rest of the global financial system too.
Aside from providing arms I doubt we're going to see much else from NATO. That of course assumes Russia won't do anything truly diabolical.
Putin's playing a long game here and on an economic front he's likely betting most of the sanctions won't stick. With 2024 looming large I wouldn't be surprised to a gradual reset in US-Russia relations depending on the election result.
It's really not about Russia, it's about Putin desire to be a famous dictator like Stalin and Hitler.
He already got high-score as a billionaire dictator of Russia with gigantic palaces and whatnot. He already did some 'small' wars and expanded Russia's territory.
Now he wants to play big and defeat a major country and be considered a major player like USSR was.
Your opinion is very biased and without a strong foundation. Here on hackernews we expect to have in depth detailed discussions where we try to unravel certain actions. In this why Russia invaded Ukraine.
The risk of NATO intervention is extremely low considering Ukraine is not in NATO. The whole NATO narrative was just Russian propaganda to try and justify Putins land grab. Russia wants Ukraine back and are willing to take it by force thats all that is happening here, there is no big complicated global politics here just more cold war fallout.
What Putin is doing to Ukraine right now is absolutely horrific.. but quite frankly, NATO intervention is unlikely and the Ukraine is going to be taking the L here.
This isn't a 1-dimensional scale (NATO > Russia). China can always weigh in. Europe can have mixed reactions. etc. That's how world wars start, which would be catastrophic for everyone. Nukes are also on the table if Putin really feels cornered.
Economic sanctions won't deter Putin. Europe still has to deal with them for energy, and a pro-west Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia. (Imagine if Mexico were to join the Russian Federation.) This is Russia's sphere of influence, which has historical precedent. Stalin's post WWII foreign policy was to maintain a buffer zone in eastern Europe.
Further, Ukraine has little real geopolitical value to the west. They're not a major trade partner, they don't have strategic resources, or control strategic ports. The west only wants Ukraine in order to gain leverage against Russia.
If you're wondering what the catalyst was, this is basically retaliation for 2014. [0] Russia believes the west is responsible for the revolution that ousted their puppet.
February 22nd, 2014 - protesters control Kyiv and Yanukovych has fled to Russia. [1]
Almost exactly 8 years later (Feb 23rd) this happens.
We have to assume Russia has been unable to "counter coup" Ukraine and regain a foothold, thus leading to this drastic action.
Putin has threatened severe consequences if any other nation meddles in the war, but he's not out for conquest. His mentality is simply: "I'd rather wreck Ukraine before letting it fall into the hands of the west." [2]
Putin will likely stop once the message is received.
I buy every one of your arguments except "A pro-west Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia," and I think this one deserves significant pushback:
How is this not the case for Latvia and Lithuania (not to mention Estonia), which are both NATO members directly bordering Russia, and in fact separating them from their Kaliningrad exclave? On the other hand, if those countries _are_ an existential threat to Russia, then why is Russia "starting" with Ukraine?
More to the point, who gets to decide what makes for an existential threat? Doesn't "existential" mean "at risk of destruction from"? Does anybody really suppose that a Ukraine that is pro-west, or even belongs to NATO, poses a direct threat of invading/destroying Russia? This sort of language frustrates me, because it seems to carry more heat than light. To your specific hypothetical, I would not welcome a pro-Russia Mexico, but I would not consider it to be an existential threat to the US for precisely the reasons I suggest here - a pro-Russia Mexico does not mean a Mexico that is even somewhat likely to invade the US.
Russia (Putin) is doing this now because Nato members are experiencing internal political discord, and the alliance itself is not presenting a unified front. The past US president threatened to stop aid to Ukraine unless they produced evidence to be used against his political opponent. Germany is tied to Russian gas. Internally, member state politics are reflecting and fomenting social division. Russia chairs the UN Security Council. The world is grappling with Covid.
This move by Russia is intentionally timed because countries themselves struggle to act with a unified voice, much less transnational alliances.
And because the US has a weak president, weakest in decades. Biden also started with a political gaffe, in his first week he lifted the Trump-era ban on the NS2 project for no apparent gain.
Trump might admire Putin as a leader, but he actually shored up the eastern flank of NATO and banned the NS2 pipeline, which Biden rushed to open back up.
Russia is in a lose-lose situation. I think the potential consequences for it are greater than it would appear here. The greater risk (to Russia) is that this will have a long-term effect similar to Napoleon's Grand Armée, which had the effect of coalescing nation-states and national identities across Europe. This invasion will have the effect of bringing France and Germany closer together. There were already grumblings from both PMs that they weren't so sure about having their foreign policy on the matter dictated by the U.S. And that points to a real kicker. Germany doesn't lose wars when it fights on one front, but always loses wars when it fights on two fronts.
You contrast this with the knowledge and memory of 1931 (when Germany was in no shape to fight a war) and 1941 (we all know), Russia does indeed have much to fear from NATO, even though NATO doesn't seem capable of threatening it today.
So on one hand, Russia does not want to coalesce a threat to it in Western Europe. On the other hand, Western Europe has already come to its doorstep. I think there's a lot of people who are legitimately asking, why are they doing this, and why now? I think you should listen to what Putin says (without reading the media commentary on it), and read between the lines. It should also be considered that Macron forced Biden to offer direct talks with Putin. That seemed rather telling. Consider the domestic situation in the U.S. Put two and two together, and also that Obama mis-stepped when he said that chemical weapons were a red line in Syria. There isn't really so much a "global elite" or just "military industrial complex" as there are heads of state, their diplomacy and spy corps, diplomatic backchannels, and then the human element. Something happened, we don't know what, but from the effect, it seems obvious enough.
Ultimately, Putin knows that the nuclear card is time-limited. Originally, they were the U.S./NATO's bulwark against the USSR. Now they are Russia's card vs the West.
Nukes are only useful if they can be delivered to their target. We've been living in a world where they have made major wars too dangerous to be waged, and the state of technology has been like that for the entirety of our lifetimes, and we don't remember it any other way. But history shows that the balance between offensive weapons and defensive weapons swings back and forth. Indeed in Israel they are steadily gaining credible (and cheaper) ABM. When that nuclear card is undone, I think we will see some terrible wars recurring through the world because a whole lot of geopolitical tension will be released.
Putin is calculating for that. Russia's only reliable defense is strategic depth. Something has pushed him to err on the side of possibly uniting Western Europe. There again, he may be ironically counting on the U.S./U.K., which have historically not been too favorable to a solid Franco/German-led EU. But the influence of the U.S./U.K. may further wane in this matter, and we are seeing a real gambit. Putin cannot possibly know. He is making a decision based on imperfect knowledge.
Maybe the interesting bits are the other players here. What will be the ultimate effect on France/Germany/EU? And what about China? This puts them in a tough spot and they seem to be caught a tad flat-footed. I bet that underneath all the official rhetoric and alliances talk, the rest of the world is pretty "annoyed" at the dynamic between the U.S. and Russia, both of them troubled/declining empires whose "traditional" power structures are stirring for legitimacy. It's been some interesting times.
Long story short, Putin's plan is, depending on how Ukraine goes, to further attack Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, maybe Finland (they'll join NATO by the end of the year if not sooner as will Sweden), maybe Poland , and push the United States and UK out of Europe. If Ukraine goes very well, this will be sooner. If Ukraine goes poorly but he still wins and installs a puppet government, it'll be on a longer time frame once he consolidates forces and adds the remnants of the Ukrainian and Moldovan militaries to the Russian and Belarusian ones.
The reasoning here is pretty sound, and the more I think about it the more I come to believe that NATO should be fighting Russia right now - at least deny them air superiority. Russia wants a war, whether NATO wants one or not, so you might as well give it to em' with the other consideration being letting the Russian military get ground down in Ukraine and seeing how that plays out.
What will happen is that if Putin wins Ukraine and invades, say, Latvia, he'll invade and then when NATO responds he will use one or more tactical nuclear weapons on the military bases that forces are responding from. So if NATO is launching air assets from a Polish airbase, he'll nuke that. And then he'll say - let me have what I want or I'll use more. Now what? Will NATO nuke a Russian base in exchange? Will it be a base in Belarus? Ukraine? Russia itself? It's easy to see this spiraling out of control. But if you believe Putin will use nuclear weapons (and I do) the endgame is that he destroys NATO and pushes "western" influence out of continental Europe.
Putin believes there are 3 pillars: US, China, Russia. He does respect the US, but thinks he can win. His goal is to create an ethnostate, similar to China, centered around Russian culture. Taking Kiev is super important to that because despite his rhetoric that Ukraine isn't a state or whatever, it is the historical cultural home of the Russian people. So he's going to want that to create a new shared ideology around the glory of the Russian people. He'll then look to cut out the US, UK, and any "liberal" sympathies.
> What about sanctions?
He doesn't care. He doesn't want to integrate with the US or the west. Russia has plenty of natural resources. Ukraine gives them plenty of farmland. Why would he need western money?
Currently we're playing along just like he planned. We tried negotiating, he went through the motions. We enacted sanctions, which he knew would happen. They shut down Nordstream 2, which he knew would happen (and leave Europeans with higher energy prices). And now he's just executing his plan and NATO is saber rattling about defending NATO territory, which... goes back to the Baltic question. Will NATO go to nuclear war over those countries? I think conventional war absolutely. But when Putin nukes a Polish air base or a Romanian one. Now what?
So we need(ed) to do something unsuspected. And I think the only option was to immediately go to war and force the issue on NATO's term. Unfortunately I think NATO is in a bad position.
Oh... and that's without literal traitors like Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and others who are "pro-russia" while we're about to be in a war with Russia. So now we have to figure out how to deal with those people too.
The Russian Army is not the powerhouse the Soviet Army once was, relative to NATO. If the Russians go after Estonia/Lithuania/Latvia/Poland/etc conventional NATO forces can stop said invasions, no need to launch nukes.
Hell the German military might do some actual fighting for once if their Polish buffer state is threatened.
I disagree. These plays have been available since the establishment of the nuclear deterrent. The soft-peddling from the US and NATO is indicative of their respect for the deterrent. People calling for NATO to counterattack are delusional. NATO and Russia still benefit from minimizing shared borders, so I don't think Russia will annex Ukraine and instead will leave it demilitarized.
This whole Trump being pro-russia needs to die. It's so dumb. If repeated enough times it'll become truth unfortunately.
Trump looked to increase NATO defenses and aggressively pump oil and gas to crash the global price of Russia's chief source of foreign exchange. That's hardly pro russian. Ironically, Biden comes in and kills oil production in the US, forcing us to then rely on external oil markets for our resources which gives Putin money to pull shit like this.
Trump also unilaterally left the assymetrical US-Russia missile accord. Hardly pro russian.
Trump ordered lethal force to be used against large numbers of Russian mercenaries who attacked a U.S. installation in Syria. He also sold offensive weapons to Ukraine.
> They shut down Nordstream 2, which he knew would happen
I heard that the German president's speech mentioned Nordstream being done. He didn't specify Nordstream 2 as expected. I read somewhere that referring to both Nordstream 1 & 2 caught Putin by surprise.
>Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily.
Especially now, after NATO's quick and easy victory in Afghanistan it's clearly seen that Russia is far behind NATO militarily. Putin is just stupid and suicidal.
In most traditional contexts, risk is defined as severity x probability.
You outlined the severity of NATO intervention. That is to say, you only described half of the equation. It could very well be that Russia assumes the probability of NATO intervention is disproportionately low, meaning the risk calculation is also low. Maybe they think that balance outweighs the economic risk.
Russia has no other choice. When USSR in 1962 [0] did something similar to USA, USA was not happy and it could end up really bad. How is this situation is different? National security is paramount.
I keep hearing this comparison. Tell me, when has NATO threatened to place nuclear missiles in Ukraine? Because that's the only way this comparison holds water.
No NATO country has ever invaded Russian soil and never will due to their massive nuclear arsenal.
I'm willing to admit Putin may have convinced himself and some Russians that there's a national security concern, but the evidence is severely lacking.
Some economic perspective. The Russian economy is 10x the size of the Ukrainian. The US economy is 14x larger than Russia's. The Canadian economy is larger than Russia's. The combined economy of all of NATO is 25x the size of Russia's. This does not even include Pacific allies like Japan and ANZUS.
For historical perspective, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the US economy was 7x larger than theirs. At the end of WW2 the red army had 12 million soldiers in uniform compared to the estimated 120K Russian soldiers now invading Ukraine.
> Some economic perspective. The Russian economy is 10x the size of the Ukrainian.
This is the fact that matters.
> The US economy is 14x larger than Russia's. The Canadian economy is larger than Russia's. The combined economy of all of NATO is 25x the size of Russia's. This does not even include Pacific allies like Japan and ANZUS.
That doesn't matter. Many countries may have larger economies than Russia, but none of them have been willing to translate that into anything that can counter Russia's actions.
IIRC, the US gives far more military aid to Israel than it has to Ukraine, and it's too late to change that. Germany sent Ukraine 5,000 hats for its defense.
> but none of them have been willing to translate that into anything that can counter Russia's actions.
It gives perspective to how Russia knows not to mess with anyone with a larger military or economic presence. These countries aren't getting involved because doing so means they have a lot more economic prosperity to lose compared to Russia.
The count of soldiers doesn't matter; you can only fit so many on a battle line anyway and a war in which you run through a full battle line of infantry is so costly that even that insane regime wouldn't go for it. The red army required millions of soldiers because it ran through them so quickly due to their battle doctrine. This conflict will be nothing like World War 2.
The size of the economy doesn't so much matter, either - there's a limit to how much aid economic power can provide to a nation at war, especially one with such deep connections to illicit markets like Russia. It's really anyone's game if war breaks out over central Europe.
That economy means we can pump out more ranged weapons than the Russians can. We could literally keep shooting missiles until they ran out of things to block them with and keep shooting until there's nothing left.
It matters at least in the sense that Russia's modest forces are so hyper exposed right now.
The US and NATO could trivially cripple Russia's army in the field. They're entirely unprepared for it and they're going to be operating far from their optimal protection (embedded in Russia where defenses are far greater).
The question is, when would Putin throw the nuclear card on the table.
I'm in favor of the US and NATO (or just the US by itself) immediately attacking Russia's forces inside of Ukraine and destroying the Belarus command structure, including assassinating Lukashenko and pushing a revolution there by any means necessary. Russia is weak militarily outside of their borders and the US could trivially defeat them. It would take most of 2022 for Russia to regroup for a full force projection into Ukraine if they're under attack from the US while doing it, and I doubt they have the manufacturing capabilities right now to sustain (that would take time to enhance).
>> What you seem to be saying is that we should be willing to fight...
Who is this "we"? For all the condemnation and claims about sanctions, everyone saw this coming and did not a damn thing. If sanctions actually are imposed, Putin can just turn off the gas to Europe. If anyone wants to engage militarily (and Europeans rightly had enough of that) they have to worry about nuclear weapons.
I see this as a big eye opener to the other European "Union" countries when they see nobody actually has Ukraine's back.
A country's economy may be a good indication of how long a battle of attrition would last, possibly, but at the same time, money is not really that important if you mobilize a country and have the raw resources.
In the era of industrialization economic size was a proxy for the capability of a state to mobilize its industrial capacity for war. Does that still hold true?
Kharkiv, 25 miles to Russia.
Just want to say that we are strong, we are confident about our army and I hope that everything will be fine.
I'm sorry that I share content like this on this platform, but that's my reality
Hi, I have friends both in Russia and in Ukraine who live in Lvov. I'm very sorry about what is happening and pray for the lives of people in Ukraine who will suffer from yet another senseless war. I will refrain from commenting on geopolitics but Ukraine is an independent and free nation and no amount of Russian aggression will ever change that.
My great grandfather was from outside L'viv, and almost as a little irony he is polish (and Poland was controlling l'viv at that time).
Not to make light of the situation, but the fact that you refer to l'viv as Ukraine (yes, I know we all agree it is) is a miniature proof that things do change and the way we look at things can be modified.
> we are strong, we are confident about our army and I hope that everything will be fine
I hope this correctness of this assessment has no impact on your safety and well-being. If it does, the people in this thread cheering you on who are not 25 miles away from the Russian border should be ashamed of themselves and you would be well advised to make contingency plans for alternative scenarios were everything will not be fine, say one where Ukraine faces complete military defeat within days.
God bless your people and army. I am so sorry, that I don't feel enough support being sent from the western world - from medicine to weapons and sanctions.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said this 6 days ago:
> If Russia enters Ukraine, it is assumed that this will lead to large numbers of refugees fleeing the country. Amnesty International warns of a humanitarian catastrophe.
> But Sweden will not be a major recipient country, according to Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. She believes that the responsibility lies with other countries.
I'm so sorry. But the truth is that you don't stand a chance. Russia will get what it wants (it got the support of China that will offset any sanctions the the West might impose)
Ukraine will make Russia suffer though as they seem very determined to protect their country. And the rest of the world will make Russia suffer economically. So this is a lose-lose situation.
Putin is alienating a lot of ordinary citizens, though. Do you think Ukrainians will peacefully consent to be governed for years after this? There is precedent in history for this kind of outcome, but that wound would be there for a long time.
Stay safe, brother, my thoughts and prayers are with you. I'm Russian and wholeheartedly despise this outrageous war crime act of our so-called government.
Hi Russian friends. Good to see you here and good to read your view.
You might see me se me support Ukraine or be angry about Russia, but rest assured that I have nothing against Russians as a people, only the ones who tries to invade Ukraine etc.
I'm living in the shadow of Russia too and I've just filled my spare water tanks with clean water and I'll fill my car and get some extra fuel for my cooking stove later today.
I've already been training for a few months now, but I'm still hoping for a good miracle to avoid a full European war.
For the rest of HN, don't forget the thing most preppers seems to ignore: as far as possible, be friendly towards everyone. If others want you to survive that should help a lot.
Have a nice day everyone.
Edit: when/if this ends maybe we can meet at the server again and play CS:GO or something :-)
Edit 2: if anyone wonders, the official rule for prepping here in Norway includes stocking up with 9L of clean water for each person in the household, keeping some food that has long shelf life, radio, lights, batteries, some way to heat food and rooms even if the electricity disappears and to cooperate with neighbors if you cannot fix everything yourself (e.g. not all houses here have alternative heating sources except electricity).
The problem is, I don’t know anything about Ukraine. I have money, and I can book an Airbnb in a neighboring country for them. But I suspect (apropos nothing) they’ll discover that there’s no way to leave the country through traditional means.
Does anyone know if the buses are still running? Can they get out of the country? If not, my fallback idea is to help them plan a way to escape on foot. But which part of the border should they try to cross?
What I really need is for someone local to Ukraine to DM me so that I can ask some basic questions. If you know anyone, please forward them:
I'll tweet updates there (and I'll post them here as edits for the next hour or so.)
--
Updates:
- Someone DM'ed me on Telegram and mentioned that they're trying to do the same thing. They were thinking about evacuating them to Germany by "sending them an official invite, but the German embassy seems to be closed."
> If you know people who want to leave Kyiv, don't drive to Zhytomyr on the M06. Russian air assault will be taking cross roads. Go south to Bila Terskva to Berdichev to Vinnitsya to Kemenytsky. Fastest evac: go to Chernivsti crossing to Romania.
I’m trying to help my programmer friend escape Ukraine. Since smuggling is a hack, I’d like to ask HN for suggestions on how to pull this off.
His elderly father is being drafted. I got a DM from a mutual asking me whether there’s anything I could do for them. I have money but no knowledge of the country; they live there but have no money.
During WW2, various affluent people helped smuggle Jews out of Germany. I’d like to help my friend’s family in a similar way. But the reality of doing this is very different than the stories from history.
Currently my only plan is to yeet some cash at them and say good luck. But I was hoping to come up with something better.
I could book an airbnb for their family in a neighboring country, for example.
Does anyone know if the busses are still running? Is it possible to leave Ukraine right now via traditional means, or would they have to hoof it on foot? If they need to walk, does anyone have a suggestion on which part of the border might be friendly for an elderly family to cross?
I know this sounds unlikely, but given the choice between unlikely and “do nothing,” I’ll bet on unlikely.
I don't know the current situation, hopefully someone else can tell you that. But the good thing is Ukrainians can travel ( with a biometric Passport) to EU for 90 days and then see further.
One good travel Option (was, but I think should be still, AFAIK only planes stopped because they could be shot down) to travel by train to Lviv, take a taxi to Przemysl in Poland for maybe 50€ worth, and then take a train from there to for example Berlin.
I recommend Transferwise [1](now just Wise) for getting money to someone in Ukraine. They've got low fees and the ability to send money to Privatbank cards. Used them many times, while in Ukraine and while in the US.
Indeed, in the local news I could hear the Polish gov is preparing hotels and other accommodation places for people who will flee away from the conflict. I don't know the details but watch out, because there might many hotel owners, whose will want more money than they would usually take for a stay.
Edit: If they would decide leaving their country my very early tip is to download Google Translate with the all locales they know + country where they are. While you can find many people who speak Ukrainian/Russian in central EU countries, it is a priceless help for any foreigner. I had occasion to be a participant of a talk between people, who were writing the phrases on the screen to communicate. Since that moment, I have downloaded Ukrainian locale pack for offline use in Google Translate.
Paracetamol, antibiotics, vitamin C, patches, tooth brush, a lighter or two, a knife and/or scissors, strong and warm clothes, pen and paper, eat soups. I have a pouch to have my papers on my body, not in the pockets. Id start with that. Many other things Id do like take photo of my ID. Get ambassies adressses. Maybe call them, tell them youre coming and hung up.
> "To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: if you do, you will face consequences greater than any of you have faced in history. All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me."
Take a big dose of Realpolitik and leave the "ought to"s behind. There's no nanny to tattle to. Nuclear war is a losing move for us all. Don't encourage it's happening out of some sense of moral justice that will kill billions.
If you're really clever, get all Sun Tzu on him and feed his fears until he chokes on them.
Most bullies are cowards. Threats and ultimatums like that come from a place of weakness. Did you hear America saying anything like that when they invaded Iraq? No, because they weren't scared.
How long do you think Russia can hold out if the entire world sanctions them? Do you think they'd trade Ukraine for trade with every world partner? Bottom line: Russia can only win a physical war - they cannot win an economic war.
This is bait and bad bait at that. The longer Russia continues to provide us with video evidence of their bullying only makes it easier for us to convince undecided countries to sanction Russia to submission.
The reason Putin is invading is because he knows the U.S. is weak, its leadership is politically weak, and there's very little it will do, and even if it does, it doesn't have popular support. It's the effect of clear incentives.
If the U.S. intervenes, a retaliatory cyber op from Russia against critical infrastructure would make america amish again. Then, wait until midterms when the president loses the house and senate and doesn't have the power to muster a draft when China takes Taiwan. This is one of those happening slowly and then all at once events in history I suspect.
Wow, not really. Putin lies all of the time and he is a bully, but he's not kidding when he says there will be retaliations.
Anything the West does directly they have to expect a response.
That said, I think the west should be using 'distance power'.
There are US Global Hawk drones over Ukraine right now doing surveillance, I think it would be reasonable for the US to launch cruise missiles at Russian targets in Ukraine.
The Russians could make things very difficult for ships in the Black Sea however as one opportunity for retaliation.
We just have to hope that Ukrainians can leverage the Javelins and Stingers to great effect and make it painful enough for Putin that he has no choice to step back, but it's impossible to tell, it's just as likely Russia may be able to just smash through Ukranian defences and leave them to some insurgency skirmishes.
He is hinting that he can nuke everyone who will stand against. This is a typical tactic of bullies – to hint death threats, without directly stating them. Also they want to assure you that they can definitely do it, even though they know about the consequences.
Putin is a 69 year old dictator who is realizing his life is over. He's decided to go out with a bang. He obviously does not care about his country since this war will only hurt Russia, it's already had multiple consequences that are directly opposed to his stated goals. He wants to play with his army and tanks.
"Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.
...
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead."
Why would Putin think his life is over? He's 10 years younger than Biden. And, have you ever heard the expressions, "better dead than Red" and "give me liberty or give me death"? People often believe that deeply held principles are more important than mere survival. Similarly Putin might believe that establishing Russia's strength and border security is more important than any short term pain Russia endures. In other words, there's other ways to look at this than as just a pure boss move for his own ego and pleasure.
Putin (and his kgb clique) is loosing grip on the power, the war started to be the only way to rally local support and remain in the power. Small scale, local conflicts are growing in size to appease common people to give them taste of USSR former glory, taste of world power, not decay of corruption riddled aristocracy ruled former empire.
Putin is at the top of the pyramid but he is not the sole ruler of the Russia. Its not like if he dies Russia will magically become exemplary democracy.
There were and still are people lining up and aiming to take his seat, but as long as Putin appears to be strong and gives his underlings enough he will remain on the throne.
It’s sad but my father always told me that the good times we’ve had are unprecedented and they can end faster than we think.
I never believed him growing up, institutions and America seemed infallible. It’s sad to say but I think with global warming, covid, and the general decline of American soft power we’ll see more and more global turmoil
Recent times were largely the result of an unusually unipolar (read: US) world after the USSR collapsed.
In more normal bi- or multi- polar periods (50s - 90s), international order often submitted to great power politics. What was right or legal was less important than who wanted what.
> the general decline of American soft power we’ll see more and more global turmoil
I have argued, tons, that America is making the world more peaceful. It was hard to sell especially to Arab/Muslim countries but without a unipolar power, it's lots of small powers fighting each other for territory.
> institutions and America seemed infallible
Couple that with recklessness. Fatca, CRS, Trade deals, etc... lots of countries got screwed bad and treatment from the masters was as bad and discriminatory as it can get. If people sympathies with Putin, you are doing something wrong.
I wonder how you can believe that knowing all the coups organized by CIA, wars waged by US military everywhere in the world, countries US split in two or more ...etc. it was only safe for USA and its allies. Only difference is war is getting close to western Europe so it's felt more
Is this any different than any other military intervention America watched idly over the past century? Not really. In the "infallible" 1970s-1990s you might be remembering, we were casually ignoring plenty of similar actions around the world that make this present intervention seem pretty benign and slow moving. American soft power was over when the failure of the Korean war made it clear that all that could be done against a major nuclear power is a stalemate.
Does anyone have any projections for how this war will go? Is the Ukrainian military powerful? Will this turn into a guerilla war, or will it go the way of total war? Or will it result in total capitulation?
And another key question. What will Western governments actually do? What if the war gets really bad? Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime? And will this crash the economy?
Good questions, hard to answer. A few quick thoughts. I will try to dispassionately focus on the facts of the military situation as I understand them. That's going to be hard to do, but I'll try. I'm sure there are experts who know much more than I do.
> Does anyone have any projections for how this war will go? Is the Ukrainian military powerful?
There are many projections, though wars are notoriously hard to predict.
Ukraine has a military, but Russia is extremely powerful and has one of the largest militaries in the world. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-... Russia has tons of equipment & everything else it needs to overwhelm Ukraine.
Geography is a key issue in wars, and Ukraine's geography is awful for Ukraine in a Russia/Ukraine conflict. Again, here's my understanding. Ukraine is just a flat plain on the path from Russia, so geography provides relatively little protection to Ukraine. The Dnieper River (which runs basically North/South in the middle of Ukraine) does provide some geographic protection, but by that point Ukraine has lost a huge amount of its territory. Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine) is on the Dnieper river, but it's way to the north near Belarus, and thus Kyiv is relatively easy for Russia to reach via Belarus. The Carpathian mountains in the west and the Crimean mountains in the south make it harder for other countries to help Ukraine. The eastern part of Ukraine has a lot more Russians than the western part, so the eastern parts will be easier for Russia to hold since they'll get more help from the population.
(Binkov uses a sock puppet to lighten an otherwise somber subject.)
> Will this turn into a guerilla war, or will it go the way of total war? Or will it result in total capitulation?
Russia can take whatever it wants from Ukraine, at least initially. Russia's military is just too powerful, and there aren't any serious geographic barriers to prevent Russia from taking whatever it wants in the short term if Russia really wants to do so.
Whether or not it'll become a guerilla war is up to the Ukrainians. However, if the Ukrainians are willing to make it a guerilla war, and that seems likely at least on the western side, they can make Ukraine very hard to hold (at a horrific cost in Ukrainian lives). In the long run, if the Ukrainians are willing to seriously apply guerilla warfare, I think there's a good chance they'll make at least the western side too painful to hold if Russia goes that far.
I would not be surprised if Russia only took part of Ukraine, e.g., the easternmost parts of Ukraine, perhaps up to the Dnieper River, and perhaps also take Kyev. Russia gets lots more land, and it creates fear (which they may interpret as respect) in everyone around them.
> And another key question. What will Western governments actually do? What if the war gets really bad? Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime? And will this crash the economy?
Western governments have already sent in a lot of military gear to help Ukraine. Western governments won't put troops in. They aren't obligated to do so (Ukraine is not a member of NATO), and the geography of Ukraine would make it hard to do anyway. Western governments have made that quite clear.
They'll put in sanctions. They will probably hurt Russia significantly. I think for Putin this is more about honor, and thus any sanctions will probably not be enough by themselves to force Russia out.
One huge problem is that the EU absolutely needs oil. Solar & wind get press, but they aren't enough today (or for years to come). The EU can't heat their homes or move their people without oil. Russia has oil.
Russia is more likely to grab eastern parts or the eastern side of Ukraine (east of the Dnieper). Russia could take the whole country, but is unlikely to keep it permanently due to guerilla resistance, so it either won't try or it will eventually give up western Ukraine. Sanctions by themselves won't be enough, but sanctions + guerilla warfare would plausibly recover at least the western side of Ukraine.
I do think that there will be serious negative consequences long-term for Russia, beyond sanction-related ones. It suddenly gives a powerful reason for other countries to join NATO (such as Finland and Sweden and a rump of Ukraine) and for them all to increase their military spending. It also gives them a very good reason to not trust Russia in the future.
"They'll put in sanctions. They will probably hurt Russia significantly. I think for Putin this is more about honor, and thus any sanctions will probably not be enough by themselves to force Russia out."
Sanctions will have no effect on Russia. Think about it - what physical items does Russia need to obtain that it cannot produce itself or obtain from China.
What physical items does the West need from Russia - gas and oil because the 'net zero' belief in the West has stymied their ability to obtain energy domestically.
If you don't pay the gas bill then you get your gas cut off. If the EU stops transacting with Russia, then it can't pay its gas bill either. And the result will be the same.
The belief in the power of money in the West will be its downfall. Putin doesn't need the West's money. He has as many roubles as he wishes to deploy and the ability to impose whatever level of tax in roubles is required to ensure people sell their labour and output to him within Russia.
War is funded by manpower, energy resources and industrial production, not by US dollars.
The EU could have used some nuclear power alternative. But not depending on war-mingering dictatorships is not as important for them as the possible consequences of a nuclear plant going wrong.
- Russia will want to make this war as short as possible. They have their objectives (occupy Donezk and Luhansk + some more, destroy the offensive power of the Ukranian army and destroy the infrastructure needed for reinforcements ) and then declare the thing a success.
- The US wants it to go on as long as possible, so they will indirectly intervene by financing and supporting any insurgents.
I hope not, because Ukraine borders several NATO countries, and we don't want that to spill over. So I hope the US won't fund insurgents, they can't win anyway.
Sanctions can have no meaningful effect on Russia.
Not selling somebody your tomatoes primarily affects your tomato growers who will go bust, not those buying the tomatoes - particularly if they have plenty of tomatoes internally, can easily produce them or can get them from those lovely tomato growers in China in return for oil and gas.
There's rather too much faith in the power of the mighty US dollar. Quite a few people are going to find out the hard way that electronic impulses on a computer don't mean as much in reality as gas and oil supplies.
You know that arab spring went viral due to lack of wheat imports from Ukraine and Russia due to draught?
Economy is important because it’s felt by ordinary people.
In Moscow there were already pretty big protests. I think Putin made a mistake, he could just install fake democratic government and retire in peace.
Will Ukraine do any sort of fighting back? I ask because it seems to me that the Western politicans are constrained by public opinion. They will not issue major sanctions if they don't have to, they'd rather keep the markets afloat. In my view only real visceral footage of the horror of war could compel the Western publics to actually get mad to the point where the politicians impose serious sanctions on Russian gas exports and banking.
Say Ukraine has ~100.000 trained~ soldiers, 10.000s with experience, and ~100.000 further conscripts, and more veterans/civilians.
It would need to end when russian military has enough presence in cities to make resistance meaningless. In order for russians to move by land into the cities, their tanks and road transports would (at the very least) need to survive handheld anti-tank missiles, of which Ukraine holds thousands, maybe 10s of thousands? Probably, weapons and ammunition will not run out for Ukraine as long as they are willing to put up resistance.
The losses for russia before this might amount to 10.000s?
At some point, losses will force a change of russian leadership, or willingness to fight among Ukrainians runs out.
Nobody is helping ukraine with any military, period. There is zero appetite for yet another military conflict in any western country, especially not with a country armed with nukes and with a madman's hand on the trigger. The response will just be yet more sanctions. If Russia provokes a NATO member then it's time to invest in those doomsday bunkers.
Ukraine has been preparing for this was since 2014. But so has Russia since 2008 (South Ossetia); that's largely what the Syrian excursion was for, to train troops and test new equipment in real combat.
Russia is certainly much more powerful militarily in pretty much every respect: it has significantly more manpower, more and better equipment, and economics to supply it logistically. I don't think there's any chance for Ukraine to win on its own.
That said, Ukraine isn't Syria. It has an air force, and, perhaps more importantly, capable anti-air. It has fairly modern tanks, attack helicopters, and cruise missiles. Russia will certainly take considerable losses taking over.
The other aspect is motivation. On the Russian side, there are certainly people whose dream is coming true right now, but most soldiers - especially not conscripts! - are not really willing to take a bullet in the process of "de-Nazifying Ukraine". I don't expect any massive anti-war resistance, but they won't fight to the end.
On the Ukrainian side, there is a mixed bag. On one hand, most of them - even those whose native language is Russian, who might self-identify as ethnically Russian, and who might even support greater regional and language autonomy etc - don't really want Russia to violently take over. People tend to be motivated to fight desperately regardless of ideology when their cities are burning. But there's also a minority that would really like to repeat what happened back in 2014 in Donetsk and Lugansk (and what was kinda sorta attempted but didn't work out in Kharkov and Odessa), and who genuinely see the Russian forces as liberators. Needless to say, those people will make fine overseers once the fighting is over, and might even help during it.
> I don't think there's any chance for Ukraine to win on its own.
It depends on what you mean by 'win'. Like, of course there's no chance of Ukraine pushing back into Russia, but it's not impossible they do what Finland did and inflict enough pain that Russia pulls back with small gains at best.
It won't crash the economy but combined with really high inflation and having already over-expended QE measures it could lead to a nasty enduring stagflation which is probably worse than a crash.
Ukraine will most likely get steam rolled. They don't have the numbers on their side. However, the west is not going to get directly involved. No one wants this to escalate and risk destabilizing Europe over Ukraine. They'll provide Ukraine with material and diplomatic support. That's about it. Western Europe (or the U.S) isn't going to get into a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine.
>Does anyone have any projections for how this war will go? Is the Ukrainian military powerful? Will this turn into a guerilla war, or will it go the way of total war? Or will it result in total capitulation?
The war was over before it began. The Ukrainian government telling people to take up arms is completely suicidal. War in the 21st century begins and ends with air superiority. Nothing else matters at all. Once air superiority is established, the war is over. And Russia is flying with absolute impunity over all of Ukraine now. The smartest decision is total capitulation at this point. Because Putin will stop at nothing and will not respect any form of ROE. The alternative is Kyiv being reduced to rubble and tens of thousands dead.
Ukrainian military is not exactly weak but Russia severely out-mans and outguns them. It will likely turn into a guerilla war like the US faced in Afghanistan.
> What will Western governments actually do?
Nothing really.
> Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime?
No. Boris Johnson in the UK is already being insulted for his nothing sanctions. I highly doubt the West will go after the assets of Putin and the rest of his oligarchs.
Russia also has separatists supporting them and they can move relatively freely withing the country.
The US did sanction Russia, but is actually more of a sanction against Germany. China might even like an invasion for different reasons, although they probably will call them out on it officially.
You are probably correct that western countries won't do much.
My projections so far have been wrong. I did not expect an actual invasion. I suspect, I'm not the only one.
But given that it did happen, I don't think the Russians will back down now. My guess is that they'll occupy Luhansk and Donetsk with minimal losses while severely reducing the Ukraine's ability to do anything about that. Judging from the events last night, the Ukranian air defenses were basically not very effective and they likely suffered a lot of damage to what little offensive capability they might have had.
The question is what the end game is. It's important to consider all the other countries that border Russia. Georgia for example. Or Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. All former Soviet territory with pro-Russian regimes and some domestic anti Russian sentiments. I'd say that this is a not so subtle hint to those countries to fall in line and do as their told. It would be a mistake to assume that this is just about the Ukraine.
As for the West's response; I think we're seeing it and it seems Putin is neither impressed nor surprised by it so far. I don't think there's much else the West can or will do. I think when the dust settles, the EU will end up re-establishing some level of trade with Russia eventually but the relation will be an uncomfortable one for some time to come. But the gas will keep on flowing, for now.
I do think that proposals for e.g. new natural gas power plants are effectively shelved as of now in the EU. Given what just happened, increasing the EUs dependence on Russia for gas even more than it already is seems not advisable. Once that realization sinks in, I think Russian gas imports will start decreasing pretty rapidly over the next decade as countries move ahead with plans to basically stop burning gas on a much more accelerated timeline than what countries were talking about at COP26 just a few months ago.
Economically, we were overdue for a stock market correction and I think we're in the middle of one now; at least judging from my investment portfolio this morning which is looking like most of last years gains have been wiped out as of this morning. A lot of people are going to have a rough year economically. Especially in Russia.
An ucraine split in half, with Kiev belonging to Russia. What else?
Putin needs just enough territory so that the NATO can't get too much near Russian and a pillow territory to handle future conflicts without touching Russian territory
Ukraine is totally overpowered. No one will intervene in their favor with troops on the ground (the only thing that would truly make a difference). Kiev will fall in 2 months top, Putin will install a puppet government and maybe annex all of the south and luhanks and donetsk and form the new russia oblast.
Hmmm, I was wondering what RT (German version) [0] meant by Putin wanting to denazify the Ukraine ("Putin launches special military operation to protect Donbass and denazify Ukraine"). Since they (Azov) are headquartered in Donetsk Oblast, is it them who Putin wants to permanently remove right now, and is this his purpose for starting this war?
Readit News
Some choice quotes:
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
“However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con...
With "unofficial" translations you will never know if the translators didnt censor/change the meaning somehow.
The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from Europe.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Geography
He claims that without any proof. This maybe would have been true in the 19th century given the technologies for war and power at that time.
But we have the 21st century now. Why should the Ukraine be so important? Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine? Russia is the biggest country with the most sources of raw materials. It has the most nuclear weapons. It has a huge fleet. It is feared by all of its neighbors.
But that all doesn't matter nowadays. Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy. And Russias GDP is as big as Italy. But invading Ukraine wouldn't help Russia to increase its GDP.
And that is why what Zbigniew Brzezinsk writes is outdated nonsense. Everyone who believes that still lives in the 19th century.
You could very well be correct, perhaps the leaders of these countries are living in the 19th century. But the fact that the current leaders of Ukraine, USA and Russia are acting in line with/on these older assumptions makes them relevant still today.
Also there’s plenty of information backing up his claims in the book, you’re welcome to go read it. It’s an excellent window into the way geopolics is rationalised, written by one of the people who have shaped it!
This is not the modern-day version of USSR vs USA. It's the modern version of the Mongol Horde vs Civilization. (No offense to current Mongols; you guys are cool).
Thinking of things in terms of raw GDP is what is getting the west into a total mess. For years now people have said Russia won't do anything and couldn't possibly be a threat because their GDP is so low. China will never be a major player because their GDP per capita is so low.
But that's, frankly, stupid. People in Switzerland pay $20 for a sandwich. People in Vietnam are paying $0.75 for a sandwich that tastes twice as good. People in China are getting locally made phones with the equivalent of US pocket change and riding high speed trains for the cost of a slow and janky NY subway trip. GDP means absolutely nothing outside of international trade within the global sphere. GDP didn't help America beat Afghanistan, one of the absolute poorest countries on earth. It didn't help them beat North Korea or Vietnam either. They still haven't succeeded in removing communism from poverty-stricken, bottom of the barrel GDP Cuba. If Russia decides to keep moving into western Europe, their GDPs mean nothing. Seizing that land just means Russia gets all of what those countries have, forever, without the high price tag.
GDP isn't motivating angry dictators to invade. They're doing it because they can.
Side note: you've used the old-fashioned (and Putin-favoured) english nomenclature for Ukraine as "the Ukraine" in the first sentence, and the Ukraine-preferred nomenclature in the second.
This is actually the crux of the issue in two sentences. Ukraine is a sovereign state, but Putin politically asserts it is merely a territory they control, harking back to a pre-WWII time; Ukraine was a territory regularly divided up and under the control of different neighbouring states as a bargaining chip, gift, settlement, or conquest.
This is I guess why Brzezinski talked about it as it was and as it is. Ukraine used to be passed around and fought over as a set of territories without a home. Post WWII, it is a nation state and its existence as a nation state historically perturbs its neighbours, most notably Russia.
Ukraine still has all the geographical significance it had. It's the second-largest country by land mass in Europe, it is fertile (a nearby breadbasket, geopolitically), it is also mineral rich, etc.
So Brzezinski wasn't wrong to say it was still a source of conflict, a prize, but now being an independent nation state it has the right to defend itself and enter alliances. That makes it a risk strategic point -- even perhaps a pivot -- in a future conflict.
> Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine?
If Russia is to (re)build an "empire", it needs Ukraine to do it, for all the reasons above.
Bold to say Brzezinski wrote nonsense, though. Good for you: put yourself out there as an international statesman.
Russia’s GDP is 25% smaller than the U.S. State of Texas.
It sounds like a joke but it isn’t.
Texas GDP is $2.0 trillion.
Russia GDP is $1.48 trillion.
Most of Russia’s GDP is selling oil and gas which is one of the reasons Putin is able to do this now. Through higher oil prices he’s amassed a war chest of $631 billion in foreign currency reserves that will enable him to weather sanctions. That along with the friendship treaty with China giving them a market to sell their oil and gas and sanctions will prove fairly toothless.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russia-counts-reserve...
Lol being a world power was never about the economy, it had always been about military strength. Americans might think that they are a superpower because they have one of the largest economies in the world, but that’s being totally small-minded and missing the fact that the reason why their economy is that big in the first place is that the purpose of economies is to power the military with networks, talent, and money.
First, you need to understand values of a person, then their goals, then their methods to achieve the goals. 90s in post-USSR countries were a relatively free environment (from state prosecution) and it naturally selected for individuals which wanted as much power as possible and were willing to take it. For these individuals power is given only to those, who are powerful enough to have it, and must be taken from those, who are not powerful enough to keep it. If you are having your power, than it is moral for you to keep it until you don't.
This way of thinking is not something new or unique to post-USSR 90s - we as humanity have lived with this way of thinking for millennia and our thinking gave birth to countless empires and kingdoms. Those, who were powerful enough to be emperors, also had a right to be. Those, who challenged them in their power, would be new emperors, if proven powerful enough, otherwise would be painfully killed, their property and wives taken and their name forgotten. Let's call this mentality a "Cult of a Warrior". When you are living in this mentality, nothing is worse than feeling shame of abandoning your ideals or friends; you must be a truthful Warrior of the Cult until you die. But in the same time you can freely take anything you like which does not already belong to any of your friends, because if somebody is not powerful enough to fight you, than this person is not worthy of keeping this thing in the first place.
Some of us (humans) during a course of time have countlessly discovered and rediscovered that people can be treated as equal in principle, independent on their physical/economic/political power. This arrangement led to a more productive economic environment where zero-sum-game of Cult of a Warrior changed to a positive sum game of "Everybody Must Be Soft Cult". Also less overall human suffering is kind of cool, but economy thing is always first. In Everybody Must Be Soft Cult power over people can be used only with great care, everything is governed by a bureaucracy and no-one is unwilling to take too much responsibility for any action. This Cult uses a strong moral system to prohibit each of its members from using too much power on the others and those, who do not accept this system, are gradually punished with worse and worse strikes of punishment each time to learn their lesson. At the end, those individuals, who do not understand the reason for given punishment (its always abuse of power over others), are brought to death or exiled. Welcome to the Western civilization as we know it.
So let's go back to Putin and Ukraine. If we accept as an axiom that Putin is an adept of the Cult of a Warrior, then we can make the following conclusions:
1. Putin sees himself as a Chief Warrior of his tribe and therefore has factual and moral power to make any decisions for his tribe as he likes it. I will call him the "Chief Warrior" from now on.
2. The Chief Warrior sees that as time goes on, more and more fellow members of his tribe are turning from Cult of a Warrior to the Cult of Everybody Must Be Soft. From a point of view of a Warrior nothing is worse than to convert yourself to an Everybody Must Be Soft person. Worse is only when your children convert to Everybody Must Be Soft Cult and become all PC and LGBTQ drug loving hippies. No Warrior wants that to their children.
3. So from the Chief Warrior point of view he (in the Warrior cult its always he) does not have any choices at all regarding what to do with his life and how to guide his tribe next. First of all, he must save the tribe from this fucking Everybody Must Be Soft epidemy which is happening right now and must do so ASAP.
4. To save the tribe from Everybody Must Be Soft epidemy it must be separated from the source of the illness in the first place. That means economic and information blockade. All key technologies and industries must be developed in house, all external communication must be ceased, the nation must be quarantined until it find its Warrior soul again. Also its awesome if some of the most active bad blood from the Everybody Must Be Soft movement emigrates in the process.
5. So how to turn a course of a nation of 100+ million people, rapidly integrating from 1990s into Western economy and system of values? It is not so easy. You nee some help from your opponent in doing so. Remember Eastern martial arts - it takes less power to use your opponent against himself, then to do everything all by yourself? So you need to use Everybody Must Be Soft system of punishment to get yourself excluded and expulsed from its system. Economic sanctions is the name for it. For all sanctions the national economy will get a strong hit in the short term, but will become independent from the Everybody Must Be Soft economic system in the long term. Everything, which does not kill us, makes us stronger - said a fellow Warrior (or something like that) once.
6. How to get economic sanctions from the West? Everybody Must Be Soft always punishes for abuse of power, so we must show it to them. Crimea in 2014 was a nice start and we also reminded our fellow Warriors that our soul of the Warrior is not lost yet to the illness, that the times are turning. Also have to make internal reforms regarding freedom of speech, independent news media and political parties to smoke out all the Everybody Must Be Soft elite, so that this liberal pus comes out of an ill body of the Warrior which always has been and always will be Russian Empire, or Russia as it is simply called right now.
So what can people from Everybody Must Be Soft Cult can do to gain advantage in this fight? First of all, get their heads out of their arses and imagine that some people from another culture living on another continent might think differently than they are regarding fundamental ways of living and morality. Take some LSD and watch Chinese martial arts movies for Christs sake if you have so limited imagination.
Second, launch a program of giving free Western university education to Russians with a condition of returning back to their shitty dictatorial country as it is right now and starting improving something in this regard. Subsidize creation of Russian voice-over for all Western movies, give free English language classes to people over 30 and overall increase cultural transfer to people living currently in Russia. To kill Putin you have to convert all these people into the Everybody Must Be Soft mentality.
Third, in NO CASE create any new economic sanctions to Russia and repel all the old ones. Going the sanctions route would be like giving the Chief Warrior exactly what he wants on a silver plate. Give large amounts of aid to Ukraine to compensate for inconvenience of having a bully neighbor at the same time.
Fourth, either Everybody Must Be Soft Cult wins by converting everyone over, or it dies from hands of the Great Russian and Chinese Warriors who are getting stronger in the meantime.
PS. Sorry for my grammar and typos, not a native speaker. Also slightly edited regarding grammar/typos.
I have traveled to Ukraine and Russia several times, dated a Russian briefly, then a Ukrainian, worked with Ukrainians in DC for several years, learned a bit of Russian and Ukrainian along the way... One of the things that I did not anticipate at first was the shared philosophical heritage with the west - my Russian ex-girlfriend's favorite book was Seneca's Letters to Lucilius, for one random example. For another, take a visit (in better times) to the Hermitage in St Petersburg and notice how the museum honors greek/roman philosophy and empire as much as any western museum.
The philosophical position upon which this country was founded - the rise of what recon517 is calling the "Everybody Must Be Soft" philosophy - has only been a dominant force recently, really only coming onto stage in the 20th century. It is not what has ruled the world for the majority of our 6,000 years of civilization and there is no guarantee that it will continue to do so. The idea that those who take and keep power by whatever means have a moral right to it is not new. I recently finished reading Xenophon's Anabasis (aka The Persian Expedition), and this philosophy seeps through just about every page as the Greek army lays waste to anyone not deemed of benefit to them, even fellow Greeks. Xenophon was a close friend of Socrates, remember.
Xenophon addressing the army, Anabasis book 6: "As long as you stay together united as to-day, you will command respect and procure provisions; for might certainly exercises a right over what belongs to the weaker."
My point with all of this is 1) we have more shared history than you might think, and 2) that if you enjoy the fruits of an equality mindset over the fruits of a winner-takes-all mindset, then do not take it for granted. Its dominance in politics is not guaranteed, at home or abroad.
Live it, understand it, be it, calmly share it, never force it. We cannot win this war of ideas by treating it like a war. The irony is that in the end it is far more powerful to cooperate than to take, but the success rests upon preventing individuals from concentrating and exercising that power.
My two cents, another imperfect model for consideration.
The Americans had their noses rubbed in it for 20 years in Afghanistan, only to see the warrior Taliban spring right back up overnight. I can’t imagine a more effective wake-up call than that.
It would have been better if they had just called Gorbachev and asked if invading Afghanistan could ever work or they should just drop it. He has the experience and I’m sure he would have been happy to share it.
Also, you could choose more neutral labels. The point of the egalitarians isn't that people should be soft but that people have rights even if they can't defend them. And really Putin believes this too, he just ignores this when convenient. He isn't okay with harms done to Russia when it was weak. If he really accepted this warrior ethos, he would think they were perfectly fine. Russia couldn't defend its interests, so it deserved whatever it got.
A neutral term for might makes right is kraterocracy. "Democracy" doesn't quite capture the alternative, but will do. Perhaps "egalitarianism" is better.
Dead Comment
Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily.
If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much.
If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO).
The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss.
But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss. Which means that they might actually believe the risk of NATO intervention is low.
How could the risk be low without some kind of collusion or hidden knowledge (hidden from us common folk)? Are "they" ("the global elite", "the military industrial complex") all "in it" (profiting) together? Is Russia just suicidal? If (when?) Russia loses out, how do they react?
"I think also that we need to realize that Ukraine is a highly valued partner. We support them with military support, with political support, with the cyber defences, with equipment. Different Allies provide different types of support. But when it comes to NATO Allies, we provide absolute security guarantees. Meaning that we make it absolutely clear that an attack on one Ally will trigger a response from the whole Alliance. One-for-all. All-for-one."
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_192343.htm
I agree the military intervention risk seems low, but what about economic intervention? Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia?
Because Joe Alzheimer is the weakest dictator in the US history.
With words.
EU has also supported Ukraine with words recently.
I've seen ads on the telly making an emotional statement that "Ukraine is Europe".
Europe as a continent does not exist: it is a small corner of Asia. Eurocentricism needs to stop. This us-vs-them game needs to stop.
This invasion is terrible for normal people, Ukrainian (bombs), Russian (sanctions) and everyone else (instability, high prices). It could have been prevented if the "west"/NATO was not "pulling on" (arming) Ukraine. The NATO already have plenty places to make bases on Russian border.
See what happened to Cuba. The US/NATO also do not like bases on their border. They should have understood Russia also does not like that.
But then I believe NATO is more into the business of war then the business of peace.
Or they see it like Poker as an "all in" move. Either lose now on their own terms in Ukraine or eventually they lose anyway as Ukraine joins NATO and Russia's nuclear advantages are "neutralized". Meanwhile there's the chance NATO may not intervene so take the risk...
Which is probably why the US doesn't want to split efforts across two theaters again.
The “all in” move was when they suggested they NATO not meeting their demands to permanently commit to excluding Ukraine and withdraw allied forces from Eastern European members of NATO was an aggressive act pushing them to war in Ukraine. When NATO didn't fold, they either had to invade or show the Putin regime as a paper tiger, which is a mortal blow for an authoritarian regime.
They spent many years on efforts to weaken governments of the West and relations between them for the purpose of doing something like that and having Western unity collapse. Maybe they misjudged and thought that would pay off.
"In my 41st year of peacetime service, I would not have believed that I would have to experience another war.
And the Bundeswehr, the army that I am allowed to lead, is more or less blank. The policy options we can offer in support of the Alliance are extremely limited.
We all saw it coming and were unable to get our arguments through to draw and implement the conclusions of the Crimean annexation. That doesn't feel good! I'm eaten!
NATO territory is not yet under direct threat, even if our partners in the East feel the constantly growing pressure.
When, if not now, is the time to put the Afghanistan mission behind us structurally and materially and to reposition ourselves, otherwise we will not be able to implement our constitutional mandate and our alliance obligations with any prospect of success."
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6902486...
Yeah, the German military is in an abysmal state:
https://www.stripes.com/news/as-germany-prepares-for-nato-cr...:
> Among the failures: none of Germany’s submarines is operational, only four of its 128 Eurofighter jets are combat-ready and the army is short dozens of tanks and armored vehicles needed for NATO missions.
> In addition, troops are short on the basics: body armor, night vision gear and cold-weather clothing.
> The situation is so dire that 19 helicopter pilots from Germany’s Bundeswehr were forced to turn in their flight licenses because of a lack of training time.
> The reason: not enough helicopters for the pilots to fly.
No country with nuclear weapons is ever going to give them up again. No security assurances will be seen as sufficiently reliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
The risk of NATO direct military intervention barring an attack on NATO is very close to zero. (Increased material support for Ukraine could happen, but that doesn’t have the same impact.)
Economic response by the Western powers (not through NATO, but independently and through the EU and other institutions) is already happening and certain to escalate.
> But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss.
Anthropomorphizing nations can be misleading. The risks born by the nation are largely not born by the people committing the nation to a particular course. “Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
1. Tactical - chokepoints are a major element of military tactics, and I guess there's a spot that leaves Russia completely defenseless with wide-open spaces if it doesn't own Poland and Ukraine.
2. Wheat - apparently, Russia owns quite a bit of the market, and Ukraine would carry another minority.
With that in mind, I see this entire thing as a coercive and brutal M&A, but with people's lives being destroyed instead of just their long-term career plans.
But how would the nuclear option play out?
Here I am, a Russian oligarch. I ordered the Ukrainian invasion because I bet that NATO wouldn't intervene because of my nukes. But it turns out I was wrong and NATO is pushing back my invasion.
So I fire some nukes.
But then they fire nukes back at me.
????
Did I profit?
After all, Putin told 2 days ago he wants NATO out of Romania and Bulgaria:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/01/21/get-out-of-romania...
Without centralised command issuing computerised targeting info, it will be for missile officers own initiative to launch them, fully knowing from what they learned in the military academy that an uncoordinated launch will likely be futile.
USA missile defences in Arctic, and North Pacific can guarantee intercept a dozen uncoordinated launches, if what Raytheon says is true.
The “Finlandization of Europe”.
The idea is to use bribery and propaganda to destabilize Eastern Europe countries until puppet governments rise to power or can be installed, while holding Central Europe at bay through leverage on natural resources. Make deals with Germany and ignore the US and UK.
Basically, take over Europe and break up NATO. Military action is the backup plan when the above coercion fails.
Even Finland itself came out of Finlandization beginning thirty-plus years ago, so it's doubly ironic that Putler at least partly succededed in bending much of the rest of Europe to something similar since. The main culprit in falling for this is, AFAICS, Germany; from about the Schröder administration and onwards.
I think that it's a mistake to assume there must be an endgame.
Putin is Slobodan Milošević with less hair and a nuclear arsenal. Milošević was clearly a clever man but what was Milošević's end game? Did Milošević expect to die in a cell in the Hague?
In essence Russia has chosen a Ukrainian hill to fight on, and that hill is no more eastward expansion of western powers/alliances or unions.
The more direct initiation of this conflict was the EU which was to enter into an Association agreement with Ukraine in 2013. When the signing of this agreement didn't go through you had the Euro Maidan protest in Ukraine and the Russian puppet government where thrown out as a result. In response to this Russia backed 2 break out regions in the east of Ukraine and annexed/claimed Crimea with sevastopol(navy base).
So the endgame here, no matter the cost it seems is that Russia defines Ukraine to be in its sphere of influence and will not accept any encroachment by western powers - so Putin is basically saying back off.
Georgia also tried to align itself more towards the west and agreed to become a NATO member and the Russian response was resolute back in 2008 as well.
Obviously there might be a number of other reasons, this is just what I have gathered over the years and I am by no means a expert.
In short, I suspect this may be Putin's way of applying pressure to Russian elites. The actions proceeding from him appear desperate (i.e. the brazen assassination attempt of Nalvany) and suggest that Putin feels much less secure than his strongman portrayal suggests.
This war achieves something Putin lacks hegemony over, restricting the lifestyles and wealth of Russia's nomadic elite (and especially their assets). Elite members of Russian society will almost surely be targets of Western sanctions. This may secure Putin and his cronies and ensure a desirable transition of power by kneecapping potential contenders of the Russian throne (for lack of a better word). No doubt western sanctions will be leaky and allow some elites through relatively unscathed, but it may restrict their latitude of choice sufficiently.
I think this is Putin versus the elites. Elites who may be feeling comfortable usurping Putin and installing someone pliant to their interests. Putin may be simply reminding them of what he is capable of.
I suspect Ukraine was selected due to the presence of a large minority of citizens neutral or proponents of Russian rule. Other former Soviet states seem much more reluctant to be Russian subjects. I think Russia is simply conquering territory of peoples who will not oppose its rule.
Perhaps Putin is insane, or delusional, but evaluating public actions without knowing what went on behind closed doors feels too rash.
I don't understand this. Putin and his cronies are the elite. And by extension the children and other extended family of those cronies are the elite. That's what the oligarchy system is.
Regarding economic sanctions: yes Russia will suffer from them, but the thing is that it is impossible to know how high Putin values the prospect of dissolving Ukraine into Russia, so it's pointless to try to reason about it (not that I'm saying you shouldn't).
Putin is 70 years old. He might just feel like he hasn't done enough with his life and decides to go all in, who knows?
People on HN tend to be in denial about the current state of the world, but I don't think Putin is.
We're already starting to see some food shortages across the globe due to climate change, this will only intensify. Together Russia and Ukraine produce 29% of the worlds wheat exports. As climate change worsens food will become as big of a concern as oil.
We are also running out of oil, and not for the naively optimistic reasons most people hope. We're not getting "greener" we're depleting resources and oil still runs economies.
If Russia secures Ukraine they will also secure a place in the end game of civilization, radically altering the power dynamics of the EU.
The point of all this is there is a lot more at stake here than people realize (or are willing to admit). Russia has a lot to gain by control of Ukraine, and therefore can also justify tremendous risk. They have a powerful nuclear arsenal, and are likely more willing to use it than ever before.
MAD only works if you have a future that nuclear war risks throwing away. People that understand energy and climate understand that these things are going to very rapidly change the world stage. All of our futures are at risk, and the time to secure a spot is now. People on HN might be deluded in to thinking "this is fine" but I very much doubt Putin shares this naivete.
On the other end of all this, NATO countries have lived in relative security for a long time. They are still largely terrified of nuclear threat and I believe many of them don't fully realize the situation we're in. Liberal democracies likely have plenty of people in power that really believe Germany is near a truly green future.
I absolutely believe Putin is willing to go nuclear if necessary and I do not believe NATO is really ready to go nuclear in return. I don't believe the US would immediately attack Russia even if Russia wiped Paris off the map, because doing so would guarantee we are all wiped off the map. There is a risk asymmetry here which weakens MAD and give Putin a lot of power, especially if his immediate goal is simply to take Ukraine.
France also has nuclear weapons, estimated as the fourth largest stockpile in the world. Even if the rest of NATO were to hesitate Moscow would already have been hit unilaterally by the french in retaliation. No one is going to fold here.
I don't think they saw the risk as high. Crimea was their 'soft-launch' to test the waters and find out what would happen. Answer - not very much. Effectively they invaded and took over a country and everyone tut-tutted and did nothing about it. Given that, I'm assuming that they didn't think the international reaction would be as strong as it is.
Obviously they miscalculated, but if the whole thing had been over in 48 hours with little resistance would it have been as strong as it is now or would there have been an effective shoulder shrug like there was about Crimea? I don't think it would be the same, but I believe the conflict being dragged out has made the reaction worse (well done Ukraine).
You also have to think that this plan was started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. There was no going back from that point on. Ukraine was only growing stronger and angrier at Russia. You either assimilate them, or withdraw. The latter is not very Russian. So it is possible that the Russian gov also saw this move as inevitable not to lose face after what they started 8 years ago, and they will now suffer the consequence of western sanctions.
What is sad really, is that China doesn’t give a fuck.
They give loads. They are watching from the sidelines, committing to nothing but learning a lot, and thinking about how they will proceed with Taiwan and the bits they like in South-East Asia.
Mussolini certainly didn't expect to be hanging by his toes either. Stalin didn't expect someone close to him to dose him with warfarin. Hitler didn't expect to be cowering in his bunker, ending with blowing his brains out. Gaddafi didn't expect the rebels to capture and shoot him. Saddam didn't think he'd end up hiding in a rat infested spider hole and then hung by his adversaries. And so on.
It is better this way, instead of China openly supporting Putin and following suit with its own territorial expansions.
I don’t know where you’re drawing such an assumption from.
Russia has repeatedly invaded its non nato neighbors for years (including Ukraine!) with zero military response from NATO.
Would NATO have the upper hand militarily? Yes, sure. Does NATO have the political will to incur that level of cost? No.
This isn’t “globalist” conspiracy, there is just no appetite for it at any level of society in nato countries. Not in France, not in Germany, not in the US.
Putin sees the west as weak. Germany has a new leader. France is about to have elections. The UK is still dealing with Brexit. The EU is fractured with Poland and Hungary and has no out. The US is so divided that a previous president is encouraging Putin to invade and the current president is likely to lose the House and the Senate very shortly.
This is the perfect time if you believe the west is weak. The problem is that what's next on the menu (maybe after Moldova? But that's not very tasty, sorry friends!) Are all NATO members.
And.. Putin lives in the echo chamber you create when you're a dictator who regularly throws people out of windows to their death. He might decide it's time to test NATO. And that's world war territory.
But you'll always be lost if you assume there is a them. There's no them. There's Putin. Read his speech from last night, this thinking and desires are very clear.
I've started hearing this a lot this morning and I don't see where Trump actually said this. From what I can tell he's blaming the current administration for allowing this to happen and saying that Putin is brilliant for taking advantage of Biden and outsmarting him. Seems like he's primarily calling Biden inept rather than encouraging Putin to go further.
Exactly what Putin's always maintained: that Ukraine joining NATO is a red line, so they're preventing Ukraine joining NATO.
> The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss.
The risk of NATO intervention is exactly zero. NATO hasn't done shit except attack random non-NATO countries (Serbia, Libya, Syria, etc...). What did they do when Turkey invaded Cyprus? Nothing.
US-led NATO is sacrificing Ukraine in order to get at Russia, the real question is why getting at Russia is so important? Ukraine could have joined NATO in the 1990's, or 2008, or NATO could have given them a guarantee of security. But no, instead the EU and NATO rolled out some long road-map and antagonized Russia along the way.
Hell, why didn't the west try to integrate Russia when Gorbachev and Yeltsin were amenable to the idea? Or when Putin was trying to increase cooperation with GWB's US government before the Color Revolutions?
Edit - for those downvoting me, it's obvious the west sold-out Ukraine. They forced Ukraine to leave an economic cooperation union with Russia in order to have more European integration (Yanukovych wanted both FYI) but didn't provide a road-map to join the EU, they sold them on NATO membership but without any actual guarantees, etc... Why isn't the west defending Ukraine?
Edit2 - also Joe Biden is useless. What was the point of all his warnings? What was the point of every western country pledging to "support" Ukraine? Now the news is talking about Biden announcing "sanctions". No real support. What's the point?
It already was the case since 2014, NATO wouldn't accept a country which isn't at peace because they'd be forced to intervene and that would mean a war between Russia and NATO, Russia didn't need further intervention for that
> "Moreover, I will say something I have never said publicly, I will say it now for the first time. When then outgoing US President Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000, I asked him how America would feel about admitting Russia to NATO.
> I will not reveal all the details of that conversation, but the reaction to my question was, let us say, quite restrained, and the Americans’ true attitude to that possibility can actually be seen from their subsequent steps with regard to our country. I am referring to the overt support for terrorists in the North Caucasus, the disregard for our security demands and concerns, NATO’s continued expansion, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and so on. It raises the question: why? What is all this about, what is the purpose? All right, you do not want to see us as friends or allies, but why make us an enemy?"
https://web.archive.org/web/20220224100924/http://en.kremlin...
One benefit is that China (supposedly) approves of this invasion. So it's possible that the sanctions won't have as much of an impact as they otherwise might've.
As others have pointed out, there is no risk of NATO retaliation due to Russia's nuclear arsenal. If China also reduced the risk of sanctions, then the net result is that there's very little downside for Russia to invade.
If we want to make a difference, we need to think of ways to make it a net loss for Putin to invade. Right now it's a net benefit.
Maybe he views it as a price tag but in a different way - it has a cost, but what use is resources/money if you can't use it to do what you want? I.e it has a big cost but it's how we wants to use the resources he has at hand, no matter the bottom line.
We're talking about a guy who thought that Lenin and Stalin were too soft.
His speech a couple days ago was unhinged and offering justification to invade almost all of Eastern Europe.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?518097-2/russian-president-put...
Dead Comment
This is extraordinarily unlikely. Nuclear Weapons are in the mix which in my opinion closes the possibility of any actual confrontations between Nuclear Armed nations. I don't think any of the involved partied are actually suicidal so this doesn't seem a possible endgame.
Wrt economic reprisals, Putin probably did the math and found it acceptable. They might be kicked out of SWIFT, they will probably get closer to China.
I assume military belligerence, aggression is about domestic political power moves. Meaning, in this case, Putin's calculus gives more weight to tightening his grip on Russia than any economic impacts.
--
IIRC, studies have shown that economic sanctions empowers the hardliners. The hardships impacting the citizens drives them to embrace the hardliners more. Also, the sanctions expand their internal domestic inequity.
So while I totally understand the European and US response to Russia -- what else are they gonna do? -- the cynic in me knows it'll prove counter productive long term.
Nor do I support military involvement. That option is even worse.
There really are no good options.
Deleted Comment
Now that the project is suspended, the EU is importing very expensive Gas from the US.
So basically: the USA gets money for gas, and Russia gets the eastern Ukraine. They both get what they want.
Enjoy the show.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...
Doesn't look like US is a significant supplier of natural gas to Europe. Not sure how much capacity the US has at its LNG export terminals either.
Deleted Comment
Putin is delusional about history and his place in it.
But he's not about to literally destroy everything he owns and then some by triggering art 5.
Assuming Putin is rational is a dangerous thing.
Putin just wants to move domestic attention away from all the misery that people will hold him reponsible for. Now war will dominate the agenda. And if someone complains about life getting worse, it's the war, not the incapable president.
However not all of these nations are within their grasp because many have joined NATO since the fall of the iron curtain. The ones that haven't have mostly been for the most part brought back within Russian influence through political manipulation. Belarus is a good example. The leadership there a little more than proxies for the Kremlin. Ukraine was like that until 2014 when its people chose self determination and overthrew their Russian puppet. This invasion is the result. If Russia can't have its puppet states through non-violent means then it will take them by force.
TL/DR: Putin and the exKGB elites are dissentful of the cold war lost to the US, see NATO as a direct threat (even though military generals don't think it is), and the internal dissent with Putin seems to them inspired from abroad. They were shocked by Libyan rebel and by the Ukrainian in 2014. Of course, the only thing they do is brute force, and every step they make only makes the conflict more real.
Regarding the common folk, here's a survey[2] from December or January. TL/DR: they accepted the propaganda's POV that it's all the West's fault. When shown evidence of earlier military build-up, they'd suggest it was fake news.
[1] https://www.thebigq.org/2022/02/23/what-are-the-reasons-behi...
[2] https://www.ridl.io/ru/nas-vtjagivajut-v-vojnu/
War means higher oil prices due to decreased supply, lifting the Russian economy (60% of its exports), while if the US intervenes it will mean further supply chain disruptions and higher inflation - as seen in 1980s: oil price spike, gov. overspending.
Putin is testing the new administration, while China is watching on the sidelines over Taiwan.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30457490
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030315/how-does-pri....
[3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/the-market/remem....
bypass paywall https://archive.is/xDqsY
Putin's playing a long game here and on an economic front he's likely betting most of the sanctions won't stick. With 2024 looming large I wouldn't be surprised to a gradual reset in US-Russia relations depending on the election result.
He already got high-score as a billionaire dictator of Russia with gigantic palaces and whatnot. He already did some 'small' wars and expanded Russia's territory.
Now he wants to play big and defeat a major country and be considered a major player like USSR was.
There's no profit in it.
This isn't a 1-dimensional scale (NATO > Russia). China can always weigh in. Europe can have mixed reactions. etc. That's how world wars start, which would be catastrophic for everyone. Nukes are also on the table if Putin really feels cornered.
Economic sanctions won't deter Putin. Europe still has to deal with them for energy, and a pro-west Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia. (Imagine if Mexico were to join the Russian Federation.) This is Russia's sphere of influence, which has historical precedent. Stalin's post WWII foreign policy was to maintain a buffer zone in eastern Europe.
Further, Ukraine has little real geopolitical value to the west. They're not a major trade partner, they don't have strategic resources, or control strategic ports. The west only wants Ukraine in order to gain leverage against Russia.
If you're wondering what the catalyst was, this is basically retaliation for 2014. [0] Russia believes the west is responsible for the revolution that ousted their puppet.
February 22nd, 2014 - protesters control Kyiv and Yanukovych has fled to Russia. [1]
Almost exactly 8 years later (Feb 23rd) this happens.
We have to assume Russia has been unable to "counter coup" Ukraine and regain a foothold, thus leading to this drastic action.
Putin has threatened severe consequences if any other nation meddles in the war, but he's not out for conquest. His mentality is simply: "I'd rather wreck Ukraine before letting it fall into the hands of the west." [2]
Putin will likely stop once the message is received.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140228013838/http://www.boston...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
How is this not the case for Latvia and Lithuania (not to mention Estonia), which are both NATO members directly bordering Russia, and in fact separating them from their Kaliningrad exclave? On the other hand, if those countries _are_ an existential threat to Russia, then why is Russia "starting" with Ukraine?
More to the point, who gets to decide what makes for an existential threat? Doesn't "existential" mean "at risk of destruction from"? Does anybody really suppose that a Ukraine that is pro-west, or even belongs to NATO, poses a direct threat of invading/destroying Russia? This sort of language frustrates me, because it seems to carry more heat than light. To your specific hypothetical, I would not welcome a pro-Russia Mexico, but I would not consider it to be an existential threat to the US for precisely the reasons I suggest here - a pro-Russia Mexico does not mean a Mexico that is even somewhat likely to invade the US.
This move by Russia is intentionally timed because countries themselves struggle to act with a unified voice, much less transnational alliances.
Trump might admire Putin as a leader, but he actually shored up the eastern flank of NATO and banned the NS2 pipeline, which Biden rushed to open back up.
Poland is in NATO since 1999.
You contrast this with the knowledge and memory of 1931 (when Germany was in no shape to fight a war) and 1941 (we all know), Russia does indeed have much to fear from NATO, even though NATO doesn't seem capable of threatening it today.
So on one hand, Russia does not want to coalesce a threat to it in Western Europe. On the other hand, Western Europe has already come to its doorstep. I think there's a lot of people who are legitimately asking, why are they doing this, and why now? I think you should listen to what Putin says (without reading the media commentary on it), and read between the lines. It should also be considered that Macron forced Biden to offer direct talks with Putin. That seemed rather telling. Consider the domestic situation in the U.S. Put two and two together, and also that Obama mis-stepped when he said that chemical weapons were a red line in Syria. There isn't really so much a "global elite" or just "military industrial complex" as there are heads of state, their diplomacy and spy corps, diplomatic backchannels, and then the human element. Something happened, we don't know what, but from the effect, it seems obvious enough.
Ultimately, Putin knows that the nuclear card is time-limited. Originally, they were the U.S./NATO's bulwark against the USSR. Now they are Russia's card vs the West.
Nukes are only useful if they can be delivered to their target. We've been living in a world where they have made major wars too dangerous to be waged, and the state of technology has been like that for the entirety of our lifetimes, and we don't remember it any other way. But history shows that the balance between offensive weapons and defensive weapons swings back and forth. Indeed in Israel they are steadily gaining credible (and cheaper) ABM. When that nuclear card is undone, I think we will see some terrible wars recurring through the world because a whole lot of geopolitical tension will be released.
Putin is calculating for that. Russia's only reliable defense is strategic depth. Something has pushed him to err on the side of possibly uniting Western Europe. There again, he may be ironically counting on the U.S./U.K., which have historically not been too favorable to a solid Franco/German-led EU. But the influence of the U.S./U.K. may further wane in this matter, and we are seeing a real gambit. Putin cannot possibly know. He is making a decision based on imperfect knowledge.
Maybe the interesting bits are the other players here. What will be the ultimate effect on France/Germany/EU? And what about China? This puts them in a tough spot and they seem to be caught a tad flat-footed. I bet that underneath all the official rhetoric and alliances talk, the rest of the world is pretty "annoyed" at the dynamic between the U.S. and Russia, both of them troubled/declining empires whose "traditional" power structures are stirring for legitimacy. It's been some interesting times.
The reasoning here is pretty sound, and the more I think about it the more I come to believe that NATO should be fighting Russia right now - at least deny them air superiority. Russia wants a war, whether NATO wants one or not, so you might as well give it to em' with the other consideration being letting the Russian military get ground down in Ukraine and seeing how that plays out.
What will happen is that if Putin wins Ukraine and invades, say, Latvia, he'll invade and then when NATO responds he will use one or more tactical nuclear weapons on the military bases that forces are responding from. So if NATO is launching air assets from a Polish airbase, he'll nuke that. And then he'll say - let me have what I want or I'll use more. Now what? Will NATO nuke a Russian base in exchange? Will it be a base in Belarus? Ukraine? Russia itself? It's easy to see this spiraling out of control. But if you believe Putin will use nuclear weapons (and I do) the endgame is that he destroys NATO and pushes "western" influence out of continental Europe.
Putin believes there are 3 pillars: US, China, Russia. He does respect the US, but thinks he can win. His goal is to create an ethnostate, similar to China, centered around Russian culture. Taking Kiev is super important to that because despite his rhetoric that Ukraine isn't a state or whatever, it is the historical cultural home of the Russian people. So he's going to want that to create a new shared ideology around the glory of the Russian people. He'll then look to cut out the US, UK, and any "liberal" sympathies.
> What about sanctions?
He doesn't care. He doesn't want to integrate with the US or the west. Russia has plenty of natural resources. Ukraine gives them plenty of farmland. Why would he need western money?
Currently we're playing along just like he planned. We tried negotiating, he went through the motions. We enacted sanctions, which he knew would happen. They shut down Nordstream 2, which he knew would happen (and leave Europeans with higher energy prices). And now he's just executing his plan and NATO is saber rattling about defending NATO territory, which... goes back to the Baltic question. Will NATO go to nuclear war over those countries? I think conventional war absolutely. But when Putin nukes a Polish air base or a Romanian one. Now what?
So we need(ed) to do something unsuspected. And I think the only option was to immediately go to war and force the issue on NATO's term. Unfortunately I think NATO is in a bad position.
Oh... and that's without literal traitors like Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and others who are "pro-russia" while we're about to be in a war with Russia. So now we have to figure out how to deal with those people too.
MAD is dead.
Hell the German military might do some actual fighting for once if their Polish buffer state is threatened.
Trump looked to increase NATO defenses and aggressively pump oil and gas to crash the global price of Russia's chief source of foreign exchange. That's hardly pro russian. Ironically, Biden comes in and kills oil production in the US, forcing us to then rely on external oil markets for our resources which gives Putin money to pull shit like this.
Trump also unilaterally left the assymetrical US-Russia missile accord. Hardly pro russian.
Trump ordered lethal force to be used against large numbers of Russian mercenaries who attacked a U.S. installation in Syria. He also sold offensive weapons to Ukraine.
Where is this pro russian Trump you speak of?
I heard that the German president's speech mentioned Nordstream being done. He didn't specify Nordstream 2 as expected. I read somewhere that referring to both Nordstream 1 & 2 caught Putin by surprise.
Especially now, after NATO's quick and easy victory in Afghanistan it's clearly seen that Russia is far behind NATO militarily. Putin is just stupid and suicidal.
You outlined the severity of NATO intervention. That is to say, you only described half of the equation. It could very well be that Russia assumes the probability of NATO intervention is disproportionately low, meaning the risk calculation is also low. Maybe they think that balance outweighs the economic risk.
Russia has no other choice. When USSR in 1962 [0] did something similar to USA, USA was not happy and it could end up really bad. How is this situation is different? National security is paramount.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
No NATO country has ever invaded Russian soil and never will due to their massive nuclear arsenal.
I'm willing to admit Putin may have convinced himself and some Russians that there's a national security concern, but the evidence is severely lacking.
For historical perspective, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the US economy was 7x larger than theirs. At the end of WW2 the red army had 12 million soldiers in uniform compared to the estimated 120K Russian soldiers now invading Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
This is the fact that matters.
> The US economy is 14x larger than Russia's. The Canadian economy is larger than Russia's. The combined economy of all of NATO is 25x the size of Russia's. This does not even include Pacific allies like Japan and ANZUS.
That doesn't matter. Many countries may have larger economies than Russia, but none of them have been willing to translate that into anything that can counter Russia's actions.
IIRC, the US gives far more military aid to Israel than it has to Ukraine, and it's too late to change that. Germany sent Ukraine 5,000 hats for its defense.
It gives perspective to how Russia knows not to mess with anyone with a larger military or economic presence. These countries aren't getting involved because doing so means they have a lot more economic prosperity to lose compared to Russia.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the helmet offer had left him “speechless”: “What will Germany send next? Pillows?”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/27/a-joke-germany-mock...
There's a good joke in there somewhere: I'll settle for "Hats off to Ukraine's new [if short-lived] fearless leader, Vladimir Putin!"
"THE BEST 68 PUTIN JOKES":
https://jokojokes.com/putin-jokes.html
The size of the economy doesn't so much matter, either - there's a limit to how much aid economic power can provide to a nation at war, especially one with such deep connections to illicit markets like Russia. It's really anyone's game if war breaks out over central Europe.
The US and NATO could trivially cripple Russia's army in the field. They're entirely unprepared for it and they're going to be operating far from their optimal protection (embedded in Russia where defenses are far greater).
The question is, when would Putin throw the nuclear card on the table.
I'm in favor of the US and NATO (or just the US by itself) immediately attacking Russia's forces inside of Ukraine and destroying the Belarus command structure, including assassinating Lukashenko and pushing a revolution there by any means necessary. Russia is weak militarily outside of their borders and the US could trivially defeat them. It would take most of 2022 for Russia to regroup for a full force projection into Ukraine if they're under attack from the US while doing it, and I doubt they have the manufacturing capabilities right now to sustain (that would take time to enhance).
How big is the Afghan economy in relation to the West?
Who is this "we"? For all the condemnation and claims about sanctions, everyone saw this coming and did not a damn thing. If sanctions actually are imposed, Putin can just turn off the gas to Europe. If anyone wants to engage militarily (and Europeans rightly had enough of that) they have to worry about nuclear weapons.
I see this as a big eye opener to the other European "Union" countries when they see nobody actually has Ukraine's back.
Or if you already have nukes ready to go.
Poor comparison. This was total war at the time.
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Not to make light of the situation, but the fact that you refer to l'viv as Ukraine (yes, I know we all agree it is) is a miniature proof that things do change and the way we look at things can be modified.
I hope this correctness of this assessment has no impact on your safety and well-being. If it does, the people in this thread cheering you on who are not 25 miles away from the Russian border should be ashamed of themselves and you would be well advised to make contingency plans for alternative scenarios were everything will not be fine, say one where Ukraine faces complete military defeat within days.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said this 6 days ago:
> If Russia enters Ukraine, it is assumed that this will lead to large numbers of refugees fleeing the country. Amnesty International warns of a humanitarian catastrophe.
> But Sweden will not be a major recipient country, according to Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. She believes that the responsibility lies with other countries.
https://www.dn.se/varlden/magdalena-andersson-andra-lander-f...
I really hope you will stay safe.
If China does this overtly, "the west" / NATO may cut them off as well.
You might see me se me support Ukraine or be angry about Russia, but rest assured that I have nothing against Russians as a people, only the ones who tries to invade Ukraine etc.
I'm living in the shadow of Russia too and I've just filled my spare water tanks with clean water and I'll fill my car and get some extra fuel for my cooking stove later today.
I've already been training for a few months now, but I'm still hoping for a good miracle to avoid a full European war.
For the rest of HN, don't forget the thing most preppers seems to ignore: as far as possible, be friendly towards everyone. If others want you to survive that should help a lot.
Have a nice day everyone.
Edit: when/if this ends maybe we can meet at the server again and play CS:GO or something :-)
Edit 2: if anyone wonders, the official rule for prepping here in Norway includes stocking up with 9L of clean water for each person in the household, keeping some food that has long shelf life, radio, lights, batteries, some way to heat food and rooms even if the electricity disappears and to cooperate with neighbors if you cannot fix everything yourself (e.g. not all houses here have alternative heating sources except electricity).
Then, protest it on the street.
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Best of luck
I am trying to help my programmer friend escape Ukraine, along with their elderly family: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30451497
The problem is, I don’t know anything about Ukraine. I have money, and I can book an Airbnb in a neighboring country for them. But I suspect (apropos nothing) they’ll discover that there’s no way to leave the country through traditional means.
Does anyone know if the buses are still running? Can they get out of the country? If not, my fallback idea is to help them plan a way to escape on foot. But which part of the border should they try to cross?
What I really need is for someone local to Ukraine to DM me so that I can ask some basic questions. If you know anyone, please forward them:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theshawwn
Telegram https://t.me/theshawwn
--
EDIT: Apparently other people want to do this too, so I made a twitter thread to pool our knowledge:
https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193
I'll tweet updates there (and I'll post them here as edits for the next hour or so.)
--
Updates:
- Someone DM'ed me on Telegram and mentioned that they're trying to do the same thing. They were thinking about evacuating them to Germany by "sending them an official invite, but the German embassy seems to be closed."
- A twitter DM pointed out https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1496724041520095235:
> If you know people who want to leave Kyiv, don't drive to Zhytomyr on the M06. Russian air assault will be taking cross roads. Go south to Bila Terskva to Berdichev to Vinnitsya to Kemenytsky. Fastest evac: go to Chernivsti crossing to Romania.
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His elderly father is being drafted. I got a DM from a mutual asking me whether there’s anything I could do for them. I have money but no knowledge of the country; they live there but have no money.
During WW2, various affluent people helped smuggle Jews out of Germany. I’d like to help my friend’s family in a similar way. But the reality of doing this is very different than the stories from history.
Currently my only plan is to yeet some cash at them and say good luck. But I was hoping to come up with something better.
I could book an airbnb for their family in a neighboring country, for example.
Does anyone know if the busses are still running? Is it possible to leave Ukraine right now via traditional means, or would they have to hoof it on foot? If they need to walk, does anyone have a suggestion on which part of the border might be friendly for an elderly family to cross?
I know this sounds unlikely, but given the choice between unlikely and “do nothing,” I’ll bet on unlikely.
EDIT: I made a twitter thread to share updates: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193
And a second HN comment further upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30451691
It turns out that other people are trying to do this too. If we pool our knowledge, our chances probably go way up. Definitely get in touch.
One good travel Option (was, but I think should be still, AFAIK only planes stopped because they could be shot down) to travel by train to Lviv, take a taxi to Przemysl in Poland for maybe 50€ worth, and then take a train from there to for example Berlin.
All the best to your friend and his family.
1: https://wise.com/
Edit: If they would decide leaving their country my very early tip is to download Google Translate with the all locales they know + country where they are. While you can find many people who speak Ukrainian/Russian in central EU countries, it is a priceless help for any foreigner. I had occasion to be a participant of a talk between people, who were writing the phrases on the screen to communicate. Since that moment, I have downloaded Ukrainian locale pack for offline use in Google Translate.
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If you're really clever, get all Sun Tzu on him and feed his fears until he chokes on them.
Most bullies are cowards. Threats and ultimatums like that come from a place of weakness. Did you hear America saying anything like that when they invaded Iraq? No, because they weren't scared.
This is bait and bad bait at that. The longer Russia continues to provide us with video evidence of their bullying only makes it easier for us to convince undecided countries to sanction Russia to submission.
If the U.S. intervenes, a retaliatory cyber op from Russia against critical infrastructure would make america amish again. Then, wait until midterms when the president loses the house and senate and doesn't have the power to muster a draft when China takes Taiwan. This is one of those happening slowly and then all at once events in history I suspect.
Anything the West does directly they have to expect a response.
That said, I think the west should be using 'distance power'.
There are US Global Hawk drones over Ukraine right now doing surveillance, I think it would be reasonable for the US to launch cruise missiles at Russian targets in Ukraine.
The Russians could make things very difficult for ships in the Black Sea however as one opportunity for retaliation.
We just have to hope that Ukrainians can leverage the Javelins and Stingers to great effect and make it painful enough for Putin that he has no choice to step back, but it's impossible to tell, it's just as likely Russia may be able to just smash through Ukranian defences and leave them to some insurgency skirmishes.
I wrote about such tactics in a blog post https://dandanua.github.io/posts/counterfactual-communicatio...
"Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere And build them a home, a little place of their own. The Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings. ... Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead."
--- The Fletcher Memorial Home - Pink Floyd
Putin is at the top of the pyramid but he is not the sole ruler of the Russia. Its not like if he dies Russia will magically become exemplary democracy.
There were and still are people lining up and aiming to take his seat, but as long as Putin appears to be strong and gives his underlings enough he will remain on the throne.
I never believed him growing up, institutions and America seemed infallible. It’s sad to say but I think with global warming, covid, and the general decline of American soft power we’ll see more and more global turmoil
My heart goes out to Ukraine and its people
PS: I agree about the feeling of infaillible institution and international order..
In more normal bi- or multi- polar periods (50s - 90s), international order often submitted to great power politics. What was right or legal was less important than who wanted what.
Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times
I have argued, tons, that America is making the world more peaceful. It was hard to sell especially to Arab/Muslim countries but without a unipolar power, it's lots of small powers fighting each other for territory.
> institutions and America seemed infallible
Couple that with recklessness. Fatca, CRS, Trade deals, etc... lots of countries got screwed bad and treatment from the masters was as bad and discriminatory as it can get. If people sympathies with Putin, you are doing something wrong.
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And another key question. What will Western governments actually do? What if the war gets really bad? Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime? And will this crash the economy?
> Does anyone have any projections for how this war will go? Is the Ukrainian military powerful?
There are many projections, though wars are notoriously hard to predict.
Ukraine has a military, but Russia is extremely powerful and has one of the largest militaries in the world. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-... Russia has tons of equipment & everything else it needs to overwhelm Ukraine.
Geography is a key issue in wars, and Ukraine's geography is awful for Ukraine in a Russia/Ukraine conflict. Again, here's my understanding. Ukraine is just a flat plain on the path from Russia, so geography provides relatively little protection to Ukraine. The Dnieper River (which runs basically North/South in the middle of Ukraine) does provide some geographic protection, but by that point Ukraine has lost a huge amount of its territory. Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine) is on the Dnieper river, but it's way to the north near Belarus, and thus Kyiv is relatively easy for Russia to reach via Belarus. The Carpathian mountains in the west and the Crimean mountains in the south make it harder for other countries to help Ukraine. The eastern part of Ukraine has a lot more Russians than the western part, so the eastern parts will be easier for Russia to hold since they'll get more help from the population.
One discussion of a plausible outcome is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9c_HhpvBpg
(Binkov uses a sock puppet to lighten an otherwise somber subject.)
> Will this turn into a guerilla war, or will it go the way of total war? Or will it result in total capitulation?
Russia can take whatever it wants from Ukraine, at least initially. Russia's military is just too powerful, and there aren't any serious geographic barriers to prevent Russia from taking whatever it wants in the short term if Russia really wants to do so.
Whether or not it'll become a guerilla war is up to the Ukrainians. However, if the Ukrainians are willing to make it a guerilla war, and that seems likely at least on the western side, they can make Ukraine very hard to hold (at a horrific cost in Ukrainian lives). In the long run, if the Ukrainians are willing to seriously apply guerilla warfare, I think there's a good chance they'll make at least the western side too painful to hold if Russia goes that far.
I would not be surprised if Russia only took part of Ukraine, e.g., the easternmost parts of Ukraine, perhaps up to the Dnieper River, and perhaps also take Kyev. Russia gets lots more land, and it creates fear (which they may interpret as respect) in everyone around them.
> And another key question. What will Western governments actually do? What if the war gets really bad? Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime? And will this crash the economy?
Western governments have already sent in a lot of military gear to help Ukraine. Western governments won't put troops in. They aren't obligated to do so (Ukraine is not a member of NATO), and the geography of Ukraine would make it hard to do anyway. Western governments have made that quite clear.
They'll put in sanctions. They will probably hurt Russia significantly. I think for Putin this is more about honor, and thus any sanctions will probably not be enough by themselves to force Russia out.
One huge problem is that the EU absolutely needs oil. Solar & wind get press, but they aren't enough today (or for years to come). The EU can't heat their homes or move their people without oil. Russia has oil.
Russia is more likely to grab eastern parts or the eastern side of Ukraine (east of the Dnieper). Russia could take the whole country, but is unlikely to keep it permanently due to guerilla resistance, so it either won't try or it will eventually give up western Ukraine. Sanctions by themselves won't be enough, but sanctions + guerilla warfare would plausibly recover at least the western side of Ukraine.
I do think that there will be serious negative consequences long-term for Russia, beyond sanction-related ones. It suddenly gives a powerful reason for other countries to join NATO (such as Finland and Sweden and a rump of Ukraine) and for them all to increase their military spending. It also gives them a very good reason to not trust Russia in the future.
This is a sad time.
Sanctions will have no effect on Russia. Think about it - what physical items does Russia need to obtain that it cannot produce itself or obtain from China.
What physical items does the West need from Russia - gas and oil because the 'net zero' belief in the West has stymied their ability to obtain energy domestically.
If you don't pay the gas bill then you get your gas cut off. If the EU stops transacting with Russia, then it can't pay its gas bill either. And the result will be the same.
The belief in the power of money in the West will be its downfall. Putin doesn't need the West's money. He has as many roubles as he wishes to deploy and the ability to impose whatever level of tax in roubles is required to ensure people sell their labour and output to him within Russia.
War is funded by manpower, energy resources and industrial production, not by US dollars.
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- Russia will want to make this war as short as possible. They have their objectives (occupy Donezk and Luhansk + some more, destroy the offensive power of the Ukranian army and destroy the infrastructure needed for reinforcements ) and then declare the thing a success.
- The US wants it to go on as long as possible, so they will indirectly intervene by financing and supporting any insurgents.
Not selling somebody your tomatoes primarily affects your tomato growers who will go bust, not those buying the tomatoes - particularly if they have plenty of tomatoes internally, can easily produce them or can get them from those lovely tomato growers in China in return for oil and gas.
There's rather too much faith in the power of the mighty US dollar. Quite a few people are going to find out the hard way that electronic impulses on a computer don't mean as much in reality as gas and oil supplies.
Economy is important because it’s felt by ordinary people. In Moscow there were already pretty big protests. I think Putin made a mistake, he could just install fake democratic government and retire in peace.
I don't expect them to occupy the rest of Ukraine. They will probably settle for destroying large parts of the Ukrainian military.
Say Ukraine has ~100.000 trained~ soldiers, 10.000s with experience, and ~100.000 further conscripts, and more veterans/civilians.
It would need to end when russian military has enough presence in cities to make resistance meaningless. In order for russians to move by land into the cities, their tanks and road transports would (at the very least) need to survive handheld anti-tank missiles, of which Ukraine holds thousands, maybe 10s of thousands? Probably, weapons and ammunition will not run out for Ukraine as long as they are willing to put up resistance.
The losses for russia before this might amount to 10.000s?
At some point, losses will force a change of russian leadership, or willingness to fight among Ukrainians runs out.
I'd be very surprised if this extends too far past separatists territories.
Russia is certainly much more powerful militarily in pretty much every respect: it has significantly more manpower, more and better equipment, and economics to supply it logistically. I don't think there's any chance for Ukraine to win on its own.
That said, Ukraine isn't Syria. It has an air force, and, perhaps more importantly, capable anti-air. It has fairly modern tanks, attack helicopters, and cruise missiles. Russia will certainly take considerable losses taking over.
The other aspect is motivation. On the Russian side, there are certainly people whose dream is coming true right now, but most soldiers - especially not conscripts! - are not really willing to take a bullet in the process of "de-Nazifying Ukraine". I don't expect any massive anti-war resistance, but they won't fight to the end.
On the Ukrainian side, there is a mixed bag. On one hand, most of them - even those whose native language is Russian, who might self-identify as ethnically Russian, and who might even support greater regional and language autonomy etc - don't really want Russia to violently take over. People tend to be motivated to fight desperately regardless of ideology when their cities are burning. But there's also a minority that would really like to repeat what happened back in 2014 in Donetsk and Lugansk (and what was kinda sorta attempted but didn't work out in Kharkov and Odessa), and who genuinely see the Russian forces as liberators. Needless to say, those people will make fine overseers once the fighting is over, and might even help during it.
It depends on what you mean by 'win'. Like, of course there's no chance of Ukraine pushing back into Russia, but it's not impossible they do what Finland did and inflict enough pain that Russia pulls back with small gains at best.
It's all there in Keynes' how to pay for the way - except Putin isn't running a liberal democracy that may object to high taxes.
The war was over before it began. The Ukrainian government telling people to take up arms is completely suicidal. War in the 21st century begins and ends with air superiority. Nothing else matters at all. Once air superiority is established, the war is over. And Russia is flying with absolute impunity over all of Ukraine now. The smartest decision is total capitulation at this point. Because Putin will stop at nothing and will not respect any form of ROE. The alternative is Kyiv being reduced to rubble and tens of thousands dead.
> What will Western governments actually do?
Nothing really.
> Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime?
No. Boris Johnson in the UK is already being insulted for his nothing sanctions. I highly doubt the West will go after the assets of Putin and the rest of his oligarchs.
> And will this crash the economy?
Possibly?
The US did sanction Russia, but is actually more of a sanction against Germany. China might even like an invasion for different reasons, although they probably will call them out on it officially.
You are probably correct that western countries won't do much.
But given that it did happen, I don't think the Russians will back down now. My guess is that they'll occupy Luhansk and Donetsk with minimal losses while severely reducing the Ukraine's ability to do anything about that. Judging from the events last night, the Ukranian air defenses were basically not very effective and they likely suffered a lot of damage to what little offensive capability they might have had.
The question is what the end game is. It's important to consider all the other countries that border Russia. Georgia for example. Or Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. All former Soviet territory with pro-Russian regimes and some domestic anti Russian sentiments. I'd say that this is a not so subtle hint to those countries to fall in line and do as their told. It would be a mistake to assume that this is just about the Ukraine.
As for the West's response; I think we're seeing it and it seems Putin is neither impressed nor surprised by it so far. I don't think there's much else the West can or will do. I think when the dust settles, the EU will end up re-establishing some level of trade with Russia eventually but the relation will be an uncomfortable one for some time to come. But the gas will keep on flowing, for now.
I do think that proposals for e.g. new natural gas power plants are effectively shelved as of now in the EU. Given what just happened, increasing the EUs dependence on Russia for gas even more than it already is seems not advisable. Once that realization sinks in, I think Russian gas imports will start decreasing pretty rapidly over the next decade as countries move ahead with plans to basically stop burning gas on a much more accelerated timeline than what countries were talking about at COP26 just a few months ago.
Economically, we were overdue for a stock market correction and I think we're in the middle of one now; at least judging from my investment portfolio this morning which is looking like most of last years gains have been wiped out as of this morning. A lot of people are going to have a rough year economically. Especially in Russia.
Putin needs just enough territory so that the NATO can't get too much near Russian and a pillow territory to handle future conflicts without touching Russian territory
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The US also has plenty of volunteer militias, yet I doubt that could be seen as an indicator for Americans unwillingness to fight for their country.
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[0] https://de.rt.com/europa/132333-putin-verkundet-militarische...