Russia invades Ukraine

[keenir]

These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking.

You don't like values-oriented analyses? From a lot of your posts over the years, I've got the impression that you believe fairly strongly that oppression is bad and should be fought against. What is that attitude, if not a value?

I think its Rotting Bones' belief.

[Raphael]

I think its Rotting Bones' belief.

A belief about what should be done. In other words, a value.

[Richard W]

And now Putin has put his nuclear weapons on alert. Oh, I'm sure that if he destroys the world, it'll be because mean other people forced him to do so.

I wonder if he's worrying about an attempt to eliminate the Königsberg pocket - it's a significant obstacle to the NATO defence of the Baltic states. I've seen a claim that we would need tactical nukes to eliminate it.

[zompist]

Random stuff from Twitter:

* Someone noted that Putin managed to do what no US president could do for twenty years: get Germany to spend over 2% of its GNP on defense
* Surrendered troops in Kharkiv said they were lied to: they were told they were on a "training exercise", not an invasion.

Now, things look grim— at least one report said that Kyiv was now surrounded. But it seems that Putin expected a walkover, and he sure as hell isn't getting it. I'm skeptical of any hot takes that Putin is or was playing 5-dimensional chess. The thing is, dictators create their own bubble of stupidity around them— he shut down any voices he didn't like, and evidently thought he could not only lie to the world, but to his own armed forces. Unfortunately he's in a position where stupidity can still cause enormous suffering.

[hwhatting]

* Someone noted that Putin managed to do what no US president could do for twenty years: get Germany to spend over 2% of its GNP on defense

Yep, heads are spinning here due to all the u-turns - not only the defence budget, but support for harder sanctions, for weapons deliveries, and for accepting open-ended numbers of Ukrainian refugees. And it extends to all the mainstream parties, except of course the Left Party (not okay with weapon deliveries and increased defense budget) and the hard-right AfD (but even they currently mostly mutter about how Merkel ruined the Bundeswehr and Baerbock gendering when talking about soldiers - for the moment, they don't want to remind people too much about how chummy they were with Putin).

* Surrendered troops in Kharkiv said they were lied to: they were told they were on a "training exercise", not an invasion.

Now, things look grim— at least one report said that Kyiv was now surrounded. But it seems that Putin expected a walkover, and he sure as hell isn't getting it. I'm skeptical of any hot takes that Putin is or was playing 5-dimensional chess. The thing is, dictators create their own bubble of stupidity around them— he shut down any voices he didn't like, and evidently thought he could not only lie to the world, but to his own armed forces. Unfortunately he's in a position where stupidity can still cause enormous suffering.

What I'm afraid of is what he's ready to do to up the ante as he notices that he's losing his gamble - putting his nuclear forces on alert makes sense from that point of view. Let's hope he doesn't push the button in a fit of pique.

[Moose-tache]

In addition to the threat of nuclear armageddon, the latest injustice against the human race is people on Twitter posting "Which do you support? RT for Russia, like for Ukraine." They're everywhere, since they immediately shoot up to tens of thousands of likes (and hundreds of retweets).

[MacAnDàil]

Saddam didn't have the luxury of admitting he didn't have nukes, and Stalin didn't have the luxury of admitting he hadn't orchestrated the Great Purge*.

* This fact was only revealed in the west after the opening of Russian archives in the early nineties. One of my mentors in college made a career out of demonstrating all the things we thought Stalin did, when in fact he was just like that dog in the burning house saying this is fine.

To which extent does this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge#Stalin's_role correspond to what he said?

[MacAnDàil]

For the record, I still think the invasion is a last-ditch effort to destabilize Ukraine to keep it out of NATO, not a conquest. I doubt Putin will try to keep a universally hated pro-Russian leader in Kyiv. More likely he will force Zelenskyy to retire and be replaced by a rapid series of nameless, faceless moderates, and Putin then will withdraw troops to Dobas/Luhansk, to keep the skirmishes lively. Basically turning back the clock to 2015 is his best remaining option, since having a proper puppet satellite in Ukraine isn't really possible anymore. If he's lucky, Ukrainian politics will be fractured, aggressive, and incompetent, thus never being acceptible as a NATO member.

But the Russian troops are coming from the North-East than the South-East, so he's not really concerned about Donbas or Luhansk. He's going after Kiev.

[MacAnDàil]

It's wrong to mistake Putin for his moronic supporters and ideologists. He's a cynical politician, and I really doubt he cares about his place in history. In fact, all the benefits of occupying Ukraine are absurdly long term: Russia's natural borders with Europe are in west Ukraine, Ukraine's arable land might make it a breadbasket for Russia, and so on.

As far it is possible to identify 'natural borders' for a country (if at all), Russia's 'natural borders' with Asia are at the Urals.

[MacAnDàil]

These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking. Russia has an authoritarian state because many of its Asian cities are not self-sufficient, and the state needs to subsidize grain transport to prevent famine.

I think Putin is invading Ukraine for the same reason American presidents attack the Middle East: All his plans to fix the economy have failed, and he's in full ass-covering mode. He thinks a just war will boost his popularity at home. The (fully justified) hysteria comes from Europeans relearning how it feels to have a war break out in your neighborhood after a long time.

If it was really about grain to feed the population, he would have focussed on the south coast and done it as soon as there was an economic crisis. Same goes for the US: the Iraq invasion preceded an economic crisis, it didn't follow one.

[Linguoboy]

Edit: Bret Devereaux has some thoughts on the situation. If I could baldly summarize, Putin is probably making a big mistake, but isn't going to realize it for some time. And he's left himself no exit, so he's going to keep bludgeoning on, at enormous human cost.

This has been my impression, which is why I've been avoiding reading about the conflict. Having come up to speed as much as I can stomach for the moment, I'm mostly just stunned at how badly run the initial invasion was. Russia had years to plan this and a military budget roughly 30 times that of Ukraine, yet they made numerous really elementary strategic and tactical errors. I guess some of them can be explained by underestimating the willingness of Ukrainians to resist (which, to be fair, many of Ukraine's allies did as well). But Thuggery 101 is hit them so hard they don't even think about getting up to hit you back and that is, by all accounts, not what they did. Ukraine seems to be winning the propaganda battle just about everywhere but within Russia itself, which is giving the USA and Europe the political will to take more concerted action than certainly I ever expected. If Russia had hit its marks and had possession of Kyiv by now, that would hardly have mattered, but they didn't and now it does.

[Richard W]

But the Russian troops are coming from the North-East than the South-East, so he's not really concerned about Donbas or Luhansk. He's going after Kiev.

The Russians are making progress in making the Sea of Azov a Russian lake. Indeed, their invasion is threatening to deny the Ukraine any coastline. And the coastal areas have a significant Russian-speaking population, if he wants to play things that way.

[hwhatting]

These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking. Russia has an authoritarian state because many of its Asian cities are not self-sufficient, and the state needs to subsidize grain transport to prevent famine.

I think Putin is invading Ukraine for the same reason American presidents attack the Middle East: All his plans to fix the economy have failed, and he's in full ass-covering mode. He thinks a just war will boost his popularity at home. The (fully justified) hysteria comes from Europeans relearning how it feels to have a war break out in your neighborhood after a long time.

If it was really about grain to feed the population, he would have focussed on the south coast and done it as soon as there was an economic crisis. Same goes for the US: the Iraq invasion preceded an economic crisis, it didn't follow one.

Russia is currently a wheat exporter, it doesn't need Ukraine's wheat to feed its people. Its economy is dependent on the export of oil, gas, and raw materials, but that was going nicely until Putin started the war. The war is not in the short-or medium term economic interest of Russia and not about the annexation of economically interesting areas; it's all about strategic interests (as Putin and his circle see them), the threat a non-authoritarian Ukraine poses to Russia's authoritarian model, and IMO, to repeat myself, about Putin's role in the history book.

[Travis B.]

Economically at least, as well as diplomatically, this war is an own goal for the Putin regime even if they ultimately win militarily in the end. The economic impact is already apparent and will only get more so, and they have managed to unite much of the rest of the world against themselves in a way that few other things could have.

[Linguoboy]

Economically at least, as well as diplomatically, this war is an own goal for the Putin regime even if they ultimately win militarily in the end. The economic impact is already apparent and will only get more so, and they have managed to unite much of the rest of the world against themselves in a way that few other things could have.

I've been reading about all the measures Putin's regime has taken over the years to isolate itself from the world economy in order to blunt the impact of the kinds of sanctions which have recently been announced and now I'm wondering what its growth rate would have looked like if that weren't the case. That is, has Putin made the decision to hamstring economic growth in order to have more of a free hand to meddle where he likes?

[Moose-tache]

Economically at least, as well as diplomatically, this war is an own goal for the Putin regime even if they ultimately win militarily in the end. The economic impact is already apparent and will only get more so, and they have managed to unite much of the rest of the world against themselves in a way that few other things could have.

I've been reading about all the measures Putin's regime has taken over the years to isolate itself from the world economy in order to blunt the impact of the kinds of sanctions which have recently been announced and now I'm wondering what its growth rate would have looked like if that weren't the case. That is, has Putin made the decision to hamstring economic growth in order to have more of a free hand to meddle where he likes?

This was famously an issue with the USSR. More than one Smart Person has said the real reason the USSR fell is because they couldn't figure out how to drive tanks into Poland and borrow from European banks at the same time.

[Moose-tache]

Oh, hey look, she won't shut up.

I've been scouring the news the last week, and one thing that I've found most fascinating is the pro-Putin crowd. Most of it seems to be repurposed anti-Biden sentiment in the US and repurposed anti-US sentiment in South Asia and the Middle East. An entire Bernie Sanders subreddit is now just a pro-Kremlin message board.

A lot of people are pushing back against the anti-Putin culture campaign because of grievences that are perfectly true, just not sufficient reasons to support an unprovoked invasion, like "The West didn't care this much about Syrians/Yemenis/Libyans/etc.!" or "The West and NATO has taken an aggressive stance against Russia!" Apparently the Indian Twittersphere is full of people saying India should support Russia because Russia supported India's claim to Kashmir. I'm not sure that sends quite the intended message about India's presence in Kashmir, but I guess I see the logic. And you'll all be relieved to know that the US president's insistence on helping Ukraine has opened all the old time capsules marked "Hunter Biden Conspiracies." It's like the late Teens all over again: useless old white man in the White House, Putin taking over stuff that's not his, Bernie Sanders fans delivering inarticulate rants to no one. All the hits.

[bradrn]

An entire Bernie Sanders subreddit is now just a pro-Kremlin message board.

…wow. ‘Are Russians the new Jews in Germany's 1935-38 ?’, they ask. Why did I even click on this?

(Spoiler: no, they aren’t, though this seems to have slipped the notice of some of the more rabid commenters. Thankfully, at least the fifth comment from the top is sane.)

[MacAnDàil]

But the Russian troops are coming from the North-East than the South-East, so he's not really concerned about Donbas or Luhansk. He's going after Kiev.

The Russians are making progress in making the Sea of Azov a Russian lake. Indeed, their invasion is threatening to deny the Ukraine any coastline. And the coastal areas have a significant Russian-speaking population, if he wants to play things that way.

And large swathes of territory already under Russian control have significant Tatar populations, among others, but Putin wouldn't want to consider that.

These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking. Russia has an authoritarian state because many of its Asian cities are not self-sufficient, and the state needs to subsidize grain transport to prevent famine.

I think Putin is invading Ukraine for the same reason American presidents attack the Middle East: All his plans to fix the economy have failed, and he's in full ass-covering mode. He thinks a just war will boost his popularity at home. The (fully justified) hysteria comes from Europeans relearning how it feels to have a war break out in your neighborhood after a long time.

If it was really about grain to feed the population, he would have focussed on the south coast and done it as soon as there was an economic crisis. Same goes for the US: the Iraq invasion preceded an economic crisis, it didn't follow one.

Russia is currently a wheat exporter, it doesn't need Ukraine's wheat to feed its people. Its economy is dependent on the export of oil, gas, and raw materials, but that was going nicely until Putin started the war. The war is not in the short-or medium term economic interest of Russia and not about the annexation of economically interesting areas; it's all about strategic interests (as Putin and his circle see them), the threat a non-authoritarian Ukraine poses to Russia's authoritarian model, and IMO, to repeat myself, about Putin's role in the history book.

Indeed. To be clear, if ti wasn't already, my own point was similar to your own: things can not be boiled down to economic aspects.

[Travis B.]

Oh, hey look, she won't shut up.

I've been scouring the news the last week, and one thing that I've found most fascinating is the pro-Putin crowd. Most of it seems to be repurposed anti-Biden sentiment in the US and repurposed anti-US sentiment in South Asia and the Middle East. An entire Bernie Sanders subreddit is now just a pro-Kremlin message board.

A lot of people are pushing back against the anti-Putin culture campaign because of grievences that are perfectly true, just not sufficient reasons to support an unprovoked invasion, like "The West didn't care this much about Syrians/Yemenis/Libyans/etc.!" or "The West and NATO has taken an aggressive stance against Russia!" Apparently the Indian Twittersphere is full of people saying India should support Russia because Russia supported India's claim to Kashmir. I'm not sure that sends quite the intended message about India's presence in Kashmir, but I guess I see the logic. And you'll all be relieved to know that the US president's insistence on helping Ukraine has opened all the old time capsules marked "Hunter Biden Conspiracies." It's like the late Teens all over again: useless old white man in the White House, Putin taking over stuff that's not his, Bernie Sanders fans delivering inarticulate rants to no one. All the hits.

I remember reading a piece (I forget the link) in al-Jazeera about how the whole opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a load of hypocrisy and white supremacism on the part of Western countries vis-a-vis other conflicts in the Third World in which the West had not responded nearly as robustly to or had actively been involved in, even though even if those accusations are true, they justify nothing on the part of Russia and are simply whataboutism.