From what I understand Putins’ decision is not too surprising. Ukraine has cut off the separatist controlled regions. This means for example it does not provide any pensions and apparently it’d be pretty hard to even get into other parts of Ukraine from these areas even if you wanted to. That’s why Russia recently started handing out passports. The percentage of ethnic Russians in this regions is pretty high, so a lot of Russian citizens live there now.
With growing tensions and more and more armed conflicts this put Putin into a bad spot. After his previous decisions he hardly had a choice but to protect his citizens. So the first thing they tried was to evacuate them. But only few people actually left for Russia. Thus the current decision.
This is not meant to apologize for any transgressions but merely to state that this was somewhat predictable and I can understand why Putin would act like this.
Something that is being brought up even more frequently now is a full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I do not see the point in that. What’s in it for Russia? I think Putin would be much happier with Ukraine as neutral buffer to other NATO members like Poland. Does the Ukraine have any natural resources? War is very expensive and Russia spends relatively little money on its military.
Russia’s economy isn’t doing poorly, but you might think that when you guzzle propaganda all day. Russia also gains absolutely nothing by invading Ukraine.
Why would Russian economy have huge swath of money ripped out of it exactly? We’ve already established that energy is a small sector of the overall Russian economy. Furthermore, Russia is already building pipelines to China, and with the economic growth happening in China and across BRI, it’s pretty clear that Russia will be able to redirect its exports if Europe decides to commit economic suicide. And of course energy prices are going through the roof right now giving Russia further leverage.
Is it ever true that an “invader gains nothing”? Or are you just (strangely) saying that there is more to lose than to gain?
Everyone on reddit is ranting about how it will be another Afghanistan… but what if it were merely another Chechnya? If Putin believes it to be that, he might well decide to invade/annex.
“Strong” support? What’s that mean? Sure, the bullies are beating up the nerd, but the nerd will win because you intend to cheer him on from the sidelines?
Is Chechnya a comparison you want to make? Russia fought two wars over it before successfully subduing them. To this day, there are still suspicions that there were false flag attacks where Russia killed its own citizens to bolster support for the war and bring Putin into the presidency.
Russia fought two wars over it before successfully subduing them.
Which, if there was some magical factor in the universe that made them always win the second war, we could expect them to lose the first, right? Except there is no such magical factor.
The first loss is explainable and quite irrelevant.
To this day, there are still suspicions that there were false flag attacks where Russia killed its own citizens to bolster support for the war
So? Even if true, that doesn’t alter my point at all.
The point is (for those who need pictures drawn in crayon for them) Russia has reasons to expect that it might prevail in such a war, in a permanent way, with what their culture and regime considers to be acceptable losses.
The pretense for that war, the ethics of it, its justifiability, these things are all besides the point.
You’re an American, so why don’t you tell me what you gained from the quagmire in Afghanistan?
People of Donetsks and Luhansk are ethnically Russian and they want independence. Weird how westerners only care about people’s right to self determination when it suits them. The leaders of these republics explicitly asked Russia for help after Ukraine failed to abide by Minsk agreements that require Ukraine to give Donbas autonomy.
Russia’s economy never recovered from being slapped with sanctions following the theft of Crimea. You can see that both in a dip in their nominal GDP and in a dip in the Big Mac index. As that page explains, a lower index value implies that McDonald’s is pricing their burgers lower to match what local people can pay. The ruble fell against the dollar, so the price of a Big Mac relative to a US dollar fell.
That’s utter nonsense as the article I linked above very clearly shows. If anything, the sanctions forced Russia to start developing its domestic industry making its economy far more robust than it was previously. Russia now also has an open alliance with China meaning that anything Russia can’t produce domestically can be sourced from China. Meanwhile, BRI is creating a huge economic bloc in Eurasia that Russia is an active member of.
I’m also not sure whom you’re claiming Crimea was stolen from given that people of Crimea are ethnically Russian and have overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia after the 2014 coup. Once again, you don’t appear to care about people’s right for self determination in the slightest. It doesn’t matter to you what people who actually live in Crimea want, all you care about NATO’s geopolitical goals. Really telling on yourself there bud.
That’s utter nonsense as the article I linked above very clearly shows.
The article shows Russia’s currency sliding in value. It dipped sharply following the annexation of Crimea, began a recovery, and then dipped sharply with the pandemic. So yes, the sanctions absolutely hurt their economy.
If anything, the sanctions forced Russia to start developing its domestic industry making its economy far more robust than it was previously.
This is true, the sanctions did have that effect, at least regarding making it resilient to sanctions. This is an effect we’ve seen in other economies under a heavy sanctions regime (Cuba, Iran) where they’ve developed a more internally resilient economy at the cost of overall efficiency. All that said, there are plenty of levers that the West has left to pull. If Russian oligarchs start having their London real estate confiscated, you can bet words will be had with President Putin.
The article shows Russia’s currency sliding in value. It dipped sharply following the annexation of Crimea, began a recovery, and then dipped sharply with the pandemic. So yes, the sanctions absolutely hurt their economy.
Wait till you find out what happened to the rest of the economies in the world after the pandemic. Sanctions created a temporary inconvenience for Russia, but the long term effect is clearly positive since re-industrialization and self reliance will serve Russia much better going forward.
l that said, there are plenty of levers that the West has left to pull. If Russian oligarchs start having their London real estate confiscated, you can bet words will be had with President Putin.
You’re once again showing your lack of understanding of the subject you’re discussing. London confiscating the wealth of Russian oligarchs directly helps Putin since it forces the oligarchs to keep wealth in Russia where it’s subject to Russian laws. What the west would be doing is helping Russia ensure that the wealth isn’t being siphoned out.
Ukraine was a neutral buffer before Russia invaded. Seeing Russia dishonor Ukraine’s sovereignty will push what’s left of Ukraine into NATO. So Russia has basically forced NATO encroachment even closer than it was before. And that’s not even counting Finland.
Calling Ukraine neutral after the Western-backed coup of 2014, in which the US candidate became PM and Russian-hating Neonazis got into government is some twisting of facts. The whole Maidan (which was supported massively by Western governments, press and NGOs) was about aligning with the West for fuck’s sake! The invasion only happened after that.
Neutral in what regard? Russia violated their sovereignty in annexing parts of their territory and in supporting militarily separatist movements. They’ve been forced into opposition by Russia’s aggression.
Hmm, Russia Today is reporting about celebrations in Donetsk and Lugansk because of this decision: https://www.rt.com/russia/550172-donetsk-lugansk-recognition-celebrations/ meanwhile western media and leaders as well as other parts of Ukraine are condemning this move.
From what I understand Putins’ decision is not too surprising. Ukraine has cut off the separatist controlled regions. This means for example it does not provide any pensions and apparently it’d be pretty hard to even get into other parts of Ukraine from these areas even if you wanted to. That’s why Russia recently started handing out passports. The percentage of ethnic Russians in this regions is pretty high, so a lot of Russian citizens live there now. With growing tensions and more and more armed conflicts this put Putin into a bad spot. After his previous decisions he hardly had a choice but to protect his citizens. So the first thing they tried was to evacuate them. But only few people actually left for Russia. Thus the current decision.
This is not meant to apologize for any transgressions but merely to state that this was somewhat predictable and I can understand why Putin would act like this.
Something that is being brought up even more frequently now is a full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I do not see the point in that. What’s in it for Russia? I think Putin would be much happier with Ukraine as neutral buffer to other NATO members like Poland. Does the Ukraine have any natural resources? War is very expensive and Russia spends relatively little money on its military.
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Russia’s economy isn’t doing poorly, but you might think that when you guzzle propaganda all day. Russia also gains absolutely nothing by invading Ukraine.
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You realize that two minutes of googling would save you from outing yourself as an ignoramus?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271373/distribution-of-the-workforce-across-economic-sectors-in-russia/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235291/legal-entity-revenue-by-industry-in-russia/
deleted by creator
Using Exports as the sole measure of the robustness of the economy really tells me that you don’t know much about economics.
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Why would Russian economy have huge swath of money ripped out of it exactly? We’ve already established that energy is a small sector of the overall Russian economy. Furthermore, Russia is already building pipelines to China, and with the economic growth happening in China and across BRI, it’s pretty clear that Russia will be able to redirect its exports if Europe decides to commit economic suicide. And of course energy prices are going through the roof right now giving Russia further leverage.
Is it ever true that an “invader gains nothing”? Or are you just (strangely) saying that there is more to lose than to gain?
Everyone on reddit is ranting about how it will be another Afghanistan… but what if it were merely another Chechnya? If Putin believes it to be that, he might well decide to invade/annex.
Ukraine will have strong western support so it won’t be as easy as Chechnya. Although Putin might decide to annex anyway.
“Strong” support? What’s that mean? Sure, the bullies are beating up the nerd, but the nerd will win because you intend to cheer him on from the sidelines?
Should have kept their nukes. Now they’re fucked.
Is Chechnya a comparison you want to make? Russia fought two wars over it before successfully subduing them. To this day, there are still suspicions that there were false flag attacks where Russia killed its own citizens to bolster support for the war and bring Putin into the presidency.
Which, if there was some magical factor in the universe that made them always win the second war, we could expect them to lose the first, right? Except there is no such magical factor.
The first loss is explainable and quite irrelevant.
So? Even if true, that doesn’t alter my point at all.
The point is (for those who need pictures drawn in crayon for them) Russia has reasons to expect that it might prevail in such a war, in a permanent way, with what their culture and regime considers to be acceptable losses.
The pretense for that war, the ethics of it, its justifiability, these things are all besides the point.
You’re an American, so why don’t you tell me what you gained from the quagmire in Afghanistan?
People of Donetsks and Luhansk are ethnically Russian and they want independence. Weird how westerners only care about people’s right to self determination when it suits them. The leaders of these republics explicitly asked Russia for help after Ukraine failed to abide by Minsk agreements that require Ukraine to give Donbas autonomy.
Stop trying to invent reality.
Russia’s economy never recovered from being slapped with sanctions following the theft of Crimea. You can see that both in a dip in their nominal GDP and in a dip in the Big Mac index. As that page explains, a lower index value implies that McDonald’s is pricing their burgers lower to match what local people can pay. The ruble fell against the dollar, so the price of a Big Mac relative to a US dollar fell.
That’s utter nonsense as the article I linked above very clearly shows. If anything, the sanctions forced Russia to start developing its domestic industry making its economy far more robust than it was previously. Russia now also has an open alliance with China meaning that anything Russia can’t produce domestically can be sourced from China. Meanwhile, BRI is creating a huge economic bloc in Eurasia that Russia is an active member of.
I’m also not sure whom you’re claiming Crimea was stolen from given that people of Crimea are ethnically Russian and have overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia after the 2014 coup. Once again, you don’t appear to care about people’s right for self determination in the slightest. It doesn’t matter to you what people who actually live in Crimea want, all you care about NATO’s geopolitical goals. Really telling on yourself there bud.
The article shows Russia’s currency sliding in value. It dipped sharply following the annexation of Crimea, began a recovery, and then dipped sharply with the pandemic. So yes, the sanctions absolutely hurt their economy.
This is true, the sanctions did have that effect, at least regarding making it resilient to sanctions. This is an effect we’ve seen in other economies under a heavy sanctions regime (Cuba, Iran) where they’ve developed a more internally resilient economy at the cost of overall efficiency. All that said, there are plenty of levers that the West has left to pull. If Russian oligarchs start having their London real estate confiscated, you can bet words will be had with President Putin.
Wait till you find out what happened to the rest of the economies in the world after the pandemic. Sanctions created a temporary inconvenience for Russia, but the long term effect is clearly positive since re-industrialization and self reliance will serve Russia much better going forward.
You’re once again showing your lack of understanding of the subject you’re discussing. London confiscating the wealth of Russian oligarchs directly helps Putin since it forces the oligarchs to keep wealth in Russia where it’s subject to Russian laws. What the west would be doing is helping Russia ensure that the wealth isn’t being siphoned out.
Ukraine was a neutral buffer before Russia invaded. Seeing Russia dishonor Ukraine’s sovereignty will push what’s left of Ukraine into NATO. So Russia has basically forced NATO encroachment even closer than it was before. And that’s not even counting Finland.
Calling Ukraine neutral after the Western-backed coup of 2014, in which the US candidate became PM and Russian-hating Neonazis got into government is some twisting of facts. The whole Maidan (which was supported massively by Western governments, press and NGOs) was about aligning with the West for fuck’s sake! The invasion only happened after that.
They’ll surely love Russia after getting invaded a second time. If alignment or invasion are their choices, Russia is really pushing them into NATO.
I’m not disagreeing there. Care to revise your statement that Ukraine was neutral prior to the invasion or are you just going to ignore that?
Neutral in what regard? Russia violated their sovereignty in annexing parts of their territory and in supporting militarily separatist movements. They’ve been forced into opposition by Russia’s aggression.