On the fifth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of many unanswered questions is why Russia has launched a military campaign at huge cost with maximalist objectives, and then declined to use the vast majority of its fixed wing combat aircraft.
This is pure and utter nonsense. Russia has been literally preparing for this eventuality since 2014, and they’re very much ready for these sanctions, even financial times acknowledges that these sanctions aren’t likely to have much of an effect. Thinking that Russia didn’t consider the worst case outcomes before making a decision to start a war is incredibly delusional.
On the other hand, the west was entirely unprepared for this and the west depends on both Russia and Ukraine for food, energy, metals, and plenty of other things. Energy prices in UK have already shot up 54% and now there are talks about prices going up as high as 300%. I wonder how western public will react when thee bills for necessities shoot through the roof. Seems like nobody is considering the impact that economic warfare will have on the western countries.
It’s also worth remembering that the whole conflict has only lasted 5 days so far, and here’s how it compares with US invasion of Iraq which is a small isolated country, half the size of Ukraine where US invaded with 10x as many troops and had utter disregard for civilian casualties.
Whatever a person’s ideology is, or their opinion of Russia, I think we can all agree they’ve been preparing since then.
And yes, it is a fairly strong counter-argument to the idea that they just unexpectedly ran out of money. If they’ve been preparing for 7 years, the missiles and bombs should have been stockpiled. It’s not like creditors showed up and repossessed those.
But it’s perplexing. Even if we accept at face value your assertion that they want to minimize civilian casualties and not turn the Ukrainian public against them, the laser-guided bombs hitting military targets would put a quick end to resistance and shouldn’t make things worse from a PR perspective.
They either don’t have them (seems unlikely, but if true, also inexplicable), or aren’t using them. And it’s a little fucking weird.
Well, if there is one criticism of the west you could level at us that’s difficult to deny, it’d be that. Since when does anyone here consider the impact of anything farther than about 3 business days out? Touche.
If this was a particularly bad winter, we’d already be howling.
Good point. It’s been a long while, I guess I’d forgotten the timetable for that one. But what will we see in the next 3-6 weeks if the comparison is apt?
Entirely possible that they don’t want to reveal their full capabilities to NATO unless they have to. They’re already doing very well using old and outdated tech, so they likely don’t see a reason to show off their latest tech unless they have to. One of the reasons could be that they anticipate that NATO may join in after all, at which point they would have the advantage of surprise.
How this progresses in the coming weeks is the real question. If Russia sees more resistance than they anticipated then they may escalate. We’ve already seen signs of that in Kiev and a few other cities. It’s very hard to predict what will actually happen, but sincerely hope that the ongoing negotiations will result in some solution that’s acceptable to both sides so that the conflict can end.
This is semi-plausible. And scary as fuck.
Were it true, though, it might mean that they intend to do something that inevitably provokes such a response. It’s not as if NATO is itching to get into the fight on this one. My read is that even if they bumbled across a border into a NATO country, NATO would do everything they could to not follow up on that unless it looked like the Russians planned on staying.
I have no clue what would be acceptable to either. Ukrainians obviously want the Russians out, and permanently. They’d likely want reparations were they in any position to demand them. They definitely want some sort of insurance policy against a repeat, of which only inclusion in NATO seems to fit the bill. (Or nukes, but even the US is clear on the subject of non-proliferation… they can’t make their own and no one will give them those.)
Russia wants something that’s unclear to me. They probably don’t want to keep the land, or to integrate it into the Russian Federation. But they want it weakened to the point that it could not defend itself against another incursion, at minimum. Probably also to the point that if they choose, they can meddle in its internal politics.
I don’t think those are negotiable. And god help everyone if Putin’s really going after that horseshit Dugin wrote up.
I don’t want to fall for propaganda, and I try not to (not even the stuff that I find comforting), but this is just impossible to make fucking sense of. Russia doesn’t seem to be behaving very sanely, which my entire life was the one thing you could count on them doing. Realpolitik seems to have been thrown out with the trash.
Indeed, as that could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust.
Russia wants 3 things as far as I know:
I imagine that they will continue military action until Ukraine agrees to these terms. Unless NATO intervenes militarily, which opens the door for a nuclear holocaust, Russia knows that they will eventually control the country and will be in position to implement their demands.
To understand why Russia is behaving the way it is you have to start from the premise that NATO is a hostile military alliance with the ultimate goal of enacting regime change in Russia.
Whether this is actually the case or not is entirely besides the point. This is what Russia is convinced of, and NATO actions can certainly be interpreted that way especially given that NATO refuses to negotiate with Russia in good faith and has now expanded right up to their border.
What happened in Ukraine is akin to if Russia engineered regime change in Mexico to install a pro-Russian government, and then Mexico asked to join CSTO and host Russian nukes on US border.
Starting from this perspective conflict is inevitable, and then it simply becomes a question on whose terms this conflict will happen. Russia calculated that they are likely in the best position they’re going to be to take Ukraine, and that their position will steadily become worse going forward. They’re willing to take any amount of economic blow back because they see this as an existential threat.
Well, #1 is a done deal. That’s not going to change. #3 is hypothetically on the table, but is a hard sell given the current circumstances. #2 just won’t happen. They’d never agree to it in a million years, not unless they are thoroughly broken… and the sorts of misery that have to be put on them for that are the same that would provoke western intervention.
It would be irrational for Ukraine to agree to demilitarization. For reasons I hope are obvious to everyone. But if we can ignore those…
Then we have to assume that the secessionists in Donbass and Luhansk won’t give up either. The Ukrainian government would no longer be able to resist them (with or without Russia sending weapons to the secessionists). They’d see their country whittled away over a few decades, until nothing is left.
They really have been put into circumstances where #2 is a dealbreaker, so if that’s a non-negotiable point for Russia… this is utterly fucked. There will be no peace.
I really wish someone would put forth the option of Russia joining NATO. Maybe if they were in the club, they’d no longer feel like it’s specifically designed to threaten them. Even if 70 years ago it was made clear that the Soviet Union wasn’t welcome, supposedly they’re no longer that entity, right?
Right, that’s what I’m thinking as well. Crimea isn’t going back to Ukraine and neutral status is something that could be negotiated. I don’t see Ukraine agreeing to demilitarization unless Russia destroyed their military by force. I’m hoping that’s the point Russia is willing to bend on.
Donbass republics are likely lost to Ukraine at this point as well. It’s hard to see how they’d go back regardless of what ends up being negotiated.
Joining NATO is precisely what Russia floated in the 90s, but was rejected out of hand. This was the turning point when Russia started treating NATO as a hostile alliance. This article is the best summary of the role NATO actually plays in practice that I’ve come across.
I have read that Stalin himself floated this in the 1950s, shortly after it was announced. That because NATO was designed specifically to thwart USSR, this was not only rejected, but with the maximum possible insult (privately at least, not publicly).
That’s all ancient history.
If they floated this in the 1990s and it was rejected again, then Clinton was a bigger fool than I figured him for. And even for my anti-commie tendencies, it seems… well, “harsh” doesn’t quite cut it. Irrationally brutal? I dunno. I hope you’re wrong on that and just misremembering something. I don’t see how that could ever be a defensible policy.
Then Russia is, regrettably, justified in that stance. That needs to change.
Whatever else I am, I am not a warmonger. If Russia were genuinely invaded by another power (China I suppose, no one else is realistic), I don’t see why we shouldn’t do what we can to put a stop to it. We wouldn’t be able to help at that point though, for the same reasons we can’t do much about Ukraine… the invader has nukes and the threat of using them is implicit if not explicitly made.
However, if Russia were inducted into NATO, then the potential invader would have to know that we’d retaliate and resist. It should deter that. Let them in for fuck’s sake. Fast-track it.
Yeh, and pragmatists in the Ukrainian government know that as well, it’s just impossible for them to say it out loud. They don’t like it, but I suspect when the microphones are turned off they’re resigned to that.
For me? Personally? It’s not even that big of a deal. In principle, secession is no different than divorce, and a seceding region doesn’t have to have a good reason or any reason at all to do so. It’s a shitty tactic to use in war. And we both know that this was egged on by Moscow. I think we disagree only on whether the Russians cheated in that game.
The concern though, in Ukraine, is that it doesn’t stop there. Sympathizers in the bordering areas will be pissed that their neighbors 5 miles down the road got to leave but that they didn’t. If Ukraine is hobbled so that they can’t police that (demilitarized), then they are looking at no longer having any sort of country at all in 40 years time.
Even should Russia acknowledge that concern and attempt to mitigate it (so that negotiations can go forward), the jackasses in Donbass won’t necessarily obey. Russia might have set something up there that they’d lose control of, and this alone could torpedo peace talks.
At this point I really think that NATO needs to be disbanded and new security architecture created for Europe based on current realities. NATO is a historical artifact of the world order that was formed after WW2, and that world order no longer exists. Ultimately, the only way that peace can be achieved is by creating a framework that addresses everyone’s security concerns.
I really don’t see secession as a big deal either. I think the problem for smaller nations is that they’re always going to end up under pressure from larger nations. Countries like Ukraine are stuck in the middle of geopolitical games between forces that are much bigger than them.
Ukraine dissolving entirely is also a very real possibility. That could happen very rapidly once Ukrainian military is defeated. There are a lot tensions within the country that have been escalating over the past decade. Ukraine splitting up into separate states may actually be the best result going forward.
All this spin isn’t going to change the fact that Russia is going broke. They clearly underestimated the capture of their foreign currency reserves. Putin doesn’t like to hear bad news, so his advisors likely painted a rosy picture. “It’s the 2014 victory lap! We’ll in Kyiv before they know it!”
Buddy, you should read up some history. In particular, go look up what Russia already went through in the 90s and in 2014. The elephant in the room is that this tactic has never worked once. This has been tried with North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela just to name a few examples. All of them are still around. These are small countries that aren’t even self reliant. If these tactics haven’t worked there, what reason is there to believe they would work in Russia.
It frankly amazes me just how deluded some people are. Do people seriously think Putin managed to stay in power all these years because he’s an irrational fool who makes rash decisions he doesn’t consider the outcomes of. It’s just fantastical to me.
I certainly suspect Putin has surrounded himself with sycophants. That Russian press release where he’s talking down to his defense ministers doesn’t look good. They look like they’re about to piss their pants. “Yes, boss! We’ll roll into Kyiv by the second day, tops!”
This is going to make the 90s Russian bond default look like a joy ride. And Russia is certainly not self reliant. Has the Moscow exchange re-opened yet? Are the trains in Moscow running again without credit card transactions? Putin clearly miscalculated here, both militarily and economically. I don’t see what his exit strategy is here. Neither NK, Iran, nor Venezuela were trying to fund an invasion when sanctioned. He’ll be broke before he can dig his heels in and demand terms. Russia, however, can safe face by ousting him.
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It ceases to exist. With no capital investment companies can’t grow, people have nowhere to invest savings (see the mega-housing bubble in China, as a result of that), and the currency backing it becomes meaningless.
Here, they are just delaying because the open would see a free fall. Judging by the performance of listings for Russian companies on the London exchange, they’d be trading at penny stock levels now.
You certainly sound like you’re living in an invented reality. There is no point arguing with you over this as the reality will become quite clear in the coming months.