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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

brogdale said:
Have they got a dossier indicating it could happen within 45mins?

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It's a weird brinkmanship, each side trying to make the other look more deranged. If the Russians are coming, then they'll hold off to maximise tension / disinformation / disruption for a while yet. Biden thinks calling them out on invasion will make them look weak if they don't, and still cowed by American "might" (LOL). Putin seems to be enjoying a pisspoor diplomatic and media corps chasing their own tail like an angry street dog with haemorrhoids. But the failure of the catastrophist predictions of invasion, to date, is undermining the credibility of the western democracies, their emissaries and scribblers, really well.

As it stands, fortunately, after her disastrous mission to Russia last week, no one's really asking the opinion of the Nadine Dorries of international diplomacy on, well, anything.
 
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steeplejack said:
This is absolute nonsense, and a key western misunderstanding of Putin and the current Russian upper ecehlons. Putin's Russian nationalism owes much more to the nineteenth century and the era of Nicholas I- "muscular" Orthodox Christian patriotism as a cover for kleptocracy and unbridled greed. Putin's cadre view Communism having failed utterly as an idea, whose late corruption (the creation of oligarchs under the table in the 1980s- cf Khodorkovsky & MENATEP from c. 1986 onwards) led to Russia's internal chaos and international humiliation in the 1990s. They seek to reverse the losses of the 1990s politically and diplomatically. The "gurus" behind Putin actually come from a White Russian background and control his "wallet" in Switzerland. Pre-Communist Russian Chauvinism and patriotism are the ideas that drive this very twenty first century push, hurried up by a stagnating / declining economy and living standards domestically. Sure the USSR still exists in cosplay form- commemorations of the Great Patriotic war, veneration of Soviet-era veterans, etc- but a desire to re-create the past does not meaningfully exist anywhere. I'm sure some of his money filters into the continuity Communist party to ensure they do performative noisy opposition on certain points without ever getting ideas above their station.

I wish people would give up with this "Putin wants to re-create the Sovet Union" bullshit. He doesn't. He knows better than anyone that the conditions which shaped the post-Stalin Soviet Union, let alone its revolutionary formation, haven't existed for nearly half a century and won't exist again in any of our lifetimes.

This is not about territorial conquest and occupation- Russia simply doesn't have the money for that- but a hybrid strategy of cronyism (e.g Armenia, Chechnya, Kazakhstan), exposing the opponents wekanesses via theatre (currently happening in Ukraine), hybrid warfare (half a dozen unrecognised statelets on the territories of soveriegn states from Transnistria to Abkhazia), soft but deniable annexation (Belarus). Taken together all of these are about re-creating a "Russian world"- buffer states surrounding Russia and protecting them from the West / NATO et al. It's a strategy of permanent uncertainty and crisis in order to prove once and for all the decadence of Western democracies, the futility and moribund nature of NATO, an exposure of the naked self interest and empty rhetoric of the liberal democracies.

Putin sees liberal democracy as a dead idea and is manoevering to strengthen an authoritarian axis with the Chinese. I suspect he will keep the pressure on the EU / NATO by keeping up performative pressure on Ukraine with little intention to launch a full scale invasion. I suspect Putin himself doesn;t yet know how things will turn out in the short to medium term.
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I agree, pretty much - but just to nitpick a bit, Chechnya was always a part of the Russian Federation, even before 1991. Cronyism is part of the story of the reassertion of Russian power there, but it would take a different form than in, say, Armenia - and even there, come on, you can't blame the Armenians for taking help from one of the only sources they can find for it! And VP didn't exactly come through for them during that last round (the Armenians - a nation of bookish nerds surrounded by some of the worst thugs in the business).
 
steeplejack said:
It's a weird brinkmanship, each side trying to make the other look more deranged. If the Russians are coming, then they'll hold off to maximise tension / disinformation / disruption for a while yet. Biden thinks calling them out on invasion will make them look weak if they don't, and still cowed by American "might" (LOL). Putin seems to be enjoying a pisspoor diplomatic and media corps chasing their own tail like an angry street dog with haemorrhoids.

As it stands, fortunately, after her disastrous mission to Russia last week, no one's really asking the opinion of the Nadine Dorreis of international diplomacy on, well, anything.
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That's a better response than my jocular post deserved tbh.
 
Will Russia snip our internet's wires if it kicks off? I imagine half the country would enlist if they do
 
Even Zelenskyy is saying it's coming on Wednesday now.
EDIT: apparently he was speaking ironically...
 
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IC3D said:
Will Russia snip our internet's wires if it kicks off? I imagine half the country would enlist if they do
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Why would they choose to cut off one of their most successful, deniable and low-cost attack vectors? Invading countries costs a lot of blood and treasure, especially when compared to the relatively low cost of socially engineering a bunch of people to shoot themselves in the foot.
 
NoXion said:
Why would they choose to cut off one of their most successful, deniable and low-cost attack vectors? Invading countries costs a lot of blood and treasure, especially when compared to the relatively low cost of socially engineering a bunch of people to shoot themselves in the foot.
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"Russian Saboteurs Snip Internet Cables, Install Higher-Speed Internet"
 
Raheem said:
Sure, but this a clear example of nut-picking.
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The AC and like minded types - all with plenty of access in Washington - have been pushing this line for ages. They have been unhappy ever since Zelenskiy kicked out the nationalists. They pushed for the arrest of Medvedchuk while resisting any arrests/clampdown on hardline nationalist elements. And throughout this they have been working hand in glove with the CIA and other spooks.

It is not only Russia's actions that have caused the rise in tension, the potential path to conflict has not only been created by only one side.
 


Oh, everyone desperate for a war and polishing up their map of Eastern Europe (pin marks from their previous seminar on how Hitler failed at Stalingrad still visible) is going to be disappointed.
 
Flavour said:
I think this is Putin's way of saying "I am listening, make me an offer" -- I highly doubt these troops are being withdrawn very far away from the border.
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Be daft to make first move ground based anyway, first 'visible' hot moves would be about air superiorty
 
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