Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

A lot of talk from warfare/strategy experts now that the battle for Kiev is essentially over and Ukraine has won it.

Lots more detail for the implications for that in this thread, especially around why they can't just regroup/resupply and try again, and what that means for Ukraine's negotiating position, and a quicker end to the war than some predicted (weeks and months rather than months and years).



My feeling is that there will probably be some kind of concession to Donbass/Luhansk independence, possibly via a referendum, constitutionally enshrined neutrality, so no NATO membership, though future EU membership will be on the table.

Russia has clearly lost any ability to either take Kiev and enforce regime change, or even cut Ukraine off from the sea by taking Odessa.

I think the question will end up being how humiliating the agreement ends up being for Russia, and the consequences for Putin's leadership. Giving Zelenskyy the power to agree and end to western sanctions could be the final nail in the coffin of Russia's ability to negotiate a favourable outcome for themselves.

I could be wrong obviously, especially if Putin decides to dig in in the East, arming and supporting separatist militias, with or without the direct support of the Russian military.

In that video of him being interviewed by Russian journalists, Zelenskyy himself mentioned a timeframe of about a year, taking into account holding a referendum (which refugee Ukrainians would be able to participate in) and also constitutional changes would require... I think it was two sessions of parliament or something like that.

He was a bit scathing of any seeming suggestions of him doing deals. He pointed out he's only the President and it would be for the people to decide and that any constitutional changes would have to go through parliament. So he's not turning into a dictator, not seizing total power, he's still respecting the political and legal processes.

In fact, one of the points Zelenskyy made was that Russia needs to bring some lawyers to the negotiations. (Because some of the things being suggested in negotiations are apparently not lawful for him to negotiate either way, or can't legally be done to a short timescale - iirc he can't just sign off on any nuclear and NATO stuff himself, some of the demands, he just doesn't have the constitutional authority to accede.)

And don't forget, although prior to being elected President he was an actor and comedian, he actually studied law, and he seems to have respect for law insofar as the extent of his powers go, and the political process, and the constitution. He's even got a lawyerly eye over the details. In that interview, there were questions and answers about a couple of allegedly faked documents purporting to be orders... iirc for Ukrainian forces to retake Crimea and Donbass (or something like that), Zelenskyy hadn't seen one document, but he had seen the other, which was purported to have been signed by him. He pointed out that it had been written in Ukrainian but signed VA Zelenskyy, for Volodymyr Alexandrovich when there's no 'A' in Ukrainian, in Ukrainian it would be written VO.

So someone like that is going to want to dot the Is and cross the Ts and the legal and political process is going to take however long it's going to take, which might be a considerable amount of time. There might be a ceasefire and tensions along the way, but I don't think he's going to take any shortcuts. He's fought this war for democracy and freedom and I don't think he's going to compromise those ideals in the negotiating process, I don't think it's in his nature to agree to do anything that would be unconstitutional, to overreach his authority as president. Although that might present difficulties when negotiating with an autocratic leader who's used to leading by strong arming and dictating.
 
I'm not so cynical about his involvement. His kids have all been brought up here in the UK and I know at least one is openly critical of Putin. People change.

Having decent children doesn't mean your not as dodgy as fuck and neither does being brought up in the UK. Johnson, Cunming and Gove were all brought yo in the UK.

Abramowitz wants to save his ill-gotten gains from being sequestered
 
True, but I think it’s a way of getting other (non-Western) countries involved, protecting their food etc.
Iirc, in the video of Zelenskyy's interview by Russian journalists, he mentioned something about Polish peacekeepers and atomic facilities (so I think maybe the idea was for a conflict-free zone around around those facilities). But from what he said, it was a Polish suggestion/offer, the Ukrainians hadn't requested or suggested it, and he didn't seem enthusiastic about the idea.
 
Interviews with people who left Belarus looking for a safer life in Ukraine.

 
The officers were subsequently fired, though they’ve challenged the decision in court and are seeking to have their employment reinstated. Meduza spoke with Krasnodar-based lawyer Mikhail Benyash, who’s representing the officers in court, about the case and its possible consequences.
If there was an armed conflict, an emergency situation, or martial law, the terms of the contract could be changed without their consent for six months. But we don’t have an armed conflict or a war, it’s just a “special military operation.” The law doesn’t say anything about that. You can go there [as a Rosgvardia officer], but only if you agree to it.
It’s very simple. People don’t want to kill or to be killed. When they first got hired, their contracts were about something slightly different. On top of that, Rosgvardia worked differently. These guys can’t shoot surface-to-air missiles, they can’t operate tanks. What are they going to do against a trained army? And with what, a club and a shield? Their job is to disperse Navalny supporters, and they’ve done a great job at that. This is something different. I want other officers to know: refusing to kill people isn’t a crime. It’s not shameful. It’s all right. If someone says no to an order that requires him to kill someone, he can fully count on our protection. Me and the lawyers from Agora will defend him.
 
I thought this writer made some good points countering Western optimism about Putin having "miscalculated" - he notes that some analysts believe Putin has always been a lot more interested in controlling the vast energy reserves of eastern Ukraine than in the people who live there, whether they're Russian-speaking or not.

As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control...

...More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.

Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions.


 
Russian military is so good at destroying civilian infrastructure
Yeh. But the Americans do it at least as well - surely you've not forgotten the cities they've destroyed from Tokyo to Haiphong to Fallujah? Not to mention when they destroy civilian infrastructure, like the electric and water systems in Iraq, it stays destroyed for years. Sure, the Russians are bastards. But they've done little the Americans haven't, it's not like the Russian way of waging war is so vastly different from the American.

The Americans just have better pr
 
Zelensky interviewed by Russian journalists



eta: now with subtitles all the way through

Here's a transcript of the interview:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cid
Another sample of Grayzone's output, from its editor Max Blumenthal:
Yes Bellingcats own accounts are shit arent they? Oh sorry forgot your opinions are fact-free abuse. Go and share the duff carpers crack pipe….
 
Life in underground metro station is the currently reality for a lot of people left in Khakiv.

[Two women who were flatmates] say they are determined to stay. They have already been displaced once by Russian forces, when their homes in the east were seized by Moscow-backed forces in 2014, who set up self-proclaimed separatist republics.

“It’s OK here. We made friends with a lot of people, and the cat is fine. I’m reading a lot of news and waiting for the situation to get better,”

With cats, ferrets and handcarts, life goes on underground in Kharkiv
 
If you read the article enough external evidence including Bellingcats own accounts are produced, so no.

I clicked on a number of those links, and ended up on the Grayzone site, or on MintPress - 'MintPress News regularly publish fabricated and fake news stories, antisemitic conspiracy theories and war-crimes revisionism.'

You're clearly a conspiraloon, and shouldn't be posting your bullshit here, and you're now a rare case of me reporting posts, and I hope others do too.
 
Yeh. But the Americans do it at least as well - surely you've not forgotten the cities they've destroyed from Tokyo to Haiphong to Fallujah? Not to mention when they destroy civilian infrastructure, like the electric and water systems in Iraq, it stays destroyed for years. Sure, the Russians are bastards. But they've done little the Americans haven't, it's not like the Russian way of waging war is so vastly different from the American.

The Americans just have better pr
True enough but point was its all they can do. Some of the Russian problems in the field were known already. Even I said at the start that Russia is incredibly stupid on the battlefield. But this has been compounded by the illpreparedness by corruption etc. Russia is not pulling back to negotiate. They're trying to bluff for negotiations.
 
Another sample of Grayzone's output, from its editor Max Blumenthal:
Absolutely everything is a conspiracy to the ‘anti’-imperialists. They seem inordinately proud that only they are able to sus it.
 
Back
Top Bottom