Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[BristolEcho]

If anyone wants to read a close-to-8,000 words thoughtful piece about this stuff, just gonna plug this one again: James Meek · Did I invade? Do you exist? · LRB 18 December 2021

That was pretty interesting thanks.

 

[steeplejack]

If anyone wants to read a close-to-8,000 words thoughtful piece about this stuff, just gonna plug this one again: James Meek · Did I invade? Do you exist? · LRB 18 December 2021

It is a really excellent summary still very relevant (nearly) two months on...

 

[not-bono-ever]

Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

Officials say they have evidence of plot to mock up scenes of attack using corpses, Turkish-made drones and actors playing mourners

www.theguardian.com

I dunno but I get a bad feeling that the western intelligence agencies have been done like a kipper here

 

[splonkydoo]

Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

Officials say they have evidence of plot to mock up scenes of attack using corpses, Turkish-made drones and actors playing mourners

www.theguardian.com

I dunno but I get a bad feeling that the western intelligence agencies have been done like a kipper here

That is a pretty insane news article, which is just banging the drum towards war. It would be great if they published the sources on any of this, but we are in an Iraq/Libya situation right now. Russia is by no means innocent, but if we see the spark lit we will see the full force of 'liberal interventionism' being invoked here without a second thought.

 

[ska invita]

That is a pretty insane news article, which is just banging the drum towards war. It would be great if they published the sources on any of this, but we are in an Iraq/Libya situation right now. Russia is by no means innocent, but if we see the spark lit we will see the full force of 'liberal interventionism' being invoked here without a second thought.

Russia does not equal Libya or Iraq though - a very different balance of power, whatever the media beats are

 

[hitmouse]

Ukraine: Between Two Fires

Anarchists in and around Ukraine speak on the looming threat of war with Russia.

crimethinc.com

Interesting (well, to some people anyway) to learn that Antti R, of the Avtonom lot, is arguing for direct support for the Ukranian military. Or at least that's what they say he's saying, he's written his actual article in Russian so I don't really know.

 

[LDC]

Just had a look at the what comprises the BTGs Russia is deploying. Wiki article is interesting, they seem to be a mix of assets (infantry, armour, artillery, support) but also something that's used to plug the holes of manpower and equipment shortages.

Battalion tactical group - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[gosub]

Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War

In the final weeks of World War I, a German general sent a telegram to his Austrian allies summarizing the situation. It was, he wrote, “serious, but not catastrophic.” The reply came back: “Here the situation is catastrophic, but not serious.”

english.aawsat.com

 

[dilute micro]

So Macron is headed off to Kiev to convince them of Finlanding Ukraine thinking this was his idea?

 

[kebabking]

Depends which version of Finlandisation Macron means of course - but I rather doubt old Vlad likes version 2.0...

Keir Giles (@KeirGiles) Tweeted: Finlandisation seems like a good option for Ukraine, given that it means EU membership, strong anti-corruption law, intimate cooperation with NATO, joining the JEF and buying F-35s and JASSMs to dissuade further Russian military tomfoolery, etc. etc. etc. (h/t @alexgarcialonso)

 

[steveo87]

Ukraine crisis: Macron says Putin pledges no new Ukraine escalation

The French president tells reporters that the Russian leader gave him assurances in talks in Moscow.

www.bbc.co.uk

Well, if Macron says it....

 

[cupid_stunt]

Ukraine crisis: Macron says Putin pledges no new Ukraine escalation

The French president tells reporters that the Russian leader gave him assurances in talks in Moscow.

www.bbc.co.uk

Well, if Macron says it....

Chamberlain again?

 

[goldenecitrone]

Chamberlain again?

La paix a notre epoque

 

[kebabking]

Times Radio is saying that the Russians have denied giving Macron any such promises....

Macron is a politician, and like all such creatures - and most of the rest of us - has a tendency to, on occasion, hear what he would like to hear. However he's also dealing with someone who lies as easily as he breathes, and who has a political objective of making western leaders look like idiots.

The parade of different states sending people to talk to Putin in a line is self-defeating: firstly because he can say different things to different people, stroke their ego's tell them how much more seriously he takes them than that fool from Y state, and second it does distrust in the west - what did X offer, what got soft-peddled, what did they say was the thing they needed?

It will get worse, because politicians are too fixed to the idea that stuff that's really bad won't happen, and that it's their personal skills at talking that will stop it happening...

 

[dilute micro]

We don't really have an A-Team of world leaders at the moment to handle things like this. Putin is in the driver seat. I believe he's playing the role of working for diplomatic solutions so that he can look back and say he tried every option to prevent war.

Putin is a true believer in the old Soviet Union. And I think he's putting it on his shoulders to help his country for the long-term by securing its geographical and defensive weaknesses Russia was left with after the USSR dissolved. He's built up the military over the last umpteen years. It was very much outdated. But I still don't think the west is the long game.

 

[Sprocket.]

Chamberlain again?

More chamberpot sadly.

 

[dilute micro]

I think the first part of this video is a good assessment of the situation. I don't agree with Putin and I hope he's defeated if he invades but I understand his position. It would be the same to us as the USSR setting up right on our border. It's times like this that make you hate all the years of paranoia that has shaped the worldview of Russian leadership, partly over democratic westerness and party over thinking everyone's going to attack them. The paranoia has gone back and forth over the cold war. If everyone just chilled out. There's no reason why we can't get along and just live side by side.

 

[steeplejack]

Putin is a true believer in the old Soviet Union.

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.

 

[steeplejack]

Anyway, I'm sure ther Russians have only one big fish, or pork market, to fry today.

I imagine this will be a short meeting with Putin maybe even sending a body double, as Saddam reputedly did with George Galloway. The message "Stop yapping or we'll turn the Conservative Party's lights out"

 

[Rimbaud]

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.

Great post, makes a lot of sense.

 

[dilute micro]

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 ...

Yes, this is what I meant by Soviet Union. I wasn't going deeply into its ideology. But if security means territory then I don't believe he cares about any differences though. I think this is what the buildup is about.

 

[steeplejack]

I don't know what that means, but it is complete nonsense to describe Putin as a "true believer in the Soviet Union". He hasn't been for three deacdes at least.

The "West's" lack of understanding of Russia is pretty staggering. Stuck in the 1990s, lots of jokes still about comrades, Lada cars, bureaucracy, et al. A weird mix of Orientalism and being stuck in a past that no longer exists.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I don't know what that means, but it is complete nonsense to describe Putin as a "true believer in the Soviet Union". He hasn't been for three deacdes at least.

I think they meant in geopolitical rather than ideological terms. And Putin has apparently described the collapsing of the Union as the greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century.

 

[steeplejack]

 

[not-bono-ever]

Liz Truss looks to have made an impact anyway

 

[friedaweed]

I think the first part of this video is a good assessment of the situation. I don't agree with Putin and I hope he's defeated if he invades but I understand his position. It would be the same to us as the USSR setting up right on our border. It's times like this that make you hate all the years of paranoia that has shaped the worldview of Russian leadership, partly over democratic westerness and party over thinking everyone's going to attack them. The paranoia has gone back and forth over the cold war. If everyone just chilled out. There's no reason why we can't get along and just live side by side.

Really interesting link. Cheers.

 

[friedaweed]

Liz Truss looks to have made an impact anyway

Yeah. You could see how engaging the conversation must have been. No need to send those Irish Fishermen in now.

 

[RainbowTown]

Two interesting takes on China's (self) interest in all of this:

China: What does it want from the Ukraine crisis with Russia?

As Xi and Putin prepare to meet, China says it supports Russia's concerns - but doesn't want war.

www.bbc.co.uk

Russia and China’s growing ‘friendship’ is more a public relations exercise than a new world order

It remains to be seen what the reset of the relations between the two countries will actually mean for the rest of the world.

theconversation.com

 

[steeplejack]

Lavrov on the meeting with Truss “Like a deaf person having a conversation with a mute”.

I think “excruciating waste of time” would be a charitable summary of the “summit”.

 

[hitmouse]

Just caught up with this, I'm sure Lavrov is a despicable scumbag but that is quite a funny windup tbf:

Liz Truss warns Russia of sanctions during tense Ukraine talks

Foreign secretary issues warning as Sergei Lavrov describes UK’s contribution to talks as ‘just slogans’

www.theguardian.com

Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.

Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.