KentVillan

Those Turkish drones are doing some serious damage

Coke has got massively out of hand IMO… so many more people doing it on a regular basis, and if you’re a fat alcoholic screaming at a footballer it’s a recipe for a heart attack Edit: Obviously not explanation for all of these by any means. Some people are just v unlucky. But I reckon might explain the increase

Yep - and IMO Kaliningrad has always been the huge flaw in the "This is all NATO's fault... we didn't respect Russia's sphere of influence" line of argument. Bear in mind, too, that Poland and the Baltic States have by far the highest levels of public support for NATO membership.

https://mwi.usma.edu/miscalculation-and-myopia-in-moscow-understanding-russias-regime-change-folly/

This is Russian state media on Soviet involvement in Vietnam... eery parallels https://www.rbth.com/history/332396-how-soviets-fought-against-americans

Official statement from Pentagon

Yes, the bit in bold is the deal that has just been scrapped. The Poles sprung it on the Americans without consulting, and the US (probably correctly) think it would be a pointless escalation with minimal benefit.

Polish delivery of MiG jets has hit a snag. Bit more of an explanation here:

It's already unacceptable, but no chance will we intervene because a car got shot up by a tank. Bear in mind all the global superpowers have been guilty of war crimes like this in places like Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, etc. and this has never factored into the other great powers' calculations of whether they should intervene. It's tragic, but risking global nuclear war (100s of millions, maybe billions of deaths) because a few hundred civilians died is never going to be a serious consideration for the top level decision makers. Think the current approach is the only way, really - severe economic sanctions, supply weapons, aid, and intelligence support to Ukraine, allow volunteers to travel freely to fight... I hope it works, but guess it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

This is a very hawkish thread, which I'm not sure I entirely agree with (even if I agree with the fundamental point that you give Putin an inch and he'll always take a mile). As someone else said in the replies, all these "mistakes" have also prevented nuclear war. But the guy Tweeting is relatively legit - ex-Nato and works for European security think tanks. But I do think that the whole, "give an inch and he'll take a mile" rationale is equally valid, and over time we've allowed Putin to become an increasingly pernicious influence. Is the strategy just to wait for him to die, and hope his successor is a bit nicer?

Yes, but part of Putin's modus operandi as an ex-KGB guy, paranoid autocrat and probable sociopath is to mislead, distract, and provoke. Also he has to think about his domestic justification for waging war, which is arguably more important to him than whether his remarks make any sense on the world stage. In effect, many non-Nato nations have gone down the "Nato overreached" line of argument anyway, so he doesn't need to help them with that. He's talking to his home audience, and firing shots at his enemies. So I can understand in Putin's mind why he needs to portray the Ukrainians as a non-country of Russian brothers in need of Denazification. It has some kind of internal logic, even if to us it is clearly ludicrous.

The thing is, there are a bunch of plausible explanations, and picking the right one involves having really high-level intelligence from Russia and China, which are hardly the most transparent systems of government. I've heard: Putin's gone somewhat mad because he's terminally ill Putin feels cornered by Nato and we've poked the bear Putin thinks this is his last opportunity to solidify his presence in Ukraine, and shore up his previous victories in Crimea / Donbas Putin is conspiring with Xi Jinping to completely reset the global order, and this is phase one, to test how US / Nato respond Putin isn't conspiring with Xi, but does see weakness post-Covid, post-Trump, EU energy dependency, post-Merkel, French election coming up, etc. and miscalculated None of them is completely impossible or inconsistent with the facts... Maybe combinations of explanations are true. Maybe we'll never know. Hard to get inside the head of one man.

Worth a read - insight into Putin's possible thinking

Sounds like this wasn't meant to be announced ahead of time, but everyone got carried away... one of the problems with democracies I guess is that every country has its Liz Truss types

Really good thread.

Sadly, the general analysis seems to be that the oligarchs are much less politically influential than we think in the West. Putin has structured his state institutions so that military / police / intelligence power is held by strongmen who owe all their authority to him. The oligarchs exist in a separate sphere, and although they have loads of money, they owe it all to Putin's largesse, and don't really get involved in displays of force. Of course this is damaging to them, and therefore they will be frustrated with what Putin has done, but the question is whether they can act on that frustration usefully. Seems like Putin has thought very carefully about insulating himself from this kind of thing.

(It’s not because the sanctions are weak or pointless… it’s because of the structure of the Russian state)

Yeah, a lot of the “Russian controlled” territory on those maps is just main roads. The Ukrainians presumably are just spreading out to surrounding towns / villages / forests, and using superior local knowledge to move freely. It just feels identical to every other case of a great power thinking it can steamroller a big country that doesn’t want it there. Whether it’s the French resistance or the Viet Cong or the Taliban… how does Putin achieve anything here in the long run?

Based on what? You think these sanctions are all a big pantomime?

Has he though? Quite a lot of stuff has happened that wasn't thought likely at the start of this. It was always expected that Germany would be hard to convince on energy, but they've gone much further than most people thought they would. Also, the FT is reporting that lots of unsanctioned Russians are getting caught up in sanctions anyway because banks are terrified of getting caught working with intermediaries. The evidence from Russia seems to be that the sanctions are hitting very hard - bank runs, ruble value down significantly, stock market closed, etc. Plus war is a very expensive activity in itself, and Putin has sunk billions on it now.

In fairness, I think that tussle between conservative critics and progressive reformers is what helps to drive democracies forwards. The country suffers when we have too prolonged a period of conservatism or weak opposition, but it's not an entirely bad thing to have people picking holes in progressive ideas and progressive reforms. The issue is when stuff is just smeared as "unworkable" or "socialist" or "fantasy economics" or whatever, and you can literally see it already working in another country.

Not sure if this belongs here or in the Russia thread, but Chris Bryant on fire today. Liz Truss's pants on fire.

I feel like you’re trying to “play Devil’s advocate” but doing it by saying things that aren’t true, aren’t relevant, or are framed in a misleading way. It’s so easy to say the mainstream media are misleading people, but most of the content in this thread is coming from expert sources / open source intelligence / etc. What point are you trying to make that people in this thread don’t already accept? That the world is complicated and not all Russians are bad!? Does anyone here disagree? I’m baffled by what you feel you’re getting out of this.

Russian-speaking / ethnic Russian Ukrainians are not necessarily pro-Putin or pro-integration. That’s a mistake a lot of people make in this debate. Lots of Russian-speaking Ukrainians have an independent Ukrainian identity. (Think of it a bit like Welsh and English speakers in Wales.)

I think you’re a top VT poster and I understand why you have misgivings about NATO, why you want a more peaceful outcome that doesn’t involve ordinary civilians fighting for their lives, etc But I just don’t think you’ve put forward a plausible scenario. Words like “neutrality” and “diplomacy” are great, but what do they mean concretely in terms of actions? What do you think could / should have been done differently? You haven’t explained.