Putin's War With Ukraine (and democracy, freedom, self-determination, etc.)

The benefits of accepting the participation of bad actors into having a roll in globalisation. I expect somewhere between now and 10 years from now this'll f**k us over many times harder when Xi makes a move.

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FFS most or all of the BS murphythecat put in that post came from a user on 4chan, and he collated it from multiple posts. 4chan.... Top quality info right there. I won't link it unless someone asks, don't want to spread more brain damage.

 

Yes, doing to China what we are doing in response to Russia's aggression will be much more difficult. The time to start planning for it is now.

 

Well I have to concede your point here. I suspect it's not nearly as neat and clear cut however. I'm a patriot, and by many people's definitions here probably even a nationalist. Does that mean I am not critical of the real evil my country as directly participated in The past and will do so again in the future? Love of home, family, city, and country is not only "natural" but a good instinct - and I don't mean in some evolutionary ethics, because I hold to a transcendental source of ethical judgment.

Is Anna's support for Putin, ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, or any other specific anything more than an expression of this however imperfect? In other words is she really a systematic thinker and and true believer of "Putinism", whatever that exactly is? I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt here.

 

Catherine the Great would disagree.

 

Watched a video on the strategic goals at play.

Putin's punch list, to my understanding:

1) Control gigantic new oil/gas reserves in East Ukraine (Partly complete with Donetsk/Luhansk break-away, in progress)
2) Control gigantic new oil/gas reserves along Black Sea Coast (Mostly complete with control of Crimea)
3) Control gigantic new oil/gas reserves in West Ukraine (Harder b/c NATO borders, prolly requires taking Ukraine)
3) Restore fresh water to Crimea by destroying blockage of North Crimean Canal (Completed. 2/26)
4) Push CSTO border West to minimize NATO attack surface on Northern European Plain
5) Prevent or mitigate possibility Ukraine can join NATO ever (Zelenskyy PR making this very hard)
6) Compel previous Warsaw Pact countries to exit NATO and restore USSR border (Demanded, Not realistic)

 

WhyOhWhyOhWhyOhWhy...

Do people dip into the sewers of the internet and believe that what they fish out is not crap? And then they expect to be believed, despite their crap outright stinking of crap. And they call the rest of us idiots, slaves of The Media, etc etc, when it is plain that they are the morons. Shit diggers, shit eaters, shit thinkers, shit talkers.

Sometimes there are even good arguments, good sources of information, good reasons, that they could be using. But they prefer shit. ShitFerBrains.

Why?

/rhetorical-rant

Answers not really needed. It's just that I have seen too much of this shit in various otherwise-reasonable conversations. On the other hand, if anyone does have the answer, that's fine too.

Very Well Said, @zerodeefex, @purr1n

 

I think the free world is pretty united in not wanting a new USSR spreading like a cancer on the globe again. Putin talks about buffer zones and neutral countries, but I'm not convinced those are really relevant things in the age of 21st century warfare. Looking at his military state I suppose they may still be relevant to him.

 

From what I read, Russia is also quite fucked demographically with low birth rate and life expectancy for males. Their ability to staff their army with young men in the future is pretty sus. Putin knows after he's gone if Russia isn't in a strong enough strategic position and NATO is right on their borders they're not going to maintain any kind of dominance on the world stage. That's good for the world, but if you're a Russian nationalist (as I'll assume Putin is), it's probably a thought that makes him want to blow his (or your) brains out.

 

Yeah, I'd almost forgotten about the efforts to improve the male life expectancy by launching anti-alcoholism campaigns. I think you can add a ton of brain drain to the demographic fuckedness, too. The whole deal's not pretty for them, even if a lot of countries have these exact issues to some degree.

It's pretty obvious (maybe not to them, but probably to them) that the buffer states aren't needed for protecting Russia's borders militarily. Especially in the context of the Russian military revealing itself as tremendously incompetent relative to what they were thought (at least by themselves) capable of. The thing protecting the borders militarily is just that nobody really is interested in invading them - there's no (or not much) sense of entitlement towards any of their border territories, and certainly no economic motive, so it doesn't even matter how impotent their military is.

Thinking of Russia's idea of buffer states as neutral isn't really right either - in their conception the idea is obviously that the governments are supposed to be subservient to what Russia wants, and when they aren't the "special military operations" happen. A neutral state would probably be favorable to Russia in some aspects and unfavorable in others, but even that's clearly not enough.

 

The more I read, the more I am convinced the Ukraine war has more parallels with Iraq invading Kuwait than the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, which has been bandied around quite a bit because Putin's public justification of Russians and Ukrainians being one people sounds a lot like stuff Hitler said. The realpolitik energy picture is more compelling to me.

Russia and Iraq are petrol states. Their governments need that money to function.

Saddam invaded Kuwait because Iraq had debts to Kuwait from the Iran-Iraq war and Kuwait made it hard for them to repay, mainly by limiting access to the Gulf and exceeding OPEC quotas that drove down oil prices on Iraq's primary export. Additionally, Iraq considered Kuwait part of its traditional territory.

A similar thing is happening in Ukraine, where Russia's energy picture was compromised by Ukraine charging high tariffs on natural gas going to Europe (which is most of Europe's natural gas), and that the Ukraine had recently found rich oil and natural gas reserves that were some of the largest in the world, which with western help would have lead in the future to them becoming a chief competitor to Russia's main exports. Additionally, Russia considers the Ukraine part of its traditional territory from the USSR.

 

I am personally impressed and grateful with all the folks that are backing up their passion with $real$ support. Ya'll already know but I will repeat it, there are more than a few scams out there right now willing to take your money. As some of you know, a certain kind of corruption is endemic in Eastern Europe (and for that matter most of non-western world), were every minor official along the way dips into your very valuable American dollars. Within the UOC-USA we get around this "tax" (let's call it) by being insiders with atypical methods of access, getting "untaxed" American dollars directly into the hands of orphanages and wounded vets (in the past mostly of the civil war/insurgency in eastern Ukraine) and their families. This in person delivery of hard currency is what makes this method an "efficient charity" so to speak. So I be bold and plug this (humanitarian only) effort:

https://www.uocofusa.org/news_220224_1

 

Russia could be a prosperous and respectable part of the civilized world and still a major nuclear power. They were sort of on their way there and we all had hopes of that decades ago, and then Putin got in there and did the president for life thing and so much for that. I'll be totally fine with giving them another shot at international friendship when Putin is gone, by whatever means necessary. He has already cemented his place in history, and it is not pretty. At this point really only a question of how much damage he can do on his way out.

 

If we use the Russo-Georgian War as the model, I'd predict a ceasefire could look like Russia pulls back all troops from undisputed Ukrainian territories, holds Crimea, and also maintains "peacekeeping forces" in Luhansk and Donetsk and uses those territorial disputes the same way as they did in Georgia to block NATO entry.

 

The "some of the largest in the world" stuff is overblown. The 'new discoveries' are unconventional (shale). Media commentators and policy wonks get excited about them, but early reserve estimates for shale plays are always overstated and what finally does end up getting produced is always expensive. Russia's main reserves are of conventional gas that's already in production and being piped to Europe. Ukraine was taking tariffs, sure; but the Nord Stream 1 and Yamal pipelines bypass it - as does the not-yet-flowing Nord Stream 2, which the invasion has put on ice and which would have increased bypass capacity (taking more away from Ukraine) by another ~55 bcm/yr (map; numbers).

Most of Ukraine's reserves (proved and potential) and production are in the east. Shell was awarded a shale exploration licence there in 2013, but pulled out in 2015 after Crimea and the start of the eastern pro-Russian insurgency. Shell was in force majeure, sure - but it's notable that Chevron, awarded a shale block in the far west (no insurgency) also in 2013, pulled out in 2014. Both companies cited profitability as an issue amid low gas prices. In Chevron's case at least, I suspect the reserves weren't really there. Having been peripherally involved in shale gas exploration in the Polish continuation of that trend in the mid 2000s, I really wouldn't be too optimistic about its potential. Oil in the deep water Black Sea off the Crimea is possibly more interesting, but deep-water exploration comes with high uncertainty and high costs, and again, Russia has a lot of already-discovered oil.

So I really don't think this is an oil/gas geopolitics game. You're right, Russia is a petrol state; but it has more than enough hydrocarbons of its own and is risking, rather than ensuring, markets for them by its current actions. The 3 latter points in your earlier post, as part of his overarching ex-KGB/cold war ambition to "make Russia great again", are more likely to be Putin's priorities.

 

Yes. What were we debating again? No question a lot of older Russians pine for the mundane predictability of Soviet life. I hope the young people empowered with instant connectivity that is hard to censor and unencumbered by delusions of past glory will drag them into the 21st century eventually

Part of all of our cultures sadly. Even the free world is run by the wealthy, for their benefit.