Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Torie]

Frankly surreal debates being held on Russia 1 (primary state-owned media channel):
https://mobile.twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1508111683323113479
Most potent quote: “Because if you failed with Ukraine, then how do you threaten NATO? Why do you threaten the US? You could not deal with Zelensky, so what are you?

The guy follows it up with a “final countdown” remark that could mean anything from Putin standing down to pressing the nuclear button (I don’t have enough context from this subtitled clip to draw any real conclusions).

It’s very likely that the speaker, Vladimir Solovyov (a key Putin propagandist), is arguing against a truce/armistice with Ukraine, and pressing for further bloodshed. To be clear, he’s not taking a moral stance.

But for this kind of primetime commentary to be aired, essentially suggesting that the war has humiliated Putin, and that he will lose credibility if they fail, is remarkable.

That is what makes this all unusually high risk. The mentality in certain Russian circles, is either win the war, and make Ukraine a vassal state, or the Russia we know that we love, our culture, our history, will die and Russia will have no further meaning as it is rendered into the ash heap of history.

My take is that this is a symptom of the disease of national exceptionalism. The mentality of national exceptionalism is one of those myths that can become very dangerous. I am looking at you now America on that one, least you become in pari delicto, cf Trump. Check your privilege at the door. I might add that when the French indulged in it, I found them particularly annoying. But they seem to have found the right antidote.

[Torie]

The overwhelming majority of these were probably Russian-speaking Ukrainians, the same demographic Putin spoke about wanting to protect from 'genocide' by their Ukrainian government as part of his justification for the invasion in the first place:

Civilian death toll in Ukraine surpasses 1,100: UN

The UN office noted that the actual injury and death tolls are likely far higher than its calculations.

"OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration," the office's statement said.

The current casualty count is from the time that Moscow's invasion began on Feb. 24 through midnight local time on Saturday.

Yes, there is a certain irony.

[Torie]

The Economist delves into the price of Russian oil, the quantity of which has been cut in half. The mag expects the existing 30% discount will go up to 40%. Interestingly, the real bite is not governments, but private firms fearing bad publicity:

"Instead seaborne exports have cratered because Western buyers, such as big energy firms, fear a public backlash. They also face financial and logistical headaches as cautious banks cut credit, ship owners struggle to obtain insurance and freight costs soar. And each time sanctions are tweaked, says Antonia Tzinova of Holland & Knight, a law firm, compliance staff must study hundreds of pages of ambiguous legalese, making many Russian deals hardly worth the hassle. As a result, Urals crude, the grade pumped out by Russia, is currently trading at a discount of around $30 a barrel. One trader expects the gap to hit $40 within a week’s time."

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/what-can-russia-do-to-sell-its-unwanted-oil/21808447

The bailout country for Russia is China.  However the transport cost is much higher than to Europe (40 days rather than 4), but China will buy when the price gets down to what it thinks is the bottom given the size of the discount. But 30% is not enough of a discount. In the meantime, the price of oil overall will be higher as the market is disrupted and now operating in inefficient ways in order to further the goal of defunding Russia.

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1508474128906469388

Of course not, because NATO was never a serious issue and all the complaining about its expansion is nonsense. Putin knows that NATO won't invade Russia and when 5% of your borders is next to NATO territory, that's not "encircles". What Putin really is afraid of is democracy and the EU. A stable and democratic Ukraine with a prospering economy would threaten his power in Russia because many Russians would start asking why they can't have this as well. A lot of Ukrainians have family relationships in Russia, something Putin can't just shut down with State TV propaganda.

Until Putin's other choices are worse.  Which makes the toughest part it seems to me the issue of how to provide Ukraine with security guarantees which make it functionally impossible for Russia to come back for another course at a later date.

[Torie]

I can't decide whether it is more likely Putin is dissembling (when it comes to the details there is nothing really there regarding protecting Ukraine for another round), or it's real. Real means the Putin's fantasies, and fantasies about Russia recreating its empire, are dead.

[Torie]

Oh god Zelensky please don’t. If he gives up 1 yard of Ukraine soil he’ll just be inviting Putin to try this again in the future and would effectively kill the UN charter which forbids the seizure of land via force

I believe in might makes right and right of conquest so I really do not care about this UN charter.  I do think if the deal involves Ukraine giving up the Donetsk area is a bad idea.  It is clearly bad for Ukraine but I believe it is also bad for Russia because it creates a revanchist Ukraine.  If Putin is determined to take over that area he is better off completely overrunning Eastern Ukraine and leaving a rump Catholic Western Ukraine that is too weak to be a future threat.  By taking over the Donetsk area but leaving Ukraine intact all that means is that decades in the future in a possible period of temporary Russian weakness Ukraine will join an anti-Russian alliance to get back Donetsk.  Putin is much better off giving back Donetsk and trading that in for reversing de-Russification in Ukraine.  What Putin/Russia seems to be doing is very short-sighted in my view if they do grab Donetsk.

What does "reversing de-Russification in Ukraine" actually mean?

If it means "protecting" the Russian language, that reminds me as to what happened to the German language in the US after WWI. It "died," almost instantly. It was not by treaty, or by law, it happened organically. It was no longer a positive status symbol to embrace German culture. It became a source of embarrassment and shame and social ostracization.

[Torie]

Isn't it still possible - if not likely - Russia just pretends to negotiate and reduce miltary action to reorganize their military? And kind of reduce high alert in Ukraine before launching another push? I just don't believe a single word from Russia. Putler more than once broke his word. He and his enablers have zero credibility.

See my post above. Flip a coin. The outlines of the deal as described basically entail "cosmeticising" a Putin loss, and perhaps his early retirement.

[Torie]

Oh god Zelensky please don’t. If he gives up 1 yard of Ukraine soil he’ll just be inviting Putin to try this again in the future and would effectively kill the UN charter which forbids the seizure of land via force

I believe in might makes right and right of conquest so I really do not care about this UN charter.  I do think if the deal involves Ukraine giving up the Donetsk area is a bad idea.  It is clearly bad for Ukraine but I believe it is also bad for Russia because it creates a revanchist Ukraine.  If Putin is determined to take over that area he is better off completely overrunning Eastern Ukraine and leaving a rump Catholic Western Ukraine that is too weak to be a future threat.  By taking over the Donetsk area but leaving Ukraine intact all that means is that decades in the future in a possible period of temporary Russian weakness Ukraine will join an anti-Russian alliance to get back Donetsk.  Putin is much better off giving back Donetsk and trading that in for reversing de-Russification in Ukraine.  What Putin/Russia seems to be doing is very short-sighted in my view if they do grab Donetsk.

What does "reversing de-Russification in Ukraine" actually mean?

If it means "protecting" the Russian language, that reminds me as to what happened to the German language in the US after WWI. It "died," almost instantly. It was not by treaty, or by law, it happened organically. It was no longer a positive status symbol to embrace German culture. It became a source of embarrassment and shame and social ostracization.

I was thinking of Russia has a status in Ukraine similar to French in Canada.  I am fairly majoritarian so I totally get where Ukraine is coming from.  On PRC, for example, I always objected to the various CCP pampering of various ethnic minorities by trying to preserve some of their languages when I always felt that we should just get going with Sinicization.   Ürümqi for example used to be called 迪化 hut the CCP changed it to a Turkified 烏魯木齊.   I still hope one day it can be changed back.  Anyway, this is mostly about power.  If the PRC had a Turkic state to its Western border with a population of 4 billion I would also advise the PRC to preserve and even promote the Uyghur language in Sinkiang out of pure power politic realities.

Just to be clear, unlike the French speakers in Quebec, I don't think most Ukrainians will want to speak Russian anymore, even those who are fluent in Russian or as to whom Russian is a first language. It is also a bad idea strategically, since just like Hitler did, an area with Russian speakers provides an excuse however ersatz for Russia to have a most unhealthy and unwanted (not by not only non-Russian speakers by also Russian speakers now) marsupial relationship with with such areas. That is what Russia really lost that it will not be able to get back. It killed off any desire by those in Ukraine to have a cultural identity or affinity with Russia. Russia and all that it is about is now perceived as a very bad place on a visceral level.

That is my perception anyway. And that is why all this real-politick stuff that one learns in international relations classes is so misplaced here. It is much deeper than that.

[Torie]

Blinkin is as skeptical as I am that peace is breaking out:

"The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, cast doubt on Russia’s pledge to reduce hostilities. “There is what Russia says and there’s what Russia does,” he said during a diplomatic trip to Morocco. “We’re focused on the latter. And what Russia is doing is the continued brutalization of Ukraine and its people and that continues as we speak.”

[Torie]

Allegedly, a munitions dump exploded in Belgorod, Russia. There are unconfirmed reports that a Ukrainian missile struck it but an accident resulting from the mishandling of the ammo may just be as likely.

Ukraine has missiles that go that far?

[Torie]

"US officials make clear the pullback is the direct result of Russia’s failure to make further gains around Kyiv, thwarting its plan to quickly encircle and take the capital. Moreover, Russian forces that withdraw from the north will likely deploy to other parts of Ukraine."

My speculation based on nothing is that Putin is pulling the troops out before they are rendered ineffective or surrender to move things along better in achieving the land-bridge with Crimea, and then Putin tries to get some sort of ceasefire. Maybe he agrees to pull troops out outside Dombass and the land-bridge area, or maybe not.

The problem though with this long term stalemate scenario, is that it also means long term sanctions, together with Western companies cancelling Russia long time. Ukraine is not going to cede Putin his land bridge for any deal. So I wonder how sustainable that strategy is for Putin. Losing 40% of his revenue from energy sales, and Russia not selling much of anything else, and cut off from high tech and parts replacements, so the gears slowly wind down, just does not seem workable to me. Economic autarky in a very high tech world that is largely elsewhere, just does not work as well as it did in the good old days.

What am I missing here?

[Torie]

I can't make heads or tails of this word salad from the NYT's:

"Belying its claims of de-escalation, Russia increased bomb and artillery attacks in Ukraine on Wednesday and sent conflicting signals about the prospects for peace, suggesting new tensions in the Kremlin hierarchy about the course of the war.

'The contradictory messaging came as a newly declassified U.S. intelligence assessment suggested that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had been misinformed about the war’s trajectory by subordinates, who were fearful of his reaction to the Russian military’s struggles and setbacks."

Somehow Putin had no idea how badly the war was going, but now having found out, is getting more bellicose, with Russian command and control in chaos. I am too senior challenged to connect the dots here.

[Torie]

1. Putin announces a special operation into Ukraine.
2. It seems as time goes on that one thing that makes the operation "special" is that it is unusually large in scale.
3. Another thing that makes it special is that it seems to be taking a long time. The Nazis seem well entrenched and have done a good job in brainwashing the populace.
4. 5 long weeks into the operation, Nazi helicopters drop some bombs on a tank farm 20 miles inside Russia.
5. How dare Nazi Ukraine attack peaceful mother Russia in that way! The special operation was a fail! It's time to declare war! Where is the nearest enlistment station!?
6. Obviously Putin attacked the tank farm to rally his nation.

[Torie]

I will remember this day, April 1, 2022, as the first time I read in black and white that India was a "great power." Given its author, I have every confidence that it does not have any jocular intent whatsoever.

I need to tell Dan that if only he can throw a party in Samoa and get the right foreign ministers to attend  for fun and frolic, it too can savor the prospect of being a swing great power.

[Torie]

The klepto plot line is one that I had not thought of before. Maybe that was a factor in combat ineffectiveness. You can't fight and loot at the same time.

[Torie]

The value of the ruble has bounced back. Krugman speculates that it is because Putin is focusing solely on that goal at the cost of high inflation rates and a tanking economy. Why? Because the ruble exchange rate is something that cannot be masked, while a sick economy and high inflation can be denied. Lie about stuff that is not subject to making it instantly obvious that you are lying.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/opinion/russia-ruble-economy.html

[Torie]

Per the NYT, the Russian military does have a division of labor:

By mid-March, the Russian soldiers were rotated out of the town and replaced by separatist fighters who were brought in from the southeast.

It was then, residents said, that atrocities began to mount.

“They were brash and angry,” Dr. Volkova said. “We could not negotiate with them about anything. They would not give us any green corridors, they searched the apartments, took away the phones, abducted people — they took them away, mostly young men, and we still don’t know where these people are.”

[Torie]

Comparisons with Nazi Germany are moot because the Russian state does not have the capacity to conquer all of Europe, and, right now, is getting somewhat shockingly clobbered about only a hundred miles from its own borders. In any event, as already noted, there are other historical analogies that are significantly more appropriate. It is a shame that people are not taught about Katyn in most Western education systems, but perhaps they will now.

My Mommy taught me about that happened in that particular dark forest while breast feeding me. It was "a thing" back when computers were adding machines.

I wonder how much of the Russian troops waging war on civilians is because they are just out of control (loot, rape and kill just for the Adrenalin rush), and how much is because Putin ordered it.

During an "operational pause," where the fighting is reduced in intensity, which side benefits more from the intermission to resupply and refit?

What I find most  irritating is the asymmetry where Russia can lob missiles into Ukraine blowing up infrastructure and homes and people without much risk as if the missiles were asteroids from outer space. Somehow the scales need to get more balanced there. In a long war, Russia can just keep destroying x buildings per day, without putting many of their own assets at risk. It was no an accident, that spirits outside the Putin sphere soared when that tank farm in Russia was hit. At last!

[Torie]

To make some unfounded speculation, does anybody else think part of the reason for the war crimes is to provoke Ukrainian war crimes and scare Russian soldiers away from surrendering, along with making as many officers as possible complicit thereby tying them further to Putin? Or is the Russian army really that bad?

My uninformed speculation from just reading the news every day, is that the command and control mechanisms of the Russian army are "that bad." So some of its troops punch holes in the gas tank, or dessert or surrender at the first opportunity, and some commit war crimes, and some loot for resale of stolen goods.

[Torie]

Poland hitting back at Germany, claiming it is Germany who is stopping new sanctions & that Hungary is onboard.

Germany is the main roadblock to imposing tougher sanctions on Russia, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday during a news conference, adding that Hungary was not blocking them.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-is-main-roadblock-tougher-russian-sanctions-polands-pm-says-2022-04-04/

Citation needed.

[Torie]

This idea strikes me as quite clever. Until the time of the Jubiliee, when Russia's fossil fuel income drops to zero, and Putin is rendered homeless panhandling for spare change, another tool to drive it down in the interim is to turn the market into a monopsony buyer as much as possible, by having the EU and friends make purchases through one centralized designated buyer, who uses the most predatory purchasing practices that are possible.

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-eu-play-rough-russia-gas-prices/

[Torie]

This idea strikes me as quite clever. Until the time of the Jubiliee, when Russia's fossil fuel income drops to zero, and Putin is rendered homeless panhandling for spare change, another tool to drive it down in the interim is to turn the market into a monopsony buyer as much as possible, by having the EU and friends make purchases through one centralized designated buyer, who uses the most predatory purchasing practices that are possible.

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-eu-play-rough-russia-gas-prices/

Is this basically what we did to Saddam in the 90s?

I don't know.

[Torie]

Surprised we haven't seen a spotting from our resident Atlas NYC Yellow Avatar guru today on market updates.

Comrade Jaichind has not recently posted, but perhaps he or other posters might be able to explain what this means to us "laypeople".

The United States has started blocking Russia from making debt payments using dollars held in American banks, a move designed to deplete its international currency reserves and potentially push Russia toward its first foreign currency debt default in a century.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman said the action was taken on Monday. It was the same day that more than half a billion dollars in Russian sovereign debt payments came due. The new restriction, the spokeswoman said, is intended to force Russia to choose between draining the remaining dollar reserves it has in Russia or using new revenue (from natural gas payments, for example) to make bond payments to avoid defaulting on its debt.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February and sanctions were imposed, the Russian government has kept up its foreign currency debt payments. While it has shown a willingness to pay, it has been able to pay investors using American banks with the approval of the U.S. government. Last month, the Treasury Department created an exemption from its sanctions that allowed Americans to accept debt payments from Russia until May 25 to avoid destabilizing the broader financial system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/business/russia-debt-dollars.html

The Treasury Department on Monday prohibited Russia from withdrawing funds held in American banks to pay its debt obligations, a major escalation aimed at forcing the Kremlin to pick between a catastrophic default and other difficult economic measures.

The Biden administration will separately on Wednesday announce an additional sanctions package that includes a ban on all new investment in Russia, sanctions on Russian banks and state-owned enterprises, and measures targeting Russian officials, according to a person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect measures not yet announced. These steps are being taken in coordination with the Group of Seven and the European Union.

Until now, the Biden administration had allowed Russia to continue to repurpose the substantial funds it has kept in U.S. financial institutions to make required payments on its sovereign debt. But with two large payments coming due — and amid evidence of mass killings in Bucha, Ukraine — the Treasury Department changed course, blocking the Kremlin from processing payments on the Russian bonds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/05/russia-ukraine-war-news-zelensky-live-updates/#link-SRP2KIZC6ZHTRAKPSY4GZ2PFYQ

The Biden administration has blocked Russia from using U.S. banks to make good on foreign debt payments, officials said, pitching Moscow closer to its first sovereign default in more than two decades.

All avenues for Moscow to pay aren’t closed and in theory it has plenty of dollars to make the payments. The Treasury spokeswoman said Russia could pay the bonds using its foreign currency reserves or tap proceeds of new revenue. She said the action applied to U.S. financial institutions.

Russia owed foreign investors about $2 billion for one of the bonds, which matured Monday, and another $84 million in interest payments on a second bond. Russia’s National Settlement Depository website showed the Ministry of Finance ordered payment for the $2 billion bond to go through on Monday. The Treasury move effectively blocked the payment.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-stymies-russia-debt-payments-11649184865?st=baatrw24bw9y7vs&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I don't think that hit is fair to the poster (in a world ever more cruel and cold, at least we can try to be kind to one another here), but the idea is to basically "seize" via freezing/impounding as much of Russia's currency reserves as possible, and apparently there were still some Russian cash trenches left in US banks that were available to use to pay off debt. Why that particular cash pool had not been frozen before along with everything else that weekend immediately after the invasion prior to the banks opening for business on the following Monday, escapes me.


In other news, per the same NYT update, Europe is thinking of closing all its ports to Russian ships. That should have been done some time ago it seems to me. All of those Russian tankers with unsold oil looking for a buyer via clouding the chain of custody should just float around in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere, preferably until they run out of gas.

[Torie]

Russia as I feared probably plans to blow places up from afar with its high tech ordinance, since its boots on the ground leave something to be desired from a command and control standpoint. The destruction/killing includes in particular Kiyv. So Ukraine really does need something that precludes antiseptic genocide and destruction from venues that are a "safe zone" for Russia.

From the NYT:

"An assessment published on Sunday by the Institute for the Study of War said that Russian forces will likely expand their bombing campaign on Kyiv instead of trying to encircle the city in the coming weeks."

[Torie]

Another heartbreaking article about going home again to a place that was visited by something far worse than Satan in search for a spouse that had been rendered to a corpse. And now all I hear on the media is that Ukraine is another forever war, and will end only when Russia loses the ability to wage war, or Putin is removed, not decades perhaps, but years.* So the standard of living of the planet goes down, starvation up (whomever was responsible for the truncation of natural gas supplies needed to produce fertilizer to ramp up food production, should also burn in hell but I digress).

The basic assumptions that assumed an interconnected world needed for a better life for all, with understanding and economic interdependence, has been utterly destroyed.  That is about as reckless as running around with rats during the Bubonic Plague as an anti vaxer.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/collecting-bodies-in-bucha

*articles like this make it basically impossible even for the morally challenged to just say, let's move on, this too will pass.