Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

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Irrelevant if the new government would be in control of the Ukrainian state, which is what Russia wants for security.

But Moscow will be forced to keep a permanent presence in Ukraine to keep that client regime in power, because it wouldn't last five minutes otherwise.

Again, irrelevant. It's Ukraine joining the western sphere that was the supposed threat in 2014 and is the same threat now. Lopping off more territory doesn't address that threat in any way. Russia wants recognition that Ukraine is in its sphere, more piecemeal actions like 2014 without changing the politics in Kyiv implicitly cedes most of the country to NATO.

I think what Putin wants is a short war that destroys Ukraine's military and keeps the nation too politically and socially divided to integrate into western institutions. He did that with Georgia in 2008

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Is now the time to invest in Russian military suppliers, jaichind?

Only half joking 🤣

He would have invested in the rope-making companies that Lenin referred to.

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It seems very unlikely that Hungary would allow Ukraine to join NATO any time soon, so what's the big deal?

It's always one election away from a new policy. The next one is this April.

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Russia isn’t a democracy. Short of violent revolution, 99% of Russia could despise Putin and it wouldn’t make a real difference.

But what if the oligarchs are angered that their wealth has been confiscated, and the generals are angered that the Ukraine war has become an unending insurgency? If I had to guess, this will be the long-term end game.

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Russia isn’t a democracy. Short of violent revolution, 99% of Russia could despise Putin and it wouldn’t make a real difference.

But what if the oligarchs are angered that their wealth has been confiscated, and the generals are angered that the Ukraine war has become an unending insurgency? If I had to guess, this will be the long-term end game.

Indeed. But that’s not done with run-of-the-mill sanctions.

Just now, South Korea has pledged it will join the sanctions on Russia if it had "no other choice", but didn't elaborate on what that meant.

https://twitter.com/BBCLBicker/status/1496731667045629953

The four rich western allies in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) have all pledged to restrict the export of semiconductors and other high-tech products to Russia in co-ordination with the US. These alone will cause serious damage to Russia's economy and even military-industrial complex, assuming this war grinds on. China has NOT been able to replace imported semiconductors for even its own needs despite its best efforts, so will not be able to help Russia in this regard.

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The RTS, the main index of Moscow's stock exchange, is down 49% so far.

The Ruble is at a record low, but is stabilizing due to Central Bank intervention. Putin had built up ample reserves of forex and gold since 2014, but some of that is held in hostile western countries.

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One thing I’ve not seen talked about, what’s happening to the remaining Pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine? The so called “opposition platform” made up of ex Party of Regions officials came 2nd in the 2019 parliamentary elections with 43 seats. I’d be interested to see if any of them have chosen to stand with their people or run off to support their Kremlin paymasters.

If they had any self-awareness, they would have fled to Russia weeks ago. Anyone left in Kyiv would have been rounded up and executed yesterday morning.

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A PRC abstention though is probably a significant move.

No, it isn't. The PRC abstained through resolutions criticizing Russia in 2014. Going all-in and supporting Russia is just too costly, from both a monetary and political perspective. Beijing will give plenty of lip service, and will make plenty of symbolic acts of support for Moscow, but will not and cannot substantially compensate for the economic damage that Putin has wrecked on Russia.

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https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1499008228700700689

Whatever else you say about Marco Rubio, his membership in the Senate Intelligence Committee means he's not BSing.
https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1499162278243016704

https://twitter.com/atanessi/status/1498720678060728321

https://twitter.com/rolltidebmz/status/1499195050336657413

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You'd think that a KGB colonel with Asperger's syndrome would be obsessed with ensuring that military communications be as secure as humanly possible. Instead, they used ordinary walkie talkies.

I'm half-convinced that western intelligence were aware of the true state of the Russian military, but hyped up the idea of Putin being a Bond villain for self-interested purposes.

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I'm half-convinced that western intelligence were aware of the true state of the Russian military, but hyped up the idea of Putin being a Bond villain for self-interested purposes.

Last time public sentiment was this united we got the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. The blob will seize any chance it gets and we must constantly be wary.

That's pretty scary how our posts followed each other.

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https://twitter.com/EchoMskNews/status/1499436686027399169

The State Duma is going to adopt amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses, according to which citizens can be fined for publicly "discrediting" the Armed Forces and calling for "obstructing their use"

The punishment for this will be a fine of 30 thousand to 50 thousand rubles. If these actions “create a threat to life and health,” then the fine will be from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles, - Kommersant. The interlocutors of the publication note that in this way anti-war slogans fall under the ban.

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I doubt the Chinese are happy about this. https://twitter.com/DrAlakbarov/status/1499423932910383105?s=20&t=CbzJy7fDjE...

You make the assumption that the CCP actually cares about its citizens. They'll just claim this airstrike was a Ukrainian provocation, and offer the victims' families some hush money.

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The end-game for Ukraine would be to fight the Russians to a standstill, force a negotiated peace, and (under whatever terms are negotiated) have NATO troops enter the country to secure the western portion of the country against further Russian aggression.  Judging by his painful slog through eastern Ukraine, I don't think Putin has the wherewithal to take the whole country anyway. 

Putin is going for broke. If he doesn't get something he can spin as a win, he will fall out of a window with three bullets in his skull. Also, given the pace at which Russia is returning to the Stalinist era, any part of Ukraine under Russian control will suffer an even worse iron fist, so the resistance will be horrendous. I don't see any other outcome that doesn't involve a palace coup.

Unfortunately, palace coups that occur when Russia is losing a war on its western border and when its economy is imploding don't end well. Sample being 1, of course.

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https://seekingalpha.com/news/3809437-wheat-futures-add-to-14-year-highs-up-32-so-far-this-week

Wheat Futures are up by 30% !

Ugh, a lot of African and Middle Eastern countries depend on Russia or Ukraine for their wheat imports. The sowing season is supposed to start in Ukraine soon, but that's not happening. Western sanctions against Russia will also disrupt Russian imports. There will have to be carve-outs for grain exports for developing countries.

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By the end of all this, Russia will be (permanently) so cut down to size as a Great Power that we may no longer have to hold Europe's hand next time -they will be more than capable of dealing with Russia on their own if it misbehaves again.  

Many countries have depended on Russia for their military hardware and training, for decades.

I wonder what their leadership are thinking right now.

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I didn't mean in terms of territory.  I mean that I want Russia so weak it can't undertake any foreign adventures, but strong enough that it can still guard its borders effectively and stay territorially intact. 

That might happen, but it's delusional for anyone outside Russia to think they can influence what occurs on the ground. It will be a miracle if a post-Putin Russia is merely as chaotic as the 90s, and any hope of rebuilding Russia on liberal democratic likes like post-WW2 Germany or Japan will take vast amounts of money and a lot of time.

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https://twitter.com/olga_chyzh/status/1500257111770550273

tl;dr: Don't expect western sanctions to force the oligarchs and siloviki to overthrow Putin, because the political logic doesn't support them. But, the sanctions will cripple the Russian state and its war effort.

Plot twist: Russia loses the war in disgrace, but Putin stays on to rule Russia like post-1991 Saddam Hussein.

I think y’all are underestimating Russia a bit. While yes the invasion could have gone better, they still are making important advances. Invasions don’t just happen overnight.

True, but Ukraine is beginning to receive the flood of very effective weaponry from the west. Russia's advance will be crippled if Ukraine repeats yesterday's successes against its air assets.

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Saddam claimed victory at home during the 1991 Gulf War. If he could do that, then Putin should be able to claim victory at home as well.

It would be better for Zelensky to renounce the Crimea. If it somehow returned to Ukraine, it would become a disloyal province that would be the target of infiltration from a still hostile state. The Donbass could be bought off by promising minority language rights and EU reconstruction funding.

Even if Zelensky promised not to lead Ukraine into NATO, I'm not sure how tenable that would be in practice. Ukraine would still be flooded with all the latest western weaponry, and Russia's army will still be a spent force. Ironically, before the war, Putin stated that it isn't enough for Ukraine to renounce joining NATO, since it could still become western-aligned in practice. He might be getting that wish after all.

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Putin is screwed no matter what happens, and it seems his alliance with China is not going to pay the dividends he thought it would:

I know Putin made clear that he wanted to conquer all of Ukraine, and install a puppet in Kiev, but China may well force him to accept an East/West division of Ukraine (and Kiev) along the Dneiper.  And that, from the Russian perspective, is being optimistic, assuming they can even control eastern Ukraine. The Chinese are getting more and more discomfited the longer this war goes on.

And we (NATO and the United States) on our part can make the legitimate Ukrainian government accept this division despite their insistence they want their whole country back including Crimea.   

The longer this war drags on, the more that Putin just becomes a dead weight for Beijing. The best outcome for Beijing now is for Russia to just end the war and retreat to pre-February 24 boundaries. Russia will be still strong enough to menace the west, but too weak to wage any more wars. But, the problem is this war is now existential for Putin - if he doesn't win this war, he will at best become like Saddam post-1991, and at worst fall out of a window.

It will also be impossible to pressure the Ukrainian government - which ultimately answers to Ukrainian citizens - to give up half of the country to the despised enemy. As much as Putin wishes as such, Russia isn't the Soviet Union, and simply doesn't have the resources to secure an area of ~20 million people, which would require ~400,000 occupation troops. All that has to be done is wait for Russia to give up and withdraw.

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The fact that one European state is inflicting such unspeakable evil on another European state and its citizens in this day and age is something I never expected to witness. We truly live in a different world now that this has happened, and it will never be as before again.

Channeling Prince William huh? Still believe in the White Man's Burden?

No idea what this babbling is supposed to mean, but as a European I find a war on my own continent in a country I visited multiple times quite a bit more scary than elsewhere. Sue me.

I think he means that, all the wars in Africa and the Middle East didn't get a fraction of the revulsion from Europeans (and European settler states) as a war in Europe. It's a fair point, but the way he presents it smacks of whataboutism.

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Interesting point about how this war could affect the Russian military's ability to retain enough people to fill the ranks. It would make sense it could be forced to more heavily rely on conscripts if fewer soldiers decide to sign contracts. The military might return to the 24 month service requirement, which was reduced to 12 months in 2007.

No problem. Putin will "convince" conscripts to sign service contracts.

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Update on Russian-Syrian Mercs per a couple hours ago from The Guardian

(Free website but donation requested).

Russia has lined up more than 40,000 Syrian militiamen to join the war in Ukraine pn rthe promise of a “salary and privileges”, according to the respected Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The SOHR, which has been reporting on the war in Syria for years, said no Syrian fighters had reached the front but around 400 were undergoing training in camps in Russia close to the Ukraine border.

“So far, more than 40,000 fighters have signed up for enlistment,” said SOHR, adding that these are not “volunteers” but have signed up on promises to receive “a salary and privileges”.

SOHR said recruitment is underway in Damascus and Aleppo through various Syrian government structures that have been co-opted for years by the Russian military system in Syria.

Russian forces have been fighting for years on the side of the Assad regime against rebels in the Syrian civil war.

The SOHR report tallies with comments made in the last few hours by a Ukrainian government adviser that Russia might try to bring Syrian fighters into the country because it was suffering heavy casualities.

I wonder how many of them are actually hoping to surrender to the Ukrainians so they could enjoy safe passage to the EU.

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https://twitter.com/space_osint/status/1506688082657091584?s=20&t=sn22b6gweW...

I wonder what Ukraine is getting in exchange. Better be real good.

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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.

I think this problem would be survivable, anyway. A Ukraine that's in the EU, NATO, and prosperous would be portrayed in official Russian media as one that's spiritually polluted by the west, and therefore Russia proper needs a strong leader to keep it spiritually pure.

The TV news would report about gay pride parades in Kyiv, and the supposedly rampant neo-Nazi skinheads (don't ask how they could co-exist). The heated debates in the Ukrainian parliament - in Russian, no less - can be shown as proof that Ukraine's politics are in disarray. The nation's strong western-aligned geopolitical status would be proof that Ukraine is a client of the EU/US, and therefore proof that Russia needs a strong leader to preserve its sovereignty. Also, the Ukrainian government is bound to make domestically controversial decisions, which will provoke mass opposition: that can be spun as evidence that Ukrainians are unhappy with the entire political system, rather than the decisions themselves.

Official North Korean media portray South Korea this way, even though most North Koreans know full well their southern compatriots are magnitudes wealthier. China's official media also similarly frame Taiwan this way, though China's own economic development does give itself more domestic credibility. Hence, it's possible to imagine Putin using the state media to ideologically protect himself from a western-aligned and prosperous Ukraine.

OTOH, DDR propaganda portrayed West Germany in that same way, but we know how East Germans responded - and Putin knows that from personal experience.

I think Putin's decision to invade Ukraine will be something whose motivation will be argued by historians for generations to come, like Hitler's decision to declare war on the US.