The Russians are Coming, the Russians are...oh, they're here...

[Stavros]

A useful if limited overview of the Rusian economy, which doesn't mention Russia's other mineral resources such as Palladium and Platinum which feed European and American industry (see second link). In the long term, decreasing the role fossil fuels have in our economies will to some extent undermine this important source of Russian wealth.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...kely-sanctions

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/preci...203055180.html

[Stavros]

Another thoughtful article on sanctions and the Russian economy (you may need to sign in to read it)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-ukraine-putin

If Putin's objectives run into Ukrainian resistance, this may only lead Putin to increase his assault, using Thermobaric missiles, which some consider to be just a notch below nuclear-(if it asks you to register just refresh the page)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2023880.html

[broncofan]

The loss of life that results from any military conflict is seriously concerning but there is an additional layer of concern. I heard someone put it this way: Russia is a nuclear superpower but they aren't a superpower in terms of conventional military power (state of the art weaponry, training, and tactics). When they realize that they can't easily take Kyiv or break the will of the Ukrainians they will have to turn to more desperate measures to achieve their objectives. This means carpet-bombings of civilian areas and thermobaric missiles as you point out. In short, a worsening array of war crimes.

I'm not convinced that Putin is any kind of mastermind or tactician but he is ruthless and desperate and looking and sounding increasingly unhinged. Chechnyan leader Kadyrov is said to be sending in more than 10,000 Chechnyan soldiers to assist Putin. We'll see what each day brings.

[Stavros]

I heard someone put it this way: Russia is a nuclear superpower but they aren't a superpower in terms of conventional military power (state of the art weaponry, training, and tactics). When they realize that they can't easily take Kyiv or break the will of the Ukrainians they will have to turn to more desperate measures to achieve their objectives. This means carpet-bombings of civilian areas and thermobaric missiles as you point out. In short, a worsening array of war crimes.

Good points, because what puzzles some commentators in the press, is not just the apparent failure of Putin to secure a quick victory in Ukraine, even with the help of Belarus, but that if he does succeed in his objectives, the assumption is that the Ukraine will become 'ungoverable' without a permanent military presence and that this involves great costs financially as well as politically, not least because he does not appear to be winning the propaganda war back in Russia. But if he does not stamp Russian power on Ukraine without force, including the lethal force you refer to, how will he be able to hold onto it?

One interesting aside, is the extent to which your fellow Americans are blaming Biden for this crisis, citing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Biden's appearance as a 'weak' President and thus a 'weak America'. One notes that the same President who refused to support Zelensky and in effect, attempted to bribe him by withholding military assistance to Ukraine, now says he supports him, but other than brag about his own non-achievements, he hasn't told the US what in fact he would do to end this crisis. And this from a man who says he knows Putin 'very, very well'.

But if you live in the UK, whatever role Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan might have played, it is the European perspective that matters most.

Looking west, Putin will have seen a Germany less certain of itself now Angela Merkel has retired, we may even speculate he waited for her to leave before acting because, as one might say, he 'knows her very well' and might have calculated she would be tougher on Russia than Scholtz. He would also have seen an EU divided against itself in regard to its internal disputes with Poland and Hungary, though Orban in Hungary has not only not supported him but advocated a strong EU response. Whether or not he waited unti

And he will have seen an EU weakened by Brexit, with the UK declining into an isolated, weak and divided country irrelevant to his European ambitions. In addition, perhaps even crucially, he twice attacked the UK with chemical weapons, and the response was a manageable bunch of sanctions none of which deterred him from annexing the Crimea and two eastern Provinces of Ukraine, murdering or attempting to murder his opposition in Russia.

Thus, to your Republican whining about Biden, I offer you the worthless garbage that Boris Johnson said in the House of Commons last Wednesday, just days after bragging about the UK's record on Covid without mentioning the catastrophic deaths of the elderly in care homes, for which so far nobody has been held accountable; the higher fatality rate from Covid per capita compared to our European neighbours, for which there has been no accountability; and the staggering sums of money that Covid cost, something like £4-5 Billion paid out to 'firms' that no longer exist, if they ever did, whose names we are now told we may never know. Rather like Trump telling CPAC one day he will reveal what he and Putin talked about in Helsinki, as if it the US was in such a dire condition 'it can't handle the truth' rght now. Two men, both of them cowards. Is it any wonder Putin felt emboldened to act now?

So if you blame Biden, I can blame Boris.

But is it not, in the end, Putin convinced he can get away with anything without any serious repercussions that has led him into the Ukraine, and that it is his Hubris that may have started the beginning of the end of his tenure in the Presidency in Russia? Instead of being remembered in history as a 'Great Russian', he risks becoming just another loser. The sooner the better.

[natina]

The Russian are losing badly and taking huge catastrophic losses

Beware lots of Russian Dead bodies, burned bodies , mutilated Bodies from antitank missiles ect..

https://thisvid.space/NoseWintry

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[Stavros]

So far the Russians are facing a level of resistance they did not expect, but they are not losing. Their war has only just begun. Given how they laid waste to Chechnya, their record in Syria, what hope is there for any restraint in Ukraine. Not least when the Russians describe the country having been taken over by 'Nationalists' and 'Nazis' -? The latter term being particularly insulting when Zelensky is Jewish, and the attack on Kyiv yesterday was on a TV mast overooking Babi Yar -coincidence?

Yevtusheko wrote a stunnng poem on it, Shostakovich set it to music in his 13th Symphony, and here is the historical record-

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article...ainian-history

Yevtushenko's poem-

https://www-tc.pbs.org/auschwitz/lea...reading1.4.pdf

[Stavros]

David Edgerton, author of a provocative (in a postive sense) book -The Rise and Fall of the British Nation (2018 ), has written an article that argues convincgly that 'Sanctions' are another form of war. I don't think there is much controversial about that.

I also think it is important to think more deeply about sanctions, because sometimes they work, but at other times they do not, and as he points out, the current sanctions on Russia do not affect their sales of oil and wheat, though that might be due to the even more negative impact such sanctions would have on the price of oil and food, as well as disruptions to an already 'challenged' global supply chain.

For example, when the British Government imposed sanctions on Iran in 1951 as punishment for the nationalization of the country's oil and gas industry, the impact was devastating -but that is because the sanctions were so effective Iran could not sell its oil on world markets, smaller than today and controlled at the time by the 'Seven Sisters' of which Anglo-Iranian (later, BP) was one- and because the country had no other source of income comparable to its petroleum, for which some blame can be made to nationalist leader Musadeq.
Sanctions against South Africa did not prevent it from importing oil from the Gulf, just as sanctions against Sadddam Hussein actually enabled him to make money from illegal sales, whlle the sanctions against Venezuela or Cuba have merely led to them form economic relations outside the 'capitalist west', admittedly at great cost, and with little regard by the leaders for the fate of their citizens.

Thus Russia can to some extent survive if China steps in, and right now that is the major issue, one that Edgerton does not consider, indeed, how China acts could be crucial to Putin's survival, as some commentators suggest China be asked to mediate in 'peace talks' designed to stop the war, and find a 'face-saving' formula that Russia can accept. Pakistan's trade deal with Russia is hardly going to change the world, let alone South Asia.

Sadly, Edgerton's intellect does not impress me on one point, and it is odd for an economic historian to make -

"Russia too has been sanctioned since 2014. But sanctions have probably not been the worst causes of economic collapse. Russia, after 1989, lost perhaps half its GDP per capita, which did not return to Soviet levels until around 2005. This economic catastrophe created Putinism."
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-war-sanctions

This is rubbish. When Yeltsin took over from Gorbachev in 1991 the Russian economy was on its knees after decades of economic mismanagement. The three independent oil companies that moved in to take stakes in the Russian industry -Exxon, Shell and BP- were invited in, and were desperately needed because the Russian industry had not been modernized, it was still using equipment that was built in the 1930s. Yes, in return for their capital investment in the upstream and downstream resources, these three companies made fabulousn profits -but the lion's share went to their Russian partners, so that when Putin took over from Yeltsin in January 2000, he was keen to ensure this partnership continued, creaming off how much from the profits we don't know. At some point, I think around 2009-10 Putin decided enough was enough and with the Russian industry robust enough, forced the three Anglo-Dutch-American companies to halve their stakes, but here is the key point that undermines Edgerton's -

The Russian owners of the oil and gas industry, and indeed the other industries, made enough profit to completely overhaul Russian infrastucture and society. By 2005 there were no excuses for the failure of these men to invest in their own country, but what did they do? They shipped much of their wealth out of the country into real estate or football clubs in Europe or the US, or parked billions in offshore accounts.

What created 'Putinism' was Putin, and it is hypocrtical of him to complain about the staggering wealth of the Oligarchs when he is the richest of them all.

Think about it -everyone around Putin was making money, and then Ukraine in 2014 had enough of the corruption and mismanagement of their country, and the 'Maidan Revolution' changed the game. It was not sanctions that created Putin, but Putin who created santions. It was Ukraine's adoption of democracy that threatened Putin, as well as the attempt to squeeze the balls of the Oligarchs all of whom needed to even craved Putin's blessing to operate in Russia. The result was the annexation of the Crimea, the chopping off in eastern Ukraine of 'Donetsk' and 'Luhansk' which Russian apologists will tell you were regions where 'ethnic Russians' were being discriminated against, even tortured and killed by the 'regime' in Kyiv, the same one which Donald Trump attempted to bribe for his own personal reasons.

And would Donald Trump ever have become President without Russia, or Putin, or both?

This is why this is called a war of 'Putin's Choice'. If there were genuine problems with Ukrainians and Russians in the east, was war and violence the only solution? No, this is Putin with all the money in the world, deciding the time has come to become a God, like Caesar Augustus, not satisfied with mortal rewards, just as Peter the Great built his city and left Russia and the world one of its most beautiful, which the Nazis could not destroy, but which Putin has dragged into the dirt.

[broncofan]

It seems to me the reason that there's fighting right now is because there is no diplomatic option if things are the way they appear. I don't believe Russia was merely concerned about NATO having borders with Russia or any kind of encroachment on its sovereignty. But Putin does not recognize Ukraine as sovereign, does not respect its territorial integrity, and would not stop if he is allowed to annex Ukraine which he should not be allowed to do. He believes he is entitled to annex any former Soviet country.

I am of course frightened of the possibility of nuclear war, which any rational person should be, but a cynical person can use the threat of an apocalyptic war to get one concession at a time and expand its territory. The world cannot repel a nuclear country without some risk of doom. And it cannot simply allow a nuclear country to annex one country after another. It's worse that this country is Russia and it offers nothing to the world except creeping totalitarianism which it is imposing within its own borders. There's nothing there but misery for its own citizens and any country it occupies.

[Stavros]

I am of course frightened of the possibility of nuclear war, which any rational person should be, but a cynical person can use the threat of an apocalyptic war to get one concession at a time and expand its territory. The world cannot repel a nuclear country without some risk of doom. And it cannot simply allow a nuclear country to annex one country after another.

I wonder if there are strategic minds in Washington DC who are actively looking at an engagement, on the basis that it is precisely what Putin believes, or gambles on not happening. The view may be emboldened by the apparent failure of the Russian military to execute a 'lightning strike' leading to a relatively painless and inexpensive takeovee of Ukraine, given that most of the damage so far has been inflicted by long range artillery and aerial bombardment. For most of his tenure in Moscow, Putin has tested the resolve of the European and Americans to see how far he can go before they react, and though the sanctions now are far more extensive and damaging than he probably expected, he remains sure that this is as far as the 'west' will go. The problems for the 'west' is that the longer it goes on, the more desperate Putin may become, both in terms of the savagery of his attack on the Ukraine, and the potential for the conflict to spill ove into, say, Finland or Poland or a neighbouring state.

So, is it militarily possible for the US/NATO to strike Russian targets on the basis Putin will not be prepared and that if it comes to it, the reality of using strategic or even tactical nuclear weapons would be too much for Putin to bear? He seems to have boxed himself into a 'no way out' mentality which is why it is hard to see what a diplomatic solution would look like, given that I don't think either Zelensky or the US would accept a compromise where the war ends, but with more segments of Ukraine 'independent' under Russian control.

Would you support the US extending its support for Ukraine into an 'active mission' there?

[broncofan]

Would you support the US extending its support for Ukraine into an 'active mission' there?

I think not. I don't think Putin is suicidal but I don't want to test it either. I'm not all that confident about what should be done. I do think Putin has decided to play this dangerous game and can't be allowed to do whatever he wants but I still worry about escalation and think an active mission into Ukraine by the US might do that.

Maybe we get lucky and the sanctions combined with Ukraine's tougher than expected resistance have Putin looking for an off ramp.