Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Syt]

German Bundeswehr has atrophied a lot since the 90s. Not just in headcount, but also in ready equipment. In recent years it was brought up again and again that outside the Afghanistan contingent there's not much material in good maintenance/repair or available at all. Politicians now say that the defense budget needs to be increased - maybe this crisis finally provides the much needed jolt (if way too late), but I believe it when I see it. When I served in 95/96, all males of a birth year were still called up. But 15 years later the force and budget had shrunk so much that not everyone was called up anymore, leading to questions regarding the fairness - some people having to serve and losing a year in their career plans while others didn't. The response in 2011 was not to increase conscriptions but to suspend them.

Hopefully attempts to rearm won't involve reintroducing conscription. That would be a massive backwards step.

Yes but no. A large share of conscripts were conscientious objectors who would work in social jobs instead. The plugged some gaps in those areas (that those gaps shouldn't exist in the first place is a separate discussion). It's also a recruiting tool. From my unit there were a couple of guys who signed up several years, took an officer's career, etc.

[alfred russel]

I was confused as to why Putin is invading Ukraine, but thankfully we have a US republican senator to explain it: "He can't feed his people," said Tuberville. "It's a communist country, so he can't feed his people, so they need more farmland."

[Syt]

From BBC:

EU to freeze European assets held by Putin and Lavrov

We've just got some news in: an official for the EU says the bloc has decided to freeze European assets held by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

It's unclear however if either man holds significant assets in the EU.

We will bring you more details as we get them.

[celedhring]

I'm sure they got a bunch stuff under their names in EU countries. 

[Josquius]

Yes but no. A large share of conscripts were conscientious objectors who would work in social jobs instead. The plugged some gaps in those areas (that those gaps shouldn't exist in the first place is a separate discussion). It's also a recruiting tool. From my unit there were a couple of guys who signed up several years, took an officer's career, etc.

They should be paying decent salaries to plug these gaps rather than enslaving their citizens temporarily.
Conscription is backwards, sexist, and really more trouble than its worth looking at the grand scheme of things. Its only to be kept on the books as a remote option for the most dire of never going to happen in our nuclear world scenarios.
I can understand that you might be annoyed having to go through it whilst the kids of today don't but perpetuating injustice isn't great.

[Syt]

I can understand that you might be annoyed having to go through it whilst the kids of today don't but perpetuating injustice isn't great.

Not at all. I'm a strong opponent of "I had to suffer, so should others after me" approach.

Is it sexist - yes. But I'd argue in today's society which still largely disadvantages the careers of women, it's negligible.

[Tamas]

From BBC:

EU to freeze European assets held by Putin and Lavrov

We've just got some news in: an official for the EU says the bloc has decided to freeze European assets held by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

It's unclear however if either man holds significant assets in the EU.

We will bring you more details as we get them.

Putin to be restricted to his untold billions and limitless power held within Russia. Ballsy move from EU.

[Syt]

Putin to be restricted to his untold billions and limitless power held within Russia. Ballsy move from EU.

Well, and all his assets in non-EU countries. Switzerland have already said re: financial sanctions - "Would love to join, but ... it's complicated."

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've always been at least partially skeptical Ukrainians, in broad number, will really keep fighting once the government is beaten. I suspect their trouble making will be more akin to Maidan stuff, when the Russian puppet is installed they'll do big demonstrations etc, which will be put down harshly, and then repeated periodically in some sort of effort to undermine the regime. Maybe I am wrong, but it's not that common that I've seen for conquered Europeans to put up a big fight, look at Poland, Hungary, the Baltics, Germany after WWII etc etc. Europeans being ruled by other white Europeans I think you get a lot of tacit passivity. It's just a different formula from Muslims who live in mud huts being conquered by infidels, those people don't value their lives or the lives of their family--Afghans for example barely care about their families at all (they regularly sell their children.) There's a level of barbarism you need to engage in Muslim / tribal people style insurgent violence that even the Eastern Europeans are simply too civilized to do on a wide scale I think.

The Chechens did it for the obvious reason.

Western Ukrainians resisted the Soviets for a decade after the end of WWII, despite the obvious consequences for them.

I didn't know that, maybe the modern day Ukrainians will surprise me. I certainly like to think I would be willing to fight to the end for my country, but I'm an old man now with a family and in a world where there's a warm and comfortable bed at home and all the comforts of modern life vs fighting the Russians I do think it's a lot different decision matrix than the insurgents in places like Iraq / Afghanistan face.

[Duque de Bragança]

From BBC:

EU to freeze European assets held by Putin and Lavrov

We've just got some news in: an official for the EU says the bloc has decided to freeze European assets held by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

It's unclear however if either man holds significant assets in the EU.

We will bring you more details as we get them.

Putin to be restricted to his untold billions and limitless power held within Russia. Ballsy move from EU.

Maybe that would have made a difference years ago (2008 ?). I would not bet my head on it though.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've honestly come around to the Biden/EU sanctions approach. The reality is even the very harshest sanctions are not going to make Putin withdraw from the Ukraine. Putin and his close underlings all have tremendous wealth and comfort fully ensconced in Russia. The sanctions will put essentially no crimp on their personal lives. Putin has an iron hand on the Russian state, with no meaningful opposition possible within Russia itself. The very worst sanctions we can imagine would simply hurt the Russian economy a bit more, but would not at all save Ukraine--and they would come at the cost of hurting Western economies and putting many European countries into a very serious gas shortage that could become a very serious crisis come next winter.

That isn't satisfying, but it is reality. In many ways we're facing a similar but luckily smaller scale version of what the Western allies faced after WWII, when it was obvious Stalin wasn't removing his armies from Eastern Europe. The only option that would have moved Stalin out of those countries would have been another war, and we just weren't willing to fight another world war scale conflict to save Eastern Europe. We made a decision to play a long game in which we applied maximum isolation to Stalin's regime. While it did not work in a year or 10 years or even 30, it did create a world in which the USSR developed more slowly and with increasing deficits versus the West.

While it seems like we cannot impose such penalties on modern Russia, I think we honestly are wrong about that. Much of the strength of modern day Russia and China are actually directly linked to them being fully embraced and economically integrated with as members of the global trade system. I think we need to view our relationship with Russia as the beginning of a new Cold War. We, collectively, need to begin the process of weaning ourselves off of Russian fossil fuels and building institutions that largely isolate Russia from our world. The reality is we are moving into a bipolar 21st century with an axis of Russia/China on one side, I think Russia/China realize that very well and have prepared for it. It is time we start to do so--if the West's powerful countries can't get their collective heads out of their asses on this we're going to be in real trouble.

[Syt]

There's several reports (from speaker Peskov, from the Chinese) that Russia is supposedly willing to talk to Ukraine in Minsk. Could of course be a distraction before bringing the hammer down.

[Duque de Bragança]

Report I heard was Russia willing to negotiate if Ukraine surrenders so colour me skeptical.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It should also be noted the theory that gained increasing popularity in the 1980s--that trading partners don't go to war, and that free trade leads to freer societies, is now as fully debunked as anything can reasonably be. Given that this theory was the justification for much of our opening up our societies to Russia and China, knowledge that it is a false hypothesis needs to inform our future decision making. With nuclear powers direct war is undesirable and best avoided, but there is no logical reason we have to open our societies up to the degree we have to Russian fossil fuels and cheap labor in China. There are other sources of cheap labor, and to be frank to some degree we have caused serious sociocultural problems in our own countries by gutting blue collar workforces in the highly developed West in favor of cheap blue-collar labor abroad. Covid also showed how fragile and weak global supply chains are. Goods and product being more expensive and being made locally, may need to become a norm, and we should probably reflect more honestly on how that would not be the end of the world. Our lives and happiness should not be linked to cheap shit when moderately higher priced products can be attained in other ways that are less politically and socially damaging.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There's several reports (from speaker Peskov, from the Chinese) that Russia is supposedly willing to talk to Ukraine in Minsk. Could of course be a distraction before bringing the hammer down.

I mean I'm sure Putin would happily agree to peace on the terms of: Zelensky out, new Russian President in, or at best maybe Zelensky gets to keep a rump state east of Kiev and the rest gets turned over to Russia or something.