Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[viper37]

Regina is a cesspool that no one in Saskatchewan appears to like. .

so, it's like the West's Toronto? 

[Admiral Yi]

Isn't Sky News a Murdoch property?  If so, their pro Ukrainian reporting might be a positive sign.

Regina is a cesspool that no one in Saskatchewan appears to like. .

so, it's like the West's Toronto? 

[viper37]

Question: assuming the war ends, and Ukraine emerges free - will the experience of the war and upheaval make the political corruption problem better or worse?

worst.  The central government will be weak, having to physically rebuild.  They won't be able to project authority as efficiently as before, and they'll have to cut a lot of slak to businesses on all kind of reporting, as many records will have been destroyed.

Regional governments may not be in any better shape, depending on the shelling they had to endure.  You need bureaucrats to administer the rules, and after the war, they will not have offices and many of them will not have a home.  Nature abores the void, so all kind of criminal elements will fill the spot, until the State can reassert its authority, and by then, it'll depend on what kind of policies those in office will pursue.

[viper37]

Honestly don't rate that song. Just don't get it. The VDV one on the other hand is pure class.

[celedhring]

Come on, "Bayraktar!" is pretty catchy. Yeah, it's no Lili Marleen, Bella Ciao or Ay Carmela but you gotta work with the times 

[Josephus]

It's hard to imagine what Ukraine will be like after the war, assuming they even win it.  If Zelensky survives the war and the peace afterwards, then it's possible that he may be one of the few people idealistic enough to fight corruption.  It's a lot more pragmatic to take stuff for yourself while you can, because you never know what tomorrow will bring.

The huge question is how many of the 10 million who fled are going to want to return?

You be surprised at how attached to their home country people can be. As an immigrant myself, I remember the struggles my parents went through and how much my mom, especially, missed home.

That said, i imagine younger people, especially those who are settled further west, like Germany or North America, may decide to stay. Older people, probably not so much. But who knows.

Also, will there refugee status be permanent? I know some countries are giving 3-year work permits etc. I imagine they will be allowed to apply for permanent residency afterwards. I'm not sure. Depends on the country and the visa.

[OttoVonBismarck]

So you seem to be saying "Russia is capable of continuing to do what it had never been in danger of not doing, and nothing more." Are you actually saying anything meaningful at all? Putin isn't lusting after solidification of the status quo ante, if he was fine with that he would have left things well enough alone.

On the flip side, criticizing Putin's strategy for failing because Russia's aggregate output is badly falling further and further behind China is meaningless because Russia doesn't have the population base to do that no matter what policies are pursued.

The position I outlined for Russia/Putin is more precarious than you let on. The economy is strained by a need to play the part of a global power with a decidedly second tier economy. His power base means he has to keep the nationalists happy which isn't easy because the economy is second tier and first tier talent ends up opposing him. I certainly don't think that the Russian sphere of influence is secure: Belarus has seriously threatened spinning off, and Uzbekistan is making signs of abandoning Moscow. Armenia even went a bit western for a while despite the obvious reliance Russia vs. Azerbaijan (to its considerable detriment).

Putin didn't need to invade Ukraine, but it isn't as though he had a quiet happy kingdom before the invasion. Reducing a pro western ukraine would have solved some of his problems, internal and external.

A lot is factually wrong here.

For one, Putin's Russia could be significantly more competitive in the areas I believe Putin wishes to be competitive, if he had focused on building up an economy that valued industrial output, technology, and advanced services. Is that trivial? Sure, it isn't. But "raping the nation blind with appointed oligarchs" isn't a good faith attempt at that that failed, it's an entirely different, much worse approach. Note that China has (correctly) been referred to as having an almost Middle Age economy in the early parts of the 20th century, and while they had somewhat industrialized, it was still grim in the 1970s. In the 1980s Deng took them down a different path--and it worked. The idea that Putin or Russia had no other economic choices simply isn't true. They had them, they chose different (and worse.)

Population isn't everything, for example the United Kingdom is much closer to being a "Great Power" than say, Brazil or Indonesia, and has significantly smaller population. The United States is still the world's sole superpower in most respects, despite having significantly smaller population than India or China. It is silly then to say that Putin could never have done any better in terms of his country's development than China...because China has more people. Human capital has some value, but I think it is a little bit overrated in most circumstances. Russia is a very big country geographically and a fairly big country population wise (a real risk for Russia is that its population has a low birth rate, but that's a future problem.)

The supposed conflict you identify of "first tier" talent opposing him and needing to keep nationalists happy is, as far as I can tell, mostly bullshit. I understand you've spoken to a few English-speaking Russians in your life, but most of Russia has been firmly behind Putin for a long time, and since most of his supporters accept his narrative on almost anything, he actually has always had tremendous freedom of action when compared to a Western leader that might have to answer to a quasi-informed public or face real elections. Certainly the type of people that oppose Putin are educated urban dwellers, but even among the educated urban population before fairly recently Putin still had more supporters than opponents, and most of his non-supporters wouldn't cross quite into opposing him.

Belarus is closer to Putin right now than it has ever been, letting Putin station troops in country--which likely Belarus can never get out now, by the way. If Lukashenko asks them to leave, I doubt Putin would listen to him. Lukashenko became completely dependent on Putin's good graces for staying in power when he was unable to handle popular unrest on his own.

Armenia considered pursuing EU membership but opted on its own to join Russia's Eurasian Economic Community instead back in 2013, and because of its military conflicts with Azerbaijan (Russia is Armenia's primary arms supplier), it is not meaningfully realistic Armenia would turn away from Russia. The fact that Turkey is a NATO member would complicate any efforts by Armenia to seek close relationships with a non-Russiam patron.

Russia has also shored up relations with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in recent years. Russia was really not in any real state of crisis, and geopolitically was fairly well positioned before it took Crimea. Taking Crimea was mostly unnecessary as they had sort of a Gitmo like lease arrangement (extended to 2042 with options for further extensions) for their Sevastopol naval base, which is the most valuable thing in Crimea and they already had it to begin with.

I dunno if you just are in love with Putin or what, or just trying to be contrary, but there really is no good logical explanation for his behavior. There are tons of emotional and bad thinking explanations for his behavior, but that conflicts with some people's weirdly invested belief that Putin is a supergenius playing the West like a fiddle.

[Josquius]

The whole thing since the seizure of Crimea and into the invasion has been putin putting his image and legacy, and Russian prestige above actual material gains.
Seizing crimea was a stupid move.
Though in that context of idiocy I guess I can see the context of then seizing more of Ukraine being sensible.... Assuming Russia was actually capable and the west was as divided as they really seemed to believe

[DGuller]

Zelensky not giving up on comedy:  "They say that the Minister of Defense of Russia has disappeared somewhere... I wonder if he personally wanted to visit Chornobaivka?"

[Sheilbh]

I love his use of humour at times. It really does puncture Russia's line - the tapping the mic following the Putin-green screen rumours was very good.

[viper37]

Russia is drawing reserves from other places in its empire, notably Georgia and Tadjikistan.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/25/russia-reinforcements-georgia-ukraine/

[The Larch]

Turkish authorities have apparently found and removed a Russian made naval mine from the Bosphorus, which had to be temporarily closed to naval traffic. It is believed to have drifted from the Odessa area.

[Malthus]

I dunno if you just are in love with Putin or what, or just trying to be contrary, but there really is no good logical explanation for his behavior. There are tons of emotional and bad thinking explanations for his behavior, but that conflicts with some people's weirdly invested belief that Putin is a supergenius playing the West like a fiddle.

There seems to be a real soft spot in the human psyche for a genius strongman leader. It seems to transcend tribalism - you get people apparently wanting to give loyalty to ethnic nationalists from a completely different ethnicity, who would loathe them if they knew about them.

Putin seems to be the latest in a series of beneficiaries of this tendency.

Of course there is an element of similarity at work - Putin hates social liberalism, and so do many of his non-Russian followers - but there is more to it than 'I wish to be like Putin, and jail all the degenerates I hate'. There is a real emotional need to find someone like that, and believe in his destiny.

[Jacob]

There seems to be a real soft spot in the human psyche for a genius strongman leader. It seems to transcend tribalism - you get people apparently wanting to give loyalty to ethnic nationalists from a completely different ethnicity, who would loathe them if they knew about them.

Putin seems to be the latest in a series of beneficiaries of this tendency.

Of course there is an element of similarity at work - Putin hates social liberalism, and so do many of his non-Russian followers - but there is more to it than 'I wish to be like Putin, and jail all the degenerates I hate'. There is a real emotional need to find someone like that, and believe in his destiny.

My thoery: the world and human society are super complex. We all have to find ways to simplify things to be able to function day-to-day. Following a genius strongman is one way to reduce some of the complexity fairly significantly.

[alfred russel]

A lot is factually wrong here.

For one, Putin's Russia could be significantly more competitive in the areas I believe Putin wishes to be competitive, if he had focused on building up an economy that valued industrial output, technology, and advanced services. Is that trivial? Sure, it isn't. But "raping the nation blind with appointed oligarchs" isn't a good faith attempt at that that failed, it's an entirely different, much worse approach. Note that China has (correctly) been referred to as having an almost Middle Age economy in the early parts of the 20th century, and while they had somewhat industrialized, it was still grim in the 1970s. In the 1980s Deng took them down a different path--and it worked. The idea that Putin or Russia had no other economic choices simply isn't true. They had them, they chose different (and worse.)

Population isn't everything, for example the United Kingdom is much closer to being a "Great Power" than say, Brazil or Indonesia, and has significantly smaller population. The United States is still the world's sole superpower in most respects, despite having significantly smaller population than India or China. It is silly then to say that Putin could never have done any better in terms of his country's development than China...because China has more people. Human capital has some value, but I think it is a little bit overrated in most circumstances. Russia is a very big country geographically and a fairly big country population wise (a real risk for Russia is that its population has a low birth rate, but that's a future problem.)

You start by saying i'm factually wrong and then state a bunch of opinions. First, lets be clear that your comparison to the UK is nonsense. It has 66 million, Brazil and Indonesia are in the 200-300 million range. So it is outnumbered roughly 4-1 by those countries. China has about 1.4 billion people. Russia has 140 million. The difference is 10-1. The UK has one of the most productive workforces in the world that on a per capita basis dwarfs Russia. There was not a path for Russia to beat the UK in terms of productivity: Russia was comparatively so backward and corrupt in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse that it is destined to be behind in terms of an advanced economy.

Second, the UK is not a global superpower in any event. Russia matching the UK's muscle on a per capita basis is still going to leave it significantly inferior to the US.

Third, the UK government has gone through several government changes since Putin took office. None of the people in the top job of UK government have become obscenely wealthy as Putin and his cronies have. Robbing the country blind and subverting democratic norms that could cause a change in government is not a bug, it is a feature. In the make believe world where UK levels of productivity could be reached in Russia, and in the make believe world that would cause Russia to be the global superpower, it still isn't certain that putin would have wanted that.