Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[jimmy olsen]

The Baltics are in NATO, too much bother.  Ukraine is perfect. Close by for logistics. Taking some Arctic tundra from Finland might be doable but the cost would be annoying. Russia could theoretically seize Gotland from Sweden via amphibious assault. Keeping it might be tricky though. Any other non-NATO countries close by that would make sense to beat up?

Sweden is too western. Belarus would make a much better bet.

[Tonitrus]

Belarus tosses out some bluster from time to time, but they do military exercises with Russia fairly often.  Putin's easy gamble there is that after Lukashenko ages out, it will either fall into Russia's lap peacefully, or they just get another pliable crony. 

Short of a successful popular revolution, there aren't any moves that are going to happen there.

[Duque de Bragança]

Lukashenko has been more than a pliable crony lately, before the current protests.
Their relationship has had highs and lows with Lukashenko being more and more suspicious of Putin after the Crimea and Donbass events.

[Sheilbh]

I wouldn't be surprised given the general attitude of Xi's CCP, but in terms of maintaining their hold on power it's one of the riskier moves they can make. Obviously if they pull it off at little cost, relatively speaking, it'll be great for them. But if things don't go smoothly that can a) embolden different cliques within the CCP to oust the current power holders and b) put serious dents into the credibility of the party with the population.

I mean, I have no doubt there's a constituency within the CCP apparatus that's highly confident that they can pull it off and have everyone "home by Lunar New Year" or whatever, but technology and rhetoric notwithstanding the PLA does not have much of a track record with large scale operations. So it'd be a gamble.

Agree with all of that. I've just seen a lot of concerns from people about China apparently being particularly aggressive right now - and it looks like a realer risk than before in my life.

NATO is not going to war over eastern Ukraine. Putin will have a new Ossetia/Abkhazia/Transnistria to play with.

Yeah NATO's not going to war over this - though you can see Zelenskiy clearly pushing for support:

Володимир Зеленський
@ZelenskyyUa
Congratulations to @NATO partners on the anniversary of The North Atlantic Treaty! Look forward to extending our practical cooperation to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security. Count on support of Allies in granting MAP to #Ukraine. The Army of Ukraine is strong & continues needed reforms

Having said that I've seen a few "both sides need to de-escalate" statements from Western government and I think it is worth remembering that we're talking about Russian troops moving within Ukraine

[Berkut]

Having said that I've seen a few "both sides need to de-escalate" statements from Western government and I think it is worth remembering that we're talking about Russian troops moving within Ukraine

That was my beef with the comment from Kronn. It smacked of buying straight into the Kremlin propaganda of "well, both sides need to be reasonable!"

Horseshit. Only one side is creating and breathing air into this conflict.

[Maladict]

If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Baltics.

[HVC]

If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Baltics.

i think the serbs are due for creating another European conflict, so the balkans might beat the baltics

[Tonitrus]

Having said that I've seen a few "both sides need to de-escalate" statements from Western government and I think it is worth remembering that we're talking about Russian troops moving within Ukraine

That was my beef with the comment from Kronn. It smacked of buying straight into the Kremlin propaganda of "well, both sides need to be reasonable!"

Horseshit. Only one side is creating and breathing air into this conflict.

What worries me is what the Russian take on things, that being whether to push harder on Ukraine or not, potentially rotates on a couple of preconception...

- When Trump was in office...he may have been a bit more pliable than most US administrations, but too unpredictable.

- But now...while Biden is somewhat of an unknown, but he and most of the US foreign policy team is the same era as when we took Crimea, and that barely elicited an impotent wail from the West...maybe we can get away with it again?

[Jacob]

What's your guys' sense on Putin's moves in Ukraine? Is Ukraine the objective, or are the moves in Ukraine part of some other plan with the local outcome being less important?

[Sheilbh]

What worries me is what the Russian take on things, that being whether to push harder on Ukraine or not, potentially rotates on a couple of preconception...

- When Trump was in office...he may have been a bit more pliable than most US administrations, but too unpredictable.

- But now...while Biden is somewhat of an unknown, but he and most of the US foreign policy team is the same era as when we took Crimea, and that barely elicited an impotent wail from the West...maybe we can get away with it again?

And the big continuity is that Obama-Trump-Biden are all to some extent post-American as leader of the free world. The pivot to Asia is part of that but I think it's just post-Bush exhaustion of Americans not necessarily wanting the role they had after 1990. Added to that you have Europe wanting and talking about strategic autonomy because they're aware of that but also aware Trump might be back in 2024 and so far their line is very much "both sides" need to de-escalate.

It seems a potential gamble worth taking.

[Tonitrus]

Read a good, if pessimistic, historical/analogical take on the current situation.  Alas, it is in Russian (link here: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/04/08/voennye-moshchi), but there is a fair summary of the main ideas in English here:

https://www.world-today-news.com/there-is-little-hope-that-the-teachings-of-the-20th-century-will-be-taken-into-account-by-anyone/

Google-translating the original does a mostly readable job as well.

[Sheilbh]

Google-translating the original does a mostly readable job as well.

Total aside but the recent improvements in Google Translate are a modern miracle - it's incredible. Sort of unimaginable only a few years ago when it produced gobbledygook.

[Tonitrus]

Agree.  It gets hung up on some colloquial phrases (that are not best translated literally), but those rarely prevent the main ideas from getting across.

[Tonitrus]

I didn't have time to sit down and do it earlier, but I've done the work of copy/pasting into Google translate, and cleaning up some/most of the Google-isms:

Military power
They - with a narrow worldview - can repeat themselves. How likely is the war.
Vladimir Pastukhov answers
This material was released in No. 39 on April 12, 2021
READ THE NUMBER
15:11, April 8, 2021 Vladimir Pastukhov, Doctor of Political Science. University College of London


All abstract theoretical models of the development of the situation in Russia in recent years have unequivocally pointed to war as an inevitable result of the evolution of the regime. But on an emotional level, as is often the case in the pre-war years, the consciousness refused to let this thought inside itself, finding thousands of excuses that make one believe why there can be no war: if only because it can never be. However, starting in March 2021, when, seven years after the annexation of Crimea to Russia and the beginning of an armed confrontation in eastern Ukraine, as echelons of Russian armored vehicles again reach the border, the issue of a new and by no means hybrid war returned to the topical agenda.

What is Russia seeking? Are we witnessing yet another "psychological attack" by the Kremlin with the aim of extorting "concessions" from the West and suppressing Ukraine's will to resist, or are we watching the latest preparations for a "final solution of the Ukrainian question" with the help of military force? I think that there is no answer to this question, since the final decision will be made situationally - depending on how the circumstances will develop.

I believe that Putin, as always, keeps both options in his head: it can be a "psychological attack", which itself will develop into an armed attack, or preparation for a military operation, which will end, however, with a propaganda assault - in short, what is happening now.  Therefore, it is necessary to analyze not so much the Kremlin's plans, as the situation. If it favors war, it cannot be avoided; if not, there is a chance to slow it down.

Russia - the troublemaker

The geopolitical position of Russia in Europe and the world at the beginning of the 21st century partly resembles, albeit with very big reservations, the position of Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. The main similarity is that both countries, due to various, mainly domestic political, reasons were deprived in the division of spheres of influence, respectively, in the industrial (Germany) and post-industrial (Russia) world. Germany was not able to get a share the main pie, as it had been politically divided for too long. Russia had a piece of the pie ripped out of its mouth as it struggled to cope with yet another revolution.

In both cases, other giants of world politics erred in assessing the potential of "outsiders" seeking to return to the Big Leagues, mistaking a sleeping dog for a dead one. Under the iron hand of Bismarck, Germany quickly became one of the most militarized states in Europe of its time. With equal energy, Putin over two decades returned to Russia its traditional historical profile of the military-autocratic Empire, the purpose of which is to be a threat to peace (Alexander II is credited with the well-known words that "Russia is not a commercial or agricultural state, but a military one, as if a thunderstorm of light "). A serious gap arose between the growing ambitions of "outsiders" and the readiness of the Great Powers to reckon with them, which became fertile ground for an armed conflict in Europe.

We know that in the case of Germany, the challenge it posed to a world order that did not suit it ended in national catastrophe.

How this will end in the case of Russia remains to be seen.

The fiasco for Germany came on the second attempt (the world war in the 20th century was divided into two phases - the first and the second), Russia, most likely, will not have a second attempt. But, one way or another, in both cases, the geopolitical situation in Europe provoked outsiders to solve their problems with the help of military force.

Main attack direction - Ukraine

Russia, like Germany in the past, found itself surrounded by countries that were unprepared and unable to provide it independently with any effective military resistance, which in itself is a circumstance provoking aggression. At the same time, the establishment of direct or indirect control over these countries was for Germany at one time, and is for Russia in the present, a question that is not so much an economic and geopolitical one, as an ideological one, since it is an integral part of the plan of national revival and reintegration. That is why the question of control over Ukraine is of the same paramount importance for Russia today as the question of relations with Austria had for Germany.

Today, practically any of Russia's neighbors, not without reason, from time to time, is inclined to declare themselves a potential victim of Russian aggression. But neither the Baltics, nor Transcaucasia, nor Central Asia are really priorities for Russia. Ukraine has been and remains a central item on the menu of Russian foreign expansion. This is not connected with geopolitics and, moreover, not with the economy and current politics, but with history and culture, with the peculiarities of the formation of Russian national identity. Only in Belarus, if a revolution suddenly occurs there and there is a threat of its withdrawal from the military-political alliance with Russia, will it be able to oust Ukraine from this "honorable" position. And this is not at all connected with the desire to control the territory.

This is an ideological, doctrinal question about "uniting the people" (not "peoples" - which Putin has repeatedly and persistently emphasized). While Ukraine is building its new national identity by opposing itself to Russia, Russia itself seeks to preserve and protect its traditional imperial identity by identifying with Ukraine (and Belarus, of course, as Solzhenitsyn wrote about). This is something that strategic planners in the West do not understand well.

The practical political consequence of the prevalence of this kind of views in the Kremlin is that Moscow does not need Crimea or Donbass at all, but the whole of Ukraine, and Moscow will not rest until it either gets what it wants, or runs into a revolution at home. Crimea was only the first step, and for a number of reasons, which I will write about a little later, it cannot remain the last step in the direction indicated by the "Russian spring" of 2014.

The Provocation of Weakness

At the same time, the situation in Ukraine itself only provokes the Kremlin's expansionist plans. In the seven years that have passed since the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in southeastern Ukraine, Ukrainian society has not moved a single step towards unification. Despite the war, it remains split along ethnic, confessional, linguistic, social, not to mention political and ideological, meridians and parallels. The state remains weak and corrupt and is still under the control of various oligarchic groups that have also adapted to benefit from the ongoing war and devastation.

Zelensky's promising presidency is stalling, and, not having time to really take off, he has already turned into a "lame duck", his re-election for the next term, in my opinion, looks like an almost impossible task. He himself rushes between naive attempts to "negotiate" with Putin (if Trump failed, then Zelenskiy will even not succeed) and giving the Kremlin weighty slaps like personal assaults on the president's godfather, Medvedchuk. He then cancels (according to rumors), perhaps, the only successful joint operation of the Ukrainian and American special services during the entire conflict, then he cuts off the oxygen to almost all Russian-language media, questioning the slogans that, in fact, brought him to power.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the Ukrainian army in these conditions, despite all the efforts of society and foreign aid, looks at all ineffective in a confrontation with the Russian army. This, of course, is not about the fighting spirit, which I am not ready to discuss here for lack of reliable information, but about purely quantitative and qualitative indicators, which are definitely not in favor of Ukraine. You have to be a saint not to try to take advantage of this situation. But there are no saints in the Kremlin.

Illusory partnership

In one thing, Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian government are really united: in the naive belief that in the event of a serious military conflict with Russia, Western countries and, above all, the United States will have to and will be able to protect it. And not just protect, but maybe even help Ukraine regain control over Crimea and Donbass. This belief is so strong that in Ukraine there are forces that would like to spur the transition of the conflict into an acute military phase, apparently believing that when Russian tanks rush to Kherson and Zaporozhye, the West will have no choice, and it will fight the good fight.

The reality, however, is that the West, immersed in a post-coronavirus nightmare, is not ready and will not go to war with anyone, let alone Russia.

Not to mention the fact that no one has ruled out the Russian nuclear triad so far, and no one will play "Russian roulette" with Moscow, checking whether the Kremlin is really ready as martyrs to go to heaven or is bluffing because of Ukraine. In the end, if Ukraine really wants to play "Russian roulette" with Russia, it has a good chance for this - given that, having annexed Crimea, Russia withdrew from the Budapest agreements, Ukraine has full moral right, and I think - legal right, to restore its nuclear status. But Ukraine is in no hurry to take advantage of this chance itself, so why should others risk it for it? They won't.

The West is ready to provide Ukraine with moral and very moderate material support. In the military sphere, one can expect intelligence cooperation, the dispatch of military advisers and moderate arms assistance. The deployment of a contingent of NATO troops on the territory of Ukraine looks like an emergency measure, and their direct participation in hostilities is extremely unlikely. For this to happen, the established paradigm of relations between Russia and the West must be broken. A hundred years ago, the Anschluss of Austria and the occupation of Czechoslovakia did not lead to a change in this paradigm. Has the Western world changed so much in these hundred years? This may be one of the most important questions today. The Kremlin is sure that is has not, and this inspires it to new aggression no less than does the weakness of Ukraine.

Internal combustion aggression

More than all foreign policy reasons put together, Russia's aggression against Ukraine is spurred on by internal political factors. In general, we can say that this is the aggression of internal combustion, or rather, internal burnout of the system, as it experiences its own agony.

Much has been written about how much the Kremlin needs war today to solve its tactical pressures (elections, suppressing protests, diverting attention from growing economic problems). This need naturally intensifies during periods of crisis or at moments of phase transitions, like the one that awaits Russia around 2024. But there are also deep reasons pushing Russia to war with Ukraine and right now.

First, aggression has its own inertia. The position is binding.

Having once chosen militarization as a method of solving internal and external problems, the Kremlin can no longer get off this needle.

Having dispersed the army and the military-industrial complex, making the "defense industry" again the touchstone of economic development, he drove himself into a trap, since now he must not only constantly feed this monster, but also "take it for a walk" from time to time. Wasn't the German war industry, guided by its own needs, pushing Germany to war? If a gun is hanging on the stage, then, as you know, it must fire in the third act. But if an army that has just been rearmed (albeit with outdated or unworked systems) is milling about on the stage, then you may not even have to wait for the third act.

Secondly, militarism is spurred not so much by the Russian government itself as by Russian society, which has been experiencing a severe political asthenic syndrome for a quarter of a century after the defeat in the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR. This syndrome is well known in Europe under the name of "Versailles". In a sense, the authorities only follow the mood of the masses, guessing and anticipating them. The ability to timely indulge this demand coming from the bottom, from the crowd of the people, is the cornerstone of the stability of the existing regime.

Thirdly, Crimea is in itself the same stumbling block and stimulus for a war between Russia and Ukraine, just as Karabakh is for Armenia and Azerbaijan, or Jerusalem is for Israel and Palestine. It, like a "black hole", pulls relations between countries into the abyss of an insoluble, endless conflict. Moreover, each of the parties has its own asymmetric motivation.

On the issue of Crimea, having said "a", one must also say "b". The annexation of Crimea in 2014, in my opinion, was the Kremlin's biggest strategic mistake, which sooner or later will cost Russia dearly (and has already cost it). But in the same way, leaving Crimea as part of Ukraine in 1991 was, in my opinion, the largest geopolitical miscalculation of the then Ukrainian leadership. This miscalculation may, under unfavorable circumstances, cost Ukraine its hard-won independence. It would be better to take missiles.*  (Toni's note: I think this is implying that Ukraine would have been better off having given up Crimea in 1991, and kept a nuclear arsenal)

"Be afraid of the Danaans who bring eggs," (Toni's note: this is an allusion to "beware of Greeks bearing gifts") the genius Ilf once wrote in his notebook while vacationing in the resorts of Crimea. Crimea turned out to be a truly Danaan gift to Ukraine, which eventually turned into a Trojan horse. Culturally alien to Ukraine, it is a poorly developed territory, which has become an eternally hostile, poorly managed enclave, always gravitating towards Russia, has turned over time into a time bomb for Ukraine and a fuse for Russia. Crimea was not for Ukraine a part of the national myth before it lost it, but it became after its loss, an extreme form of national humiliation, through which it is almost impossible to put behind it. The knot is now tied tightly at both ends.

All these factors, pushing Russia to war, receiving additional powerful doping due to difficulties arising, first of all, with the water supply of Crimea. Despite the victorious reports of local and central authorities, the state of affairs seems to be much worse than what is declared. In the heat of the military campaign, everyone somehow forgot that the reasons that prompted Khrushchev to transfer Crimea to Ukraine were not political, but economic: Crimea depends very much on the supply of water and electricity from the territory of Ukraine. This dependence becomes gigantic during drought years, of which, according to statistics, there are four in Crimea every decade.

Ukraine has finally groped for this painful point with the "poke method" and openly declared its intention to organize a water blockade of Crimea. The former first president of Ukraine Kravchuk, who replaced the former second president of Ukraine Kuchma as the representative of Ukraine in the contact group, recently said: "Ukraine will not just supply water to Crimea, because we do not know who this water will go to - citizens for irrigation, or military factories, or someone else. " At the same time, Kravchuk is aware that such a decision can provoke a war, and, apparently, wants the following consequences: "I think that this will be one of the impetus for Russia to make a way from there to Ukraine, Kherson, Mariupol <...>, to provide the Crimea with water. This will be one of the reasons for even bigger attacks or big aggressive steps by Russia. "

All ways of alternative solutions to the issue (desalinization plants, transferring water from the territory of Russia) require significant time and costs that actually exceed the costs of a war. Therefore, if Crimea faces the threat of a humanitarian catastrophe, a "water war" with Ukraine is almost inevitable. The difference between Ukraine and Russia on this issue is that Ukrainian leaders talk about this war, while Russian leaders are actively preparing for it.

Tru-la-la, we can do everything for three rubles ...

No matter how many objective prerequisites for a war there are, it will not happen until subjective conditions are formed - the political will to unleash a war. The alarming situation on the border with Ukraine is that Russia has this will. There are forces in Ukraine that want war, naively hoping that in this way they will be able to embroil the West and NATO in a military conflict, but this point of view is not dominant. In Russia, on the contrary, one can speak of an elite consensus in the highest echelon of power. The essence of this consensus lies in the admission of war as a means of solving domestic and foreign policy problems and in the moral and psychological justification of the inevitable victims of war.

This unity did not arise out of nowhere. It is a consequence of the re-ideologization of the regime. Having started as pragmatic-mercantilist, oriented more towards the material than the spiritual, it has been reborn in twenty years into a quasi-theocratic state, having grown for itself a new ideology to replace the lost communism. This ideology is eclectic and internally contradictory, which, of course, will affect the future of the regime, but for the present it is important that it exists. This ideological Molotov cocktail, in which Soviet and Orthodox messianism are mixed, turned out to be an excellent fuel for igniting Russian militarism. Around this ideological ersatz, something like a sect has formed, in which the adequacy of the perception of the surrounding reality is limited, and sharply narrowed and clotted by their own mantras worldview. These may well be repeated.

In the cultures of different peoples, it is customary to express a high degree of psychological stability through idioms that are somehow connected with the peculiarities of male anatomy. Bykov, who is an absolute authority in matters of literature, writes on "Echo of Moscow" about "balls of steel." In America, these balls would be "iron", and in England - "brass". In Italy, my colleague, a good lawyer, once said that he had "square balls." Today's Kremlin elites are psychologically impenetrable, they are people with "frostbitten balls." Once they were almost soft-boiled with fear of the future, but after a long freezing they became hard as steel.

Determination based on suppressed hysteria is the most conducive environment for unleashing a war; this determination does not know doubts, does not allow sober calculation inside itself, and therefore most often becomes the mother of adventurous steps.

This is the thug's determination, like punks on the street, pumped with adrenaline, acting from the realization of their own coolness, to get involved in any fight. Where they came from, they came to that. The Academic Choir of Overage Boys, which performed a comic song about the bombing of America in St. Isaac's Cathedral two years ago on February 23, is a collective Freudian image of the modern Kremlin elite: "Tru-la-la, tru-la-la, / I can do everything for three rubles! / Burn the enemy's land in half!" They really are capable of anything. And for even less than three rubles.

Counteraction must be equal to the action

Those who comfort themselves with the thought that the Kremlin is only rattling their "weapons" is seriously missing the mark. The Kremlin is internally ready to use these weapons to achieve its goals. It has long been ready for a big war, in part because it considers it inevitable in any case, and therefore believes that whoever starts first will be in the winning position. There is not even a hint of bluff in Russia's actions. If someone thinks this is a prank, so much the worse for him. Russia is deploying troops to wage war and is preparing public opinion within the country to think that it is inevitable. This does not mean that there will necessarily be a war. This means that it will be inevitable if urgent measures are not taken to prevent it.

A hundred years ago, it was not possible to stop the war under similar circumstances. Will Russia become the Germany of the 21st century by provoking a major war by invading Ukraine? Much speaks in favor of this, but not less and against.

First of all, humanity has the experience of that war, and it is worth a lot. If you do not repeat the mistakes of a century ago, then the world will most likely be saved. Among these mistakes, the most important is the hope that aggression can be stopped by word or hypnosis. Action requires adequate opposition. Only by realizing that they are facing a real, and not a virtual wall, the Kremlin might abandon its intentions. Much depends on whether the West will be able to realize this before Russian tanks enter Kherson and Odessa.

Biden said about Putin (not what everyone is hearing now) - he is an autocrat. No, that's not the problem. For a long time now, the matter is not about authoritarianism, but about militarism. Authoritarianism can still be viewed as an internal problem, while militarism concerns everyone. First of all, it will affect Russia itself, because in the final analysis it is on the shoulders of the Russian people that all the hardships of the great war will fall. Therefore, of all forms of political protest in Russia, the most relevant today is the anti-war movement. The world can still be saved, but it will take a lot of effort.

[celedhring]

Christ, that's a grim read.