Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Jacob]

That makes a lot of sense. So there's a real cost to Putin and he'll have to decide if he's going to go all in (and incur that cost), try a limited engagement (and incur the cost of that + the risk of ending up all in nonetheless), or find a way of backing down gracefully (how?).

[KRonn]

So it looks like the West and Ukraine are not going to concede on the "we promise Ukraine will NEVER join NATO" point. Eventually Russia will have to actually move on this, or deescalate a bit. Or I suppose, they could keep this "ready to start a war on five minutes notice" posture for a long time?

IMO, this should be a no brainer, not having Ukraine in NATO. A couple NATO nations have said that, Germany and France I think. Certainly Russia doesn't want more NATO nations on its border; already has the Baltic States. But that said, I think Putin just wants at least a slice of Ukraine anyways. The eastern portion, Donbas with its resources and industry. 

I heard today that Poland and the UK have signed a separate kind of treaty with Ukraine, but it's unclear to me what the details are.

Ukraine has signed a new cooperation agreement with Poland and the United Kingdom as the threat of a Russian invasion looms over the former Soviet republic.

"I am glad to announce that Ukraine, the UK and Poland are starting a new trilateral format of cooperation," Kiev's Foriegn Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba said at a joint press conference with British Secretary of State Elizabeth Truss on Thursday, according to Russian independent news agency Interfax.

The announcement comes two weeks after leaders from the three nations met to discuss greater cooperation amid the looming threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[Jacob]

A thing that occurs to me is that Putin's Russia is really good at the brazen gaslighting "no you" thing: pretending it's a genocide, using the words and forms of laws and principles while contradicting the substance, false flag operations, false accusations of underhandedness that they engage in routinely, and so on.

And it's very effective in a lot of ways, in sowing doubt, in giving excuses for other parties to support them out of self-interest, and of course in gaslighting their own population. But when it comes down to whether Ukrainians will make an occupation painful for Russia and when it comes down to sanctions from the West that set of tools will do very little. You can't pretend those effects away for very long, no matter how brazen you are.

[Jacob]

IMO, this should be a no brainer, not having Ukraine in NATO. A couple NATO nations have said that, Germany and France I think. Certainly Russia doesn't want more NATO nations on its border; already has the Baltic States. But that said, I think Putin just wants at least a slice of Ukraine anyways. The eastern portion, Donbas with its resources and industry. 

I think whether to apply to NATO or not is Ukraine's sovereign decision.

[Sheilbh]

A thing that occurs to me is that Putin's Russia is really good at the brazen gaslighting "no you" thing: pretending it's a genocide, using the words and forms of laws and principles while contradicting the substance, false flag operations, false accusations of underhandedness that they engage in routinely, and so on.

The BBC's diplomatic editor pointed out how in this case it looks like a very deliberate imitation of Kosovo:

Mark Urban
@MarkUrban01
Some Russian observers have mentioned that Putin may be planning to pattern operations closely on Nato's 1999 campaign against Yugoslavia over Kosovo. Early steps seem to confirm this: Putin's use of 'genocide' + the creation of a 'refugee crisis' by removing Donbas citizens 1/
If Russia goes for this Nato 'Kosplay' we can expect strikes throughout Ukraine as an instrument of coercion, thus Biden suggestion on Friday that RU would 'strike' Kyiv (not drive there), may mirror Nato actions against Belgrade + infrastructure targets like Novi Sad bridge 2/
It should be noted that the RU military build up includes Iskander missiles, kalibr cruise missiles, and squadrons of jets, all of which could be used to strike targets deep in Ukraine in an attempt to break Zelensky govt 3/
In this Russian Kosplay scenario, ground forces would move into the Donbas to drive back Ukrainian forces 'avert the risk of genocide' and might even use 'peace-keeping' tactic deployed in other post-Soviet interventions 4/
By mirroring the tactics + messages employed by Nato in 1999 the Kremlin might hope not just to troll the western alliance on a historical scale, & underline the aggressive character of Nato seen from Moscow, but to maintain that its actions were justified by precedent 5/END

I think that in using Kosovo in that way there's also a corrosive (but kind of true) cynicism that Russia wants to make plain, that ultimately the reason the West could intervene in Kosovo without a UN mandate was because Russia was too weak to protect Serbia, while other genocides and war crimes continue if the perpetrator is strong enough or protected. It wasn't an expression of a rules-based order, or liberal internationalism but rather American power (temporarily borrowed by Europeans like Blair), which allowed the creation of an exceptional action. I think it's very deliberate that Russia is staging this to, in their view, present that reality but also use force to, again from their point, dramatise what they think is terminal decline of American/Western power and there's nothing Europeans have done to replace it in Europe (to use a Marx-y phrase Europe believed so much in the flowers, they forgot the chains).

I think one of the challenges is going to be what happens the day after from the perspective of Europe. Not what do we do in response to this in relation Russia - though that's really important - but how do we build, to nick Macron's phrase, the security architecture that meaningfully protects the Baltic states and Poland. It is going to require far more defence and deterrence from the Arctic to the Med than we've seen in a generation. While I'm not convinced as I think Russia (and China) is that America/the West is in terminal decline - I think America has limited resources and needs to focus on the Pacific, so this is a challenge to Europeans.

And it's very effective in a lot of ways, in sowing doubt, in giving excuses for other parties to support them out of self-interest, and of course in gaslighting their own population. But when it comes down to whether Ukrainians will make an occupation painful for Russia and when it comes down to sanctions from the West that set of tools will do very little. You can't pretend those effects away for very long, no matter how brazen you are.

No, but ultimately if you know that sanctions are the outcome that's really just a price and whether or not Putin's willing to accept that or not. Is he willing to Brezhnevise Russia? Because I think the price (if the West follows through) could be that substantial.

There has been lots of talk about very strong sanctions - but just today Draghi came out and said they should be targeted and exclude the energy sector. In part, I think that reflects reality - my understanding is that if Russian gas stops flowing to Europe the lights go out for many countries and there isn't the infrastructure in place to just replace it with LNG - possibly if we fire up the coal plants again? So the price may not be as substantial as you'd hope - and while there's been a lot of unity so far I'm not sure how it'll play out once it requires the EU to make decisions because I think it requires unanimity and I'm really unsure over whether Orban will cause significant issues or not and, also, Draghi given all of the comments he's made throughout this crisis have been about need to not hurt Europe too.

The Ukrainian resistance is the huge unknown and again this will have direct implications for Europe because Ukraine's longest border to the West is Romania and it's also the most mountainous/good for smuggling.

Edit: Separately Steve Rosenberg (BBC correspondent in Moscow who is really good) on what's on Russian news TV tonight: "Who benefits from war?" Biden, Johnson, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Erdogan, Macron, Zelenskiy etc. As he says "alternate reality":
https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1495449160753070080

[Tamas]

Isn't it also an imitation of what they did with Georgia?

[Sheilbh]

Isn't it also an imitation of what they did with Georgia?

I don't think so - or certainly not like this. From memory there was nothing nothing like "evacuations" from Abkhazia or South Ossetia causing Rostov or any other Russian region to declare an emergency or Russia to do a big show of housing and transporting "refugees". I don't remember allegations of genocide. There's reports tonight from the Ukrainian MoD of civilian areas of Luhansk being shelled from (according to the Ukrainian MoD) within the Luhansk "Republic". I don't remember anything that elaborate with Georgia and in addition to Kosovo, especially if that shelling your own side's city it reminds me of the tower block attacks before Putin came to power. Also the huge obvious difference is time - with Georgia the whole situation lasted about a fortnight, while this has played out over months.

With Georgia I think what happened was in part because Saakashvili was a man in a hurry (and as we've since discovered there were many, many issues with him) - he wanted to join NATO after the Bucharest declaration but couldn't because there were two frozen conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There were provocations so I think there were shells and snipers firing from the Russian side - but not, from my understanding an unusual amount - Georgian officials on the ground escalated which led to a war that they were utterly unprepared for but Russia was. From what I've read that was far more Russia having a trap ready to go if Georgia decided to do something - and I think it was an unforced error by Saakashvili who also showed himself to not be a great leader, whereas I think Zelenskiy has been far more impressive not least in the discipline of not stepping into any traps or responding to provocations so instead the Russians just have to work through the playbook themselves.

[mongers]

There has been lots of talk about very strong sanctions - but just today Draghi came out and said they should be targeted and exclude the energy sector. In part, I think that reflects reality - my understanding is that if Russian gas stops flowing to Europe the lights go out for many countries and there isn't the infrastructure in place to just replace it with LNG - possibly if we fire up the coal plants again? So the price may not be as substantial as you'd hope - and while there's been a lot of unity so far I'm not sure how it'll play out once it requires the EU to make decisions because I think it requires unanimity and I'm really unsure over whether Orban will cause significant issues or not and, also, Draghi given all of the comments he's made throughout this crisis have been about need to not hurt Europe too.

Shelf, a lot of those plants have just gone in the UK, but don't know about the situation in the rest of Western Europe.

And oil may not be much of an option in the UK, for instance relatively recently they've demolished the Fawley oil fired power station on Southampton water, a pity as it would be very easy to divert oil intended for the refinery to go directly there, if there was very bad shortages.

[Sheilbh]

Shelf, a lot of those plants have just gone in the UK, but don't know about the situation in the rest of Western Europe.

I don't think it's an issue in the UK. We don't rely as much on Russian gas and there is infrastructure in place that means we could actually replace it with LNG. When European countries were making their fossil fuel deals with the devil we didn't go for pipeline gas from Russia, but LNG from the Gulf. Plus earlier last year the UK signed a new deal with Qatar where they would act as our supplier of last resort if things got really bad in the market - again it's a different deal with the devil, but there we are and it was maybe quite a sensible thing to have done if Russia's about to start a war.

It's Central (including Germany and Italy) and Eastern Europe that would face challenges - as I say my understanding is there isn't the infrastructure in place to replace the amount of pipeline gas currently used with LNG even if there was a desire to do that, or if Russia just turned off the pipes. Rather attractive (I think NYT) diagram:

[Admiral Yi]

So, theory of the day- this isn't about Ukraine. Anything they get out of scaring Ukraine is a bonus. Anschluss with Belarus was always the main goal.

I like this one.

[Sheilbh]

Second Macron-Putin call today. Four hours of talks - now admittedly there were five hours when Macron was in the Kremlin and it was, reportedly, largely history lessons from Putin. But as long as they're talking tanks aren't rolling and Putin's still in the implausible deniability greyzone.

Edit: Interestingly between the talks Macron spoke with the US, Germany, Ukraine and UK (surprised no call to the Poles) - and Number 10's made a statement noting "that Putin's commitments to Macron were a welcome sign he might still be willing to engage in finding a diplomatic solution". Again impressive coordination and working together by Western allies - and including Ukraine in that process.

[grumbler]

So, theory of the day- this isn't about Ukraine. Anything they get out of scaring Ukraine is a bonus. Anschluss with Belarus was always the main goal.

Given the unrest resulting from the sham elections in 2020, this theory might have legs.

[Tamas]

Yeah I raised that like a week ago. But I have doubts about it now. It has progressed too far with the Ukraine for a diversion. But forgetting to ever remove Russian troops from Belarus is sure a nice side-effect of all this, for Putin.

[Jacob]

The Kosovo cosplay hypothesis is interesting. It's also a scenario where Russia doesn't need to occupy Ukraine proper and risk significant casualties.

[grumbler]

The Kosovo cosplay hypothesis is interesting. It's also a scenario where Russia doesn't need to occupy Ukraine proper and risk significant casualties.

But it's also a scenario where a handful of anti-aircraft units can make Russia look very bad, indeed.  Russian SEAD is not very good, from all reports.