this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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There has been some good answers, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the details, so I will add my own response.
Culturally Russia sees itself as outside the rest of the world. At the very minimum, an equal to historical empires of Europe or Asia, but part of neither. It sees the USA as an ethnic mongrel with no culture or history, and hates the US power it projects globally.
Russia sees the former Soviet Union countries as property of the Rus people, and NATO involvement as outsider influence in affairs that do not concern them.
Globally, the world values stability more than they value justice or peace. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, it came after several other invasions of other former Soviet countries. There was little global response on any occasion.
Putin did expect the invasion to be fast and achieve their goals quickly. It was a mistake on his behalf.
This invasion was taken differently than any previous invasion because it upset global stability. Gas, oil and grain were traded openly with Russia and Ukraine and a war upset the market right when the world was trying to stabilise markets rocked by inflation, pandemic recovery and suppy chain problems.
The result was many countries around the world pledging military support. This was always older generation materiel which essentially costs those countries to maintain. It was the global equivalent of giving a homeless man the doggy bag you didn't want anyway.
Why did they do this? They wanted Russia to pull back, return to its 2014 lines and go back to stability so that global markets could resume. So they gave Ukraine just enough to defend itself, but not enough to win.
Why did they do this? Because the world wants stability more than peace. Of the pledges of materiel, almost none has actually come to fruition. About 1/4 of the armor promised has arrived that was promised. Ukraine continues to beg for alms (or in this case arms), and they do amazing things with the little they are given.
Western powers could arm Ukraine and it would win. They have had no problem spending trillions of dollars over decades to protect their influence. It does not in this case as the World is only just coming to terms that Russia will not stop just for stability.
Putin will cease to be leader if he pulls back. The Russian leader would be seen as weak, and the Russian culture loves a Tsar. Putin believes in luck and will continue the sunk cost in the hope that some outside factor or random event will go in his favor.
The West is already getting bored and tired of a war they aren't even fighting. There is a possibility that pro-Russian Republicans could regain office or power in the US. All Putin has to do is hold and eventually the West will even start telling Ukraine to capitulate to them.
Putin does not care how many troops he loses. Russia doesn't really care how many people it loses unless those people are from the cities. Russian culture dehumanises the poor and mixed ethnicities.
This current grinding stalemate is a direct result of world policy. The world supplies Ukraine with just enough so they don't lose, but not enough that they can win. In the meantime, the arms dealers are circling like sharks. India and China are cashing in on filling global supply gaps and taking advantage of Russias need for materiel frozen by sanctions. The hope would be that world leaders realise before it's too late that the only way Ukraine can win, is that if Russia loses.
I think the fact that Kyiv didn't fall within hours like everybody thought it would, and the morale/inspiration/call to action effect of "I need ammunition, not a ride," shouldn't be taken lightly either.
I agree. Ukraine did a great job in preparing for an inevitable invasion. Zelensky is the reason the preparations succeeded.
This seems mostly right, but I want to add a few points.
The first is that the Ukrainians won't stop fighting if the west stops supporting them. They may suffer some severe defeats and the nature of the war may shift to being more of a guerrilla insurgency, but they won't stop fighting.
The second is that even if the US withdraws support, it's not likely that European nations will necessarily follow, and between Germany and the UK and France, the Europeans can easily continue to support Ukraine at or above current levels.
My final point is that Ukraine actually is making slow progress in pushing back the Russians, it's just not going anywhere near as fast as anyone would like.
I also really dislike the term "stalemate" because it implies a static state of affairs as in a chess game where there are only so many pieces and moves, when in fact war is much different in the sense that additional pieces and moves can and probably will be added to the equation.
But the EU countries also dont want Ukraine to decisively push the Russians out. The longer the war goes, the more Russia will weaken itself, being less of a threat in the long run.
Also Germany is a puppet of the US, when it comes to military decisions. They will do what the US tells them to do and if Trump tells them to kiss Putins ass they will do that. They already did that before without the US telling them.
This post is pure and unadulterated bullshit.
Germany didn't go to Iraq with the US.
Germany will never stop supporting Ukraine.
You are full of shit.
Then why did Germany hesitate to promise equipment and unserselivered on its promises?
Also Germany did nit put boots on the ground in Iraq, which would be unconstitutional anyways, but it did provide extensive support to the US. US army bases in Germany were integral to the logistics and control of the US invasion. Germany did everything it could to support the Iraq invasion within its own legal limits.
Before swinging big accusations, maybe consider judging politics by actions instead of words
examples of Russia weakening itself
perhaps you were thinking of the US?
I was wondering if you could provide something to back this up since these are rather sweeping claims.
The only thing I can think of that comes close is Dugin's writings but I have never seen anything that could suggest that his ideas are widely accepted or adopted as the state's doctrines.
Timothy Snyder makes a pretty convincing case for it in "The Road to Unfreedom." It was published in 2018 so probably written in 2016 and 2017 at the latest, and it looks ridiculously prescient now.
Can you help me towards some starting points in the book where he explains this? Here are some digital copies of the book in case you don't have one at hand: http://libgen.is/search.php?req=the+road+to+unfreedom&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def
I agree with what you said and appreciate the insight. Thanks for writing it.
I think part of it from Russia's side is definitely an attempt to rebuild Stalin's buffer to the west, but there are echoes of the appeasement that took place before WW2. Crimea was quick and done.
Then, it's a repeat years later in an attempt to grab more. Thing is, since then there was a lot of election tampering in the form of misinformation and it continues as an attempt to turn Americans against each other. Russia is waging war via the Internet and it's working.
I think the US government is unable to control it because there is no direct control of social media companies, and social media companies are ineffective. Their interests are purely financial and to truly be effective, it would require significant investment.
The US is instead providing just enough support, but I think it's purposely done. What happens if they were to provide double? Ukraine pushes Russia back to the border and then what? They continue forward? That's WW3. Even if they stop at the border, Putin may be forced to stop and may lose power. Then you're dealing with a potentially worse successor who wants to destroy at all costs...again a dangerous unknown.
They're doing it this way on purpose to bleed Russia slowly over time. Russia expected to drive a 40 mile column into the capital and finish fast. A long war is not sustainable for Russia economically and the population isn't interested either (as shown by the huge expatriation that took place when conscription was announced).
If enough western countries continue to provide arms, it will damage Russia for a long time to come.
Except that now we have Ukrainian chief negotiator having come out and openly admitted that Russia and Ukraine were on a verge of making a deal back in last March before Boris Johnson sabotaged it. The only reason this was is still going on is because the west couldn't accept peace and decided to cynically push Ukraine into further conflict.
What actually happened was that NATO countries wanted to break and balkanize Russia, which was openly said by lots of western officials. The west made a mistake thinking that they could easily break Russian economy using sanctions while using Ukraine as a proxy without having to put NATO boots on the ground. Now we're seeing this massively backfire with western economies going into a recession while Russian economy is now growing.
They literally can't, and even NATO officials now admit that the west lacks industrial capacity to keep up with Russia even in basic things such as shell production.
This is not a problem that can be fixed by throwing money at it. This requires building factories, training workers, creating supply chains and so on. These things simply can't be done overnight. All throwing money at the problem does is raise prices as anybody with even a modicum of economic knowledge could've predicted
How to say you're a racist without saying you're a racist.
There was never any scenario in which Ukraine could win and it's absolutely incredible that western propaganda machine managed to convince so many people of this insane fantasy. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians lost their lives in a NATO proxy war with Russia, and Ukraine will likely cease to exist as a functioning state at the end of all this. All for the insatiable need for NATO expansion. Stoltenberg finally let the cat out of the bag and told us that this was the real reason for the war:
Source? Because the only "deal" I can find is basically a surrender of Crimea and the Donbas in 2022.
Again, source? Sure, this is true if you look at single numbers, but there are huge difference between Europe shifting away from over a decade of quantitative easing and into repair mode, and Russia who is nationalizing businesses left and right and forcing companies to sell them foreign currencies at a discount to prop up the ruble. The need for foreign capital is so massive, due to capital flight, you can land 15% interest in Russia right now.
The three things propping up the Russian economy are the high oil price, China and massive government intervention.
Because lobbing shells at eachother is Soviet doctrine, not NATO. NATO doctrine is to bomb the everloving shit out of someone with massive air superiority. If NATO decided to send 200 F35s to Ukraine, there would be no need to more 155mm shells.
And because it's not doctrine, nobody really wants to build more artillery factories that will sell great now, and get mothballed in 5 years. If Russia steps into NATO territory, those factories will sprout like mushrooms, but it's simply a bad business decision to do so now.
And tell me, when a dictator known for annexing other countries demands appeasement, how effective has that been historically? I don't even need Czechoslovakia for this example, although it's a classic. Did Russia stop after, say, two Chechen wars, Georgia, Abkhazia?
"There wouldn't have been a war if putin got what he wanted without one" is a shit take
Funny how you request sources to one argument but swallow the other without question and provide none for your counter arguments.
https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms
Europe is in deep shit because it got cut off from cheap pipeline gas. Plain and simple. Now, Europe is forced to buy LNG on the spot market at an order of magnitude higher price, and a large chunk of this LNG still comes from Russia. The only difference is that now it's sold through middlemen at even higher markup. German industry is no longer competitive with China, and it's now shutting down
Russian factory activity grew at fastest pace in over six years in September. This should not be a surprise to anyone because western companies left a void that's now being filled domestically
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-factory-activity-grows-fastest-pace-over-six-years-sept-pmi-2023-10-02/
On the other hand, US manufacturing output actually shrank to lowest in three years
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-03/us-manufacturing-activity-shrinks-by-most-in-three-years
Because lobbing shells is what actually works. Vast majority of casualties in the war come from artillery fire. That's the reality. All the magic NATO wunderwaffe failed to make any visible impact in the conflict. IF NATO decided to send 200 F35s to Ukraine, they would just be shot down by Russian air defence. Also, the fact that you think F35s would make any difference in this kind of war shows your profound lack of understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate here.
NATO isn't building artillery factories because NATO shipped all its industry overseas and isn't capable for producing the basics that any army needs.
Once again you show deep and profound ignorance of the subject you're opining on. To help you get a bit of an understanding, let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
here's how the election in 2004 went:
this is the 2010 election:
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
Ukraine is clearly not some homogeneous blob, but a large country with complex cultural and ethnic situations.
In fact, what we see in Ukraine is directly modelled on what NATO did in Yugoslavia where NATO recognized breakaway regions and then had them invite NATO to help break up Yugoslavia. Russia recognized LPR and DPR and then had them invite Russia to help. So, if you want to know how that works out then you can look at modern Serbia and the breakway regions.
There wouldn't be a war if NATO just got to do what it wanted is the only shit take here.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
this lecture
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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This is quite the work of fiction you've written here. I wouldn't even know where to start with all of your lies.
Literally provided sources, but you keep on living in your fantasy wonderland buddy.