Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[Dr. Shades]

Are you really unaware of the fact that Putin worked for the KGB under Stalin, one of the cruelest and most evil despots in history, and whom Putin openly admires as a hero, and wishes to emulate?

Putin was too young to have worked for the KGB under Stalin.

[Moksha]

Are you really unaware of the fact that Putin worked for the KGB under Stalin, one of the cruelest and most evil despots in history, and whom Putin openly admires as a hero, and wishes to emulate?

Putin was too young to have worked for the KGB under Stalin.

Putin joined the KGB in 1975 during the time of Leonid Brezhnev. Stalin died less than a year after Putin was born.

[Chap]

Because he knows he doesn't have the strength to do it. I think Putin believes that he should rule all northern slavic countries. As you said, if Putin wanted nuclear war he could have it right now. If you give him at least the parts of Ukraine in the east that were pro Russian anyway, it will allow him to save face and not go home completely empty handed. He'll have his buffer zone, his Crimean port (which was Russian before Krustchev anyway). If you concede nothing, he's only going to wratchet up the hostilities and the idea of nuclear war becomes more appeasing to him than it is now.

The problem with that argument is that even much of the Russian Speaking formerly pro Russian populace of Eastern Ukraine are so aghast at what Putin has been doing in Ukraine, that they no longer want to be any part of Russia. Surely you must realize that the bombs and artillery that are killing so many in the cities of the Donbas region don't distinguish between Russian and Ukrainian speakers or between pro and anti Russian people, don't you? None of them are being spared simply because they speak Russian or claim to be Pro Russia. In fact, if anything, because Putin is trying so hard now to concentrate on the cities in the Donbas region in particular, the inhabitants of those cities, including those who are Russian speaking and/or have ever expressed pro Russian sentiments are probably getting the worst of it. Thus Putin's war has only made Ukrainians, in general, including the Russian speaking ones, more determinedly anti-Russian than ever!

Yes indeed.

People need to get this point: there are parts of Belgium where most people speak French. The people who live there, however, do not wish to become French. Same goes for English speakers in the Republic of Ireland. Same goes for India, where many people speak English as pretty well their main language, especially where they are in a marriage with someone from a different part of the subcontinent. They do not, however, wish to be thought of as English.

Similarly, there are many Ukrainians who (like Zelensky) speak Russian as their mother tongue, but don't think of themselves as Russian. Before the invasion, that often took the form of a firm but polite insistence on their Ukrainian identity when speaking to foreigners who didn't get it. Now they have had Russian troops killing, robbing and raping over large parts of their country, the explanation of their identity is more likely to be more like "I am not a f*****g Russian!" There is no hope of people like them accepting further Russian seizure of Ukrainian land.

[Chap]

At what stage do you think the Confederacy should have 'preferred peace to [what it saw as] justice'?

... you're comparing apples to kiwis given that the union didn't possess nuclear weapons nor threaten to use them upon anyone who supplied the confederates with food and weapons.

In fact, after seeing the abject failure of his plans for a quick seizure of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, the assassination of its government and the installation of puppets, Putin has not said a lot about nuclear threats. And even Putin never threatened nuclear war against those who sent the Ukrainians civil or military supplies: what he wanted was to deter a NATO military force from coming into Ukraine and standing in his way.

The question arises, however: if a state has nuclear weapons, is one forced to allow it to do whatever it wants with its conventional weapons without opposition? Clearly not. Once that happens, the US (which depends hugely on a rule-governed, orderly and safe world for the international trade that is the basis of its prosperity), will begin to find life very difficult indeed. Just think of China, plus a few other places too ...

Let us recall too that the NATO treaty obliges all members to come to the assistance of a treaty partner who is attacked: the first country to invoke that clause was the US after 9/11. If Putin comes to believe that he has achieved his aims in Ukraine by military force, and decides to bite off bits of his NATO member neighbours like Poland or the Baltic states, no-one will be able to use the 'he's got nukes' excuse.

[Moksha]

Same goes for India, where many people speak English as pretty well their main language, especially when they are in a marriage with someone from a different part of the subcontinent. They do not, however, wish to be thought of as English.

Strangely enough, there are Indians who identify with Russia and want to fight with them. For lack of a better term, they should be thought of as Trump-like Indians.

[Chap]

Same goes for India, where many people speak English as pretty well their main language, especially when they are in a marriage with someone from a different part of the subcontinent. They do not, however, wish to be thought of as English.

Strangely enough, there are Indians who identify with Russia and want to fight with them. For lack of a better term, they should be thought of as Trump-like Indians.

For India, Russia is a convenient counter-balance to China, with whom they have a low-intensity but occasionally shooting conflict on part of their northern border. And Russia is also a major arms seller to India. Plus in the old Soviet days Russia was seen by leading Indian politicians (the sort they had before the rise of Hindu nationalism of the kind they have now) as a friendly socialist country.

[Gadianton]

Because he knows he doesn't have the strength to do it. I think Putin believes that he should rule all northern slavic countries. As you said, if Putin wanted nuclear war he could have it right now. If you give him at least the parts of Ukraine in the east that were pro Russian anyway, it will allow him to save face and not go home completely empty handed. He'll have his buffer zone, his Crimean port (which was Russian before Krustchev anyway). If you concede nothing, he's only going to wratchet up the hostilities and the idea of nuclear war becomes more appeasing to him than it is now.

That's possible. It's possible this will be the natural end result anyway: he wasn't strong enough to take Ukraine, but he's strong enough to take the parts of the country he was at war with anyway, and if he goes a little farther and then if he takes the coast he can cut the rest of it off from the world and starve it out. The hope is that with elevated sanctions, he would stop there. He miscalculated Western resolve, and now that he factors that in, he'll stop. That's really the best case scenario.

It's a catch-22 though. If the West appears weak, NATO expansion is a pretext for aggression, he takes what we'll let him take, but then when we say, "Enough!", the West unifies and draws the line, then his fears of NATO become justified.

Either way, his strength is his nukes, and that's the bottom line. His army is irrelevant. He's strong enough to take what the West will give him under the threat of nuclear attack. He's never needed to send out a single troop to do anything. All he had to do was issue an announcement to hand over Ukraine, and if it's not done by next Friday, here are the countries that will receive tactical nukes, and if there are any nuclear retaliations or conventional incursions on Russian soil, then he'll release all of them and level the United States.

Sending out troops is just going through the motions, maybe it's needed to psychologically prepare himself and his crew to play the one and only hand they've ever had.

There are two rules:

1) if he loses; nukes.
2) if he wins; take more.

[Chap]

Because he knows he doesn't have the strength to do it. I think Putin believes that he should rule all northern slavic countries. As you said, if Putin wanted nuclear war he could have it right now. If you give him at least the parts of Ukraine in the east that were pro Russian anyway, it will allow him to save face and not go home completely empty handed. He'll have his buffer zone, his Crimean port (which was Russian before Krustchev anyway). If you concede nothing, he's only going to wratchet up the hostilities and the idea of nuclear war becomes more appeasing to him than it is now.

That's possible. It's possible this will be the natural end result: he wasn't strong enough to take Ukraine, but he's strong enough to take the parts of the country he was at war with anyway, and if he goes a little farther and then if he takes the coast he can cut the rest of it off from the world and starve it out.

Ukraine has land borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, all of which are NATO members. See routes are important, but even if Putin manages to seize and hold Odesa (which the Ukrainians will resist fiercely), Ukraine will not be cut off 'from the rest of the world'.

When you say 'the parts of the country he was at war with anyway', you presumably mean the parts he seized in 2014?

[Gadianton]

I mean Donetsk and Luhansk.

Yes, my understanding is that cutting off all of Ukraine's sea ports would destroy its economy for good. If I'm wrong -- I do hope that's wrong.

[ajax18]

1) if he loses; nukes.
2) if he wins; take more.

Geez, this is depressing. Do you think Putin would stop if he retook all the northern slavic countries. I don't think he wants global communism the way his leaders wanted, for the simple reason that he's not a communist.