What I see now, kremlin for sure have not prepared for long term war campaign, they just have not built hospitals for wounded (thanks to western sat photos, provided by official sources), and this is extremely important, because in real war, 80% wounded die within 24h if have not received medical care in nearest 1-2 hours.
And if will be resistance, attacking forces will have very large number of wounded, so they will be forced to stop attack, because have not enough medicine institutions to heal wounded.
So I think, kremlin accounted for similar to 2014 behavior of Ukrainian soldiers, I mean, in 2014 many Ukrainian soldiers or even officers just drop weapons and surrendered, to avoid bloodshed, because they think it is not war, they think it is provocation.
Now I have some under the hood tools, and with them I see totally different reaction.
I know that border guards tried to stop occupants; I know that pilots got very clear instruction "You could fire if you sure see enemy"; I know, in many places, air defense fires on "unknown aircrafts".
And it is important, that count of Russian military forces, prepared before occupation, where close to current Ukrainian army.
And technical power of armies are similar now, except of aviation - Ukraine have approx few tens military planes and helicopters, but occupants have more than hundred, same thing with tanks.
But Ukraine now have Stingers, Javelins, Bayraktars, and some other modern weapons, so powers similar.
So, I think, in approximately 30 hours, hot phase of war will end, and will continue similar to "ATO", mean struggle on east, but possible in few additional places.
Or if You have good understanding of Israel history, or history of Korea, their hot war phases, usually does not last more than few weeks, some oven few days, and between of those hot phases, where very-very long periods of economy struggle or just information wars.
I have before analyzed Japan success, and I think, they have V-shape economy grows on every big earthquake, because they had to rebuild lot of things from scratch, this is very good for market competitiveness.
Ukraine before 2014 does not seen so large examples of market falls, because of this Ukrainian business was not ready for real life, and I think, now its time to change selves.
Thank you for the insight. Godspeed. If you have links to organisations we can support from far away (with money, labour or lobbying), those would be appreciated.
I just donated to the Ukrainian army. They’re people too, and deserve the best medical and logistic support money can buy.
The ruling class in Moscow isn’t just attacking some other ruling class. They’re attacking _my_ Europe.
I don’t care about any military-industrial complex, or even the military in general.
But the moment that some misguided person decides to launch rockets at Europe, I’m not willing to just sit back and let that happen.
> no different than donating money to the United States military
Which Americans did. In World War II.
With donations, war bonds and by accepting massive sacrifices to their quality of life through rations, price controls and more. We did this when we felt threatened. Last I checked, the Canadians weren’t rolling tanks into Syracuse.
This is an inchoate line of argument. You ask for precedent and then object to it being in the past.
WWII was the last time America was attacked by a foreign state. Ukraine is being attacked by a foreign state. The analogy shouldn’t be lofty enough to go over one’s head. If Russia rolls tanks into the Baltics we’ll have a new analogy for the ensuing half century. For the time being, I’m fine letting the precedent age.
...in Europe. There was war all over the world, hence, World War. The Soviets suffered tremendously _before_ and during that war (mostly at the hands of their own gov't). They didn't fight for their gov't, they fought for their home.
Please do not try and take an immensely complex topic and boil it down to the point it has no meaning.
Yes, the Soviets defeated the Nazi's with some distraction, tech and assistance from the Allies. China did a whole ton of work against Japan, they fought the longest and hardest.
Also, without the Marshall Plan (of which the Soviets were fearful of and denied themselves participation), Europe would not be Europe right now. Maybe Russia wouldn't be an economic wasteland today, forcing their gangster gov't to use an invasion of a sovereign country to prop up their oligarchy.
The Nazis are the eternal scapegoats of the Western elite mania. This mania underwrites their irrational doctrine and propaganda that defines current international affairs. And they never consider the preceding circumstances which led to the Nazis coming to power. It’s incredibly vacuous and irresponsible.
Germany designed its current constitution specifically around the lessons it learned when the Nazis exploited the Weimar system.
Every German high school student spends several months learning about the Nazi era, including the economic and geopolitical context.
You literally can’t escape it.
Don’t worry about our level of education. We’re fine, thanks.
Mine doesn’t involve the United States at all. Try putting yourself in the shoes of a citizen of Europe who wants to live in peace, but feels their community is under attack by a nostalgic Russian dictator with an inferiority complex.
Not resisting and not getting involved is what my grandparents did when the Nazis were rising to power. I’m not going to make the same mistake.
9 Eastern European countries in the former Soviet sphere joined NATO and the EU and are currently going through one of their longest periods of growth and peace in their history.
That's true. I know because I am from Bulgaria. We're vassals one way or another. Bled dry is correct. The entire eastern block was sold out for peanuts during the 90s. I guess that was the price for joining NATO and the EU
However, being US/EU vassals is better for us. I personally think that's mainly because the so called west has all the money in the world. That's the root cause. Not culture, values, etc. Those are all secondary to having money for so long.
While I understand the stated reasons for the invasion, and they are much more valid then America's struggle to steal as much resources as possible from all over the world under the guise of "democracy" and "WMDs", I fear we'll be next. I don't want to be under their boots. My family has suffered enough under the Soviets
I agree. Bulgaria was on the right track until 2009. It's almost as if different countries face different realities.
Corruption does not happen in a vacuum. Ultimately, the responsibility lies to those with power. What I am saying is geopolitics are not decided by the common person. You seem to disagree and that's fine
I think we're probably more aligned than you think :-)
I think society is a slow, lumbering beast that's hard to turn around, and very unpredictable.
I think that elites generally control things and the average person can't do much.
But if <<only>> elites control <<always>> things and only in <<their>> favor, then we can't explain how developed countries happened.
Long story short: the common person can't do much in general, but sometimes they can. Otherwise we can't explain stuff like Taiwan or South Korea or Estonia or Czechia or Slovenia or Ireland or whatever. So that means that the common person has a super low chance of changing anything, but that's their only hope. Giving up means that you have <<no>> chance, <<ever>>. And that's how you end up with Ukraine pre-2008 or Moldova pre-2014.
Yes, I agree with everything you said. Voting and protesting matter. Expression matters and is very important despite everything I said earlier. Otherwise everything would be even more alike than it is now. Your logic is sound.
It is a real pity because the same amount of money applied effectively instead of looted would have made Bulgaria the Switzerland of the East by now. I've visited your country and love it there - and love the people - but the road to go is a long one.
That's true, the brain drain is going to be impossible to stop without giving people a credible future and for that to happen the corruption needs to stop.
Unfortunately my business colleagues are not answer fast, most probably all extremely busy, evacuate families and help army.
So at the moment, I could suggest most trustful for me organization and person, who are ready, and please be patient, I believe, after Monday hot phase will end, and people will answer faster.
Also I will give more info as will got news.
For others, either I think they are ineffective (like official government organizations, which accumulated huge money, but don't have spent them), or they have not created reliable system organization, or I just don't know them good enough.
> because have not enough medicine institutions to heal wounded.
They might not care? Significant casualties might be part of the calculation, if it's an all-or-nothing move by their leaders. The existence of their mobile crematoriums suggest something like it.
I know Russians very deep, they are not demons.
Russian outlook, as I know, is very close to just ordinary beggars, some are criminal, but not many.
So most of them have not strong moral values, but they don't want to be wounded or die.
So they will not care too much, if they just need to press button or "just attach box to pipe in concentration camp".
And we also know, that Russian army is in reality not high tech army, most their weapons are based on 1960th technologies, no electronic computers at all, paper maps, old analogue radio, etc, so their technologies cannot work without people (US have large number of modern automatic weapons).
And even before invasion, we know about very low morale in Russian army, but if Russian soldiers will conclude, that nobody will care wounded, they will surrender just after see Ukrainians without any shoot.
I'm not the person you asked, but the very well-known understanding, going back probably to Napoleon or earlier (among foreign policy experts), is that Ukraine has geopolitics. Geography is far more important to national power than non-experts realize.
Without Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, Russia loses sea access to the Black Sea and thus the Mediterranean for their navy (and also for trade), which historically has been a primary determinant of Russian military influence in Europe. Otherwise, they only have northern ports which are frozen and easily choked off (and ports way over on the Pacific - imagine having to sail your navy around Eurasia in order to attack or defend).
More importantly, Ukraine's geography is easy to move large forces across, in that respect a major battlefield (with due respect to Ukrainians). Napoleon and the Nazis both crossed through that region on their way to Russia, and when Russia attacks West, they go through Ukraine. Russian wants to control it and to prevent others from controlling it.
By controlling Ukraine, Russia can put more pressure on, have more influence over, Ukraine's neighbors, including Poland, and further cut off Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia from their NATO allies.
Finally, Putin wants glory - don't underestimate the personal characteristics, such as ego, of unaccountable dictators - and to recreate the Soviet empire and the illusion of power. An independent, democratic Ukraine both undermines that appearance (and perception is everything for dictators) and embarasses Putin's claim to power as an authoritarian dictator.
> Without Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, Russia loses sea access to the Black Sea and thus the Mediterranean for their navy (and also for trade),
That's untrue. Sevastopol is the main port and naval base in the Black Sea, but Russia has plenty of others, and some are even undergoing expansion - Novorosiisk ( the backup one). Sevastopol is in Crimea, but was shared under an agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian navies. So in reality, Russia gained nothing there besides an extra front for their current invasion of Ukraine.
They gained exactly what they wanted by taking crimea, the inability to deploy nato forces and equipment there and domestic contorl of their leased naval port in crimea.
Basically nato stated that yep, ukraine (and georgia) should join them, later on when the ukraine coup happened and got a pro western government, russia was going: yep - possibility of nato on crimea and losing our haval base there is not going to happen, it's ours now.
But that didn't achieve anything. NATO can still deploy forces and equipment in Odessa or Mykolaiv, or in Romania or Bulgaria or Turkey, and can still easily block access to the Mediterranean.
It all depends on your point of view - the russian point of view is that nato controlled crimea is much more unwanted, and would and leave them much more cornered compared to nato controlled Odessa and Mykolaiv (and that point shouldn't be too hard to realize by looking at the map). And they wanted to keep their naval base there, which they now can.
Romania, Bulgaria doesn't border Russia , Turkey is not on the land border and they have decent relations with them. But sure, they're likely not happy with that either - they just can't and will not do anything about it. With Crimea/Ukraine - they could.
> That's untrue. Sevastopol is the main port and naval base in the Black Sea, but Russia has plenty of others, and some are even undergoing expansion - Novorosiisk ( the backup one).
I have never seen someone claim that Novorosiisk was a sufficient port. Maybe it's a capacity issue?
> Sevastopol is in Crimea, but was shared under an agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian navies.
It is in a foreign country, an unfriendly one. That greatly limits Russia's freedom of action.
Novorosiisk is undergoing expansion for precisely that reason. And Ukraine wasn't exactly unfriendly before the invasions, the Sevastopol lease was prolonged just before that.
That naive geography positioning reasoning is far from reality. From that point of view Belorussia is more valuable.
That "Mystery of Russian Soul" lies among the lines of "Kiev - mother of Russian cities" (term of 12th century Primary Chronicle) and too many other historical facts. Like Wild Steppe (south of Ukraine) were fought for and liberated from Crimean Khanate by Russian Army. Modern Kherson, Nikolayev, Sevastopol, and Ekaterinoslav(Dnipro/Dnepropetrovsk), were established by Gregory Potemkin (Empress Catherine times) and populated by peasants from Russian heartlands - Tambov, Ryazan, Pskov, etc.
All that is well known and well remembered facts by Russian public. So we should not expect that Russian people will be so against all that. If in doubt then see the above.
These nationalistic narratives are means, not causes. Russia wants to control Ukraine, so they teach these narratives to create public support. It's done in many places about many things. You can see people on HN repeating them about their countries.
There is a Wendover Productions video on YouTube that describes "Russia's Geography Problem" and then this whole thing mostly clicks. It is all geopolitics to them.
I wouldn’t use the word desperate. This campaign seems to have been planned out over a decade or more and carefully timed if you ask me. Observe how the new German leadership can’t bring itself to block SWIFT access in winter after recently turning off nuclear power capacity, because it will cause an energy crisis. That isn’t a coincidence. Neither I think is that all this happened while it is Russia’s turn chairing the UN security council.
The fact is that democratic countries with leaders elected yesterday are at a disadvantage to these perpetual dictators with low accountability and strong convictions.
Putin is a snake. I would say he’s the most dangerous man in the world. He absolutely cannot be trusted, and his agenda really does involve damaging and weakening other sovereign nations seemingly for the sake of it.
For one, Putin seems to want to reassemble the USSR as a vanity project. Further, this all started (years ago) when the Ukrainians removed out their Moscow friendly president. Putin doesn't like reminders that months of sustained protests can really effect change and remove leaders, especially so close to Russia.
Crimea is the only "warm water" port that Russia has access to to gain access for the end and the Atlantic.
The Ukraine has a ton of farmland. This may be more valuable soon because China imports a ton of food and if you're planning on a Sino-Russo alliance cut off from western powers, food is important.
Similarly, it shares a lot of the fresh water sources with the rest of Europe. I don't know if it's something he can attempt to monopolize, but controlling water into the region is at least as good as natural gas, and less seasonal with less ability to diversify like to green energy.
The USSR located some specialty heavy industry in Ukraine. If it still exists, it might be valuable. I read, but can not confirm, that it was part of the strategic goal of the USSR to make sure each constituent state wasn't self sufficient to encourage national unity. But that could just be BS. Reasoning like that is almost certainly why Crimea was given to the Ukraine.
It's not your fault. They've been peddling this, as well as conquering Constantinople for the same reason, since the time of Peter the Great.
Its straight out of Imperial Russia's propaganda book. Kind of proof that Russia since ~1600 has always been the same country, just with a different coat of paint (the one between 1917 and 1991 happening to be red paint).
You're wrong about Crimea ( Novorosiisk), but mostly correct about the rest. Ukraine has a lot of specialised heavy industry - tank, engine, ship, aircraft building. Important parts of it are needed by the Russians, which is why there were many joint programmes before 2014 - Russian ships used Ukrainian produced turbines and engines, there was collaboration on new cargo aircraft, etc.
I didn't mean the government of the USSR. I meant the geographic reach.
But you contend that Putin doesn't want the western tip of Ukraine, but instead to reclaim Finland, Alaska and parts of Poland? Because that's the only difference in his territorial ambitions.
For Russians, this is geopolitical question.
What I mean, they feel themselves imperfect, if size of their country does not correspond with their weight in world.
Very similar to what WW1 and WW2 causes.
- In approx 1900, Germany becomes one country (before, there where many small principalities, and no central power lasts long).
So appear new country, powerful country, and they look on world and see colonial system, where nearly ALL powerful countries has colonies.
I mean whole world where divided between top countries.
First, Germany tried to reach an agreement with top countries, to cut some colonies from other countries and assign to Germany, but without fast success, because pre WW1 agreements system where extremely sophisticated, and they just cannot rebuild this system fast.
Than German powers conclude, that they could faster got wanted if make war, that's all.
To be more precise, Russia is large, but economically, it's position is worst in world, except Mongolia.
- Russia have longest in world size of land borders, near no borders on mountains, very little number of possible sea ports; extremely large territory is just ice, nothing could grow there.
- Russia really have reliable access to sea only in few places - Baltic, Black sea/Azov, and on Pacific, this is extremely little, for so large number of citizens (approx half of US).
BTW, current Russia situation is much better, than for example 200 years ago, because that time they had neighbors, who demand very high fees for access to sea.
To solve this, Russians occupied their neighbors - 300-200 years ago, Russians near constantly invade neighbors and assimilate them into their empire, so now they have another problem, google Belfast.
Now, Russians trying to work less crude, they trying to place puppet governments in all neighbors countries.
Ukraine have borders with three EU countries, and is one of the largest counties on Black sea, so Ukraine is extremely interest for logistics.
And unfortunately, current Ukraine don't have effective government system, as I said on another comment, current Ukraine officials are extremely corrupted and extremely illiterate.
So Russians concluded, that Ukraine could be easy target for occupation and/or to place puppet government, and prepared for invasion and invade.
"What does Ukraine really have, that Putin so desperately wants? "
It's not 'what it has' it's 'what it is'.
Putin views the Ukraine as 'part of Russia' - that's it.
I don't understand why people have such a hard time with this.
Imagine if Mexico invaded Texas in 1950 and 'won'. A lot of Americans would want to 'take it back'.
Now I don't believe that this analogy is real in terms of the Ukraine situation (Imagine if those Mexicans wanted to be Mexicans and definitely did not want to be part of the USA...), but you can see how Putin + Co. propaganda would like you to see it.
I'm wary that there will be much of an insurgency in Ukraine - it's big, open, spread out, there are few places to hide.
Not a very good analogy. No western country ever invaded Ukraine. When the Soviet Union collapsed Ukraine was granted its independence without a shot being fired.
A better analogy would be Australia and Canada. Both were part of Great Britain and both became independent after the British Empire collapsed.
Yes, but that doesn't in any way change the fact that they aren't really independent if an official appointed by a foreign power can dismiss and appoint cabinet ministers at will.
Yes, but this quote leaves out the distinction they made. The GP goes on to note the difference caused by who the people in the region support. In real life, as far as I can tell, most people in that region ended up supporting independence or later accession to the US, which seems slightly more similar to the more complex Ukraine situation in the GP comment than Mexico simply wanting Texas back.
Biden is not war specialist, he depends on analytics, and he is political person, he may sometime exaggerate things, to save lives.
Analytics said, Russian have TECHNICAL resources for war, but unknown in which condition those resources.
This remember me old anecdote, in 1960th, American analytics count overall area of all Russian secret enterprises, than compare it with American rocket enterprises, and give to Senate defense comitee prediction, how many rockets USSR already build, to suggest huge increase of defense spending.
Members look on this prediction, and asked one simple question: how they could been sure, that all those enterprises made just rockets?
And where Soviets build cars, trains, other mechanics?
Analytics could not answer to this, and where got out with shame.
Returning for technical resources, we have not before invasion know, what will be used.
And sure Biden insured for worst possible case, he thought, and we also thought, that Russia will attack with modern high precision weapons, but fortunately, this does not happen.
Now we know exactly, that Russian army mostly have extremely old machines, approximately 1970th if account from Western technical level, not Russian.
Thanks for sanctions on Russia, they have not modernized much machines for modern level.
And 1970th machines, are totally depend on people, they are not automatic at all, and to be exact, they are just support for infantry, which is extremely vulnerable for Ukrainian weapons.
Second question where, if Ukrainians will resist, or like in 2014 will drop weapons and surrender - we have Great answer for this question.
If Ukrainians where not resist, Russians would be used Ukrainian medical infrastructure.
So, kremlin mistaken. To be honest, all mistaken, underestimated Ukrainian forces and Ukrainian people, and overestimated Russians.
Because of these mistakes, I could talk to you from Kiev, and we still resist, and I believe, we will win, all world will win, with independent Ukraine.
What I see now, kremlin for sure have not prepared for long term war campaign, they just have not built hospitals for wounded (thanks to western sat photos, provided by official sources), and this is extremely important, because in real war, 80% wounded die within 24h if have not received medical care in nearest 1-2 hours. And if will be resistance, attacking forces will have very large number of wounded, so they will be forced to stop attack, because have not enough medicine institutions to heal wounded.
So I think, kremlin accounted for similar to 2014 behavior of Ukrainian soldiers, I mean, in 2014 many Ukrainian soldiers or even officers just drop weapons and surrendered, to avoid bloodshed, because they think it is not war, they think it is provocation.
Now I have some under the hood tools, and with them I see totally different reaction. I know that border guards tried to stop occupants; I know that pilots got very clear instruction "You could fire if you sure see enemy"; I know, in many places, air defense fires on "unknown aircrafts".
And it is important, that count of Russian military forces, prepared before occupation, where close to current Ukrainian army. And technical power of armies are similar now, except of aviation - Ukraine have approx few tens military planes and helicopters, but occupants have more than hundred, same thing with tanks. But Ukraine now have Stingers, Javelins, Bayraktars, and some other modern weapons, so powers similar.
So, I think, in approximately 30 hours, hot phase of war will end, and will continue similar to "ATO", mean struggle on east, but possible in few additional places.
Or if You have good understanding of Israel history, or history of Korea, their hot war phases, usually does not last more than few weeks, some oven few days, and between of those hot phases, where very-very long periods of economy struggle or just information wars.
I have before analyzed Japan success, and I think, they have V-shape economy grows on every big earthquake, because they had to rebuild lot of things from scratch, this is very good for market competitiveness. Ukraine before 2014 does not seen so large examples of market falls, because of this Ukrainian business was not ready for real life, and I think, now its time to change selves.