ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

I've also heard (anecdotally) that having a western-leaning, semi-successful democracy sharing a border is unnerving for Putin, as it shines a negative light on the Russian Federation's autocratic leadership and moribund economy. He hates the Baltic Republics for the same reason.

That all makes sense, but doesn't seem to warrant invading Ukraine, a decision whose cost/benefit ratio ultimately might only work out well for him if he just keeps invading places.

It's hard to know what's going on because of so much suspected misinformation (from Russia, from the US, etc.), but I've def. seen people opine that this is indeed a power move gamble not for international political gain but for Putin's domestic benefit - to potentially forestall his doom, with former and current military/intelligence sharks reportedly smelling blood in the water and circling.

Putin is an opportunist, so he is probably moving the troops to the Ukrainian border to see what sorts of opportunities he can open up. There are various possible positive outcomes: boosting approval at home, destabilizing the current pro-Western Ukrainian government, gaining concessions from NATO. He is gambling that he can convert at least one or more of those. I think actually invading Ukraine would probably not be his first-choice.

It's truly a heck of a gamble, though, no? That would imply a bunch of world (and potentially world-destroying) powers, none of whom want war, being perched perpetually on the precarious precipice of war (no, I didn't start writing that out on purpose but yes, it ended up intentional). That seems like some desperate North Korea level shit, or even Iran, but Russia isn't some marginalized rogue state or something, they have a seat at the table and, one presumes, could negotiate without resorting to attention-getting stunts.

Well - everybody's talking/fretting about Russia right now, perhaps that's all he really wants. But it's unlikely that he'll act during the Olympics, and I think most Ukrainians are sort of 'meh' about the whole thing.. after all, Russia already invaded Ukraine (Crimea) a few years back.

As the world slowly tries to shift away from fossil fuels, their economy will likely sink even further in the doldrums... (cutting siberian timber for Ikea furniture, the occasional space tourist?) - so I think him stoking a crisis like this might become a regular thing

Apart from its oil & gas, Russia has few ways to project global power apart from militarily. Or via hackers, which is becoming another form of military power.

Putin has few ways to project power apart from telling Biden there's a pool on the roof of the whitehouse.

A couple of things:

“I don’t get it / I don’t understand what’s going on” is a more honest and accurate position than the majority of analysts and journalists are willing to take.

Nobody knows what’s going on. Is the US trying to provoke a war or trying to bounce Kyiv into accepting the Minsk protocols? Is Russia planning an invasion or a quasi-defensive move in the event of an attempt to take back rebel areas? Is Zelenskiy under threat of a Russia-backed coup or a nationalist one? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What does ‘Russia-backed’ and ‘nationalist’ mean in a domestic context where the richest man in Ukraine, a long-time supporter of parties representing Russian-majority areas, rumoured to be involved in a variety of coup plots, is currently palling around with the guy who founded the Azov movement and other Poroshenko-era, post-Maidan figures? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There is no significant danger of Ukraine being semi-successful (or more than semi-democratic) until the hold that oligarchs have on the country is broken. GDP per capita is substantially lower than Belarus, let alone Russia. As in Moldova, ‘pro-Russia’ and ‘pro-West’ are malleable and almost completely misleading window dressing for corrupt elite factions arguing between themselves. Yanukovich had good a good relationship with the EU and IMF until a couple of weeks before he was deposed and became a ‘Russian puppet leader’.

The Baltic states are a gift for Putin as their lousy policies on Russian residents, including making them stateless, allows him to point to the risks that come when Russia ceases to be able to exert influence over neighbouring countries with large Russian populations.

I’m not sure the idea that the ‘domestic popularity’ argument around an invasion really stacks up. Crimea was genuinely popular but a unique situation. I think an unprovoked attack on Ukraine would be more likely to decrease Putin’s domestic standing than improve it but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s probably also important to avoid mistaking acknowledgment that a huge proportion of people were materially better off under the Ukrainian SSR with antipathy towards independence. Opinions vary but I’d wager the vast majority of people want an independent, pluralistic, democratic Ukraine that has good relationships with both the EU and Russia.

Anne Applebaum ties it all to Putin's own experience of watching the USSR collapse: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/

It’s a long way from the Donbas to France or the Netherlands, where far-right politicians hang around the European Parliament and take Russian money to go on “fact-finding missions” to Crimea. It’s a longer way still to the small American towns where, back in 2016, voters eagerly clicked on pro-Trump Facebook posts written in St. Petersburg. But they are all a part of the same story: They are the ideological answer to the trauma that Putin and his generation of KGB officers experienced in 1989. Instead of democracy, they promote autocracy; instead of unity, they try constantly to create division; instead of open societies, they promote xenophobia. Instead of letting people hope for something better, they promote nihilism and cynicism.

Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.

Anne Applebaum is talking out of her hole, as usual.

she's the worst person to read if you want know what the fuck is going on anywhere!

she blocked me on twitter for being unkind to her dead neo-fascist mentor and pal Scruton

she's gotta put me on

Eh, I think she's interesting. Or the most interesting of the '90s neo-cons, which is admittedly a low bar. But she's at least bothered by rising autocracy and trying to understand it. I don't think she's all wrong about Putin.

she's the worst person to read if you want know what the fuck is going on anywhere!

OK but what's she wrong about? It's easier to indict her credentials than her arguments.

She’s a warmongering lightweight who thinks the Cold War is still on and she’s friends with a load of fascists and is always like “wah the fascist friends I have are for real, how could I have seen this coming” and just general peppering her shit with stuff like this

Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Ceausescu, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Salvador Allende, Mengistu, Castro, Kim Il-sung: the list of murderous communist leaders is long, diverse and profoundly multicultural

Lol ok.

The idea that Ukraine, as it is, could ever have become a shining beacon of democracy, economic success and foreign investment is a fantasy. Applebaum is a clown if she believes it (and i strongly suspect she doesn't).

The EU and Russia have both traditionally taken the same line - 'you can have a free trade agreement with one or the other, but not both'. The only thing that could plausibly begin to pull Ukraine out of the hole that it has been in for most of the last thirty years is full EU membership but that quickly runs into the problem of the rhetoric on 'Westernisation' meeting the reality of none of the other member states wanting to admit a country of 45m people and a GDP per capita lower than South Africa. Even if they did, it wouldn't fly with the six or seven people who control the national economy or the legions of corrupt officials in their pockets.

Ukraine has consistently been a strategic asset to win from the 'sphere of Russian influence', not a country anyone cares about making successful.

Sure. I don't think anything in Applebaum's analysis contradicts in any way. Unless you think limiting the sphere of Russian influence is an inherently bad thing I guess. Or are we ceding some kind of legitimacy to Putin's expansionism?

And also, I think there are people in Ukraine who care about making Ukraine successful?

idk what to tell you. If ‘the West’ was serious about putting Ukraine on a path to economic and political development and integration it would be a good thing. If the West only really cares about breaking economic and political ties between Ukraine and Russia, it would be a bad thing.

There’s about 45m people in Ukraine who want to make the country a success and their combined power is only marginally more significant than yours at the moment.

(The Ukraine isn't a rogue state, but the way Putin is acting reminds me of Kim Jong Un. Russia's resources may be comparatively vast, and Russia may have the attention of the West, but I wonder if secrecy, disharmony with the population, and testing of credulity in the context of modern communication are similar enough to propel disaster on a faster timescale than anticipated. But I am reminded above of the Arab Spring, the limited power of the people, etc.)

If ‘the West’ was serious about putting Ukraine on a path to economic and political development and integration it would be a good thing. If the West only really cares about breaking economic and political ties between Ukraine and Russia, it would be a bad thing.

Obviously. But there's been at least some effort toward the former, right? The U.S. and EU — plus of course Soros and the NGO world — have supported civil-society efforts and pushed for anti-corruption reforms etc. I get the skepticism and even cynicism about any discussions of democracy vs. autocracy in Ukraine, but I also think it's too easy to write off the entirety of western interests as nothing but window-dressing for an old-fashioned game of Risk.

Similarly I don't think it's an either-or whether Putin is trying to undermine NATO influence or democratic legitimacy more generally — the efforts go together.

(If Putin were Trump, I would think he just wanted more headlines than Navalny. Russia also seems to have a long tradition/history of social unrest.)

How’s that working out eight years after Euromaidan? Do the oligarchs have less influence? Is the country less corrupt?

The most reformist leader Ukraine has had (his own oligarch ties aside) is currently looking over his shoulder for a domestic coup, while trying to jail the guy the West was fawning over circa 2016.

You don’t need to be cynical about anyone’s intentions to see that ‘Ukraine must be stopped from becoming an example of a better path Russia could follow’ doesn’t really fly.

I was just thinking that Putin might need a distraction and that power might have gone to his head rather than that thiings are good in the Ukraine. I guess sadly enough this is more about Russia than the Ukraine.

You don’t need to be cynical about anyone’s intentions to see that ‘Ukraine must be stopped from becoming an example of a better path Russia could follow’ doesn’t really fly.

I don't think the fact that it hasn't become an example of a "better path" reduces Putin's interest in it continuing not to. Or do you think Putin isn't trying to undermine democratic legitimacy both in Ukraine and across the EU/US? Because it sure seems like he is.

"do you think Putin isn't trying to undermine democratic legitimacy both in Ukraine and across the EU/US?"

Putin doesn't need to do any work there your two parties do a fine enough job of it. Seeing as it's all about the US, who have been undermining democratic legitimacy throughout many regions of the world since Putin was a microscopic dot in his dad's ballsack.

I feel embarrassed that when I went through an obsessed with the Soviet Union stage 10 years ago I read half of the Applebaum Gulag book! I'm not getting into any nuance here or even reading the piece. She's a fucking clown who writes fiction that impresses impressionable posho liberal tools who need to believe their own wretched country occupies some kind of moral high ground in this.

though it is true that the Soviet ties of the Russian president, most notably his years spent as a KGB officer, matter a great deal

Deserving only of the biggest and most exaggerated jackoff motion you can make.

Even if they did, it wouldn't fly with the six or seven people who control the national economy or the legions of corrupt officials in their pockets.

lol, that is what my Ukrainian ex-pat friend says about his home country. There is a sense of futility (on his & his family's part) that it's basically a pawn and there is no foundation for it to not be dysfunctional.

fwiw his perception of his country is also colored by the fact his family is Jewish, and Ukraine is "a bit anti-Semitic"

Reaching back to Applebaum's analysis of 'what Putin wants'. It is probably correct in all its particulars, because it has the advantage of ignoring 'what Putin can achieve'. That whole list of 'wants' is just his Christmas wishlist and portraying it as a list of achievable goals is unforgivably lazy and disingenuous.

As for her analysis that Putin's motives are directly tied to the trauma of the breakup of the USSR, its hogwash. Putin may be the most personally wealthy head of state on earth. His greatest motivation is to ensure the indefinite continuation of his personal wealth and power. Bullying Ukraine is useful in that it helps him politically with the Russian public.

and Ukraine is "a bit anti-Semitic"

Heard a lecture once on that "thematic" restaurant they built in a former Jewish ghetto where the waiters have fake noses and you're supposed to haggle over the bill, yikes.

It’s also the only country other than Israel to have had a Jewish President and Prime Minister at the same time, tbf!

The Normandy talks about Minsk in Berlin unsurprisingly didn’t go anywhere:

https://tass.com/politics/1401333

The risk is that if Zelenskiy agrees to implement the Minsk accords, he gets framed as a traitor and couped.

If he doesn’t implement them, Russia might unilaterally declare recognition of an independent LNR / DNR. Failure to respond to that with military action leads to Zelenskiy being framed as a traitor and couped.

NEW: The US believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, and has communicated that decision to the Russian military, three Western and defense officials tell me.

— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) February 11, 2022

how the hell does this guy know that?

"three Western and defense officials tell me"

so like a cowboy and two generals?

Wouldn't the Russian military already know?

Not if the US doesn't tell them, per trusted twitter sources

Plenty of long-tenured autocrats have unshakeable faith in their own strength and contempt for the weakness of their opponents, so it's quite possible he'll go ahead with it.

Asked about my earlier reporting, @JakeSullivan46 says the US has not concluded that Putin gave the order to invade.

— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) February 11, 2022

this fuckin guy

"oopsie"

Make your mind up guys.

Predictable from one of Twitter's most popular bullshit genres, the "I got the scoop" tweet first ask for forgiveness later because in the end I got the attention/visibility either way idiots.

Why not just skip the middle man and announce that Russia has already successfully invaded and occupied Ukraine and save everyone the stress, time and suffering?

Russia has already successfully invaded and occupied Ukraine

And that would be true... Crimea

That was just a lil' invasion.