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Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him? Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea had 70%+ ethnic Russians with pro-Russia sentiment. Everywhe
by _xnmw 5y ago
Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him? Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea had 70%+ ethnic Russians with pro-Russia sentiment. Everywhere else in Ukraine he is hated, there's no way he will want to expand into territory that jeopardizes his own stability.
- swagasaurus-rex 5y agoWhy wouldn't he?
- vetinari 5y agoWhy would he feed another country? Crimea is a strategic territory, LNR/DNR protect access to RF borders, and both are home of ethnic Russians, but the rest? Only throwing away good money. In his strategic interest he would let the West to continue throwing finances here.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y agoSo… Anything to say to this now?
- yakshaving_jgt 5y agoWell, no, not really. It's plausible given his rhetoric that he'd be interested in all of Novorossiya.
- vetinari 5y agoHe would need support of local population for that. And if locals want it, why not? Right for self-determination, after all. At least that was the excuse when USSR/Yugoslavia/etc were broken down. But it is not that simple; any such territory would be a drain on Russian economy. For now, it is tactical advantage to keep Europe and US to drain theirs here. (One of reasons, why opolchentsi stopped before Mariupol few years ago).
- ncmncm 5y agoUkraine is has fantastically fertile crop land, and Russia is today a net importer of food. Food has never been a trivial concern for Russia or Russians.
- vetinari 5y agoThanks to sanctions, Russia is net exporter of food now. Sure, Ukraine has fantastic crop land, but their western partners are already taking care of it.
- geoka9 5y ago> Crimea is a strategic territory, LNR/DNR protect access to RF borders, and both are home of ethnic Russians, but the rest? Odessa is the biggest port in Ukraine. Controlling it (and Mykolaiv) will make Ukraine a land-locked country, in addition to providing Crimea with reliable access to electricity, water and supply routes (in addition to connecting Russia with Transnistria). These are only the rational reasons, but Putin apparently has fears and complexes that go beyond those.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoInvading a country is easy, occupying it and annexing it is extremely difficult. The only times it seems to be viable is when the local population is already within your cultural sphere, speaks your language, and is ethnically similar. Putin certainly could go on an annexation spree but he would be stymied very quickly by local resistance in places that aren't 80%+ ethnically and culturally Russian.
- slezyr 5y agoWhy not? Nothing stops him.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y agoWhy? I suppose you missed the speech he gave last night?
- afterburner 5y agoCould be a diplomatic tactic, threaten greater destruction so people are relieved when he takes less.
- jcranmer 5y agoUnhappy populations can be dealt with sufficient application of repression. Or, worst case scenario, genocide--history has shown that the international community is extremely reluctant to do anything about genocide other than moralize after the fact about how wrong it was. I mean, there's already precedent for Russian genocide against Ukrainians...
- celticninja 5y agoI think the bigger issue for Putin is his army and his support. That will beging to fade if he goes into an area that is not supportive and then Russian soldiers start dying. It's all good 'capturing' territory without a loss of life, but are the Russian people going to put up with dead soldiers just for them to occupy Kyiv?
- Mikeb85 5y agoNo one in the modern era has attempted to take a country with a population that's 1/3 of the invading country. If he incorporated Ukraine, that's 40 million angry citizens. It would absolutely be the end of him especially because most Russians see Ukrainians as brothers. He justifies Luhansk, Donbass and Crimea because of the 2014 revolution and they fact they were always culturally Russian. Edit - I should also add that it's in Ukraine's interest to simply let these regions go. Prior to 2014, Ukrainian elections always flip-flopped between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions... Now that most of the pro-Russian support no longer votes in Ukrainian elections (due to being part of Russian or breakaway), Ukrainian politics are almost entire pro-Western.
- jcranmer 5y ago> No one in the modern era has attempted to take a country with a population that's 1/3 of the invading country. Saudi Arabia invading Yemen. Syria invading Lebanon is I think around the ⅓ mark. Iraq invading Iran--note that Iran was the larger country then. All of these are conflicts that were intended to induce suzerainty if not outright conquest, and all of these are undeniably in what you'd call the "modern era". Although I'll note that "modern era" is usually given as since about ~1789, which means we can throw in all of the wonderful aggression conflicts that make up World War II, such as Germany attempting to incorporate the populated bits of the USSR into its own territory, after killing off the current inhabitants of course. > they fact they were always culturally Russian. IIRC, he claims that Ukrainians are themselves no different from Russians, which means this gives him casus belli to incorporate all of Ukraine on the same grounds.
- sysmet 5y agoSeems you are living in the Disneyland.
- _ph_ 5y agoFor the "why" you would ask him, but didn't he stress in his speech yesterday, that he considers the whole Ukraine a part of Russia? So yes, if the Russian troops do nothing beyond settling the status, it might be good for the local population. But what if not? Why would he need such a huge army just to consolidate those regions, why army in the Belarus? I guess we will see what happens (and I wished things stopped where they are now).
- pqb 5y agoFor money, of course. Donetsk region is full of good quality coal and benefits coming from controlling the Black Sea are definitely very tempting. > Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him? Please change your optics. People never matter in Russia/Soviet Union. Even, if there will be 70-80% of people who are dreadful opponents to "new goverment" then what they would do? Take it to the street? Strike? Please remind yourself how it looked in the Kazakhstan in early January 2022 (you will get shot, just because you left your home to buy some food) and in Belarus 2021 (mass protests, thousands of people being thrown in jail for no reason, very often beaten, many found dead there). Coup d'état? Poor joke, especially if we look at the latest events in Africa (for example Mali), where armed Russia's Wagner forces helped to take over the whole country. Edit: As a person who lives in Central Europe, your question made me sad, because it means western mass-media is crap these days - they cannot explain a very silly thing why this ongoing conflict for 8+ years takes place.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- giantrobot 5y ago> As a person who lives in Central Europe, your question made me sad, Reading the GP's other comments they're either a "useful idiot" (in KGB parlance) or a Russian-supporting astroturfer. There has been a lot of coverage of Russia's actions in Ukraine in "the West" for the past 8 years.
- avgcorrection 5y agoThis isn’t a constructive comment. There isn’t a point to accusing people of being propagandists or <insert nefarious Soviet intelligence term here> unless you have proof.
- baybal2 5y ago> Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea had 70%+ ethnic Russians with pro-Russia sentiment. The absolute majority sans the single digit percentage of ethnic Russians hate Russia with passion. And I am not even talking about ethnic Russians within Ukraine, but Russia itself. Russian Far East very seriously wanted to seccede. South Russians don't count themselves as the same ethnicity as Russians living in the Moscow at all. People in Urals, besides attempting at Urals Republic in early nineties, are still very unhappy about Urals, and Western Siberia being the poorest part of Russia, while their resources allow Muscovites bathe in Champagne. All other ethnic republics will secede in no time as well if given the opportunity. Russia will be the next Yugoslavia. This is what we actually need to be talking about Russia losing its oil/gas, or Putin getting assasinated, or just any major crisis = Yugo with nukes, and a civil war 10 times worse.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him? Because distracting people with a project to restore the greatness of Imperial Russia, repudiating the losses it suffered at the hands of hostile foreign powers (and even Soviet leaders—he’s blamed, e.g., Lenin for “creating” Ukraine from “Russian” territory and Stalin for giving Ukraine control of additional “Russian” territory) is Putin’s central political strategy right now, and he’s already laid out the public case for why Ukraine ought to be Russian on that basis.
- toyg 5y agoThat's definitely a factor. Another factor is the refusal to make NordStream2 operational. Gazprom must be free of Ukrainian influence, and if it can't be North it will be South - the spice must flow, and so does the gas.
- marshray 5y agoPutin has repeatedly made clear his (weird) belief that NATO will base hypersonic nuclear missiles in a free Ukraine. Yesterday he claimed Ukraine will develop its own nukes. These claims would suggest that Putin will stop at nothing short of total regime change in Kiev.