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Maybe I’m stupid but did he not calculate the cost of this? Their stock market crumbled, the ruble crumbled, SWIFT kicked out. All that for Ukraine? What is

• FpUser 5y ago
  I think he's gone mad. No one in his right mind would do what he did in this situation. I thought he was an authoritarian but rational person. Not anymore.
  • ILMostro7 5y ago
    He's done pretty bad things before. Georgia in 2008. The endless attacks on his own citizens, institutions; poisoning dissidents and hunting them down across the globe. This is not overnight. I'm not sure why some people are giving him benefit of the doubt now for his long legacy of ruthlessness.
    • FpUser 5y ago
      There is a difference between supporting an asshole or thinking that asshole being rational. I've never supported what he's done. But I did not think he will do what he did now. Ok I was wrong. Does that make you happy?
      • ILMostro7 5y ago
        Not judging you, buddy. Just saying that his methods have always been relatively aggressive and crazy, in my opinion, even when they were on a smaller scale than this.
        • FpUser 5y ago
          It seems you completely misunderstand me (or do not want to understand) so whatever. P.S. I am not your "buddy".
          • ILMostro7 5y ago
            Again, prior instances have shown the same type of logic from him. If he miscalculated the response, doesn't mean he's a lunatic itching to nuke anyone and everyone. However, his past behavior has always shown that he is willing to do things that would be unthinkable in this day and age from a leader of one of the relatively friendly nations and key members on the international stage. So, the risk was always there for him to invite an aggressive international response. Yet, he saw himself as invincible as the leader of one of the superpowers.
  • pmarreck 5y ago
    Is it irrational, or merely mean, to take something that is not yours because you know you can get away with it?
  • type0 5y ago
    > I think he's gone mad. Probably a psychopath, doesn't mean he is mad or crazy.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• hbarka 5y ago
  Legacy building. The strongman who longs for Soviet.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    He's building a legacy alright. But not the one he thought.
    • leeoniya 5y ago
      the old, "would you rather be forgotten or hatefully remembered?"
  • jtr1 5y ago
    If you read through his speech the other day, he actually thinks the Soviets betrayed Russia and laid the groundwork for the formation of Ukraine
    • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      [flagged]
• jacquesm 5y ago
  Putin has nobody around him that he fully trusts, that trust him fully. It's all fear driven, so there isn't anybody that will tell him that something will not work. Yes men, all of them.
  • JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    Oof George Lucas effect. Deadly. Resulted in the prequels. Wondering when a Russian oligarch says “you know what I think we’d be better off without this guy alive.” Putin, not George Lucas.
    • jessaustin 5y ago
      ...prequels... Pearls before swine. The prequels were a work of art, expanding and deepening the meaning of the originals.
      • pmarreck 5y ago
        I think this is sarcasm so tentatively upvoting
      • Hamuko 5y ago
        Even Jar Jar?
      • toyg 5y ago
        A film is art by definition, even when it stinks to high heaven. And gosh, did those movies foul the place up... I don't think I've seen worse acting before or since, it's incredible how he managed to ruin even Ewan McGregor's craft.
    • davidgay 5y ago
      > Wondering when a Russian oligarch says “you know what I think we’d be better off without this guy alive. And I think that Putin has clearly demonstrated how much more powerful the state is than the oligarchs (anywhere, not just Russia). Look up what happened to oligarchs who opposed Putin. See, e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky
• tpmx 5y ago
  It seems like he severely underestimated the willingness of Ukraine to fight back. Seems familiar...
  • CyanLite4 5y ago
    Learned behavior. He took Crimea without firing a shot. Took Georgia and it didn’t even make the 6 o’clock news. Slowly expanded his empire while the West was preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan. Even up until the tanks started rolling in did Europe not even consider the possibility of invasion to be real. Just last Monday was the Ukrainian President asking for calm and not to overreact.
    • mindslight 5y ago
      Yes. I think there was also a severe miscalculation how the invasion would be internationally received. Putin has been extremely successful at distracting and dividing the western world with troll farms and reactionary political movements. But violating long respected international law with an overt invasion cannot be postmodernly relativized away. And Russia going back to doing exactly what Soviet Russia did - subjugate and impoverish client states to implement crony totalitarianism - inflames a lot of cultural memories. The modern world makes the contrast even starker - at least the European countries behind the Iron Curtain had been liberated from Nazi Germany with Soviet Starvation being a step up. This is a direct attack on a modernizing democracy to drag it backwards to the "good old days".
• elviejo 5y ago
  For Putin having Ukraine part of NATO is as dangerous as it was for the US to have Russian missiles in Cuba. It's something he is not willing to risk. So almost any price is worth it for him. I've found the first 25mins of this conference by professor John Mearshimer https://youtu.be/Nbj1AR_aAcE https://youtu.be/Nbj1AR_aAcE
  • langarus 5y ago
    What Measarshimer is missing in his presentation is that Russia's plan with Ukraine is not to be a neutral country but rather a puppet like Belarus. I smell bias.
    • elviejo 5y ago
      Mearsheimer has been proposing the same since 2015.. as can be seen on this video: https://youtu.be/lfk-qaqP2Ws https://youtu.be/lfk-qaqP2Ws And his proposal, for Ukraine to be a kind of neutral zone, was not for Putin, it was for the USA and Ukraine.. so that Ukraine could survive as an independent country. Mearsheimer is West point graduate and air force officer... His biases are if anything pro USA.
      • langarus 5y ago
        I've watched a 2015 talk as well. He still does not address the issue that by remaining neutral Ukraine has a very high chance of becoming a puppet state to Russia. If he's not biased his thesis is incomplete.
  • phatfish 5y ago
    I would agree that makes sense from Puntin's world view. But not for anyone else's including a lot of Russians. I watched the the start of the video, apparently a country simply being allied with the west and the US is an "existential threat" to Russia. Ukraine or Georgia are not going to invade Russia after joining NATO, they simply don't want be a part of the next Russian empire dreamt up by a tyrannical regime. This has now come to pass, a Russian puppet government lost power in Ukraine, Putin saw his power slipping away and invaded. And NATO is supposed to be the aggressor and the cause of this?
• nyokodo 5y ago
  > I don’t understand how his mind works. Russia has terminal demographics. Russia’s borders as they are today are impossible to defend let alone with a soon to be rapidly shrinking military. If they don’t take regions they can defend far easier with few troops then they never will. Russia has been invaded enough times across the North European Plain and Hordelands and they have a long memory, and at least the leadership has little conscience. I can’t read Putin’s mind either, but, perhaps he figured Ukraine would roll over and the US and Europe wouldn’t do anything.
  • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    He probably expected harsh sanctions and nothing more. Russia has a pretty massive war chest, and the US will suffer from shutting out Russian oil. But Putin was exactly right that NATO will not respond militarily. And he is exactly right to think NATO was delusional and did not expect him to invade.
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      You talk like Putin is some kind of god? He's a piece of shit bully. What if he take Ukraine? it will cost him the confidence of his people as they start starving from being cut off from Capitol unless they're willing to become a vassal state to China. He has a good tactical game but his strategic game is a failure unless he pulls out now.
      • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
        No I don’t. Clearly Putin has little chance to succeed. But that doesn’t mean his best move was capitulation to the incorrigible Western liberal consensus which was clearly too arrogant to even plan for the possibility that anyone would disobey their incessant cravings for domination. I think his speech made very clear where he stands. And while some of it represented unhinged nationalist ideals, every single one of his criticisms of hypocritical Western liberal leaders was spot on.
    • krisoft 5y ago
• dawsmik 5y ago
  He doesn't want NATO on his door step any more than we would want Mexico to ally with Russia. Ukraine and Russians share a somewhat similar history and the Russians see relative prosperity in Ukraine as a newly capitalist society. This does not reflect well on Putin. This is one of many reasons, including but not limited to: the money and resources Ukraine would bring and control of the gas lines that lead directly into the heart of the EU.
  • wyldfire 5y ago
    But if he annexes Ukraine or installs a puppet regime there, doesn't he get NATO on his doorstep anyways? Romania and Poland are both NATO members IIRC.
    • dawsmik 5y ago
      Yes, but a larger buffer between NATO and strategic assets like Moscow.
      • type0 5y ago
        He said himself as-much: he would sleep better knowing that the missiles wouldn't reach Kremlin.
      • vesinisa 5y ago
        Nonsense. There is already about equal distance to Moscow from Latvia, a Nato and EU member, as there is from Ukraine. Despite, Ukraine was not really ever even close to Nato membership to start with. Western political alignment is completely separate from military alignment, although Putin has now made it absolutely clear these must go hand in hand for those sovereign countries he consider's "Russian vassal states."
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • itake 5y ago
    or we would want Mexico to alley with China. Better example IMHO is if Russia allied with Cuba and moved missiles there.
• CyanLite4 5y ago
  Several US politicians (Marco Rubio for example) have gone on Twitter/major news outlets saying that this isn’t the same semi-rational Putin from 5 years ago. Alluding to possible medical/psychological issues.
• nannal 5y ago
  > All that for Ukraine? They don't have Ukraine.
• sillysaurusx 5y ago
  The consensus in this thread is that Putin has gone crazy. But I think there's a rational angle that we must accept. What's the cost of this to Putin? Think about it carefully -- for Putin himself, there is more or less only an upside. 1. China unfortunately is choosing to side with Russia. Realistically, we can't do much to interfere with trade between China and Russia. That means that sanctions that we're going to impose will have less of an effect. (I hope this doesn't read as political flamewar, since it's my intent just to state the facts.) 2. I am rooting for Ukraine, and I think they have a chance at victory. But the reality is that the battle is far from over. And in the worst case, if Putin loses, he still has the option of employing a tactical nuke as a last resort. My point here is that even in the worst case for Putin, he still believes he can win, no matter what. I'm hoping that Putin will lose, and does try to use a nuke, because that seems the most likely path to Putin finally being assassinated. But until that moment comes, we're witnessing the outcome of an unhinged person who is also acting rationally. (Both can be true simultaneously.)
  • pmarreck 5y ago
    > The consensus in this thread is that Putin has gone crazy. I mean... Does anyone else remember the time (2004/5?) Putin stole a $25k Superbowl ring from a Patriot just because he knew he could get away with it (notably, while also observing "I could kill someone wearing this")? This is pretty much the same exact thing on a broader scale. https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2020/09/10/robert-kraft-putin-super-bowl-ring/ https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2020/09/1... The global community should no longer stand open belligerence like this and I'm glad we're cutting them off from the world. Let's see how long they last in financial isolation. It's too bad that the story that @Pornhub blocked Russia was fakenews, as that would have been hilarious.
    • mlatu 5y ago
      holy crap, that plays into my theory that he is testing the nato, really the world. i mean, he can get away with this much, what else are they gonna let him do until they realize he is not interested in talks? In Germany our freshly elected politicians are making fools of themselfs calling out for Putin to return to the negotiation tables... they say "we are waiting for you mister putin"... while he thinks "keep on waiting then, ill have my way with eastern europe"
• ILMostro7 5y ago
  Look up the term "Lebensraum" from WWII era. That might put this into context for you.
  • type0 5y ago
    Not applicable here, that was to replace slavic people with germanic. It simply is a power grab, Putin wants another Lukashenko in power in Ukraine.
    • ILMostro7 5y ago
      Sudetenland was deemed to be part of Germany. Parts of Poland were treated the same way. The comparison is valid, even if not a one-to-one parallel.
  • int_19h 5y ago
    Russia doesn't have a problem with "living space" - it has plenty of undeveloped land in the Far East. Eastern Ukraine is Russia's Sudetenland.
    • ILMostro7 5y ago
      Granted. However, in terms of a "buffer zone", strategic geography; leading to a nation that's "self-sufficient in terms of resources and territory". In my view, annexation of Crimea fits that strategic idea more than to believe that it was an ideological move to regain long-lost land. Plus, with 40% of the world's grain export, Ukraine is a fertile target for Russia.
      • int_19h 5y ago
        Crimea was both - it was a very potent ideological move that boosted Putin internally, but it is also the main Russian naval base on the Black Sea for a good reason. Russia also exports food, so it doesn't really need a "breadbasket" region. Ukrainian heavy industry (which is mostly in the East!) is a more lucrative prize. But there's really no economic justification for a grab for the entirety of Ukraine. Donbas alone would be a net sink for a very long time. There's plenty of (internal) political reasons, though. Especially if you accept that Putin really believes the tripe that he is saying about Russia and Ukraine, which I'm increasingly convinced is the case.
• wusel 5y ago
  Ukraine is/was on track to become a petrostate for Europe, which is a big threat for Russia. Add to that all the other points and he has somewhat „good reason“. Russia is also kinda on a decline polulation wise so he must act sooner rather then later. One thing no one notes is that Crimea gets most of its sweet water from Ukraine (which was cut off of course). That was quite the issue, but it seems they advanced now to the location where it was cut off so that’s solved I guess.
  • barsonme 5y ago
    Sweet water?
    • stickfigure 5y ago
      "Sweet water" is a common English-language (possibly "American old west") euphemism for fresh water.
      • unityByFreedom 5y ago
        Sweet tea maybe.. I've never heard "sweet water" but webster does have this, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sweet%20water https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sweet%20water > : a sugar solution > especially : one obtained by recovery of waste sugar during refining
        • stickfigure 5y ago
          Try `sweetwater` without the space: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/sweetwater https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/swee...
      • presto8 5y ago
        I would not say it's common: I'm a native (American) English speaker and I've never heard the word before! I would just guess it's some kind of flavored water before reading this thread.
    • 5y ago
• bhawks 5y ago
  I'd avoid the meme that Putin is acting irrationally or crazy. He is looking at the west build a fortress around Russia through NATO. Look at US reaction to Cuba and now imagine Cuba having a 100x more tactical and strategic geography in relationship to the US. Months ago Russia asked that Ukraine and Georgia be excluded from NATO. We ignored him. A better approach would have been to negotiate and demand that they become permanently neutral countrys. Now we're here. Yes Putin owns all this bloodshed but it is naive to say that we the west did everything to avert this situation.
  • toyg 5y ago
    NATO membership is a red herring. But I agree that "we" made a lot of bad moves in the past decade: if you keep poking the bear, at some point he's going to react somehow.
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      The only one poking "the bear" is Putin. He hates that his country is withering on the vine. He can't see that it's his own authoritarian policies that are slowly killing his country.
    • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      If it’s a red herring then why was Biden so stubborn in refusing to give assurances that Ukraine was not invited into NATO? We are talking about war. There is never an excuse to come short of doing everything possible to prevent it. But Biden refused. How do you explain that?
      • stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Because why should he? Ukraine is a sovereign nation and should make up its own mind. I'm personally unsure why they didn't just declare themselves a neutral country like Switzerland, but here we are.
        • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
• moralestapia 5y ago
  A whole new country is worth much more than whatever sanctions they'd get for this.
  • sharken 5y ago
    Except the fact that the Russian economy will collapse first. Having a new country is not worth anything when you cannot feed your population.
• toyg 5y ago
  > What is so valuable there to him, I really still don’t get it. The gas pipelines. Gazprom is a key element of his kleptocratic rule. I don't think it's a coincidence that he waited so many years to "solve" the Donbass, but a few months after it became clear that NordStream2 will likely never become operational, suddenly he went balls-out. From a security standpoint he could have simply deployed in the key regions and dared anyone to fight back, like Erdogan has done over the Syrian regions he wanted to annex. Instead Putin is trying to take the whole thing, because he wants to control the pipelines all the way.
  • saiya-jin 5y ago
    One think I really, really hope will come out of this, regardless of the outcome - to cut back dependence on any Russian import including gas and oil to ideally 0 across whole Europe. It doesn't make sense to cut one's branch off by paying him to build & maintain his army. If it costs more, well damn that's the price for freedom I guess right now, still acceptable given circumstances. I've been saying it for years, also here repeatedly - Russia and its current 'leader' is by far the biggest threat to European free western society we value so much here. Even the most stubborn and russia-invested ones are getting the memo now.
    • toyg 5y ago
      The counter-argument is that, often, it's more effective to coopt your opponent rather than to fight him. I reckon that giving them NS2 would have avoided this war - at worst they'd have taken just the Donbass like they took Crimea.
      • salawat 5y ago
        ...Keep your enemies closer aside, one does not hop into bed with a hostile power and just expect things to go well. They will not hesitate to pull out of the arrangement when it hurts the most. In fact, one can practically count on it in most cases.
      • baq 5y ago
        that's... not how he thinks. he has a number and it is more.
• nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  Ukraine could get the US military within 300 miles of Moscow.
  • killingtime74 5y ago
    Estonia and Latvia are closer and already in NATO
    • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      But they don’t have warm water naval access, which makes them practically useless in comparison.
      • stickfigure 5y ago
        I think the phrase "never get involved in a land war in Asia" was invented in a NATO country. And certainly not in winter.
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I was thinking that as well. Ukraine doesn't bring a whole lot to the table from a military perspective and just doing cold calculations. I personally feel like we should be arming them to the teeth and should have been for a while. I'm glad they've been able to hold out so far, but it's still very early
      • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
        They haven’t been “holding out” from Russia. Working Ukranians have been fed up with the EU’s mingling in their governmental affairs and favorable towards Russia. Of course that will no longer be the case now, but realize the West has been stoking this war for many years even if Putin officially started it.
        • jacquesm 5y ago
          > They haven’t been “holding out” from Russia. They absolutely have. That's why they declared independence in 1991. > Working Ukranians have been fed up with the EU’s mingling in their governmental affairs and favorable towards Russia. This is simply 100% nonsense. "Working Ukranians" have been employed en masse by Western European companies, with more joining every year. There is a small minority in a relatively small region of Ukraine that was favorable towards Russia, but even those have now decided that Russia is not their friend. Note that these are what you would call 'Ethnic Russians' and even for many of them this has gone way too far. People want peace and stability, not war. > Of course that will no longer be the case now. At least you realize that. > Realize the West stoked this war even if Putin started it. On the contrary, Putin would have had this war, because his country is failing and he wants to look successful and strong, rather than preside over the bankruptcy of his country. Ironically, that's exactly where it is headed now, the number of friends remaining is pretty close to zero, we'll count Lukashenko for 0.5 because he relies on Putin to stay alive. What the West did was too little, arming Ukraine further and stationing troops there earlier would have precluded this war.
• mlatu 5y ago
  my take is, he is testing the nato. it was originally there to oppose the warsaw pact, which broke with the soviet union. so what is natos purpose? we have seen time and again that nato bases are set up to opose the russian federation. then whats it gonna do if i poke it in a country that is formally not yet a member? everybody is trying to get putin "back" to the table, they dont realize he already memorized what is on it and is not interested in anything that is being offered there... there is a russian playbook from 1997 that putin might be playing by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con... it's outlining a possible version of russians geopolitical long game
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I doubt that, otherwise he could back out now and that would be enough to prove that he will invade other countries to back up "Russian interests". Looks like he's all in this time though. Maybe he has a terminal disease and just doesn't care?
    • pmontra 5y ago
      He's 69. In ten years he could be backstabbed or forced to leave. There is a tradition of that sort of things in the SSSR. If he wants to be reminded as a father of the country by doing something more substantial than rebuilding the might of Russia (which he did) this is the time to do it.
  • Cosmin_C 5y ago
    If there is anything we can take out of the current conflict is that being a NATO member as a country is exceedingly important. I am unsure Russia would have made all the moves it made against Ukraine if the latter were a NATO country. Also, mr P managed to do what the US hasn't achieved - make Germany put a ridiculous amount of money in the defense budged - exceeding the 2% of the GDP that was asked by the US in the past. Every way you look at the current situation it is undescribably stupid and dumb, I don't care about "super sekrit intelligence information", the backlash from the US and the EU to the Ukraine invasion is incredible and continues mounting up. All that mr P can hope right now is that he doesn't end up in jail for life at the end of this whole debacle.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  >All that for Ukraine? What is so valuable there to him, I really still don’t get it. I think Russia agreed with China to pull this wild experiment off with invading Ukraine in order to see how far US and its allies are willing to go to sanction Russia and to see if two of them(Russia and China) can survive and prevail together. This mentality "me against the world" is extremely irrational from diplomatic and economic point of view but it can work out because Russian and Chinese economy can complement, synergize and eventually survive and live together. Russia has 6,400 nuclear warheads—the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world so no way anybody can compete with them militarily. Also they have $600bn+ in national reserves in USD, gold and other assets so this vast amount of sanctions won't hurt them at least not in the short term. Btw Taiwan could be next.
  • not2b 5y ago
    China is backing away from this. In the Security Council they didn't vote with Russia to veto the condemnation of the invasion. They abstained.
    • mrkramer 5y ago
      You really trust CCP? Russia and China have common enemy. US. No one else really matters to them because US is the only "West" superpower excluding India which is economically lagging quit a bit behind US and their competitor China.
      • not2b 5y ago
        This has nothing to do with trust; China would back Russia if it were in their interest, but it looks like they are hanging back, probably because it looks like it is blowing up in Russia's face.
      • tarsinge 5y ago
        That rhetoric makes me uneasy. Isn’t the US an enemy of China the choice of the US? My understanding is that until Trump overnight declaration of economic war and Biden continuing it China was maybe not an ally but a strong economic partner. Don’t tell me being authoritarian automatically makes it an enemy otherwise so would be Saudi Arabia with the Yemen situation being worse than anything in China.
• analyst74 5y ago
  Anyone remember cuban crisis during the cold war? In fact, even today US is still sanctioning Cuba despite it no longer have USSR backing or any ability to threaten US. You underestimate how much threat a hostile neighbor poses.
• fny 5y ago
  These are still impotent sanctions. Only select Russian banks are excluded from SWIFT with many carveouts: oil, gas, wheat, fertilizer companies all excluded for example. Sanctions on Russian banks will go into effect in 30 days. The world, especially Europe, is still dependent on Russian natural resources. Putin knows this. His enemies are weak and fighting runaway inflation. They do not have the appetite for war. Putin will not tolerate having another enemy on his border. I presume he also expected for Ukrainians to capitulate faster. He has been demanding for Ukraine to remain Kremlin friendly or at least neutral since 2014. As far as geopolitical YOLOs go, it was a decent bet. He took Crimea with little pushback, I presume he expected he could oust Zelenskyy swiftly or at least return Ukraine to a state of neutrality with little meaningful fallout from a weak West. A video you should watch which elucidates why Putin is hostile towards a potential EU/NATO candidate being right at his doorstep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
  • rgifford 5y ago
    "If you want to wreck Russia what you should do is tell them to try and create a greater Russia. It will lead to no end of trouble. I think Putin is much too smart for that." - John Mearsheimer 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 Wowza. That aged like milk. Really glad this guy didn't have a hand in our foreign policy. His apologist attitude towards autocrats is pretty gross too. "I believe he is sowing divisions in The West that will manifest over time. If he is smart he will sit back and continue to pull levers as he has over the past year or so, and in the end ... he will get what he wants." - John Mearsheimer 2022 https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/21/us-impose-new-sanctions-amid-ukraine-crisis https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/21/us-impose-new-sanctions-ami... Yep. I didn't know who John Mearsheimer was an hour ago, now I actively dislike him. Pretty impressive how consistently he's been wrong about Putin and his intentions over the years.
    • fny 5y ago
      (1) You're assuming Putin is trying to create a greater Russia. There is no evidence for that yet. Putin has been pounding the table about security guarantees. The Ukraine terrorism rhetoric seems mostly to gain popular support within Russia. In that video, Mearshiemer posits that Russia will level Ukraine in the process without intent to occupy it properly... what are we seeing now? (2) The sanctions have tons of carveouts and are still toothless. We need more. (3) Russia /has/ been sewing divisions in the West. Politics are extremely polarized in the US in part do to Russian troll farms. Have you seen this nonsense? https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1497613102765907968 https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1497613102765907968
• Kretinsky 5y ago
  If Mexico signed a military alliance with Russia and accepted to have russian military bases on its soil, what would be the reaction of the US? Of course, Russia is never going to invade a country twice bigger in terms of population than it. It's a matter of threat management. Even if you know that the guy who's pointing the gun at your head isn't going to fire it, you'd prefer him to stop, or at least throw his gun. Once NATO will have cornered Russia with ultrasonic missiles, then the NATO's ultimatums will have much more power. I'm against war, and I don't think personally that opting for an aggressive behavior toward our neighbors will wage peace. The US has a very long history of bombing every possible threat on the globe, either economical or military, so I guess your question is quite moot if you think a bit more about it.
  • BbzzbB 5y ago
    But isn't he creating himself NATO neighbors by expanding his borders up to it? Whereas the alternative status quo is NATO not daring to add Ukraine to it's ranks. Tho I guess the calculation could've been that Ukraine was on track to become more powerful than he'd like it to be, economically or militarily, and thus wanted to cripple it while he was expecting it to be easy, both in terms of retaliation from the West and Ukraine's self defense.
• 13415 5y ago
  Not that I'm an expert on this topic, but my guess is that Putin lives in a self-produced information bubble. He's superficially well-informed but relies way too much on intelligence reports, which can completely misrepresent what's going on when you look at them in isolation. His mindeset is "me against others" and "Russia against the rest of the world." He is surrounded by Yes-sayers as advisers and some oligarch friends who are probably also not particularly connected with reality and more interested in real estate, superyachts and Gazprom stocks. Lack of good advisers is a huge problem. Given this background and a certain lack of empathy and sense of right and wrong, from Putin's perspective the past actions appear reasonable. He successfully prevented Ukraine from joining NATO and the EU and involved it into a useless war in the Donbas region. Now things weren't moving on from this point and the situation in the Donbas region was a constant source of concern. So he apparently decided to "solve" the Donbas problem once and for all, perhaps as part of his legacy, and miscalculated. From a pure military perspective the decision might seem reasonable. Ukraine's military is badly outnumbered and still has not much of a chance in the long run. He probably thought it's going to be a quick rush into the capital, installing a puppet regime, and he's done. Western military analysts thought the same. Why he's been so extremely fixed on keeping Ukraine out of NATO can probably only be explained with his KGB background and the corresponding mindset. There are superficial justifications, it is a prima facie reasonable standpoint of Russia to be against this, but nevertheless Putin seems to be fixated on this in an abnormal way. It is clear that NATO membership of Ukraine would not pose a threat to Russia. However, you could just as well ask why Putin hasn't diversified Russia's economy, made the country a close ally and trade partner of the EU, and helped turning mother Russia into a prospering modern democratic state. This wouldn't have been hard, Russia has all the potential you could imagine - rich of resources, longstanding integration into Europe, excellent scientists and engineers (before the brain drain). The answer is probably that Putin is a paranoid poison murderer and filthy rich ex-KGB officer who came to power more or less by accident. He's simply not good presidential material. Normally this isn't a problem (most presidents aren't), but when a "president" becomes a dictator and is surrounded by Yes-sayers in an information bubble it certainly is a problem.
  • prirun 5y ago
    I heard a pretty good radio program today on NPR. A guy was a foreign exchange student in Russia in the 90's and he went back to interview the lady he lived with, a CPA. She referred to him as her American son, and he to her as his Russian mother. She talks about why she loves Putin. The main topic was on Putin's popularity with Russians. The TLDR is, Russia was shit before Putin came to power, and now, Russia is not shit for average Russians. Putin gets credit for that. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/763/the-other-mr-president/act-two-5 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/763/the-other-mr-president/...
• deleted 5y ago
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• int_19h 5y ago
  He did calculate the cost of this, and gave the order regardless. This is the most worrying part of the current events, because it implies that more is to follow, and not just in Ukraine. As far as what is and isn't what's valuable, you're ignoring the ideological dimension. Putin's favorite philosopher is is Ivan Ilyin, whose take on politics was basically Eastern Orthodox fascism. Ukraine itself, to Russian nationalists, is the single largest chunk of land that is "rightfully theirs". If Putin can pull the invasion off, he'll be a hero with that crowd.
• cwp 5y ago
  It could be geographic considerations. The USSR/Warsaw Pact had pretty secure boarders, but that ended when the Soviet Union fell apart. If Putin can get control of Ukraine, that would put the Carpathian mountains between him and an invasion from southern Europe. Northern Europe is still wide-open terrain, but if can get control of the Baltics and eastern Poland, he can constrict land invasion routes to the bottleneck between Kaliningrad and Slovakia. Getting control of Kazakhstan (which, not coincidentally, is also suddenly awash with Russian troops) would similarly give him the ability to dominate other formerly Soviet countries and put mountains between Russia and invasion from the south.
• duxup 5y ago
  I think he knew there would be a great cost. Indications are they were preparing. But maybe underestimated the entire cost… how in lock step NATO and other nations would be. Even if victorious, he seems to have underestimated the Ukrainians. I think he expected a VERY quick victory, that doesn’t seem to be on track so far… Militarily I have no idea why they haven’t established air superiority or even softened up the opposition for a while before committing to a ground war….
• vba616 5y ago
  >Is he just a crazy person? The reason people are saying platitudes about solidarity while watching people die from a safe distance, is because the nuclear threat is credible. And the nuclear threat is credible, because the leader appears crazy or at least inexplicable. As long as everyone else is not that crazy and cannot appear so, MAD is inoperative. So in that case, why not take over the world? It just has to be in small enough steps that none of them justifies nukes individually. That's it, that's the constraint.
• causality0 5y ago
  It's less about Russia and more about one man preserving power for himself and his oligarchs.
• smaryjerry 5y ago
  It is intentional that they are not going to show on the news Putins reasons for invading. You won’t see him speaking and you won’t see quotes from him because they don’t want him to sway you even a little bit to his side. They might cherry pick 2-3 seconds to “catch” Putin saying something that will portray him negatively but they will never allow his reasoning to be spread. This keeps him an enemy. You might wonder why isn’t every country against this, and it because they do allow him to speak and at minimum create doubt in peoples mind on who is the bad guy. For instance, it’s unlikely you would have heard how Ukraine cut off water to Crimea which Russia took over previously, literally forcing people to starve because no water for crops. You probably wouldn’t have heard that Putin is comparing Ukrainians to Nazis in their treatment of Russians in Ukraine. If you heard only what Putin was saying and not what our media was saying you might even consider them the good guys. The problem is who is telling the truth here? The US explicitly said weeks before invasion that Russia is going to conduct a false flag operation as justification. Did that operation occur? I don’t know, because as I said we literally get no explanation presented to us by our media and that is the way they prefer it. Feeling for your enemy would make NATO and the US look like the bully, if their citizens were to believe Putin’s explanation or even see them to understand them.
• blindmute 5y ago
  Putin is a rational actor. The western media will and does refuse to show any information that would even slightly justify Putin's actions, or even make his actions seem rationally evil, which is why so many people here are thinking he's a crazy power drunken fool. Did you see any of his speeches air in our media, even parts of it? Did you see any Russian press releases describing any amount of why or how? Did you see any explanation from China about why they support this and to what degree? Most likely you saw none of this, and therefore think Putin is a madman. The war propaganda right now is incredibly dense from both sides, and each side sees only their side. But no, he's not a crazy person, he's the leader of Russia making a play.