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Suggesting Russians are playing a rational game here? I think the cover has been pulled on the Russian "master strategy".. it's literally a hierarchy of terror

Suggesting Russians are playing a rational game here? I think the cover has been pulled on the Russian "master strategy".. it's literally a hierarchy of terror and lies, where everyone will do whatever it takes to please the irrational autocrat. I have been spamming this lecture everywhere since the war started and again I think anyone who's still questioning the Russian operative reality should watch it: Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel (subtitles) | December 3, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw

jimbob45 5y ago
This must be how the allies felt in 1939 wondering what Germany’s master plan could possibly have been. Of course, they couldn’t have foreseen Hitler being a bumbling buffoon all along.
- labster 5y ago
  Yeah, but Hitler had the Wehrmacht and all the competence there. Putin only has… whoever is responsible for that megaconvoy stalled for a week, in uncontrolled airspace.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    It's all tactics but no strategy Blowing up stuff is certainly bad, but their lack of planning met considerable resistance Not to mention the strict top-down delegation and low morale.
  - PedroBatista 5y ago
    Putin has what he designed and built. The incompetence and low status of the army at this scale mostly exists because Putin is afraid of the army, that’s why he appoints mostly “security guys” for the top spots and now has his own private army. Putin’s Russia is a police state pretending to be a military state.
atoav 5y ago
I watched that evaluation yesterday and I think it is spot on and I second your recommendation. Many western officials (as most people) seem to be unable to put themselves into this different environment and framework of values. Knowing a lot about a country helps, but judging them by the values you'd have doesn't help you a bit. Edit: Take the below with a grain of salt, this is one personal experience which can/should not be extrapolated from. There are good/bad people in all nations. When I was 16 we were on vacation and played waterball in a pool against a russian family. When they realized we were winning (all members of my family were playing handball for life, so this was no wonder) they started to do things like pulling pants and punching underneath the water surface, scratching with the fingernails etc. They still lost. Back then I could not understand why anyone would deploy such methods in a game during their vacation. For me personally, it would be entirely unpleasant and unenjoyable to envolve myself that much in a non-serious game. But maybe the answer is contained in that video: Maybe it is just much more normal to deploy the whole arsenal of what you can do in russian culture. I guess if you don't try everything and then loose you are seen as an idiot or as a weak person. I grew up in a culture where the rules of society are taken comparedly serious, so for me playing unfair is a sign of weakness (proof you cannot win by the rules).
- RobertMiller 5y ago
  This reminds me of the way my troop used to play "greased watermelon" in boyscouts in America. Basically get a watermelon greased up with vaseline, throw it into the lake and let everybody battle royale over it. There were usually some black eyes by the end of it, but it was a lot of fun.
  - throwaway_4ever 5y ago
    That’s a real thing?! I thought it was a random Always Sunny plotline haha. What a strange game. https://youtu.be/AV2cy84Qh8U https://youtu.be/AV2cy84Qh8U
- sdoering 5y ago
  Wow. When I was a kid I was on holiday playing together with Russians, Brits, Belgians and other German kids. While the Russian kids were playing by the rules (at least not significantly outside of that) especially the British kiddos did everything they could to win the medals we received in these games from the hotel. So what does my anecdata tell us? Nothing. I have great experiences with Russian people while I was cheated by Brits. Should I deduce all Russians are great people? Or all Brits are cheaters? Probably would be a bad idea. There clearly are different cultures. But talking about that as if this means people a a homogenized blob of that culture does not pay justice to the people who went to the streets in Russia to protest against the war for example. Or to the people that only know the propaganda side of this war on any side.
sdoering 5y ago
You start by "suggesting Russians are playing a rational game..." but literally the next sentence is condescending western rhetoric. We don't know the strategy and the plan. We might, even maybe reasonably, deduce that Russian leadership thought that Ucrain would fall more quickly. And that some form of stable solution would be the result. But most people don't only have one plan to reach a longer term strategic goal. So thinking of "the Russians" as rational players (and taking a lot of potentially missing information into account due to every body only hearing their own side's propaganda) we could at least ask ourselves, if the plan was to overthrow the Ucrain quickly, to probably secure the Donbas and also probably secure the water resources for the Crimean peninsula as a strategic necessity, what course of action remains for Putin now that at least the quickness of the action failed. While there are already people reporting that Russia secured most of the Donbas and the water resources for the Crimean. But how much is propaganda there, I don't know. So Putin needs to appear as the winner in the end. At least internally. He needs to sell this to his power base and his own ego as well probably. The west wants/needs to see the Ucrain at least as partial winner. And the sanctions to have worked (because that was sold as solution to the voters). Can there be a way to end the killing, save thousands of lives and reach these goals? I don't know. But I would be at least hesitant to call Putin irrational. Maybe that is valid if one defines the criteria of evaluation up front. What defines 'rational'. Because I suggest that within Putin's worldview these actions make some forms of sense to him and. As said. From the outside perspective it might be reasonable to call it irrational. But that might not help the world in finding a way out. For that one needs to understand why it makes sense to Putin to act the way he does right now.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Don't delude yourself and others. Wars of aggression are the prelude to world wars and mass scale violence.
  - borkt 5y ago
    Wars are one of many ways to organize the world. To pretend they are any one thing is naieve, just look at the Opium Wars and try to explain it in the context of todays players. It surely involved aggression, it surely affected change in much of the world, but was there mass scale violence? How does that violence compare to the war in Iraq, which clearly was a war of aggression to the indidviduals who conceived of it, even if they misled the vast majority of those they represent? I am incredibly concerned by the number of people speaking about what is and isnt right now as if they have any idea of what the facts are or who is making decisions on either side right now. Please keep in mind the stakes are nuclear war;
jl6 5y ago
Even though plan A (rapid victory) appears to have failed, there is still a rational plan B: carve out the eastern and southern portions Putin wants, leave the rest of the country a smouldering ruin which will cost the west $1tn in aid to rebuild.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >will cost the west $1tn in aid to rebuild Why the west? Sanctions against Russia should stay on place until they agree to pay for the reparations.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    How long is the western world willing to leave Ukraine in ruins until Russia agrees to pay for the reparations? They seem equally likely to pay the reparations as Mexico is to pay for a wall.
    - trasz 5y ago
      We could confiscate all the Russian assets. That’s some 300 billion dollars there.
      - gcthomas 5y ago
        A trillion dollars of Russian assets have already been frozen by the US alone. Across the whole world, there will be plenty of funds if only a fraction ends up getting confiscated.
    - Tams80 5y ago
      Offer Ukraine bursaries and low-interest loans. Then over time take money from Russia as possible. Plus all the frozen assets.
  - newaccount2021 5y ago
- 5y ago
supergirl 5y ago
> Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel I can't take this talk seriously. it's just a bunch of history bits used to explain and reinforce stereotypes about Russians. "Russians like strong leaders" because Russia was once invaded by mongols who also had strong leaders. Russians always think the leader is infallible because he gets his power from God. Then almost in the next sentence he says Russians hate Gorbachev because he ruined the Soviet Union. It's all just a bunch of shower thoughts. All it does it reinforces stereotypes and hate.
- waihtis 5y ago
  Reality shatters your point really quickly, it's even mentioned in the lecture (suggesting you didn't watch it): Russians have literally had 8 years of democracy in the past 600+ years, otherwise it's always been an autocracy.
  - supergirl 5y ago
    My point was the explanations in the video are shower thoughts. If you want to understand why Russia is how it is just read a real history work on Russia not this guy’s shower thoughts
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      What are some sources you'd recommend? The thing that impressed me about the colonel's lecture is that it seems to have had some predictive power. Someone who watched that lecture a couple of years ago will be less surprised at Putin's actions today.
    - waihtis 5y ago
      Just parroting the word "shower thought" isn't making any effect here. How about presenting an opposite view instead?
      - madaxe_again 5y ago
        Their entire recent comment history is contrarian “maybe the Ukrainians are Nazis, maybe they aren’t, how can anyone know”, “the Soviet Union mostly did good things”, etc. This is either a victim of Russian propaganda, or an agent of Russian propaganda. As to the presented ideas in the talk - as someone who knows Russia well, speaks Russian, has Russian family, he’s spot on - but no Russian will ever agree, because that is part of their complex.
yason 5y ago
Russia generally acts rationally. It's just that the assumptions and axioms on top of which rationality is applied is different from the West and ― apparently ― not uncommonly delusional. This made it very hard for the West to believe what Russia was saying for years about Ukraine, for example. Further, the explanations seem to differ whether they're addressed to Russians or to other countries. Russia's own population tends to get what they want to hear (which we often consider bizarre), and what the West gets doesn't matter much what (because the West has already proven they don't understand Russia even on the big things so why not lie about military training near Ukrainian border as well just to avoid any extra yet futile discourse?) With delusions in the case of Ukraine I refer to the idea that Ukraine never was a real country and it has belonged to Russia all the time. This falls in line with the worldview of the ex-KGB grandpas from the Soviet era but there's a notable difference they don't seem to accept. Back in the Soviet times USSR had the (fire)power to keep their member states in line and practically own the local governments. There was nowhere to go and it wasn't until the USSR was disbanded that the small Eastern European countries could run away. And run away they did. But Ukraine and Belarus are so close to Russia that it can be easy to think of them as extensions of Russia if you assume you can retain control over the countries, both politically and ultimately militarily. But Russia is much weaker than USSR. Russia have Belarus because, to my understanding, their president basically sold his country to Russia to personally remain in "power" but Ukraine has been looking to West much more than to Mother Russia. And they overruled their Russian leaning president and replaced him with one who's much more open to the West. Here's where I think the delusion comes to play. Russia somehow thought it would be a simple matter to put Ukraine back in line to avoid them drifting too far into West. Like a father who had no trouble beating his son when he was a kid, the son is now a young adult and the father is much older and weaker, and it's necessary to realize the change. So far, Russia seems to be stuck with the idea that they can maintain control in Ukraine, even after a war. But Russia doesn't seem to be in any position to boss their neighbours around like USSR could. Even if I ultimately believe that what Russia wanted was Crimea with their old naval city and a land route over there I think they figured why not just go for the whole Ukraine while they're at it, and for once reset the country with a government that makes things easier for Russia in the future. The old USSR could've done that but Russia can't, yet Russia acts as if they're still operating like in the times of USSR. To achieve a "reset" like that you need citizens who agree with you or who are so oppressed that they won't revolt. Russia has neither.
WilTimSon 5y ago
Well, it might be so but what's the point in Russia pissing off Finland while a good chunk of its forces is dedicated to the war in Ukraine? They're irrational but surely going "Let's start a war on TWO fronts!" is a step too far even for them?
- waihtis 5y ago
  Asymmetry - Russia knows we won't conduct an offensive and they can stress-free empty their Finnish border for this campaign
  - mads_ravn 5y ago
    I’ve been sort of amazed by the line of reasoning as well: Russia can invade a democracy aligning with “the west”, but if “the west” were to, say, bomb the military in a country that is aligning with Russia (after ignoring election results and suppressing the opposition with violence), then we would be inviting nuclear war. Very asymmetric, but I guess that is the advantage of being an autocrat with a propensity for throwing threats around :/
- Delk 5y ago
  There's no way Russia pissing Finland off to any conceivable degree would risk war or military retaliation from present-day Finland. None. The same goes for any other Nordic (and Baltic) countries. The current Russian regime likes to demonstrate its power now and then, though, and to try and project its influence through intimidation. They can do that with their significantly smaller neighbours with no risk of military retaliation. There are risks, of course, but those would be in the form of deteriorating relationships and the associated economical costs, or from losing overall international rapport and respect. Those don't seem to matter much to the current regime in Russia, though.
  - saiya-jin 5y ago
    Well they may push Finland to Nato, which is a major strategic fuckup on Russian part. Considering how Finns are generally portrayed in Russia I think its stupid to be a direct Russian neighbor and claim neutrality now... there is no such thing as neutrality in this case.
cracrecry 5y ago
You can see lots of things about Putin, but being irrational is not one of them. Putin behavior makes lots of sense. In fact way more sense that European leaders for example. For example: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Putin-German-nuclear-phase-out-does-not-make-any-s https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Putin-German-nuc... There is a video of that more than ten years ago. Here Putin was saying that Germany energy strategy was nuts and he was right. How stupid some leader could be to make her country dependent on outside countries for something as strategic as energy? Putin told everybody what he thought about Ukraine. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 Even the "I will push the nuclear button because I have nothing to loose" is pretty rational. It worked wonders multiple times. Just because he is our enemy now does not mean he is stupid. He is not.
- waihtis 5y ago
  I would never make the mistake of thinking him stupid, but the power structure underneath him pervades his visibility and makes him do irrational things. Seriously, watch the lecture I linked.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    Could the same be said of Washington bureaucracy? After all, we have a tremendous record of foreign policy blunders over the last 25 years or so.
    - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
      It's not exactly the same, but similar enough. This is because institutions warp incentives. Holding institutions accountable is the primary way you combat that.
trasz 5y ago
I think the crucial thing to understand is that current Russia isn’t just some “failed state” - it’s a crime syndicate that, due to historical mistake in 1990, was allowed to get its own country. See this thread for explanations: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278?s=21 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278?s...
- chrisco255 5y ago
  That assertion is rather unsatisfying given that Russia is indeed a nation state with 1000 or so years of history.
  - trasz 5y ago
    Of course, but I’m talking about Russia - the state, not the nation - as it is now. I’ve added “current” to make this more obvious.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Mach's principle is true but the sun dominates our lives i.e. culture and history are important to understand but are rarely models for future policy IMO (in particular cultural arguments about society are often peddled by those who judge too easily or those who are scared)
  - murkt 5y ago
    You're being very generous with that thousand. Current Russia isn't a descendant of Kyivan Rus
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > You're being very generous with that thousand. Current Russia isn't a descendant of Kyivan Rus I'm beginning to form a hypothesis about why Putin's "Russians and Ukrainians are one people" rhetoric is such a big and important part of the background to this invasion: This whole concept of Russia growing out of Kievan Rus has, as I understand it, long been part of the Russian self-image. In reality, though, at least as far as the actual Russian state is concerned, that's not true at all -- Russia is the descendant of Muscovy[1], not Kiev (=Kyiv). But, as that contrasting-pictures-of-cathedrals-vs-forest meme that did the rounds last week so brilliantly illustrates, Muscovy has pretty much no early history at all -- AFAICR it really rose to prominence only after the Mongol invasions, so it's late-medieval. Kiev, OTOH, goes back to at least the Vikings and Byzantines, so pre- or early-medieval. So I'm beginning to think this whole conflation of Russia's history with Ukraine's is just Russia looking to shore up its histirical legitimacy. Rulers, particularly autocratic and authoritarian ones, have always wanted to make their country look ancient and venerable: The Swedish Vasa kings consigned a Historia from Olaus Rudbeck that purported to show how Sweden was actually Atlantis reincarnated; Czar Ivan The Terrible, from the original to the current incarnation, tried to usurp Ukraine's history as that of Muscovy. (No idea how original this is; probably not at all. I mean, it's hard to believe that real historians would have missed it all these years... But not having studied anywhere near enough history, I hadn't seen it before I came up with it on my own.) ___ [1]: And, OK, I suppose to some extent of Novgorod.
sdeframond 5y ago
Somehow I feel like this is a decent time to bring up Chesterton's fence again https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
- waihtis 5y ago
  Like I mentioned elsewhere, this offensive holds no rational grounds even if you try hard to see it through a Russian lens - this is why they keep inventing new reasons of invasion on the fly (e.g. the biolab stuff, etc.) So still clinging to the thought that Putin has some kind of grand plan behind him is wishful thinking at best
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    It looks very rational to me. I say that as someone who lives across the Black sea and have suffered under their rule and feels for the Ukrainians. Placing weapons next door to any powerful entity is recipe for conflict. It sounds like you're repeating the same talking points over and over. Russia felt threatened and attacked. What did the US do to Cuba when the Soviets put weapons there? Oh, that's right. Eternal embargo. No war because they couldn't risk it at the time. How can you feel so rightous is beyond me
    - brandmeyer 5y ago
      Your history is wrong. The sanctions against Cuba were all well in place before Cuban missile crisis began.
      - beebeepka 5y ago
        Haven't been lifted because... completely unrelated reasons? Is that it?
        brandmeyer 5y ago
        Haven't been lifted because the same regime which justified the actions in the first place is still in power doing the same things. Foreign military weapons installations didn't have anything to do with it then, and doesn't have anything to do with it now.
sega_sai 5y ago
I started to watch it and it was indeed interesting, till it reached the point where the presenter claimed that Khodorkovsky was jailed because he stole too much. That's just plain false, and kind'a casts doubt on how expert is this expert. He was jailed for his political stance, that he didn't want to bow down to Putin. It's true that his first sentence for various tax dodging schemes in the 90s (that many at the time were involved in). Those were likely legal, but definitely immoral.
- waihtis 5y ago
  Khodorkovsky was at one point the richest oligarch, which is basically one of the pinnacle states of kleptocracy. I think the lecturer understands the system much better than you
- p1esk 5y ago
  He stole so much he started to think he could challenge Putin. That’s why he got jailed. In Russia (then and now) you get charged with “tax dodging schemes” when you either challenge the mafia bosses or don’t pay them enough.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  I think he knew that, but used Khodorkovsky as his example of "stole too much" because he just stole so much.
andai 5y ago
I copied the subtitles here if anyone prefers to read the transcript: https://ghostbin.com/tjYA8/raw https://ghostbin.com/tjYA8/raw (Somewhat amusingly, Pastebin refused to accept it due to "objectionable content")
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Unfortunately the translation is not quite perfect. Hilarious bit, when he talks about the opera A life for the Czar:[1] "...for the Tsar to be saved from the gut..." No, from a swamp, I would think. (Unless it was the Biblical Czar Jonah?) Understandable, though: The Finnish for "swamp" is "suo"; for "gut", "suoli". Due to the agglutineration(?) Finnish grammar is based on, "a bit of gut, some entrails" becomes "suol-ta", while "from [a|the] swamp" becomes "suo-lta". Both of course spelled without the hyphen I put in here for illustrative purposes, and "suolta" pronounced identically in both cases. But still, which would a Czar need saving from -- a swamp, or someone's gut?!? So, TL;DR: IMO the subtitles are somewhat weak on concluding the correct wording from context. Oh, and I can't access your link at all. Locked/blocked/taken down? Perhaps there's a time limit on this ghostbin thingy? [EDIT:] Changed my somewhat un-charitable "the translation is far from perfect" to "not quite": They got "Laiska Jaakko" ("Lazy Jacob"[2]) --> "Jacob de la Gardie" right[3], bravo! [/EDIT] ___ [1]: https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1114 https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1114 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_la_Gardie#Death_and_legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_la_Gardie#Death_and_l... [3]: https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1553 https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1553
GrothendieckA 5y ago
[dead]
- waihtis 5y ago
  > He choses some (very cherry picking) facts and anecdotes from Russian history, cites them with factual mistakes, but he choses and interpretes them so they meet his theory. This is not scientific approach at all. Examples my friend, we need concrete examples. Otherwise this is like all other pro-Kreml astroturfing accounts which cry about Russia being misrepresented except they can never show any example exactly how they are being misrepresented. Simply arguing semantics of pravda and istina and then calling the lecture false doesn’t mean anything. And as it happens I read the Rob Lee article February 21st or 22nd in anticipation of the attack. Question to you is - how does it provide anything of a conflicting point to the lecture? Zelensky tries to distance Ukraine from Russian political interference, so its OK to raze the country to the ground because…???
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > These two articles will be more insightful than (sorry) any made up theories from Finnish intelligence colonel. Or, as people used to languages with articles would be more likely to say, from a Finnish intelligence colonel. (You know, Slavic languages' lack of the articles make really easy spot native speakers write English.)

jimbob45 5y ago

This must be how the allies felt in 1939 wondering what Germany’s master plan could possibly have been. Of course, they couldn’t have foreseen Hitler being a bumbling buffoon all along.

labster 5y ago
Yeah, but Hitler had the Wehrmacht and all the competence there. Putin only has… whoever is responsible for that megaconvoy stalled for a week, in uncontrolled airspace.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- raverbashing 5y ago
  It's all tactics but no strategy Blowing up stuff is certainly bad, but their lack of planning met considerable resistance Not to mention the strict top-down delegation and low morale.
- PedroBatista 5y ago
  Putin has what he designed and built. The incompetence and low status of the army at this scale mostly exists because Putin is afraid of the army, that’s why he appoints mostly “security guys” for the top spots and now has his own private army. Putin’s Russia is a police state pretending to be a military state.

atoav 5y ago

I watched that evaluation yesterday and I think it is spot on and I second your recommendation. Many western officials (as most people) seem to be unable to put themselves into this different environment and framework of values. Knowing a lot about a country helps, but judging them by the values you'd have doesn't help you a bit. Edit: Take the below with a grain of salt, this is one personal experience which can/should not be extrapolated from. There are good/bad people in all nations. When I was 16 we were on vacation and played waterball in a pool against a russian family. When they realized we were winning (all members of my family were playing handball for life, so this was no wonder) they started to do things like pulling pants and punching underneath the water surface, scratching with the fingernails etc. They still lost. Back then I could not understand why anyone would deploy such methods in a game during their vacation. For me personally, it would be entirely unpleasant and unenjoyable to envolve myself that much in a non-serious game. But maybe the answer is contained in that video: Maybe it is just much more normal to deploy the whole arsenal of what you can do in russian culture. I guess if you don't try everything and then loose you are seen as an idiot or as a weak person. I grew up in a culture where the rules of society are taken comparedly serious, so for me playing unfair is a sign of weakness (proof you cannot win by the rules).

RobertMiller 5y ago
This reminds me of the way my troop used to play "greased watermelon" in boyscouts in America. Basically get a watermelon greased up with vaseline, throw it into the lake and let everybody battle royale over it. There were usually some black eyes by the end of it, but it was a lot of fun.
- throwaway_4ever 5y ago
  That’s a real thing?! I thought it was a random Always Sunny plotline haha. What a strange game. https://youtu.be/AV2cy84Qh8U https://youtu.be/AV2cy84Qh8U
sdoering 5y ago
Wow. When I was a kid I was on holiday playing together with Russians, Brits, Belgians and other German kids. While the Russian kids were playing by the rules (at least not significantly outside of that) especially the British kiddos did everything they could to win the medals we received in these games from the hotel. So what does my anecdata tell us? Nothing. I have great experiences with Russian people while I was cheated by Brits. Should I deduce all Russians are great people? Or all Brits are cheaters? Probably would be a bad idea. There clearly are different cultures. But talking about that as if this means people a a homogenized blob of that culture does not pay justice to the people who went to the streets in Russia to protest against the war for example. Or to the people that only know the propaganda side of this war on any side.

sdoering 5y ago

You start by "suggesting Russians are playing a rational game..." but literally the next sentence is condescending western rhetoric. We don't know the strategy and the plan. We might, even maybe reasonably, deduce that Russian leadership thought that Ucrain would fall more quickly. And that some form of stable solution would be the result. But most people don't only have one plan to reach a longer term strategic goal. So thinking of "the Russians" as rational players (and taking a lot of potentially missing information into account due to every body only hearing their own side's propaganda) we could at least ask ourselves, if the plan was to overthrow the Ucrain quickly, to probably secure the Donbas and also probably secure the water resources for the Crimean peninsula as a strategic necessity, what course of action remains for Putin now that at least the quickness of the action failed. While there are already people reporting that Russia secured most of the Donbas and the water resources for the Crimean. But how much is propaganda there, I don't know. So Putin needs to appear as the winner in the end. At least internally. He needs to sell this to his power base and his own ego as well probably. The west wants/needs to see the Ucrain at least as partial winner. And the sanctions to have worked (because that was sold as solution to the voters). Can there be a way to end the killing, save thousands of lives and reach these goals? I don't know. But I would be at least hesitant to call Putin irrational. Maybe that is valid if one defines the criteria of evaluation up front. What defines 'rational'. Because I suggest that within Putin's worldview these actions make some forms of sense to him and. As said. From the outside perspective it might be reasonable to call it irrational. But that might not help the world in finding a way out. For that one needs to understand why it makes sense to Putin to act the way he does right now.

beebmam 5y ago
Don't delude yourself and others. Wars of aggression are the prelude to world wars and mass scale violence.
- borkt 5y ago
  Wars are one of many ways to organize the world. To pretend they are any one thing is naieve, just look at the Opium Wars and try to explain it in the context of todays players. It surely involved aggression, it surely affected change in much of the world, but was there mass scale violence? How does that violence compare to the war in Iraq, which clearly was a war of aggression to the indidviduals who conceived of it, even if they misled the vast majority of those they represent? I am incredibly concerned by the number of people speaking about what is and isnt right now as if they have any idea of what the facts are or who is making decisions on either side right now. Please keep in mind the stakes are nuclear war;

jl6 5y ago

Even though plan A (rapid victory) appears to have failed, there is still a rational plan B: carve out the eastern and southern portions Putin wants, leave the rest of the country a smouldering ruin which will cost the west $1tn in aid to rebuild.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>will cost the west $1tn in aid to rebuild Why the west? Sanctions against Russia should stay on place until they agree to pay for the reparations.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  How long is the western world willing to leave Ukraine in ruins until Russia agrees to pay for the reparations? They seem equally likely to pay the reparations as Mexico is to pay for a wall.
  - trasz 5y ago
    We could confiscate all the Russian assets. That’s some 300 billion dollars there.
    - gcthomas 5y ago
      A trillion dollars of Russian assets have already been frozen by the US alone. Across the whole world, there will be plenty of funds if only a fraction ends up getting confiscated.
  - Tams80 5y ago
    Offer Ukraine bursaries and low-interest loans. Then over time take money from Russia as possible. Plus all the frozen assets.
- newaccount2021 5y ago
5y ago

supergirl 5y ago

> Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel I can't take this talk seriously. it's just a bunch of history bits used to explain and reinforce stereotypes about Russians. "Russians like strong leaders" because Russia was once invaded by mongols who also had strong leaders. Russians always think the leader is infallible because he gets his power from God. Then almost in the next sentence he says Russians hate Gorbachev because he ruined the Soviet Union. It's all just a bunch of shower thoughts. All it does it reinforces stereotypes and hate.

waihtis 5y ago
Reality shatters your point really quickly, it's even mentioned in the lecture (suggesting you didn't watch it): Russians have literally had 8 years of democracy in the past 600+ years, otherwise it's always been an autocracy.
- supergirl 5y ago
  My point was the explanations in the video are shower thoughts. If you want to understand why Russia is how it is just read a real history work on Russia not this guy’s shower thoughts
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    What are some sources you'd recommend? The thing that impressed me about the colonel's lecture is that it seems to have had some predictive power. Someone who watched that lecture a couple of years ago will be less surprised at Putin's actions today.
  - waihtis 5y ago
    Just parroting the word "shower thought" isn't making any effect here. How about presenting an opposite view instead?
    - madaxe_again 5y ago
      Their entire recent comment history is contrarian “maybe the Ukrainians are Nazis, maybe they aren’t, how can anyone know”, “the Soviet Union mostly did good things”, etc. This is either a victim of Russian propaganda, or an agent of Russian propaganda. As to the presented ideas in the talk - as someone who knows Russia well, speaks Russian, has Russian family, he’s spot on - but no Russian will ever agree, because that is part of their complex.

yason 5y ago

Russia generally acts rationally. It's just that the assumptions and axioms on top of which rationality is applied is different from the West and ― apparently ― not uncommonly delusional. This made it very hard for the West to believe what Russia was saying for years about Ukraine, for example. Further, the explanations seem to differ whether they're addressed to Russians or to other countries. Russia's own population tends to get what they want to hear (which we often consider bizarre), and what the West gets doesn't matter much what (because the West has already proven they don't understand Russia even on the big things so why not lie about military training near Ukrainian border as well just to avoid any extra yet futile discourse?) With delusions in the case of Ukraine I refer to the idea that Ukraine never was a real country and it has belonged to Russia all the time. This falls in line with the worldview of the ex-KGB grandpas from the Soviet era but there's a notable difference they don't seem to accept. Back in the Soviet times USSR had the (fire)power to keep their member states in line and practically own the local governments. There was nowhere to go and it wasn't until the USSR was disbanded that the small Eastern European countries could run away. And run away they did. But Ukraine and Belarus are so close to Russia that it can be easy to think of them as extensions of Russia if you assume you can retain control over the countries, both politically and ultimately militarily. But Russia is much weaker than USSR. Russia have Belarus because, to my understanding, their president basically sold his country to Russia to personally remain in "power" but Ukraine has been looking to West much more than to Mother Russia. And they overruled their Russian leaning president and replaced him with one who's much more open to the West. Here's where I think the delusion comes to play. Russia somehow thought it would be a simple matter to put Ukraine back in line to avoid them drifting too far into West. Like a father who had no trouble beating his son when he was a kid, the son is now a young adult and the father is much older and weaker, and it's necessary to realize the change. So far, Russia seems to be stuck with the idea that they can maintain control in Ukraine, even after a war. But Russia doesn't seem to be in any position to boss their neighbours around like USSR could. Even if I ultimately believe that what Russia wanted was Crimea with their old naval city and a land route over there I think they figured why not just go for the whole Ukraine while they're at it, and for once reset the country with a government that makes things easier for Russia in the future. The old USSR could've done that but Russia can't, yet Russia acts as if they're still operating like in the times of USSR. To achieve a "reset" like that you need citizens who agree with you or who are so oppressed that they won't revolt. Russia has neither.

WilTimSon 5y ago

Well, it might be so but what's the point in Russia pissing off Finland while a good chunk of its forces is dedicated to the war in Ukraine? They're irrational but surely going "Let's start a war on TWO fronts!" is a step too far even for them?

waihtis 5y ago
Asymmetry - Russia knows we won't conduct an offensive and they can stress-free empty their Finnish border for this campaign
- mads_ravn 5y ago
  I’ve been sort of amazed by the line of reasoning as well: Russia can invade a democracy aligning with “the west”, but if “the west” were to, say, bomb the military in a country that is aligning with Russia (after ignoring election results and suppressing the opposition with violence), then we would be inviting nuclear war. Very asymmetric, but I guess that is the advantage of being an autocrat with a propensity for throwing threats around :/
Delk 5y ago
There's no way Russia pissing Finland off to any conceivable degree would risk war or military retaliation from present-day Finland. None. The same goes for any other Nordic (and Baltic) countries. The current Russian regime likes to demonstrate its power now and then, though, and to try and project its influence through intimidation. They can do that with their significantly smaller neighbours with no risk of military retaliation. There are risks, of course, but those would be in the form of deteriorating relationships and the associated economical costs, or from losing overall international rapport and respect. Those don't seem to matter much to the current regime in Russia, though.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Well they may push Finland to Nato, which is a major strategic fuckup on Russian part. Considering how Finns are generally portrayed in Russia I think its stupid to be a direct Russian neighbor and claim neutrality now... there is no such thing as neutrality in this case.

cracrecry 5y ago

You can see lots of things about Putin, but being irrational is not one of them. Putin behavior makes lots of sense. In fact way more sense that European leaders for example. For example: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Putin-German-nuclear-phase-out-does-not-make-any-s https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Putin-German-nuc... There is a video of that more than ten years ago. Here Putin was saying that Germany energy strategy was nuts and he was right. How stupid some leader could be to make her country dependent on outside countries for something as strategic as energy? Putin told everybody what he thought about Ukraine. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 Even the "I will push the nuclear button because I have nothing to loose" is pretty rational. It worked wonders multiple times. Just because he is our enemy now does not mean he is stupid. He is not.

waihtis 5y ago
I would never make the mistake of thinking him stupid, but the power structure underneath him pervades his visibility and makes him do irrational things. Seriously, watch the lecture I linked.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  Could the same be said of Washington bureaucracy? After all, we have a tremendous record of foreign policy blunders over the last 25 years or so.
  - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
    It's not exactly the same, but similar enough. This is because institutions warp incentives. Holding institutions accountable is the primary way you combat that.

trasz 5y ago

I think the crucial thing to understand is that current Russia isn’t just some “failed state” - it’s a crime syndicate that, due to historical mistake in 1990, was allowed to get its own country. See this thread for explanations: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278?s=21 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278?s...

chrisco255 5y ago
That assertion is rather unsatisfying given that Russia is indeed a nation state with 1000 or so years of history.
- trasz 5y ago
  Of course, but I’m talking about Russia - the state, not the nation - as it is now. I’ve added “current” to make this more obvious.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Mach's principle is true but the sun dominates our lives i.e. culture and history are important to understand but are rarely models for future policy IMO (in particular cultural arguments about society are often peddled by those who judge too easily or those who are scared)
- murkt 5y ago
  You're being very generous with that thousand. Current Russia isn't a descendant of Kyivan Rus
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > You're being very generous with that thousand. Current Russia isn't a descendant of Kyivan Rus I'm beginning to form a hypothesis about why Putin's "Russians and Ukrainians are one people" rhetoric is such a big and important part of the background to this invasion: This whole concept of Russia growing out of Kievan Rus has, as I understand it, long been part of the Russian self-image. In reality, though, at least as far as the actual Russian state is concerned, that's not true at all -- Russia is the descendant of Muscovy[1], not Kiev (=Kyiv). But, as that contrasting-pictures-of-cathedrals-vs-forest meme that did the rounds last week so brilliantly illustrates, Muscovy has pretty much no early history at all -- AFAICR it really rose to prominence only after the Mongol invasions, so it's late-medieval. Kiev, OTOH, goes back to at least the Vikings and Byzantines, so pre- or early-medieval. So I'm beginning to think this whole conflation of Russia's history with Ukraine's is just Russia looking to shore up its histirical legitimacy. Rulers, particularly autocratic and authoritarian ones, have always wanted to make their country look ancient and venerable: The Swedish Vasa kings consigned a Historia from Olaus Rudbeck that purported to show how Sweden was actually Atlantis reincarnated; Czar Ivan The Terrible, from the original to the current incarnation, tried to usurp Ukraine's history as that of Muscovy. (No idea how original this is; probably not at all. I mean, it's hard to believe that real historians would have missed it all these years... But not having studied anywhere near enough history, I hadn't seen it before I came up with it on my own.) ___ [1]: And, OK, I suppose to some extent of Novgorod.

sdeframond 5y ago

Somehow I feel like this is a decent time to bring up Chesterton's fence again https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

waihtis 5y ago
Like I mentioned elsewhere, this offensive holds no rational grounds even if you try hard to see it through a Russian lens - this is why they keep inventing new reasons of invasion on the fly (e.g. the biolab stuff, etc.) So still clinging to the thought that Putin has some kind of grand plan behind him is wishful thinking at best
- beebeepka 5y ago
  It looks very rational to me. I say that as someone who lives across the Black sea and have suffered under their rule and feels for the Ukrainians. Placing weapons next door to any powerful entity is recipe for conflict. It sounds like you're repeating the same talking points over and over. Russia felt threatened and attacked. What did the US do to Cuba when the Soviets put weapons there? Oh, that's right. Eternal embargo. No war because they couldn't risk it at the time. How can you feel so rightous is beyond me
  - brandmeyer 5y ago
    Your history is wrong. The sanctions against Cuba were all well in place before Cuban missile crisis began.
    - beebeepka 5y ago
      Haven't been lifted because... completely unrelated reasons? Is that it?
      - brandmeyer 5y ago
        Haven't been lifted because the same regime which justified the actions in the first place is still in power doing the same things. Foreign military weapons installations didn't have anything to do with it then, and doesn't have anything to do with it now.

sega_sai 5y ago

I started to watch it and it was indeed interesting, till it reached the point where the presenter claimed that Khodorkovsky was jailed because he stole too much. That's just plain false, and kind'a casts doubt on how expert is this expert. He was jailed for his political stance, that he didn't want to bow down to Putin. It's true that his first sentence for various tax dodging schemes in the 90s (that many at the time were involved in). Those were likely legal, but definitely immoral.

waihtis 5y ago
Khodorkovsky was at one point the richest oligarch, which is basically one of the pinnacle states of kleptocracy. I think the lecturer understands the system much better than you
p1esk 5y ago
He stole so much he started to think he could challenge Putin. That’s why he got jailed. In Russia (then and now) you get charged with “tax dodging schemes” when you either challenge the mafia bosses or don’t pay them enough.
CRConrad 5y ago
I think he knew that, but used Khodorkovsky as his example of "stole too much" because he just stole so much.

andai 5y ago

I copied the subtitles here if anyone prefers to read the transcript: https://ghostbin.com/tjYA8/raw https://ghostbin.com/tjYA8/raw (Somewhat amusingly, Pastebin refused to accept it due to "objectionable content")

CRConrad 5y ago
Unfortunately the translation is not quite perfect. Hilarious bit, when he talks about the opera A life for the Czar:[1] "...for the Tsar to be saved from the gut..." No, from a swamp, I would think. (Unless it was the Biblical Czar Jonah?) Understandable, though: The Finnish for "swamp" is "suo"; for "gut", "suoli". Due to the agglutineration(?) Finnish grammar is based on, "a bit of gut, some entrails" becomes "suol-ta", while "from [a|the] swamp" becomes "suo-lta". Both of course spelled without the hyphen I put in here for illustrative purposes, and "suolta" pronounced identically in both cases. But still, which would a Czar need saving from -- a swamp, or someone's gut?!? So, TL;DR: IMO the subtitles are somewhat weak on concluding the correct wording from context. Oh, and I can't access your link at all. Locked/blocked/taken down? Perhaps there's a time limit on this ghostbin thingy? [EDIT:] Changed my somewhat un-charitable "the translation is far from perfect" to "not quite": They got "Laiska Jaakko" ("Lazy Jacob"[2]) --> "Jacob de la Gardie" right[3], bravo! [/EDIT] ___ [1]: https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1114 https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1114 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_la_Gardie#Death_and_legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_la_Gardie#Death_and_l... [3]: https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1553 https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1553

GrothendieckA 5y ago

[dead]

waihtis 5y ago
> He choses some (very cherry picking) facts and anecdotes from Russian history, cites them with factual mistakes, but he choses and interpretes them so they meet his theory. This is not scientific approach at all. Examples my friend, we need concrete examples. Otherwise this is like all other pro-Kreml astroturfing accounts which cry about Russia being misrepresented except they can never show any example exactly how they are being misrepresented. Simply arguing semantics of pravda and istina and then calling the lecture false doesn’t mean anything. And as it happens I read the Rob Lee article February 21st or 22nd in anticipation of the attack. Question to you is - how does it provide anything of a conflicting point to the lecture? Zelensky tries to distance Ukraine from Russian political interference, so its OK to raze the country to the ground because…???
CRConrad 5y ago
> These two articles will be more insightful than (sorry) any made up theories from Finnish intelligence colonel. Or, as people used to languages with articles would be more likely to say, from a Finnish intelligence colonel. (You know, Slavic languages' lack of the articles make really easy spot native speakers write English.)