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As I've argued before, the issue here is that invading Ukraine doesn't really make any sense from the Russian perspective. They've lost so much money in trade,

As I've argued before, the issue here is that invading Ukraine doesn't really make any sense from the Russian perspective. They've lost so much money in trade, their army is shattered, their soft-power is in shambles, and they've pissed off even the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine that used to view them as friends. This is why there was a lot of dissension in the West over a year ago about whether the Russians would invade- people who looked at the actual Russian actions kept saying 'it looks like they are getting ready to invade' but people who focused on whether it was a good idea or not kept saying that it would be a terrible idea to invade, and gain them nothing, so they weren't going to do it. So given that Kremlin decision-making clearly does not seem like it is well thought-through, I'm very wary of this particular argument. Of course their decision-making might not make sense. Not that this proves their guilt, of course. As one analyst I saw put it, all of the stories for who planted the bombs seem weak, but one of them necessarily has to be true.

mikrotikker 4y ago
> the issue here is that invading Ukraine doesn't really make any sense from the Russian perspective. It makes perfect sense for Russia to invade, what are you talking about? In one sense its the death throws of a dying nation, in the other its logical national protection of a vital resource - energy. A few questions for you: - Did you know in 2012 lots of oil and gas was found under Crimea and Donbas? And that US company Shell was preparing to extract it? - Did you know about the vicious fighting at Stalingrad in WW2 and why the fighting was so vicious? - Have you heard of "the Volgograd Gap"? - Have you heard of South Ossetia (and the one next to it, starts with a) and why there was a proxy conflict with the USA in the 2000's there? The Volgograd gap is the bit of land between Ukraine and the Caspian Sea. All of Moscows energy flows through there. The city used to be called Stalingrad. It also allows Russia access to its separatist regions in its neighbour Georgia. Those separatist regions put Russia within striking distance of a) the major Georgian port and b) the Georgian capital Tblisi. Guess who tried to join NATO in the 2000s? Georgia. Zelenskyys second in command is a great geopolitican and he knew this invasion was coming because he knew it was inevitable. There is multiple interviews with him saying as much, and also that they pooh-pooh'd the idea of a Russian invasion to buy time. He knew part of Russias plan was to scare the Ukrainian populace eastward, frustrating the Ukrainians armies effort to reach the front, hence they had to keep even their citizens in the dark to have a fighting chance. There are other reasons that make this make sense, such as the fact that Russia is facing a demographic crisis thanks to communism gutting it, the Minsk accords being broken, and some other stuff. I recommend you watch docos and info pieces from the following people to avoid making such silly remarks again: - RealLifeLore - Whatifalthist - CaspianReport - Good Times Bad Times - S2 Underground None of this makes what Russia did and is doing OK by any means, but it explains why they did it.
- mikrotikker 4y ago
  And Perun
xyzelement 4y ago
I think Russians can articulate a logical reason for the war: in their perception, Ukraine was becoming unacceptably close to the West/NATO and they took a gamble to prevent it. Whether the gamble will pay off, we'll see. But I can follow the logic - risk for a chance at upside. What's the upside of blowing up your own pipeline and then denying it?
- mandevil 4y ago
  I mean, I can tell a just-so-story as well. It's just that, like your explanation, it involves Putin making what seems to me to be a dumb decision. Some parts of game theory emphasizes ostentatious signaling that you can't turn back (e.g. 'win the game of chicken by clearly throwing your steering wheel out of the car before the game starts, so the other person KNOWS you can't turn' line of reasoning, which is stupid but some people occasionally try- the most famous successful example is of course Cortes burning his ships). In support of that, it's possible Putin was afraid of a coup: shortly before the invasion, he made each and every member of the cabinet get up on national TV (recorded to tape and broadcast a few hours later) and give a speech about why the war was a great idea and just the thing for Russia, that seems consistent with preventing an anti-war clique from trying to seize power if the war became unpopular, because you had everyone even close to power on the record, before the war, as major cheerleaders for it. If Shoigu or Lavrov or whomever try to seize power in a coup, banking on ending an unpopular war to give them legitimacy, they have to explain away those speeches and their full-throated support of the war back in 2/2022. Similarly, ostentatiously destroying the pipelines in a way that will take months to fix even if you wanted to removes the ability of a coup to win goodwill and legitimacy with Europe by immediately turning on the pipeline and letting the CH4 flow. Is it what motivated the bombing? I don't know. Does Putin fear a coup by his senior people? I mean in the vague sense that all dictators are aware that it's a threat, certainly. But is he actually taking steps to prevent it? I dunno. Is this explanation plausible? I dunno, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. Is it just as plausible as the US or Poland or Norway or Ukraine or even Germany blowing up the pipeline? That I do think is a clear yes. Which is why I paraphrased that analyst before, none of the explanations really seem plausible, but one of them has to be true.
  - 4y ago
kornhole 4y ago
There is a lot missing from this account such as: The US promising not to expand NATO beyond Germany. The Maidan coup in 2014. The Minsk agreement where Kiev agreed to stop bombing the Donbas but has still killed over 14K people doing so. The Ruble is strong and Russia's GDP will grow more than the UK this year.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  21 people were killed in the Donbas in the year prior to Russia starting a war of aggression, mostly by mines.
- jakeinspace 4y ago
  The US made no such official promise. Apparently not even unofficially, Gorbachev denied that Clinton ever made that personal promise.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    They were informal assurances. Jeffrey Sachs was there at the time. https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/gafr872ellaha3wpjhpfylc6lcx68j https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/gafr872ellaha3w...
  - anlsh 4y ago
    You're wrong. There was indeed never anything "official", but high-level diplomats (such as the US Secretary of State) did promise as much behind closed doors. See https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
    - joshsyn 4y ago
      [dead]
- hndamien 4y ago
  Don't forget the US breach of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the Defensive Alliance NATO (and Clinton) deposing Ghadafi after he got rid of his nukes.
jrsj 4y ago
[flagged]
thoewiruoi2343 4y ago
[flagged]
- ninjagoo 4y ago
  > Russia should've done what it's doing in 2014, and saved many more people in the process. Somehow I doubt Russia's political goals have ever been to save peoples in the collective sense. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Death_toll [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Humanitarian_impact_and_war_crimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Humanitaria... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War#Human_rights_and_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War#Human_right... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Humanitarian_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...
thephyber 4y ago
Agree with most of your conclusion. Too many people are making assumptions that governments are giant monocultures that have all departments rowing in the same direction and don’t have some actors with perverse incentives. Nobody in any large organization would realistically make these assumptions. My take on the war stems from a few facts that I now assume are true: - RU has publicly stated multiple conflicting reasons for invading UA. - RU doesn’t incentivize honest and open discussion about intelligence, risks, readiness, etc so intelligence analysts are probably scared to speak truth to their bosses. I remember reading a FB post son after the invasion that claimed an FSB/GRU analyst said as much in a Telegram channel (obviously unverifiable). - RU’s capabilities have atrophied and are hampered by corruption of their military / industry - RU isn’t a healthy society; it is largely dominated by wealthy energy magnates (and the politicians/military that enable them) It’s possible, but not guaranteed that a nation state destroyed the pipeline. I’m curious what the possibilities are about an energy company that rivals Gazprom could/would destroy a rival’s distribution channel. Gazprom was already running those lines below capacity because of “turbine maintenance” issues. That only complaint I have with your comment is the last sentence. It’s possible that none of the popular narratives are correct.
spurgu 4y ago
Ukraine had signed the Minsk agreements only to buy time to build their military to NATO standards. Petro Poroshenko and Angela Merkel have admitted as much. With the US promised them backing they believed that they could be victorious even if Russia intervened. Armed with this information they were planning and preparing to take back Donbass by force. OSCE data shows increased activity and casualties on the Donbass side in the days leading up to the invasion. Remember how Ukraine was constantly pleading for a no-fly zone? They had likely been counting on it (false promises), that the US and NATO would jump in and give them the upper hand. At this point Russia couldn't really have let the ethnic Russians there lose and die in large numbers with the remainders getting assimilated through Ukrainization as this would've been quite a bad look back home (Russia has always protected ethnic Russians in other countries) and so it was more or less forced to act. The US knew this and still pushed for it. It was certainly not an unprovoked aggression. Remember Euromaidan where it was portrayed as all of Ukraine protesting? It was actually closer to a 50/50 split (population vote) between EU and the Russian customs union in late 2013. As for Russia losing much? Compared to Ukraine and Europe (who are the big losers here, Ukraine for obvious reasons and Europe financially and industrially) not so much at all. Since 2014, when the sanctions actually made a decent impact, Russia had spent all this time hardening their economy. Living standards of Russians hasn't really changed, aside from some foreign products that aren't available anymore and many already have Russian replacements. They have managed to switch their exports towards Asia and India (and actually made more profits than before). Sure there are things that will take time to adapt and will be costly in the long run but still nothing compared to the problems Europe is facing, barely managing to fill up its gas reserves for this winter.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  You make assertions to statements made by Merkel but give no links to back that up. OSCE data shows that 21 people were killed the year before invasion, mostly from mines. My friend that died fighting for Ukraine in this war called himself 'Russian from Ukraine' before the war, went to university in Moscow, spoke Russian, and loved Russia prior to the war and was helping this malinki chuvak learn Russian. He was sadly killed a few months ago but the ethnic Russian Ukrainians that I still know HATE Russia now. Russia has lost how many working age males to the surrounding counties in order to avoid the draft? But Russia isn't losing much? How is that not losing much? The mayor of Moscow is on record as saying Moscow was losing 200,000 jobs from western companies leaving(2% of the population of Moscow). This was the winter to impact Europe. By next winter Europe will have plenty of alternatives. Even with blowing up the pipeline and trying to create market uncertainty that would drive up prices to cause Europe pain, Europe survived this winter (the largest hurdle).
shagie 4y ago
> As I've argued before, the issue here is that invading Ukraine doesn't really make any sense from the Russian perspective. In the mode of lay person channeling Russian leadership... Russia is facing a demographic crisis. Their population pyramid is going the wrong way ( https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2020/ ). They are on the path of losing population. What's more, the ethic Russians are declining faster than others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia#Future_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia#Future... > The ethnic demographic mix of the Russian Federation is projected to change far into the future. The majority population, ethnic Russians, who have been in slight decline since the 1950's will decline further due to a below replacement fertility rate and population ageing. In 2010, rough population projections from Ivan Beloborodov projecting to 2030 estimated that the percentage of Russians within the population would decrease to around 70 to 60% of the total population. So... how do you fix this? You appropriate a country that is ethnically similar to Russia. If this isn't done willingly, while acting as an occupying force, you deport (import?) the children to Russia which could have the effect of delaying the fertility decline of ethic Russians. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156500561/russia-ukraine-children-deportation-possible-war-crime-report https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156500561/russia-ukraine-chi... I fully admit that this is a just so story ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story ) for the reasoning behind Russia's policy towards Ukraine. It is a last ditch attempt by a the ethnic group in power to prop up its future majority in a country that is losing people and if nothing is done to rectify its future will become an (even more) sparsely populated petro-state fracturing on ethic lines where the current leadership would be in the minority... and eghads is that ever a run on sentence.

mikrotikker 4y ago

> the issue here is that invading Ukraine doesn't really make any sense from the Russian perspective. It makes perfect sense for Russia to invade, what are you talking about? In one sense its the death throws of a dying nation, in the other its logical national protection of a vital resource - energy. A few questions for you: - Did you know in 2012 lots of oil and gas was found under Crimea and Donbas? And that US company Shell was preparing to extract it? - Did you know about the vicious fighting at Stalingrad in WW2 and why the fighting was so vicious? - Have you heard of "the Volgograd Gap"? - Have you heard of South Ossetia (and the one next to it, starts with a) and why there was a proxy conflict with the USA in the 2000's there? The Volgograd gap is the bit of land between Ukraine and the Caspian Sea. All of Moscows energy flows through there. The city used to be called Stalingrad. It also allows Russia access to its separatist regions in its neighbour Georgia. Those separatist regions put Russia within striking distance of a) the major Georgian port and b) the Georgian capital Tblisi. Guess who tried to join NATO in the 2000s? Georgia. Zelenskyys second in command is a great geopolitican and he knew this invasion was coming because he knew it was inevitable. There is multiple interviews with him saying as much, and also that they pooh-pooh'd the idea of a Russian invasion to buy time. He knew part of Russias plan was to scare the Ukrainian populace eastward, frustrating the Ukrainians armies effort to reach the front, hence they had to keep even their citizens in the dark to have a fighting chance. There are other reasons that make this make sense, such as the fact that Russia is facing a demographic crisis thanks to communism gutting it, the Minsk accords being broken, and some other stuff. I recommend you watch docos and info pieces from the following people to avoid making such silly remarks again: - RealLifeLore - Whatifalthist - CaspianReport - Good Times Bad Times - S2 Underground None of this makes what Russia did and is doing OK by any means, but it explains why they did it.

mikrotikker 4y ago
And Perun

xyzelement 4y ago

I think Russians can articulate a logical reason for the war: in their perception, Ukraine was becoming unacceptably close to the West/NATO and they took a gamble to prevent it. Whether the gamble will pay off, we'll see. But I can follow the logic - risk for a chance at upside. What's the upside of blowing up your own pipeline and then denying it?

mandevil 4y ago
I mean, I can tell a just-so-story as well. It's just that, like your explanation, it involves Putin making what seems to me to be a dumb decision. Some parts of game theory emphasizes ostentatious signaling that you can't turn back (e.g. 'win the game of chicken by clearly throwing your steering wheel out of the car before the game starts, so the other person KNOWS you can't turn' line of reasoning, which is stupid but some people occasionally try- the most famous successful example is of course Cortes burning his ships). In support of that, it's possible Putin was afraid of a coup: shortly before the invasion, he made each and every member of the cabinet get up on national TV (recorded to tape and broadcast a few hours later) and give a speech about why the war was a great idea and just the thing for Russia, that seems consistent with preventing an anti-war clique from trying to seize power if the war became unpopular, because you had everyone even close to power on the record, before the war, as major cheerleaders for it. If Shoigu or Lavrov or whomever try to seize power in a coup, banking on ending an unpopular war to give them legitimacy, they have to explain away those speeches and their full-throated support of the war back in 2/2022. Similarly, ostentatiously destroying the pipelines in a way that will take months to fix even if you wanted to removes the ability of a coup to win goodwill and legitimacy with Europe by immediately turning on the pipeline and letting the CH4 flow. Is it what motivated the bombing? I don't know. Does Putin fear a coup by his senior people? I mean in the vague sense that all dictators are aware that it's a threat, certainly. But is he actually taking steps to prevent it? I dunno. Is this explanation plausible? I dunno, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. Is it just as plausible as the US or Poland or Norway or Ukraine or even Germany blowing up the pipeline? That I do think is a clear yes. Which is why I paraphrased that analyst before, none of the explanations really seem plausible, but one of them has to be true.
- 4y ago

kornhole 4y ago

There is a lot missing from this account such as: The US promising not to expand NATO beyond Germany. The Maidan coup in 2014. The Minsk agreement where Kiev agreed to stop bombing the Donbas but has still killed over 14K people doing so. The Ruble is strong and Russia's GDP will grow more than the UK this year.

ROTMetro 4y ago
21 people were killed in the Donbas in the year prior to Russia starting a war of aggression, mostly by mines.
jakeinspace 4y ago
The US made no such official promise. Apparently not even unofficially, Gorbachev denied that Clinton ever made that personal promise.
- kornhole 4y ago
  They were informal assurances. Jeffrey Sachs was there at the time. https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/gafr872ellaha3wpjhpfylc6lcx68j https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/gafr872ellaha3w...
- anlsh 4y ago
  You're wrong. There was indeed never anything "official", but high-level diplomats (such as the US Secretary of State) did promise as much behind closed doors. See https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
  - joshsyn 4y ago
    [dead]
hndamien 4y ago
Don't forget the US breach of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the Defensive Alliance NATO (and Clinton) deposing Ghadafi after he got rid of his nukes.

jrsj 4y ago

[flagged]

thoewiruoi2343 4y ago

[flagged]

ninjagoo 4y ago
> Russia should've done what it's doing in 2014, and saved many more people in the process. Somehow I doubt Russia's political goals have ever been to save peoples in the collective sense. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Death_toll [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Humanitarian_impact_and_war_crimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Humanitaria... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War#Human_rights_and_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War#Human_right... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Humanitarian_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...

thephyber 4y ago

Agree with most of your conclusion. Too many people are making assumptions that governments are giant monocultures that have all departments rowing in the same direction and don’t have some actors with perverse incentives. Nobody in any large organization would realistically make these assumptions. My take on the war stems from a few facts that I now assume are true: - RU has publicly stated multiple conflicting reasons for invading UA. - RU doesn’t incentivize honest and open discussion about intelligence, risks, readiness, etc so intelligence analysts are probably scared to speak truth to their bosses. I remember reading a FB post son after the invasion that claimed an FSB/GRU analyst said as much in a Telegram channel (obviously unverifiable). - RU’s capabilities have atrophied and are hampered by corruption of their military / industry - RU isn’t a healthy society; it is largely dominated by wealthy energy magnates (and the politicians/military that enable them) It’s possible, but not guaranteed that a nation state destroyed the pipeline. I’m curious what the possibilities are about an energy company that rivals Gazprom could/would destroy a rival’s distribution channel. Gazprom was already running those lines below capacity because of “turbine maintenance” issues. That only complaint I have with your comment is the last sentence. It’s possible that none of the popular narratives are correct.

spurgu 4y ago

Ukraine had signed the Minsk agreements only to buy time to build their military to NATO standards. Petro Poroshenko and Angela Merkel have admitted as much. With the US promised them backing they believed that they could be victorious even if Russia intervened. Armed with this information they were planning and preparing to take back Donbass by force. OSCE data shows increased activity and casualties on the Donbass side in the days leading up to the invasion. Remember how Ukraine was constantly pleading for a no-fly zone? They had likely been counting on it (false promises), that the US and NATO would jump in and give them the upper hand. At this point Russia couldn't really have let the ethnic Russians there lose and die in large numbers with the remainders getting assimilated through Ukrainization as this would've been quite a bad look back home (Russia has always protected ethnic Russians in other countries) and so it was more or less forced to act. The US knew this and still pushed for it. It was certainly not an unprovoked aggression. Remember Euromaidan where it was portrayed as all of Ukraine protesting? It was actually closer to a 50/50 split (population vote) between EU and the Russian customs union in late 2013. As for Russia losing much? Compared to Ukraine and Europe (who are the big losers here, Ukraine for obvious reasons and Europe financially and industrially) not so much at all. Since 2014, when the sanctions actually made a decent impact, Russia had spent all this time hardening their economy. Living standards of Russians hasn't really changed, aside from some foreign products that aren't available anymore and many already have Russian replacements. They have managed to switch their exports towards Asia and India (and actually made more profits than before). Sure there are things that will take time to adapt and will be costly in the long run but still nothing compared to the problems Europe is facing, barely managing to fill up its gas reserves for this winter.

ROTMetro 4y ago
You make assertions to statements made by Merkel but give no links to back that up. OSCE data shows that 21 people were killed the year before invasion, mostly from mines. My friend that died fighting for Ukraine in this war called himself 'Russian from Ukraine' before the war, went to university in Moscow, spoke Russian, and loved Russia prior to the war and was helping this malinki chuvak learn Russian. He was sadly killed a few months ago but the ethnic Russian Ukrainians that I still know HATE Russia now. Russia has lost how many working age males to the surrounding counties in order to avoid the draft? But Russia isn't losing much? How is that not losing much? The mayor of Moscow is on record as saying Moscow was losing 200,000 jobs from western companies leaving(2% of the population of Moscow). This was the winter to impact Europe. By next winter Europe will have plenty of alternatives. Even with blowing up the pipeline and trying to create market uncertainty that would drive up prices to cause Europe pain, Europe survived this winter (the largest hurdle).

shagie 4y ago

> As I've argued before, the issue here is that invading Ukraine doesn't really make any sense from the Russian perspective. In the mode of lay person channeling Russian leadership... Russia is facing a demographic crisis. Their population pyramid is going the wrong way ( https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2020/ ). They are on the path of losing population. What's more, the ethic Russians are declining faster than others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia#Future_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia#Future... > The ethnic demographic mix of the Russian Federation is projected to change far into the future. The majority population, ethnic Russians, who have been in slight decline since the 1950's will decline further due to a below replacement fertility rate and population ageing. In 2010, rough population projections from Ivan Beloborodov projecting to 2030 estimated that the percentage of Russians within the population would decrease to around 70 to 60% of the total population. So... how do you fix this? You appropriate a country that is ethnically similar to Russia. If this isn't done willingly, while acting as an occupying force, you deport (import?) the children to Russia which could have the effect of delaying the fertility decline of ethic Russians. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156500561/russia-ukraine-children-deportation-possible-war-crime-report https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156500561/russia-ukraine-chi... I fully admit that this is a just so story ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story ) for the reasoning behind Russia's policy towards Ukraine. It is a last ditch attempt by a the ethnic group in power to prop up its future majority in a country that is losing people and if nothing is done to rectify its future will become an (even more) sparsely populated petro-state fracturing on ethic lines where the current leadership would be in the minority... and eghads is that ever a run on sentence.