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I'm not at all clear on what Putin gains with expansion. Russia has way more land than they need. Their population has been flat since the 80s. Their military i
by imglorp 5mo ago
I'm not at all clear on what Putin gains with expansion. Russia has way more land than they need. Their population has been flat since the 80s. Their military is already depleted and skeletal. Anyone who's played Diplomacy understands that if you spread too thin as you expand into your neighbors, they will keep taking back your gains like we see here. Complete occupation is clearly out of the question at this point, they're going to keep fighting over a stolen sliver here and there. No ego has been satisfied here, nor will it be.
- pjc50 5mo agoOn the other hand, it is extremely Russian to not surrender no matter how badly it is going and regardless of the cost in human life. Leningrad, Stalingrad, even burning Moscow to keep it from Napoleon. For nationalist purposes, it doesn't matter if the objective is worthless or unachievable. Like so many other situations, we have to wait for him to die.
- NordStreamYacht 5mo agoWait for whom to die?
- everdrive 5mo agoAccording to Peter Zeihan, it's not so much that Russia needs more _land_ but that its current land is difficult to defend militarily given the facts of its geography. I'm not necessarily defending Zeihan's view, but simply claiming that there is some analysis which suggests there's a strategic benefit for Russia here. (or perhaps there would have been back when they thought the war would be easy) And let's also not forget the importance of Crimea with regard to Black Sea shipping. It's also the case the the "Kievan Rus" has quite a bit of historical and cultural importance to some in Russia. Now to be clear I'm completely opposed to the war in Ukraine, and I'm quite happy to see Russia getting pushed back. My hope would be that Ukraine takes back all of its remaining territory. But, I think there are at least some justifications that could have made sense for someone who thought the war would be easy, and who did not care about the human cost either side would bear.
- mopsi 5mo agoZeihan is a strange guy who seems to take a lot of his information from online discourse, which is a poor substitute for first-hand knowledge. The ground truth is very blunt: Russia has not bothered to install even a chain-link fence along its European border. Some sections have a sand strip to detect crossings, others not even that, most of it looks like this: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/misc/FIRU/DSCN2375.JPG https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/misc/FIRU/DSCN237... Mushroomers and other foragers often get lost and end up walking into Russia (and vice versa) without even realizing it. This is such a regular occurrence that it receives only warning or a small fine, and a few sentences in local newspapers. A counterexample comes from post-2022 Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland: every single one of them is digging anti-tank trenches along the border with Russia, installing everything from surveillance systems to reinforced bunkers and pillboxes, preparing minefields to be laid and bridges to be blown up. Things have gone so far that some of them are discussing dismantling railway lines connecting with Russia to prevent them from being used by invading forces. No such preparations can be seen on the Russian side of the border, because in the post-Cold War world, everyone recognizes that an attack from Europe is a delusional fantasy. There's no will and no means for that.
- 5mo ago
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoWhat Putin gained was not having a culturally-adjacent country next door with a functioning democracy. That was a threat, not to Russia, but to Putin. He couldn't accept that, because Russians might get ideas about how their culture didn't require a strongman at the top in order to function.
- rchaud 5mo agoDemocracies aren't automatically immune to voting in illiberal leaders. Russia and the west have both been heavy handed in their efforts to swing Ukrainian elections in their favour.
- selivanovp 5mo ago[flagged]
- ponector 5mo agoI hope you got paid well for your comments, promoting putin's narratives. A fact: Zelenski as well as his predecessor Poroshenko came into the office not by coup, but were elected by Ukrainian people.
- sam_lowry_ 5mo ago> What Putin gains with expansion Personal survival. He needed a war to justify the dismantling of the remaining democratic institutions. That the war lasts plays in his personal interests also. P.S. Don't forget that he is 73 years old.
- thewinnie 5mo agoExactly this. Putin been killing civilians back from 2001. This diagram cleary shows that together with propaganda machine you can drastically shift population opinion https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28383.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28383.jpeg. Simply, they underestimate how much Ukraine is able to resist.
- Zigurd 5mo agoAgriculture, industry, even more oil and gas, a pretty big economy and population, a better climate than most of Russia. And a place at the center of Europe instead of the periphery. Without Ukraine, and probably soon without Transnistria, and maybe even Belarus, Russia can be quarantined and contained. Eventually the Russians will decide they want to be more European than they want to be North Korea.
- fabian2k 5mo agoWhy assume it's rational? The Ukraine belonged to the USSR, Russia sees itself as the legitimate successor to the Soviet Union. So the Ukraine and the Baltic states belong to it, as far as Putin sees it.
- sam_lowry_ 5mo agoBy the same logic, US belongs to the crown.
- BadBadJellyBean 5mo agoNo one says there is any logic behind it.
- Ancapistani 5mo agoYes, and the War of 1812 happened. The US grew too strong to be plausibly taken by the UK.
- red-iron-pine 5mo agoit belonged to the tsar before that. moscow always called the shots in kyev and they prefer to keep that going. also don't underestimate the black sea access and the pan-slavic, pan-orthodox "3rd rome" thing -- those also shape perception.
- general1465 5mo ago> pan-slavic Panslavism has died in 19th century when other slavic states figured out that it is just different name for Russian empire. Then panslavism was revived after 1945 as Eastern Block. It has been an economical disaster.
- selivanovp 5mo agoUkraine war has never been about more land or resources for Russia. It was all about NATO expansion by overthrowing governments in post soviet countries and installing hostile regimes there. For Russia an independent Ukraine was fine as long as it doesn't join a hostile military block, and that's exactly what was planned to do since the coup in Kiev in 2014. So we have war.
- Gud 5mo agoTotal nonsense. The “NATO expansion” so often mentioned by Russian apologists, are free nations correctly observing they are more safe against their past oppressor by joining NATO. Russia is a bully, and smaller nations are strong together. For Russian leadership, an independent Ukraine was fine as long as Ukrainian leadership was controlled by Kremlin. As soon as Ukraine started moving towards the west, Russia invaded.
- red-iron-pine 5mo agothere is land and there is land. most of the russian land is frozen tundra, and even if global warming improves that slightly it'll still be mostly to largely useless. crimea, meanwhile, is a highly desirable warm water port that has been the subject of many conflicts throughout the ages. ukraine is a breadbasket and produces 40%-50% of the food of all of russia but with 3.5% of the land. a considerable number of soviet era heavy industry was there, such as the azon steel plant, and it is the gateway to europe, the black sea, and anatolia.