When you don’t allow your strongest opponents to run, you order the stuffing of ballot boxes, and you engage in other election monkeyshines, you don’t have to worry about what would benefit you in the next election.
I wonder what offer that could be.
BTW: One of the reasons Putin did not lean on Lukaschenko to become an active asset is that he did not need him. Just his existence, like the existence of Kazachstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgistan and all the other corrupt Former Soviet Republics were a second hand justification of his regime strong enough to not have to interfere too brazenly. Now I don’t know whether he needs Belarus or not, but he seems to have decided he does, tactically.
BTW: Kazachstan had bad troubles four weeks ago and Putin sent troops to re-instate the local despot President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (yes! I can get away with this!!! Like with Lukaschenko! A good dictator is the dictator that stays in power!), but yesterday when Putin asked for his troops he refused:
That is, I hope, revealing.
I dispute the premise that Putin was ever rational.
He has a kind of ruthless cunning, shared with all autocrats. He has an intuition about the pressure points that people respond to, and a complete willingness to apply them, regardless of ethics or morality or humanity.
But rationality requires, above all else, a kind of introspection. You must pit ideas against each other, be willing to accept that your ideas are wrong, accept outside input, look at all available evidence, and so on. It’s a slow and imperfect process and still doesn’t always get you what you want. An autocrat’s cunning is impulsive and based on getting a read of a situation. I don’t think Putin has a single speck of introspection in him.
It works, until it doesn’t. Getting an accurate read also requires good information, but the autocrat doesn’t know this; they trust their instinct but don’t know how that instinct operates. They isolate themselves, and their intuition doesn’t work as well, but they’re told otherwise and wouldn’t believe anyone that said they were making bad decisions anyway.
Putin has said he doesn’t want a return of the Soviet Union, but I don’t think that means he doesn’t want a new Russian Empire–what he wants only differs in the details. It’s complete and utter lunacy, of course. It’s not possible or desirable. He’s had over two decades to give Russia a soft landing into being a respected regional power. They have immense natural resources and a well-educated population. They cannot turn into a China or US, but they could have been well on their way to being a respectable European nation. Instead, Putin focused solely on becoming a petrostate and funnelled the proceeds to oligarchs.
The sad irony for me is that one of the true, indisputable glories of the Soviet Union was their space program. Many firsts, and no small number of “onlys” (for instance, they are still the only nation to take pictures from the surface of Venus). But Putin put an absolute moron in charge of their program, cut funding, and now it is nearly a laughingstock. It’s an incredible fall from their start. Putin doesn’t seem to care–he has some vision of glory that is at odds with their actual record.
That’s probably it.
“I’m so crazy I might shoot off nuclear missiles unless you stop thwarting me”.
Well according to Putin NATO leaders are talking bad about the Russian attack on the Ukraine and he feels threatened. So escalating the nuke threat is 100% logical.
Yep, Putin might be another Stable Genius at this point.
Yeah, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the Russians seem to be to an extent “pulling their punches”. Probably because of the expectation…
IIRC the last time armored columns were rolling across the Dniepr plain in anger, a prediction along those lines was also made that did not age well…
Exactly the reference I was thinking of when I wrote that…
This, more than anything else, is what tells me that the spin about Russian troops not being as effective as expected is more accurate. Reaching so soon for the big weapons is a sign to me that the Russians may win in the end, but now it looks more like a Pyrrhic victory.
I just hope Putin isn’t holed up in his office, doing lines of coke while watching the last few minutes of “Scarface” on DVD.
“Say hello to my little friend!”
I’m very fearful of what this asshole is willing to do if his back is really up against the wall. Especially if he’s pretty sure they’re about to line him up against the wall for a 21 gun salute.
FWIW, a freelance designer in Russia I do business with just sent me an email prefaced with, “As I’m sure you’re aware, our president just went nuts and invaded Ukraine…” Collecting payment from her mostly Western clientele is going to be a challenge and she’s really pissed. I think it’s safe to say a large number of Putin’s countrymen think he’s crazy.
According to the EU foreign policy chief, most of the reserves of the Russian central bank….are out of reach of the EU and the western aliased, since Czar Vlad has been moving them out for the past year.
Yeah, I figured that was the case, and I’m sure it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
As you note, we disagree. But I don’t see this as an unachievable plan. The United States certainly has installed plenty of compliant dictators and Russia has as well.
How well can that work if NATO is giving every bit of intel we can gather to Ukraine?
Not to you or me but apparently it did surprise EU leaders since they had the “latest” figure, which showed about half held overseas. Unfortunately that was correct till last June 30.
Indeed.
https://twitter.com/mapsukraine/status/1498126799343083528?s=21
Kyiv is close to being encircled and Ukraine is fast becoming a landlocked country. The strategic picture has been getting grimer by the day
Surely if they thought Ukraine was that fragile, they would have used fast and concentrated forces?
The man who made the originals observation certainly did.
From the Guardian:
More Cannae on a regional scale.
Encircling Kiev doesn’t mean the war is over. Stalingrad was encircled for months. Unless Russia conjures up enough troops to occupy the entire country, they’re going to be fighting for years.