Officially it is primarily over Sweden and Finland’s refusal to extradite some members of who they claim are PKK, which is tied into the dispute over whether the YPG is a PKK front. Also there are claims that they are supporting the group in some fashion with arms and money, which those countries deny and again may relate to the PKK/YPG dichotomy. Turkey claims to have found Swedish ant-tank weaponry in a raid on PKK stores. Sweden in particular has a small Kurdish population, most of whom originally fled or are descended from people who fled Turkey.
Erdogan has recently been trying to enhance his political standing by cracking down on the PKK once again and Sweden/Finland play into that narrative. The other thing he might be angling for is some quid pro quo like US fighter sales, which had become a political hot potato after Turkey bought some Russian S-400 missile systems (a purchase order for 100 F-35s got cancelled over that). Just recently he has asked for 40 upgraded F-16s, plus upgrade kits for 80 more aircraft already in inventory.
The Kurds are a nation whose people do not have a nation state. They live in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Each of those states regard some Kurdish organisations a threat to their sovereignty, especially Turkey.
Turkey is objecting to Sweden and Finland joining NATO unless they expel Kurdish refugee organisations that Turkey regards as terrorists threatening the Turkish state. I expect there are also some people involved in the attempted coup in Turkey that may be refugees in those countries.
I expect there will be some horse trading, bribery and arm twisting until a deal is done.
Turkey is a key poker player in the geopolitics of Syria/Iraq and now Ukraine/Russia conflict as well as being in NATO. But it’s domestic economy is in a dire condition. This NATO intrigue may be a useful distraction.
Institute of War sums up Russian gains as of May 26.
We can only hope this is similar to the Battle of the Bulge. Where Germany mustered one last major offensive and collapsed.
Russia is no where near collapse, but they may not be able to mount a huge offensive like this for awhile.
Don’t even think about giving Russia a bloody nose. They’re bombing Ukraine cities into dust and getting away with it. I agree that only high value Russian military assets should be targeted.
This article ties in with the Reuters article. I understand there’s legitimate concern about hitting Russian cities. Civilian casualities would create a extremely dangerous situation.
The MLRS system would be a game changer. Ukraine could destroy Russian artillery positions that are pulverizing Ukraine cities.
This isn’t a couple of cnn commentators making allegations. I’m familiar with Raoul Wallenberg. He was a Swedish businessman/diplomat that saved Jews from the Holocaust. Most likely arrested
& murdered by the KGB. The center is dedicated to continuing his work.
It is WWII all over again and I’m not sure what can be done?
I’ve seen multiple reports of Ukrainian children sent to Russia. I assume for re-education and to make them Russian?
Because it would feed the Russian narrative that this war is about NATO vs Russia, rather than an it being an empire-building land grab.
If NATO is performing a world policeman role, than it cannot be argued that it is a purely defensive alliance, for mutual assistance in the event of a member state being attacked. It is instead an alliance of shared national security interests, and that seems like mission creep from its originally-stated role. A country joining a purely defensive alliance is a different thing politically than a country joining an alliance that might get involved in other selectively-chosen hotspots outside the borders of that alliance without a member state having been attacked.
So I can see advantages in keeping the defensive alliance and world policeman entities distinct from each other. At the very least, NATO’s job description would need to be updated.
The NYT has a good series of maps showing the reduction of Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine (gift article, so should be accessible to all). The writer of the accompanying article seems to think that this likely will be Russia’s last major offensive since they do not have the personnel to do more.
For as strongly as Article 5 is cited as NATO’s reason to be, NATO has undertaken at least a few armed intervention campaigns that had no discernible connection to mutual self-defense. (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Libya come to immediate mind.)
There’s ample precedent for NATO to undertake robust armed intervention, even to the extent of “going to war.” Just never against a nuclear power, and especially not against the forces of the successor state to the Soviet Union.
Who is listening to the Russian narrative? Any countries likely to be swayed by it? Putin doesn’t even bother with a narrative any more. He just does whatever his anger demands.
The Russian people, as well as all the Russian officials below Putin. Their support or non-support for the war might turn out to be a decisive factor in the outcome.
You are missing my point. The Russian narrative is untethered to anything NATO says or does. The Russian people hear only what Putin wants them to hear. If Putin wants NATO to say something provocative, that is what he tells them, whether it is true or not. If Putin needs justification for new aggression, he simply fabricates it. Putin is not waiting with bated breath for NATO to slip up and say something that gives him cover to be a monster. Putin acts, and justifies it after the fact, with a backstory invented to support his aggression. NATO is irrelevant to Putin’s narrative.
I’ll just note this post that I made in January (before the invasion):
I was wrong in my expectation that Putin would try to avoid an outright war. Whether I was right that attacking Kyiv was just a distraction / hail mary pass remains to be proved one way or the other, some decades from now. But certainly it’s imaginable - since I did imagine it - that the battle in the North was never a primary focus of the attack and was, almost purely, a diversion.
And, in that sense, the war wouldn’t be shrinking. Maybe it would cover less territory but a million troops across 100 miles of land isn’t more peaceful than a million troops in 20 miles of land.
Likewise, if Russia has taken and is holding Melitopol, and Ukraine isn’t attacking it any more, then that would also not be a part of the war at the moment. In that case, the war is shrinking, not because Russia is losing, but because they won that battle and the new border has (for the moment) solidified in that region.
As you say history will judge. But based on the imperfect information we have, I rather doubt it. If the idea was to distract from the Donbas region, the thrust should have been made around Kyiv first to try and draw out the substantial Ukrainian forces deployed in the east. Instead the attacks were de facto simultaneous - the larger part of the Ukrainian army was pinned in place in the east, exactly where Russia wouldn’t want them if the Donbas were the entire goal and Kyiv a feint.
I strongly suspect the analysts that have come to the conclusion that Putin simply overreached are correct. He thought Ukraine was a house of cards that would buckle under the initial shock and the Ukrainian forces in the east could be effectively encircled while the Ukraine government was simultaneously neutralized. Since that ploy failed and lacking the combat power to concentrate on every front, he has re-consolidated and is trying to go for the consolation prize. We shall see how that plays out.
Everything I’ve read points to Putin wanting to decapitate the Ukrainian government, thus the attack on Kyiv (and it sounds like he came pretty close to achieving that objective). If he’d been successful, things would be in a very different place now.
I saw a longer version earlier today. Insiders think the West’s attention and support will dry up. Making another attack on the Ukrainian government possible.
Russia would be attacking Kyiv with an even more spent-and-broken invasion force than last time, going up against even better prepared Ukrainian defense, with even better weapons, thus losing even more troops.
I mean, I’m all in favor of it. 30,000 more dead Russians sounds like a swell idea.
In other news, the U.S. just regrew a tiny bit of spine and may send a bit of HIMARS to Ukraine.
