I agree. Russia should have been rebuilt after the Cold War like Germany was after WWII.
And where did that go? To create oligarchs.
They didn’t want nor ask for our help rebuilding. I’m not sure how you think we’d have been able to rebuild them like Germany was rebuilt after WWII…Germany was a defeated and occupied country, they had no choice in being rebuilt or having their government reformed into what the allies wanted (democracy in the west, communism in the east). Russia wasn’t in a similar position, and the US wasn’t in a similar position to rebuild it. Merely to work with it to try and help as we could. Which we did, to an extent.
The thing that really annoys me is, I was saying that at the time.
Of course, at the time, I was also just some punk kid in University, so no one listened to me, but it seemed obvious to me. I trusted Gorbachev, because he started from a position of near-total power, as Premier of the USSR, and then actually gave away a lot of that power, because he realized that this was the only way there was any hope of revitalizing the USSR as a modern state.
Fucking Yeltsin sneaks in, becomes the darling of the Western Powers (for some goddamned reason?), and all the while Gorbachev is giving up power, Yeltsin is gathering it. Yeltsin didn’t give a crap about anything other than his own power, and his screw ups lead directly to Putin taking power.
TL;DR: Fuck Yeltsin.
I visited Russia in the mid-90s and again a couple of years ago. The transformation is amazing. It’s like turning Detroit into Singapore.
It would be hard to visit the country and think that money didn’t go into rebuilding the country. I’m sure that some of the oligarchs made their money through crime and corruption but, realistically, I expect that most of them simply ran a successful business. Russia has a lot of oil and a lot of software developers. Those are both good businesses.
I think it’s time to start asking if Ukraine is going to continue fighting from western Ukraine after Kyiv falls, and if Zelenskyy, around whom much of this remarkable resistance seems to orbit, will be willing to relocate his headquarters to Lviv or somewhere near to continue directing the war.
The problem is that it’s one thing to slow an invader, and something else to try to retake land. That requires a more comprehensive combined arms approach - you need substantial mobile warfare assets. Armor, transport, artillery, mobile AA and air support.
I’m also wondering what Russia will do. Call for a ceasefire or keep moving West? The latter seems immensely stupid to me but invading was immensely stupid.
Mm, cynicism. That’s what gets me up in the morning.
No, they made their money because Russia sold off state assets at rock-bottom prices. With the high approval and active encouragement of the America’s neo-liberal establishment.
But I’ll leave it there, because this is getting off topic. If you’re interested in discussing Russia’s path after the Cold War, it’s a large subject in itself and should go into a new thread.
They definitely should be looking at defending further west, and I hope they have plans for how to pull their forces back in good order from the southeastern pocket. My WAG on Zelenskyy is he won’t pull back but will stay in Kyiv. It’s not a smart decision, but I think it’s the emotional one that will resonate with Ukrainians. You have to remember that not long ago polls to Ukrainians about their government were extremely low for all branches. That has changed (it’s skyrocketed in fact…I think Zelenskyy is polling over 90% right now). But a lot of that is because of what he is doing. I think that he probably thinks if he falls back it could all come apart.
Well, my earlier WAG was that they would take all of eastern Ukraine to the Dnieper, as well as the eastern part of Kyiv, then halt to see what terms they could or would get. I still think that’s what the original plan was, but that’s before events might have overtaken them in Putin’s mind. He might be in the mind to go all in and try and take all of Ukraine unless they completely surrender. I will say, it’s going to be increasingly difficult for Russia to support thrusts into western Ukraine, especially when their current logistics is having such issues. That was and is a bit of a surprise, at least to me that they have been having so many issues with this.
This is correct, start a new thread for anything further.
Of course, there may be little resistance left to fight through if Ukraine cannot withdraw effectively. The loss of Kyiv is going to make it awfully hard to save anything in eastern Ukraine.
Putin, meanwhile, has put his country’s head in a tiger’s jaws. Occupying Ukraine will keep Russia a pariah, and if he’s worried about NATO, this makes Russia far more vulnerable to NATO, not less - closer to NATO forces, and western Ukraine would basically be a huge salient with NATO on three sides.
I agree. I don’t think things are panning out the way Putin dreamed they would. That said, I also agree that Russia could win a decisive victory on the battlefield, and if they do it would be fairly pointless to defend west…except maybe for Ukraine to push for the best terms they can get.
I don’t get the reference.
It looks like Russia is eventually going to prevail, and that NATO/USA does not intend to intervene directly.
So my question is: Have we done everything possible for the Ukrainians short of actual fighting for them? We’ve given them munitions, supplies, surely the best intel 24/7, ammo, and volunteers are coming in, and it’s hard to think of any other non-direct-intervention thing the rest of the world could do that it hasn’t done, and yet all of that is probably still not going to suffice.
It’s a US television commercial from the 1970s. The father finds drugs in his son’s room and demands to know where he learned to use drugs.
Horatius’s point being that Russia learned about having a country fall into the hands of kleptocrats by looking at the West.
Well, we’ve done everything possible within the constraints, especially those before the fighting started, we could. It would have been nice if Germany had lifted their disruption of arms to Ukraine prior to the fighting, but they have done so now, even sending them their own weapons. Many other nations have sent aid both military and medical. The US has been and continues to share intelligence with Ukraine, so they have a really good picture of the battlefield.
There isn’t a lot more we can do at this point except to continue to give them what aid we can and see what happens. That, and continue to ramp up the sanctions and make sure we follow through with them or even take them up a few more notches when/if Ukraine falls.
I agree, … i think the russians will die a death of a 1000 cuts. (I do not doubt that they will prevail fighting, but at what cost → phyrrus-triumph)
Putin must be prepared to receive copious daily shipments of Russian youth in big black bags. And once the Russian Mothers start to organize - and do a grassroots campaign against war from within - then its over. And shooting at elderly women in mourning never came across as classy.
I don’t think there is any WIN in here for the russians at all.
best case scenario: they will muddle through to get out there in a couple of months/years without anything to show for, just like afghanistan. Tough titties if other states in russia are starting to revolt … they have no money nor resources to fight at 2 or 3 places when his own pants are on fire.
I think you meant “Pyrrhic victory” here.
I completely agree … if anything else, russia is only the catalyst for europe to get out of dinosaur energy …
at the drop of the hat, germany took up the challenge and will be 100% renewable energy in 13 years … that will take a lot of geopolitical relevancy off russia and the middle east …
that goes nicely with getting out of ICE cars and into electrics, as well - same process, same narrative
Putin is the “salesman of the month” for NATO memberships and renewable energy … whothavetought??
It’s too late, even if not too little. Had the West started pouring aid in like this six months ago, maybe. (It’s not even clear Ukraine would at that time have accepted this amount of military aid.)
On short notice you can outfit guys with things like rockets, guns, and other small arms. That’s great for hurting an army on the advance. What you can’t do is create whole formations, systems of command and control, or introduce complex weapons platforms like new aircraft, tanks, or large scale AA. I’ve seen people online say “let’s give them A-10s!!!1!” but that takes a LONG time. People must be trained to fly them, fix them, and service them, and A-10s use ammunition and weapons the Ukrainians do not possess, so now you need to bring those in. Oh, and A-10s are near-helpless unless you have air superiority so what did you do to equip Ukraine to have that?
Even just having the people available TO train is a big deal. Handing an AK-74 or a rocket launcher to a civilian doesn’t make them a soldier. It makes them a civilian with a gun and a rocket launcher. do they have proper field gear? Camo? Protective gear? Radios? Do they know anything about the relevant doctrine? Do you have the systems in place to get them ammo? Food? Fuel? Shit, they don’t have uniforms. I am 100% certain some of these guys have already shot each other.
I’ve been a professional soldier. We spent most of our time learning. You learn, learn, learn and train, train, train. It is, basically, your job; the time you spend on actual deployment is a fraction of the time spent training. Militaries are wildly complex things and the skills needed are great in number but absolutely critical. Sergei can’t learn this stuff in four hours.