I think the non-NATO countries on Russia’s western border could create their own defensive NATO-style pact that isn’t NATO. That might be enough for Putin to claim he’s held off NATO whilst still allowing those nations to form some sort of security from Russia. However I think what Putin wants is more to do with having influence over them and less to do with the “threat” of NATO.
They would want both. They would absolutely want Russia dependent on them and backing them up whenever they want. And they have pretty obviously moved towards this. They want North Korea to be completely dependent because it’s a distraction when they need one for the west that takes the pressure and public view off of China. Russia is doing exactly the same thing, so that’s all to Beijing’s good. Both also provide raw materials and resources to China that it needs, so they don’t care if they are economic basket cases…they get iron, coal, oil, gas, and other raw materials which they need.
The west is highly unlikely to force China to do an either/or…either you stick with Russia (and North Korea) or you sell us shit. The world is too dependent on China to do that…much like Europe is too dependent on Russia to simply stop buying oil and gas.
This war is the best thing to happen to China in a long time. They’ll absolutely have Russia over a barrel. And it has also caused a pivot in US attention away from Asia towards Europe.
Russia is going to have to sell massive quantities of valuable fuel and minerals to China on the cheap from now on.
Yep. And Russia already sells fuel to China at a discount - they prefer selling to Europe because they’ll pay more than China will already.
I would not call this hard reporting — it’s anecdotal and uncorroborated. But it’s been a fairly consistent rumor, and it would be excellent if it were true.
I’ll agree to this is you agree to calling it the Warsaw Pact.
Well, it will take time before that stuff starts to happen. Basically, they will need to build new infrastructure if they want to move more oil, gas, and coal than they already do, as most of that is maxed out right now. They will also need more rail systems to move stuff like wheat in the quantities they (Russia) would need to in order to make up even part of the difference they are losing from their European markets. This isn’t going to start happening tomorrow…more like a year or two at best.
China certainly is going to come out of this better…IF the west doesn’t impose secondary sanctions on them for supporting Russia during this conflict. I don’t know if the west will do that, but if so then that will certainly take some of the win/win (with Chinese characteristics) out of the equation.
Has there been any confirmed movement by Belarus to put troops in Ukraine? At some point, a complete lack of action has to be assumed to be on purpose. If they weren’t going to help Putin the first week, when everyone assumed Ukraine would collapse pretty quickly, why would they move now, when it looks like Russia might get stuck in a quagmire instead?
I would expect some sanction-type constraints, but they will be minor and symbolic. Along the lines of, “Okay, so, all that wheat you’ve started to buy super-cheap from desperate Russian suppliers? You can’t resell it to us.” Stuff like that. Nothing really substantial.
I saw a report that a couple of Belarusian detachments were moved to the border, and then were moved back to their bases. I’ll see if I can dig up a cite.
Okay, here’s a story quoting Lukashenko saying that Belarusian troops would head to the border, but solely in a defensive position, preventing NATO or anyone else from taking advantage of the situation to stage an incursion into Belarus. Our troops will not enter Ukraine, he said: “That’s not our job.”
At the time, everyone assumed this was hot air, that the justification for their presence on the border was transparent nonsense, and of course they were staged for entry. But it doesn’t seem to have materialized.
Still, I can’t locate the thing I saw about the latter part, that those troops were returned to base. Still looking.
I remember back when Bush I decided to attack Iraq, he issued a message, “Our army is coming! Six months from now!”
At the time, I felt like it was a strange thing to do and say. Telling the enemy that you’re coming is strange. Waiting six months to do something is strange.
Logistics, though. If Belarus really wanted to go in there and duke it out properly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it took them a good couple of months to get everything arranged, packed up, and ready to move out.
That’s a large part of where Putin seems to have screwed up. They packed for a training mission, not for a true conquest. If Belarus really wants to join in, the longer they take the worse that is for Ukraine, just as likely.
And taking that at face value, it makes perfect sense. If Mexico was to suddenly invade the US, I’d expect Canada to move at least a few troops closer to the US border, just in case.
Might be worth noting that Belarus’ military is rather small. Much smaller than Ukraine’s, let alone Russia’s. It’s actually not that large of a country - around 1/3 the size of Ukraine with less than a quarter of the population. They wouldn’t be likely to be any sort of serious difference maker from a strictly military POV, or at the very least not on the ground.
Lithuania’s defense chief at least seems to think that at this point they are completely subordinated to Moscow. So their failure to engage might just be Russia not seeing them as terribly useful at this point in the conflict. OR, and more interestingly, the Lithuanians may not be completely correct and maybe this is Lukashenko struggling to wriggle through the diplomatic morass he’s stuck in.
If yet another unintended consequence of Putin’s misadventure is that Belarus moves away from Russian influence, that would be fantastic. As a complete fantasy, imagine if Ukraine starts to get the upper hand, and the Belarus leadership turns on Russia completely and joins the war on Ukraine’s side. I can dream…
Ukraine is the only non-NATO country on Russia’s western border, other than Belarus, which is firmly in Russia’s camp. Who are you suggesting that Ukraine form this defensive alliance with?
See the map here, under “Current status”:
Finland, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan.
The video is, to say the very least, heavily edited. One cannot discern much at all from it. We see several different shots, but in the one with the most vehicles we get only 15, maybe 20 seconds of nonconsecutive footage where we see four distinct explosions (amongst DOZENS of vehicles.) At least one doesn’t appear to be a direct hit. It is not possible to determine what sort of weapon caused the explosions. So three vehicles, tops, were hit, and they might well have returned fire but we don’t know.
Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are all on Russia’s southern border, not western. Moldova doesn’t border Russia at all. So Finland and Ukraine?
You’re taking this too literally. Let it go.
Ukraine could promise not to join NATO. And then they could negotiate joining NATO in secret, then announce once it’s done. What’s Russia going to do, invade again and find itself on the receiving end when the mutual protection clause gets activated?
Besides, why should either Ukraine or NATO keep their word to Russia when Russia never keeps its word to anyone else?