Well let me clarify that I think it’s more “meh” about the possibility / likelihood than what the threat actually is.
Think of it like South Korea. Are most people in Seoul living in fear of an imminent invasion? No, because you can’t maintain such a fear for years, let alone your whole life.
The difference with Russia though is, like I say, the change in troop deployment is significant, plus Russia recently annexed Crimea. But perhaps the Ukrainian media is framing this in a way that de-emphasizes these fundamental differences?
Zelensky sounds naive at best and irresponsible/ingrate at worst.
Frankly, if I were Biden, I’d tell him, “If you don’t want us taking your defense seriously when we are 5,000 miles away and not directly affected at all, then go ahead, get invaded. We won’t lift a finger.”
Ukraine has been culturally linked to Russia by religion and by similar Slavic languages and ethnicity since the 12th century. It spent two centuries under Tsarist rule, and 70 years under Soviet rule. The vast majority of Ukrainians fought on the Russian side in both WW1 and WW2.
Recently they have been dealing with the Crimean situation, and the situation in Donesk and Luhansk.
Do you think it might be conceivable that they understand Russia, their own country, and the current situation a little better than you do?
The last thing Putin wants now is a major war and major economic sanctions. He’s already achieving his aims, by creating splits in NATO, and putting pressure on Ukraine and Europe, politically, militarily, and economically via gas prices. What he wants, and has wanted for decades, is a new peace and security agreement with Europe that recognises Russia as a major player in Europe.
Sabre-rattling is also a tried and trusted tactic to distract a nation from domestic issues.
When everybody has rattled their sabres long and loudly enough – and I very much include America under the heading of countries that are sabre-rattling – the situation will revert to the status quo.
Sorry to disappoint all the warmongers here who would just love something exciting and melodramatic to happen, but it won’t.
The cost of mobilizing 15 divisions for months on end is enormous. Anything is possible, and it’s possible that Putin will eat the cost of flushing all that money down the toilet with nothing to show for it. But it’s the least likely outcome in this scenario.
And quite frankly it’s childish to paint folks who are anxious about a potentially dangerous and destabilizing conflict as “warmongers.” Unless you think it’s impossible to expect and oppose a war simultaneously.
Even though there are a few cracks, the west’s unanimity has probably surprised Putin a bit. Macron is going into an election, Merkle is off the stage, Johnson is weak and facing his own internal problems, the Ukrainian president is extremely inexperienced and everyone is coming out of a pandemic.
He was probably hoping for a few more cracks but considering all of that, the reaction to the Russian threat seems quite a problem now for Putin. The other negative for Putin is that he’s driving Ukraine further to the west. Before the annexation of Crimea the pro-Russian parties and the pro-west parties were close to 50/50. The Crimea invasion removed over a million pro-Russian voters and created more anti-Russian sentiment amongst the rest. This troop build up almost seems desparate in that context. He traded land for the loss of influence in Ukraine and I’m not sure that was such a good deal. Perhaps he thought losing Ukraine in such a way was inevitable making Crimea a small consolation prize.
He might still be eyeing up the Suwalki Gap as a secondary goal but I think even that’s off the table. Though actually that would arguably anger NATO even more.
Mind you Putin can be a stubborn bastard - anything is possible.
This is my gripe with pacifists (I’m not saying GreenWyvern is necessarily one): They think that the aggressor and the defender are equally guilty. They remind me of zero-tolerance school teachers who think that bullying, and standing up to bullying, are equally “troublemakers” alike.
I’m not a pacifist. But it’s necessary to distinguish realistic threats and use common sense. Putin is an unpleasant and ruthless man, but he is NOT a fool.
There’s always a danger in these games of brinkmanship that someone may go too far and it may get out of hand, but that’s unlikely here. Putin doesn’t act on impulse or emotion. He has a complex, detailed, carefully-considered game plan that he’s busy playing out.
I’ve seen some interesting speculation that Putin’s real goal is Belarus. Nearly a third of the troops supposedly aimed at Ukraine will be in Belarus for military exercises. It’s unlikely that they will leave. Belarus is now firmly back in the Russian orbit.
Also the US may be quietly backing down on Ukraine.
Washington’s written response to Moscow’s security proposals was leaked and published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais. While the US isn’t willing to give a written guarantee that Ukraine won’t ever join NATO, the document contained serious offers from the US on the issue of arms control.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been concerned that US MK 41 missile launchers that are deployed in Romania can fit Tomahawk missiles that could potentially target Russia. In the written response, the US said that it was willing to discuss a “transparency mechanism to confirm the absence of Tomahawk cruise missiles” at US bases in Romania and Poland.
Russia is also seeking a mutual ban on the deployment of short and medium-range missiles in Europe that were previously prohibited under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019. The US said it’s prepared to start talks on “arms control for ground-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles and their launchers.”
Even with the NATO issue, the US has signaled it might be willing to give Moscow an informal guarantee that Ukraine won’t be joining the alliance anytime soon. Russia wants a guarantee in writing since the US broke a verbal promise it made at the end of the Cold War not to expand NATO eastward. But if there are real deals made concerning bans on missile and troop deployments to Ukraine, that could alleviate Moscow’s main worries of what a Ukrainian NATO membership could mean.
I don’t understand what this means. Invasion means slaughtered civilians, murder, rape, and theft. Can you specify which Ukranians deserve those fates?
Putin has claimed that he’s just “protecting” Russia’s security, because apparently Ukraine (in conjunction with Western interests) is a huge threat to Russia.
Ridiculous? Sure, but this is a man who has lived his whole life in a manufactured alternative reality, with Putin himself doing much of the manufacturing. In that respect, not unlike Trump. The pretext for triggering an invasion may be the claim that it was Ukraine that first breached their border … https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/03/politics/us-alleges-russian-false-flag-ukraine/index.html
I’m not Alessan, but if someone has been specifically warned of a threat and refuses to take it seriously, well, they can’t blame anyone but themselves.
“Hey John, your carbon monoxide alarm is going off. You better leave the house.”
“Don’t be alarmist, that sort of talk is unnerving and causes distress.”
“CO poisoning ain’t a joke, John.”
“Stop hyping up the threat.”
John dies an hour later. Did he deserve the asphyxiation? Hey it’s a cruel fate.
You’re basically proving my point. Ukraine was part of Russia for centuries, so is it so surprising that they still have a hard time thinking of themselves as an independent country, with its own right to self-definition? And if that’s the case, they won’t survive a war. You can’t fight for something you don’t believe in.
This is a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I don’t think that Ukraine was threatened as an excuse to take over Belarus than that Belarus was taken over as a way to better threaten Ukraine. The pretext to occupy Belarus was some highly convenient “civil unrest” that had nothing to do with Ukraine so its hard to argue that Ukraine was just a distraction to take over Belarus. On the otherhand I agree that the probability of Russian troops vacating Belarus now that they are in place is slim to none, and slim’s just left town.
I would always worry that Putin’s idea was to take over Ukraine and that it’s this letter that gives him the idea to take Belarus.
If I had been a person who thought of it, I’d be trying to relay the message to Biden and others in the most secret way possible, not just blasting it out into the world for all to read.
Whoever it is that came up with it, though, they should be put into charge of dealing with this cause it is a clever thought and the sort of thing that Putin might do.
??? Trump was opposed to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany and was encouraging them to build 2 liquefied natural gas terminals. This was to prevent Russia from using the pipeline as leverage like they did with Poland.
Maybe that had a lot to do with providing US LNG businesses with access to the German market to sell their product at a premium. The US companies are doing very good business selling LNG into Europe and if Putin turns off the taps….
