I actually said that Putin isn’t likely to attack. The whole point of my post is that he does not see that as a wise course.
Many countries do assassinations. And all sorts of things. Some folks that were killed were also digging up things about non state suspect folks. I do not deny that folks may have been killed by state. But can’t base any direct connection of that to Ukraine invasion possibilities.
It was not stated in the article that he was at the time working for the KGB. May have been. But the job that he was doing, even if it was a cover, he was apparently doing well. But of course the person who wrote the article may have been a deep cover U.S. citizen KGB plant as well. Who later went on to work for a KGB run major western news outlet. Maybe I am a KGB agent. OOOpppppss I wasn’t supposed to say any of that. The KGB no longer exists. Trust me comrade.
Lots of coutries do assassinations, but only corrupt and evil ones assassinate journalists and political opponents. As to why Snowboarder_Bo asked if the agency was the KGB, that’s because that is the only agency that Putin could have been a civil servant. He went straight from Law school, to KGB, to politics. This wasn’t deep undercover conspiracy, its right there on his wikipedia page.
Yes he did go to the KGB. Common knowledge.
Scanned a lot of pages of search results. The first link is the one I remembered from before. The second one I read while searching for the first one.
Considering what I see when constantly perusing news and history of so many world leaders. Putin would not even make the top 10 of the nasty corrupt, self serving, selling out their counties and people that the western governments feel comfortable supporting and dealing with. As long as they will sell out to them. Putin commits the unforgivable crime of being independent not subservient. As well as making his country stronger.
And lots of those countries are best buddies with western democracies. It is not at all certain that the so called non corrupt/evil ones do not also make all sorts of people die. Certain countries are very hopeful Julian Assange will die in prison. Discussed plans to make him disappear or die.
And as I said, some of the journalists and political folks that were likely assassinated, were also irritating some very murderous wealthy criminal types. Some of those deaths could have been state or criminal instigated.
But aside from dirty state dealings. I still feel Russia, whoever is in charge, has nothing to gain from overt invasion of Ukraine. Only negative results.
Really? Because he clearly sees attacking and annexing places that have a Russian population as a wise course. And you agree–you go out of your way to defend it, and minimize it as nothing important. Furthermore, you obviously feel that the parts of the Ukraine that are “almost all Russian” should belong to Russia, not Ukraine.
Putin is like the rancher who kept buying more and more land. When questioned about how much land he wanted, he said, “I’m not greedy. All I want is the land that adjoins mine.”
Specify which places that Russia under Putin attacked and annexed. Keeping in mind that Crimea voted to rejoin Russia. It was not attacked.
As for the military conflict in portions of Georgia. After it finished Russian forces left. The areas were not annexed.
If that’s the case, why doesn’t he just allow open and fair elections?
Why are his political opponents in jail?
Well, first it was invaded (with Russia seizing control of the parliament), then an election took place, so actually both things can be true.
But in terms of the election, not only was there obviously a cloud over it due to the fact that Russian troops were there, but the ballot only had two options, neither of which was the status quo (one was joining russia, the other was de facto independence). There are reasons why the election was largely condemned internationally, and it wasn’t because Putin be so strong and there just jealous!
(deliberate misspelling of they’re)
The specific events of the Crimea crisis were that “mystery men” with weapons, tanks, and helicopters - who Russia specifically stated were not Russian military - exited the Russian military base in Crimea, took up various positions around town - which included taking over the government buildings - and a vote proceded to be held by the local members of the government was to whether to stay a part of Ukraine. They decided to leave.
Now, let’s assume three things:
- It was a fair vote.
- There was no duress.
- All members of the government were fairly elected by the people of Ukraine.
These things might not be true, but let’s assume that they are. If they are, that is the best argument that you can make for the validity of the Russian takeover of Crimea.
Now let’s imagine a woman, Belinda, goes out on a blind date with a man. It’s a pleasant date, she likes him, they get along well, and it ultimately becomes the beginning of a long term relationship that was formed under no duress and purely based on the personality involved.
But, as it happens, when the man showed up for that first date, he had assumed a false identity - not to her, to the waiters at the restaurant, the valet, etc. and made sure to pay in cash, to avoid witnesses who could correctly identify him and evidence which could be tracked back. His name is John, but he told everyone that he is Matt.
He had brought a backpack to the first date. In it, he had handcuffs, rope, several guns, ammo, a cattle prod, and a variety of pharmaceuticals that would render a person unconscious or too loopy to understand what’s going on.
The real story of John’s first date is that the future of the relationship was never optional. While, yes, Belinda decided that she liked him, she chose to go in future dates with him, and she chose to go home with him that night - she never had a choice in the matter and simply lucked her way into avoiding a far less pleasant encounter with her boyfriend.
Personally, I would vote that Belinda should get out of that relationship and that it’s deeply questionable whether it’s a voluntary relation or not. It’s likely voluntary only to the point that no one ever tests it.
Leaving Belinda and John, we have the matter that Crimea’s government was elected by the people, fairly. That would strongly suggest that the remainder of the government was fairly elected.
In a country where the government is elected by the people, it acts in accordance with the will of the people, and the people can remove it through their vote, there is no argument to make that the choices of the government are unfair and that you have a right to leave. If the government is tyrannical and installed itself then, yes, you can make an argument that you have no duty to obey the laws and orders of the government. But if it’s the laws and people that you chose to organize everything, under the social contract you made with the rest of your fellow citizens to organize a government and abide by its rules, and then you get miffed that they chose differently than you were dreaming - well, you just have to suck it up and make the arguments to convince others. If you can break away and take everything with you, there’s no purpose to voting. No one could ever organize any group of humans and expect anything to last more than two seconds. If you, the individual, want to leave then that’s up to you, but the holdings of the government are theirs and cannot be taken away because you don’t like what your own chosen government decided. That is simply theft.
And now, Crimea be as it may, Eastern Ukraine was invaded. Troops have crossed the border to fight, in an effort to take over land. Quibble about how the Crimean troops were already stationed there and so might not have “invaded” in the traditional sense of the word, so far as the rest of Ukraine goes, the traditional sense of the word “invade” is precisely where things went.
Conquest is no longer a right of nations. That’s very simple and unambiguous.
Much is made of Russia taking over Crimea. Crimea was already Russia. It was almost all Russian people, it did not need to be invaded, as it was already a huge Russian military installation in the midst of a Russian population. They voted to go back to being fully Russian. End of that non conflict.
The other portions of Ukraine that are in dispute are also almost all Russian. I do believe there is covert and overt support from both sides to win them over.
Apparently Crimea is not entirely Russian. It was the homeland of the Crimean Tartars before the Russians decided to expel them to Siberia.
Crimean Tatars constituted the majority of Crimea’s population from the time of ethnogenesis until the mid-19th century, and the largest ethnic population until the end of the 19th century.[11][12] Almost immediately after the retaking of Crimea from Axis forces, in May 1944, the USSR State Defense Committee ordered the deportation of all of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea, including the families of Crimean Tatars serving in the Soviet Army. The deportees were transported in trains and boxcars to Central Asia, primarily to Uzbekistan. The Crimean Tatars lost 18 to 46 percent of their population as a result of the deportation, according to various estimates.[13] Starting in 1967, a few were allowed to return and in 1989 the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union condemned the removal of Crimean Tatars from their motherland as inhumane and lawless, but only a tiny percent had been able to return before the full right of return in 1989.
The European Union as well as international indigenous groups do not dispute their status as an indigenous people and they have been officially recognized as an indigenous people of Ukraine as of 2014.[14][15] The current Russian government considers them to be a “national minority”, but not an indigenous people,[16][17] and continues to deny them as a titular people of Crimea, despite the Soviet Union considering them indigenous before their deportation and subsequent dissolution of the Crimean ASSR.[18][19][20][21] Today, Crimean Tatars constitute approximately 15% of the population of Crimea.[22] There remains a large diaspora in Turkey and Uzbekistan.
A similar fate befell of lot of former Soviet Republics. There was a policy of Russification and the remains of this policy are very evident in the Baltic states that have significant Russian speaking populations. There is even a part of Russian territory, Kalingrad, between Poland and Lithuania. These are existential threats to the independence all of these states and something Putin exploits from time to time.
Rescuing beleagured countrymen in oppressed enclaves within the borders of neighbouring countries and claiming a right to that territory based on dubious historic precedents. That is how the saddest episodes in European history began.
Putin plays to Russian nationalism and faces off NATO.
He owes a great deal of his political fortunes from the mistakes that the US made in the Middle East that sent Oil and Gas prices rocketing at a time when Russia really needed the money. He cried all the way to the bank.
Putin has also benefited from the arguments over nuclear power and the closure of power nuclear stations in Germany that have made it very dependent on Russian gas. Now, with a transition to low carbon power generation becoming mainstream policy in many countries, Russian gas is even more important as they transition from polluting coal fired power stations.
Quite apart from being smart, Putin is lucky. He has been quick to take advantage of the mistakes and weaknesses of western powers and their short sighted political leadership.
An invasion of Ukraine would be very expensive and seriously damage the Russian economy. No amount of dancing around the flag compensates for the human costs involved but he will find it easier to stay in power as long as the economy does not tank.
A lot of Russian money is salted away in the West and I am sure Biden knows how to cause some pain to the Russian economy. Russia is part of the global economy and that is still dominated by the US.
I expect Putin would rather wait until some populist maverick takes the presidency in the US before he takes any big gambles.
Taking over a large county with overwhelming military superiority is the easy part. A lot easier than dealing with the fallout, the resistance and the years of financial drain for little benefit in the years afterwards.
Ya think? 
Wanting to rejoin Russia was an ongoing theme, even before the Ukraine government was toppled and replaced with a far more anti Russian government. There is a section noting this in the WIKI.
Ostensibly, the Crimean vote to join Russia was in reaction to a variety of protests that had been occurring in the country.
If you read about those protests, and take note of the numbers, the groups who wanted to join the EU would be groups in the thousands and tens of thousands. The groups who wanted to join Russia were in the dozens and hundreds.
Likewise, if you look at polls taken off the nation, they showed that nearly everyone wanted to join the EU and that only a minority was interested in Russia.
Now, personally, I’ve been to Russia and it is - in modern times - a surprisingly nice place. And from the collapse of the USSR, the general direction of the relationship between Russia and the West was almost completely positive until ~2014.
If Ukraine had joined the EU, it should have had zero practical effect on Russia and Russia’s relationship with Ukraine. There was jack-bupkis to get in the way of a continuing, mutually beneficial set of trade and diplomatic relations between everyone.
The idea that there was some sort of “either-or” factor in any of this was stupid. Everyone approaching the issue in that view is drastically short sighted and wasting everyone’s time. It’s all a needless tragedy, no matter which partner you would have preferred Ukraine to have had to start with.
I think the basic concept of joining the EU was not that negative a thing for most Ukrainians. Probably those of Russian ethnicity as well. But the very anti Russian bent of the government that did come to power after the democratically elected one was toppled, was a negative thing. Many ethnic Russians did not feel they would be treated equally. That things were going to change in ways that they felt would affect them negatively. That does not justify an invasion at that time and so far things are not so bad that it does now. Some pretty monstrous things would have to happen specifically to Russians in Ukraine to consider such action. I would hope that all nations would act to stop any such things.
Putin’s government is in a world of hurt. Sanctions and low oil prices have hurt very badly. He probably wants to do … something to divert attention. Invasion? Maybe.
Or maybe modern war is not about invasions. Maybe these troop movements are part of a longer-term campaign. Troops movements + hacking of critical systems + supporting nutty pro-Russian movements. Mass rallies, maybe with a Ukrainian brutal repression for extra points, rumors of Ukrainian atrocities, a few mysterious deaths. Putin is no dummy and may play his poor hand very well.
Couple of things worth bearing in mind:
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Western Europe gets a substantial percentage of their energy supplies from Russia. I would think this significantly hampers their ability to impose crippling sanctions on Russia. At some point, Russia could just shut down the energy supplies and see how they like it.
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China is also a Big Player on the world stage, and much of the opposition to Russian actions is also similarly opposed to comparable actions on the China side, most notably Taiwan. And China is not particulrly vested one way or the other WRT Ukraine or Eastern Europe generally; ditto for the Russians WRT Taiwan. Taking too hard a stance on Russia and/or China risks creating an alliance of Russia and China (along with some related allies), which would be a much bigger force to reckon with than either one alone.
So even before considering how much pain the US and Western Europe could actually impose on Putin and whether that would be enough to deter him from something he really wanted, there are serious constraints on their ability to impose maximum measures to begin with.
Yes and no. He’s smart at playing chess, in the real world. He’s pretty poor at understanding that he would do better to play Monopoly.
When you play chess, even when you win, you’ve probably lost most of your pieces. When you play Monopoly, even when you lose, you still own more and are more prosperous than when you began.
Putin is wasting everyone’s time by looking at the world as though it’s all a zero-sum game. That is pretty dumb.
Putin took over a country which was arguably in free-fall at the time and at least stanched the decline if not actually increasing its influence and borders, while remaining at the helm himself for 20+ years. Hard to call a guy like that dumb, by any measure.