With Wagner group searching jails for volunteers, I think this is very typical how Russians have organized these wars: chaotic and unprepared. — ssu

Uh huh. Whereas this...

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/07/30/zelensky-militants-convicted-child-rape-torture-military/

...is presumably a genius move from a well organised war machine?

...is presumably a genius move from a well organised war machine? — Isaac

Have I said that? Strawmanning as usual Isaac.

As I just said, the Ukrainian mobilization of 2014 is an example how long it takes to mobilize forces when you don't have a plan or organization to do it. Was Ukraine ready for war in 2014? Absolutely not! It took half a year for Ukraine and in 2014 the voluntary battalions were doing the fighting then. The Ukrainian military seems to have developed from that time, I guess.

Uh huh. Whereas this...

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/07/30/zelensky-militants-convicted-child-rape-torture-military/ — Isaac

And this is the Websites @Isaac uses:

The Grayzone is a far-left news website and blog founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal. The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project, was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018. The website's news content is generally considered to be fringe. It is known for misleading reporting and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes, in addition to its denial of the Uyghur genocide. The Grayzone has published conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria and other regions, as well as pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Keep it up for Putin, Isaac!!!

And this is the Websites Isaac uses: — ssu

You criticise a source by posting an unsourced criticism of that source?

And this is the Websites Isaac uses: — ssu

Ha! Thought you'd like that one (of course the news was reported in major British newspapers like the Telegraph too, but the Grayzone version's more punk)

Very partisan. Not like your "well-respected think tank" CSIS, with their...

funding from defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and General Atomics.[36]

Significant funding has come from the governments of Japan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates. — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Strategic_and_International_Studies

You criticise a source by posting an unsourced criticism of that source? — boethius

I found it. It's Wikipedia, for evidence citing a Times article about the BBC pursuit of Tim Hayward (who cited Grayzone). A pursuit for which they later had to offer a full apology after complaints of bias.

It writes itself...

Very compelling resemblances.

All that is needed to complete the picture is the Rasputin in the story.

If Russia was to take over Ukraine (in whichever way), then Putin's whi...err rhetoric about NATO, equally becomes Moldova's, Poland's, Romania's, Hungary's, and Slovakia's neighbor-fears, and by extension, likely most of Europe's, having enjoyed fair stability.
Putin's nuclear rattling doesn't help.
By Putin's "logic" at least, they'd be justified in direct military action to free Ukraine — direct as in planes in Ukrainian airspace, troops on the ground, whatever — not a mere "special operation".

If Russia was to take over some parts of Ukraine (in whichever way), like Donbas and Crimea, then Putin's rhetoric would still apply to the rest of Ukraine.
Sort of similar to the current occupation, with whatever instability.

If Russia was to leave Ukraine alone, except for acquiring a guarantee that Ukraine won't become a NATO member, then these two scenarios wouldn't be applicable, at least.
For such a guarantee to work, some sort of international observers/inspectors might have to be put in place, not sure, don't know if that could work.
I'm guessing this option is acceptable to the Ukrainians (mentioned earlier), maybe also to many/most Russians, hard to tell.

(By the way, Europe won't become "Western Russia", under Kremlin control, hardly realistic, rattling or not.)

Very partisan. Not like your "well-respected think tank" CSIS, with their... — Isaac

That btw. got things wrong, as was my main point. But of course you don't notice such 'minutiae'. :roll:

Alexander Gabuev (Financial Times; Sep 23, 2022) writes:
Putin has once again overplayed his hand in Ukraine

Source is respected enough, but some details not so easy to verify.
I guess we'll see.

Misc comments via max seddon ...

Interesting article. Fairly typical of the western response trying to tie itself in knots. So...

These actions are unlikely to deliver victory

Phew! Incompetent, stupid Russians can just be left to fail embarrassingly, should be good for a laugh. Except, for some reason these manifestly failure-ridden actions...

increase the risk of a potential collision between Russia and Nato.

Struggling to see why on earth NATO would get involved against actions so manifestly destined to fail anyway. Still, moving on...

The Kremlin hopes that this combination of annexation and nuclear blackmail will make the US and European leaders rein in their military support for Ukraine

...which won't happen, of course... what with Putin's stupid plan destined for failure and all. Same with the strategy to...

continue to attack random targets in Ukraine with the single goal of preventing the country’s reconstruction.

...not going to actually work, so no cause for alarm yet... Although, myself, I must admit, I'm struggling to see how a country that's being simultaneously destroyed and threatened with nuclear weapons is in the clear. Maybe it's the immanent downfall of Russia internally the author's got in mind?

the scale of resistance is too small to present a real danger to Putin.

Nope. Not that then. Ah ha! We finally have the answer, the reason Putins' idiotic plans are all destined for failure. It's those plucky Ukrainians, of course...

The reality, however, is that Ukraine has both agency as a highly-motivated fighting force and nearly unlimited moral capital in the west. Not only will the Ukrainian army not vacate the territories annexed by Moscow, it is very likely to redouble its efforts to liberate more territory before the Russian reinforcements arrive.

The author here is a little shy on details. It's not quite made clear how the heroism of Ukrainian armies are going to fend off...

use of tactical nuclear weapons.

...nor do anything at all, once...

the US and European leaders rein in their military support for Ukraine

...but we are, by the end of the article, reassured that we can rest easy in our beds, assured that the bumbling incompetence of the Russian bullying is no match for the plucky heroism of the Ukrainian army. Phew!

Only...

we enter the most frightening chapter of this crisis yet, Nato leaders face difficult choices.

Hang on! I thought we were barely involved. Isn't it those super independent Ukrainians who face the difficult choices? What choices NATO leaders face is left something of a mystery for a war we're barely involved in and couldn't do anything about anyway (what with all the Ukrainian agency and all).

Perhaps it's all in the

minutiae — ssu

...?

If Russia was to take over Ukraine (in whichever way), then Putin's whi...err rhetoric about NATO, equally becomes Moldova's, Poland's, Romania's, Hungary's, and Slovakia's neighbor-fears, and by extension, likely most of Europe's, having enjoyed fair stability.
Putin's nuclear rattling doesn't help.
By Putin's "logic" at least, they'd be justified in direct military action to free Ukraine — direct as in planes in Ukrainian airspace, troops on the ground, whatever — not a mere "special operation". — jorndoe

I think it has already happened in February 24th of this year. Russia achieving it's objectives (Novorossiya + regime change in rump Ukraine) isn't the event when other countries change their views. Even if the war would stop in a frozen conflict (basically a loose armstice and talks going nowhere), Russia would be the looming threat. It actually took a long time to come to this, with the resets, and all that hopeful belief that Russia will change.

Putin is all in.

In fact, I think made a good historical comparison just how "all in" Putin has gone and how this could backfire on him (based on what has happened earlier in Russian history with similar actions). And it doesn't look good for him now.

Not only did the Ukrainians win the battle of Kyiv, a huge moral booster, but the success of their counter attack has also kept the moral up in the Ukrainian camp. And then there's the NATO/US support, which by these levels are totally sustainable for the West. The West hasn't thrown in everything, perhaps the Javelin missiles have to be produced about 1,5 years to regain the levels of missiles that were prior the war. The West isn't bleeding, the defense expenditure isn't excessive. The simple fact is that the West can continue such support it now is giving for a very long time. That the Ukrainians can not only defend, but regain territory and go on the offensive has changed how the Ukrainians are viewed in the West.

After the war in Afghanistan came to it's natural conclusion, in a spectacular catastrophe that was for very long in the works as an impending policy train-wreck, the West likely saw any military engagement as unwinnable, a looming failure. So the up-beat attitude of the Ukrainians actually talking about winning the war surprised them. Now that can become overconfidence, because let's just remember that WW2 was for the Russians a cascade of epic failures until the battle Stalingrad. Russia is those countries can constantly fail and then just continue at it far longer than anybody would anticipate them continuing.

As the saying goes, Russia is never as strong it looks at strength and never so weak as it looks at it's time of weakness.

I'm banking on Russia imploding from the inside as the most likely way of this war ending in favour of Ukraine (eg. land returned, possibly even Crimea then).

A second option is Russian "allies" get fed up with the fall out from the war, such as India, NK and China. In guessing they're not too happy about current food prices either. But this would probably force Russia to the table and might mean some territorial gains (eg keeping what they currently occupy) or even a reversal. It's unclear what the West would back and Russia would be expected to swallow.

I guess if neither of these play out by the end of winter, we'll have to assume this is unlikely to happen and sanctions aren't accomplishing what the West wanted.

Worst thing that can happen is that the Russian disgruntlement and logistical problems with the mobilisation are grossly exaggerated in the news and we'll see a huge influx in personnel on their side. That will lead at a minimum to a long protracted war or worse new gains by Russia.

@Jamal do you have any sense about sentiment in the Russian population? Some "resistance" seems quite well organised but no clue how big or small it is.

More 'anecdotal' videos...

More 'anecdotal' videos... — ssu

There's no need for the scares quotes, they are literally anecdotal videos.

Do you think Gabuev is wrong then, when he says...

the scale of resistance is too small to present a real danger to Putin.

...?

More 'anecdotal' videos... — ssu

Firing into the air is pretty normal in some cultures. Certainly would be a "huge deal" in the West, but a good indication that it's not a big deal in Dagestan is that no one in the crowd seems at all alarmed.

There is zero reason to believe small protests are about to take down the entire Russian state.

We had massive protests in the West against the war in Iraq, all sorts of drama ... wars still happened.

There's almost no examples of protests stopping wars that the people in charge are set on.

Furthermore, Western propaganda is starting to be a broken record of protests, Russian lines collapsing, low morale, Putin about to die or be assassinated, logistical problems dooming their operation, incompetence and "miscalculations" at every level, and so on, with a few choice anecdotes.

People are free to argue that "this time is different" but that requires actually arguing that.

Otherwise, these positions are essentially "there's much less evidence for this belief that Russian collapse is imminent as there was 6 months ago ... and I believed it then and I'm believing it now."

There's no need for the scares quotes, they are literally anecdotal videos. — Isaac

Of course, and this is naturally from an Ukrainian media.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z9VP6q5osL0

Otherwise the mobilization is going absolutely perfectly. :smirk:

There's almost no examples of protests stopping wars that the people in charge are set on. — boethius

Vietnam comes to mind.

the mobilization is going absolutely perfectly. :smirk: — ssu

It seems strange to try and mobilize a population that has been effectively demobilized for decades, ie told not to get involved in politics.

Jamal do you have any sense about sentiment in the Russian population? Some "resistance" seems quite well organised but no clue how big or small it is. — Benkei

My geographical location unfortunately gives me no special knowledge. I have a sense that people are increasingly scared (for example, many of my wife's colleagues originally came from distant parts of the country and have young male relatives there who now face the prospect of going to war), but I don't really know how people are thinking because those who openly express their opinions are usually either supporters of the war or critics of the government from an even more bellicose nationalist position. Opponents of the war and the depoliticized bulk of the population are mostly silent, or else they're in another country.

Having said that, there is a strong sense that debates are heating up. The mere fact that pro-Kremlin politicians are voicing their frustration and anger is probably a sign of a roiling mass of resentment and fear (there has been open criticism of the way the mobilization has happened).

But I don't know to what extent the mobilization is actually causing the hitherto indifferent majority to change their minds about the war. That may develop. So far the anger is about the fact that the government has messed up and might be losing control; they've always tolerated Putin because he's strong and stable.

Vietnam comes to mind. — Olivier5

Vietnam is not an example of protesting a war leading directly to the collapse of the US government or ending the war or anything remotely similar to what's being continuously predicted will happen in Russia. US stayed in Vietnam for years even after the majority of the public was clearly against the war, of which large protests is more a manifestation than a cause (good arguments to question why the US was in Vietnam).

And even if you want to particular emphasise the role of protests (compared to other political discourse) then that's still one single example that does not serve as a good analogy: the war was thousands of kilometres away from US shores, North Vietnam was not a threat to the US, domino theory was speculative, and the war went on for years and years, before the US withdrawing under a ceasefire and not surrender conditions ... and, again, the US government did not entirely collapse.

Wars eventually end but there are no examples I know of where protests like we see in Russia somehow lead directly to the end the war.

Firing into the air is pretty normal in some cultures. Certainly would be a "huge deal" in the West, but a good indication that it's not a big deal in Dagestan is that no one in the crowd seems at all alarmed. — boethius

Of course. A daily normal occurence in Dagestan. :blush:

There is zero reason to believe small protests are about to take down the entire Russian state. — boethius

Mere inconvenience. Putin Strong!!!

It seems strange to try and mobilize a population that has been effectively demobilized for decades, ie told not to get involved in politics. — Olivier5

According to our Putinists, No Problem! Puny protests and tiny minorities fleeing Russia won't have any effect on the regime. Anytime, in any way. It's just a hoax by the Western media that this would any kind of problem to the strong Putin regime. :razz:

Or that what just some months ago were said:

(Thursday, June 16th 2022) Russian President’s Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that Vladimir Putin will not announce a general mobilisation in Russia at the St.Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday. - This is the third time Russian officials are denying a general mobilisation will happen. Initially, rumours about it appeared in early March, and then many Western analysts expected its announcement on 9 May.

(See here)

Just like they denied having any ideas of making a large scale attack on Ukraine prior to February this year. (Which btw was believed by the same people here)

Of course. A daily normal occurence in Dagestan. :blush: — ssu

I just was talking to an American a few days ago who was complaining about the love of people where she comes from for firing into the air on every holiday, (triggering PTSD of veterans was the gripe about it).

In Turkey the army fired into a crowd with a helicopter ... and that didn't bring down the government.

So again, feel free to argue that this one soldier in some random outpost firing into the air to warn a hundred or so people is some ground shaking political event in Russia that changes everything, or that compared to the protests at the start of the war "this is different" and will lead to full scale revolution.

Otherwise, it's just that "pointing out some true things for propaganda purposes" that you complain Russia does.

Mere inconvenience. Putin Strong!!! — ssu

The idea that Ukrainians should keep fighting and dying for the strategy that Putin is weak internally and eventually the whole Russian state should collapse, yes, should have more than just virtue signalling as a basis.

Otherwise, the Russian army and reserves are far larger and now on the defensive and have all the benefits Ukrainians had defending Kiev, and the Russian army can disable the entire Ukrainian grid at will, and also has nuclear weapons that it can deploy at any moment. So, without the mechanism to somehow collapse the Russian state, there are not presently favourable battlefield conditions.

If the proposal that there is a mechanism to collapse the Russian state is wrong, then the cost of being wrong is literally hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and the entire Ukrainian economy: dead.

It's repeated over and over that it's their land and they can fight and die for it if they want. Ok, sure, but if the fighting and dying doesn't accomplish anything, is it still worthwhile as some sort of moral Churchillian gesture? (Churchillian gesture the whole West applauds ... but doesn't put their own soldiers in this noble quest)

↪ssu I’m not a big fan of boethius’s view, but I have to say, your reaction to his statements of fact is just bizarre. — Jamal

Unfortunately, most of this debate is arguing with obvious denial of facts (there are definitely more Nazi's in Ukraine with more power than in the typical Western army and government) or then unsupported hypotheticals presented as likely (such as Russian state on the brink of collapse), and I try to keep my arguments focused one positions I intend to defend.

Furthermore, the purpose of the denialism and unsupported hypotheticals is not to argue them in any sort of good faith way, or that their proponents even believe them despite the lack of supporting evidence and analysis, but rather to tease out a normative agreement for the purposes of tribal-group think.

For example, if I disagree that Putin is literally Hitler, I am supposed to annex my argument with "but of course Putin is super evil and bad" or then if I disagree that the Russian state is on the brink of total collapse I am supposed to preamble that with "of course the Russian state should collapse!".

I don't play into that because I don't like propaganda.

Furthermore, the moral evaluation of Putin should nevertheless have supporting arguments. The "hyperbole", as one poster refers to himself, followed by "of course Putin is still bad" is a way to get agreement on a moral evaluation of Putin without any facts, analysis or values.

If I say "Putin is bad", the standard I set for myself is I have reasons I'm willing to explain for saying that.

My priority in this discussion is a diplomatic resolution, and morally evaluating Putin is not necessary for a diplomatic resolution.

If other's have as their priority the moral evaluation of Putin, they are free to present an argument and if it's convincing then I can just say I agree to it.

My purpose in pointing to the Nazi's in Ukraine is that obviously many Russians are upset about it, which is important to understand their world view which is important in finding a diplomatic resolution.

That there are too many Nazi's in Ukraine and therefore we must invade and destroy them, is, for me, a completely sound argument: the conclusion follows from the premises. Of course, maybe the premise is false, that there aren't enough Nazi's in Ukraine to satisfy the Wests own definition of "appeasement" of Nazi's; that is a complicated journalistic and political question. How many Nazi's with how much power are in Ukraine exactly? And where do we draw the line between "not relevant" and "too many" politically speaking.

Again, people who's priority is merely condemning the Russians in order to justify any and all Ukrainian suffering (and the world for that matter) should present their argument (the sources that plausibly establish "how many Nazis" and the political theory that answers "how many is too many"). It's their priority and not mine, if their arguments are compelling I can simply agree to them.

My priority is a diplomatic resolution and for that solutions must be found that are also reasonable for the Russian perspective, and what the Russian perspective "ought to be" is hardly relevant in that.

To take another example of something taken for granted in the West but no argument is ever presented to support it, the current votes in South Ukraine are simply announced as "a sham".

However, although on the surface it may seem a vote carried out under an occupying force is coercive and illegitimate, or then the "real law" there is Kiev's, these are not so easy positions to argue.

Both positions the West would not support in other contexts. For example, votes in both Iraq and Afghanistan after the US invaded and occupied are completely legitimate according to the West. And, obviously, if conquest was not a valid form of changing legal systems then the entirety of America would be given back to Native Americans and all the borders of the world would radically change overnight.

It would be a complicated task to resolve these sorts of questions without resorting to "it's legitimate when the West does it because we say so!"

If the people of these Southern Oblasts genuinely want to separate from Ukraine and join Russia, then it is indeed liberation according to the Wests own standards (that Iraqi's genuinely didn't want Saddam's form of government, and Afghani's genuinely didn't want the Taliban's).

Of course, how do you establish what people genuinely want (on average) without a vote? But how does an occupying army, such as the US, carry out such a vote if no vote under occupation is valid?

The answer to that is of course the vote is valid because we already know what the population feels about it.

Which sounds circular reasoning, and formally it is, but the world is a lot messier than formal arguments and we can get an idea of what a population thinks by both culture and journalism.

Ok, applying all this to Southern Ukraine, we do know there are a lot of ethnic Russians there that speak Russian and, we can safely conclude, based on "cultural knowledge", that they maybe genuinely upset about the Russian language being banned and other cultural genocidal practices; which the West may support this sort of cultural genocide when "we do it" but maybe the Russians feel differently (again, how people see things and feel about things is critical for finding a diplomatic resolution).

Of course, with the right journalistic evidence we maybe convinced that only a tiny majority support joining Russia and therefore the votes are illegitimate. Point being, things are not so simple as they appear in Western media.

As for Putin's moral character, again it's not so easy to condemn Putin.

If he's as evil as people in the West say ... why hasn't he nuked us yet. It seems incompatible with extreme levels of evil to have nukes and not use them.

Additionally, I try to avoid moral evaluations of people, but when I do my criteria is always comparing to a similar class of people and not some immutable set of actions I deem "moral". In this case, Putin's peers are other authoritarians ... but in Putin's case no one really disputes that he has the support of a majority of Russians; which definitely "sounds like democracy" to me.

Compare that to the US Senate ...

A national leader supported by a majority of their people is difficult to morally condemn. The people can be wrong ... but then it's the people that are condemnable and the leader a mere tool expressing that.

Of course, one may argue that the Russian people only support Putin because of Putin's propaganda ... but good luck trying to convince me there's no propaganda in the West.

We then therefore conclude that all nation-state leaders are morally condemnable, but then we come up against my criteria of comparing people to their peers; there being no reason to single out Putin in particular.

The reason we condemn Hitler, Stalin and Moa, is because their actions go far beyond their peers of national leaders (during the same epoch ... again, if British and other previous genocides are fair game, they become far more banal, just happen to be the last members of the same list: nothing more unusual than that, someone has to called out last in attendance).

Now, my point in explaining all this is not to present my views on these topics, but to point out they have not been debated and they are not my priority so I don't have time to evaluate these topics, take a position, present my arguments and have even more time to defend them.

They would be interesting to debate, but no one is actually debating these issues, but rather engaging in a series of factual denials and unsupported hypotheticals in order to argue against the position that diplomatic resolution involving compromise (sort of necessary for diplomacy to happen) is not the best possible outcome for Ukrainians.

The Grayzone is a far-left news website

known for misleading reporting and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes, in addition to its denial of the Uyghur genocide

Yes, they're tankies all right. But I'd like to address "far-left". While I'm not denying that it's a far left website in some sense, or even that tankies are far left, I'd like to point out that one can be far left but also against authoritarian regimes like China's or Russia's. It's sad that so many on the left fall for the pro-or-soft-on-Putin crap, but not all do.

Although it's true that people like Isaac do have a serious problem:

On the international left, almost nobody knows Russian, and even less Ukrainian; so when the left wants to know what is happening in Ukraine, it finds itself in a catastrophic situation. So as not to depend on the Western media, it is condemned to have recourse to the English-language propaganda of the Putin regime and to that of the so-called “anti-imperialist networks” which are pro-Russian (often “red-brown” or downright brown) — Zbigniew Kowalewski

This is quoted in an article on anti-Stalinist far left website libcom.org, which traces the history of red-brown alliances (alliances of the far left and far right). I'm not unreservedly endorsing the view that pro-or-soft-on-Putin leftists are necessarily in alliance with fascists, or that there's much of a link between, say, Aleksandr Dugin and Western Leftists, but the article is at least an example of a left-wing history and critique of the authoritarian tendencies on the left. (Though to be honest it's too boring and full of links to read in full)

This seems like a pretty good article on Grayzone and Blumenthal:

Grayzone, Grifters and the Cult of Tank

Once the 'referenda' have run their course and the occupied territories are integrated to Russia, there won't be anything left to negotiate. Putin won't give up what he sees as Russian territories in exchange for peace.

It's sad that so many on the left fall for the pro-or-soft-on-Putin crap, but not all do. — Jamal

Being "hard on Putin" NATO could have done by sending NATO troops into Ukraine before the war to defend a dear ally, create a standoff and then negotiate a resolution a la Cuban missile crisis (which would be easy to do).

Otherwise, the available means to be hard on Putin is to nuke him.

If you're not willing to nuke Putin then the only available options are soft options.

As for sanctions, they have never been demonstrated to bring about regime change.

So, what are the hard options available to "deal with Putin"?

The "hard on Putin" position since over a decade is simply incendiary rhetoric which, at the end of the day, only serves to support US imperialistic policies and not harm or deal with Putin in anyway.

According to our Putinists, No Problem! — ssu

So you'd include Gabuev as a Putinist then? Interesting assessment...

the scale of resistance is too small to present a real danger to Putin. — Alexander Gabuev

...or is it only Putinist when we say it?

Once the 'referenda' have run their course and the occupied territories are integrated to Russia, there won't be anything left to negotiate. — Olivier5

There is the rest of Ukraine to negotiate over and avoiding or inviting the use of nuclear weapons.

On the international left, almost nobody knows Russian, and even less Ukrainian — Zbigniew Kowalewski

What a bizarre critique. Does your source go on to say why Centrists know more Russian? Is it just Russian? Do leftists know more Swahili than Centrists? Are the Right Wing mysteriously fluent in Turkish, but haven't a clue what's being said in Hebrew?