Sometimes I find Modernist art more "interesting" than actually satisfying to watch/read/listen, and this goes for some of Varèse that I have listened to. But this one I liked:

Wow.
I read several of those articles and found the talking points of boethius and Tzeentch in bold relief. In some cases, they have been transcribing the text verbatim. — Paine

Another of his sources is Brian Berletic, aka Tony Cartalucci, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has been amplifying Russian propaganda, and before that has championed Assad's regime in Syria ("independent Arab state that spends on human welfare and refuses to surrender to Israel"), Myanmar junta, and other such noble causes.

Across Ukraine, the Russian losses mounted. A giant armored column of more than 30,000 troops at the core of Russia’s force pushing south toward the city of Chernihiv was eviscerated by a motley group of Ukrainian defenders outnumbered five to one, soldiers and senior officials said. The Ukrainians hid in the forest and picked apart the Russian column with shoulder-fired antitank weapons, like American-made Javelins. — New York Times

This popular narrative of "a motley group of Ukrainian defenders" that eviscerated Russian armored columns "with shoulder-fired antitank weapons" was challenged in a recent report by RUSI. They maintain that, contrary to popular belief, most of the Russian losses during their failed Kiev push were inflicted by conventional Ukrainian artillery.

The New York Times published a big investigative article: Putin's War

How could one of the world’s most powerful militaries, led by a celebrated tactician like Mr. Putin, have faltered so badly against its much smaller, weaker rival? To piece together the answer, we drew from hundreds of Russian government emails, documents, invasion plans, military ledgers and propaganda directives. We listened to Russian phone calls from the battlefield and spoke with dozens of soldiers, senior officials and Putin confidants who have known him for decades.

(You should be able to read without subscription if you open the link in a private/incognito window.)

It is mostly narrative interpolation, and those who have been closely following the war won't find much that they don't already know, but some specific details are intereting. Here are some highlights (per NYT):

• Some Russian soldiers described being sent to war with little food, training, bullets or equipment — and watching about two-thirds of their underprepared platoon be killed.
• Many of the people closest to Putin fed his suspicions, magnifying his grievances against the West.
• The U.S. sought to stop Ukraine from trying to kill Valery Gerasimov, a top Russian general. American officials were worried that an attempt on his life could lead to a war between the U.S. and Russia. Gerasimov survived the attack.
• A senior Russian official told the C.I.A. director that Russia would not give up, no matter how many of its soldiers were killed or injured. One NATO member has warned allies that Putin might accept the death or injury of as many as 300,000 Russian troops. Here’s how Russian data journalists calculate Moscow’s toll from the war.
• Invading Russian soldiers used their cellphones to call home, enabling the Ukrainian military to find and kill them. Phone intercepts obtained by The Times showed the bitterness Russian soldiers felt toward their own commanders.

Lol, Scott Ritter, really? Well, shit seeks its own level.

Powerful stuff. Ewig...

The Economist interviewed General Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Now, normally I don't pay much mind to government or military officials' statements. You have to read between the lines to get a morsel of useful info. But Zaluzhny is no politico, and he is known for speaking candidly on those infrequent occasions when he speaks in public. And indeed, this interview is not what you might expect: "Rah-rah-rah! Crimea in six months!" Not at all.

Modernist deterministic moral arguments of those like Pereboom, Strawson and Nussbaum surrender the absolute solipsist rationalism of free will-based models of the self in favor of a view of the self as belonging to and determined by a wider causal empirical social and natural order. — Joshs

Who are they arguing against? No one but no one believes in Strawson's strawman of a self-caused, perfectly autonomous agent.

If we ask why the agent endowed with free will chose to perform a certain action , the only explanation we can give is that it made sense to them given their own desires and whims. If we instead inquire why the individual ensconced within a modernist deterministic or postmodern relativist world performed the same action, we would be able to make use of the wider explanatory framework of the natural or discursive order in situating the causes of behavior.

That's news to absolutely no one. The understanding that our decisions are influenced by many things, and furthermore that the development of our character is influenced by many things, is already built into ordinary interpersonal relationships, as well as modern justice systems.

In an Interview with Galen Strawson:

"I just want to stress the word “ultimate” before “moral responsibility.” Because there’s a clear, weaker, everyday sense of “morally responsible” in which you and I and millions of other people are thoroughly morally responsible people."

I don't know what he means by "ultimate" responsibility. — ChrisH

In that interview he says:

Almost all human beings believe that they are free to choose what to do in such a way that they can be truly, genuinely responsible for their actions in the strongest possible sense—responsible period, responsible without any qualification, responsible sans phrase, responsible tout court, absolutely, radically, buck-stoppingly responsible; ultimately responsible, in a word—and so ultimately morally responsible when moral matters are at issue. Free will is the thing you have to have if you’re going to be responsible in this all-or-nothing way. That’s what I mean by free will. That’s what I think we haven’t got and can’t have. — Strawson

He uses similar superlatives in the "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility" essay. According to his thesis, what this "ultimate responsibility" amounts to is being self-caused in a God-like way, having no causal history whatsoever, so that you are the sole originator not only of your actions, but of your personality - "what you are." He continues with this admonition to his fellow philosophers:

I like philosophers—I love what they do; I love what I do—but they have made a truly unbelievable hash of all this. They’ve tried to make the phrase “free will” mean all sorts of different things, and each of them has told us that what it really means is what he or she has decided it should mean. But they haven’t made the slightest impact on what it really means, or on our old, deep conviction that free will is something we have. — Strawson

This is hilariously lacking in self-awareness. You might think that, unlike all those armchair philosophers who just make shit up, he, Strawson, went out and did some actual research. But he does exactly what he accuses others of doing: he tells us "that what [moral responsibility] really means is what he... has decided it should mean."

Meanwhile, if you want to know what ordinary people, not philosophers, think about things like agency, responsibility and free will (what he in passing refers to in the interview as "the weaker, everyday sense"), a body of research does exist in sociology and a relatively new discipline of Experimental Philosophy (which in this area is basically a crossover between sociology and philosophy). And for my money, it is this everyday sense that actually matters, not the artificial constructs that philosophers make up, such as Strawson's "ultimate responsibility".

This is problematic. The argument declares for determinism in the first premise, and then discovers it at the end as if it has proved it. — unenlightened

Although the main argument seems to leave out the possibility of indeterminism, Strawson does discuss indeterminism and argues that, if anything, "random factors, for which one is ex hypothesi in no way responsible" make matters worse for personal responsibility. This is the part of the argument with which I unreservedly agree. (But these are well-known objections - cf. Ayer: "But if it is a matter of pure chance that a man should act in one way rather than another, he may be free but can hardly be responsible.")

But of course the cause of my actions is my imagination. I imagine the pleasant taste of beer and that might cause me to head to the fridge, or I might catch sight of my burgeoning beer-gut and think again. The causal path of thought cannot be predicted even if it is mechanical because of the halting problem. So the question is begged as it always must be. — unenlightened

I don't really understand what this has to do with predictability. The argument is that, assuming causal determinism and a fixed past, you could not have become anything other than what you are. (And furthermore, if a non-deterministic component is also in play, you have no more control of it than you have of the past.) Predictability does not play any role here. (And halting problem?)

But the argument is further disguised by talk of "ultimate responsibility" as if it is something deeper than ordinary responsibility. Which it clearly isn't. I choose to drink beer and then I am drunk, and I am responsible for the way I am - drunk. And if I get in a fight or run someone down, I am responsible for that because I am responsible for the way I am. And of course the law recognises that one attains an age of responsibility, one is not born with it, but develops the capacity to change one's state. It also recognises diminished responsibility, when circumstances are overwhelming. There is a lot of work being done by that weasel word, 'ultimate', that it has no permit for. — unenlightened

I agree. If "utlimate responsibility" is defined as causa sui, against which Strawson needlessly argues, then it has little to do with what we normally understand by responsibility. And if it is his argument that what we take responsibility to be is reducible to mechanistic causation, then he is plainly wrong.

Here is Strawson's paper: Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility (1994)

summarizes it accurately. Much of the short paper consists of restatements and elaborations (or belaboring) of this thesis. Here is a longer version from the paper:

(1) You do what you do because of the way you are.

So

(2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do you must be truly responsible for the way you are – at least in certain crucial mental respects.

But

(3) You cannot be truly responsible for the way you are, so you cannot be truly responsible for what you do.

Why can’t you be truly responsible for the way you are? Because

(4) To be truly responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are, and this is impossible.

Why is it impossible? Well, suppose it is not. Suppose that

(5) You have somehow intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are, and that you have brought this about in such a way that you can now be said to be truly responsible for being the way you are now.

For this to be true

(6) You must already have had a certain nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are as you now are.

But then

(7) For it to be true that you and you alone are truly responsible for how you now are, you must be truly responsible for having had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are.

So

(8) You must have intentionally brought it about that you had that nature N, in which case you must have existed already with a prior nature in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are …

Here one is setting off on the regress. Nothing can be causa sui in the required way. — Strawson

Composed in the final weeks of the war, when the composer's world was crumbling around him. If the theme sounds vaguely familiar, listen carefully: about 3/4 of the way in, and then again at the very conclusion of the piece the source of the theme is revealed.

:up: I loved that video (and music too, of course).

British Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) published Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022. You can read the executive summary at the linked page, and the full PDF is available from there.

This report is an account of the pre-war plans of both Russia and Ukraine, the course of the initial phases of the war between February and July 2022, an overview of what has been learned about the AFRF, and an assessment of the implications for NATO and specifically the UK military. — RUSI

The authors caution that the report was based to a large extent on classified and sensitive data, which precludes discussion of methodology. "For this reason, this report should not be considered a work of academic scholarship and it does not use citations."

Putin offers yet another reason for annexing Ukrainian territories (not a new one though):

I think it should be obvious to all those present here why we supported and eventually agreed to the recognition and admission of Donetsk, Luhansk, and then two more territories into the Russian Federation. Look at these young women. How does [meeting participant] Fedorova, who lives in the Lugansk Republic, differ from other Fedorovs [common Russian surname] somewhere in Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg or Moscow? Nothing. These are our people. — Putin

That's harsh. No love for Ives?




The conclusion is just heartbreaking.

Are locutions such as "torture is bad" truth-apt? — SophistiCat

Of course not. — Vera Mont

Well, that's one long-standing philosophical debate closed!

So the OP question is not about truth anymore again? — Vera Mont

It is hard to tell, to be frank. The OP insists that it is, but then when philosophers discourse about truth (or anything else for that matter) things get complicated. Are locutions such as "torture is bad" truth-apt? Controversy! I am with @Banno on this: I am happy to count as "true" any statement that I would endorse.

Does the OP endorse the statement "torture is bad"? I should hope so.

There are no such things as regards physics. There are such things as regards biology. For biology to operate, life is a necessity and the sustenance of life is therefore inherently good. A moral claim based on that premise may not universally true, since much of the universe is non-living, but it is true for a class of material entities known as organisms. — Vera Mont

I don't mean to stick up for error theorists, but I am with them (and with Humeans) on this one. One shouldn't confuse explanations for morality being the way it is, and reasons for acting morally - that would be a naturalistic fallacy. Explanations can be biological, anthropological, social, or perhaps even physical. Motivations ultimately require value judgements. The gap cannot be bridged.

If nothing can be good, or bad, how can anything ever be good, or bad? — Leftist

Your question is (perhaps deliberately) unclear. If you are bothered by the apparent tension between moral talk (locutions such as "torture is bad") and the ontology that denies moral properties, then there are several ways out of this conundrum: fix the language, reconsider the argument about the language (perhaps embrace non-cognitivism instead), reconsider ontology (perhaps abandon moral realism).

What should not be in question is what we actually mean when we say things like "torture is bad." What we care about when we say these things (@Moliere) is neither language nor ontology - only metaethicists care about that.

What if the moral claims are simply not truth-apt? — Moliere

And so it seems to me that you've missed the point of morality. Who cares that it's not "true"? — Moliere

When I want to make safe meta-ethical claims, error theory is home base. — Moliere

If you are referring to the above (moral claims are not truth-apt), that is non-cognitivism, rather than error theory. Error theorists (and Leftist, if I am not mistaken) maintain that moral claims have the grammatical structure and the apparent intention of saying something true about the world (the real world, not a fictional universe of Star Trek, for example). But that (they argue) is a mistake, because for a moral claim to be true, there ultimately needs to be something out in the (real) world that has the property of being good or bad or otherwise morally flavored, and there are no such things.

However, when error theorists say that it is not true that "torture is bad," they do not therefore mean to say that "torture is fine": that would be repeating the same mistake. Indeed, all this theorizing does not necessarily imply anything about common morality. All it means (if you accept their arguments) is that moral talk is confused. But you don't have to change your moral attitudes on that account. The appropriate therapy would be to fix the philosophical language, rather than behavior.

@Leftist seems to be reasoning from the error theory, except that Leftist doesn't quite get it. Leftist doesn't get that the error theory is a metaethical position: it is concerned with the nature of moral talk. It doesn't, for example, conclude that "torture is fine," nor does it conclude that "torture is wrong." It concludes that both statements are false - more or less for the reasons that Leftist gives: because they lack truthmakers. There is nothing in the world that could make something good, bad, or even morally neutral. That doesn't imply moral nihilism though.

I love that knifepoint between late romanticism and early modernism. I'd like to live there. — Noble Dust

At about the same time (1900s) Ives asked a question that is now stuck in my head. Does anyone know the answer? ;)

I've been thinking about this since you wrote it.
I woke up this morning with an earworm but not any dangling from the Prophet Bird.
And I wondered what is it about music that has that effect on our brain or mind.
I guess it's the recurrence of a motif. Is that all? Why does some music resonate more than others?
Does the impression depend on the listener's mental state or brain rhythm already going on?
What do you hear that I can't? — Amity

Earworms are funny things. Often after listening to a number of pieces, such as Schumann's Waldszenen, what gets into my head is not what drew me most while I was listening. Other times I am only semi-aware of the music in my ears while I am occupied with something else. But then, after an incubation period of about 8-16 hours, some "little phrase" or entire pages worth of music hatch in my head and won't quiet down for the rest of the day (or night).

Found this. The Schumann piece comes in just after rapturous applause at 11:00. (if I hear right!)

Wilhelm Backhaus at age 72 in splendid form, giving four encores during a Carnegie Hall recital in New York in 1956. Starting with some preluding to establish the key of the next piece, he plays:
- Schubert's Impromptu in B flat major Opus 142 no. 3, D935;
- Chopin's Etude Opus 25 no. 2 in F minor;
- Schumann's "Vogel als Prophet", from his Waldszenen Opus 82;
- Mozart's Rondo alla Turca from his Sonata no. 11 in A major, KV331 — Amity

Thanks for this, I loved it! (Interesting how he improvises little transitions between the pieces, as if walking from one to the next.)

Truly unhinged: — Noble Dust

LOL, yeah!

Ah, there you go, thanks. For some reason I thought the Rain King in Bellow was an interpolation from Frazer, not a literal reference. In hindsight, Dugin is much likelier to have read Frazer than Bellow.

The Russians are actually digging fortifications in Crimea - something that would have been unthinkable even a year ago. Of course, such moves aren't always what they seem. Prigozhin's much-advertised "Wagner Lines" are pure theater, for example.

Huh. So much for Dugin. (I think he is mixing up Frazer's The Golden Bough with Bellow's Henderson the Rain King - not that it matters in this context.)

Russian official media has been pretty tight-lipped about the "Kherson maneuver", as it is described by the MoD. In sharp contrast with Kharkiv retreat, most milbloggers and nationalists, as well as public figures like Kadyrov and Prigozhin stick to the party line this time around. Looks like they finally got the message.

There have been mixed messages coming in about the retreat. Many expected this to be a bloody rout, and there were early reports to that effect. Some experts asserted that it would be impossible for the Russians to pull out in anything less than a week. Others describe it as a well-organized retreat. We'll know more in the coming days, but on balance so far it looks more like the latter. Apparently, they had been preparing this for weeks before the official announcement, and managed to pull out most of their working equipment in the meanwhile. (Also, they looted everything they could from the city, from museum collections to toilets and sinks, and trashed what they couldn't take - but that's nothing new.) Their best fighting units withdrew as well, but there have also been reports about some units that were told to change into civvies and piss off any way they can.

This changing into civvies trick had been reported by locals many times, even before the retreat. I am not sure what's up with that. Perhaps the military were mixing with civilian evacuees in order to avoid becoming targets for Ukrainian strikes when they crossed the river?

I woke up this morning with this playing in my head... and it still is.

Russia has a long history of similar views of Putin and Patrushev (or Dugin). We often forget that either the Mensheviks or the Bolsheviks weren't the only play around in Russia when it had it's Revolution and especially before the revolutions. For example, the Chornaya sotnya, the Black Hundreds, promoted an ultra-conservative right-wing idealism which supported the House of Romanov, was against any reforms to the autocracy of the Tzar and favoured ultra-nationalism and anti-semitism. Some of the sycophants of Putin's regime seem like them. And of course, in today's Russia the movement has been refounded. And btw. the movement participated in the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War on the side of pro-Russian separatists. — ssu

Fun fact: Drya Platonova/Dugina - Dugin's daughter who was car-bombed, allegedly by the Ukrainian intelligence - closely cooperated with the present-day Black Hundreds publishing company, and knew its founders well. One of her texts was to be included in "Book Z", a collection of texts about the invasion that the publisher is planning to release later this year.

I have discounted Dugin's influence on Putin here, but lately there have been rumors that since Darya's death, Putin, or at least his administration, have taken a greater interest in Dugin. Dugin, along with another odious ultra-nationalist figure, Alexander Prokhanov, have reportedly been invited for consultations to Kremlin, and their idioms have been cropping up in, e.g., Medvedev's ridiculously ferocious social media posts.

Putin's regime has an ideology problem. It was never really ideological, as I have previously said. What could pass for ideological messaging from the top was amorphous, inconstant and uninspiring, for the most part. As in the late Soviet era, there was an unofficial social contract where the populace was discouraged from participation in politics and activism, and in exchange those in power would leave them be, provide safety from wars and major upheavals, as well as some basic prosperity. Keep your head down, and you'll be fine.

That contract was already fraying before the invasion: prosperity was declining and the future didn't look promising. And then the contract was shattered entirely. The unthinkable happened, and then again and again: an invasion into Ukraine that turned into a protracted war that isn't going well, sanctions and isolation that ordinary people are beginning to feel, and then the ultimate blow: mobilization. The authorities are asking a lot from the populace, but have nothing to give in return. So they feel like they have to come up with some inspiring ideology at last. Or at least they feel like this is what Putin expects of them. Dugin, Prokhanov, etc. - they sound like they are in tune with Papa (as they call Putin among themselves), so they may finally find some use.

It will probably come as no surprise that Isaac is playing fast and loose with the truth in saying that Ukraine banned opposition parties. Only one of the main opposition parties was banned (Opposition Platform). It was an openly pro-Russian party that maintained close ties with Russian officials and Russian ruling party before the invasion. (One of its leaders, Viktor Medvedchuk, has longstanding personal ties to Vladimir Putin. After he was arrested on treason charges, Putin had him exchanged for over 200 Ukrainian prisoners, including all of Azov commanders, as well as foreign prisoners who were sentenced to death in Donbass. That provoked a lot of anger among Russian war hawks.)

It should also be noted that although the parties themselves were banned, their elected representatives were not ejected from legislatures, and members of local governments from those parties continued in their capacities. (Unlike, for example, members of the banned British Fascist party, who were interned until the end of the war.) The Opposition Platform simply renamed its faction in Ukraine's parliament.

Who cares? The Russian economy is rather small. You think the world economy will tank if we boycott Portugal? — Olivier5

It is true though that Russia (unlike Portugal) is an important source of energy and raw materials for other countries, and cutting out that dependency will be difficult - for those who even wish to do that: unlike Europe and the US (which had a small exposure), the rest of the world, Asia in particular, is gladly lapping up the spoils.

Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at the Center for Naval Analyses, posted a thread on the current course of the war.

There might be differences, yet I’m not sure if they are enough to support your claim. The expression “Putinism” would be more insightful if it referred to distinctive/identifiable Putin’s ideological beliefs that he promotes and make a difference with his socio-cultural environment’s, but your claim that Putinism consists in “mining old tropes for ready appeal” doesn’t seem to support that, it simply suggests that Putin’s not an original ideologue. And even if, as you suggest, Putin’s motivations were cynical and not genuine by exploiting the nationalist/imperialist tropes, I wouldn’t qualify a regime “ideological” based on the honesty of its leader (and assumed it's clear what "ideological regime" is as opposed to "non-ideological regime"). — neomac

By "Putinism" I meant, for lack of a better term, the regime that has formed in Russia during Putin's rule. We don't really know what's in Putin's head, and ultimately, that's not what matters most (excepting Putin's biographers). What matters is the character of the regime, and that we can see without the benefit of mindreading.

Is he banned from Russian television?

I'm not so sure how much Dugin's star has faded as his speeches is quite well taken now as there is a war between Russia and Ukraine. — ssu

Yeah, I think Dugin is still in the doghouse for whatever reason. He used to have his own program, appeared on panel discussions and such. Not any more. Doesn't hold any prominent academic positions either.

And let's not forget that his daughter (presumable killed by the Ukrainian intelligence services trying to kill him) is now a martyr for the Russian side in this war. Obviously not the smartest moves that Ukrainians have done as Dugin is a civilian. But I guess an easier target than lawful targets as military commanders. — ssu

That was a very strange affair.

Not sure what you mean by "ideological regime", but I might disagree on that one. Putin's speeches are replete of myth-building claims, philosophical references, and civilization clash rhetoric — neomac

I meant that Putin's regime doesn't have a founding ideology - the kind of ideology that animates the masses, at least in its early years. Such was the case with Communist, Fascist and Islamist regimes, but "Putinism" doesn't have this pedigree. The regime's control over mass media, for example, was always a sloppy, cynical affair, in which carefully curated news and propaganda shows went hand-in-hand with Western or Western-styled TV series and commercials for Western products. (To a large degree, that remains true even today.) Alternative media was marginalized but not entirely banned. Whatever ideology there is, it is ad hoc, tactical, often inconsistent. It is pandering, rather than revolutionary, mining old tropes for ready appeal.

The ultimate proof text of Putinist ideology is Putin himself - and yes, of course, Putin has his influences. He does like citing Ilyin - a Russian monarchist political thinker, who was sympathetic to Nazism and Fascism (like I said, there is a lot of cynicism, inconsistency and fakery in this ideology, if it can even be called such).

Alexandr Dugin is really a "Putin whisperer" in the way he has promoted this semi-fictional historical view of Russia and it's role in the World. — ssu

Dugin's influence is often overstated. His reputation as "Putin whisperer," "Putin's Rasputin" is largely self-created. He is a shrewd self-promoter, but he is probably better known in the West than at home. In Russia he is a fixture in the imperialist nationalist circles, and he has some influence among the siloviks, but Putin doesn't talk to him; they probably never even met. Nor is it likely that Putin reads Dugin: the latter once lamented that Putin doesn't read the right books.

Ironically, Dugin's star went into decline in 2014, during Maidan revolution in Ukraine. He was fired from his position as head of a department in Moscow State University and banned from TV after he called for killing of Ukrainians. Hard to imagine now, when exactly that is being put into practice, although there is an echo in the recent firing of the chief of RT's Russian language division after he called for drowning and burning of Ukrainian children. There have been various speculations as to exactly why Dugin fell from grace, but nothing is known for certain other than that he never quite recovered from that fall.

Putin's regime is not an ideological one, and Putin doesn't need some bearded philosopher to set the agenda for him. He needs flexible, undistinguished and, above all, loyal underlings. That today Dugin's ideology resonates with Putin's is probably more a coincidence than a causal link.

Most of Putin's Valdai speech was devoted to airing his grievances against the West. None of it was new.

• The West wants to rule the world unchecked. They want to impose their rules, their culture, their values upon everyone.
• They have no respect for cultural sovereignty.
• Cancel culture.
• Globalism.
• Liberal world order.
• How come the West can do whatever they like on the world stage, but not anyone else? There should be a "democracy" in international relations.
• Every civilization has the right to choose its own path. No one can tell us how we should live.
• Traditional values.
• Multipolarity.
• Two Wests: traditional, conservative West (good) and liberal, cosmopolitan, neocolonialist West (bad).
• The West was trying to undermine Russia (e.g., by supporting Chechen separatists), but we came out on top.
• We extended the hand of friendship to the West but were rebuffed and slapped with sanctions instead.
• The West is constantly creating sources of tension on our borders with the aim of making Russia more vulnerable and turning it into the instrument of its geopolitical ambitions. (This vague passage is as far as Putin went in articulating his threat perception - aside from all the culture wars stuff.)

In the end he aspirationally talked up autonomy, the end of Western hegemony and reorientation to the East (Belt and Road, etc.)

Ukraine was barely mentioned in the main speech, but it came up in the subsequent Q&A. This is what he said about Ukraine:

• A "coup" in 2014 ultimately led to the "special military operation." (Putin still eschews the W-word, although other high-ranking officials and propagandists have broken the taboo on multiple occasions.) He claimed that a "bloody coup" was staged already after President Yanukovich effectively ceded power by agreeing to early elections, which, Putin candidly admitted, he had no chance of winning. (In actual fact, Yanukovich, together with his siloviks, secretly fled to Russia the day after he signed an accord with Euromaidan representatives, leaving the state legislature to fill the power vacuum.)
• The primary aim of the invasion was to secure Donbass. Also: NATO. But mainly, it's about Donbass.
• We had to attack when we did because Ukraine, with NATO help, was fortifying its defenses, and it would only get more difficult for us if we waited longer.
• Ukraine was originally that part of Russia which fell under foreign domination. People there wanted to reunite with Russia, which eventually happened when Ukraine was absorbed into the Russian Empire. In the 19th century Western powers encouraged Ukrainian nationalism as a divide and conquer strategy against Russia. This led to all sorts of bad things, such as Nazi collaboration. (That Ukrainian nation and Ukrainian language were originally a malicious Western project is a popular thesis among Russian nationalists, to Putin has appealed before.)
• Russians and Ukrainians are one people. And yes, the present war is basically a civil war.
• Modern Ukraine is an artificial state that was created by Soviet Russia.
• Only Russia can guarantee true sovereignty for Ukraine (as part of Russia?)

IEA's World Energy Outlook 2022 is out. A large part of it is about the outlook for clean energy and CO2 reduction. In that context the report notes that the energy crisis precipitated by the war in Ukraine will in the longer term hasten the transition to clean energy (although in the short term there has been some backsliding in Europe as it tries to compensate for energy shortages).

Russia's fossil fuel exports will decline, both in absolute and in relative terms. Russia used to export 75% of its gas and 55% of its oil to Europe. Asia will not make up for the loss of the highly lucrative European market. Russia's share in oil and gas exports will fall by half by 2030, and it will lose 1 trillion dollars in revenue.

The US has always maintained that there would be no American boots on the ground fighting in Ukraine, and to the best of our knowledge, that's still true. But what's the next best thing? US-trained elite foreign troops fighting in Ukraine! Only... they might be fighting for the other side this time.

Members of Afghanistan’s elite National Army Commando Corps, who were abandoned by the United States and Western allies when the country fell to the Taliban last year, say they are being contacted with offers to join the Russian military to fight in Ukraine. Multiple Afghan military and security sources say the U.S.-trained light infantry force, which fought alongside U.S. and other allied special forces for almost 20 years, could make the difference Russia needs on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Afghanistan’s 20,000 to 30,000 volunteer commandos were left behind when the United States ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021 . Only a few hundred senior officers were evacuated when the republic collapsed. Thousands of soldiers escaped to regional neighbors as the Taliban hunted down and killed loyalists to the collapsed government. Many of the commandos who remain in Afghanistan are in hiding to avoid capture and execution.

The United States spent almost $90 billion building the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. Although the force as a whole was incompetent and handed the country over to the Taliban in a matter of weeks, the commandos were always held in high regard, having been schooled by U.S. Navy SEALs and the British Special Air Service...

Now, they are jobless and hopeless, many commandos still waiting for resettlement in the United States or Britain, making them easy targets for recruiters who understand the “band of brothers” mentality of highly skilled fighting men. This potentially makes them easy pickings for Russian recruiters, said Afghan security sources. A former senior Afghan security official, who requested anonymity, said their integration into the Russian military “would be a game-changer” on the Ukrainian battlefield, as Russian President Vladimir Putin struggles to recruit for his faltering war and is reportedly using the notorious mercenary Wagner Group to sign up prisoners. — Foreign Policy

The foresight and follow-through of US and British foreign military engagements never fails to disappoint...