It is clear that the Russian economy emerged from the first shock of the war and sanctions in 2022 far better than many expected. The official data show a fall in 2022 of just over 2 percent and a prediction for at least some economic growth in 2023, no worse than that expected for Germany and better than the outlook for Britain.
Grown-ups do not speak of Putin's war . It is quite clear that the war was provoked by NATO and forced on the Russian government as an option less desirable than watching impotently as the Donbas was over run.
The nature of the NATO supported government in Ukraine is notorious- it is a fascist regime, far more authoritarian than anything seen in Russia for many years, supported by death squads and devoted to the cult of Bandera and those instrumental in the Holocaust by Bullets.
The horrible reality is that tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians are being killed because Ukraine, under pressure from NATO, refused to honour the Minsk accords.
I don’t think you mean that western support is funny, even if you say so, Vlad.
Russia attacks Ukraine and destroys the Ukrainian economy. Russia does not appear to be interested in any kind of continued production in Ukraine — the only purpose is to destroy. Western governments support the Ukrainian economy to avoid having Russians at their doorstep and destroying everything in their own countries. That is quite reasonable, but not funny.
Anyway, you are right in your first statement: Zelensky’s last sentence is funny. Nato hasn’t even arrived yet.
Since I am Vlad, you can draw a reasonable conclusion that I am fluent in Russian. Which puts me in the position to read evil, bad Russian propaganda alongside good, wholesome Western propaganda, and draw comparisons between the 2. Which puts me in a position to at least start approaching to comprehend the real picture, both military and politically, albeit I fully admit that I am one of those blind scholars trying to describe the elephant by touch.
From your statements I can draw the conclusion that you peruse only the latter part of the propaganda, which means that you are nowhere near the said elephant.
I give you a linear example, using only Western coverage. Up to October Western press was describing Russian aerial bombardment as indiscriminate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. From October Russian aerial bombardment actually did start targeting civilian infrastructure, i.e. the power grid. Whichmakes the statements of the Western press prior to October what? Hint - starts with F, ends with E. Or with B and T, respectively, depending on your preference.
A text starting with “What about” — that must be whataboutism. Nevertheless, I shall try to answer:
When the war started a year ago, the expectation was that Ukraine could resist the Russians for two weeks and nothing more than that. The government distributed weapons to anyone who wanted one. Some of these weapons will, of course, trickle down to neighboring countries.
I have visited Ukraine five times over the past 10 years. I like the Ukrainian approach: Curious, friendly, optimistic, not at all like the Russian one. But I am afraid of all these weapons. There is a war going on and the ubituqious weapons are sort of collateral damage.
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
I prefer to take Prof John Mearsheimer's analysis as a guiding element, and not this slanderous trope that parrots the official line provided to the western masses for easy digestion.
That is absurd - he is on record to saying explicitly that "not regretting Soviet Unions means no having no heart, but tying to resurrect it means having no brains". Which is exactly 100% right. I would strongly suggest to do some research and apply some critical thinking skills and not repeat sound bites from MSM.
Just till recently, Poland's ruling PiS party wasnt' exactly a beacon of European Democracy either. But then it was baptised anew "born again" and EU money flow resumed.
If the Ukrainians with the army they had at that moment attacked Donbas it would looked like retarded meat grinder you actually see from the Russian side in Donbas in which the neighbourhoods of Donetsk which were turned into one of the most comprehensive lines of defence from both sides are holding for a year and a large share of mobilised from Donetsk and Luhansk died in trying to storm them.
Obviously, Russia could be actually defending Donbas if Ukrainians attacked and not trying to do a multi-direction attack which included a badly organised thunder run on the capital.
The amount of defending Donbas is so powerful, at this moment the place has so much civilian casualties, still not really evacuated Donetsk that lacks basic utilities during the winter and absolutely magical total mobilisation from the start in which people were just hunted on the streets from the day one and sent undersupplied to storm fortified positions with insane casualties for months.
Indeed, having grown up with an Eastern European family, I can completely comprehend why this war will brew for years. Indefatigably and obstinantely clutching to archaic paradigms of ruling can not easily be relinquishe . Particularly, when the leader of the world's largest nation (geographically) is in his seventh decade.
Obviously, there was a Russian occupied part of Donbas with the two People's Militia corpuses of LNR and DNR supplied by heavy equipment by Russia and manned by locals and leaded by Russian officers. Delaware doesn't have armed anti-government groups that control its territory and have a size larger than almost all European armies.
There is nothing obvious about your unsubstantiated assertions: there was no Russian occupied part of the Donbas, the militias of the two republics employed the equipment they inherited from the pre-Maidan regime, they were led not by Russians but by former officers of the Ukrainian forces.
The area in question has been Russian populated and Russian ruled since Potemkin's time-Jeremy Bentham's brother Samuel was one of its officers. It had contributed millions of soldiers to the Red Army, the memorials to whom are being torn down by the lineal descendants of the SS forces that they fought. (The Canadian deputy Prime Minister being one of them.)
At Minsk all parties agreed that Ukraine would benefit from a federal constitution under which local cultural rights would be protected. The ludicrous campaign to ban Russian and burn Russian books would be ended, and the enormous fissures within a country in which so many different cultures were incorporated would become a source of strength rather than an excuse for stormtrooper activities.
It has now transpired that both the Ukrainian negotiators and the French and German leaders who also took part in Minsk were acting in bad faith- hence the war. Hence the hundreds of tghousands of casualties. Hence the very real threat of nuclear conflict.
Nuclear threat is Always imminent when the war is essentially between two countries who have the most nuclear warheads in the World. I love it how China was "caught off guard" by this war. In actuality, when you claim that your intelligence is predicated on rote memory and intellectual property theft, inevitably your future will be jeopardized by other Superpowers.
This is not merely a military war but a full-fledged Economic War. It's a battle for an unstable supply chain. Undeniably, the price of petrol will rise to 3.50per litre as Russia has decided to decrease production this March. Moreover, the OPEC nations have also agreed to cut production. I suppose this will force more people to take public transport. That would really combat the Obesity problem which is the real KILLER of Western countries. If we refuse people who were obese medical intervention, then the country would achieve a huge savings. That would resolve the burgeoning debt all Western Nations are faced with due to the irrational lockdowns.
Undoubtedly, paranoia and anxiety has heightened worldwide because "tracking people" incessantly in the community is disorderly thinking. Consequently, there's been extreme levels of crime escalating in communities. The police have zero training in mental health disorders, so they're intervention is useless. Moreover, hospitals can't cope with all the paranoid people flooding the emergency departments. The prisons are also full. The court system is incredibly backlogged. Hence, these people simply circulate in the community. The drop of a hammer would merely wind them up.
like you have the list of pre-war equipment of Donetsk people's militia, please try to link the sources in which they inherit or capture all these 300 tanks and other heavy equipment, it would be wildly interesting.
> the militias of the two republics employed the equipment they inherited from the pre-Maidan regime, they were led not by Russians but by former officers of the Ukrainian forces.
What would you call the situation in which you have a part of the country which doesn't recognise the rule of the official government and exists solely due to the influence of the other country because without military and economic support it would collapse, which has people on leading positions from the said country and was established by people from the said country in the military revolt that started by a person from the said country and the people from the said country have active political influence in running the internal affairs of the place? If it's not occupation, what is it?
Can you please show from what exactly they collected their heavy armour, like what stockpiles in particular and so on, from what they inherited their tank units at the quantity they had? Like what units defected to Donbas with what machines to create their tank core? Please name the names.
At this point no one denies outside of weirdo Internet Westerners who can't read the language that the army had Russian advisers for years and were supplied by Russians, I don't understand why are you doing so because people got awards for it and the military units in which they served and at which time are know, including from Russian sources on the Internet. People who served in people's militias like Murz constantly wrote about it through years, their influence was often negative but they were there.
The paragraphs after are just random irrelevant political memes. The federalism from Kremlins was always about pushing the veto power on Ukrainians, there would be no "source of strength", the politics would continue to be an incompetent clusterfuck ran by grifters as they were but now with the ability of Kremlins to leverage their influence more and having even more dysfunctional divide which wouldn't disappear due to magical federalism and I have no idea why do you assume so. The reality in ex-Soviet space is that everyone tries to run de-Russification and transfer everything into national languages away from Russian and kick Russians away (including Belarus which had the cycles of moving to the West and promoting local nationalists). You want to invent some amusing stories about how great it could be in Ukraine, it's just all memes, everyone can invent amusing stories about how everything would be good, but it's irrelevant garbage.
The idea is that there was no attack on Donbas and Russia didn't act to save it, it could have just engage in a border war without thunder run on Kiev or just annex the places and say that if Ukrainians will attack they will start a war without doing a thunder run on Kiev, but they didn't do anything like this, this story is just dumb lunacy. The region is currently in ruins and thousands are killed including by really amusing Russian deployment of the mobilised from the region which shows the great amount of care from Russians.
> It has now transpired that both the Ukrainian negotiators and the French and German leaders who also took part in Minsk were acting in bad faith- hence the war.
They are just brazenly lying now because it's popular and they don't want to look bad and want Ukrainians to like them, neither Germans nor French behaved like it was a lie and actively tried to push Ukrainians into compliance.
While not disputing the technical data, the underlying thread (that Russia is in serious financial trouble) is hogwash. It has extremely low debt to GDP, the strongest currency last year, massive Gold hoard (yet to be deployed), high demand and strong prices for its energy, food, and weapon exports, and very strong support of its allies. (SCO/Brics). If you want to see serious financial trouble, you don't need to look far afield. (US, EU, UK, essentially the west). It has an economy and population perfectly designed for war - a warrior society. Watch which economy implodes when the BRICS initiate their new hard reserve currency. lol (oh, and BTW, Vlad has ~ 70% support, while Biden lucky to get 30% (ignorant delusional socialista remanant). Western leadership? Say what leadership. The west is doomed to failed state status. It will be a wake up call and a blessing for those who are ready. In God and Gold I Trust
I am very surprised that Mr. Tooze has not brought up any of the papers written by Mr. Sergey Glazyev, the Commissioner for Integration and Macroeconomics within the Eurasian Economic Commission, the executive body of the Eurasian Economic Union, who had very harsh words about the policies pursued by the Russian National Bank and Mr. Putin's austerity approach and discouragement of productive investment in Russia.
I find such a lapse extremely disappointing, especially since the work of Mr. Glazyev has been translated into English. Has Mr. Tooze ever perused the big online list of publications made available by the Valdai Club? Relying ONLY on western sources might signal political correctness, but by gosh it is showing a huge and cultivated blind spot. Talking about Russian economy with only one unnamed former National Bank official is shoddy to cite from it is beyond lame and unprofessional and following such a trend could bring one on the level of gutter analysis that The Economist has been engaging for so many years. The cross on The Economist credibility was put by The Economist itself when, more than 10 years ago, they have stopped allowing online comments to their articles, because 95% of the comments were in total contradiction, in a very articulate and factual critical manner, with the message that the Economist wanted to push forward.
So when I see Mr. Tooze making such a copious use of excerpts from The Economist, my levels of confidence in his posting sink like the Titanic...
Your sources for this article are well bogged into the US/NATO war camp Adam. They don’t come any less independent than the ‘ Economist.’ Alexandra Propenko writes for the Carnegie Endowment fund whose board of trustees chair is former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker, Carnegie’s Board of Trustees is peppered with corporate lobbyists from Nestlé, etc. The article itself is full of ‘what if’s’. Not your best work.
A passing comment here reminds me of an issue that keeps arising in discussions of Russia's war. Prisoners were sent to the tank factories, as they have been sent to die on the front lines, and no doubt to other key functions. Do they have a choice? Are they paid? Or are they in fact slave labor? Is this another crime Russia will have to answer for?
Mr. Tooze, if I were you I would disable comments. Learn quite a bit reading you and quick scroll through the comments expecting a somewhat intelligent discussion and it’s just a nonsensical firehose of Russian propaganda. Usually I leave your readings itching to learn more but after reading the absolutely disgusting comments I think I may avoid your Substack page for awhile. Shit is toxic.
"Putin's war" phrase really insults the intelligence of anybody who had looked at the genesis of this conflict. Quick recap:
- US finally - after decades of sustained efforts - succeeds in color revolution in Kiev (Maidan) installing a neo-Banderista regime which proclaims the intent to ethnically clean Ukraine from anything Russian, from culture to actual people
- Civil war breaks out - some parts predominantly inhabited by Russians manage to break free from regime that wants to kill them
- Minsk agreements try to stop the civil war - we now know 100% for fact that West and Ukraine signed them not in good faith but to gain time for "final solution"
- NATO spends 8 years revamping the Ukraine Army with training, logistics, intelligence, purging pre-Maidan officers. Neo Nazi military units are part of Ukrainian Army and commit various crimes where they operate.
- US withdraws from ABM treaty, INF treaty and finally from Open Skies agreement - setting the perfect stage to deploy missile and nuclear forces close to the middle of European part of Russia critically tipping the balance of power
- West signals intent to bring Ukraine also formally into NATO (at this point it is already biggest army in Europe after Russia)
- Russia tries a wide diplomatic effort to re-negotiate European security, re-enforce Minsk and keep Ukraine neutral. It is met with derision and humiliation. The attempt is dismissed in most arrogant, non-diplomatic way.
- Kiev regime intensifies attack on Donbass, with plans to "solve the situation" by force. Documented by OSCE
- Russia intervenes to save Donbas and also to achieve strategic objective to establish a land connection between Russia and Crimea.
It is certainly not "Putin's war" because any other leader in Kremlin would not have decided differently - there was simply no other avenue left, beside complete humiliation and accepting of ethnic cleansing of Russians in land that they inhabited for centuries.
To grossly oversimplify, there were two questions (among others, of course!) following the invasion: What would it and western economic responses do to Russia’s economy in the short term and what would it do in the long term.
Obviously, todays post pretty much -- but not conclusively? -- that first question. But there’s that second question to game out...
Pretending that anywhere Russia invades becomes magically a part of Russia is a delusion shared only by Putin and those who long for a mythical glorious Soviet past.
It won't happen "magically" but by the fact that those lands are predominantly inhabited by Russians and were part of Russia before Lenin and Khrushchev gave them to Soviet Ukraine. Donbass in order to convert a purely agrarian republic into a agrarian-industrial to align with communist power base doctrine, and Crimea - nobody to this date knows really why? In any case, I don't see the point of my tax dollars to enforce internal border decisions made by Soviet Communist Party Polit bureau 100 or 70 years ago, nor do I see the need to risk world war over them.
Let's then add him to long list of murderous thugs - for example Sarkozy and Cameron that destroyed Libya (with generous support from Obama and HRC) so that to this point 10+ years after it is a failed state (exists only in map not reality), with destroyed infrastructure, and wealth looted. Or how about Obama, Trump and Biden that are unable or unwilling to remove US troops from illegally occupying parts of Syria, without any authorization from UN, or US congress even... The list is long...
Grown-ups do not speak of Putin's war . It is quite clear that the war was provoked by NATO and forced on the Russian government as an option less desirable than watching impotently as the Donbas was over run.
The nature of the NATO supported government in Ukraine is notorious- it is a fascist regime, far more authoritarian than anything seen in Russia for many years, supported by death squads and devoted to the cult of Bandera and those instrumental in the Holocaust by Bullets.
Yes, Ukraine being overrun by Ukrainians. What a horrible thought.
The horrible reality is that tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians are being killed because Ukraine, under pressure from NATO, refused to honour the Minsk accords.
Here is Zelensky’s answer:
“Two Jewish guys from Odesa meet up. One asks the other: ‘So what’s the situation? What are people saying?’”
“And he goes, ‘What are people saying? They are saying it’s a war.’”
“What kind of war?”
“Russia is fighting NATO.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, yes! Russia is fighting NATO.”
“So how’s it going?”
“Well, 70,000 Russian soldiers are dead. The missile stockpile has almost been depleted. A lot of equipment is damaged, blown up.”
“And what about NATO?”
“What about NATO? NATO hasn’t even arrived yet.”
(www.youtube.com/shorts/6UG3_zHY2O0)
Very funny. You know what is also funny? 70% of Ukrainian government budget is covered by western help. Not counting military aid.
I don’t think you mean that western support is funny, even if you say so, Vlad.
Russia attacks Ukraine and destroys the Ukrainian economy. Russia does not appear to be interested in any kind of continued production in Ukraine — the only purpose is to destroy. Western governments support the Ukrainian economy to avoid having Russians at their doorstep and destroying everything in their own countries. That is quite reasonable, but not funny.
Anyway, you are right in your first statement: Zelensky’s last sentence is funny. Nato hasn’t even arrived yet.
Dear Ebbe,
Since I am Vlad, you can draw a reasonable conclusion that I am fluent in Russian. Which puts me in the position to read evil, bad Russian propaganda alongside good, wholesome Western propaganda, and draw comparisons between the 2. Which puts me in a position to at least start approaching to comprehend the real picture, both military and politically, albeit I fully admit that I am one of those blind scholars trying to describe the elephant by touch.
From your statements I can draw the conclusion that you peruse only the latter part of the propaganda, which means that you are nowhere near the said elephant.
I give you a linear example, using only Western coverage. Up to October Western press was describing Russian aerial bombardment as indiscriminate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. From October Russian aerial bombardment actually did start targeting civilian infrastructure, i.e. the power grid. Whichmakes the statements of the Western press prior to October what? Hint - starts with F, ends with E. Or with B and T, respectively, depending on your preference.
Give it a thought.
The short version of Vladimir is Vova, Vlad is short for Vladislav.
What about all the materiel and ammunition sent by NATO, who is getting demilitarized at a fast clip?
https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-inventories-six-critical-systems
A text starting with “What about” — that must be whataboutism. Nevertheless, I shall try to answer:
When the war started a year ago, the expectation was that Ukraine could resist the Russians for two weeks and nothing more than that. The government distributed weapons to anyone who wanted one. Some of these weapons will, of course, trickle down to neighboring countries.
I have visited Ukraine five times over the past 10 years. I like the Ukrainian approach: Curious, friendly, optimistic, not at all like the Russian one. But I am afraid of all these weapons. There is a war going on and the ubituqious weapons are sort of collateral damage.
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-s-ukraine-invasion-may-have-been-preventable-n1290831
Putin has delusions of grandeur. He wants to reassemble the Soviet Union and be remembered as Vlad the Great. Not going to happen.
I prefer to take Prof John Mearsheimer's analysis as a guiding element, and not this slanderous trope that parrots the official line provided to the western masses for easy digestion.
You know so much about Russian culture, you don't even know Vlad is short for Vladislav, and Vova is for Vladimir.
That is absurd - he is on record to saying explicitly that "not regretting Soviet Unions means no having no heart, but tying to resurrect it means having no brains". Which is exactly 100% right. I would strongly suggest to do some research and apply some critical thinking skills and not repeat sound bites from MSM.
Just till recently, Poland's ruling PiS party wasnt' exactly a beacon of European Democracy either. But then it was baptised anew "born again" and EU money flow resumed.
If the Ukrainians with the army they had at that moment attacked Donbas it would looked like retarded meat grinder you actually see from the Russian side in Donbas in which the neighbourhoods of Donetsk which were turned into one of the most comprehensive lines of defence from both sides are holding for a year and a large share of mobilised from Donetsk and Luhansk died in trying to storm them.
Obviously, Russia could be actually defending Donbas if Ukrainians attacked and not trying to do a multi-direction attack which included a badly organised thunder run on the capital.
The amount of defending Donbas is so powerful, at this moment the place has so much civilian casualties, still not really evacuated Donetsk that lacks basic utilities during the winter and absolutely magical total mobilisation from the start in which people were just hunted on the streets from the day one and sent undersupplied to storm fortified positions with insane casualties for months.
This story is just dumb.
You're confused. Donbas is part of Ukraine. It would be like the US invading Delaware.
Indeed, having grown up with an Eastern European family, I can completely comprehend why this war will brew for years. Indefatigably and obstinantely clutching to archaic paradigms of ruling can not easily be relinquishe . Particularly, when the leader of the world's largest nation (geographically) is in his seventh decade.
In that case Kosovo is definitely part of Serbia, and Golan Heights are part of Syria, not to mention Norther Cyprus part of Cyprus etc.
Obviously, there was a Russian occupied part of Donbas with the two People's Militia corpuses of LNR and DNR supplied by heavy equipment by Russia and manned by locals and leaded by Russian officers. Delaware doesn't have armed anti-government groups that control its territory and have a size larger than almost all European armies.
There is nothing obvious about your unsubstantiated assertions: there was no Russian occupied part of the Donbas, the militias of the two republics employed the equipment they inherited from the pre-Maidan regime, they were led not by Russians but by former officers of the Ukrainian forces.
The area in question has been Russian populated and Russian ruled since Potemkin's time-Jeremy Bentham's brother Samuel was one of its officers. It had contributed millions of soldiers to the Red Army, the memorials to whom are being torn down by the lineal descendants of the SS forces that they fought. (The Canadian deputy Prime Minister being one of them.)
At Minsk all parties agreed that Ukraine would benefit from a federal constitution under which local cultural rights would be protected. The ludicrous campaign to ban Russian and burn Russian books would be ended, and the enormous fissures within a country in which so many different cultures were incorporated would become a source of strength rather than an excuse for stormtrooper activities.
It has now transpired that both the Ukrainian negotiators and the French and German leaders who also took part in Minsk were acting in bad faith- hence the war. Hence the hundreds of tghousands of casualties. Hence the very real threat of nuclear conflict.
Nuclear threat is Always imminent when the war is essentially between two countries who have the most nuclear warheads in the World. I love it how China was "caught off guard" by this war. In actuality, when you claim that your intelligence is predicated on rote memory and intellectual property theft, inevitably your future will be jeopardized by other Superpowers.
This is not merely a military war but a full-fledged Economic War. It's a battle for an unstable supply chain. Undeniably, the price of petrol will rise to 3.50per litre as Russia has decided to decrease production this March. Moreover, the OPEC nations have also agreed to cut production. I suppose this will force more people to take public transport. That would really combat the Obesity problem which is the real KILLER of Western countries. If we refuse people who were obese medical intervention, then the country would achieve a huge savings. That would resolve the burgeoning debt all Western Nations are faced with due to the irrational lockdowns.
Undoubtedly, paranoia and anxiety has heightened worldwide because "tracking people" incessantly in the community is disorderly thinking. Consequently, there's been extreme levels of crime escalating in communities. The police have zero training in mental health disorders, so they're intervention is useless. Moreover, hospitals can't cope with all the paranoid people flooding the emergency departments. The prisons are also full. The court system is incredibly backlogged. Hence, these people simply circulate in the community. The drop of a hammer would merely wind them up.
Biometric Surveillance is Very UNHEALTHY.
like you have the list of pre-war equipment of Donetsk people's militia, please try to link the sources in which they inherit or capture all these 300 tanks and other heavy equipment, it would be wildly interesting.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%A0%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BF%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8
> the militias of the two republics employed the equipment they inherited from the pre-Maidan regime, they were led not by Russians but by former officers of the Ukrainian forces.
What would you call the situation in which you have a part of the country which doesn't recognise the rule of the official government and exists solely due to the influence of the other country because without military and economic support it would collapse, which has people on leading positions from the said country and was established by people from the said country in the military revolt that started by a person from the said country and the people from the said country have active political influence in running the internal affairs of the place? If it's not occupation, what is it?
Can you please show from what exactly they collected their heavy armour, like what stockpiles in particular and so on, from what they inherited their tank units at the quantity they had? Like what units defected to Donbas with what machines to create their tank core? Please name the names.
At this point no one denies outside of weirdo Internet Westerners who can't read the language that the army had Russian advisers for years and were supplied by Russians, I don't understand why are you doing so because people got awards for it and the military units in which they served and at which time are know, including from Russian sources on the Internet. People who served in people's militias like Murz constantly wrote about it through years, their influence was often negative but they were there.
The paragraphs after are just random irrelevant political memes. The federalism from Kremlins was always about pushing the veto power on Ukrainians, there would be no "source of strength", the politics would continue to be an incompetent clusterfuck ran by grifters as they were but now with the ability of Kremlins to leverage their influence more and having even more dysfunctional divide which wouldn't disappear due to magical federalism and I have no idea why do you assume so. The reality in ex-Soviet space is that everyone tries to run de-Russification and transfer everything into national languages away from Russian and kick Russians away (including Belarus which had the cycles of moving to the West and promoting local nationalists). You want to invent some amusing stories about how great it could be in Ukraine, it's just all memes, everyone can invent amusing stories about how everything would be good, but it's irrelevant garbage.
The idea is that there was no attack on Donbas and Russia didn't act to save it, it could have just engage in a border war without thunder run on Kiev or just annex the places and say that if Ukrainians will attack they will start a war without doing a thunder run on Kiev, but they didn't do anything like this, this story is just dumb lunacy. The region is currently in ruins and thousands are killed including by really amusing Russian deployment of the mobilised from the region which shows the great amount of care from Russians.
> It has now transpired that both the Ukrainian negotiators and the French and German leaders who also took part in Minsk were acting in bad faith- hence the war.
They are just brazenly lying now because it's popular and they don't want to look bad and want Ukrainians to like them, neither Germans nor French behaved like it was a lie and actively tried to push Ukrainians into compliance.
While not disputing the technical data, the underlying thread (that Russia is in serious financial trouble) is hogwash. It has extremely low debt to GDP, the strongest currency last year, massive Gold hoard (yet to be deployed), high demand and strong prices for its energy, food, and weapon exports, and very strong support of its allies. (SCO/Brics). If you want to see serious financial trouble, you don't need to look far afield. (US, EU, UK, essentially the west). It has an economy and population perfectly designed for war - a warrior society. Watch which economy implodes when the BRICS initiate their new hard reserve currency. lol (oh, and BTW, Vlad has ~ 70% support, while Biden lucky to get 30% (ignorant delusional socialista remanant). Western leadership? Say what leadership. The west is doomed to failed state status. It will be a wake up call and a blessing for those who are ready. In God and Gold I Trust
I am very surprised that Mr. Tooze has not brought up any of the papers written by Mr. Sergey Glazyev, the Commissioner for Integration and Macroeconomics within the Eurasian Economic Commission, the executive body of the Eurasian Economic Union, who had very harsh words about the policies pursued by the Russian National Bank and Mr. Putin's austerity approach and discouragement of productive investment in Russia.
I find such a lapse extremely disappointing, especially since the work of Mr. Glazyev has been translated into English. Has Mr. Tooze ever perused the big online list of publications made available by the Valdai Club? Relying ONLY on western sources might signal political correctness, but by gosh it is showing a huge and cultivated blind spot. Talking about Russian economy with only one unnamed former National Bank official is shoddy to cite from it is beyond lame and unprofessional and following such a trend could bring one on the level of gutter analysis that The Economist has been engaging for so many years. The cross on The Economist credibility was put by The Economist itself when, more than 10 years ago, they have stopped allowing online comments to their articles, because 95% of the comments were in total contradiction, in a very articulate and factual critical manner, with the message that the Economist wanted to push forward.
So when I see Mr. Tooze making such a copious use of excerpts from The Economist, my levels of confidence in his posting sink like the Titanic...
People's ability to engage in independent, critical thinking has eroded since the advent of Smartphones and high-speed internet.
Your sources for this article are well bogged into the US/NATO war camp Adam. They don’t come any less independent than the ‘ Economist.’ Alexandra Propenko writes for the Carnegie Endowment fund whose board of trustees chair is former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker, Carnegie’s Board of Trustees is peppered with corporate lobbyists from Nestlé, etc. The article itself is full of ‘what if’s’. Not your best work.
A passing comment here reminds me of an issue that keeps arising in discussions of Russia's war. Prisoners were sent to the tank factories, as they have been sent to die on the front lines, and no doubt to other key functions. Do they have a choice? Are they paid? Or are they in fact slave labor? Is this another crime Russia will have to answer for?
Worst case scenario they are just copying the American private prison slave system,
Mr. Tooze, if I were you I would disable comments. Learn quite a bit reading you and quick scroll through the comments expecting a somewhat intelligent discussion and it’s just a nonsensical firehose of Russian propaganda. Usually I leave your readings itching to learn more but after reading the absolutely disgusting comments I think I may avoid your Substack page for awhile. Shit is toxic.
"Putin's war" phrase really insults the intelligence of anybody who had looked at the genesis of this conflict. Quick recap:
- US finally - after decades of sustained efforts - succeeds in color revolution in Kiev (Maidan) installing a neo-Banderista regime which proclaims the intent to ethnically clean Ukraine from anything Russian, from culture to actual people
- Civil war breaks out - some parts predominantly inhabited by Russians manage to break free from regime that wants to kill them
- Minsk agreements try to stop the civil war - we now know 100% for fact that West and Ukraine signed them not in good faith but to gain time for "final solution"
- NATO spends 8 years revamping the Ukraine Army with training, logistics, intelligence, purging pre-Maidan officers. Neo Nazi military units are part of Ukrainian Army and commit various crimes where they operate.
- US withdraws from ABM treaty, INF treaty and finally from Open Skies agreement - setting the perfect stage to deploy missile and nuclear forces close to the middle of European part of Russia critically tipping the balance of power
- West signals intent to bring Ukraine also formally into NATO (at this point it is already biggest army in Europe after Russia)
- Russia tries a wide diplomatic effort to re-negotiate European security, re-enforce Minsk and keep Ukraine neutral. It is met with derision and humiliation. The attempt is dismissed in most arrogant, non-diplomatic way.
- Kiev regime intensifies attack on Donbass, with plans to "solve the situation" by force. Documented by OSCE
- Russia intervenes to save Donbas and also to achieve strategic objective to establish a land connection between Russia and Crimea.
It is certainly not "Putin's war" because any other leader in Kremlin would not have decided differently - there was simply no other avenue left, beside complete humiliation and accepting of ethnic cleansing of Russians in land that they inhabited for centuries.
To grossly oversimplify, there were two questions (among others, of course!) following the invasion: What would it and western economic responses do to Russia’s economy in the short term and what would it do in the long term.
Obviously, todays post pretty much -- but not conclusively? -- that first question. But there’s that second question to game out...
Pretending that anywhere Russia invades becomes magically a part of Russia is a delusion shared only by Putin and those who long for a mythical glorious Soviet past.
It won't happen "magically" but by the fact that those lands are predominantly inhabited by Russians and were part of Russia before Lenin and Khrushchev gave them to Soviet Ukraine. Donbass in order to convert a purely agrarian republic into a agrarian-industrial to align with communist power base doctrine, and Crimea - nobody to this date knows really why? In any case, I don't see the point of my tax dollars to enforce internal border decisions made by Soviet Communist Party Polit bureau 100 or 70 years ago, nor do I see the need to risk world war over them.
Russia invaded Afghanistan but then exited full of dignity and leaving a stable government that lasted longer than the Soviet Union.
Russia invaded Georgia as a response to Georgian attack, and after 2 weeks of beatings of Georgian army, exited the country.
In the meantime, the US is still in Japan, Germany, Korea, Iraq, Philippines, etc., after so many years...
Come now. Not one person died from that. People are dying because Putin is a murderous thug.
Let's then add him to long list of murderous thugs - for example Sarkozy and Cameron that destroyed Libya (with generous support from Obama and HRC) so that to this point 10+ years after it is a failed state (exists only in map not reality), with destroyed infrastructure, and wealth looted. Or how about Obama, Trump and Biden that are unable or unwilling to remove US troops from illegally occupying parts of Syria, without any authorization from UN, or US congress even... The list is long...