Dejin
3102
Front page of Novaya Gazeta a Moscow based newspaper. (Tweeter is a Bulgarian journalist and this was retweeted by Andrew Roth, the Moscow correspondent for UK’s The Guardian newspaper).
I see your worry, and the world is in a bad state right now, with this sort of thing happening. But I think we all need to keep two things in mind.
One - domino theories don’t hold. There’s no one event that will cause a chain reaction of events leading to world chaos (or - as the US thought 20 years ago - democracy). Events like this certainly encourage dictators, but it also stiffens the resolve of their opponents.
Secondly - be careful of over-estimating Putin. Putin is a smart politician - he would not have survived as long as he has if he wasn’t, but he is not infallible. He acts irrationally and makes mistakes just like everyone else - hopefully Ukraine will prove to be one of his.
I tend to agree with you. I honestly do not understand the sentiment “they’re not in NATO, too bad so sad you have to die and lose your democracy.” One of the requirements to join NATO is being “a stable democracy” but Russian aggression over the past decade (that the EU and the US did nothing about) precluded Ukraine from doing just that; not only did we turn a blind eye toward Putin we (meaning the West) enriched him along the way. Our addiction to cheap shit is going to be the death of us in more ways than one.
Putin is still going to have nukes if he tries to liberate Narva or Transnistria (“Putin wouldn’t dare attack a NATO country” kinda assumes he’s rational.) It’s not hard for me to imagine “Estonia isn’t worth dying for” becoming a refrain should that come to pass.
Democracy is hard and brittle, and, apparently, just not all that important to large swathes of people. I mean, Facebook memes from Russian troll farms is all it took to destabilize ours and turn nearly half this country into drooling idiots. I don’t know, abandoning Ukraine to its fate and standing down when faced with evil, it’s all very dispiriting; it just feels like the bad guys are winning on all fronts. Putin is not going to be the world’s last dictator.
Even at my low level, with a group of 8 soldiers including myself to look after, I am empowered to make plans on the fly as I see fit.
It’s always been that way as far as I can remember with the army here, and there’s a running joke/tradition that the lieutenant does bigger all, other than literally direct groups like mine.
In my reserve company, my platoon is supposed to be javelin trained, but the training slots are few and far between and those munitions are fucking expensive.
So I have played with and touched javelins, not properly trained however. :(
I suspect this will change soon…
vyshka
3108
Sounds like one of the pincers from the north is making its way into Kiev.
Timex
3109
The report I had seen suggested they had destroyed a T72.
Quaro
3110
The amount of Russian vehicles is just nuts. A continuous hour of tanks, trucks, radar, and troop transports passing by. Just endless.
Sounds like a logistics nightmare to me.
vyshka
3112
Don’t know how accurate this is, but looks like they could be throwing in the towel:
This is taken out of context.
Zelensky answered claims that Ukraine does not want to negotiate. He says we’d be happy to, but who’d give us guarantees, meaning Budapest memorandum turned out to be just a paper.
Only I’ve seen Zelensky say that, not some advisor. It’s a strange tweet.
Dejin
3114
Georgetown Professor specializing in nuclear escalation/de-escalation and military issues:
Seems like a very long way of saying Napoleons old maxim
“Morale is to the physical as three is to one”
Interesting read, thanks!
This reinforces my feeling that this conflict is mostly fueled by internal issues in Russia, not some strategic goal.
Aceris
3117
Germany has been very vocal about the importance of peace and the rule of law.
But when it was time to Germany to accept some suffering in order to fight fascism and naked imperialist military aggression, they said a resounding “Nein, we would rather keep funding fascism instead.”
The SDP died yesterday. The shambling zombie corpse presided over by mercantilists and oppurtunists doesn’t deserve the name.
Dejin
3118
Yes, but also a US three-star general who served as Commanding General US Army Europe describing his personal experience observing Russian troops and working with Ukrainian troops.
schurem
3119
Sadly the story of “the ghost of Kiev”, a lone MiG-29 pilot who reputedly shot down six Russian jets has been debunked :(
Still, putin is getting his nose bloodied.
Bluddy
3120
This is all absolutely awful, but hopefully it’s at least a reminder to the west. If we democracies ever drop our guards - if we start looking weak and stop being willing to fight for democracy - there will be autocrats around the world who will gladly take advantage of us. Pax Americana seems to be nearing its end, and the world is headed for some very rough years.
I can kinda see the reasoning to depend on Russian gas and not look for alternatives, after all, if Russia is a good little supplier making money, it wouldn’t risk it’s relationship to it’s customers and stop making all that money.
Peace in our time!
Too bad Putin doesn’t buy into that whole trade makes war impossible spiel.
