Just to add to those lists - the best analyst blog I’ve found is in Swedish here - he posts a new live thread for each day of the conflict.
The author apparently has some military contacts in Russia and Ukraine - he often comes up with tidbits I don’t find anywhere else (and are later confirmed in other mediums). Google translate does an excellent job with turning Swedish into understandable English.
KevinC
5910
Who knew, right?! Thanks for the link, was a good read.
There’s video of reportedly Russian armored vehicles loaded on a train in Russia’s Far East, moving west. It’ll take at least a week to get to Ukraine.
But again, this isn’t all that easy. It sounds like Russia is already stretched its logistics crazy thin. Throwing more armored units into the mix is going to exacerbate the supply problems. “Now we have twice as many tanks that need fuel! And double the amount of food needed!” Meanwhile, the road width remains the same, and the fields are turning to mud.
You’d need to build up everything if you’re going to do it properly, a process that literally takes the US weeks or even months.
Ok so I might be a little slow but I think is actually about more than Ukraine and internal Russian politics. Gulp.
If this was an strategy game and I was playing China: I’d be looking at what territories and resources I could take from Russia since they’ve removed so much of their eastern troops and equipment.
That’s literally the plot of one of the actual Clancy books (not the ones ghost-written years after he died).
Siberia is chock full of all sorts of valuable natural resources that China would love to control. And it’s barely populated.
No one wants to live in Siberia. Not even the craziest Chinese people.
The way things going they will be able to extract everything from there in exchange for vital products. Right now Russians boast about them being able to buy stuff from China if no one else will sell it, but it also means that China won’t have to apply any force go make Russia do it’s bidding.
Russia won’t even be able to extract resources without imported parts.
This seems like pension fund financial malpractice.
Menzo
5918
Fake news, apparently?
The key here is, as always, the denominator. They have holdings of $26 billion.
“TRS’s remaining exposure to holdings in Russia is proportionately negligible in a portfolio of about $26 billion,” Barnes said in a statement Friday.
Not fake. It had them, then sold them. Maybe avoided the loss, but why the heck does a state teacher’s pension fund hold a $13m investment in a Russian bank?
Menzo
5920
Maybe a good question, but that’s $13 million out of $26 billion, so .05% of their holdings? Not a big deal.
Yeah. It just looks like diversification. Perhaps a bit of headscratcher if that one bank amounted to their entire investment (all .05% of it) in Russia, but still not all that big of a deal.
I thought this was interesting and thoughtful as well:
Nevertheless, responding to Putin with reciprocal threats and the language of deterrence may further provoke Putin, rather than prompting him to back down. While strongmen such as Putin respect only hard power and are unmoved by international norms or the prospect of isolation, the rest of the world must walk a fine line between demonstrating resolve and exercising strategic flexibility in engaging with Russia’s core concerns. By invading Ukraine, Putin has signaled that he will not back down. After having publicly painted a false picture of the situation in Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia’s own territorial integrity and sovereignty – either because it harbors “neo-Nazi terrorists” or because of its close ties to the West – Putin cannot afford to reverse policy course now.
The principal way to defuse the crisis is to provide a diplomatic off-ramp that would allow Putin to save face and claim limited victory in Ukraine. A negotiated ceasefire that includes pledges of Ukrainian neutrality, as well as a tacit acknowledgement of at least some of Russia’s security concerns, could allow Putin to assert that he has reclaimed Russia’s great power status on the world stage. The Ukrainian government also could provide formal assurances concerning the treatment of minorities in eastern Ukraine, one of the pretexts Russia has used for the invasion, without giving into Putin’s maximalist demands that Ukraine accept the loss of the Donbas region or recognize Crimea. Providing these types of guarantees, while fostering a diplomatic atmosphere of mutual respect, would damage Putin’s efforts to manipulate the narrative surrounding the crisis, particularly his claims that he has been “forced” to invade Ukraine due to western “intransigence” and the Kyiv government’s unwillingness to “move a millimeter on any issue.” Such diplomatic maneuvering might reduce the risk of escalation and a broader war in Europe, while providing time for economic sanctions and other policy measures to take effect.
Microsoft suspends sales in Russia.
Aceris
5924
Yeah, actual war is expensive and controversial. It doesn’t matter to China who governs Siberia, they just want to own it.
Good for them. What a world we live in when Microsoft and Apple are on the good guy team.
Everyone stop using Chrome and switch to Edge and Bing! I’ve been using Edge for a year now. It’s fine. I’m a professional web dev too (sort of). You aren’t missing anything.
In theory it’s the classic international relations approach to crisis management, and it makes sense. In practice, it gets a bit messy, because in the end you are still tacitly admitting that force is an effective way to change the status quo, and as long as a country doesn’t mind paying the price, they can always move the needle diplomatically by simply blowing stuff up. It’s a sort of slippery slope thing. At the same time, of course, it is also the most practical and least damaging in the short to medium term approach. In effect you are saying that any nation that is concerned enough about something to go to war over it must have at least a bit of justification, so giving them some of their demands is justified.
I’m conflicted though because at some level such compromise approaches ultimately sanction exactly the behavior they are supposed to mitigate, even if the other alternatives are worse. Utilitarianism is effective, but not always satisfying!
Yes, agreed. Even the best outcome to this mess is going to suck.
CraigM
5928
Its a trend right now for sure.
