This is part of Ukraine’s lobbying effort for strong preemptive, rather than reactive, sanctions against Russia; Ukraine is arguing that Russia can be dissuade from invasion by tougher pre-general-invasion action, and is acting (whether they believe it or not) like they believe that their lobbying effort to Western powers for this approach will succeed in getting the desired policy which will, in turn, dissuade Russia.
So far, whether or not they are right that it would work, they seem to be largely unsuccessful in lobbying, with the US, especially, offering only limited sanctions for the actions related to the separatist regions but holding back the massive general sanctions threatened in case of a broader invasion as a reactive contingency.
Ukraine’s official channels are very clear that they view decisive factor in Russia’s decision making the strength of immediate Western action.
Examples: https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1495922056541753349?...
Viewing the Ukraine statements about not expecting a full-scale invasion without this context is...misleading. They are saying if an invasion happens, it is because the West failed to be resolute in the ways Ukraine expects them to, not that Russia does not intend to invade.
Well, a couple hours later and this part is outdated, as the US has now announced the first set of general sanctions on Russia and described existing Russian actions as the beginning of the invasion that was always described as the triggering condition for such sanctions.
Yes, they think an invasion already is ongoing, but that's explicitly not the only factor in their call for action. It is directly tied to impact on Russian escalation.
History would show you otherwise.
First, he is a politician. My rational explanation for his words is to cooldown the emotions. Back in last week, you could see news about many oligarchs departing the country, while others trying to cash out every asset they have. Standing enemies at the borders is economically tragic for the whole country. Trying to sell other, non-catastrophic vision is his duty.
Secondly, there were many variants of the invasion. The full-scale operation often means the Russia forces will attack the entire Ukraine - eastern, central and the western. Many experts say this scenario is highly unlikely, because there will be too many casualties on both sides.
Not all of it.
For the record, I do not condone the annexation of Crimea, but I also do not support giving it back to Ukraine, as it just creates unnecessary tension at this point. I understand, how globally we should not just be ok with countries taking parts of other countries, but at the same time the reverse transaction will bring more misery to people of crimea.
If you go in fast and settle the issue quickly, it's a fait accompli and anyone seeking to "reverse the transaction" is just bringing misery.
If you can't settle the issue quickly, support a local insurgency until the international community stops paying attention and then go in. Everybody will be grateful.
It's kind of how the Soviet Union and the west divided up Europe after WWII.
Here's a map of the Allied offensives in the last two years of the war.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Second_w...
Note how the western allies (The US and UK, mostly, plus France, Belgium, Netherlands, and so forth) controlled Italy, France, the Low Countries, and the western half of Germany. The USSR controlled Finland through the Balkans and eastern Germany.
The general agreements of how everything would settle down were set by the Potsdam conference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Agreement), generally along the lines of countries' pre-war borders (although the USSR presented a fait accompli annexing part of East Prussia and attaching parts of east Germany to Poland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oder-neisse.gif) because they had troops there). This result hardened into what eventually became NATO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#/media/File:History_of_NA..., the 1949 version) and the Warsaw Pact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact#/media/File:Iron_C...). And that's how Europe ended up divided into East and West.
(Modulo the invasion of Hungary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary#Communism_(1945%E2%80%...) in 1956 and Czechoslovakia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia#Communist_Czech...) in 1968[1] when those countries flirted with being insufficiently Red.)
The person who described themselves as "Ukrainian-Ukrainian" is implying that their own assessment of the situation is likely to be more accurate since they are not just an expatriate.
The first three groups form a continuity and is not perfectly correlated with loyalty to Ukrainian state.
Plus hungarians and some tatars.
Caveat emptor: I'm not from Ukraine.
One fact which people forget: Ukraine decided to end support to minorities, as such there is no longer possible to study in native language. This type of nationalism should not be supported at all. Ukraine is no saint.
Source, official website of Ministry of Education of Ukraine. (in Ukrainian) https://nus.org.ua/news/mon-pidrahuvalo-skilky-shkil-navchay...
Just FYI - like you, I grew up hearing it called "the Ukraine" (like "The Philippines" or "The Netherlands") but apparently that's changed and it's just "Ukraine" now.
From my point of view, it seems Canadians are team Russia here, especially our prime minister.
That's a great question, but I don't know if I know the answer. Overall, the US as world police, Obama and his nobel peace prize and 7 wars, and virtually entire existence of the USA they have been at war. It's kind of easy to see this point of view.
However, I would generally say our media was saying the invasion wasn't imminent. Largely reporting the Ukraine government denied any invasion was coming.
This I would say as well was the story across political lines.
The only thing really covered was how Trudeau was being actively excluded from diplomacy by Biden.
https://twitter.com/annmarie/status/1485652537105600516/phot...
Though not about Ukraine... our media covered how we got excluded from the security alliance as well: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
I dont think I ever read anyone in our media suggesting Biden lost respect or trust in Trudeau but now in hindsight...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poroshenko-ukraine-russia-c...
Ukraine is on the other side of the planet and they are singling us out to ask for aid that we aren't giving?
>and the idea that Canada has aligned itself with Russia)?
Well as I said, a week ago I didn't believe in this at all. In my mind, it was a wackadoodle conspiracy theory.
Here's a 5 minute video from Jimmy Dore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJdHF7J_ZZM
It is public knowledge that the liberal party are members of the WEF. So is Putin. Both Putin and Trudeau have done keynotes. They are publicly linked.
It's a whole different thing to say this is some evil cabal or some diplomatic war-supporting effort. For all I know Trudeau is a mole and we are still complete allies to the USA, if not protectorate.
But frankly, I look at the last week. Russia invaded and Canadians are under an unjustified national emergency with the government seizing bank accounts with no due process or redress. We do have political prisoners and global celebrities from across the political spectrum are calling out Trudeau as Hitler.
I'm going to show my left-wing bias but Bill Maher and Jimmy Dore both called Trudeau Hitler. They are objectively right, but what happened?
Canada had some ineffectual blockades, but at the time of the emergency being invoked. Those were gone. So the emergency was ONLY the protest in Ottawa.
The justification for the emergency is the military occupation and they used the givesendgo hacked data to analyze that around 50% of the raised money was from the USA. The allegation is that the USA is somehow doing this? This is absurd but why is Trudeau overreacting to all this? What did he fear?
I think I might know why he fears the USA.
Oops. Your comment aged really poorly in one day. It turns out Russia wanted all of Ukraine and you are fighting them head-on.
Yesterday's moves were just the first step. Within a few days they'll escalate by doing something like claiming the entire regions, by staging a false flag, Triggering an insurrection outside the regions etc. Once they have threatred their way into making it look as if Ukraine is the aggressor, they'll move in widely.
I don't know where he'll end up, but the ultimate objective is the humiliation of the west and subjugation of Ukraine. What I think you'll see is a wide areal campaign destroying most of Ukraines military equipment, a take over of the entire black sea coast making Ukraine landlocked. Finally there'll be a "peace" treaty making Ukraine a substantially smaller landlocked country, forcing them to demilitarize, pay tribute etc.
This isn't about the humiliation of the west and the subjugation of Ukraine, this is about national defense strategy. The way the borders were set after the breakup of the USSR were based on certain assumptions that don't hold true today, and as a result Russia does not have a defensible border. With these annexations, they do. Additionally, it's a way to test what sort of response they'll get and prepare for similar responses in the future.
In the thirty years since the USSR dissolved no one has so much as bothered Russia or even pretended like they wanted to bother Russia. Most NATO members in Europe vastly reduced their militaries and defense spending. Everyone was content to just buy shit from them as business relationships are far cheaper than invasions and annexation. NATO only expanded east because of Russia's posturing about reclaiming former SSRs.
The only people worried about "defensible borders" are old Soviet hardliners pining for some past glory that didn't exist. They either see or pretend to see the specter of foreign invasion because it whips of nationalistic fervor. They use it to distract from their shit show governance and to blame "the West" for every self-inflicted problem they have.
The most baffling part is literally no one wants to invade Russia. Outside of their propaganda machine no Westerner has any interest in Russian territory. No one is super excited to occupy Siberia or fish the "waters" of the Aral Sea.
Most western members did. Eastern ones, meanwhile, ramped it up very significantly. Which is the only reason Western countries could get away with it, really - NATO is supposed to feed the American defense industry.
> NATO only expanded east because of Russia's posturing
More like because of the bordering countries clamoured for protection, even when there was no threat whatsoever (since the Russian military was in utter disarray). In a way, they were right: the ones who didn't manage to escape Moscow's orbit back then (Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus stans...), are now enduring dictatorship or war. In another way, they fuelled the Russian paranoia that fed Putin's nationalism, eventually ensuring that the doomsday scenarios did, in fact, materialize.
> The most baffling part is literally no one wants to invade Russia.
It's not just about immediate military occupation. Gazprom is an important piece of Putin's kleptocratic powerbase, and Gazprom needs to be free of Ukrainian control of their pipelines. If NordStream2 can't happen, because the Germans have to obey their American lord-protectors, then Putin must establish an alternative to the South - which doesn't need to be entirely in Russian hands, but rather in a position where Russian troops can secure it in a matter of days if necessary. In my view this is the real endgame.
This, obviously, on top of putting the strategic Crimean ports in a safer position; because NATO might not want to invade Russia, but Erdogan's Turkish troops are not shy about "securing" stuff (any sanctions against them carving up Syria? Not that I'm aware of...).
Border disputes are par for the course when you're a state managing a nation and territory. These disputes come up when other concerns are dealt with. They're bargaining chips. Right now China and Russia need each other. Later maybe they fight over them or they resolve them peacefully.
For those interested in the details, Wikipedia lists 5 current disputes[0], almost entirely relating to maritime borders, with some uninhabited islands being the only land in dispute.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_areas_disputed_by_Cana...
This "national defense strategy" is just a made up tale, another episode of russian propaganda that keeps poisoning generations after generations.
It's how empires operate. It's not fair, but it is what it is. For an example of how this turned out when the shoe was on the other foot, look at Cuba. The world nearly ended in '63, because the American empire needed a 'buffer colony'.
It's been a lifetime since the revolution, communism as a world ideology has been dead for a generation, but Cuba's still paying for the consequences of flipping allegiances. (The western world, sans the United States has normalized relations with it a very long time ago - so it's not an ongoing ideological problem...)
No. Nations don't throw national resources away, especially in modern times. If they're spending money, their lives, political capital on this they're profiting from it in some way.
Russia has to control the black sea and they have to control territory all the way to the Dneiper river. If Ukraine realigns to Europe and NATO they have to at a minimum have control over that territory to have a defensible position. This has been true since the days of the Russian empire, and this is one of the historical reasons for a Russian ethnic majority east of it.
That’s a descriptive opinion on the matter. Not a normative one.
If Russia did not get an ex-KGB absolute monarch traumatized by the fall of the Berlin wall, the country could've joined NATO by now. Pretending that this particular made up "national defense strategy" is the only one possible, is just caving in to the Putin's propaganda.
Even if Russia for some dumb reason chooses to be perpetually against the West even after the fall of communism, it does not mean that the West automatically becomes interested in invading Russia either. Even in this case the "national defense strategy" is just a cover-up for the unprovoked aggression.
Russia joining NATO in good faith would change it for sure but would not make it obsolete.
Who would that alliance be (ostensibly) protecting themselves from? China? Taking that kind of stance (EDIT: against China) would not be in Russia’s interest.
You don't need military action to provoke. The West has been trying to incite regime change all over the region, Ukraine is a prime example.
It's not a national defense strategy, it is a national security one. They need to control the paths for gas exports to Europe to maintain Europe's reliance on them for heat in the winter. It makes them powerful.
If you look at national strategies for nations and territories, even beyond the time the current state has ruled, for every major or minor power throughout history, you'll find similar strategies because the underlying realities remain the same.
Putin doesn't care about defensible border with China. In fact they don't care about the Chinese ambitions in South Siberia at all. And those ambitions are much clearer than any idea that NATO or European countries might want to invade Russia.
Putin's only worry is avoiding the fate of Sadam and Qaddafi and for that, in his mind, he needs to keep waging wars around Russia (and support struggling dictators all over the world, but that's unrelated to this conflict).
The fact that he did it means that either he really believes that NATO is scheming on invading Russia proper, in which case he's just gone mad, or all this pseudo-historical pretext is just a bunch of crap he feeds the world to legitimize his personal quest for glory and give his worldwide supporters ("useful idiots" as they call them in KGB) a reason to let him off the hook for that.
So it should be easy for NATO to go on the offensive here and teach Russia a lesson? If that isn't true, then why would Russia need to invade a country to "make itself safer"?
He achieved his political objectives by just threatening invasion, without actually invading. An actual full-scale invasion is something nobody wants, least of all most ordinary Russians who have relatives in Ukraine.
> you won't have to wait very long to see why
I'd bet you on it if you set me a date. Westerners have been raising the alarm about a potential Russian invasion since time immemorial.
I certainly hope I lose.
Note I'm not expecting Putin to stop playing chess, he will never stop with his political power moves, he might blockade Odessa, but there will be no bloodshed. Mark my words. I look forward to peace in Ukraine, for the first time in 8 years.
My email is in my profile.
I hope you'll still stock up on various necessities and supplies in the mean time. If nothing happens, you'll still use them up all the same.
Biden has said this was coming, biden has said this is complete invasion of ukraine. He's headed to kyiv.
How so? Doesn't it just turn a pro-Russian insurgency into a pro-Ukrainian insurgency? In other words, the "insurgents" and the "legitimate local militias" just switch places.
"Now that Donetsk and Luhansk are officially Russian-backed, the Ukrainian army will no longer attempt to keep recapturing it (confirmed by President Zelensky today -- said we will not be fighting Russia head-on). Therefore no more Ukrainian body bags, which is great news, though not the ending we wanted."
As long as Putin stops at the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk.
And, by the way, it's good there are no Ukrainians in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Obviously it is not a prerequisite for statehood, which is a complex construct that goes beyond territorial claims (since Woodrow Wilson at the very least, in legal terms).
Tbh, I bet the Russian generals would dearly like to reach the Dnieper.
Because distracting people with a project to restore the greatness of Imperial Russia, repudiating the losses it suffered at the hands of hostile foreign powers (and even Soviet leaders—he’s blamed, e.g., Lenin for “creating” Ukraine from “Russian” territory and Stalin for giving Ukraine control of additional “Russian” territory) is Putin’s central political strategy right now, and he’s already laid out the public case for why Ukraine ought to be Russian on that basis.
> Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him?
Please change your optics. People never matter in Russia/Soviet Union. Even, if there will be 70-80% of people who are dreadful opponents to "new goverment" then what they would do? Take it to the street? Strike? Please remind yourself how it looked in the Kazakhstan in early January 2022 (you will get shot, just because you left your home to buy some food) and in Belarus 2021 (mass protests, thousands of people being thrown in jail for no reason, very often beaten, many found dead there). Coup d'état? Poor joke, especially if we look at the latest events in Africa (for example Mali), where armed Russia's Wagner forces helped to take over the whole country.
Edit: As a person who lives in Central Europe, your question made me sad, because it means western mass-media is crap these days - they cannot explain a very silly thing why this ongoing conflict for 8+ years takes place.
Reading the GP's other comments they're either a "useful idiot" (in KGB parlance) or a Russian-supporting astroturfer. There has been a lot of coverage of Russia's actions in Ukraine in "the West" for the past 8 years.
He justifies Luhansk, Donbass and Crimea because of the 2014 revolution and they fact they were always culturally Russian.
Edit - I should also add that it's in Ukraine's interest to simply let these regions go. Prior to 2014, Ukrainian elections always flip-flopped between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions... Now that most of the pro-Russian support no longer votes in Ukrainian elections (due to being part of Russian or breakaway), Ukrainian politics are almost entire pro-Western.
As for angry citizens... for one thing, not all of those citizens will be angry, especially in central Ukraine. Not the majority, but enough to supply informants etc to keep the rest in check.
But also, why do you say that no-one in the modern era has attempted that? This exact thing happened during WW2 - or is that not sufficiently "modern"? And if not, then what makes the difference?
When I say modern I think in the internet age. When everyone can communicate with everyone and information can be shared quickly.
> Most Russians very much don't see Ukrainians as brothers after 2014.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/02/16/we-are-one-people-...
All the Russians I know view Ukrainians as brothers and are against the idea of Slavs fighting Slavs. Anyhow I'm not spending the time to find a comprehensive poll but it's you believing the propaganda that a majority of Russians actually want to fight Ukrainians.
> Russian propaganda works reasonably well.
Yeah right, I've never met a Russian that believes any news, no matter the side lol. Ditto for Ukrainians. Distrust in authority is basically a cornerstone of Slavic culture...
Not everybody gets their news from internet. And those young folks were from Moscow / St Peterburg and used internet like everybody else.
> are against the idea of Slavs fighting Slavs
Bullshit, army men do what they are told. In 1968 Soviet, mostly russian army invaded Czechoslovakia. Soldiers had no qualms with shooting to ie teenage girls riding across the street on their bicycle, harmless as one can be. Hundreds of cases like this, nobody was armed or posed any threat. Nobody was ever punished, there are tons of memorials across whole country(ies).
There is a lot of wishful thinking in your statement, and I hope its meant in optimistic way. I wish there was really this fabled slavic friendliness since I am also one of those, but I see it more a nice myth which works mostly on language grounds, and falls apart as quickly as problems arise, see ie Yugoslavia.
Because US news (Canadian as well) is way different than European news as well. Even Ukrainian news hasn't been as fear-mongering as US news...
Saudi Arabia invading Yemen. Syria invading Lebanon is I think around the ⅓ mark. Iraq invading Iran--note that Iran was the larger country then. All of these are conflicts that were intended to induce suzerainty if not outright conquest, and all of these are undeniably in what you'd call the "modern era".
Although I'll note that "modern era" is usually given as since about ~1789, which means we can throw in all of the wonderful aggression conflicts that make up World War II, such as Germany attempting to incorporate the populated bits of the USSR into its own territory, after killing off the current inhabitants of course.
> they fact they were always culturally Russian.
IIRC, he claims that Ukrainians are themselves no different from Russians, which means this gives him casus belli to incorporate all of Ukraine on the same grounds.
> IIRC, he claims that Ukrainians are themselves no different from Russians
Saying something and believing it are two different things. Also, it depends what you mean by 'no different'. Ethnically they're almost identical. Culturally close. But there is a bit of a difference, mainly that much of "Ukrainian" identity comes from regions that had been been invaded by both Poland-Lithuania and Austria-Hungary and spread to the rest of the country since independence.
Anyhow, not even the Ukrainian President thinks Russia will invade all Ukraine...
The word you said was "attempted" which includes failed attempts as well as successful. There have been no successful attempts post-WW2 that I can think of, but that doesn't mean there haven't been any unsuccessful attempts.
> Ethnically they're almost identical. Culturally close.
You can say the same thing about the US and Canada. Yet Canada successfully resisted both US invasion attempts, and even today, you would likely get a pretty vehement response if you suggested that the US and Canada ought to be part of the same country.
I live in Alberta... That statement is definitely not true lol.
Plus, given the political issues involved with integration of the two countries, I suspect serious concessions would need to be made by Canada.
And Canada's not the liberal paradise people think. We're leaving, personally.
The quality of life here is pretty shit - think LA or Seattle cost of living (SF if you're in Vancouver or Toronto) with Nebraska wages (actually that would be generous)...
These claims would suggest that Putin will stop at nothing short of total regime change in Kiev.
In his strategic interest he would let the West to continue throwing finances here.
But it is not that simple; any such territory would be a drain on Russian economy. For now, it is tactical advantage to keep Europe and US to drain theirs here. (One of reasons, why opolchentsi stopped before Mariupol few years ago).
Sure, Ukraine has fantastic crop land, but their western partners are already taking care of it.
Odessa is the biggest port in Ukraine. Controlling it (and Mykolaiv) will make Ukraine a land-locked country, in addition to providing Crimea with reliable access to electricity, water and supply routes (in addition to connecting Russia with Transnistria). These are only the rational reasons, but Putin apparently has fears and complexes that go beyond those.
The absolute majority sans the single digit percentage of ethnic Russians hate Russia with passion.
And I am not even talking about ethnic Russians within Ukraine, but Russia itself.
Russian Far East very seriously wanted to seccede.
South Russians don't count themselves as the same ethnicity as Russians living in the Moscow at all.
People in Urals, besides attempting at Urals Republic in early nineties, are still very unhappy about Urals, and Western Siberia being the poorest part of Russia, while their resources allow Muscovites bathe in Champagne.
All other ethnic republics will secede in no time as well if given the opportunity.
Russia will be the next Yugoslavia. This is what we actually need to be talking about
Russia losing its oil/gas, or Putin getting assasinated, or just any major crisis = Yugo with nukes, and a civil war 10 times worse.
What a lot of folks in the West don't realize is that Ukrainian soldiers have been at war with Russian Mercenaries and Russian Soldiers since 2014. It's been a slow burn war and every week there have been Ukrainian KIA but it never made the news. We can only hope that you are correct about the war being over but I'm not so sure. My opinion is it will never be over as long as Putin and his mafia are in power. There is just too much at stake for them to hand over power to a new guard because of the hundreds of billions they have stolen from the Russian people.
>The rebel-held regions which were backed by Russia have been in constant conflict for 8 years.
I don't think anyone believed that the Separatists/Russians in Ukraine were some home grown group. They were funded, supplied, and reinforced with Russian Mercs and Army from the beginning, it's just that the world didn't give a shit because there was too much business going on between Europe and Russia.
I still don't believe the West is going to take this or any future aggression seriously, strongly worded disappointments is about all they can muster in the face of evil. NATO and the West are toothless, America has no appetite to take on an enemy like Russia or China and those countries know it. Even now any reaction is just theater without any real consequences. What this means for the future is that it sets a precedent, There are millions of Russians seeded throughout Eastern Europe and it leaves the door open to separatism. Taiwan is also fucked, the Chinese will take it in a day and the USA won't do a single thing. Just saying, always hoping I'm wrong.
We should remind ourselves that "taking on" such entities might well mean the end of the human race.
In many ways, we got lucky that Hitler and Mussolini appeared before the atomic bomb was invented. Since 1945, the world effectively lost the option to "take on" certain countries, even if they were to succumb to pure evil.
What does the USA need/want from Russia, other than for them to stop being antagonistic against the USA? Nothing that I can see.
This "live map" makes it seem like there is some kind of war starting. There's nothing of the sort. War started 8 years ago, and this move by Putin last night actually ENDS the war decisively.
The rebel-held regions which were backed by Russia have been in constant conflict for 8 years. There's nothing new here on this map. Putin's decision yesterday to make it officially Russian-protected instead of shadow-backed actually de-escalates tensions and finally ends the 8-year long conflict. Now that Donetsk and Luhansk are officially Russian-backed, the Ukrainian army will no longer attempt to keep recapturing it (confirmed by President Zelensky today -- said we will not be fighting Russia head-on). Therefore no more Ukrainian body bags, which is great news, though not the ending we wanted.