History in the Making: Russian Invasion

Whelp.  Looks like they parked "Give 'em hell Harry" in the med (or "give 'em smell!", if you're a fellow squid )

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/03/europe/uss-navy-truman-nato-exercises-intl-cmd/index.html

Also,Heather Cox Richardson had this to say today:

February 3, 2022 (Thursday)

Russian president Vladimir Putin has demanded extraordinary concessions, and rather than weakening the resolve of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, his aggression has united them. 

Today, U.S. officials claimed to have evidence that Russian intelligence intends to create a “very graphic” video, involving actors and corpses, that claims to show a Ukrainian attack on Russian speakers in order to justify a new Russian invasion of the neighboring country. Britain came to a similar conclusion. 

British diplomat James Roscoe tweeted: “Russia says it will never invade Ukraine. Unless it is provoked. So *just in case* it is provoked, it has massed over 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border. But how is it that they are able to anticipat[e] that provocation? Perhaps because they are planning to stage it?

Interesting times we find ourselves living in, that's for sure.

...and on the other side of the world, the Chinese make multiple feint aerial attacks on Taiwan to counter their "aggressions", which appear to consist of them letting China make feint attacks.

Oh, and the Olympics are starting.... in China...  in the spirit of bringing the world together in friendly competition.  

I don't find the recent US deployments, especially of ground troops to NATO countries bordering Russia, to be very well thought out. They basically make Putin's point for him - that the US and NATO are a danger to Russia - while being quite useless in both diplomatic and military senses. There's no possibility of Russia invading NATO, and even if it did, Article 5 would be invoked in any case and the US would be committed; there's no need for tripwire forces. And there's no possibility of the US launching any sort of cross-border attack on Russian forces. So what's the point?

Further, Putin is quite correct that the US basically ignored Russia's concerns. Not to suggest that the US should simply have given Putin everything he asked for, but if he's not offered something, he has no real option that allows him to both reduce tensions and maintain his domestic political standing. The US has a long history of being quite inflexible diplomatically, something that in this case may result in precisely the opposite of what the US wants to happen. There's a time and a place for taking the hard line, but I find it hard to make a strong argument for why this should be one of those times.

The situation in Ukraine is also having the effect of creating divisions within NATO. The US and the UK have been shipping weapons, while the Germans have refused and are blocking any member state from shipping German-made weapons to Ukraine as well. A German minister resigned after pro-Russian comments. Allowing the crisis to go on as it is will have no benefits for anyone but Russia, and Putin knows it very well. He's not going to end it as long as Russia is gaining from it.

The US loses nothing by closing the door to NATO to Ukraine, if it's accompanied by a multilateral deal with Russia for a non-invasion agreement toward Ukraine with real, enforceable consequences and significant additional supplies of defensive weapons to Ukraine. The Ukrainians won't like it, but if they're smart they'll realize that a deal that protects them now is a far better outcome than a dubious hope of joining NATO a decade from now. And Russia will get the non-NATO buffer state Putin wants - not a compliant one, but at least one that Russia can keep an eye on without worrying about antagonizing NATO.

aircooled said:

...and on the other side of the world, the Chinese make multiple feint aerial attacks on Taiwan to counter their "aggressions", which appear to consist of them letting China make feint attacks.

Oh, and the Olympics are starting.... in China...  in the spirit of bringing the world together in friendly competition.  

The Olympics are bullE36 M3.  They've been bullE36 M3 for some time now, but this year especially so.  At best it's the world bowing down to China, and at worst potentially running cover for Russia's offensive actions. 

Excellent points, 02Pilot.  And now its becoming more and more evident that China and Russia are joined at the hip, and Putin is Xi's lackey.  If the West sanctions Russia, or Russia just decides to shut off oil & gas shipments, China will be eager to trade with Russia.  Putin won't lose a penny, but Europe will suffer. 

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I think it's a mistake to view Putin and Xi as necessarily strongly-bound allies in the sense of the US and UK. Both Putin and Xi are fundamentally realists in the international relations sense of the term; both believe that countries have no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Right now their interests are aligned, in that both want to disrupt the Western-dominated global status quo, because both leaders feel they are not invested in it, and have little to gain from doing so. If either had reason to want to play ball with the West - as China did from the 1990s until maybe ten years ago - they would happily hang the other out to dry. But right now, they think their chances are better working together.

One other vaguely related point: I read yesterday that the EU is moving to classify nuclear power as "green". This is probably under pressure from the French, who rely on it heavily, but a useful side effect in the medium term (assuming it leads to building more generating facilities) would be to reduce Russian leverage on Europe. In the long term, however, this could also push Russia to seek oil and natural gas sales further afield, which could lead to some undesirable consequences.

Oh, and on the Olympics: The FBI is recommending athletes use burner phones while in China, and the Chinese government has said that athletes will be held accountable for their comments and actions. I don't feel that further comment is really necessary.

3 things making me very nervous about an impending invasion, or two, that I haven't really seen covered anywhere: 

1. Russia is stopping export of ammonium nitrate. To my understanding of agriculture, which is not even elementary level so please correct me if I'm wrong, they're the worlds number one exporter of it, and it is the most important fertilizer for corn. They're doing this under the guise of wanting to give their domestic agriculture a big boost, but the timing is awfully convenient. Source for the stop of export
2. China is stockpiling corn, rice, and wheat in their strategic reserves at enormous rates not seen before. Like, over 50% of the worlds store for all of them, and 69% of the corn. Source
3. KHL has cancelled the rest of the regular season and will commence with playoffs immediately after the olympics. They say it is because of the olympics and the pandemic, but that sounds silly to me. All of that was known when the season started. I think that there are 2 plausible reasons for this. First, that teams are going broke and won't be able to make payroll, or Second (and more likely) that Putin is leaning on them to finish the season by early April. 
    

I expect our food costs to go up significantly. 

Another interesting development:

Putin's super yacht abruptly left Germany amid sanction warnings over Russia-Ukraine tensions, report says  ( https://news.yahoo.com/putins-superyacht-abruptly-left-germany-205427185.html )

Left before repairs where done.  Apparently worried about it being seized.  Is there any actual worry it would be seized, in GERMANY (almost a Russian ally at this point, they like natural gas), if they don't invade!?

Of course, LOTS of talk about imminent invasion in the last few weeks.  Not sure I find it entirely likely while the Olympics are going on (not that anyone is watching of course).  

I almost agree with Russia in that the various troop deployment by the US serve no real purpose other than some sort of toothless intimidation.  There is essentially zero chance Russia would ever move outside of Ukraine's borders and zero chance any NATO / US forces would move into Ukraine's borders.

Regarding: Just give Russia some concessions on NATO etc.   I don't entirely disagree with this as it would certainly deflate things, but I am not sure it's the lesson we want Russia to learn.  If you kid throws a tantrum and threatens to hit his sister if you don't give him what he wants, giving him what he wants will almost certainly encourage that sort of behavior.

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

Today, U.S. officials claimed to have evidence that Russian intelligence intends to create a “very graphic” video, involving actors and corpses, that claims to show a Ukrainian attack on Russian speakers in order to justify a new Russian invasion of the neighboring country. Britain came to a similar conclusion. 

And Tom Clancy predicts another one. Red Storm Rising has the USSR faking a West German-perpetrated terrorist attack against themselves as an excuse to launch an invasion of western Europe.

Yeah, it's not exactly a new idea either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler

Operation Himmler, also called Operation Konserve or Operation Canned Goods, consisted of a group of 1939 false-flag undertakings planned by Nazi Germany to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany. The Germans then used propaganda reports of the events to justify their invasion of Poland, which started on 1 September 1939.

Operation Himmler included the Germans staging false attacks on themselves - directed at innocent people or at concentration-camp prisoners. The operation arguably became the first act of the Second World War in Europe.[1]

Again... just to make sure no one is misunderstanding.  I am in no way implying this is the start of WWIII !!!

I don't think Putin wants an all war in Ukraine because I am sure he knows it will be costly, deadly and bad for him. But I think he will invade if he doesn't gets something that he can show to the Russian people and say look what I was able to get from the West.

The problem is I think there are a lot of reasons why the West won't give those things to him. So really it comes down to is Putin will to pull his troops back and say hey guys I told you it was just for joint military exercises the whole time.

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/us-russia-nato-donbass-maidan-minsk-war

I found this article written by a Ukrainian professor very interesting on why the way the western media has talked about Ukraine is wrong.

This FA article addresses some of the domestic side of the issue from the Russian side.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2022-02-09/would-russians-embrace-war

^That FA article is behind a paywall / requires an email link to read. 

This was just posted- Denis Pushilin, (Head of the Donetsk People's Republic)- '130 mass graves of civilians killed by Ukrainian aggression have been discovered in the DPR', https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1492066649557671951. Following the false flag warnings from last week.

And someone pointed out that the wording from yesterday for US citizens to depart became more urgent, from, "should consider departing now", to "should depart now".  https://twitter.com/lookner/status/1491913160504360977

Any recommendations for twitter users to follow? Over the last month I started using it again to follow the situation, and think it has some benefits. It’s real aggravating that they nerf a most-recent feed though.

So far I’ve found, HI Sutton, OSINTtechnical, Project Owl, Military Air Tracking Alliance, Rob Lee, Global MilitaryInfo,  The Intel Crab, and ElINT News. I can’t vouch for any of these; they just seem to post relevant and valuable information.

aircooled said:

Regarding: Just give Russia some concessions on NATO etc.   I don't entirely disagree with this as it would certainly deflate things, but I am not sure it's the lesson we want Russia to learn.  If you kid throws a tantrum and threatens to hit his sister if you don't give him what he wants, giving him what he wants will almost certainly encourage that sort of behavior.

I think Putin's ultimate goal is to retake all the eastern bloc territory lost during the fall of the USSR. He wants to reclaim the glory and power the old Soviet Union had. To that end he's pushing outward into all the old satellites he can. Some have pushed back because they dont want to go back. 

We tried appeasement of a totalitarian regime back in 1938, look where that got us. 

mblommel said:

aircooled said:

Regarding: Just give Russia some concessions on NATO etc.   I don't entirely disagree with this as it would certainly deflate things, but I am not sure it's the lesson we want Russia to learn.  If you kid throws a tantrum and threatens to hit his sister if you don't give him what he wants, giving him what he wants will almost certainly encourage that sort of behavior.

I think Putin's ultimate goal is to retake all the eastern bloc territory lost during the fall of the USSR. He wants to reclaim the glory and power the old Soviet Union had. To that end he's pushing outward into all the old satellites he can. Some have pushed back because they dont want to go back. 

We tried appeasement of a totalitarian regime back in 1938, look where that got us. 

That maybe part of the goal but I think an even bigger part is to keep Ukraine from being a successful democracy and economy because that would show the Russian people that other things are possible then their status quo. To that end I wonder if he is willing just to sit troops on the border just to keep Ukraine in a constant state of threat and destabilize the economy and government.

mblommel said:

aircooled said:

Regarding: Just give Russia some concessions on NATO etc.   I don't entirely disagree with this as it would certainly deflate things, but I am not sure it's the lesson we want Russia to learn.  If you kid throws a tantrum and threatens to hit his sister if you don't give him what he wants, giving him what he wants will almost certainly encourage that sort of behavior.

I think Putin's ultimate goal is to retake all the eastern bloc territory lost during the fall of the USSR. He wants to reclaim the glory and power the old Soviet Union had. To that end he's pushing outward into all the old satellites he can. Some have pushed back because they dont want to go back. 

We tried appeasement of a totalitarian regime back in 1938, look where that got us. 

Well he's got Viktor Orban kissing his butt here in Hungary, that's for sure  (Or as Vik is known locally "The Viktator of Orbanistan"). 

I think this all probably started off as a bluff to test the international waters (eg:  See how the West would respond), but the longer it goes on the more I worry it'll end up being the last act of a man desperate to keep power.  I think it's hard for blow-hards like Putin to save face and back out of a bluff, and an embarrassment after all his chest puffing would look very very bad to that "strong leader" image he's got going on...

Going back to the Viktator:  Every political party in Orbanistan (6 of 'em!) just threw 100% of their support behind a single man in an attempt to root Vik out of office.  Part of me also thinks that Putin might be watching this and a that he might be just a little worried that if this succeeds, then his days in power may be numbered.

The FA article shouldn't be paywalled. I suppose it might be if they have a limit on free articles and you've been reading other stuff there, but it's coming through fine on my end.

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Putin's got a lot of border to secure with not enough troops--if that's his strategy I doubt he can do that for long.  Leaving a threat almost certainly galvanizes Ukraine rather than destabilizes it, IMHO.  

The irony of this to me is that no matter what Putin does with Ukraine, his internal trends will continue to rot from within.  I guess it's possible the acquisition of Ukraine staunches the financial dependence on oil for revenue but he's still got a LOT of other issues to address....

stroker said:

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Putin's got a lot of border to secure with not enough troops--if that's his strategy I doubt he can do that for long.  Leaving a threat almost certainly galvanizes Ukraine rather than destabilizes it, IMHO.  

The irony of this to me is that no matter what Putin does with Ukraine, his internal trends will continue to rot from within.  I guess it's possible the acquisition of Ukraine staunches the financial dependence on oil for revenue but he's still got a LOT of other issues to address....

I agree I don't think it will be long term but there have been people pulling investment out of Ukraine and obviously tourists aren't traveling to Ukraine. Plus leaving a country in a constant state of worry can certainly wear on a country. I could see them continuing military exercises until the end of winter pulling the troops back and repeating the same trick next winter.

I could also see some limited military action in the Donetsk region. I just don't see Putin launching a full scale invasion of Ukraine. The potential downfalls for him just seem too great and I don't think Putin is a stupid man.

He's not stupid, but he may be desperate.  There is pretty much nowhere in the world he's likely to be safe if he is out of power, so he needs to remain in charge of Russia for the rest of his life, or have it be run by cronies he can trust, and I suspect that could be a rapidly dwindling number of people.

As for the mass graves thing, that sounds like a tired rerun.  Already did that during one of the prior conflicts with photos from a mass grave in Chechnya.

NickD said:

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

Today, U.S. officials claimed to have evidence that Russian intelligence intends to create a “very graphic” video, involving actors and corpses, that claims to show a Ukrainian attack on Russian speakers in order to justify a new Russian invasion of the neighboring country. Britain came to a similar conclusion. 

And Tom Clancy predicts another one. Red Storm Rising has the USSR faking a West German-perpetrated terrorist attack against themselves as an excuse to launch an invasion of western Europe.

Eh, it's not hard to predict things that have happened before, ie Reichstag Fire. Do something bad to your own country then say it was someone else and we have to do XXXXXX now.

Ive enjoyed some movies based off of Clancy, but it's not like he's just coming up with all these ideas in his mind. 

eastsideTim said:

He's not stupid, but he may be desperate.  There is pretty much nowhere in the world he's likely to be safe if he is out of power, so he needs to remain in charge of Russia for the rest of his life, or have it be run by cronies he can trust, and I suspect that could be a rapidly dwindling number of people.

That may be true but I can't imagine that Russian soldiers coming home in body bags, massive spending on a military operation and the economic hit from sanctions will in any way help him stay in power.

93EXCivic said:

eastsideTim said:

He's not stupid, but he may be desperate.  There is pretty much nowhere in the world he's likely to be safe if he is out of power, so he needs to remain in charge of Russia for the rest of his life, or have it be run by cronies he can trust, and I suspect that could be a rapidly dwindling number of people.

That may be true but I can't imagine that Russian soldiers coming home in body bags, massive spending on a military operation and the economic hit from sanctions will in any way help him stay in power.

That's the part that scares me.  If he backs himself into a corner he can't get out of, does accept his fate or does he try to take the world down with him?

eastsideTim said:

93EXCivic said:

eastsideTim said:

He's not stupid, but he may be desperate.  There is pretty much nowhere in the world he's likely to be safe if he is out of power, so he needs to remain in charge of Russia for the rest of his life, or have it be run by cronies he can trust, and I suspect that could be a rapidly dwindling number of people.

That may be true but I can't imagine that Russian soldiers coming home in body bags, massive spending on a military operation and the economic hit from sanctions will in any way help him stay in power.

That's the part that scares me.  If he backs himself into a corner he can't get out of, does accept his fate or does he try to take the world down with him?

I agree that is a possible worry.

But I don't think that he is in a corner unless he launches a full scale invasion and the people and more importantly oligarchs turn against him. Right now there are three possible options beyond that, 1) pull the troops back, say look it was military exercises like we said it was the whole time and use the Russian media to spin it or 2) small scale action in Eastern Ukraine plus high volume hacking operations in Ukraine all as an attempt to destabilize Ukraine and say it was to defend the people holding Russian passports in Eastern Ukraine or 3) he gets some sort of agreement from the West, pulls the troops back and can say to his people look what I won off the west.

The other worry for me is Ukraine is the 5th largest grain producer in the world and particularly exports to the former Soviet countries, Middle East and Africa. Losing that critical supply of grain could led to hunger and destabilization across an already fairly violate region.

It is also the world's 9th biggest steel exporter.