Russia

[AnBr]

Let Putin fail in Ukraine

The West should resist any calls to directly engage Russia in war, while supporting Ukraine with military and financial assistance. Let Putin reap the reward of his folly, and suffer the domestic consequences.

Ukraine, Putin suggested last month, is not a real country. It’s a fake, corrupt country run by ‘drug-addled Nazis’. So Putin is doing Ukrainians a favor by bringing them back into the loving arms of Mother Russia.

This appears to be a catastrophic misreading of the situation on many fronts. Putin has seriously miscalculated Ukrainian public sentiment — and Russian public sentiment — if he thought there was appetite among Ukrainians or Russians to unite the countries. He underestimated the popularity of president Zelensky, elected with 70% of the vote, and the strength of national sentiment among Ukrainians, both in the Ukrainian-speaking west and the Russian-speaking east. He also apparently miscalculated the strength of the Ukrainian military and the weakness of the Russian military — who are so badly organized they’re communicating via cell-phones and walkie-talkies, to which anyone can listen. 20 years of corruption has apparently rotted the Red Army.

He also underestimated the unity and resolve of not just western countries but the rest of the world, and their ability to harm the Russian economy by freezing the Russian central bank’s stockpile of foreign reserves — thereby limiting the central bank’s ability to defend the rouble. It’s down 30% in the last week, and Russia’s sovereign debt has just been downgraded to junk status. One Russian analyst toasted the death of the Russian stock market on live TV. The last remaining western investors in the Russian economy — BP and Shell — are selling up, and Apple and Amazon are also turning off their Russia operations, leading defiant Russians to share videos of themselves smashing up their iPads. That’ll show them!

[AnBr]

[andydp]

Mar 6, 2022 23:02:07 GMT AnBr said:

Let Putin fail in Ukraine

The West should resist any calls to directly engage Russia in war, while supporting Ukraine with military and financial assistance. Let Putin reap the reward of his folly, and suffer the domestic consequences.

Ukraine, Putin suggested last month, is not a real country. It’s a fake, corrupt country run by ‘drug-addled Nazis’. So Putin is doing Ukrainians a favor by bringing them back into the loving arms of Mother Russia.

This appears to be a catastrophic misreading of the situation on many fronts. Putin has seriously miscalculated Ukrainian public sentiment — and Russian public sentiment — if he thought there was appetite among Ukrainians or Russians to unite the countries. He underestimated the popularity of president Zelensky, elected with 70% of the vote, and the strength of national sentiment among Ukrainians, both in the Ukrainian-speaking west and the Russian-speaking east. He also apparently miscalculated the strength of the Ukrainian military and the weakness of the Russian military — who are so badly organized they’re communicating via cell-phones and walkie-talkies, to which anyone can listen. 20 years of corruption has apparently rotted the Red Army.

He also underestimated the unity and resolve of not just western countries but the rest of the world, and their ability to harm the Russian economy by freezing the Russian central bank’s stockpile of foreign reserves — thereby limiting the central bank’s ability to defend the rouble. It’s down 30% in the last week, and Russia’s sovereign debt has just been downgraded to junk status. One Russian analyst toasted the death of the Russian stock market on live TV. The last remaining western investors in the Russian economy — BP and Shell — are selling up, and Apple and Amazon are also turning off their Russia operations, leading defiant Russians to share videos of themselves smashing up their iPads. That’ll show them!

Love this quote:  Russians are great (people), until they get drunk and start looking at maps.

[LFC]

Putin is cracking down at home. That's only popular with the MAGAt types in Russia. And if history is a guide it doesn't necessarily bode well for him.

He could not allow Ukraine to continue developing into a successful country, linked increasingly to its Western neighbors and already offering its citizens more freedom and opportunities than most Russians enjoy. That’s an example Putin is determined to eliminate.

After more than two decades in power, Putin also fears his domestic critics, like jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who have systematically exposed the wholesale corruption of his regime. As in the late Soviet era, even relatively small protests signal a challenge to the rulers that suggests much wider discontent—and trigger repression, including more arrests and crackdowns on the few remaining independent media outlets.

Compared to the early 1980s, there are many more Russians who want to live in a normal country, who at least for a while felt that they were almost already doing so, and dread the prospect of going through another long period as a pariah state. When I asked Lyubimov if his message was one of optimism, despite everything, he replied: “There’s the aphorism: a pessimist is a well-informed optimist.”

In that sense, I feel the same way about Russia today. Unless the current war, which is a tragedy for both Ukraine and Russia, prompts a long overdue upheaval in the Kremlin, the pessimist within me will dominate, and Ukraine will continue to bear the brunt of the lethal consequences. But the Russians will—and already are—feeling the consequences as well.

That worst-case scenario will rebound against Putin at some point, which is a conviction that nurtures the optimist within me even now. His war on Ukraine is the beginning of the end for him, no matter how long that beginning takes.

[LFC]

This is just great.

Short of delving inside his mind, Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Europe and Russia on the U.S. National Security Council during the Trump administration, did a splendid job of purifying Putin’s sense and sensibility in a recent interview. “Putin is increasingly operating emotionally,” she told Politico. “It’s reestablishing dominance over what Russia sees as the Russian Imperium. We’re treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again.”

And he's murdering civilians with the help of the church and God(tm). Gee, what a shock.

“Russian politicians excel in making people everywhere believe in things which are not real,” Vladimir Yerofeyev once explained over dinner during my years as a correspondent in Moscow. Yerofeyev should know. He was Joseph Stalin’s translator and no slouch when it came to triggering the trickery Russian leaders use to rally public support to exorcise Western criticism.

The Imperial Kremlin has two masters, one temporal, the other spiritual. The tsar and the Russian Patriarch of All Moscow and All Rus. The tsar and his hierophant-in-chief worked and lived and ruled in tandem. “There’s no difference between the secular realm and the spiritual realm,” explains the Byzantine and Russian historian Henry Hopwood-Phillips. “The tsar and the patriarch are meant to occupy the same body and the same mystical mind. That’s the anvil of Russia’s domestic Byzantine statecraft.”

And Putin’s hammer is wielded by God.

“Let God save the Russian soil,” Putin’s Patriarch Kirill earlier this week on TV told his flock of 90 million devout parishioners. “When I say Russian, I use an ancient expression from the chronicles of where Russian soil started, which includes the Ukraine and Belarus. God forbid,” Kirill thundered, “that the evil forces that have always fought against the unity of Russia and the Russian church get the upper hand in brotherly Ukraine.”

[LFC]

If you really want to be a great fascist you need an easy symbol of support and intimidation. Welcome to "Z", the swastika of the 21st century. Much like a red hat with an empty slogan on it the symbol provides a mechanism of fascist virtue signaling, encompassing nationalism and general hate of whoever the people supporting the fascists are told to hate.

What started out as curious markings slapped in white paint on Russian tanks and trucks has now become a symbol of Vladimir Putin’s own version of World War Z.

Now, the “Z” has become akin to a new “swastika” or symbol of hatred and is showing up everywhere supporters of Russia’s uninvited invasion of Ukraine can be found.

Kamil Galeev, a Galina Starovoitova Fellow at Woodrow Wilson Center, has been curating examples of the creepy character’s use on Twitter. “‘Z’ is a letter that Russian Military are putting on their vehicles departing to Ukraine. Some interpret ‘Z’ as ‘Za pobedy’ (for victory). Others - as ‘Zapad’ (West). Anyway, this symbol invented just a few days ago became a symbol of new Russian ideology and national identity,” he tweeted before the invasion. Now Galeev believes the symbol means Putin has taken a page out of the world’s worst tyrants, including Benito Mussolini. “To put it simply, it’s going full fascist,” he tweeted. “Authorities launched a propaganda campaign to gain popular support for their invasion of Ukraine and they're getting lots of it.”

Indeed, the symbol, which is likely not directly tied to Mussolini’s fasces symbol which also sported a “Z” any more than it is a reference to the 2013 Brad Pitt film “World War Z” which premiered at the Moscow film festival that year—though it could be argued that Russian troops are not so different from the zombie invasion the film is based on.

But it certainly is gaining popular appeal. Over the weekend Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak was seen wearing a white “Z” on his leotard as he stood next to Ukraine’s Kovtun Illia, who had just won the gold in the Gymnastics World Cup event in Doha.

[indy]

Uh oh. We're in trouble now. Putin has us on his 'list', along with nearly the entire rest of the democratic world. Because we weren't on the list before? Maybe Trump got us off with his ass kissing.

www.businessinsider.com/russia-publishes-list-unfriendly-countries-Ukraine-war-condemnation-2022-3

[jackd]

Maybe Germany isn't on that list because, at last report, they were refusing to ban Russian oil and gas,

[LFC]

A bit more on Russian's use of "Z." Sounds more and more like a pro-invasion symbol.

[indy]

Mar 7, 2022 20:42:32 GMT jackd said:

Maybe Germany isn't on that list because, at last report, they were refusing to ban Russian oil and gas,

Germany is in a tough spot because they are highly dependent and get something like 50% of their natural gas from Russia. That seems like a strategic blunder to me because I wouldn't depend on Russia to shine my shoes.

I also think they (Russia) are going to default on their debt for the second time in 25 years. Their stock market is still closed and the last time it closed for this long it didn't reopen for 75 years. They are adequate teachers but we are inadequate students.

[indy]

I think this article by the always insightful and readable Anne Applebaum, BTW, aptly expresses Germany's profound pivot in attitude about Russia. You can never really know how sincere this pivot is or how quickly it will be forgotten, but my current opinion is that Germany is desperately looking for an alternative supply to Russian gas and are simply delaying action until they can arrange it. I think if an oil and gas ban is announced (and that is a pretty big if), Germany will (eventually) be part of it and make it onto Putin's list. A list, also BTW, that immediately reminded me of Squire "Red" Will Danaher in The Quiet Man.

[indy]

One other thing I was thinking about is that I know many people think the Ukraine invasion is about Russian 'national security' with the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU and NATO and all, and I have no doubt that is true, but an awful lot of Russia's oil and gas flows through the Ukraine and that is undoubtedly a concern to them as well.

[indy]

LOL.

[indy]

Reports are that Biden will ban Russian oil and gas imports this morning. The inevitable political cost will be that he will be blamed domestically for gas prices by every Republican with a keyboard and/or a voice.

[indy]

An interesting bit on this war is the encrypted phone system that Russia introduced in 2021 called the Era system. It's a bit of technology that uses encrypted 3G/4G cell signals to communicate. One side effect of indiscriminate artillery bombing, however, is the destruction of cell towers. Oops.

[LFC]

TPM has a number of bits and pieces but I think this one really helps summarize just how badly Putin f***ed up with the invasion. In a matter of days he seems to have accelerated everything he feared including greater Ukrainian identification with Europe, Europe's resolve to achieve energy independence (at least from Russia), increased NATO member defense spending, and global sanctions in all sorts of markets. But at least he has a decent change of ruling over an expensive, difficult, and dangerous occupation of the largest nation in Europe whose citizens hate his guts.

ONE FACTOR THAT HAS left Ukraine in almost perpetual political crisis for the last twenty years is that the country really is divided between one part that is more focused on integration with Europe and another that looks toward alignment with Russia. The specifics of these divisions are way outside my expertise and we’re lucky to have Josh Kovensky on staff to help us understand them. But we know broadly a division between the east and west, with some divisions between cities and countryside. Many Ukrainian political elites actually speak Russian as their first language. In any case, that division is real, though my understanding is the support for greater integration with Europe has grown substantially with the upheaval of 2014–15 and the subsequent low level warfare in the East.

But one thing that comes up again and again in war reportage out of Ukraine are individuals and regions that were generally more aligned toward Russia doing an about face toward a Ukrainian nationalism that is deeply anti-Russian and generally looking to Europe for protection. Some of this is likely a version of a rally-around-the-flag effect. And while bombs are falling there’s probably little public room for public expressions of anything but antipathy toward Russia. But it’s hard to believe the ferocity and intensity of this onslaught won’t be a defining experience for a generation of Ukrainians. War on your own territory will do that.

It is another example of something you see in every dimension of this. As outsiders to Great Russian nationalism it’s hard for Americans to evaluate the importance that Vladimir Putin and many other Russians attach to reuniting Ukraine with Russia. But even though Russia may still win this war, it’s hard to imagine a greater strategic catastrophe either economically or militarily. If Russia conquers Ukraine it seems likely to be a restive and hostile population that will be hard to control or hold. Fighting a domestic insurrection will only further drive Ukraine into eventual economic union and military alliance with the rest of Europe. The NordStream 2 gas pipeline project that seemed like an inevitable has already be ditched and the company behind it has filed for bankruptcy. It’s not impossible to imagine a Russian climbdown or withdrawal that would include removing many of the sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy. But it’s difficult to imagine a return of the pipeline project any time soon or maybe ever. Meanwhile, far from resetting or upending the post-Cold War security regime in Europe, Putin has put it on steroids. The key NATO member states are pledging dramatic increases in military spending and falling over themselves to reinforce NATO’s eastern frontier. The future that is coming into view is pretty dark for everyone. But it’s a nightmare scenario for Russia.

[goldenvalley]

There's minimal comfort coming from the fact that Putin f%&*d up. The bottom line is that he is destroying Ukraine, Russia, and causing economic stress across the world.  

[LFC]

Mar 8, 2022 17:01:43 GMT goldenvalley said:

There's minimal comfort coming from the fact that Putin f%&*d up. The bottom line is that he is destroying Ukraine, Russia, and causing economic stress across the world.  

If he can't rule the world, he'll burn it down.

[LFC]

Another opinion on how badly Putin effed up.

CIA Director Says Putin Assumed Wrong On Several Fronts

CIA Director William Burns listed several assumptions that he said Putin had made about Ukraine, and which he said had been proven wrong:

• that Ukraine was weak and easily intimidated
• that Europeans were distracted and risk-averse
• that Russia had developed a ‘sanctions-proof’ war chest of foreign currency reserves
• that Russia had a modernized military capable of a quick and decisive victory

Burns said Putin’s biggest challenge is that he has “no sustainable political endgame” in the face of Ukrainian resistance, but that he will likely double down on the war.

“His military planning and assumptions was premised on a quick, decisive victory, and that has not proven to be the case,” Burns said.

[LFC]

TPM is following the news and impacts of the invasion, in particular Biden's announcement that we would block imports of Russian oil and gas. Republicans, being Republicans, have advocated for this move while simultaneously whining about the price of gas. All I see is yet another anti-democracy move by the GOP.

The Right Tries To Have It Both Ways With An Oil Import Ban And Energy Prices

As President Biden is reportedly set to ban Russian oil imports at a press conference momentarily, Republicans have already signaled their intentions to attack the President over any resulting economic fallout from the move.

Although lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have demanded that the U.S. cut Russia off from global energy markets as oil prices continue to surge in anticipation of a potential embargo, those same Republicans who supported a ban have made it clear that they would use Biden’s decision to further blame him for high prices and inflation.

“Joe Biden’s failed agenda is to blame for the highest inflation in decades,” the Republican National Committee tweeted last week, hours after Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant and spurred a hike in commodity markets.

Or, as the far-right Gateway Pundit put it:

Click on the two pics to see the ridiculousness of the right.

[LFC]

Putin's losing it as his country's economy is being pummeled by sanctions.

Russia has lashed out with a threat to cut off Europe’s gas supply if Western allies push ahead with further sanctions. The U.S. has urged its European allies to ban Russian oil imports over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but the Kremlin said it would retaliate if any such move went ahead. Speaking on state television, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned that a ban on Russian oil would lead to “catastrophic consequences” for global energy prices, and said the Kremlin was prepared to “impose an embargo on gas pumping through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline,” which carries natural gas from Russia to Germany. Last month, Germany halted the certification of $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline in a previously unthinkable economic sanction against Russia.

He's practically begging all other top suppliers, including the U.S., to open up their spigots and reap the windfall.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 8, 2022 22:02:35 GMT LFC said:

Putin's losing it as his country's economy is being pummeled by sanctions.

Russia has lashed out with a threat to cut off Europe’s gas supply if Western allies push ahead with further sanctions. The U.S. has urged its European allies to ban Russian oil imports over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but the Kremlin said it would retaliate if any such move went ahead. Speaking on state television, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned that a ban on Russian oil would lead to “catastrophic consequences” for global energy prices, and said the Kremlin was prepared to “impose an embargo on gas pumping through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline,” which carries natural gas from Russia to Germany. Last month, Germany halted the certification of $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline in a previously unthinkable economic sanction against Russia.

He's practically begging all other top suppliers, including the U.S., to open up their spigots and reap the windfall.

Shipping LGN all over the world seems a bit dangerous to me, but I don't see a way around that.  This was bound to happen once the European countries decided to oppose Russia's move into Ukraine.

[LFC]

Here's a sociologist who has been studying the super-rich for 15 years. They make the case that the sanctions are  sanctions are starting to bite the oligarchs where it hurts: their egos. It's not because it's going to break the oligarchs but rather because it's making their flamboyant, blatantly public lifestyles nearly impossible and for them that's really the point of wealth. If you can't show it off then what good is it?

The United States, United Kingdom, and European Union had barely announced sanctions on overseas Russian wealth when the oligarchs began to whine and protest. That meant the policy—enacted after Russia invaded Ukraine—was working as intended, to punish Russia’s elites for supporting President Vladimir Putin. By last weekend in Moscow, the Russian-state-television host Vladimir Solovyev raged on camera over what the sanctions would mean for him personally: loss of access to his two luxury homes in Lake Como, Italy, near the villa of George Clooney.

Amid a broad suite of economic sanctions targeting the Russian financial system, which has driven the ruble’s value to record lows, Western powers also are significantly increasing their efforts to identify and freeze the assets of Putin’s business allies. And some of Russia’s best-known oligarchs—business figures who have built up huge fortunes, in most cases through their connections to the state—are now calling for an end to the war. By Sunday, the billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska and Mikhail Fridman, a founder of Russia’s largest private bank, both urged an end to Putin’s war. This was a startling break in ranks among the country’s elites. Deripaska is on the U.S. sanctions list; Fridman is on the EU’s. Even those who have not yet faced individual sanctions appear to be feeling pressure. Another billionaire businessman and close associate of Putin’s, Roman Abramovich, has put his British soccer club up for sale and vowed to donate the proceeds to “all victims of the war in Ukraine.” Over the weekend, Abramovich also accepted the Ukrainian government’s request for mediation help in peace talks with Russia. Oleg Tinkov, a banker and entrepreneur, frequently uses his Instagram account to post photos of things like his 253-foot yacht with mini submarine, but he told his 634,000 followers last week, “Innocent people are dying in Ukraine now, every day, this is unthinkable and unacceptable.”

If figures like these are calling for, even demanding, an end to the war, the sanctions are far more effective than past efforts by Western powers to target the Russian elite.

It ain't really cash if it can't be flashed.

What is an oligarch without ostentation? For many Russian elites, the answer is apparently “nothing.” The sanctions threaten oligarchs with a kind of annihilation, similar to the phenomenon that sociologists describe as “social death.” That is why Russian elites were so quick to gather up their expensive toys as soon as sanctions were announced, and why several have taken the extraordinary step of publicly begging Putin for a quick end to the war.

Although economists and policy makers may pooh-pooh such ideas, sociologists—including me—have long understood that the need to see and be seen is a fundamental driver of human affairs. Perhaps surprisingly, oligarchs need not just to be filthy rich; the need to be seen as such seems to only increase with economic wealth. That’s one reason billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson flamboyantly compete among themselves to launch rockets into space amid great media fanfare, rather than discreetly enjoying their fortunes in private.

I have spent the past 15 years researching the offshore wealth of the super-rich. In my efforts to understand how oligarchs’ wealth was hidden from tax agencies, divorcing spouses, and disgruntled business partners, I have been astonished again and again at how many oligarchs cannot seem to live without the splashy public display of their wealth, even when it puts them at risk. In recent days, Internet sleuths and government agents alike have been closely tracking the movements of Russian oligarchs’ private jets and multimillion-dollar yachts. Instagram posts from plush locations are a major strategic asset for anyone seeking to impose accountability on people who otherwise seem to be untouchable. For example, a niche profession has developed in tracking down transnational oligarchs via their social-media posts so they can be served with legal papers to freeze their assets in debt-collection proceedings. These high-end collection agents, the Boba Fetts of the ultra-high-net-worth crowd, can do their job precisely because the oligarchs and their globe-trotting family members can’t help themselves. They seem compelled to post photos of themselves hobnobbing with celebrities or posing with race cars, even when they know they are under investigation. Many people claiming bankruptcy in the face of heavy fines and court judgments have been exposed to the courts as frauds after unintentionally or intentionally exposing the extent of their assets.

This tendency appears pronounced among the families of Russian oligarchs. The now-locked Instagram account “Rich Russian Kids” acquired 1.5 million followers just aggregating the images of decadent luxury posted by the sons and daughters of wealthy Russians.

[AnBr]

Mar 8, 2022 17:19:01 GMT LFC said:

Mar 8, 2022 17:01:43 GMT goldenvalley said:

There's minimal comfort coming from the fact that Putin f%&*d up. The bottom line is that he is destroying Ukraine, Russia, and causing economic stress across the world.  

If he can't rule the world, he'll burn it down.

“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution ^World as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

— Abraham Lincoln
Cooper Union Address, 1860

[LFC]

The pain increases for Russia. I can't believe Putin ever expected things to get this bad. I also can't believe he'd ever admit it and leave Ukraine. He's trapped in a cluster-f*** of his own making and a LOT of other people are suffering because of it.

Russia’s Isolation Deepens

Biden announced a ban yesterday on all Russian oil and natural gas imports to the United States.

• BBC: “West hits Russia with oil bans and gas curbs”

• New York Times: “Food companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, symbols of the West in Russia, will pause operations there.”

• The Washington Post: “U.S. to ban oil imports from Russia as White House explores drastic plans to buffer economy from energy shock”

• Reuters: “EU agrees new sanctions against Russia over Ukraine invasion, France says”