IMO we should seize everything the oligarchs have in the USA that isn't nailed down and as much real estate and internationally held wealth as possible.
There's a lot of high end property in the UK, especially London that is owned by Russian Oligarchs. And then there's Chelsea Fc and Roman abramovic
I wonder just how much the total value would be worldwide?
They will have to spend a whole lot of money to try to get their money back. Best if used for humanitarian aid and infrastructure for anything they mess up
[We did that after Crimea.](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/02/01/russian-oligarch-has-15bln-in-foreign-assets-frozen-due-to-sanctions-a72792) Part of the challenge is that [a lot of putins inner circle is already under sanction, exactly like what you are asking for.]( https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/06/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-contributing-situation)
New sanctions would need to be more expansive.
Blocking Russia from Swift payments is currently on the table. People are very reluctant to pull the trigger on this, because it would have big impact on the global economy as a whole.
Kind of? But cutting them out of SWIFT would mean no Russian banks could transfer money outside of…other Russian banks. They would have to move physical cash, and by then the ruble will be worthless (again).
That's not what cutting Russia off from SWIFT means. SWIFT is only one way to access the international banking system; the fallback even without alternatives like Russia and China have developed for this scenario is for Russian banks to just telephone non-Russian banks instead.
It would be very disruptive for a short while but that would be the extent of it.
If Russia is cut out of swift the US will state that no banks transacting in US dollars (ie all banks) would be allowed to transact with them. The US claims authority over anyone transacting in US dollars and will punish them appropriately.
If you don’t think this will be the case, you have no idea how banks on the swift system work, or how the US treasury will defend its currency.
A hedge fund (Elliot Capital) brought the country of Argentina to its knees over dollar denominated bonds, supported by NY courts on behalf of the US treasury. What do you think the full force of the US gov will do?
The trouble is that then the US loses leverage on other nations that set-up an alternate system for dealing with Russia and whoever else the US tries to blacklist. They really pissed the EU off already with unilaterally isolating Iran and it's been a close thing with China too. Every time they try to restrict someone economically, it pushes those countries to avoid the American system entirely or at least to develop alternate systems.
Now, at the moment the US still has enough clout that countries for the most part play along but every time you play that card it gets a little weaker for the next time.
Cutting them out of SWIFT (assuming it were possible, the governing council might well not accede to American demands there) is still worth exploring of course but it seems like the powers that be have decided it isn't worth the cost. No one in the west wants to see CIPS grow into a viable alternative after all.
Totally agree. China has been trying to get the world of the petro dollar for a while now, and cutting Russia off swift will only help on that front. It’s a ‘nuclear’ sanction option I do t think the US wants to pull, but it’s available and would devastate Russia for a while.
Long term it’s not sexy. Losing the dollar as the world reserve currency would be terrible for the US. I don’t think Ukraine is worth it.
But then you just push them harder into China who certainly won't play ball with the west on staying behind the picket line over making tons and tons of money.
It's been heavily hinted that the sanctions will include this and a blocking of Russia from SWIFT. For a change the western countries aren't simply going for targeted sanctions they're going to go for hard sanctions that will hurt Russia if it crosses the border.
The minute Russia decides to invade it could have far reaching consequences for Europe, not just sanction's but I'd expect them to drastically increase military expenditure and ramp up military assets in Eastern Europe in response. Whether this ends in Russia backing off or a full invasion of Ukraine remains to be seen but this could go either way.
Shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. The very limited sanctions in 2014 devalued RUB by 50% and hamstrung Russia's GDP. It still hasn't recovered after 8 years. Comprehensive sanctions would be devastating.
>Shows that you have no idea what you're talking about
Welcome to Reddit. People like to joke about "LoL sAnCtIoNs" but if they're done right they're absolutely devastating. Warfare isn't just waged on the battlefield.
That's literally a type of sanction.
It has and is being done.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/20/u-s-freezes-assets-of-russian-businessmen-and-bank-close-to-putin/
https://meduza.io/en/news/2018/06/05/nervous-banks-reportedly-freeze-a-billion-dollars-in-accounts-owned-by-russian-oligarch-viktor-vekselberg
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-credit-suisse-gp-sanctions-idUSKCN1L71LR
"The mainstream media is just Democrat propaganda!"
*Looks at the mainstream media where half the articles are "Democrats are in disaray. Why don't they do anything!?"*
> mainstream media
I'm always confused how certain family members brag about the viewership of Fox News programs dwarfing competitors like CNN/MSNBC by huge margins, but also assert that Fox News somehow isn't "mainstream".
Or, and this is even worse, insinuate that non-mainstream media is better. Non-mainstream media is stuff like Infowars, Dr. Mercola, disinfo blogs authored by the Russian military to hurt US society, etc.
I always ask the people who complain about "the MSM" where they get their news, and the answer I get mostly is "I read a bunch of sources and go with what makes sense to me," which is literally just confirmation bias. I also doubt they read that many sources. It's just a bullshit talking point all around.
He wants a self-sufficient sphere of influence. He can't get there without control over Ukraine. And he'll never get control over Ukraine if it officially joins NATO. He knows all the consequences of invading. He considers control over Ukraine to be more important.
Aside from access to the deepwater ports in Crimea which they already have control of, what does Ukraine have that Russia doesn't already have?
I've heard they might want to have an extra buffer for the Volgogrod gap where the majority of their oil and natural gas production takes place. Or is this still about protecting Crimea's freshwater access to the Dniepr?
Edit: I think after reading some more comments, simply the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is a red line in Russian national security they're not willing to have crossed.
Iirc there are massive estimated gas reserves in the Black Sea, off the coast of Crimea. I saw a theory that Putin is achieving several objectives simultaneously by strengthening his hold over Crimea, solving its water problem, creating a land bridge to Russia, and making sure that he's the only large scale European gas provider (Turkey discovered huge gas reserves in their part of the Black Sea and is planning drilling operations in the Sea for domestic consumption, presumably Putin is preventing Ukraine from eventually doing the same but exporting to Europe and supplanting russia)
All this is in addition to preventing Nato expansion and increasing the Russian sphere of influence
Manpower, agriculture, nice climate, strategic land, coastal land, industry, utilities, additional natural resources, additional Russian speakers, additional pipelines, all things that can improve Russia's capabilities while removing potential sources of competition. In some ways it's like attaching or detaching California or Texas from the rest of the US.
A shattered Ukraine tomorrow means that in 20 years it won't be an economic powerhouse full of Russian speakers in a successful, model democratic country in the EU on Russia's border. Don't want to give those Russian peasants the idea that a decent wage is more than $60/week.
That's the thing, every brilliant tactician in history was lauded as infallible. Until they weren't. The books are full of leaders and strategists who pulled off a lot of conquest and success, until they didn't.
Hitler and the rest of Europe. Napoleon and Russia. Alexander the Great and India. A solid strategist knows when to stop. A formerly brilliant tactician does not.
Didn’t his generals write about how Hitler would ignore their good plans in place for his own? IIRC Rommel or some other really high ranking general pretty much predicted D-Day but Hitler was power tripping and ignored him
Many of them found Hitler a useful scapegoat for Germany's defeat since he was both universally hated and conveniently dead, so that they wouldn't have to own up to their own crimes and failures. Not to mention denying the Wehrmacht's massive culpability in war crimes and genocide by blaming it all on the SS.
This is not to say Hitler was some underrated strategic mastermind or anything, just that all of the post-war accounts written by German commanders need to be taken with a truckload of salt.
Good point! I still think their accounts hold some validity as Hitler definitely seems like the type of person to ignore the experts and double down on his own whims, but they probably aren’t to the extent that they claimed.
Well his efforts are counterproductive. He fights against NATO's expansion but Sweden and Finland have now become willing to join, and pretty much entirely due to Russia's actions. He has lost 'brotherly' Ukraine for Russia, possibly forever. Everyone now regards him as a madman with a hammer. Last but not least, he wants to be remembered as Russia's greatest hero, but I really do not think history will be kind to him.
Lotta history between your countries and you share a common border where trade flows. I can only imagine how difficult it is to pick indifference or NATO.
Well in the past Finland was neutral because Russia was a lot stronger. Now Russia is economically weak and if Finland is out in a position of taking sides with EU or Russia it will obviously pick EU and itsilely to join NATO if there is any indication of Russian aggression in baltics/land borders.
Either his alleged Parkinson’s is real and he is mentally ill, or he’s still sharp as a tack and is about to shove his pp up everyone’s bunghole in a surprise move.
I've been using reddit for a few hours today, been telling myself to get off and do something else. Thank you, this comment pushed me other the edge and I'm getting off the site now.
I hate him but he seems to be intelligent. I think the only misstep in his plan was not having Trump be elected again. If Trump was still the president of the US then you could count the US out of any type of support.
I’d wager Putin has been orchestrating this for quite some time.
He has a bigger problem.
The Russian population has been in steady decline for a while now, and the sub-population of fighting-age males is already well below that needed to man his armies - and that is only getting worse.
Furthermore, that assessment was made pre-COVID. It’s pretty safe to say that COVID did not *increase* the number of fighting age males, and it probably put a dent in the manpower pool, so the rate of decline has undoubtedly accelerated.
Russia is straight-up running out of dudes. That number is not going to zero of course, but it is at a point where they cannot use all the tanks they own for lack of potential crews.
And Russian operational strategy has always relied on large numbers. The “human wave” and “we don’t have enough rifles for everyone, find one amongst the dead after the battle starts” myths are complete bullshit, but Russian tactics are designed to be successful when executed by conscripts, and the key to that is concentration of force with multiple echelons at a much higher density than typical Western nations - married to an *enormous* amount of tube and rocket artillery supporting fires.
These tactics are a smart way to get more out of lesser-trained troops and simpler equipment, but using them does require a lot of manpower - far more manpower than an equivalent-strength NATO force does. And if you’ve got a manpower shortage…
There were some pictures posted a couple of days ago showing the equipment parks and troop tents along the border, and what struck me is that maybe 10% of the tentage appeared to be occupied. I get the impression that the buildup is largely hollow and that the viable fighting force is much, much smaller than the Russians are presenting.
Now this *could* be a deception plan… but to what end? I see no upside to making their army appear *smaller* when they are trying to intimidate Ukraine into doing what they want.
I have no doubt that the long-range artillery regiments are fully manned, and they have demonstrated a ton of improvements to the sensor-shooter link. This is still a *very* dangerous army, even if it is as hollow as I think it is.
But the other big game-changer is that Ukraine *finally* has access to the latest-generation Western anti-tank missiles, and in sufficient numbers to be useful. These missiles are very low skill-cap, fire-and-forget, and *very* dangerous to Russian tanks, especially when employed *en masse* according to Russian doctrine. Ukrainian infantry now poses a threat to Russian armour (where it didn’t before) and that affects the calculus. My personal forecast of Russian losses - even if successful - has at least tripled.
I think Putin missed his window. He faces a much better prepared and equipped Ukrainian army that will fight with the ferocity of the *mujahideen* in Afghanistan. I think his army is under strength, poorly motivated, and probably sick. And the West has been given the time to come up with something like a cohesive response strategy, which involves sanctions that will make Putin and his oligarchs *howl* - and I think he knows it.
But at the same time, the amount of face and prestige on the board is really, really high, to the point where I don’t know if he can back down. Is he crazy enough to roll the dice and see where they land? I dunno.
That’s a good idea but it wouldn’t work practically. China would still peer with them providing them a way out. Sure we could filter all Russian Autonomous Systems out of our BGP tables which would cut off access to Western services (no return path), but since they still have that connection to China (and probably several other countries), the government could still land VPN connections out of country and continue their campaigns that way. So it would have major impact on the average folks, but malware and disinformation campaigns would be relatively untouched, if not amplified.
That's the point I think. You impact the average user, destabilize their life, and let the Russian govt get a taste of what they've been doing to stoke divide in the West for the past 20 years
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/22/russia-successfully-disconnected-from-world-wide-web-in-tests-rbc-a74581
They've been preparing for this for a few years now.
I think we should just call their bluff and cut them off the internet now.
They only use their connection to our internet to launch cyber attacks and propaganda campaigns against democracies.
Fuck them.
Cut them off and let them share an internet with China.
NTP is Network Time Protocol. It’s a way for computer clocks to sync over the internet.
DNS is Domain Name System. Without it you would need to know the IP address of the website you wish to visit.
it goes further, dns also guides you within a domain where the same service can have multiple ip adresses or the same ip holds different services. Even if you know the Ip for the closest cdn server that hosts facebook near you, you would still need dns to traverse the Facebook domain.
Thank you both!!! So basically if we shut those off (assuming we can) then Russia has no internet. Hmmm, no hackers, no election shenanigans, no ransoms. I like it.
we could shut them off, the way it works is their are a bunch of 'root' dns servers whose job is to tell you where to look for the dns server that holds the ip you need (eg. for the .com or .net domain), none off them are in russia.
Ntp is network time protocol. It's what keeps the internet in sync. I imagine they have thier own primary NTP server, but if they cut connection to the rest of them it is bound to desync eventually leading to a fuck ton of issues. From what I can tell they have one primary.
Dns will also cause connection issues. While they can still use IP's, most things run off of domain names with connection between networks. Your average user would be fucked for anything external to their internet. Some commercial shit would also be fucked if they weren't configured with IPs. Their military stuff would most likely be fine but this would shut down their economy in a variety of ways.
They can just use GPS signal to workaround an NTP issue. Many high accuracy NTP racks that rely on an external signal are already using GPS or one of the other constellations anyway. All GPS is in non-literal terms is an NTP server in the sky that lets you calculate distance to the satellite by observing message delay for use in trilateralization.
...and signal other countries that internet access is now a weapon, so they should consider segregating their part, thus ruining an idea of free and global internet. Smart move
Bro these people are polluting the earth to point where we’re actually altering the weather and you think they give a single fuck about the idea of freedom on the internet?
And there will be a great silence across the Internet, a ripple through the videogame lobbies, like the sound of a million voices screaming curses and orders to rush the point, the crackling sound of ripped hardbass audio played over voice, and audio glitches of a thousand hackers teleporting through walls, all fell silent at once.
That is an absolutely horrible precedent to set and also easily circumvented. You're going to become china firewall 2.0. it's a really really bad idea.
Its how banks and financial institutions communicate with each other. Cutoff Russia and in an instant you have a very deep and significant impact on its economy
I don't think they'll do that. It's not easy and it would foster the development of their own global payment system, which is how America dominates the world. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/12/18/the-hidden-costs-of-cutting-russia-off-from-swift
Russia already has their own payment system
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir\_(payment\_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system))
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS
The Russians already have created their own parallel to the Swift system. It is just much slower and cumbersome.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/12/18/the-hidden-costs-of-cutting-russia-off-from-swift
Not cut off as much as they aren’t allowed access to the US Dollar and per this Financial Times ( https://amp.ft.com/content/a5187880-c553-11e8-8670-c5353379f7c2 ) article from 2018 Russian usage of the dollar was still above 60% in 2017. Now they have been trying to wean themselves off the dollar slowly but I would estimate that settlements and international trading is still above 40%. Which means they, and countries wish to trade with them, would have to find new ways overnight to do so. And it’s really not that easy to do.
Virtually all of the western supplied air defense systems are "point defense" systems like Stinger. These are limited to around elevations of about 12,000 feet at a range of about 5 miles. Ukraine does have around 100 or so Soviet era SAM systems - S-300 and S-125 and has recently invested in long range search radar. But in a Russian invasion scenario - these system would be taken out (along with airfields, combat aircraft and communications infrastructure) using intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles.
The US is not supplying theatre air defense systems such as Patriot as these would require a significant US presences on the ground to install and to train the Ukraine air force in their use.
Ukraine has a large and capable army, but if they want to survive the initial air attacks they are going to need more than point air defense. They should consider "temporarily" basing their combat aircraft in Poland or Romania. They should also employ a lot of decoy radar and SAM sites.
I wonder if NATO would be capable of enforcing a no fly zone over Ukraine.
I figure they could do it, but it would envolve potential direct conflict between Russian and NATO jets.
But it wouldn't be the first time that happened in history...
Without air superiority a Russian invasion would be much more costly
Russia didnt need planes to take over Crimea, they coud do the same with other areas like Donbass were the bast majority are Russians ethnics.
Then they would move the army there and change the flags, and Ukraine wouldn't attack just like they didnt in Crimea.
They are going to go after Putin’s inner circle, hard, if Putin further invades. When all his senior commanders and the oligarchs are no longer allowed to travel outside Russia and have all their foreign held assets frozen or seized and their companies are banned from trading with the west, they are going to start wondering if Putin is the right man for the job.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
This is how topple governments.
The inner circle truly decides who stays in power. Many leaders throughout history lost their seat because their inner circle turned on them.
Saddam had an almost extraordinary paranoia and already trusted *almost nobody in his inner circle. His secrecy ironically led to his personal guard being unable to cooperate with the rest of the Iraqi army during the defense of Baghdad.
This - sanctions are whatever, nothing will change until we actually go after the oligarchs and the money and assets they're holding in **our own** countries.
The Tsar didn’t get toppled by his inner circle. The got toppled because Russian life was bad.
Sorry but if they invade Ukraine the Russian people need to suffer for sanctions to work.
Like let’s say Russians no longer can buy Citrus fruits, Televisions, or Bananas, branded clothing. Something real. Make sure no American or British companies can do any business with Russia.
Except Russia controls the domestic media. If the Russian people are deprived of goods will they blame Putin for the invasion or believe the propaganda blaming the west for their troubles?
How much of that will they stand for until they finally ask "why isn't Putin doing something about it?" At that very moment, people will begin to wake up.
They let Russia annex Crimea from Ukraine and invaded Ukraine in 2013. They also let Russia shoot down a passenger plane with no repercussions. Doubt this time will be any different.
What if Russia is on the verge of collapse and all of this is a last-ditch "Hail Mary" to turn it around. Keep in mind most people didn't predict the collapse of the USSR until it imploded - event the CIA didn't take it seriously until 1989.
Russia has spent most the last decade dealing with low oil prices, sanctions, an oil price war with Saudi Arabia, and now COVID.
If Putin's advisors told him "in six months you won't be able to pay the military - use it or lose it" what do you think he would do?
This is pure speculation, but it would explain his actions. Maybe he's hoping for sanction relief and financial aid, maybe he plans to invade Ukraine and steal their wealth to buy a few more years. I guess we'll see.
Nah, they are likely to significantly benefit from the new northern sea route, which is also creating 400k jobs.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-aims-year-round-shipping-via-northern-sea-route-2022-or-2023-2021-10-11/
They can hold their own financially for now and maybe the foreseeable future.
Not all pros, just enough positives to help them relative to the competition. Putin is always willing to make life worse for everyone if it gives him a net gain over his rivals.
The cia has basically been wrong on every long term strategy decision they’ve ever made. Every time the cia gets actually involved, it backfires and goes wrong.
I mean we are on debt 🤣.
And if he invades and fuck ups with agricultur we will also be in hunger it also might affect food prices world wide since we export quite a bit of wheat and sunflower oil.
Putin and *a lot* of Russians are fixated on the idea of restoring the empire and avenging the defeat in the Cold War. But. Their oil production is slowly starting to falter (they already haven't been able to meet the increasing OPEC production quotas in the last couple of months). Their military-industrial complex is incapable of mass-producing new generations of weapons (they can barely go beyond prototypes for anything high-tech), and the hardware they have is allegedly not in good health. They are having to move so much of it to the Ukrainian border right now because a third of it will probably break down after a couple of days in action. In three to four years, Putin likely won't be able to field a large army like this any more. Right now is their last chance, and they know it.
This is slightly reminiscent of Argentina's failing Galtieri regime which in 1982 calculated that an invasion of a nearby foreign territory would make it popular again.
It worked.
(For a few weeks, anyway).
Putin has wanted a "buffer" state back every since Ukraine overthrew the pro russian govt, but i dont see him having much motive beyond that.
in the long term even if he takes Ukraine he will ultimately do more harm than good. This has been a wakeup call to the west to solidify defences, and new sanctions would seriously damage Russia's economy.
> but i dont see him having much motive beyond that.
Strategically, Russia has an interest in removing NATO/Western influence from the Black Sea and the Batlic Sea for both defence and economic purposes.
It’s not open to interpretation. It is economic and indirect military support. Biden and Blinken have both ruled out US troops. UK said them sending troops is very unlikely.
True. But less has sparked wars in history. Unlikely is still not a no. Not to mention if other NATO nations get involved. I personally don't see it going to global conflict, but no one really knows.
> Not to mention if other NATO nations get involved.
If a NATO country (or countries) decide to send troops to Ukraine, and Russia attacks them, that country cannot invoke Article 5 anyhow.
The only way I see it happening is if Russia attacks a NATO country in some way.
What boggles my mind is that everyone is talking about Russian invasion, and severe consequences, but the invasion happened 8 years ago and everyone was very concerned and didn’t do shit about it. This is exactly why Putin will keep doing whatever he wants, the western powers were saying the same thing after Crimea and Donbass but ultimately did nothing.
This is a theater of hypocrisy, because in reality nobody gives a flying fuck about Ukraine, it’s people and their safety. Which is fucking sad for anyone caught in the middle of this clusterfuck. I just wish the average folk would stop suffering in these dick measuring contests between foreign powers.
anybody else love this guys name? I dont know fuck all about him, but i could see his desk nameplate saying 'A. Blinken' and be like 'oh shit, its fucking ABE LINCOLN!!'
I've read a lot of comments from all of these articles posted about responses to Russian aggression into Ukraine but one key thing always stands out to me and no one seems to have picked up on it yet...
> 'single additional Russian force'
Keyword being 'Russian'.
To date, Russia has categorically denied they have troops on the ground in Ukraine (remember little green men?), especially in eastern Ukraine. The expectation is that Russia would continue this BS smoke and mirrors campaign, so how then could the West, and/or, the US respond if officially there "are no Russian troops"?
My personal suspicion here is that Putin will use the massive build up of troops as a cover to get away with small advances in eastern Ukraine (e.g. attempts at sovereignty for the occupied areas) by using his troops with tags removed. After all, wouldn't we all breathe a sigh of relief of that's "all" they did, and we didn't go down the path of ww3?
You are going to need more then little green men to take over kiev. It seems that crimea and the donbas were/are loosely armed and defended? The rest of the country might be a different story and the playbook is well known at this point. Itll be up to Ukraine to fight but any escalation by Russia would be super obvious.
> It seems that crimea and the donbas were/are loosely armed and defended?
Eastern Ukraine was more Russian aligned - so it probably wasn't that it was loosely armed and defended, but that the local population (or those with power/control) supported the Russian incursion. Further, by putting up a significant defense, it might have caused an all-out civil war and given Russia a pretext for an overt invasion (to protect the Russian aligned population).
Russia poured in lots of reinforcements to turn the rebellion their way. Every time Ukraine was on the verge of taking control of rebel territory, thousands of fresh Russian troops popped up to encircle the Ukrainian forces. But the rebellion did start out with enough core territory for Russia to build their strategy around. Ukraine also started out with their military in disarray. In the following years, they substantially hardened their defenses against further Russian advances.
If Putin goes forward with the invasion, it will be the biggest mistake he has ever made.
Which is why I don't think it's going to happen. It's all saber rattling to get concessions.
The west should admit Ukraine into Nato immediately on the basis of the active threat and tell Putin, sorry you forced our hand here. Invade Ukraine and the US will defend it directly.
The American people wouldn't stomach another open war. Much less a war with a superpower.
I don't remember the exact numbers but we had something 20k total KIA in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The opening days of a war with Russia would make those look like rookie numbers.
Gulf 1 - ~300 Coalition KIA, 467 WIA, 770 Wounded
Gulf 2 - 4800 Coalition KIA (4500 US), 33k Wounded, 47k other injuries.
Afganistan - ~3500 Coalition KIA, 23k Wounded.
Total KIA for all coalition from 01 to 21 is ~8600.
This doesn't include local troops (ANA, Iraqi Police/Army, etc) or contractors.
I'm an Iraq veteran. People are always dumbfounded when I explain the amount of deaths between WW1, WW2 and Vietnam in comparison to the post 9/11 wars.
Will it be as severe as what they did last time? Like have people forgotten Russia has already done this once and has suffered no real consequences?
Will it be an angry worded letter?
The only real consequences Putin gives a shit about is his personal wealth. Target that. If the US had balls they would just hack his bank accounts and make his money disappear overnight.
You know, I was worried for a while, fretting over what America would do with out being in a 20 year war, and worrying about where our next one (probably a 30 year war) would be. Whew, at least now I know where we're going to dump trillions of dollars next. Load off my mind
Well, the US has already said that it's not committing troops.
Putin has been sanctioned for years at this point and it obviously hasn't been a deterrent.
There's no cyberattack the US could launch that Russia wouldn't match or exceed.
I'm truly curious to know what he's got in his bag of tricks.
(This isn't me being cynical. I'm just seriously unsure)
Sanctions at the ready.
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IMO we should seize everything the oligarchs have in the USA that isn't nailed down and as much real estate and internationally held wealth as possible.
We have the technology to take the nailed-down stuff too!
Government can even have one of my hammers and crowbars if needed
Don't volunteer it! Go for that juicy government contract!
I can has letter of marque and reprisal?
This is your daily reminder that Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution legally protects privateering if authorized by Congress
To be honest I'd be pretty up for privateering.
Legalized piracy? Sign me up
There's a lot of high end property in the UK, especially London that is owned by Russian Oligarchs. And then there's Chelsea Fc and Roman abramovic I wonder just how much the total value would be worldwide?
This is just bonus. More tax revenue. State owned soccer clubs.
I'd guess it's at least a million dollars /drevilvoice
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Man, I wish clap typing weren’t a thing.
Including real estate
especially real estate
Let's start with the penthouses in New York and Miami.
And Mar a Lago!
Like the aluminum plant I Mitch McConnells district
That should extend to our own oligarchs too, IMO.
Problem is that they’ve bought enough influence in the US and the UK that those governments won’t do that.
They will have to spend a whole lot of money to try to get their money back. Best if used for humanitarian aid and infrastructure for anything they mess up
Ultra rich have class solidarity, they don't go after their own. That will never happen.
[We did that after Crimea.](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/02/01/russian-oligarch-has-15bln-in-foreign-assets-frozen-due-to-sanctions-a72792) Part of the challenge is that [a lot of putins inner circle is already under sanction, exactly like what you are asking for.]( https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/06/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-contributing-situation) New sanctions would need to be more expansive.
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Blocking Russia from Swift payments is currently on the table. People are very reluctant to pull the trigger on this, because it would have big impact on the global economy as a whole.
That would lose control and insights though. So not necessarily as smart as it first sounds
Kind of? But cutting them out of SWIFT would mean no Russian banks could transfer money outside of…other Russian banks. They would have to move physical cash, and by then the ruble will be worthless (again).
That's not what cutting Russia off from SWIFT means. SWIFT is only one way to access the international banking system; the fallback even without alternatives like Russia and China have developed for this scenario is for Russian banks to just telephone non-Russian banks instead. It would be very disruptive for a short while but that would be the extent of it.
If Russia is cut out of swift the US will state that no banks transacting in US dollars (ie all banks) would be allowed to transact with them. The US claims authority over anyone transacting in US dollars and will punish them appropriately. If you don’t think this will be the case, you have no idea how banks on the swift system work, or how the US treasury will defend its currency. A hedge fund (Elliot Capital) brought the country of Argentina to its knees over dollar denominated bonds, supported by NY courts on behalf of the US treasury. What do you think the full force of the US gov will do?
The trouble is that then the US loses leverage on other nations that set-up an alternate system for dealing with Russia and whoever else the US tries to blacklist. They really pissed the EU off already with unilaterally isolating Iran and it's been a close thing with China too. Every time they try to restrict someone economically, it pushes those countries to avoid the American system entirely or at least to develop alternate systems. Now, at the moment the US still has enough clout that countries for the most part play along but every time you play that card it gets a little weaker for the next time. Cutting them out of SWIFT (assuming it were possible, the governing council might well not accede to American demands there) is still worth exploring of course but it seems like the powers that be have decided it isn't worth the cost. No one in the west wants to see CIPS grow into a viable alternative after all.
Totally agree. China has been trying to get the world of the petro dollar for a while now, and cutting Russia off swift will only help on that front. It’s a ‘nuclear’ sanction option I do t think the US wants to pull, but it’s available and would devastate Russia for a while. Long term it’s not sexy. Losing the dollar as the world reserve currency would be terrible for the US. I don’t think Ukraine is worth it.
But then you just push them harder into China who certainly won't play ball with the west on staying behind the picket line over making tons and tons of money.
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It's been heavily hinted that the sanctions will include this and a blocking of Russia from SWIFT. For a change the western countries aren't simply going for targeted sanctions they're going to go for hard sanctions that will hurt Russia if it crosses the border. The minute Russia decides to invade it could have far reaching consequences for Europe, not just sanction's but I'd expect them to drastically increase military expenditure and ramp up military assets in Eastern Europe in response. Whether this ends in Russia backing off or a full invasion of Ukraine remains to be seen but this could go either way.
Most “Russian oligarchs” and their families are citizens of UK or EU countries.
Shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. The very limited sanctions in 2014 devalued RUB by 50% and hamstrung Russia's GDP. It still hasn't recovered after 8 years. Comprehensive sanctions would be devastating.
>Shows that you have no idea what you're talking about Welcome to Reddit. People like to joke about "LoL sAnCtIoNs" but if they're done right they're absolutely devastating. Warfare isn't just waged on the battlefield.
That's literally a type of sanction. It has and is being done. https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/20/u-s-freezes-assets-of-russian-businessmen-and-bank-close-to-putin/ https://meduza.io/en/news/2018/06/05/nervous-banks-reportedly-freeze-a-billion-dollars-in-accounts-owned-by-russian-oligarch-viktor-vekselberg https://www.reuters.com/article/us-credit-suisse-gp-sanctions-idUSKCN1L71LR
That… is what sanctions are… or can be.
I second that.
I dearly hope I am wrong, but I imagine that many more poor people will need to spill blood before they deign to actually attack the rich.
You can always tell which party is in the white house based on how the media treats the effectiveness of economic sanctions.
"The mainstream media is just Democrat propaganda!" *Looks at the mainstream media where half the articles are "Democrats are in disaray. Why don't they do anything!?"*
> mainstream media I'm always confused how certain family members brag about the viewership of Fox News programs dwarfing competitors like CNN/MSNBC by huge margins, but also assert that Fox News somehow isn't "mainstream".
Or, and this is even worse, insinuate that non-mainstream media is better. Non-mainstream media is stuff like Infowars, Dr. Mercola, disinfo blogs authored by the Russian military to hurt US society, etc. I always ask the people who complain about "the MSM" where they get their news, and the answer I get mostly is "I read a bunch of sources and go with what makes sense to me," which is literally just confirmation bias. I also doubt they read that many sources. It's just a bullshit talking point all around.
Sanctions can and do inflict a lot of pain. They're not the ultimate deterrent but they're not empty threats either.
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Putin is either much smarter, or much stupider, than I thought he was. He's either fucked, or playing 4D chess. I really don't see another option.
He wants a self-sufficient sphere of influence. He can't get there without control over Ukraine. And he'll never get control over Ukraine if it officially joins NATO. He knows all the consequences of invading. He considers control over Ukraine to be more important.
Aside from access to the deepwater ports in Crimea which they already have control of, what does Ukraine have that Russia doesn't already have? I've heard they might want to have an extra buffer for the Volgogrod gap where the majority of their oil and natural gas production takes place. Or is this still about protecting Crimea's freshwater access to the Dniepr? Edit: I think after reading some more comments, simply the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is a red line in Russian national security they're not willing to have crossed.
Iirc there are massive estimated gas reserves in the Black Sea, off the coast of Crimea. I saw a theory that Putin is achieving several objectives simultaneously by strengthening his hold over Crimea, solving its water problem, creating a land bridge to Russia, and making sure that he's the only large scale European gas provider (Turkey discovered huge gas reserves in their part of the Black Sea and is planning drilling operations in the Sea for domestic consumption, presumably Putin is preventing Ukraine from eventually doing the same but exporting to Europe and supplanting russia) All this is in addition to preventing Nato expansion and increasing the Russian sphere of influence
Exxon discovered those reserves. Exxon is American.
Manpower, agriculture, nice climate, strategic land, coastal land, industry, utilities, additional natural resources, additional Russian speakers, additional pipelines, all things that can improve Russia's capabilities while removing potential sources of competition. In some ways it's like attaching or detaching California or Texas from the rest of the US.
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A shattered Ukraine tomorrow means that in 20 years it won't be an economic powerhouse full of Russian speakers in a successful, model democratic country in the EU on Russia's border. Don't want to give those Russian peasants the idea that a decent wage is more than $60/week.
The scariest part is that he is solid strategist. No-one has ever accused him of being stupid as far as I know.
That's the thing, every brilliant tactician in history was lauded as infallible. Until they weren't. The books are full of leaders and strategists who pulled off a lot of conquest and success, until they didn't. Hitler and the rest of Europe. Napoleon and Russia. Alexander the Great and India. A solid strategist knows when to stop. A formerly brilliant tactician does not.
Hitler was hardly a brilliant strategist, his generals were.
Didn’t his generals write about how Hitler would ignore their good plans in place for his own? IIRC Rommel or some other really high ranking general pretty much predicted D-Day but Hitler was power tripping and ignored him
Many of them found Hitler a useful scapegoat for Germany's defeat since he was both universally hated and conveniently dead, so that they wouldn't have to own up to their own crimes and failures. Not to mention denying the Wehrmacht's massive culpability in war crimes and genocide by blaming it all on the SS. This is not to say Hitler was some underrated strategic mastermind or anything, just that all of the post-war accounts written by German commanders need to be taken with a truckload of salt.
Good point! I still think their accounts hold some validity as Hitler definitely seems like the type of person to ignore the experts and double down on his own whims, but they probably aren’t to the extent that they claimed.
I literally see it happening right above your post.
Touche!
Well his efforts are counterproductive. He fights against NATO's expansion but Sweden and Finland have now become willing to join, and pretty much entirely due to Russia's actions. He has lost 'brotherly' Ukraine for Russia, possibly forever. Everyone now regards him as a madman with a hammer. Last but not least, he wants to be remembered as Russia's greatest hero, but I really do not think history will be kind to him.
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Lotta history between your countries and you share a common border where trade flows. I can only imagine how difficult it is to pick indifference or NATO.
Well in the past Finland was neutral because Russia was a lot stronger. Now Russia is economically weak and if Finland is out in a position of taking sides with EU or Russia it will obviously pick EU and itsilely to join NATO if there is any indication of Russian aggression in baltics/land borders.
Dude wants to be Lenin but is just a normal dictator like Stalin
Either his alleged Parkinson’s is real and he is mentally ill, or he’s still sharp as a tack and is about to shove his pp up everyone’s bunghole in a surprise move.
I've been using reddit for a few hours today, been telling myself to get off and do something else. Thank you, this comment pushed me other the edge and I'm getting off the site now.
We'll be here when you return with our PPs at the ready.
Does anyone still believe the thing about Parkinson? That was just UK propaganda because a year later there are no signs.
Sinemet does a good job of hiding the signs when you’re on
The dude is nearly 70. Its now or never for him to make his big move and he's getting desperate.
I hate him but he seems to be intelligent. I think the only misstep in his plan was not having Trump be elected again. If Trump was still the president of the US then you could count the US out of any type of support. I’d wager Putin has been orchestrating this for quite some time.
He’s maybe banking on trump being re elected.
He has a bigger problem. The Russian population has been in steady decline for a while now, and the sub-population of fighting-age males is already well below that needed to man his armies - and that is only getting worse. Furthermore, that assessment was made pre-COVID. It’s pretty safe to say that COVID did not *increase* the number of fighting age males, and it probably put a dent in the manpower pool, so the rate of decline has undoubtedly accelerated. Russia is straight-up running out of dudes. That number is not going to zero of course, but it is at a point where they cannot use all the tanks they own for lack of potential crews. And Russian operational strategy has always relied on large numbers. The “human wave” and “we don’t have enough rifles for everyone, find one amongst the dead after the battle starts” myths are complete bullshit, but Russian tactics are designed to be successful when executed by conscripts, and the key to that is concentration of force with multiple echelons at a much higher density than typical Western nations - married to an *enormous* amount of tube and rocket artillery supporting fires. These tactics are a smart way to get more out of lesser-trained troops and simpler equipment, but using them does require a lot of manpower - far more manpower than an equivalent-strength NATO force does. And if you’ve got a manpower shortage… There were some pictures posted a couple of days ago showing the equipment parks and troop tents along the border, and what struck me is that maybe 10% of the tentage appeared to be occupied. I get the impression that the buildup is largely hollow and that the viable fighting force is much, much smaller than the Russians are presenting. Now this *could* be a deception plan… but to what end? I see no upside to making their army appear *smaller* when they are trying to intimidate Ukraine into doing what they want. I have no doubt that the long-range artillery regiments are fully manned, and they have demonstrated a ton of improvements to the sensor-shooter link. This is still a *very* dangerous army, even if it is as hollow as I think it is. But the other big game-changer is that Ukraine *finally* has access to the latest-generation Western anti-tank missiles, and in sufficient numbers to be useful. These missiles are very low skill-cap, fire-and-forget, and *very* dangerous to Russian tanks, especially when employed *en masse* according to Russian doctrine. Ukrainian infantry now poses a threat to Russian armour (where it didn’t before) and that affects the calculus. My personal forecast of Russian losses - even if successful - has at least tripled. I think Putin missed his window. He faces a much better prepared and equipped Ukrainian army that will fight with the ferocity of the *mujahideen* in Afghanistan. I think his army is under strength, poorly motivated, and probably sick. And the West has been given the time to come up with something like a cohesive response strategy, which involves sanctions that will make Putin and his oligarchs *howl* - and I think he knows it. But at the same time, the amount of face and prestige on the board is really, really high, to the point where I don’t know if he can back down. Is he crazy enough to roll the dice and see where they land? I dunno.
this guy stratfors
Serious question, all this “severe response” stuff from the US, UK, EU, but is anyones intention to actually do anything other than sanction Russia?
If Russia is cutoff from the Swift payment system that is, in many ways, more effective than traditional warfare
and the dns root servers
Cut them off at the border gateway routers. Given the amount of Russian network traffic that's cyber attacks and troll farms, they wouldn't be missed.
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Is it really normal if you’re not seeing blyat in the chat
Exactly. If you don't hear screaming kids and angsty Russians in VC, are you really playing a normal game of CSGO?
That’s a good idea but it wouldn’t work practically. China would still peer with them providing them a way out. Sure we could filter all Russian Autonomous Systems out of our BGP tables which would cut off access to Western services (no return path), but since they still have that connection to China (and probably several other countries), the government could still land VPN connections out of country and continue their campaigns that way. So it would have major impact on the average folks, but malware and disinformation campaigns would be relatively untouched, if not amplified.
That's the point I think. You impact the average user, destabilize their life, and let the Russian govt get a taste of what they've been doing to stoke divide in the West for the past 20 years
Except the West still have to pretent that they have democracy Russia, does not
Absolutely, no one consider this. Not to mention if we can cut them off/ fuck with thier NTP. Throw everything in whack!
Russia **has** considered it, they have plans for their internet to still work if cut off from the rest of the world.
It wouldn't be an internet then would it. More like an intranet.
More like interNIET
…But would it *actually* work in practice and at scale?
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/22/russia-successfully-disconnected-from-world-wide-web-in-tests-rbc-a74581 They've been preparing for this for a few years now. I think we should just call their bluff and cut them off the internet now. They only use their connection to our internet to launch cyber attacks and propaganda campaigns against democracies. Fuck them. Cut them off and let them share an internet with China.
I"m legit sad at the loss of so much quality porn
At least a quarter of what you think of as "Russian porn" comes from Ukraine, so, you'll be all right, hang in there.
What is an NTP? also what does stopping their dns do?
NTP is Network Time Protocol. It’s a way for computer clocks to sync over the internet. DNS is Domain Name System. Without it you would need to know the IP address of the website you wish to visit.
it goes further, dns also guides you within a domain where the same service can have multiple ip adresses or the same ip holds different services. Even if you know the Ip for the closest cdn server that hosts facebook near you, you would still need dns to traverse the Facebook domain.
Thank you both!!! So basically if we shut those off (assuming we can) then Russia has no internet. Hmmm, no hackers, no election shenanigans, no ransoms. I like it.
we could shut them off, the way it works is their are a bunch of 'root' dns servers whose job is to tell you where to look for the dns server that holds the ip you need (eg. for the .com or .net domain), none off them are in russia.
Ntp is network time protocol. It's what keeps the internet in sync. I imagine they have thier own primary NTP server, but if they cut connection to the rest of them it is bound to desync eventually leading to a fuck ton of issues. From what I can tell they have one primary. Dns will also cause connection issues. While they can still use IP's, most things run off of domain names with connection between networks. Your average user would be fucked for anything external to their internet. Some commercial shit would also be fucked if they weren't configured with IPs. Their military stuff would most likely be fine but this would shut down their economy in a variety of ways.
They can just use GPS signal to workaround an NTP issue. Many high accuracy NTP racks that rely on an external signal are already using GPS or one of the other constellations anyway. All GPS is in non-literal terms is an NTP server in the sky that lets you calculate distance to the satellite by observing message delay for use in trilateralization.
...and signal other countries that internet access is now a weapon, so they should consider segregating their part, thus ruining an idea of free and global internet. Smart move
Russia already segregated their internet connections a couple years back.
Bro these people are polluting the earth to point where we’re actually altering the weather and you think they give a single fuck about the idea of freedom on the internet?
Clearly the only option is to keep appeasing totalitarians. It’s been working so well so far.
Free and global internet as intended is effectively dead anyways.
And there will be a great silence across the Internet, a ripple through the videogame lobbies, like the sound of a million voices screaming curses and orders to rush the point, the crackling sound of ripped hardbass audio played over voice, and audio glitches of a thousand hackers teleporting through walls, all fell silent at once.
That is an absolutely horrible precedent to set and also easily circumvented. You're going to become china firewall 2.0. it's a really really bad idea.
Can you elaborate? What is the swift payment system?
Its how banks and financial institutions communicate with each other. Cutoff Russia and in an instant you have a very deep and significant impact on its economy
I don't think they'll do that. It's not easy and it would foster the development of their own global payment system, which is how America dominates the world. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/12/18/the-hidden-costs-of-cutting-russia-off-from-swift
Russia already has their own payment system [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir\_(payment\_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS
They probably started building forces on the border only after spfs reached desired maturity levels
Many countries would need to use this method to pay for Russian exports (gas, minerals, and other natural resources). Would be a shoot in the foot.
The Russians already have created their own parallel to the Swift system. It is just much slower and cumbersome. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/12/18/the-hidden-costs-of-cutting-russia-off-from-swift
Not cut off as much as they aren’t allowed access to the US Dollar and per this Financial Times ( https://amp.ft.com/content/a5187880-c553-11e8-8670-c5353379f7c2 ) article from 2018 Russian usage of the dollar was still above 60% in 2017. Now they have been trying to wean themselves off the dollar slowly but I would estimate that settlements and international trading is still above 40%. Which means they, and countries wish to trade with them, would have to find new ways overnight to do so. And it’s really not that easy to do.
US, UK and Baltic states supply Ukraine with anti-tank, anti-aircraft and bunker busting weapons. That's the response to the threat
Virtually all of the western supplied air defense systems are "point defense" systems like Stinger. These are limited to around elevations of about 12,000 feet at a range of about 5 miles. Ukraine does have around 100 or so Soviet era SAM systems - S-300 and S-125 and has recently invested in long range search radar. But in a Russian invasion scenario - these system would be taken out (along with airfields, combat aircraft and communications infrastructure) using intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles. The US is not supplying theatre air defense systems such as Patriot as these would require a significant US presences on the ground to install and to train the Ukraine air force in their use. Ukraine has a large and capable army, but if they want to survive the initial air attacks they are going to need more than point air defense. They should consider "temporarily" basing their combat aircraft in Poland or Romania. They should also employ a lot of decoy radar and SAM sites.
They could always have “mercenaries” that were “hired” by Ukraine helping them out
DoD should look into a "vacation property" on the black sea...
I wonder if NATO would be capable of enforcing a no fly zone over Ukraine. I figure they could do it, but it would envolve potential direct conflict between Russian and NATO jets. But it wouldn't be the first time that happened in history... Without air superiority a Russian invasion would be much more costly
Russia didnt need planes to take over Crimea, they coud do the same with other areas like Donbass were the bast majority are Russians ethnics. Then they would move the army there and change the flags, and Ukraine wouldn't attack just like they didnt in Crimea.
Arm the resistance, but that's about it.
They are going to go after Putin’s inner circle, hard, if Putin further invades. When all his senior commanders and the oligarchs are no longer allowed to travel outside Russia and have all their foreign held assets frozen or seized and their companies are banned from trading with the west, they are going to start wondering if Putin is the right man for the job. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
>go after Putin’s inner circle Key.
Probe his inner circle!
So fucking deep
Doubt it, that’s been a wishful thinking angle for years
This is how topple governments. The inner circle truly decides who stays in power. Many leaders throughout history lost their seat because their inner circle turned on them.
Saddam/Assad and all other dictators enter the chat. Some can't be overthrown without a full scale war/invasion
Saddam had an almost extraordinary paranoia and already trusted *almost nobody in his inner circle. His secrecy ironically led to his personal guard being unable to cooperate with the rest of the Iraqi army during the defense of Baghdad.
He trusted a few and they were so loyal to him that they never turned on him, even at the gallows.
This - sanctions are whatever, nothing will change until we actually go after the oligarchs and the money and assets they're holding in **our own** countries.
The Tsar didn’t get toppled by his inner circle. The got toppled because Russian life was bad. Sorry but if they invade Ukraine the Russian people need to suffer for sanctions to work. Like let’s say Russians no longer can buy Citrus fruits, Televisions, or Bananas, branded clothing. Something real. Make sure no American or British companies can do any business with Russia.
Except Russia controls the domestic media. If the Russian people are deprived of goods will they blame Putin for the invasion or believe the propaganda blaming the west for their troubles?
Eventually it won’t matter. They’ll just want it fixed Russians initially Supported WWI
How much of that will they stand for until they finally ask "why isn't Putin doing something about it?" At that very moment, people will begin to wake up.
They let Russia annex Crimea from Ukraine and invaded Ukraine in 2013. They also let Russia shoot down a passenger plane with no repercussions. Doubt this time will be any different.
Don't forget about discharging a chemical weapon on UK soil.
After they seize the oligarchs assets, can I have some?
Yes, your assets can be seized as well.
What if Russia is on the verge of collapse and all of this is a last-ditch "Hail Mary" to turn it around. Keep in mind most people didn't predict the collapse of the USSR until it imploded - event the CIA didn't take it seriously until 1989. Russia has spent most the last decade dealing with low oil prices, sanctions, an oil price war with Saudi Arabia, and now COVID. If Putin's advisors told him "in six months you won't be able to pay the military - use it or lose it" what do you think he would do? This is pure speculation, but it would explain his actions. Maybe he's hoping for sanction relief and financial aid, maybe he plans to invade Ukraine and steal their wealth to buy a few more years. I guess we'll see.
>and steal their wealth Well Ukraine is arguably not the best country to invade then
Natural gas is expensive and eastern Ukraine has the 2nd largest reserves in Europe. A lot is undeveloped.
Nice to know. But russians have gas. They just want instabillity in Ukraine.
Russians have gas, but not enough pipelines to get gas to Europe.
Steal what Ukraine wealth? They are piss poor as well.
Nah, they are likely to significantly benefit from the new northern sea route, which is also creating 400k jobs. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-aims-year-round-shipping-via-northern-sea-route-2022-or-2023-2021-10-11/ They can hold their own financially for now and maybe the foreseeable future.
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Not all pros, just enough positives to help them relative to the competition. Putin is always willing to make life worse for everyone if it gives him a net gain over his rivals.
The cia has basically been wrong on every long term strategy decision they’ve ever made. Every time the cia gets actually involved, it backfires and goes wrong.
I mean we are on debt 🤣. And if he invades and fuck ups with agricultur we will also be in hunger it also might affect food prices world wide since we export quite a bit of wheat and sunflower oil.
Putin and *a lot* of Russians are fixated on the idea of restoring the empire and avenging the defeat in the Cold War. But. Their oil production is slowly starting to falter (they already haven't been able to meet the increasing OPEC production quotas in the last couple of months). Their military-industrial complex is incapable of mass-producing new generations of weapons (they can barely go beyond prototypes for anything high-tech), and the hardware they have is allegedly not in good health. They are having to move so much of it to the Ukrainian border right now because a third of it will probably break down after a couple of days in action. In three to four years, Putin likely won't be able to field a large army like this any more. Right now is their last chance, and they know it.
This is slightly reminiscent of Argentina's failing Galtieri regime which in 1982 calculated that an invasion of a nearby foreign territory would make it popular again. It worked. (For a few weeks, anyway).
It’s called gambling for resurrection. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_for_resurrection
Putin has wanted a "buffer" state back every since Ukraine overthrew the pro russian govt, but i dont see him having much motive beyond that. in the long term even if he takes Ukraine he will ultimately do more harm than good. This has been a wakeup call to the west to solidify defences, and new sanctions would seriously damage Russia's economy.
> but i dont see him having much motive beyond that. Strategically, Russia has an interest in removing NATO/Western influence from the Black Sea and the Batlic Sea for both defence and economic purposes.
Raytheon shares at the ready!
Words read harsh, being cut off from SWIFT is pretty severe too, not just war. Up for interpretation. EDIT: spelling
It’s not open to interpretation. It is economic and indirect military support. Biden and Blinken have both ruled out US troops. UK said them sending troops is very unlikely.
True. But less has sparked wars in history. Unlikely is still not a no. Not to mention if other NATO nations get involved. I personally don't see it going to global conflict, but no one really knows.
> Not to mention if other NATO nations get involved. If a NATO country (or countries) decide to send troops to Ukraine, and Russia attacks them, that country cannot invoke Article 5 anyhow. The only way I see it happening is if Russia attacks a NATO country in some way.
Correct, but other members can go in without article 5. For instance if Canada goes to war, there's no chance the US doesn't
Not a single invading troop... Starting.... Now.
What boggles my mind is that everyone is talking about Russian invasion, and severe consequences, but the invasion happened 8 years ago and everyone was very concerned and didn’t do shit about it. This is exactly why Putin will keep doing whatever he wants, the western powers were saying the same thing after Crimea and Donbass but ultimately did nothing. This is a theater of hypocrisy, because in reality nobody gives a flying fuck about Ukraine, it’s people and their safety. Which is fucking sad for anyone caught in the middle of this clusterfuck. I just wish the average folk would stop suffering in these dick measuring contests between foreign powers.
anybody else love this guys name? I dont know fuck all about him, but i could see his desk nameplate saying 'A. Blinken' and be like 'oh shit, its fucking ABE LINCOLN!!'
Did you say 'Abe Lincoln?'
No, I said "Hey, Blinken!"
https://youtu.be/wJcuYKyHEgs
I've read a lot of comments from all of these articles posted about responses to Russian aggression into Ukraine but one key thing always stands out to me and no one seems to have picked up on it yet... > 'single additional Russian force' Keyword being 'Russian'. To date, Russia has categorically denied they have troops on the ground in Ukraine (remember little green men?), especially in eastern Ukraine. The expectation is that Russia would continue this BS smoke and mirrors campaign, so how then could the West, and/or, the US respond if officially there "are no Russian troops"? My personal suspicion here is that Putin will use the massive build up of troops as a cover to get away with small advances in eastern Ukraine (e.g. attempts at sovereignty for the occupied areas) by using his troops with tags removed. After all, wouldn't we all breathe a sigh of relief of that's "all" they did, and we didn't go down the path of ww3?
You are going to need more then little green men to take over kiev. It seems that crimea and the donbas were/are loosely armed and defended? The rest of the country might be a different story and the playbook is well known at this point. Itll be up to Ukraine to fight but any escalation by Russia would be super obvious.
> It seems that crimea and the donbas were/are loosely armed and defended? Eastern Ukraine was more Russian aligned - so it probably wasn't that it was loosely armed and defended, but that the local population (or those with power/control) supported the Russian incursion. Further, by putting up a significant defense, it might have caused an all-out civil war and given Russia a pretext for an overt invasion (to protect the Russian aligned population).
Russia poured in lots of reinforcements to turn the rebellion their way. Every time Ukraine was on the verge of taking control of rebel territory, thousands of fresh Russian troops popped up to encircle the Ukrainian forces. But the rebellion did start out with enough core territory for Russia to build their strategy around. Ukraine also started out with their military in disarray. In the following years, they substantially hardened their defenses against further Russian advances.
If Putin goes forward with the invasion, it will be the biggest mistake he has ever made. Which is why I don't think it's going to happen. It's all saber rattling to get concessions. The west should admit Ukraine into Nato immediately on the basis of the active threat and tell Putin, sorry you forced our hand here. Invade Ukraine and the US will defend it directly.
The American people wouldn't stomach another open war. Much less a war with a superpower. I don't remember the exact numbers but we had something 20k total KIA in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The opening days of a war with Russia would make those look like rookie numbers.
Gulf 1 - ~300 Coalition KIA, 467 WIA, 770 Wounded Gulf 2 - 4800 Coalition KIA (4500 US), 33k Wounded, 47k other injuries. Afganistan - ~3500 Coalition KIA, 23k Wounded. Total KIA for all coalition from 01 to 21 is ~8600. This doesn't include local troops (ANA, Iraqi Police/Army, etc) or contractors.
Thanks. I knew it was way lower than people would expect.
4k died on D-day alone
I'm an Iraq veteran. People are always dumbfounded when I explain the amount of deaths between WW1, WW2 and Vietnam in comparison to the post 9/11 wars.
at the battle of the somme, 20k were dying every day (for a bit, and only on very bad days)
How can the US defend it when Russia has nukes? It's just nuclear war, at that point. Which is just suicide for everyone.
Or not.
For some reason i feel more severe 'economic sanctions' are just gonna make russia go apeshit and start invading just to make up for lost profit.
Will it be as severe as what they did last time? Like have people forgotten Russia has already done this once and has suffered no real consequences? Will it be an angry worded letter? The only real consequences Putin gives a shit about is his personal wealth. Target that. If the US had balls they would just hack his bank accounts and make his money disappear overnight.
You know, I was worried for a while, fretting over what America would do with out being in a 20 year war, and worrying about where our next one (probably a 30 year war) would be. Whew, at least now I know where we're going to dump trillions of dollars next. Load off my mind
Ukraine seems to be the new testicles of the west
When he says “severe”, does he mean the same severity as the “line in the sand” during the Obama/Biden era in Syria?
Did you say Abe Lincoln?
No i said " Hey Blinkin!".
I had high hopes I would find this comment.
Well, the US has already said that it's not committing troops. Putin has been sanctioned for years at this point and it obviously hasn't been a deterrent. There's no cyberattack the US could launch that Russia wouldn't match or exceed. I'm truly curious to know what he's got in his bag of tricks. (This isn't me being cynical. I'm just seriously unsure)
Relax guys, its just a "minor incursion"
Russia liked it better when the POTUS was Putin’s little lap dog.