WWIII? Or just a little fuckery?

[dales]

[BoSoxGal]

For the iPhone users: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o7EJMyL6htw

The Bear is in the woods, and has quite possibly lost his mind.

Let’s re-elect his bitch and see where the two of them take this planet together.

[BoSoxGal]

Here’s the original ad that actually aired, I think it’s more effective than the slow motion version just posted:

https://youtu.be/FErYyPMbllI

[Big RR]

More effective? Sure. But still a pretty simplistic way to portray a complicated situation.

[BoSoxGal]

More effective? Sure. But still a pretty simplistic way to portray a complicated situation.

Welcome to the modern GOP; where have you been the last 40 years?

[Big RR]

Very true, presenting complicated situations in a simplistic way was a Reagan trademark; and, for better or worse, he (and his staff) did it far better than anyone before or since. Indeed, when W did it he just sounded like he was too stupid to understand it, and when Trump did he just came across as an ashhole--maybe one too stupid to understand it, maybe deliberately lying, but mostly like an asshole who just didn't give a shit. And, FWIW, Bush Sr just seemed uncomfortable with doing it.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I was pretty sure Putin was bluffing to get some sort of concessions. It made no sense to occupy Ukraine apart from some short term objectives of domestic gain. After all there is nothing like a common enemy (real or imagined) for a demagogue to consolidate power. Ukraine's independence was already guaranteed by the USA, Russia and Britain in return for giving up its status as (then) the third ranked nuclear power. So the US and Britain (then of course part of the EU) could say that they had already guaranteed protection and that therefore NATO membership was not necessary. This would amount to punting and might buy a few years, maybe hopefully to outlast Putin.

Anyway it reminds me of 2003. I was then living in Saudi Arabia and I was certain that GWB would not invade Iraq. It made no sense to do so: clearly Saddam's claims of WMD were nothing more than bombast for regional consumption; and the US had never been good at nation-building in a hostile environment. So despite the saber-rattling I was sure that cooler heads would prevail.

Of course I was wrong then. I was right that it made no sense to invade Iraq and with 4500 dead US troops and 32,000 wounded, the cost to the US was clearly greater than any benefits. But I misunderestimated GWB's ignorance and willingness to believe what he wanted to believe. That to me puts Putin in the same mental bracket as W.

[BoSoxGal]

I think Putin is in a very different mental bracket than W, who was dangerously arrogant and stupid and persuadable.

Many Russia analysts are saying that Putin’s mental health may have declined significantly in recent years, that he is distancing from former advisors and exhibiting greater paranoia as he has isolated himself during the pandemic.

Just the sort of person who should be in control of the world’s second largest military and thermonuclear arms cache, and the largest stockpile of wealth on the planet. Good times ahead!

[Joe Guy]

Good thing we still have a stable genius like Trump on our side leading the GOP just in case we need him to put Putin in his place.

[BoSoxGal]

We fucked Ukraine so hard. So did the UK. We promised them independence and gave security assurances if they relinquished the world’s 3rd largest stockpile of nukes. Certainly if they’d kept possession of them, Putin would not be invading them now.

And we, and the UK, are imposing sanctions. While the people of Ukraine are dying. We are massive assholez.

[Scooter]

Short of turning several Russian cities into craters, I'm not sure what the options are.

[BoSoxGal]

Why can’t we use those nifty drones to take out Putin and all his nasty henchmen?

In all seriousness, I feel compelled here to honor LJ by acknowledging that one of his harshest criticisms of Obama was the largely ineffective ‘reset’ with Russia and wholly inadequate response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

My memory doesn’t go back so far and CSB no longer exists to search the archive, but I wouldn’t doubt if he’d also had words to say about W’s doing fuck all about Georgia, either.

We’ve all along had opportunities to do better with Russia, but it really does seem like our misadventures in the Middle East made us take our eyes off the Bear in the woods almost entirely.

[BoSoxGal]

Isolated, paranoid, deluded. But Vladimir Putin isn't a mad despot... he's evil, writes the Russian President's biographer Professor MARK GALEOTTI

By Professor Mark Galeotti, Putin's Biographer, For The Daily Mail
18:06 EST 24 Feb 2022 , updated 18:17 EST 24 Feb 2022

Vladimir Putin's address announcing the Russian invasion of Ukraine – delivered at 3am UK time yesterday – was the stuff of nightmares.

By turn rambling, terrifying, apocalyptic, he warned: 'Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so to create threats for our country, for our people, should know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history.'

Within hours, bombs and missiles were raining down on Ukraine. Russian troops and tanks have poured over the border.

Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and civilian casualties are mounting.

Putin's justification for invading might have been laughable if not for these horrific consequences. He claimed, absurdly, that the Russian mission was to 'de-Nazify Ukraine' – while behaving exactly like the Nazis who invaded Ukraine in 1941.

He played both victim and bully. One moment he was whining that Nato's 'Eastward expansion' was 'dangerous for Russia'.

The next he was threatening that Russia remains 'one of the most powerful nuclear states' with 'cutting-edge weapons'.

This was Putin unfiltered, his words and demeanour giving us a horrifying glimpse into the dark recesses of the mind behind this seemingly inexplicable step.

Many are asking whether Putin is deranged. Why else would he destabilise the world order by invoking the nuclear threat?

Why else commit Russia, with its economy in freefall, to a bloody, costly war?

To explain Putin's actions as those of a madman would be easy but wrong. As his biographer, I believe he is not mad. Rather, he is acting rationally, according to his own warped, ill-informed world view.

I used to live in Moscow on the road between Putin's country house and the Kremlin. I would see his motorcade speed by, blacked out windows and heavy security, symptomatic of his dark, defensive psyche.

Like most bullies, his aggression stems from insecurity. He grew up poor, in the rubble of post-war Leningrad – now St Petersburg – in a working-class family in a grim block of rat-infested flats.

He joined a street gang and learned it pays to throw the first punch.

While still at school he applied to join the KGB, the biggest gang of all. But just as his KGB career was flourishing, the Berlin Wall fell, and with it the Eastern bloc and then the USSR itself.

Putin was based in the KGB office in Dresden, surrounded by anti-communist crowds. He was scared and furious: he had risen through the ranks only for the system to collapse beneath him.

He, like many of his ilk, blamed the-then Russian president, Mikhail Gorbachev. He saw him as a 'weak' leader who betrayed Russia by giving away her empire.

He has never come to terms with its loss. Thirty years on, he sees himself as the man to right that wrong.

Putin knows – and understands – little of the West, but believes implacably that it is dishonest in all its dealings, and that Westerners have no respect for Russian culture.

He steadfastly believes that the West is out to get Russia. Until recently, this fear was tempered with caution.

Despite his macho posturing, Putin has been calculating in his 20 years at Russia's helm, not impulsive.

When he invaded Georgia in 2008, he needled the Georgians to move first. He waited till Ukraine was in political chaos before seizing Crimea in 2012.

But today Putin is a self-caricature. Wariness has turned to paranoia, cool hostility to unrestrained aggression.

Why? Age is one reason. Putin is 69, and, for all the Botox, the workouts and attempts to hold back time, it is marching on.

He is an old man in a hurry, obsessed with history – although he misunderstands and misinterprets it.

Whenever he is introduced to a historian, he demands to know just one thing: 'What will be posterity's epitaph on me?'

He wants to be remembered as the man who saved Russia and regained Ukraine. He feels this is his last chance.

With a stagnant economy and rampant crime, he knows Russia looks weak. His show of force, assembling troops on Ukraine's borders, was designed to compensate by instilling fear.

If he was wily, he would have kept them there, waiting for Ukraine's economy to disintegrate, without a shot fired.

So why didn't he?

Covid has played a role. Since the pandemic started, Putin has retreated. He hasn't travelled, even within Russia, ferried between his sumptuous palaces and the Kremlin by limousine and helicopter.

He has seen few people outside his inner circle. Anyone granted an audience had first to isolate for two weeks in a state hotel, watched over by armed guards.

Before meeting the President, he or she then had to pass through a special tunnel in a mist of ultraviolet light and disinfectant. Such is Putin's paranoia.

And his world view has become ever smaller and darker. Putin doesn't even have a smartphone. He is disconnected from reality.

It wasn't always like this. Putin used to listen to professionals who would tell him the facts, his generals and economists. But most of these advisers have been side-lined.

Even the astute foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is no longer consulted, simply wheeled out to defend decisions already made.

Now, the President surrounds himself only with hawks and yes-men, mostly ageing former KGB hardmen like himself. Their job is to agree with him.

A former Moscow intelligence officer told me: 'You do not bring bad news to the tsar's table.'

Those who survive are the ones who tell him what he wants to hear.

This was evident at the televised meeting of Russia's Security Council on Monday night when a smirking Putin publicly bullied his senior officials, humiliating them, to appear the strong man.

The truth is that Putin has deluded himself that the invasion of Ukraine will be rapid and successful, and that he can install a puppet government without a long, bitter war of occupation. There is no one left to tell him he is wrong.

He acts like a Tsar: unaccountable, arrogant, heedless of the price that Ukrainians and Russians will pay for his obsession with history. He is not mad, but evil.

I do not believe that any further territorial expansion is likely. Unless he retreats – unlikely, as he could not bear such loss of face – he will become bogged down in Ukraine for years.

Putin's endgame is for the West to recognise Russia as a great power and for the countries of the old Soviet Union, except the Baltic States, to fall in his sphere of influence. For the KGB hardman, it's all about respect.

But his methods don't earn respect – only fear. I suspect Vladimir Putin, ever the street gang bully, doesn't understand the difference.



Mark Galeotti is Honorary Professor at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and author of We Need To Talk About Putin.

[ex-khobar Andy]

He joined a street gang and learned it pays to throw the first punch.

We used to call it getting your retaliation in first. Somewhat amusing in a rugby context but truer than we knew.

[Big RR]

The right sanctions might work, but we need to economically isolate Russia entirely from world finance--no access to banking or capital, feeze the assets, prevent their citizens from having that access as well. I doubt it would play well with the oligarchs who live for their moeny, and they may well get rid of Putin. But I'm not sure we have the resolve to do that, especially when they have oil.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Covid has played a role. Since the pandemic started, Putin has retreated. He hasn't travelled, even within Russia, ferried between his sumptuous palaces and the Kremlin by limousine and helicopter.

I haven't seen anything about this but Covid is definitely a player in all this. There is no doubt that WW1 helped the spread of the (mis-named) Spanish 'flu; and it seems to me that this Ukraine misadventure will make Covid worse. Ukraine has a pretty low vaccination rate 70 doses per 100 people (cf UK at 224 and USA at 166) and Russia isn't much better at 114 (all per Johns Hopkins data). The crowding and unsanitary conditions of war will not help.

[ex-khobar Andy]

And Putin's installed puppet government should check out what happened to the Vichy guys. Laval went to a firing squad and Petain was condemned to death but it was commuted on the grounds of his service to France in WW1.

[BoSoxGal]

Should Russia be expelled from the United Nations?

[ex-khobar Andy]

I'm not sure it's possible but even if it were I think it's a bad idea.

[TPFKA@W]

Well an aspect of interest are the Russians who are physically, and great risk to themselves, protesting in the streets. They woke up realizing they have been lied to. This may bring Putin down. I would be willing to travel to spit on his body if he is taken out.