WWIII? Or just a little fuckery?

[Scooter]

[BoSoxGal]

Credit to our friend Daisy for this one:

[Scooter]

[ex-khobar Andy]

Piece in the Guardian well worth a couple of minutes of your time. By a Russian, married to a Ukrainian, safely both in Dubai. He thinks - I hope he's right - that Putin is digging his own grave in Ukraine. Among his comments about Putin's pre-invasion speech:

We were disgusted by the theatrical performance of a president we had never chosen. We were even more disgusted by the thought that most people in Russia would believe him.

Sounds very familiar.

[BoSoxGal]

I saw this piece in the Guardian and thought it was a view that our LJ might have espoused, and thus I’m sharing it here. Also there is much in the argument that makes sense to me.

Whatever would have been best to do, it does feel more and more that we let our Middle East misadventures take our eye off the potential threat from Russia over the last 20 years.

Thinking through the Ukraine crisis – the causes

Ted Galen Carpenter

Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between Nato and Moscow even more dangerous. The west’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but Nato’s arrogant, tone‐​deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐​century deserves a large share as well. Analysts committed to a US foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐​century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.

“It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand Nato eastward without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself.” I wrote those words in 1994, in my book Beyond Nato: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars, at a time when expansion proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign policy seminars in New York and Washington. I added that expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of Russia”.

What was not publicly known at the time was that Bill Clinton’s administration had already made the fateful decision the previous year to push for including some former Warsaw Pact countries in Nato. The administration would soon propose inviting Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to become members, and the US Senate approved adding those countries to the North Atlantic Treaty in 1998. It would be the first of several waves of membership expansion.

Even that first stage provoked Russian opposition and anger. In her memoir, Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state, concedes that “[Russian president Boris] Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargement, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerability and moving Europe’s dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated.”

Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state, similarly described the Russian attitude. “Many Russians see Nato as a vestige of the cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the west should not do the same.” It was an excellent question, and neither the Clinton administration nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer.

George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the cold war, perceptively warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of Nato’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”

He was right, but US and Nato leaders proceeded with new rounds of expansion, including the provocative step of adding the three Baltic republics. Those countries not only had been part of the Soviet Union, but they had also been part of Russia’s empire during the Czarist era. That wave of expansion now had Nato perched on the border of the Russian Federation.

Moscow’s patience with Nato’s ever more intrusive behavior was wearing thin. The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when Putin addressed the annual Munich security conference. “Nato has put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. Nato expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

In his memoir, Duty, Robert M Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administrations of both George W Bush and Barack Obama, stated his belief that “the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George HW] Bush left office in 1993”. Among other missteps, “US agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.” In an implicit rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into Nato was truly overreaching”. That move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests”.

The following year, the Kremlin demonstrated that its discontent with Nato’s continuing incursions into Russia’s security zone had moved beyond verbal objections. Moscow exploited a foolish provocation by Georgia’s pro‐​western government to launch a military offensive that brought Russian troops to the outskirts of the capital. Thereafter, Russia permanently detached two secessionist‐​minded Georgian regions and put them under effective Russian control.

Western (especially US) leaders continued to blow through red warning light after a red warning light, however. The Obama administration’s shockingly arrogant meddling in Ukraine’s internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro‐​Russia president was the single most brazen provocation, and it caused tensions to spike. Moscow immediately responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war was underway with a vengeance.

Could the Ukraine crisis have been avoided?

Events during the past few months constituted the last chance to avoid a hot war in eastern Europe. Putin demanded that Nato provide guarantees on several security issues. Specifically, the Kremlin wanted binding assurances that the alliance would reduce the scope of its growing military presence in eastern Europe and would never offer membership to Ukraine. He backed up those demands with a massive military buildup on Ukraine’s borders.

The Biden administration’s response to Russia’s quest for meaningful western concessions and security guarantees was tepid and evasive. Putin then clearly decided to escalate matters. Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a Nato political and military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.

The Ukraine tragedy

History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that Nato expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the US foreign policy establishment’s myopia and arrogance.

Ted Galen Carpenter is senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Carpenter served as Cato’s director of foreign policy studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice-president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to 2011

This piece originally appeared in 19fortyfive

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ia-ukraine

[Joe Guy]

I'm sure these brave truckers are now planning to go over to Ukraine to block a Russian convoy.

[Bicycle Bill]

UKRAINIAN AUTHORITIES SAY CITIZENS
DON'T NEED TO DECLARE CAPTURED RUSSIAN TANKS,
OTHER MILITARY EQUIPMENT FOR TAX PURPOSES

Ukrainian authorities have reassured citizens that they don't need to declare captured Russian tanks or any equipment they pick up as personal income.

"Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it?  Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland!" read a statement from the Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) seen by Interfax Ukraine.

"There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment because the cost of this does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100)," the agency explained.  The sum equates to about $8,300.

On the NACP's website, a document dated Monday said that the seizure of tanks or equipment would instead be considered a "manifestation of the unity and cohesion of the Ukrainian people in the fight against invaders" and will not be taxable.  

"Thanks to the courage and victory of the defenders of the Ukrainian state, hostile military equipment, weapons, and other armor arrive as scrap.  It is impossible to evaluate such objects in accordance with the Law of Ukraine," read the NACP's guidelines.

.....https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-tax-office-captured-russian-tanks-not-personal-taxable-income-2022-3

-"BB"-

[ex-khobar Andy]

I don't disagree with much of the Graun piece BSG posted. It's a realistic assessment of the situation since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it's probably predictable that the old KGB operative sees things that way.

It's a bit victim-blaming, of course. The liberal father-of-a-daughter in me recognizes the dilemma. While there is no doubt that male on female sexual assault is 100% due to the man's actions and should be punished as such, there are times when "If you are going downtown you should probably think again about wearing that" is, although illiberal, a prudent and understandable reaction.

Ducks head to avoid brickbats.

[BoSoxGal]

War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. Now, it must bring him down

Jonathan Littell

‘Putin might be a tactical genius, but he is incapable of thinking strategically.’
Twenty-two years ago, a vicious war brought Vladimir Putin to power. Ever since, war has remained one of his main tools, which he has used without flinching throughout his reign. Vladimir Putin exists thanks to war, has thrived through war. Let us now hope that a war will finally bring him down.

In August 1999, a then-unknown Vladimir Putin was named prime minister when his predecessor refused to condone a full reinvasion of Chechnya. Putin, however, was ready, and in return for their unconditional support he granted the military a free rein, allowing them to avenge their humiliating 1996 defeat in blood and fire. On the night of 31 December, an ageing and broken Boris Yeltsin stepped down, handing the presidency like a gift to the newcomer. In March 2000, after famously promising to “grease the terrorists even in the outhouse”, Putin was triumphally elected president. With the exception of his four years as prime minister (2008-2012), he has ruled Russia ever since.

I returned to Chechnya as an aid worker when the second war began. In February 2000, I had dinner with Sergey Kovalev, the great Russian human rights defender, and I asked him the question on everyone’s lips: who was this new unknown president? Who was Putin? I still remember Kovalev’s answer: “You want to know who Vladimir Putin is, young man? Vladimir Putin is a lieutenant colonel of the KGB. And do you know what a lieutenant colonel of the KGB is? Absolutely nothing.” What Kovalev meant was that a man who had never even made full colonel was simply a small-minded operative, incapable of thinking ahead more than a move or two. And while Putin, over his 22 years in power, has grown immensely in stature and experience, I still believe the late Kovalev was fundamentally right.

Putin proved brilliant at exploiting the weakness and divisions of the west
Tactically, however, Putin soon proved brilliant, especially at exploiting the weakness and divisions of the west. It took him years to crush the Chechens and install a puppet regime there, but he succeeded. In 2008, four months after Nato promised a path to accession for Ukraine and Georgia, he gathered his armies for “maneuvers” at the Georgian border and invaded the country in five days, recognizing the independence of two breakaway “republics”. The western democracies mumbled protests, and did practically nothing.

In 2014, when the Ukrainian people, after a bloody revolution, overthrew their pro-Russian president, who had turned his back on Europe fully to align himself with Moscow, Putin swiftly invaded and annexed Crimea, the first overt landgrab in Europe since the second world war. When our leaders, shocked and bewildered, responded with sanctions, he upped the ante and provoked uprisings in Donbas, a Russian-speaking area of Ukraine, using his forces covertly to crush a weak Ukrainian army and carve out two new breakaway “republics”, where a low-level war has simmered ever since.

Thus he began what the French would call his fuite en avant, his “flight forward”. At every step, the west condemned and attempted to punish him, with mild and ineffective measures, in the vain hope of discouraging him. And at every step, he doubled down, and went further.

Growing up in postwar Leningrad clearly taught him a lesson: if you are the smaller boy, hit first, hit hard and keep hitting
Putin is a small man, physically, and growing up in postwar Leningrad must have been tough for him. It clearly taught him a lesson: if you are the smaller boy, hit first, hit hard and keep hitting. And the bigger boys will learn to fear you, and will back off. It is a lesson he has taken to heart. The US’s military budget for 2021 was about $750bn, Europe’s combined budget $200bn, and Russia’s about $65bn. Yet he still scares us a lot more than we scare him. It’s the advantage of fighting like a cornered rat, rather than like a pudgy boy gone soft on a diet of Coca-Cola, Instagram and 80 years of peace in Europe.

Putin must have rejoiced when the west, eager to freeze the active conflict in Donbas, quietly allowed Crimea off the discussion table, effectively conceding the illegal annexation to Russia. He saw that while sanctions hurt, they didn’t bite deep, and would allow him to continue building his military and extending his power. He saw that Germany, the greatest economic power in Europe, was unwilling to wean itself off his gas and his markets. He saw that he could buy European politicians, including former German and French prime ministers, and install them on the boards of his state-controlled companies. He saw that even the countries that nominally opposed his moves still kept repeating the mantras of “diplomacy”, “reset”, “the need to normalize relations”. He saw that each time he pushed, the west would roll over and then come fawning, hoping for an ever-elusive “deal”: Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump – the list is long.

Each time he pushed, the west would roll over and then come fawning, hoping for an ever-elusive ‘deal’
Putin began murdering his opponents, at home and abroad. When it happened, we squeaked, but it never went further. When Obama, in 2013, callously ignored his own “red line” in Syria, refusing to intervene after Bashar al-Assad’s poison gassing of a civilian neighborhood in Damascus, Putin paid attention. In 2015, he sent his own forces into Syria, developing his naval base in Tartus and gaining a new air base in Khmeimin. Over the next seven years, he used Syria as a testing ground for his military, granting invaluable field experience to his officer corps and honing their tactics, coordination and equipment, all the while bombing and slaughtering thousands of Syrians, and helping Assad to regain control of large swaths of the country.

In January 2018, he began confronting western powers directly in the Central African Republic, sending his Wagner mercenaries there. The same process is now under way in Mali, where the military junta, with Russian support, has just forced the French anti-Isis mission out of the country. Russia is also actively involved in Libya, foiling western attempts to bring peace to the country, and deploying forces along the southern flank of the Mediterranean, in a position to directly threaten European interests. Every time, we protested, flailed, and did exactly nothing. And every time, he took good note.

Ukraine represents the moment when he finally decided to put his cards on the table. He clearly believes he is strong enough to openly defy the west by launching the first land war in Europe since 1945. And he believes it because everything we have done, or rather failed to do over the last 22 years, has taught him that we are weak.

Putin might be a tactical genius, but he is incapable of thinking strategically. Our leaders have refused to truly understand him, but he has also had no interest in understanding us. Completely isolated for the past two years because of Covid, he seems to have become increasingly paranoid and imbued with his own pan-Slavic, neo-imperialist and Orthodox ideology, originally a wholly artificial creation designed to give a thin veneer of legitimacy to his corrupt regime.

He seems to have truly swallowed his own propaganda when it comes to the Ukrainians. Did he believe they would welcome their Russian “liberators”? That they would just surrender? If he did, he was very wrong. The Ukrainians are fighting, and though outnumbered and outgunned, they are fighting hard. Schoolteachers, office clerks, housewives, artists, students, DJs and drag queens are taking up guns and going out to shoot Russian soldiers, many of whom are mere children who have no idea what they are doing there. Ukraine is not giving up an inch of ground, and it seems Putin will not be able to take their cities without leveling them, as he once leveled Grozny and Aleppo. And do not think that just because Kyiv is a “European” city, Putin will shrink from leveling it. Bombing has already started.

Do not think that just because Kyiv is a ‘European’ city, Putin will shrink from leveling it
After the initial shock, the western democracies – finally! – seem to have understood the existential threat that Putin poses to the postwar world order, to Europe, and to our “way of life” which he so despises. Crushing sanctions are being put into place, no matter what the economic cost to us. Arms are pouring into Ukraine. Germany seems to have realized overnight that it can no longer continue to depend on the kindness of others for its security, and that it needs an army of its own, a real and functional one. Russia is being massively isolated on the international level, and its economy and capacities will be severely diminished.

But this is not enough. As long as Putin remains in power, he will continue to double down, to push further, and to do as much harm as he can. Because he hates the west, and because his power is entirely based on violence: not just the threat, but the systematic use of it. It is the only way he knows how to behave. Can we really believe his nuclear threat is just a bluff? Can we afford to? As long as he continues to rule Russia, no one will be safe. No one.

The only way out of this crisis is to make Putin’s failure in Ukraine so disastrous for Russia and its genuine interests that his own elite will have no choice but to remove him. And for this much more could be done. Our governments seemed focused on punishing the Russian “oligarchs”, but they must understand that Putin has nothing but contempt for them, and doesn’t care a fig for their opinions or their assets; he considers them mere cash cows, there to be milked for his needs.

The western sanctions need to target the people who actually enable Putin’s actions: his entire senior security and administrative apparatus. Not just the few dozen people already targeted, but the thousands of second-tier officials in the presidential administration, the military and the security services. These people are not billionaires, but all are multimillionaires, with much to lose. Ruin the lives of these several thousand people, and let them judge who is to blame. Seize the mansions in England and Spain, forbid the vacations in Courchevel and Sardinia, throw their children unceremoniously out of Harvard and Oxford, and let them stay in Russia, with no way out and no imported goods to spend their stolen money on. Make the cost a real one, a personal one, and let them see if it is worth the price to maintain a deranged, power-hungry tsar on his throne. Let them decide if they want to follow him into the abyss.

Over the past 22 years Russia has fallen prey to a demented, corrupt and totalitarian regime, one we have in many ways facilitated. But it is a great country, one I have loved deeply, and one that has produced wonderful, humane, just men and women. It deserves better than this clique of thieves looting its wealth under the cover of illusory imperial fantasies, and ravaging its neighbors to maintain their grip on total power. Russia deserves freedom, the same freedom Ukraine has painfully obtained over the past three decades. A ceasefire in Ukraine is a vital, urgent first step, and a full Russian withdrawal a second one. But after that, Putin must go.

Jonathan Littell is a writer and filmmaker

[TPFKA@W]

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout ... ource=link

We need to do something physical NOW.

[BoSoxGal]

I also feel we need to actively engage. If Putin is crazy enough to launch nukes, he will launch them over the sanctions or Finland entering NATO or whatever reason. If he is crazy enough to murder his own children and grandchildren, nothing will save us from his wrath.

I am sick to my stomach watching him level Ukraine and murder children and old people. It’s shameful we have done nothing for more than 20 years and beyond shameful if we do nothing more now.

The United States and the United Kingdom PROMISED Ukraine independence and security assurances in 1994, to get them to give up their nukes. We are the worst kind of liars.

[BoSoxGal]

There is a fire at the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine, one of the largest in all of Europe. The local fire department cannot access the plant because the Russians are presently shelling all around it. Military analysts on CNN have said it would be 10x worse than Chernobyl if the reactor melts down.

Welcome to total insanity, friends. Brought to you by one seriously fucked up human being whose mother didn’t love him enough. Oh joy.

ENERHODAR, Ukraine — Russian troops are shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power station in Ukraine.

“We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire,” Andriy Tuz, spokesperson for the plant in Enerhodar, said in a video posted on Telegram. “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe.”

The plant accounts for about one quarter of Ukraine’s power generation.

Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were falling directly on the Zaporizhzhia plant and had set fire to one of the facility’s six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.

[BoSoxGal]

https://youtu.be/VUBY6bMZn8w


This video has aged well. I wonder if Bill Perry is getting any sleep tonight? Not sure if I will.

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Joe Guy]

I bet they're not lubricated.

[BoSoxGal]

If anyone wants a little history lesson, and to understand one of the very good reasons why the Ukrainian people will fight to the death to resist subjugation to Russia, watch this moving documentary about the Holodomor genocide of Ukrainians under Stalin.

https://youtu.be/1lDp9AMACys





Just realized I already posted this link. Oh well, it’s worth posting twice because it really should be seen to understand the Ukrainian people.

[liberty]

IF Putin doesn't pay one hell of a price for Ukraine, there's going to be real trouble in the future, especially as he gets older and starts becoming more concerned about his legacy. We really could hurt Russia by ramping up our domestic oil and gas production. And targeting the Russian oil and gas exports business. We need to destroy the Russian oil export business; even if we have to sell the oil and gas at a loss, it is either World War III or slavery if we don't. I still say that if I had to choose a master, I would select Russians over the Chinese because my children and grandchildren look a lot more like the Russians than they do to Chinese it would be easier to hide in the herd.

[BoSoxGal]

I still say that if I had to choose a master, I would select Russians over the Chinese because my children and grandchildren look a lot more like the Russians than they do to Chinese it would be easier to hide in the herd.

You don’t have to choose a master, you could fight to the death as many Ukrainians are doing right now. I know that’s where I’d be - I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

Nice to know that you’re Vichy, liberty. And of course I don’t mean sparkling water.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Meanwhile in South Africa, the German embassy takes on the Russian embassy

https://twitter.com/GermanEmbassySA/sta ... g-20220305

[Joe Guy]

We're currently buying oil from Russia.

It's probably one-a them thar liberal ideas that make no kinda sense!