If you want to demilitarize a country you can do it by treaty, or you can do it by fact. Germany was demilitarized after WWI, but it retained the ability to build a large military and eventually did so.
The Russian view is that Ukraine needs to be demilitarized, de-Nazified and made neutral, it will otherwise remain a threat to them.
The demilitarization strategy is fairly simple: kill or disable everyone who can and will fight. This has been a grinding war, but at almost every stage Russia has had air, drone and artillery supremacy. It has taken great care to disperse attacking troops and to keep its own casualties down.
Casualty ratios are a matter of great dispute, but I cannot imagine that the side with air, drone and artillery superiority is taking the most casualties. I would guess the exchange rate is between 3:1 and 6:1. Once again, we won’t know until some years after the war.
Ukraine’s population is crashing. Pre war it was 42 million, as of 2023 it was probably 28 million and there’s no way it is not even lower now.
So to a large extent Russian tactics support the goal of demilitarization. Even if Russia could do “big arrow”, why do them before the Ukrainian military is ground to dust and Ukraine is demographically exhausted? Win the war, but fail to end Ukraine’s ability and willingness to fight and there’s just going to be another war.
Which is why anything but a neutral Ukraine, genuinely neutral, or a Russian satrapy is also unacceptable. Ukraine wasn’t and isn’t part of NATO but that didn’t keep NATO from using it as a cat’s paw against Russia. If Russia wants a defanged, safe Ukraine on its border, it’s no longer just about staying out of NATO, true Austrian cold war style neutrality will be required.
And the since the neo-Nazis who are influential in the military and government, despite their small numbers, will never not be hostile to Russia, Ukraine has to be be de-Nazified. Out of the military, out of power, and either dead or in prison for a very long time.
Demographics isn’t the only thing which creates capability to fight, of course. The more of Ukraine that Russia takes, the weaker Ukraine will be in the future. What is particularly important is to take the entire coast and landlock the Ukrainian hump, but farther West Russia takes land, the less of a threat Ukraine is to the Russian heartlands.
Smaller population, worse geography, no Nazis anywhere near power, no allies to feed it weapons and help it fortify, and genuinely neutral: these are Russia’s post war goals for Ukraine.
These are maximal goals, and they require a completely defeated Ukraine, likely one that signs an uncoditional surrender. If they can be accomplished with a negotiated surrender, fine, but if Russia is wise it will fight till it gets the terms necessary to defang Ukraine and make it useless as a Western catspaw.
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Tallifer
This all sounds like a hundred good reasons for the West to fight Russia until it surrenders its imperial fantasies.
someofparts
I hope they do take the whole coastline. Hardly seems safe unless they do.
ilpalazzo
The saddest thing is Ukraine was probably one of Soviet Union’s richest republics post war with immense industrial and civil infrastructure, one of the best places to live on the planet and lost it.
bruce wilder
Things would have to evolve considerably from where we are, but an interim period where rump Ukraine is a collapsed state could tempt neighbors other than Russia to intervene and possibly slice off pieces. Hungary would like to protect ethnic Hungarians. Moldova would like to reach the sea.
Odessa, with its large Russian-speaking minority, would have to be conquered or annexed to make rump Ukraine land-locked. An alternative strategy might be to hold it hostage. Since Odessa is tied into the transportation network of western Ukraine heavily, becoming a hostage or gateway could become a point of continuing leverage.
Türkiye, which grinds Ukrainian and Russian wheat to flour and controls naval access to the Black Sea will have an opinion that Russia will have to respect.
The Ukraine War was a gamble, which Russia may well lose, yet. The multipolar world in which Powers, great and small negotiate and accommodate, is a world where Russia, too, will have to negotiate with and accommodate its neighbors. The war has confirmed several lesser Powers in hostility to Russia and that is a problem for Russia.
Revelo
Both Russia and USA are incentivized to continue war at a low boil for several more years.
Russia is incentivized for reasons you listed, plus others. Attrit (=liquidate, exterminate) fanatics along existing line of contact. Destroy Ukraine’s industrial potential, so that all weapons and other supplies must be imported and transported at great expense to distant line of contact, thus facilitating attrition process. Break will of older or poorly educated Ukrainians, who are forced stay in Ukraine, by several more years of suffering without electricity. Push young and well educated EU oriented Ukrainians, with their deluded fantasies of €2000+/month salaries in Ukraine in the near future due to EU membership that will never happen, to migrate to and permanently settle in EU. Wait for EU to weaken economically and tire of spending money supporting Ukraine. Wait for USA to get tangled up in a war with Iran or China or both, this unable to spare resources on Ukraine.
USA is incentivized because long war will keep both Russia and EUoccupied and weak, so that neither can compete with USA for exploitation of Africa and South America. USA can then focus on competing strictly with China. War also helps USA in its efforts to poach German industries which depend on cheap energy, and to poach top EU, Ukrainian and Russian engineers/scientists.
Final result will likely be partition of Ukraine that people have been talking about since 1991, which would have avoided this war.
Western Ukraine (everything west of Zhytomyr/Vinnytsia oblasts, or roughly west of line drawn due south fromMinsk) becomes new state called Galicia, which is joins EU as Polish controlled puppet regime (though one small slice of west Ukraine will likely go to Slovakia/Hungary, another slice to Moldova/Romania). Note that Poland has unsettled business with west Ukraine because of 1943 Volyn massacre, when Ukrainians killed 60000-120000 ethnic polish women and children with clubs and farm implements and threw the bodies into a lake to rot, where the skeletons remain to this day because Ukraine refuses to allow Poland to recover them. So don’t expect this Polish puppet regime to show much patience for Ukrainian fanaticism.
Rest of Ukraine not currently claimed by Russia will be a puppet regime of Russia. This piece can never be allowed into EU because its huge agricultural power would destroy all EU competitors. This piece includes half of former industrial Ukraine (other half is in Donbas, which Russia currently claims), but industry will mostly be destroyed by time war ends. Much of former population will be scattered to Western Ukraine, Kyiv or Odessa, EU, or Russia. Most of those who remain outside Kyiv and Odessa will be old, uneducated and/or disabled. Russia will likely not rebuild rump Ukraine, so viable parts will be Kyiv and Odessa plus whatever towns are necessary for supporting agriculture. Formerly great industrial cities of Zaporozhia, Krivvy Rog, Dniper, Kharkiv, Krememchuk, etc will be left to collapse into ruins. Ukraine will be more desperately poor in nominal GDP than ever, but not so bad in real terms. In particular, there will be plenty of cheap land for those interested in agriculture.
Rump Ukraine will likely repudiate its debts and confiscate property owned by EU/USA corporations, which is another reason to prolong war, because realization of these losses will cause stock market disturbances. Best kick this can down the road.
EU and USA also don’t want to unfreeze $300 billion of frozen Russian assets, because Russia would then spend that money buying things in EU and USA to reduce Russian inflation while causing EU/USA inflation. Another reason to prolong war and kick this can down the road.
USA also wants to use Ukraine continue testing new weapons, so as be better prepared for Iran and China. Another reason to continue war.
Trump has made big unrealistic promises to end in 24 hours. Easiest way to unwalk those promises is demand full audit of Ukrainian spending, then get furious when Zelensky/Ermak refuse to cooperate, blame Biden for corruption, walk away in disgust. Quick end of war would require partition described above, which would force acknowledgement of Russian victory and NATO defeat. Much better for Trump is slow-boil kick-the-can-down-the-road option.
Nate Wilcox
Typo: “Ukraine’s population is crashing. Pre war it was 42 million, as of 2023 it was probably 28 million and there’s no way it is even lower now.” should be “Ukraine’s population is crashing. Pre war it was 42 million, as of 2023 it was probably 28 million and there’s no way it is *NOT* even lower now.”
Feral Finster
“Tallifer
This all sounds like a hundred good reasons for the West to fight Russia until it surrenders its imperial fantasies.”
Go sign up, then, tough guy. Ukraine is desperate for warm live bodies of any kind.
Anyway, it remains to be seen whether the West will charge into WWIII. Starmer certainly is anticipating this, presumably to show his American Master once and for all who is the most loyalest little bitch.
Soredemos
@Tallifer
The worldview of NATOids is fascinating. In their world it’s reasonable for DC to have subservient client states ten thousand miles across oceans right up to the borders of another country, but it’s ‘imperialism’ for that country to not want an obviously hostile proxy state on its borders, particularly one already engaged in ethnic cleansing and which will inevitably play host to nukes with flight times to the capital measured in handfuls of minutes.
I can only imagine you would be fine with China setting up military shop in Mexico. Would only be fair.
Mark Level
The psychos who run the Biden admin, Sullivan, Blinky et al are trying very hard to gin up a full WW III scenario before Trump takes office. The fact that Trump is NOT opposing the escalation publicly now shows he is too cowardly to actually change policy (& this might be entirely rational, who knows what kind of threats they have made to him after 2 “failed” assassination attempts, the first in which the dupe teenager got a shot off with the compliance of the SS that was within inches of DJT’s cranium). So I think Revelo’s take is the most credible so far in this thread.
The Western MIC class is insane, high on their own Propaganda supply, & cannot let the fantasy of defeating & “breaking up” Russia die, no matter how much Ukraine suffers & weakens. But here’s the rub– supposing Trump can be bullied into doing as he’s told (otherwise he has a sudden “accident”, Yasser Arafat was poisoned with slow-acting polonium by Mossad, these things happen), the US military is definitively NOT capable of running 2, much less 3, conflicts near World War levels at the same time, not with “all the King’s Horses & all the King’s Men” that slavish EUrope can provide. IF the next admin is forced into 100% support for the Banderites, how can the OTHER mideast Zionist entity receive enough support to exterminate the final Palestinians, without the rest of the region eventually blockading & shutting it down? And the Big Kahuna, China (or Ghina) will be untouchable for decades . . .
Chris Hedges, among others, has noted that Empires usually fall via over-extension, & this is clearly where things are at now. Even much of the US public (dumb & complacent as it is) is “war weary”, I recently saw a poll saying 58% are tired of all the wars, only 32% (chicken hawks like Tallifer) on board . . .Now, that matters not a whit to the Leadership Class who believe they can create their own Rovian reality.
But circumstances & the RoW (rest of the world) aren’t cooperating . . . The U$ will keep digging the hole deeper as the country falls further into poverty & deaths of despair. Perhaps they can keep the Ukraine Death Train rollin’ on for 3 more years or so. I’d be surprised if it lasts that long, but again, the US is like the monkey with its paw caught in the glass jar trying to get that treat out. Voltaire’s people who believe in absurdities will commit atrocities applies, but the timing seems to be getting smaller and smaller.
I agree with a main point of the article– when we see a Russian Big Arrow toward Odessa, the fat lady will soon sing. The collapse model is already approaching the US Civil War’s events when Lee realized it was over & surrendered to Grant. Collapse is gradual, then sudden, as the common wisdom goes.
mago
No one knows where it’s going or how it will resolve, if ever.
Kick the hornet’s nest, get stung.
Down in Tallifer Square dead bodies strung from lampposts jostle in the wind.
Lisa Mullin
And Russia will round up all the LGBT people in Ukraine..probably feminists too.
By any definition Russia is: a fascist oligarchy, women hating to the core, homophobic, racist as all fuck.
A country where it’s ..legal.. for men to bash women because that’s ‘traditional family values’. A MAGA paradise in fact.
GrimJim
I’ve seen no reason yet to make any alterations in the predictions I put forth in my map. Everything is proceeding as expected. No opportunities for a quick, easy victory have presented themselves, so Russia will continue to grind away at the population of Ukraine for as long as the Ukrainians want to throw their seed corn into the woodchipper.
Ask the Germans how well that worked for them after WWII.
I expect Rump Ukraine (TRump’s Ukraine?) won’t want Turkish guestworkers, they’ll more likely hire Poles, who can no longer send their extra laborers to the UK.
rkka
Lisa, by the time I went to Russia in the late ‘90s to adopt my now late ‘20s daughter, I had seen for myself the worst poverty & misery sub-Saharan Africa & India had to offer. What I saw in Russia was a people dying in their feet, Russian LGBT & feminists very much included.
Russians are now have much longer, better lives than they did while the “Seven Bankers,” very much US protégés & the only actual beneficiaries of “Reform,” were running the place into the ground by their unlimited asset-stripping & offshoring.
Putin curbed that, to the great benefit of Russians, their LGBT & feminists included.
Daniil Adamov
What I find most infuriating about this situation is that Ukraine never posed a credible threat to “Russian heartlands”. The post-2014 regime was a credible threat to its people only. For that matter, those of them who supported it did so out of a delusional belief that they will be accepted by the West as equals. There was no real chance of that happening either, from the start. All of this was entirely avoidable with the right choices at specific points, but it appears to me that those in power, in Moscow, Kiev and Western capitals, have done their damndest to have things play out this way instead. After all, none of them will pay for it, so may as well play.
When the war in the Donbas was just starting, a local Russian Orthodox Church priest was asked by a journalist (forget which country) what he thought about it all. He pointed to a nearby tree and said that the President of Russia should hang on one branch and the then-President of Ukraine on the other. I would add a few more distinguished statesmen from other nations and also all subsequent Ukrainian presidents, but otherwise, that is the view I have found most sympathetic.
That aside, yeah, I think we’ll win and Putin will be praised through the ages.
Anonymous
Lisa,
Mind your own freaking business and clean the messes at home. Americans have zero credibility to dictate and denounce any other country. 500 years of land stealing and broken treaties and kidnapping /enslavement of millions followed by over a century of imperialism abroad.
Nothing the US *accused* other countries of doing to their populations compares to the violence and inequity perpetrated by the US, at home and abroad.
Anonymous
Bruce,
Who are these “lesser powers” that are supposed to be hostile to Russia? Outside of “the Garden” and perhaps a few minor mischief makers in Moldova or Azerbaijan, I really can’t think of any. Even Western allied stooges with MBZ, Erdogan, and al Sisi tend to work very closely with Russia on core interest matters.
Richard Holsworth
From a Twitter (X) exchange I just had:
“German intelligence knows about Russia’s plans to take over Europe, I think ours does too”
– former US General Jack Keane
Listen to this general. If you didn’t take his word at face value, how would you test if he’s being honest about Russia going into Europe as soon as Russia is done with the war in Ukraine. I don’t mean technical questions, but common sense questions. What would you ask?
At first, I discounted the proposition that Russia would expand beyond Ukraine. But maybe the fall of Ukraine will be a signal that the US isn’t going to stop Russia — will Poland be next? Finland seems like a possible flashpoint, but they too are right next to Russia and not strategically important to the US. So at what point does Russia Feel free to expand? I don’t know. will nuclear war be the outcome again – I don’t know. What do you think?
Why? What would be the ‘interest’ in pushing into those countries?
In other words, what do those countries offer that Russia doesn’t have. What would be the reason to get into a war with NATO (all of Europe) that wouldn’t stop Russia. What is so important?
In that same vane, what’s so important about Ukraine that makes the US and Europe want to make Ukraine a NATO and EU country that it is willing to push that close to a nuclear war?
What do those countries offer? 🤔 Not natural resources as far as I know. Maybe a buffer, as far as reclaiming the former Soviet satellites. Now if we consider Russia’s alliance with China, which both may see as existential, a conquered Europe shifts the balance of power against the US and its remaining allies: Japan and South Korea?
I think bring Ukraine into NATO may represent a symbolic as much as a strategic move. The goal is, to once and for all, to neutralize Russia and its fierce and proud people.
Bottom line. Yeah, barring the real possibility of thermonuclear annihilation, Russia could probably take Europe imho.
Deep dive in lieu of sleep:
The Russian army is 15 percent larger today than when it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Russia’s armed forces now number 1.3 million people. In Ukraine, it has 470,000 battle-tested troops—more than the entire active U.S. army.
and in this corner:
So, would Trump mobilize the U.S. army? And could they quickly become effective in this theater of war?
Russia could attack Europe, while China could attack Taiwan, North Korea, or South Korea. Similarly, Iran could launch attacks in the Middle East. Under such a scenario, U.S. military resources would be seriously stretched under the current “one major war” standard for the conventional force.
Otherwise:
A recent report from the European Council on Foreign Relations warns “that many European armies have become ‘bonsai armies’ with extremely limited force volumes that only offer samples of major capabilities rather than large and robust combat-ready forces.”
A rundown of the European “coalition of the willing”-
”Unfortunately, the Bundeswehr (the German armed forces) is in moribund condition. The Deutsche Heer (German army) is not ready for a real fight—certainly not against a more than two hundred thousand-strong invading army.
In a real war against a near-peer adversary, the French could reliably field up to two combined arms battalions (GTIA) within a week, followed by a full heavy brigade within a month. However, Paris would have difficulty retrieving combat equipment and vehicles from the myriad sites where French troops have been deployed for the last decade.
While the British army has been repeatedly downsized over the last decade, it maintains a high state of readiness, its equipment is mission-ready, and it has sufficient munitions stockpiles for a real fight… This means that unlike France or Germany, once a UK Brigade Combat Team is in the field, the UK has the capacity to sustain it indefinitely.”
Anonymous
Revolo,
Just because Russia is winning doesn’t mean it’s not paying a high price in blood. Even assuming 10 to 1 advantage in artillery and far superior battlefield medicine, Russia had paid for its victories with tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of KIA and WIA.
There’s also a BRICS+ future that China, Russia, and Iran want to build out in a more peaceful world. Fighting (winning) battles with the West gets in the way of building a prosperous future for themselves, even if the wars are necessary to secure sufficient peace to move forward.
That’s why Putin giving very reasonable off ramps along the way. It may continue on with a grinding war until it reaches the conclusion you described, but that will be because the West gave it no other reasonable option.
Anonymous
Richard,
Occupation is extremely expensive for the occupier and tend to turn future generations of the occupied against you. Why would Russia fall into that trap for a temporary sense of security?
If they want to bury Europe, just continue to build out BRICS+ and then stop trading with unfriendly European countries. If they want to be nasty, they can help post-colonial countries press their reparations claims against these colonizers. Then Europe goes back to being a small, impoverished, flavor deprived back corner of the world.
bruce wilder
Who are these “lesser powers” that are supposed to be hostile to Russia?
I was thinking of Poland, the Baltic states, Finland particularly. The unaccountable hostility of tiny Estonia is something to behold.
GrimJim
Anyone who thinks Russia plans to conquer anything other than eastern and southern Ukraine has swallowed the US MIC propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
As mentioned elsewhere above, there is no point to taking Europe. They have no resources. Even their farmlands require too much maintenance to be truly profitable. And any profit realized would be expended it holding the territory. It is not Russia that needs Lebensraum… They’ll have plenty and to spare thanks to Global Warming.
They need Ukraine as a border against US and Western aggression. That’s it. Even holding the parts they want, after ethnic cleansing, will be expensive in men and materiel, at least, until the West collapses and rump Ukraine no longer gets support.
Life is going to be a special kind of Hell for everyone for the next 20 years or so, assuming things are allowed to attain a new equilibrium at that point (I have no faith in that). But if so, there might be another generation of general peace and common welfare before the next collapse down.
It will seem like poverty to us today, who still remember the gloriously wasteful heights of Western wealth, but it will be the last sweet taste of civilization before the final series of collapses into grinding poverty, destitution, and savagery that will follow. Again, though, only if the US MIC does not decide to bring it all crashing down at once, Samson style.
Revelo
>Daniil Adamov
>What I find most infuriating about this situation is that Ukraine never posed a credible threat to “Russian heartlands”
You don’t seem to understand that “Ukraine” has no real agency. “Ukraine” is a USA proxy run by corrupt opportunists who take orders from USA, with the fighting done by deluded Ukrainian peasants. Even EU has no real agency, because again EU leaders are corrupt opportunists who take orders from USA and the EU people are deluded fools. War in Ukraine is thus USA versus Russia, and even Russia is only an incidental actor, because the real conflict is USA versus China.
USA knew it was doomed to lose hegemony if it didn’t contain China. (Those who wear the ring of power soon become addicted to their “precious” and will not surrender it, those without power, like most commentators, fail to understand how desperately USA wants to maintain hegemony.) Causing an internal revolt in Russia, followed by a repeat of the 1990’s where corrupt Russian leaders sell out their country to USA and allow USA to install military bases in Siberia, was the only hope to contain China. Given how amazingly successful CIA has been at installing corrupt comprador opportunists into power across most of the world, including formerly independent nuclear power and UN security Council member France, plus Ukraine of course and even Russia in the 1990’s, USA had every reason to think its plan had a good chance of succeess, plus it was the only plan possible and not very expensive either, given how Ukraine volunteered to fly the kamikaze plane. Alas, CIA finally met their match in the person of former KGB Colonel VV Putin.
Ukraine post-2014 was most definitely a massive threat to Russia. It was being primed to attack Russia or at least be a staging ground for terrorist attacks on Russia which would eventually cause an internal revolt in Russia. By destroying Ukraine, Russia is sending a powerful message to every bordering state not to repeat the error of the Ukrainian people who allowed themselves to be so badly used by USA. It is also sending a message to USA, because failure of this Ukraine gambit will weaken world perception of USA strength. Already, Africans are getting uppity with USA and talking about alliance with Russia and using BRICS payment system. USA will thus not risk a second defeat at the hands of Russia.
Russia will indeed not stop at Ukraine, but it will imitate USA in future attacks, meaning it will engage in covert divide and conquer techniques to keep EU divided, weak and reminded of the danger of attacking Russia. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania will all be rewarded with slices of Ukraine and cheap gas. Serbia and other Balkan states will also get cheap gas. Britain, France and Netherlands will likely get Russian sponsored Islamic terrorism. Finland and the Baltics will get some other sort of harassment.
USA will play along with Russian attempts to divide and weaken Europe because USA also wants a weak EU that cannot challenge USA in Africa. New “long game” for USA will be to try to undermine Russia-China relationship, versus trying to undermine Russia itself.
Daniil Adamov
Revelo, I don’t think there’s much room for even constructive disagreement as regards agency. However, you seem to acknowledge that we have it, even if everyone west of us and east of the Atlantic Ocean does not. That being the case, the threat Ukraine supposedly posed us is worth examining.
“It was being primed to attack Russia”
Ian Welsh is right about the force correlation between Ukraine and Russia being decisive in any sustained confrontation. Ukraine can’t even win a defensive war. The idea that it could have attacked Russia to any significant effect is ludicrous. At most it would’ve been like Georgia in 2008 all over again. That is not what I consider a serious threat.
“or at least be a staging ground for terrorist attacks on Russia”
We’ve had terrorist attacks before. That is not a serious threat either (it obviously is to individuals, but not to the state).
“which would eventually cause an internal revolt in Russia.”
How are terrorist attacks from outside meant to cause an internal revolt? When have they ever had this effect? They certainly have never had such an effect here, not now, not under the Union and not under the Empire.
The only real threat to Russia today, apart from climate change and nuclear weapons, is from internal collapse. But that, in current conditions, can only be caused by elite divisions. I do not think the necessary divisions currently exist. At any rate, they are simply beyond the ability of the West to influence. In brief: the US in relation to Russia is a paper tiger and Ukraine was a failed state even before the invasion; therefore, there was no real threat to RF, though there was to the Peoples’ Republics and to ordinary people in and near Ukraine. They may have been better served by a different policy. I believe it was morally necessary to try something else. If we may have agency, of course.
bruce wilder
Ukraine itself (the state) has no agency left. Just a fact. And a big problem for everyone involved, including Ukrainians.
Revelo
>The only real threat to Russia today, …, is from internal collapse. But that, in current conditions, can only be caused by elite divisions.
Thank you for restating my argument and the USA deep state plan.
>I do not think the necessary divisions currently exist.
True at this point, but you don’t explain why, because you don’t like the explanation. Elite divisions were massive in the 1990’s. These divisions were gradually reduced during Putin’s reign, and the Ukraine war has eliminated elite divisions completely. At this point, any oligarch who dares suggest that Russia should become an obedient USA vassal like France will be thrown out a window by mid level FSB agents acting on their own, without waiting for orders and without expecting reward. In other words, the Russian deep state now knows Russia is under attack, they know who is attacking and why, and they will not tolerate internal divisions. This war has thus strengthened Russia tremendously precisely because internal division among the elite was always the main weakness. Russia will thus be able to easily resist further USA attacks for the foreseeable future (until peace and prosperity in Russia opens the door for elite divisions to re-emerge).
>At any rate, they [elite divisions] are simply beyond the ability of the West to influence.
USA was able to exploit Russian internal divisions among the elite in the 1990’s, so why not again in 2022? Public statements by USA foreign policy leaders have been very clear that USA plan for victory was based on the idea that sanctions would hit the Russian oligarchs and they would then revolt against Putin and USA could then maneuver to get another Yeltsin in power. When sanctions failed to work in March and April 2022, war was effectively over. Everything since is just delaying the inevitable.
USA persists with war because war is cheap both in blood (Ukrainians volunteer to be kamikaze pilots, so USA doesn’t have to spill its blood) and treasure (war costs small percent of USA defense budget and much of this spending can be written off as valuable field testing of USA weapons), and because admitting defeat will have tremendous political repercussions, both internal USA politics and geopolitics.
Russia persists with war because final victory over USA requires winning hearts and minds of Ukrainian people (Russia wants Ukrainians to wake up and understand what is happening and stop volunteering to be kamikaze pilots), and also hearts and minds of Europeans. Killing and maiming to win hearts and minds is necessary because some people become really stupid and unable to see reality when war breaks out, and the only language they can still understand is that of the stick. Indeed, humans can become stupider than animals during wartime. Male lions are brave, but they run off when confronted by bull elephants and hippopotamuses. Only humans volunteer to be kamikaze pilots.
Revelo
>Lisa Mullin
>And Russia will round up all the LGBT people in Ukraine..
I usually just scroll past such silly blather, but worth spending some time in this case, since I mentioned hearts and minds. How did CIA manage to win hearts and minds of Ukrainians, so that they volunteered to be kamikaze pilots?
Originally, it was usual promise of better economic future. Appeal of communism in eastern Europe prior to 1960’s was because peasants saw communism as well offering relief from predatory landlords, who had been their enemy since time immemorial. But then prosperity of USA dimmed communism’s appeal. By 1991, economic appeal of USA was overwhelming. Experience of next 20 years in Eastern Europe was mixed. Poland did very well upon becoming USA vassal (because of German factory investments) whereas Ukraine was plundered mercilessly..
As of now, Germany is no longer in a position to make huge investments so as to lift Ukraine up to Polish level, nor can USA itself credibly promise economic uplift to the entire Ukrainian nation. On the contrary, USA is now being very open about its plans to exploit Ukrainian resources to fix USA’s own budget problems. So while USA can still bribe opportunistic comprador elite of Ukraine, Ukrainian masses have to be offered something other than better economic future.
Maybe something to do with sex, because sex sells, as Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays taught (Bernays consulted for CIA). I remember a podcast by a Russian native teacher of English, who discussed how both she and her mostly Muslim students in Kazakhstan in the 2000’s, were fascinated by Sex and the City and used it for conversation practice. Recall that Kazakhstan was flirting with USA vassaldom a few years later (it is now once again an obedient Russian vassal after watching what happened to Ukraine).
Perhaps appeal of heterosexual sexual liberation wore off after everyone got access to internet porn, so now something spicier is needed, though I think it’s a sign of desperation that public LGBT+ is what CIA nows offer in exchange for being USA vassal/kamikaze pilot. (Note that LBBT+ is legal behind closed doors in Russia, you just can’t publicly promote LBGTQ sexuality.)
bruce wilder
The turn against the gay in Russia was tied closely to the end of the second Chechnya war, which was brought about by making a deal with Akhmad Kadyrov to switch sides. I do not pretend to understand the political dynamics but it started there and gained additional rationalization as a conservative response to western liberalism as the latter embraced “woke”.
different clue
@ Mark Level,
“Prudence is the better part of valor.”
Since Trump is not President yet, there is nothing he can do to affect the NATO EUFUKUS Prime Directive driving NATO EUFUKUS plans and actions between now and Inauguration Day. So it is not cowardice for him to say nothing now, it is merely prudence.
If he continues the NATO EUFUKUS Plan on its current and evolving trajectory AFter he beCOMES President, then you could perhaps say he is motivated by cowardice. But since any non-cowardly President knows he/she will get the Kennedy Treatment, how non-cowardly is any President going to be?
Perhaps Trump will be more non-cowardly then most . . . if he is aware that he has very few years left to live anyway, and so loses very little lifetime if he is assassinated for derailing the NATO EUFUKUS plan and perhaps pushing over the first domino which finally leads to the abolition of NATO itself. Perhaps he will decide that successful revenge will be worth a bullet, especially if it is a revenge which will echo down the centuries and for the ages, a revenge which will self-serve itself over and over and over again.
Revenge on EUrope, Revenge on Great Britain, Revenge on the City of London. Revenge. Revenge. Revenge.
Feral Finster
Ukraine, as a society, isn’t any more LGTBQXYZPDQ+ friendly than is Russia, nor as Ukraine just chockablock with feminists deamnding more rights, while across the border in Russia they are forced into kitchens for being feminists. Just because.
Lisa sounds like she gets her information about Russia and Ukraine straight from Marvel Comics.
Carborundum
The statistics that I am seeing are around 6.1 million or a little better for net Ukrainian out migration. What’s the source for 28 million as of 2023?
Dermot O Connor
Lisa, Christ on a crutch, you are LAZY.
Literally 5 seconds on any given search engine. FIVE seconds. And I very much doubt that something as policed as Wikipedia even covers a fraction of the things that go on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Ukraine#Attacks_on_the_LGBTQ_community
Yeah, thought so. Follow the link to the full Amnest report in the footnotes:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/05/ukraine-discrimination-and-violent-attacks-pervasive-climate-homophobia/
QUOTE: Rather than addressing discrimination against LGBTI people, Parliament is now discussing proposals to criminalize the “propaganda of homosexuality,” measures that would restrict fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression and assembly.
Antidiscrimination and hate crimes provisions now on the books do not cover sexual orientation or gender identity..For example, a 2013 law “On Principles of Prevention and Combating Discrimination in Ukraine” does not include sexual orientation or gender identity as prohibited grounds for discrimination.
Ukrainian authorities do not adequately investigate or prosecute acts of violence motivated by bias. In fact, those working for the police, prosecutors and other government offices routinely express negative stereotypes about LGBTI people, calling into question their willingness to afford everyone equal protection of the law.
A Ukrainian non-governmental organization (NGO) received 29 reports of violent attacks against LGBTI people by members of the public in Ukraine in 2012, and 36 reports of threats of violence. It has also has documented 49 cases of human rights violations committed by police against LGBTI people, including illegal detention, blackmail, torture and other ill-treatment in 2012.
Armen Ovcharuk, a young gay man, was hit on the head as he left a gay nightclub in Kyiv in the early hours of 22 October 2012. Witnesses called an ambulance. His friends reported the crime the following day and an investigation was subsequently started. Armen died of his injuries on 27 October, but so far Amnesty International has received no response from the Ministry of Interior about the progress of the investigation into the attack, or whether it has been recorded and investigated as a hate crime.
Mykola Lebed was with friends in a bar in the town of Rivne on 2 March 2013 when he was assaulted by a group of men at a nearby table who had been drinking heavily. His nose was broken and his eyes were blackened. When the police arrived, they spoke to the attackers, but did not arrest them. They reportedly told Mykola Lebed that the assailants were part of a ‘higher structure,’ a phrase that suggests that they were officials from the prosecutor’s office.
To date, no pride march of LGBTI supporters has yet taken place in Ukraine. A march planned for last May was cancelled at the last moment because of threats of violence and the failure of the Kyiv police to put in place adequate security measures to protect marchers.