So his primary motivation was money? What does that imply for his next move? Since it’s going so badly, I’m guessing declare victory and call it a day?
Possible but I’m going with money and gas/oil being secondary. I mean they’re great, but not that satisfying in themselves. They do, however, give him leverage over others and dominance is what he’s been telling us he wants. Since he seems to think that’s his destiny, I don’t see him being done yet.
I never even heard of it. But yeah.
3.8m russians left the country since beginning of the year. that’s close to 2.5% of total population, and most skew younger and able to be employed. that’s a catastrophe any way you look at it.
Money and power. Controlling more area, not having Russians look at Ukrainians becoming more well off than Russians and getting angry.
It’s also money and power to his supporters. The people who prop him up need to be getting rich too.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1522712443134357507?s=20&t=O_M4Wf55XHgBB_qMpEmpcA
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1522724129102868482?s=20&t=O_M4Wf55XHgBB_qMpEmpcA
Feb 23, 200k troops on the border.
Russia: There will be no invasion.
Feb 24, invasion.
…
May 6, Russia short of troops.
Russia: There will be no mobilization.
May 9, ?
Should we pay more attention to what Putin says, or to what he does? 
What would a post office need a mobilization expert for? And why would the best way to find one to be posting online classifieds in a country that seems to have 0 experts on anything warfare related, especially something that hasn’t been done in living memory? Lol
I’d like to separate those. May not be possible.
Yeah, that’s a notable example. I was going to make a list but got lazy.
I believe Ukraine is pretty much all in already. Able bodied men weren’t allowed to leave the country.
It’s hard to imagine a huge pool of effective soldiers who haven’t already joined up. Probably not in the country’s long term interests to send all their IT nerds to the front lines.
russia already started an unofficial mobilization through spring conscription of 18 year olds. it won’t get him to 600k troops though, it’s 130-200k. and i doubt he’s prepared to commit that many anyway. as long as the war isn’t over, he is more secure burning through thousands of soldiers per for a few years than burn through tens of thousands for a few months. the biggest question isn’t what happens on the 9th, but what gains ukraine can show in the next two weeks or so. good milestone might be restoring the border around kharkiv, or battling for energodar, or (wishful thinking) threatening to push out units in kherson or izyum.
Yeah maybe - the impression seems to be they’re all in.
they’ve actually starting to relax the rules for men traveling abroad. short trips will be allowed for large parts of the male population.
there were a lot of volunteers in territorial defenses, and they’ve been training for close to 3 months now, the best for sure being moved up to regular units. ukraine hasn’t released any information about their troops reinforcements, but they were able to rotate hundreds of regular troops to train with the M777 for at least a week at a time. obviously there’s a shortage of air defenses and aircraft capabilities, and azov is dwindling as we speak, but overall we do not yet see evidence of ukraine being short.
I wonder if they think they need 600-800K well-trained soldiers or 600-800K bodies? Because it sure seems like mobilization is going to give them bodies, not well-trained soldiers.
It’s also going to be a turning point in sentiment back home.
You might well be right but until he proves otherwise I’m going to assume security is not his plan.
People who study psychopaths say he’s driven to prove he’s smarter than everybody else and that might mean disregarding what a competent advisor would suggest. Also, psychopaths, like NFL QBs, have short memories when it comes to punishment…They don’t anticipate it happening again. Just because he just got clobbered with 20k dead doesn’t mean he won’t as quickly throw away another 20k.
Maybe that doesn’t apply and he will make a safer play. That would be a good thing.
I meant not just for him, but 90% or whatever of the profits to Russia of which he takes half and the other half go to the other oligarchs
I’m more wondering if they’re only fighting in Ukraine.
