belarus isn’t on the open steppe, and only half of ukraine is. chechnya and georgia don’t hold any defensive military value. neither do russian excursions into georgia. nagorno-karabakh even less so. the buffer zone against invasions is an outdated concept in itself, giving way to allies and technological defenses as more important, but it is also wrong to think buffers would be sufficient to protect for non-military influence, like political pressures, trade routes, infrastructure projects.
transnistria conflict predates putin by a full decade, and isn’t close in scale to the other ones. russian troops stationed there are irrelevant, the borders are essentially frozen because moldovan armed forces are very small, while the transnistria population does compulsory service. lt is not occupied in the same way as dnr/lnr or ossetia. it’s not held up hostage like belarus either. putin isn’t concerned with it any more than he is concerned with plotting a coup in montenegro to keep them from joining nato.
what “invasions” are you counting in the last couple hundred years? 9 or 10 is a gross overestimation. unless of course, you mean 9-10 invasions by Russia, then you are underestimating.
Thanks for the corrections. To what extent mistakes in supporting details invalidates my argument I’m not sure. I have an easier time understanding this war as Russia forwarding its strategic interests than Putin’s position threatened by the existence of a democracy on his border. And while strategic depth (buffer zone) may be an old idea, I’m not sure its outdated per se, or that Russia doesn’t still believe in it.
you are focusing too much on purported history and worldview, which itself has been skewed by both putin himself, and his regime’s propagandists. how he/they explain or sell their actions to the greater population of mostly disillusioned and detached from reality zombies is not a good starting point for an argument. it’s actually buying the misinformed premise that, 1) territorial conquest is important and inevitable, and 2) history and public opinion are to be manipulated and used to justify territorial conquest. neither of those things make a country or society great, or even builds a robust economic or political system.
putin’s strategic interest is to control the state as a organized crime family, with kickbacks extracted wherever they see value, and wherever they can get away with asymmetric tactics. it’s devoid of agency for ukraine and any other country wishing to leave the criminal’s sphere of influence, and would like to keep living without an insane tyrant leveling their city theaters and hospitals.
I totally agree But you don’t think that Putin thinks at all about Russia’s interests, only his own? I have trouble with that. Yes, it’s a mafia state, but it’s a mafia state.
To be clear – what I’m suggesting are Russia’s strategic interests driving this conflict (control (directly or by proxy) of the geographical chokepoints European countries can invade through) – I’m not saying that justifies anything. Or that we shouldn’t have let Poland, et al join NATO, or that that was provocative. I’m suggesting Russia hasn’t changed that much from Tsarist days, still a corrupt autocracy, still relying on strategic depth for defense.
Honestly, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong. A Putin that only thinks about lining his own pockets and for whom this is just another smash & grab is containable. Whereas if I’m right, this war is seen as an matter by Putin, which makes coming to terms much more difficult.
putin has lost most rationality in his decisions. whether due to bad intelligence channels fed to him, or by purposefully removing any dissent within the country’s political class. that really isn’t significant. you should probably read the other opinions (kasparov, navalny), which prove with evidence that putin’s reputation of a master strategist is deeply wrong. he started out as a reactionary, propped up by an information dictatorship and a secret police, and has evolved into fully totalitarian state.
to say that putin thinks of his own interests as russia’s interests is possibly correct, but to say that russia’s strategic interests are coupled to putin’s is wrong. i don’t consider bribing the ex-chancellor of germany or the far-right candidate in france as strategic moves. but those moves were merely opportunistic events that will be on the ash-heap, not lauded as the great ploy to break the backbone of europe.
yes, putin made those moves ahead of time, and they advanced some corrupt schemes that resulted in a castle or a yacht on a pretty cliff somewhere, but they were to the detriment of russia the state. they resulted in selling natural gas to china at a deeper discount than Turkmenistan, while the world is experiencing an all-time record surge in gas prices is not to Russia’s strategic interests.
there are millions of examples like that, and now they compound with catastrophic errors in judgement that are accelerating putin’s current crisis. and i would argue there are no longer any off-ramps for him because he never took any of the last 20 that were offered.
TBF, Russia’s actual strategic interests would be pulling back from foreign adventures and provocations and investing in it’s country and people.
In 2022 it doesn’t matter if there are flat paved road to Moscow or it’s surrounded by mountains. NATO is not the mongols or Napoleon and doesn’t attack with cavalry. But I guess Russia isn’t only planning to fight the last war but one from 200 years ago.
I do accept that Putin puts the state first, at least as he understands it, as a czar should, but he’s no smarter than Trump when it comes to understanding Russian interests.
What you or I think is in Russia’s strategic interest isn’t necessarily what Putin thinks is. And you can’t hold territory with just air power. Sure warfare has changed but if we wanted to invade Russia we would still have to roll tanks and infantry in to hold it at some point. Not that anybody wants to. I think you underestimate the extent to which fundamentals are still fundamental.
It depends on your definition of rationality. Some people would describe Putin as irrational because they think his preferences are crazy. I would not describe goals such as Russian nationalism or totalitarianism to be irrational preferences so, for me, whether or not Putin is rational depends upon his ability to make decisions using the information available to him to maximize his desired outcomes.
the value of running troll farms is most definitely to stash away money on Lake Como first, and foment dissent in the west second. it’s exactly the same charter as the FSB suborg that was in charge of converting ukrainian officials into collaborators during the invasion. those wasted billions amounted to nothing.
it is remarkable that the troll farms started working and were successful in the usa/west before security services caught on, but i would argue the online mis/information arms race took off and the initiative is no longer with russia. like brexit couldn’t be pulled off in a similar way knowing what we know now.
the tools are all widely available. crowdsourced content is abundant and no single person could even read it all, much less get a clearer picture. on the other hand, the same arms race has exposed and identified countless russian agents with digital evidence. the propaganda regime is having trouble battling VPN inside the country. people like leonid volkov are mentioning more and more frequently that if you can imagine turning off the tv in all of russia, the regime might collapse like a deck of cards.
I’d agree the US has made the biggest dono’s but, per capita, that’s what we’d expect. I’d suggest he’s been a pace or two behind, playing catch up to Euro sanctions and promises of heavy artillery for the duration of the war. Maybe those helicopters are in the mail and he’ll pay a visit to Kyiv one day.
biden and austin have been preparing nato behind the scenes since the russian troops were building up in late '21-early '22, or more accurately since the last buildup/summit gambit in june '21. many countries dismissed the warnings until the actual invasion, ukraine included. it took a couple of weeks into the war for ukraine to start acting on all the intelligence given to them, e.g. maneuvering troops out of possible strike range.
I was under the impression it was the US pushing the sanctions on e.g. the central bank and more or less driving consensus on support. I mean, everybody lined up behind sanctions + arms to Ukraine awfully fast, that doesn’t generally happen without a consensus built and plan in place already. Who else would be driving it, Macron? Boris? If that impression is mistaken, ok, I’m not married to it.