The EU offered a large loan program because the Ukrainian economy had been crippled. In no small part because the Russian-back president was siphoning off large amounts of money for himself and his family. Ukraine has been influenced by the West because most of western Ukraine wanted closer relations with the West, in part because their Russian-aligned leaders were repressive, brutal, corrupt, and had a tendency to imprison or (with Russia's complicity) attempt to assassinate political opposition. The phrase "you reap what you sow" comes to mind. I doubt that Putin is emboldened. This has gone terribly for them. He might well attempt to level Ukraine, but it isn't because he's acting from a position of strength, it's because artillery is their one great advantage and they have little chance to install a friendly regime that would last so much as a weekend.
So here’s a jolly picture of 3 blokes having a glass of wine at a nice villa in Umbria. The 3 are Rupert Murdoch, Evgeny Lebedev (the son of a KGB officer who Johnson has recently given a seat in the House of Lords), and the one in the shoes dying to have dogs with diarrhoea **** on them is our very own Nigel Farage, who is going to solve the energy crisis by fracking up the entire UK.
It is fascinating to read about how the Russian miltiary has been performing. I was a bit suspicious that the initial reports were wishful thinking but they appear to gave a major problem with logistics as well as fundemental issues such as vehicle maintenance. I was reading earlier today that the lack of aerial support may now be due to lack of training of their pilots who are not used to flying in crowded air space. You anticipate that NATO will be very underwhelmed. In the end, it will just come done to shear numbers and any suggestion that a victory will come down to military nous seems highly unlikely.
This is the part of the war that Russia should be winning handily, though. If they do intend to occupy the country, that means an enormous amount of infantry on the ground in cities that will be bristling with partisans, and occupation does come down to military nous...all of your artillery and planes and tanks are largely useless in street-to-street fighting. That requires well-trained and tactically adept infantry, which is not Russia's strong suit.
I finally got around to reading (or at least getting most of the way through) the New Yorker article where John Mearsheimer was interviewed. I recognise on of his International Relations books from when I was at uni (The Israel Lobby) But blimey if you thought politicians where bad at refusing to admit they are wrong... They have nothing on academics who are clearly proven wrong. The mental gymnastics he was trying were really quite something to read The piece is from 1st March and is really quite something I actually only got around to reading it today but am mainly prompted due to talk of invasion / occupation. As he insists (insisted?) that this wasn't Putin's aim in the piece on 1st March. That he just wanted to peel off the territory in the East. This is an academic on International Relations who is so hilariously wrong it is unbelievable. But there is a very important reason why he is wrong. And so badly wrong. It is that he is absolutely desperate to blame the West (although mainly the USA) for everything. And similarly desperate to absolve Russia of any blame at all. This is just a phenomenally bad take as I have said already in this thread. But if even published academics in the field can make it then I guess normal guys on a Saints message board can as well...
My academic background is IR theory and political economy, and one of the beautiful/incredibly depressing things about those fields is that they're non-falsifiable; there will never come a point where someone has to say 'huh, this invalidates my entire worldview'. The same academics have the same arguments via papers, symposiums and the letters section of Foreign Affairs in perpetuity, which is part of the reason I chose not to remain in academia (that and the prospect of paying my student loans by selling my organs while working as an adjunct for 10 years in the vain hope of getting a permanent position). Mearsheimer is a very intelligent and influential academic, but his theory of great power politics is by necessity amoral: it presumes that a couple powers call the shots, and everyone else either cozies up to them, gets used by them, or aims to knock them off. The world that Mearsheimer sees would be a truly awful place to live, and while you can get by on those assumptions in theoretical debate, Chotiner made him squirm by bringing in the real-life implications: if Ukraine is by virtue of geography a natural pawn of Russia, what does that mean for the Ukrainian people who are functionally deprived of any sort of autonomy? The answer is "well, yeah, if they want to have autonomy then they should become more powerful than their suzerain", but that's really difficult even for Mearsheimer to articulate given that you're effectively consigning a few million people to permanently serve a master that has historically treated them like chattel.
I’m so glad LBC have put this blistering diatribe by James O’Brien in a tweet. I heard it this morning and was simultaneously cheering and on the point of tears of shame for my fellow countrymen. Please watch this.
BBC News - Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60589965
I find it genuinely hard to imagine how the West could have been governed any worse in the last decade or two. - House prices outrageously expensive - childcare outrageously expensive - fuel outrageously expensive - police, military and nhs totally underfunded. all of this at the expense of UK citizens and to the benefit of tax avoiding Russian oligarchs. Now Oil/gas is still going exponentially up with no end in sight. Where does all this end? Honestly wondering how much of their awful policies are deliberate because if they wanted to absolutely wreck Great Britain they could hardly have done a better job.
During the brief period after WWII, there was a phenomenon called the social consensus in the U.K. and throughout Western Europe. It was accepted across the political spectrum, that one of the key roles of government was to ensure decent pay and working conditions, housing, health, and education for all it’s citizens. Margaret Thatcher’s government destroyed all that on the alter of the free market; she believed, with the ardour of a religious fanatic, that unregulated capitalism would naturally provide for all the needs of an entrepreneurial nation. Social housing and public utilities where sold off, an “internal market” was created to monetise health and education. The rich got exponentially richer, a few working class people also gained, many fell behind. When the country finally decided to give Labour another chance, Tony Blair had largely bought in to Thatcher’s revolutionary ideology, so not much changed, really; the free market remained king, the rich continued to get filthy rich, some money was directed to support the very poorest, but the principle of “every man for himself” still ruled. Now we are reaping the whirlwind of over 40 years of economic free for all. We are basically a pirate economy with a shrinking legacy of public service just about holding it all together.
The West or England/UK? The EU is dealing with the funny money. It's said that avoiding the new regulations was one of the prime movers for brexshit.
Doesn't bode well for our family entry.permit application for Mrs Jab. It's already held up by a delay in the issuing of her new Indonesian passport. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...red-by-bureaucracy-from-reaching-safety-in-uk
Putin will not occupy Ukraine as you imagine but I think he will raise the country. There will not be much infrastructure by the time he has finished. There will cetainly not be many cities left. I have to admit that I am shocked at the support the invasion appears to have amongst the Russians. It does not bode well and I am not sure how the crisis will be resolved..
The EU moved swiftly to invoke the ‘temporary protection’ mechanism since its introduction, in 2001, following the conflict in former Yugoslavia. https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/...orking-rights-to-ukrainians-fleeing-conflict/ Dutch statement issued overnight. "Ukrainians with a biometric passport can travel freely to the Netherlands. And stay in the Netherlands without a residence permit for 90 days during the visa-exempt term. You therefore do not have to apply for asylum immediately. And you do not have to register at the application center in Ter Apel right now." Dutch staffing agencies are getting ready to welcome Ukrainian refugees in the hope that they can fill some of the record number of job vacancies currently open in the Netherlands https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/...an-refugees-but-should-first-show-compassion/
