Some Ukrainians... have vented by writing on the reviews pages for websites of Moscow restaurants. And they have been mocking Russians in scathing terms for complaining about hardships with banking transactions or the collapsing ruble currency because of international sanctions. “Damn, what’s wrong with Apple Pay?”
Stanislav Bobrytsky, a Ukrainian computer programmer also trapped in the fighting around the capital, Kyiv, wrote sarcastically about how Russians are responding to the war. “I cannot pay for a latte in my favorite coffee shop.”...
Many Ukrainians chastise Russians for increasingly accepting middle-class comforts afforded by the country’s oil wealth in exchange for declining to resist limits on their freedoms. They blame millions of Russians, who Ukrainians say gave up on the post-Soviet dreams of freedom and openness to the West, for enabling the war.
“Are your iPhones all right?” another Ukrainian writer, Andriy Bondar, asked Russians on his Facebook page, after a thinly attended antiwar rally in Moscow that was broken up by the riot police.
Posts
76 comments:
"Hate for Putin’s Russia Consumes Ukraine"
I don't blame them. But they still need to decide what to do: act on hate and keep fighting, or restrain it for now and surrender.
Contrary to the supposed FSB story, they are not Russia and Russia is not Germany in 1943-44.
In the short run, the sanctions imposed by the West seem likely to make ordinary Russians more "complicit" with Putin rather than to make them oppose him. Unless Apple really does matter most.
Why would Russians protest the war? They will be held without bail and then get a long prison sentence.
Via NY Post:
Kremlin spokesman has laid out demands: give up 3 areas (including Crimea), demilitarize, and “They should make amendments to the constitution according to which Ukraine would reject any aims to enter any bloc.” Are those demands so onerous that Ukraine should keep risking further destruction? Not for me to decide, but getting rid of the ethnic Russian areas might actually be an advantage.
i have to admit, i'm Still Confused why the Ukraine should be admitted to Nato?
Is Mount Hoverla really, truly, the hill we want to die on?
If Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact; would we have just sat by and watched?
Yes, yes, very hateful. Russia has never had a problem controlling territory that was worth controlling (which excludes Afghanistan), so I can't imagine they'll have a real problem with Ukraine. Earlier this week I assumed Russians were preparing Chechens and Syrians to "occupy" any defiant cities. The more Ukrainians insist on guerilla defense, the more Russia is likely to treat everyone involved like an offshoot of the Azov Battalion. Tough luck.
"Well that escalated quickly" - Anchorman
I am talking about the US here, not Ukraine, whose emotions are understandable. Unfortunately, the hate propaganda has made the management of this crisis problematic worldwide. Now Shell Oil is being raked over the coals for legally buying Russian crude, and has apologized. Light touch sanctions that weaken Russia while not paralyzing economies in the West are now off the table. Attempts to drive a wedge between Putin and his people, which was the original goal of the sanctions, are now going to backfire. What a propaganda coup for Putin when the Met opera fired that singer for the crime of being Russian. That will only drive the Russian people into Putin's arms. The country has become irrational.
3/4 of Americans support a no fly zone, which would make Polish air bases military targets of the Russians. How are we supposed to know if an inbound missile into Polish (NATO) air space is nuclear tipped or not? We can't. 3/4 of Americans support taking a huge gamble on nuclear war rather than letting the sanctions work, which takes time, unfortunately.
Russia would not stop with just a couple of provinces. Guaranteed. And Ukraine has lived under the Russian boot before, so they know what that is like.
"The fertile Ukraine suffered worst. But other regions were also affected, notably Kazakhstan, where 40% of the 4 million inhabitants died as a result of the attempt to turn them from nomadic herders into collective farmers. As early as December 1931 hordes of Ukrainian peasants were surging into towns and besieging railway stations with cries of "Bread, bread, bread." By the spring of 1932, when Stalin demanded nearly half the Ukrainian harvest, the granary of Russia was in the grip of starvation. While peasants collapsed from hunger, Communist shock brigades invaded their cabins and took their last ounces of food, including seed for the spring planting.
"The Ukraine came to resemble 'one vast Belsen.' A population of 'walking corpses' struggled to survive on a diet of roots, weeds, grass, bark and furry catkins. They ate dogs, cats, snails, mice, ants and earthworms; even horse manure for the whole grains of seed it contained. Cannibalism became so commonplace that the OGPU received a special directive from Moscow to issue hundreds of posters announcing that 'EATING DEAD CHILDREN IS BARBARISM.' Each morning wagons rolled along the streets picking up the remains of the dead. Some were picked up before they died and buried in extensive pits.
"In the autumn of 1932 Stalin increased his squeeze on the villages. It may well have been over the famine that on 5 November 1932 his wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide. Certainly she had lost any illusions she might have held about her husband. Some time before her death Nadezhda yelled at him: 'You are a tormentor, that's what you are! You torment your own son, you torment your wife, you torment the whole Russian people.'
"The better to control his victims, Stalin reintroduced the internal passport. It enabled them to hide the famine by making most of the deaths occur outside urban areas. Early in 1933 he issued orders to extract further deliveries from the barren countryside. They announced that the region had failed to provide the requisite grain because of the Party's 'leniency.' Over the next few months, the famine reached its terrible climax. Entire families died, buildings decayed, schools closed. Fields were choked with weeds. Altogether the famine claimed some five million lives and Stalin followed it with a more prolonged purge....."
--Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley
"Is Mount Hoverla really, truly, the hill we want to die on?"
Apparently we are nobly encircling Russia with our armies and only an evil Russian leader would take note of it, any new post-Putin leader will understand that Russia is an untrustworthy country, and it will be for the best for them to consent to this and simply go back to the status quo ante regarding trading in US dollars, running their economy off of US tech, etc. Once Putin is gone, all will be rosy. The surrounding army will be welcomed with gifts of bread and salt!
Whatever happens, Biden crossed a Putin red line, Putin crossed a bright red line for Europe, the world will never be the same.
The Putin support in these comments always fascinate me.
@gilbar
Cuba is still Communist. We agreed not to invade it in 1962.
Still no serious talk of re-opening the domestic energy supply Biden and his fake green corrupt cronies shut down.
"Hate for Hitler's Germany Consumes Jews/Much of the bitterness is directed at Adolph Hitler, but Jews also chastise ordinary Germans, calling them complicit."
Kind of makes you realize the tone of the headline doesn't work well...
Thanks, Kai Akker. Those who say "Real socialism has never been tried" should read those passages. That is real socialism, stripped of any romantic dreams.
3/4 of Americans support taking a huge gamble on nuclear war
@tim, and if you told the Americans that New York City and Washington, DC, would disappear in mushroom clouds in the first few minutes of a nuclear war, that percentage would get closer to 90%
/sarc
Just for the fun of it, the media machine should switch and start telling us that virtuous people must hate Ukrainians and love Russians now. It would work too. It's already Tuesday, but by the end of the week, people on social media would chuck their Ukrainian flags and start wearing Russian colors and Z's and Putin swag and calling for NATO to bomb Ukraine and for the heroic Poltergeist of Poland to come and shoot down that diabolical muthafuckin' Ghost of Kiev.
"The Putin support in these comments always fascinate me."
The suspension of rationality and refusal to understand how we got into this mess always fascinates me. Some of us have resisted the bullshit propaganda of the past five years that Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton because we know that half the country hated that war-mongering skank ("We came, we saw, he died. chortle, guffaw" - HRC after NATO overthrew Khadafy) and since we knew how much she was hated, it didn't bother us that she lost, so we weren't looking for excuses for her 'tragic loss,' like blaming foreign actors. And since we had zero hatred for Trump, we didn't need to get our politics all mixed up with foreign policy.
BTW, here is a quote from that "finding" that Putin got Trump elected.
We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.
So they lied to you about that too.
"It's much harder to convince somebody that they have been lied to than to convince somebody of a lie." - Mark Twain
I am not surprised you refuse to understand it.
Well, I just came to Ann’s blog to find out how the war is being talked about here. Why am I not surprised that all most all of Ann’s commentariat is drawing a false equivalency between Russia and the United States. Sorry, Ukraine is not Mexico and the United States is definitely not Russia. But you bots do you.
Ann, why is it that your blog has for years attracted this kind of commentariat?
Tim - What red line did Biden cross in your opinion?
Getting Saudi Arabia to open the floodgates is a quicker solution to replacing Russian oil, April. The only US restrictions were on new leases of federal lands which take years to get in production. US oil companies are free to increase production in existing fields on their own accord.
Putin likes it whenever you useful idiots vomit up his talking points.
We went hands off on Cuba after the Russians agreed to take the nukes out. Cuba is still Communist, but we don't perceive it as a threat any more. That wasn't exactly the deal Russia is asking for now or what Austria and Finland accepted, but it wasn't totally different either.
You could also draw analogies to what Russia balked at in 1914 when Austria demanded it of the Serbs. Again, it's not entirely the same, but also not totally different. It's said that what Austria wanted from its neighbor didn't go as far as what we demanded from far away Serbia in the 1990s.
I don't love Putin or his regime but Democrat policies did much to bring this on.
*
NYT reports that Biden to cut off oil imports from Russia. Prices going up even more.
Hey kids, let's have a climate emergency and go to renewable energy! That'll teach those Ruskies to try to peacefully secure their borders!
If the people of Ukraine are fighting for the right to self-determination, how much of that is offered by their oligarchs or for that matter by the oligarchs of Brussels and Davis? Or by the U. S. oligarchs of Big Tech and Big Finance? Wasn’t Brexit about the right of self-determination? Until Putin invaded Ukraine weren’t Poland and Hungary considered fascist by the globalists? Until Trudeau took them away, weren’t individual rights considered a hallmark of Canada? Until Biden took them away, weren’t civil and legal rights (right to a speedy trial, bail, etc.) hallmarks of the U.S.? It’s getting harder and harder to see a clear delineation between good guys and bad guys in the Russia Ukraine affair. War is bad so Putin is the worst. But how much better on the moral scale is a regime that would punish Americans with the taxes of inflation, stolen elections, alliances with the largest state sponsor of terrorism (Iran), the existential threat to America (China), the Putin of the West (Maduro), all for the benefit of U.S. oligarchs? I could go on. It’s not hard to be cynical about all of this. The American experiment is under grave threat in front of our very eyes and all the regime wants us to think is that everything will be all right without Putin. It seems everything is part of one big disinformation operation, that 1984 is just arriving a little late. Or perhaps I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed?
This hate for Russians is not just since February, this is from a journalist on a US backed media outlet set up after we backed the coup there.
"Dunbass [Russian speaking] itself is not simply a region in a very depressed condition, it has a whole bunch of problems, the biggest of which, it is severely overpopulated with people nobody has any use for. ... at least 1.5 million of them are superfluous."
https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1501054499129110528
There are no good guys, and this is not our fight. Sorry if that sounds "pro-Putin." Ordinary Ukrainians and ordinary Russians are bearing the bloody brunt of this battle between oligarchs.
If you hate all things Russia, you do so because you were told to. Not because you arrived at that position independently.
Congratulations. De-humanizing an entire class of people, calling for their utter destruction without mercy, puts you in the same class of those that committed the most heinous atrocities past the present.
The Ukranian flag in your profile does not ensure you a roster spot on Team Good. It is not a shield from moral depravity.
I loath what the Russian Army is doing in Ukraine. It sickens me. I'm betting no less than half of the Russian Army in Ukraine feels the exact same way.
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-man-who-sold-ukraine/
Been a long time coming.
Red line Biden crossed:
"The Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from two immense strategic blunders, (Russian historian) Robert Service says. The first came on Nov. 10, when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America's support for Kyiv's right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The pact made it likelier than ever that Ukraine would eventually join NATO — an intolerable prospect for Vladimir Putin. 'It was the last straw,' Mr. Service says. Preparations immediately began for Russia's so-called special military operation in Ukraine.". - Wall Street Journal
If you refuse to try to understand the motivations of our enemies, you reduce yourself to an NPC, a "non player character." Maybe it's OK with you to be told what to think and let the chips fall where they may because Joe Biden knows best; that's no different from the plight of the Russians under Putin.
The future is on the way, comrade. It has just stopped off for a drink.--Soviet joke.
The Russians understandably enjoyed the relative peace and prosperity brought on by Putin's strongman tactics after the chaos of the Gorbachev/Yeltsin years. The Obama/Biden bumbles on petroleum have made the country rich. Merkel assured that Russia would prosper on natural gas for generations to come. Until now, the dirty military work has been done by mercenaries like the Wagner Group.
Putin's fractured history lessons shows that KGB paranoia runs deep, but the West were fools to press NATO's eastward expansion. NATO's involvement in the Yugoslav wars (bombing Serbia) showed that it isn't just a defensive alliance.
The third-rate people (Putin, Biden, Johnson, Merkel) at the head of various governments have upset the gameboard and led us to a very dangerous place, with the Ukrainians being stuck in the middle. There is a long and narrow road out of this mess.
Putin likes it whenever you useful idiots vomit up his talking points.
Why would Putin push for increased US production to lower prices?
"US oil companies are free to increase production in existing fields on their own accord. "
I have seen multiple oil industry executives on Bloomberg say that without political cover from Joe Biden, and assurances that their investments won't be stranded by a future regulatory whipsaw by the Biden Administration, they can't get support from bankers to do it.
Well said, Critter.
Psaki is a world class gaslighter on domestic oil production, know that as you vomit up her talking points.
Sebastian writes, "Kremlin spokesman has laid out demands..."
The Sudetenland was Hitler's demand. Under intolerable pressure from Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, Edvard Beneš acquiesced and signed the piece of paper. Barely six months later Hitler made more demands.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, i.e. fundamental international law, demands Ukraine's 1991 borders must be respected by the Russian Federation. The fact that Vlad Putin has blatantly abrogated that agreement should make any reasonable person scoff at his "demands".
Gilbar writes, "If Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact; would we have just sat by and watched?"
As if the alternative to sitting back and watching is all-out war, how puerile can you get? If it were I cherish the belief that sitting back and watching is exactly what the United States would have done because invading Mexico in revenge for becoming a Warsaw Pact member would have been worse than criminal, it would have been a blunder of apocalyptic proportion. Like Ukraine, Mexico is a sovereign power free to conduct its own foreign policy. If the United States has only two tools in her diplomatic kitbag -- acquiescence and war -- then she would be a pathetic and contemptible weakling indeed. Frankly, I'm shocked that Gilbar would even offer such an absurd false dichotomy to the Althouse blog community. (Better take that shit to Twitter, Gilbar. The Althousers are too sophisticated for that sort of nonsense.)
Allow me to paraphrase Winston Churchill. The Putin apologists have been offered a choice between war and shame. They have chosen shame, and will get war.
The difference Tim is if you were spewing anti Putin CIA talking points in Russia right now, you would be in jail or worse.
But that's okay because I understand from science that the mental illness brainwashing campaign via social media facilitated by the Svengali Trump has a nearly unbreakable hold on your psyche. Only a major traumatic event with reality can snap you out of it.
Picture Robin Williams hugging Matt Damon in the movie Good Will hunting rocking him back and forth telling him over and over again it's not your fault it's not your fault it's not your fault
Kremlin spokesman has laid out demands: give up 3 areas (including Crimea), demilitarize, and “They should make amendments to the constitution according to which Ukraine would reject any aims to enter any bloc.”
That would be a fair solution if there were reason to believe that Putin would be content with that. But, he's made it clear that he believes that Ukraine is a part of Russia and not a real state. He has also stated that he wants the east European states out of NATO. So the only viable guarantee for Ukraine's sovereignty would be to be part of NATO, with EU membership down the road. There's no way they'd trust a promise made by Putin now.
The only possible deal I seen now would be for the Ukraine to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea and make face saving adjustments in the Donbas. Russia in return would have to recognize Ukraine's sovereignty to do as it wishes in foreign policy. But that's a very optimistic scenario as both sides would have to give up something that they have said is not negotiable.
The Putin support in these comments always fascinate me.
"Fascinate" isn't the word.
The word for this -- and all the urging from comfy people that some other people surrender and all the other isolationism -- is, as I said at the beginning, disgusting.
And notice that more and more they are talking amongst themselves.
If Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact; would we have just sat by and watched?
If Mexico had nuclear missiles aimed at the US, direct military intervention would be likely.
If the alliance were primarily of a defensive nature and didn't pose a threat to the US, then it would most likely be handled the way Cuba (after the missile crisis), Nicaragua, Venezuela and other Latin American countries that have allied with Russia and now China have been handled; a mixture of boycotts, economic pressure and funding challengers to the regime. But not direct military intervention.
NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no offensive threat to Russia. The real threat for Russians is that Ukraine would be fully integrated into western Europe and they would lose controlling influence over them.
tim in vermont said...
I have seen multiple oil industry executives on Bloomberg say that without political cover from Joe Biden, and assurances that their investments won't be stranded by a future regulatory whipsaw by the Biden Administration, they can't get support from bankers to do it.
3/8/22, 8:39 AM
After Keystone, they would be very great fools to do so. The fact Biden is dealing with MBS under the expectations that he will be invited to do anything but lick Saudi crack just shows the utter retardation of the Biden regime.
In 2008 NATO said that Ukraine will be joining. Specifically, NATO "agreed that Ukraine will become a member of NATO." Was that Biden's fault? Further, in 2022 Ukraine was hardly on the verge of joining NATO, which requires the consent of all NATO countries (including Hungary/Orban).
More important, you act as if Ukraine has no agency and isn't an independent country able to make its own decisions re whether it wants to align with the west or east (or nobody). I'm sorry but the free world doesn't have to jump every time Putin says that something is unacceptable to him.
The problem is that Ukraine didn't join NATO sooner. It is only their NATO membership that has saved Latvia and Estonia from Russian evasion. They are both on Russia's border -- so what does that do for your red line theory?
Further, if successful, most of Russia on the western front will be bordered by Poland, a NATO country. So the argument that Russia invaded Ukraine because it didn't want NATO on its doorstep makes little sense.
Further, NATO has no interest in attacking Russia, and potentially start a nuclear war. It is the last thing they would want to do. This is self-evident to everyone including Putin.
NATO is an excuse. Putin wanted to expand his territory for natural resources, more warm water ports, etc.
US oil companies are free to increase production in existing fields on their own accord.
Putin likes it whenever you useful idiots vomit up his talking points.
More lies from Howard. Or maybe he is just stone ignorant.
The biggest antitrust violation in history may be in plain sight. Wall Street banks and money managers are bragging about their coordinated efforts to choke off investment in energy. It’s nearly impossible to raise money to explore for oil and gas right now, and we may all be experiencing rising energy costs because of this market manipulation.
“ Sorry, Ukraine is not Mexico…”
Actually, if you want to begin to understand the situation in Ukraine, it would be useful to look at Mexico. Mexico and Ukraine have at least one common problem, weak and ineffectual central government. Mexican government has no control over many areas that are completely ruled by criminal cartels. Likewise, Ukrainian government has no control over many areas occupied by Nationalist military groups (either anti or pro Russian). Zelensky may be viewed as charismatic, but what he says means absolutely nothing and influences nobody inside Ukraine.
At least Mexican cartels mostly stick to their criminal business. Take Mexican cartels, give each of them political and nationalist agenda and you get the same situation as in Ukraine.
"But that's okay because I understand from science that the mental illness brainwashing campaign via social media facilitated by the Svengali Trump has a nearly unbreakable hold on your psyche."
All it would take is actual evidence that anything I say is wrong, but you prefer this kind of "mind guard" cult discipline, which won't work, because I am not part of your cult.
The more evidence I provide for my views, the more angry you get, and yet you can't counter it factually.
"But that's okay because I understand from science that the mental illness brainwashing campaign via social media facilitated by the Svengali Trump has a nearly unbreakable hold on your psyche."
All it would take is actual evidence that anything I say is wrong, but you prefer this kind of "mind guard" cult discipline, which won't work, because I am not part of your cult.
The more evidence I provide for my views, the more angry you get, and yet you can't counter it factually.
Blogger Amexpat said...
NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no offensive threat to Russia.
Do you think Putin and his security team believe NATO is strictly defensive and not a threat to their hold on power?
The real threat for Russians is that Ukraine would be fully integrated into western Europe and they would lose controlling influence over them.
Isn't this one offensive threat to the Russian Kleptocracy that NATO enforces?
Not arguing with you, interested in your expanded thoughts.
It's like the Banksters, despite their greenwashing, saw the Russian Oil Embargo coming.
Big banks fund new oil and gas despite net zero pledges
By Tom Espiner
Business reporter, BBC News
Published
14 February
Big banks are pumping billions into new oil and gas production despite net zero pledges, campaigners have said.
Banks including HSBC, Barclays and Deutsche Bank are still backing new oil and gas despite being part of a green banking group, ShareAction said.
Since joining the Net Zero Banking Alliance last year, 24 big banks have provided $33bn for new oil and gas projects, with more than half of that amount ($19bn) coming from four of the founding members - HSBC, Barclays, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank, the campaigners said.
ShareAction urged big investors to demand that banks restrict finance for oil and gas expansion, saying funding new oil and gas is a lose-lose for banks and investors.
"Putin likes it whenever you useful idiots vomit up his talking points."
If you are seriously suggesting Putin is in favor of the Keystone pipeline and increasing US domestic energy production, YOU are the idiot. If you aren't, then you are just spouting bull shit as an excuse attack people you don't like, as usual.
Obama, Biden, Clinton, McCain, Biden's Slavic Spring, and a complicit fourth estate to spin and bray handmade tales.
Since the Slavic Spring, and Obama's administration, Zelensky et al have had nearly 32 trimesters to offer reconciliation and remediation to Ukrainians and Ukraine's neighbors to mitigate progress.
For some unknown reason, the Russians had a consuming hatred for the Germans between the years 1941 and 1945. No one knows why.
Lord, I haven't seen so many wet panties since the last Victoria's Secret pool party.
The Blame America First Crowd and the Surrender Caucus have joined with the Weekly World News subscribers and found a home here at Althouse.
Biden, under political pressure, did today what he should have done 13 days ago.
gilbar,
If Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact; would we have just sat by and watched?
Why is it always Mexico, please? Can't it be Canada occasionally? They've shown a damn fine authoritarian streak the last couple months.
Candide, Mexico is barely in control of half its territory, and has outright ceded a couple of states to the cartels, to the point where when they say jump, the police say "How high?" I don't see the situation in Ukraine as remotely similar. Zelensky is not a figurehead or a buffoon. Yes, the far Eastern parts of Ukraine are, shall we say, but loosely held. But Putin isn't limiting himself to nibbling round the edges, you know. He wants the whole damn country under a puppet government, and in order to achieve that aim, he's completely fine with shelling what he asserts to be his own people. If you think the Ukrainian populace would fight so fiercely and tenaciously without Zelensky's example, I think you're dreaming.
"The Sudetenland was Hitler's demand"
But it really was long-standing British policy to prevent one power from dominating the continent. Chamberlain engaged in wishful thinking and delayed the inevitable. But his missteps notwithstanding, Britain really was prepared to fight against German dominance, and had to.
It is entirely possible that Putin will have more "demands," put pressure on Poland or the Baltics say, and, like Britain of old, we have an interest in him not dominating Europe. That is why it is good to raise the costs for him, up to a point, and to see the Europeans step up. We want a balance of power--ideally a balance of power that favors freedom, to quote a quotable quote from a once much-maligned neocon document, but a balance of power nonetheless.
We have two kinds of questions. What are we prepared to do for Ukraine, and if we are doing the max in sanctions without repelling Putin's control of Ukraine, what is our next step? Are we prepared to fight for real? Unlike the Brits in 1939, I don't think we are, and I don't think we can. Therefore we should look for the least bad alternative outcome.
The broader issue is what the future balance of power looks like. Though we have made Ukraine a big issue since 2008, and certainly since 2014, Ukraine as such is not a basic interest to us, except insofar as their kleptocracy funded ours. It is a big effing deal to Vlad, as he told us and now shows us. One obvious danger is that Vlad will want to make other moves, and that is where some of the sanctions and a united Europe help. My own sense is that this invasion is encouraging in showing the limits of what the Russians can do. But what is our red line? What are our demands--demands we are prepared to back with real force?
The Blame America First Crowd and the Surrender Caucus have joined with the Weekly World News subscribers and found a home here at Althouse.
Situations like these are when one's true character comes out. And it isn't pretty.
Do you think Putin and his security team believe NATO is strictly defensive and not a threat to their hold on power?
There are different types of power that nations use to compete with one another; economic, soft (culture, ideas, etc) and military. Putin rightly fears that western liberal democracies will try to use the first two means to oust him and his cronies out of power. But unless he's delusional, I doubt that he believes that NATO has any plans to invade Russia - it's not set up to do so and it can win with out doing so.
Sebastian said...
"Hate for Putin’s Russia Consumes Ukraine"
I don't blame them. But they still need to decide what to do: act on hate and keep fighting, or restrain it for now and surrender.
Well, since they're not pathetic pussies, they're going to fight
So Sebastian, have you joined the Democratic Socialists of America yet? They do seem to be your natural home
gilbar said...
If Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact; would we have just sat by and watched?
Cuba because a Soviet satellite, and the US government didn't invade. The most we did was blockade when they were playing nuclear missiles right off our shores.
Of course, there COUDL be a slight difference here, because I'm pretty sure the US never enslaved all of Mexico for 45 years, and I'm pretty sure NATO never invaded a member country to replace its government with a "better" one.
Exactly how fucked in the head do you have to be to claim there's a moral equivalence between the Warsaw Pact and NATO?
Or are you just so historically ignorant that you can't say anything intelligent?
Sebastian said...
Via NY Post:
Kremlin spokesman has laid out demands: give up 3 areas (including Crimea), demilitarize, and “They should make amendments to the constitution according to which Ukraine would reject any aims to enter any bloc.” Are those demands so onerous that Ukraine should keep risking further destruction? Not for me to decide, but getting rid of the ethnic Russian areas might actually be an advantage.
Gee, because we all know that Putin is such an honorable man that he'd never come back two years later with an additional set of demands.
How do you people get so pathetically ignorant about all of human history?
tim in vermont said...
3/4 of Americans support taking a huge gamble on nuclear war rather than letting the sanctions work, which takes time, unfortunately.
Amusing words, from someone who doesn't want the sanctions, and doesn't want them to work.
But, other than that, I totally trust your advice
gilbar said...
i have to admit, i'm Still Confused why the Ukraine should be admitted to Nato?
Because the world is an infinitely better place if Russia has no ability to militarily expand to the west.
Do you need an explainer on why it is that we don't want a dictator who mourns the death of the USSR obtaining more resources and power, or are you able to figure out that part on your own?
tim in vermont said...
Apparently we are nobly encircling Russia with our armies and only an evil Russian leader would take note of it
1: Please name the last three non-evil "leaders" of Russia
2: We're not encircling Russia, we're stoping it from invading westward
3: It is your position that Russia is a perfectly reasonable member of the international community, and that non of Russia neighbors properly fear invasion by Russia?
4: It is your position that Russia has every right to invade countries with the misfortune to share a border, and that it's entirely wrong for other countries to want to save those countries from invasion?
any new post-Putin leader will understand that Russia is an untrustworthy country
5: So it's your position that Russia is a "trustworthy country"?
The surrounding army will be welcomed with gifts of bread and salt!
The surrounding army won't be invading Russia, so they won't have to welcome it with anything
The neighbors hosting that surrounding army, OTOH, have so far very happily welcomed that "surrounding army", and the protection it provides from Russia enslavement
Is it really the case that little earning bells don't go off in your head when you find yourself arguing teh stupidity you posted above?
Mexico is not invading? Radical, dude! We're just helping out by taking their overflow? Fentanyl and heroin aren't killing 100K a year? Cartels aren't rogue warriors? Glad you cleared that up. Still time to catch a flight and join up over there.
Zelensky is an entertainer, he's doin his job.
Bob Boyd said...
Just for the fun of it, the media machine should switch and start telling us that virtuous people must hate Ukrainians and love Russians now. It would work too.
Gosh, yes!
Because no one can tell the difference between a Communist apparatchik KGB Colonel who likes to invade neighboring countries, and someone who possesses none of those traits
Do you spend even 5 seconds thinking before you send off these bon Motts?
tim in vermont said...
"The Putin support in these comments always fascinate me."
The suspension of rationality and refusal to understand how we got into this mess always fascinates me. Some of us have resisted the bullshit propaganda of the past five years that Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton
Yes. Some of us have brains, and so realize that Putin wanted Hillary to win, which is why he never released any of her emails during the campaign
Some of us have brains, have paid attention fo the last 20+ years, and understand that Putin is an enemy of the US, and that anything that makes him more powerful makes the US worse off.
I am not surprised you refuse to understand it.
I AM surprised that you refuse to understand that Putin is, always has been, and always will be America's enemy.
So, what's your excuse?
Michael K
It's just funny as hell. Howard with one foot on the dock and one foot in the boat as it slides away, yelling, "No! Seriously! This is how you're supposed to do it!"
Howard said...
Getting Saudi Arabia to open the floodgates is a quicker solution to replacing Russian oil, April.
You mean that evil pariah country that murdered Kashogi?
Why is it, Howard, that you're always desperately eager to send money to corrupt foreign countries, rather than have it go to Americans?
Let's get some reality into the talk, shall we?
U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil in barrels.
Year 2019 4,485,653
Year 2020 4,129,563
Year 2021 4,082,478
Now, the reason for the drop for 2019 to 2020 was Covid lockdowns, and the significant economic contraction that came with them.
So, why the drop from 2020 to 2021? Could it be because the Biden* Admin decided to act as big pals to Putin, and deliberately drove down US oil production, thus driving up the cost of oil, enriching and empowering Putin?
Gee, what do you thing?
Oh, wait, you're a lefty troll, you don't think, you just spout whatever talking points you're given.
If you want to weaken Russia, and strengthen America, you act to reverse the legal and regulatory changes the the Biden* Admin has inflicted on American oil production for the last year+.
If you're Putin's butt boy, you keep on making up excuses as to why we shouldn't' do that, pretending that "production over the next week" is important, but "production over the next year" is not.
Rollo said...
We went hands off on Cuba after the Russians agreed to take the nukes out. Cuba is still Communist, but we don't perceive it as a threat any more.
Ukraine gave up its nukes in 1994 in exchange for such a deal
now Putin is changing the deal, and telling Ukraine "pray I don't change it further", and you're trying to tell us it's Ukraine's fault, or the West's fault, not the fault of Putin.
WTF?
Browndog said...
If you hate all things Russia, you do so because you were told to. Not because you arrived at that position independently.
Fuck you, you arrogant and ignorant ass.
Russia is a shithole country. It has never, in the entirety of its existence, had anything that could qualify as honest government, let alone good government.
It is currently a third world country with nukes, ruled by a megalomaniacal dictator who's massively butt hurt by the fact that the USSR was destroyed, and a bunch of corrupt oligarchs who got their money and power because they were members of the nomenklatura who were able to rob the hell out of the people of Russia due to their powerful positions when the USSR fell apart
It's got some lovely people, but none of them have the slightest shred of power.
it is for all intents and purposes an evil country that should be blocked at every point, because there's absolutely nothing desired by the people running Russia that's good for the rest of the world.
If you'd like to actually try to argue any of that, make your case
Tell us about the good governments Russia has had
Tell us about the positive aspirations of Putin
Tell us exactly what you think should happen, and why
Or else FAOD, you pathetic toad
tim in vermont said...
Red line Biden crossed:
"The Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from two immense strategic blunders, (Russian historian) Robert Service says. The first came on Nov. 10, when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America's support for Kyiv's right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The pact made it likelier than ever that Ukraine would eventually join NATO — an intolerable prospect for Vladimir Putin. 'It was the last straw,' Mr. Service says. Preparations immediately began for Russia's so-called special military operation in Ukraine.". - Wall Street Journal
If you refuse to try to understand the motivations of our enemies, you reduce yourself to an NPC, a "non player character."
I entirely understand the motivations of our enemies. Putin wants to be able to dominate Ukraine, as a prelude to absorbing it all back into Russia.
Something he can't do if Ukraine becomes part of NATO
Ukraine joining NATO is "an intolerable prospect for Vladimir Putin" because it blocks his ability to threaten and harm others, NOT because it poses any actual threat to Russia.
If you can't grasp that, YOU are the NPC
Amadeus 48 said...
Putin's fractured history lessons shows that KGB paranoia runs deep, but the West were fools to press NATO's eastward expansion. NATO's involvement in the Yugoslav wars (bombing Serbia) showed that it isn't just a defensive alliance.
NATO's involvement in the Yugoslav wars, bombing the aggressor country that was using military equipment it got from the disintegrating Yugoslavia, and doing nothing more than stopping the Serbs from winning their wars of aggression, showed that NATO is only a "threat" if your'e planning on trying to conquer someone else.
Which is pretty much the definition of a "defensive alliance".
Now, would it have been better if we'd simply sold Serbia's opponents weapons, and trained them up to the point where they could slaughter the Serbs on their own?
Yes, probably. That was certainly my position at the time.
But who you chose to start wars and attacks nd invade other countries, you've pretty much given up any right to complain when someone else does it to you.
And that's what Serbia did.
"President Volodymyr Zelensky said he is no longer pressing for NATO membership for Ukraine, a delicate issue that was one of Russia's stated reasons for invading its pro-Western neighbor.
In another apparent nod aimed at placating Moscow, Zelensky said he is open to "compromise" on the status of two breakaway pro-Russian territories that President Vladimir Putin recognized as independent just before unleashing the invasion on February 24."
https://www.ibtimes.com/nod-russia-ukraine-says-no-longer-insisting-nato-membership-3428691
Do you spend even 5 seconds thinking before you send off these bon Motts?
I know. I got in a rush. I should have made him the Poltergeist of Petropavlovsk.
The Poltergeist's wingman was the Schpook of Irkutsk.
And it was a four ship flight so the Apparition of Omsk and the Duppy of Dudinka deserve credit for an assist.
So, teh answer is "no", and your name should be Bob No thought Boyd
Thank you for clearing that up
I especially appreciate the part where you don't even try to pretend that what you said is not phenominally stupid
Part of the deal was that Ukraine would not join NATO. We broke that deal when we invited Ukraine to join. That doesn't justify Putin's invasion, but it does a little to explain it.
Cold War rhetoric made more sense when Russia was on the Elbe than it does now.
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