Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022-3

[Jubal]

So, Russia has a lot of tanks parked on Ukraine's borders and is demanding that Ukraine abandon any intention of joining NATO and also claiming that Ukraine is attacking Russian-speakers in the east of the country. Ukraine has already had one significant chunk of its territory annexed by Russia within the past decade and is basically bracing for Russian tank columns to start rolling in at the slightest provocation. There are allegations from the US and UK that Russia may be planning to "false flag" attack its interests in some way as a pretext for invasion (Russia has accused Ukraine of planning much the same thing).

It's a mess, and the stand-off increasingly has Europe/US allied behind Ukraine: one of Putin's original gambles, it seems likely, was that Germany would try to take a pro-Russia or neutral stance for as long as possible to defend Nord Stream 2, the Russia/Germany oil pipeline project. The generally very cautious and somewhat more Russia-friendly SPO, however, are now in coalition with the Greens who hold the foreign office and the FDP who are more aggressively liberal on foreign affairs, and seem to be taking a harder stance than Putin might have hoped.

The brinkmanship from Russia is probably part of the point: in part, Putin is forcing the west to not ignore him in order to strengthen his hand across the board. He probably also genuinely believes that Ukraine should be part of Russia, and wants to put back together a Russian influence sphere where surrounding governments are dependent on the Kremlin's goodwill (see also his placing Russia as increasingly the core peace broker in Azerbaijan/Armenia, and his propping up of the Kazakh regime recently). One thing that I think is also under-appreciated is the colonial aspect of all this: Russia very much was an Imperial power, even if for most of the C20th it was an empire run by statist-Communists rather than conventional dynastic imperialists, and the attitude towards Ukraine really feels like that towards an astray province. For the international audience Putin focuses on the idea of defending Russian speakers in a nation-statist form of argument, but AIUI experts on this tend to see the Kremlin as thinking more about Russia's provinces still in that Imperial-colonial mode, as peripheral areas and peoples that are there to be subjugated by the "real" Russian centre.

So that's where we are, we'll see where we go next...


I also wrote a longer piece yesterday on my blog about claims circulating on social media that Ukraine and the US backed a pro-Nazi stance at the UN: one tactic of left wing pro-Russia posters is often to imply that the Ukrainian regime are fascists. Unsurprisingly, the truth about the vote and resolution they're talking about is a lot messier than some of the glib tweets and maps that circulate tend to show: https://thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com/2022/02/17/on-fighting-fascist-memories-ukraine-russia-the-us-and-the-un/

[dubsartur]

Here is one of Gwynne Dyer's columns on the crisis in 2014.

Hilariously, I am told there are in fact many neo-Nazis in Ukraine and the Ukranian diaspora in Canada.  That is as ridiculous as the Greek Neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn (how many Greeks did the Nazis shoot, starve, work to death, or gas?) but its a mad world.  Otto Wächter and his inoffensive son Horst Arthur Wächter in Austria are good names to look up.

Edit: One problem interpreting the jingoism in the US and UK media is that Russia's invasions of Ukraine are exactly as illegal and dangerous as the US and UK's invasion of Iraq.  And the US's problems with Russia and China have nothing to do with how they treat their own people (see US policy towards Israel and Saudi Arabia and the dictatorship in Egypt), and everything to do with old-fashioned great power rivalries.  So its very hard to find anyone I trust to comment and not just spout propaganda.  For what it's worth, Gwynne Dyer has been skeptical that Russia plans to invade Ukraine (although as he warns, you don't get your money back if he is wrong).

[Pentagathus]

Caspian Report on youtube had good explanation of the strategic motivations for an invasion of Ukraine. As I recall it's partly that Russia has no hard borders as is, so pushing into Ukraine would allow Russia to use the Dnieper and other major rivers as a defensive western border from potential land invasion whilst also securing fresh water supply to the Crimea, which itself has immense strategic value as a base for naval power in the black sea.
Could be that Putin's just trying to put some pressure on and stir the pot for diplomatic leverage but a large nation without natural borders is always going to be prone to paranoia and trying to strip away it's buffer zones probably hasn't been the smartest move from the West.

[dubsartur]

pushing into Ukraine would allow Russia to use the Dnieper and other major rivers as a defensive western border from potential land invasion whilst also securing fresh water supply to the Crimea, which itself has immense strategic value as a base for naval power in the black sea.

But who on earth could possibly invade Russia from the west?  First, Russia has atomic weapons, and second, Russia has large and well-trained conventional forces.  As far as I know, the only power which could do it would be the United States, and first they would never get buy-in from the EU and Turkey, and second they are trying to focus on their long-term encirclement of China by withdrawing from Europe and the Arab world.  Gwynne Dyer laid out the issue in the oughties: the USA can see that its position as sole superpower is crumbling as India and China grow economically, so it does what great powers in that situation do and launches a series of far-fetched aggressive gambles.  Invading Iraq with a small army was supposed to intimidate the middle powers like Iran, while at the same time the USA was busy building an anti-Chinese alliance around the Pacific rim.

The Russian seizure of the Crimea and de-facto seizure of the Donbas sort of made sense in an old-fashioned kind of way, but invading central Ukraine would just cut off Russia's markets and get it entangled in a giant bloody war.

[Jubal]

I think both perspectives may be right - that is, the fact that nobody actually would invade Russia from the west doesn't mean that this isn't something Russian officials aren't treating as if it's still a real threat. In general I think Russia is probably adopting quite an outdated idea of what a Great Power ought to look like (see also its interventions elsewhere). I think the narrative of "NATO expanded east and this was a mistake" is a bit in error though, in that NATO has expanded east far more slowly than Russia's neighbours have wanted it to. Georgia has been trying to join for years. So I'm not sure it's really true that the west has tried to strip away Russia's buffer zones, more that Russia has played the diplomatic game very badly with its former-province neighbours and has consquently left them in a position where they see NATO and the EU as the only route to retain meaningful independence. I'm not sure the alternative, in which NATO explicitly permitted Russia to "grow a sphere of influence" by sitting on its hands, would have helped: it would just have meant Russia running puppet governments in Ukraine and Georgia and the Baltics and then expanding its reach until it was butting on NATO countries again, potentially more willing to engage in a war.

And yeah, it's also true that Russia can't hold Ukraine the way it is now, and the Russians must know this. I'm not sure what their endgame is and I think it may be a mistake to assume that they really know either.


EDIT: Also, may be worth looking more than we have been doing at Russia's actions in Belarus, where its prepared stance on Ukraine seems to have been transferred to a full-scale military presence, and where reportedly today their armed forces chief cited Putin, as well as Lukashenko, as if he was a superior in deciding to keep Russian forces in Belarus with no time limite

[dubsartur]

A lot of coverage does not seem to observe that the dictator of Belarus has been struggling to keep control in the face of nonviolent resistance for the past year or two.  Remember when Belarusian forces forced down an airliner containing an opposition journalist in May 2021?  (Just like the USA forced down an Ecuadorian diplomatic flight in 2013). 

Russia often sends troops to support allied regimes against popular protests, as in Syria.  So one reading of the Russian troops in Belarus is that they were sent to keep Lukashenko in power.

Edit: someone shared this link to an opinion piece in Belarussian Pravda https://belprauda.com/budni-soyuznoj-reshimosti-2022/  That is a paper which a US project recorded during the 2020 Belarusian election, so it least it has not been put up in the past few months.

Military exercise "Allied Dexterity - 2022" on the territory of Belarus will definitely be included in the annals of Belarusian history. If not for the number of military personnel who take part in them, then at least for the opportunism ("pofigism") of its participants relative to both themselves, and "surrounding" which is our country.

...

In addition to disease, among the locals there is fear, and not even of war, but first, of the occupation, because no matter how much they say that the Russian military will leave the country at the end of the exercise, there are still doubts about this.

• COVID Omicron spreads rapidly and fills the field hospitals
• Russian soldiers are getting drunk, raping, and stealing.  People are afraid to go to the police.
• Belarussians are worried about all the non-Slavic minorities in Russian forces
• Russian armoured vehicles are destroying the roads
• Vast amounts of wood are being cut down for fuel and building of the camps, including from parks and beauty spots
• At Kharkopkovka in the Gomel region, some Russian soldiers "of Asian appearance" were found passed out and frostbitten after getting drunk on moonshine.
• The Russian soldiers are not well fed, and while some are stealing or extorting better food, others are selling fuel, uniforms, and possibly weapons and writing them off as "expended during the exercises."

So further Russian incursions into Ukraine would be monumentally stupid and destructive, but there is plenty of both in world politics.

Edit: Dr. Jeremy Morris in Aarhus has this take from the end of January https://postsocialism.org/2022/01/29/if-russia-invades-ukraine-again/  See also his essays on who writes and comment on Russi (mostly people sponsored directly or indirectly by Russian or NATO intelligence and armed services) "Russia coverage on Twitter is dominated by Washington DC policy types who may not be frauds (although some of them are), but who often have a very narrow, and second-hand, knowledge of Russia the country, and Russia the diverse population, as opposed to Russia the foreign policy problem. I’ve written about ‘imperial’ hierarchies of knowledge production before here. ... These issues pertain just as much to ‘natives’. There are plenty of Russian Russia experts who have long had a comfortable DC or US media gig and who have a weak direct grasp on events. Just as much as others, they are vulnerable to bad takes due to the secondary, or belated sources of their analysis. Another hobbyhorse of mine is the extreme self-selection and self-reproduction of this group: in the main they are privileged Russian liberals who are often the last people to ask about the diversity of Russia itself. Think for a moment about who can and who can’t up-sticks and move to the US, regardless of the level of repression in Russia.  ... If the first elephant is the clear leveraging of latent public sympathy abroad for the Russian regime by our friends at the English-language offices of RT, then the other elephant is the continuing relevance of academic and think-tank contacts with the security services in the West."

[dubsartur]

Well, I was wrong.

I think the next thing to see will be whether Russian forces have enough of an advantage in skill and equipment to smash through Ukrainian forces with less than a thousand dead (I don't think they have greater numbers deployed than the post-2014 Ukrainian military).  That will determine whether this is a horrible grinding conventional war, or a horrible grinding insurgency.

[Jubal]

People are apparently trying to flee Kyiv en masse and Russian tanks have reached Kharkiv (which is Ukraine's second city, though it's practically on the Russian border).

From what little I've heard so far it doesn't sound like the Russians are rolling over the Ukrainian army without a fight though of course it's hard to tell. But I don't think this is an Afghanistan type situation where the national military will just dissolve under pressure.

The US Republicans are claiming that this is Biden's fault and that Trump would have stopped the war, which is, as they say, a take. Iran and China have both blamed "NATO provocation" for the war, so Russia has its allies in this matter it seems.


Edit 13:23 - just seen reports that the Russian northern column, invading from Belarus, has reached Kyiv oblast. Suspect the strategy on Russia's part is to try and knock out Zelensky's government as fast as possible and then attempt to install their own regime, or some such.

[dubsartur]

Yes, I would see that as a third possible outcome but unlikely.  My understanding is that politically Ukraine is a lot like Russia was in the 1990s, its a democracy but the national government exists to keep a few well-connected people rich.  That is one major reason why Ukraine is so poor, but I don't think the government is so unpopular that the military will fall apart.

Canada has shamefully evacuated its embassy from Lviv.  The Guardian has printed an opinion piece saying that "Britain must show its steel" which is a lot easier than explaining what Britain should do when another nuclear power has invaded a country 1,000 km away the only access to which is through the federated Europe the UK has noisily separated from and through Turkish waters.

My rolodex is completely empty of people competent to comment on modern conflicts, and experts on Ukraine.  The only two things I can say are this.  War is the most unpredictable things people do, that is why the ancients said it was in the realm of the gods.  And there is no cheat code that Russia can use to make counterinsurgency or urban conflict end in a quick and clear victory.  Ukraine is close to Russia and the Ukrainians speak a language pretty similar to Russian, but taking defended cities is hard and suppressing an insurgency is hard.

[Jubal]

A few further things.

• Reports currently are that Russia tried to capture a major airport near Kyiv but was pushed back by a Ukrainian counterattack. Don't know if that's reliable, but if it's true, maybe suggests Ukraine is not seriously folding.
• I think it can both be true that the national government is not hugely naturally popular and that wealth gaps are very large, and also that people will rally round the flag in these circumstances. Like, I'd be willing to bet that polls right now (if you could conduct them) would give Zelensky a massive approval rating, because the polarisation and because there seems to be very little willingness to surrender among Ukrainians.
• In terms of what other countries do: mainly asset freezes and banking sanctions seem to be the weapons of choice, though how long they will take to kick in and if they'll be effective without China playing ball remains to be seen. Some MPs in other countries including the UK have suggested general visa freezes on all Russians or similar which seems horribly counterproductive to me.
• I've seen reports that Putin has a very small inner circle now which he hugely dominates, and that he's making all the calls more or less on his own. That's pretty concerning because it suggests he's less likely to act in anything approaching a rational way.
• There seems to be a lot of anti-war sentiment in Russia. Even with its draconian anti-protest laws and tendency to ban dissenters with public faces from state TV (which is to say, ending their careers) there have still been a number of Russian public figures opposing the war and sizeable protests on the streets of major Russian cities. This may grow if the Russian economy starts snarling up: Putin may not actually have very long to win his war before it destabilises him at home.

I'm still honestly just frozen up at the whole thing. I find it really hard to know what to say or do at these times: as a political activist and a historian interested in the wider region I don't feel I should be silent, but I'm also very far from an expert so it's hard to know what's best to say or not say, especially in more publicly-read locations.

[dubsartur]

I'm still honestly just frozen up at the whole thing. I find it really hard to know what to say or do at these times: as a political activist and a historian interested in the wider region I don't feel I should be silent, but I'm also very far from an expert so it's hard to know what's best to say or not say, especially in more publicly-read locations.

Well, paying attention and not adding to the noise on social media is worth something.  And at least, judging by preliminary reports, the first day of this war is not a bad day (although the future of Ukrainians in a war or under Putin's control is very worrying).  Ukraine is claiming that 137 soldiers and civilians have been killed, and in a war like this that is a small butcher's bill.  Its possible that Russia is holding back some of its ground troops while it bombs every Ukrainian base, vehicle park, and command post it can find and the full offensive will come when it thinks Ukrainian forces can no longer communicate or maneuver.

And yes, this seems likely to tilt sentiment in Ukraine towards the EU and away from Russia even if Putin can put a puppet government in Kyiv.

This appears to be a small, online-only paper in Kyiv https://kyivindependent.com/

[Jubal]

Yes, the Kyiv Independent AIUI was formed when the Kyiv Post's owners threatened the paper's editorial independence, leading to an argument with journalists and ultimately the owners firing every single journalist at the paper, who then went and formed the Kyiv Independent together, so from what I know I think they're good people. Anything by Terrell Starr is usually worth reading on Ukraine too, he's a US journalist/analyst with a lot of worthwhile perspectives on Ukraine, Russia, and colonialism.

Watching the mythology of the war build as it happens is something I think is not done enough: like, plenty of people comment on these things from an IR or military standpoint (whether or not they have the expertise to do so), and historians often rightly point out that their views are not necessarily the most important ones right now since explaining the long run can be interesting but not always useful - to focus solely on the long history sometimes obfuscates the short-term goals of people like Putin in favour of long-term explanations that miss the point. But anyway, mythologies of war are something I really have never seen discussed much in the public domain, and there's clearly tons going on there.

• The thirteen defending soldiers of Snake Island, a small Ukrainian-owned rock in the Black Sea, were killed. Their final recording has been relayed and released, and involves a chilling exchange in which a Russian ship commander tells them to surrender or he will open fire, and is responded to with "Russian ship, go f*ck yourself". (Link)
• A video has been released of a Ukrainian lady berating Russian soldiers for invading, and offering them sunflower seeds to put in their pockets so that when they die Ukraine's national flower will grow on the spot. (Link)
• Rumours have been circulating online of a "ghost of Kyiv" Ukrainian flying ace who single-handedly downed six Russian fighters yesterday (entirely unconfirmed/probably not true).
• The speeches of Ukrainian leaders have been geared on this angle too, whether intentionally or not - Zelensky's speech to the Russian populace where he emotionally reminisced about friends and times in the Donbas and talked of his family in response to allegations of Nazism (Zelensky is Jewish and his grandfather was a Soviet colonel) has been widely shared internationally (Link). I've also seen a lot of sharing of a chilling exchange at the UN in which the frustrated Ukrainian delegate told his Russian counterpart ther "There is no purgatory for war criminals - they go straight to hell, ambassador." (Link)

Frustratingly I'm finding a lot of this stuff really difficult to find on places other than Twitter (there are often wider articles, but actually you end up getting more depth from journalists doing original Twitter threads on the topics than from the actual news websites). Anyway, a bunch of these pretty definitely happened (Obviously the speeches, Snake Island seems as reliably verified as these things get, and I've seen video of the lady talking to Russian troops), and some are more dubious like the Ghost of Kyiv, and some of the ones that did happen may of course be missing context. But I think "did they happen" isn't really the point, in any case. The mythologisation of the war and the intensity with which that seems likely to strengthen the sense of Ukrainian nationality and anti-Putin sentiment in the country has an awful lot of power to make Putin's life more difficult, and I think it's worth watching how those sorts of urban legends of resistance grow.

It does seem like the overall likelihood is a slow military defeat for Ukraine followed by an even slower insurgency, and that might be quite destabilising for Russia too: what Putin's doing feels like taking on the Iraq war but if the insurgents were signficantly better trained and funded, had a more unified national sentiment (and probably a government-in-exile to rally round), and with a fraction of the resources the US-led coalition had to spend. Though I do also worry that if there is even the appearance of success in the short term, that will embolden Putin to go after Georgia and Moldova in particular.

[Glaurung]

I'm still honestly just frozen up at the whole thing. I find it really hard to know what to say or do at these times: as a political activist and a historian interested in the wider region I don't feel I should be silent, but I'm also very far from an expert so it's hard to know what's best to say or not say, especially in more publicly-read locations.

There's some typically thoughtful commentary from Brett Devereaux in his blog post today. In terms of advice, he says: So one thing you can do is contact your representatives and urge them to support sanctions and stand by Ukraine.
There is already so much written about the conflict that I'm doubtful any addition will make much difference; persuading Western governments to take the strongest possible action against Russia seems to me like the most productive use of time.

Brett Devereaux (and, no doubt, many others) notes the unfolding humanitarian crisis, within Ukraine and in its neighbours to the west. Support for organisations such as the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres will be very welcome, I'm sure.

[Pentagathus]

And yeah, it's also true that Russia can't hold Ukraine the way it is now, and the Russians must know this. I'm not sure what their endgame is and I think it may be a mistake to assume that they really know either.

Yeah I can't see how this ends in a long term strategic win for Russia.
I could see the Russian military taking out as much of Ukraine's military infrastructure and airports as they can and then pulling back to the regions they really want to hold and think they can keep the populace onside. But I can't imagine how that would actually be worth it.
This invasion seems (from my very uneducated peep into it) to be putting more strain on Russia's relationship with Turkey, and I'd imagine that a friendly Turkey is worth a whole lot more than a little slice of eastern Ukraine. But then again I suppose Turkey was never likely to ditch Nato anyway.


Putin baffles me, maybe he really is just desperate to avoid a steady decline of Russian influence and couldn't think of any better plan. Maybe he's got a terminal illness and is just trolling the whole world.
Either way I hope he dies soon. Although god knows what would come after him, the thought of Russia descending into anarchy like Libya or Syria is not exactly comfortable. I'm sure a lot of nukes would be unaccounted for by the time the dust settled.


Happy Friday folks!


Edit:
Also am I the only one who has a real craving to fire up a TW game and play a faction centred around Crimea? It feels weird how easy it is to dissociate the events from the actual human reality until you're actually watching some of the scenes on the ground.

[dubsartur]

This invasion seems (from my very uneducated peep into it) to be putting more strain on Russia's relationship with Turkey, and I'd imagine that a friendly Turkey is worth a whole lot more than a little slice of eastern Ukraine. But then again I suppose Turkey was never likely to ditch Nato anyway.

From what I remember, the situation in Syria was:

- Turkey supported the Islamist rebels as long as possible and hates the Kurds
- the rest of NATO supported the Kurds and the other rebels who kept the atrocities off the teevee and kept the names "ISIS" and "Al-Quaida" off their propaganda
- Russia supported the Syrian government because Russia really values having a friendly country in the Mediterranean and does not care if that government murders and tortures a city or two

So the Turkish government is on bad terms with both Russia and NATO right now.  Before Erdogan Turkey wanted to join the EU, and its still nominally part of NATO, but it and NATO supported opposite sides in Syria.

For all the vague noise in newspapers about the Russians besieging Kyiv or closing in on the city from north, east, and south, This map shows just the column from Belarus having penetrated close to the city. 

I don't know what to make of Putin saying he invaded Ukraine to demilitarize and denatzify the country on Thursday, then calling for the Ukrainian military to overthrow its government on Friday.