Open Thread: Putin’s unconscionable invasion of Ukraine

I must confess to some disappointment that some of my lefty friends, whom I wouldn’t have regarded as Tankies, are seeing this as liberating Ukraine. Apparently Euromaidan was a neo-nazi coup d’etat and Ukraine is crying out to be taken back into the Russian fold to protect it from NATO and the EU.

I just hope that this can be sorted out by economic and cyber warfare rather than bloodshed. I accept I’m possibly being optimistic there.

Yeah I am BAFFLED by the Lefties who are supporting Putin on this.
All I can think is that they don’t know any Ukrainians. The vast majority of them are very happy to have been free of the USSR/Russia for quite a while. Their non-Russia-friendly president was elected with 70% of the vote. They are NOT interested in being a Russian puppet state, because things were awful when they were. It was their people who were sacrificed when Chernobyl went down, after all (and that’s of concern, itself… has the bombardment harmed the encasement of that reactor? I heard a rumor the Russians took that region already.)

Over half the physics faculty at my university are from Ukraine, making Ukrainian the unofficial language of my department. Two were even born in the same village in eastern Ukraine. None of them are thrilled about this development either.

Personally, my main hope is for Putin to have a deadly or debilitating aneurism or stroke that forces someone else to take control of the situation, or else an asteroid to finish things off.

Maybe we can give Cheeto Hitler Ebola, and he’ll infect Putin by incessantly french-kissing his ass…

https://twitter.com/_khaaan/status/1496947720304529419

I’m not an expert on any of this, but my understanding is part of the reason Russia wants to control Ukraine is because Ukraine was and/or is courting NATO, which would be bad for Putin’s plans. Since Trump was talking about pulling the US out of NATO, effectively removing their backbone and defanging the whole thing, the Conservatives are right, this never would have happened on Trump’s watch. He was enthusiastically following Putin’s script to the best of his ability, and NATO was only saved because to the best of Trump’s ability isn’t saying much.

So, if my understanding is anywhere near correct, the idea that Trump held Putin back by intimidating him is hilarious. Rolling over for him to keep him happy might be better for Ukraine, but it makes Trump a good little doggie, not a badass.

So full of despair about the suffering of theUkrainian people and about the inexcusable rallying behind Putin on the part of some U.S. Republicans.

@Surplus: Not to mention the Russian soldiers who will be dying for Vlad’s ego — a direct loss to Russian families. It’s not like the Ukrainians are wimps who are just going to roll over without fighting back.

Let’s get some babushkas wailing in Red Square.

@ .45

I am not an expert either, and I certainly don’t know Putin’s mind, but from what I’ve read talk about Ukraine joining NATO

1) was highly preliminary, not requiring or even expecting short to medium term action

2) post-dated years of Russian proxy rule of Ukraine through deliberate corruption of the Ukrainian state + mechanisms to control their puppet

3) did not begin until that puppet fled the country after the Ukrainian political democratic revolution

4) was very possibly (probably?) something that NATO countries were deliberately leaking to show some sympathy to Ukraine without going so far as to **actually** ally with Ukraine. The goal of this would be (if this is correct) to not antagonize Russia and Putin by creating a formal alliance but nonetheless to increase the deterrence by making Putin uncertain how much aid Ukraine might receive if he invaded.

Obviously #4 only makes sense if Putin posed a threat to Ukraine **before** there was talk of Ukraine joining NATO. And, of course, there’s good evidence of this from his years of other attacks and proxy rule undertaken before a single vague word about future NATO membership was uttered.

In short: Putin wanted to take Ukraine. Talk of potential NATO membership could not possibly have created Putin’s interest, since that long predated such talk. It is likely (but not certain) that the talk was intended as a deterrent. And, finally, Putin is not in Ukraine now because we spoke too seriously about Ukraine joining NATO, but it’s at least possible that he’s in Ukraine because we did not speak about it seriously enough.

@Alan

I, too, wish that this could be resolved without bloodshed, but I am put in mind of the old saying that a city under siege can always feed its king — the point being when the city can no longer feed itself, it kills its king as it cannot tolerate the hunger.

I’m not entirely sure that I agree with it, but what’s interesting here is the assumed premise — it is not the rich or the rulers that suffer under a siege. The same would be true under an economic boycott.

If there is a blockade of sufficient seriousness to threaten Putin, it would first have to kill or sicken thousands or millions. Putin will ignore deaths to starvation right up until the deaths become so widespread his people revolt against him for failure to provide basic necessities.

Unfortunately, given Putin’s weapons and his disrespect for his people, I don’t see this ending any other way but with significant bloodshed.

I am a pacifist, truly I am, but that doesn’t mean that I’m deluded enough to think everyone else is. Putin is a tyrant, and there will be widespread suffering. As much as I hate war, I worry that deliberately starving the Russian populace will cost even more lives.

Economic war should be tried – by people, hopefully, smarter and more knowledgeable on the topic than myself – but I wonder what could they target? If they target natural gas exports from Russia, people across Europe and especially in Poland and Germany lose power, and potentially freeze. If they target food imports, the Russians starve. If they target anything else, I don’t know that they can possibly have a significant effect on Putin, and thus his invasion would continue.

I don’t know foreign policy very well, and I’m worse at economics. Maybe I’m wrong and there are things to do to compromise Putin without creating widespread suffering. But right now I don’t see it, and the people on TV who say that they are experts are talking more about the dangers of economic war than its potential to resolve the conflict.

My husband and I are just waiting for the draft letter to show up. If they take him from me, I’ll probably end up joining him soon after

Putin: House of Slytherin.

My apologies to Slytherins with integrity. I also apologize to snakes, creatures who, like Garbo, just want to be left alone.

So, the general thrust of things, since there’s a lot still unconfirmed:

There are four main prongs to this attack. First is from the NW via Chernobyl, and from the N via Chernihiv, both with the goal of capturing Kyiv ASAP. Fog-of-war has made it difficult to tell how things are going, but things don’t appear to be going so great for the Russians here, as they have yet to actually reach Kyiv and have been beaten back a few times. If nothing else, Putin’s boast that he would have the city captured and Zelenskyy replaced within 24 hours was very wrong.

Then there’s the NE prong which is attempting to make a similarly swift strike against Kharkiv. This is where the bloodiest fighting has been happening, and as of time of writing, neither side is really winning here.

Finally is the SE prong attacking across the southern part of the country via the Russian-Occupied Crimea region, probably with the intent of taking Odesa in the SW. This prong appears to have captured Melitopol and is currently trying to take Kherson, a major chokepoint because it’s one of the few ways to get land troops across the Dneiper River. So far it appears to be a stalemate, but less bloody than Kharkiv.

There are also some occasional attacks attempting to grab smaller, less defended towns/cities either on the borders or near the Russian-occupied Donbas region, such as the one which managed to take Sumy.