Putin: Enemy of ....

[Stockmann]

I'm not aware of any publicly available analysis from before the war that predicted Kyiv holding out for a month (let alone a Russian retreat of any form) or that Russia wouldn't have air supremacy by now, let alone Ukraine being able to strike Russian territory from the air. Also, Russia admits to 3+ k deaths - this is an order of magnitude more than the average monthly rate of Soviet deaths in Afghanistan, and of course the USSR had a bigger population - and actually captured Kabul. It seems that, far from being among the top armed forces in the world, having nuclear weapons is the only thing that distinguishes the Russian military from a third-rate military.

Not to demonize, he's done that to himself, but to surface another awful what-if...never taking his capacities for cunning for granted.

What chance is there (honestly not knowing) that all that business about first marching into Chernobyl, then taking another reactor site, was about assembling ground-level nuclear missiles in situ?

I don't know of it's even possible, but the comment he made a week ago about using nuclear weapons could have been a kind of out-loud signaling...

The degree of enrichment required for nuclear weapons is much higher than for fuel, and enriching it further to reach that degree is hard. They could build a radiological weapon (dirty bomb), of course, but there's little obvious advantage in doing so.

[mamselle]

Thanks for taking the question seriously and replying.

Obviously, I didn't know enough to know if it was even a possibility, and now they've taken off (I suspect for the moment, I only trust them to have third and fourth motives in mind...) but at least that is less an issue.

Some speculation has also arisen that Putin has thyroid cancer. The MD seen with him is a specialist in that, and apparently the question has been raised before.

And Zelensky addressed Russian citizens most recently:

   https://youtu.be/P72_DNt_Btg

My daily prayers: Stop Putin. End the war. Keep Z. alive. Free Ukraine.

M.

[Stockmann]

No problem. Expanding a little on my reply, they'd need to set up ultracentrifuges, etc, to enrich fuel-grade uranium to weapons grade enrichment - that's not something that can easily or quickly be set up, especially on a battlefield I'd imagine. I suspect taking any such materials was an afterthought or a secondary objective, rather than part of a battle plan. I can't think of anything else of value from the reactor itself - the technology used there has been obsolete for a long time. I'd guess it's more about location, being a convenient point both close to the Belarusian border and in the middle of northwestern Ukraine.
There are various reports that the Russians dug up trenches in the Red Forest, one of the most radioactive outdoors places on the planet (even plant life, which is far more resistant to radioactivity than animal life, died out and has not recovered). Given the likely consequences to Russian soldiers and officers who were there, and that these are WWI tactics, it doesn't look exactly competent. A combo of shockingly poor performance from Russia, excellent performance of Western weapons, and Ukrainian heroism have turned this into what looks in some ways like a repeat of 1905. Ukraine could still lose, of course, but I don't see any plausible outcome that doesn't weaken Russia. Even a repeat of military spending collapsing the Soviet economy could happen - the estimates I've seen is that Russia has lost of the order of thousands of tanks, and I've seen estimates of the cost of a tank being in the tens of millions of dollars - meaning replacing the lost tanks alone would cost of the order of tens of billions of dollars - not a small burden on an economy that before sanctions was in the same ballpark as Mexico and Brazil.

[dismalist]

An interesting analogy to the Ukraine invasion was cited on another blog -- the Winter War.

Here is the very illuminating and intelligent Twitter thread by a Finn https://twitter.com/jmkorhonen/status/1498989087700701184

There is also an informative and moving video about the Winter War, Fire and Ice, made by the BBC, if I recall, but put on You Tube by Finnish television

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR2FqMUVZzc&t=2s

Here is a more complete version of the BBC film about the Winter War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_-JATOVHNI

Especially the beginning. All very poignant.

Now there is Mark Felton's explanation, shorter and with maps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkxbDwsJo38

The parallels to Ukraine are striking

[nebo113]

An interesting analogy to the Ukraine invasion was cited on another blog -- the Winter War.

Here is the very illuminating and intelligent Twitter thread by a Finn https://twitter.com/jmkorhonen/status/1498989087700701184

There is also an informative and moving video about the Winter War, Fire and Ice, made by the BBC, if I recall, but put on You Tube by Finnish television

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR2FqMUVZzc&t=2s

Here is a more complete version of the BBC film about the Winter War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_-JATOVHNI

Especially the beginning. All very poignant.

Now there is Mark Felton's explanation, shorter and with maps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkxbDwsJo38

The parallels to Ukraine are striking

And perhaps a bit of the Spanish Civil War?

[Stockmann]

Russians are being killed at over an order of magnitude the rate of Soviets in Afghanistan, or Americans in Vietnam, and about two orders of magnitude the rate of Americans in Afghanistan. Russia has a significantly smaller population than either the US or the USSR and was in demographic decline even before the war (and even before the pandemic), of course, and these losses include elite units taking heavy losses, and high-ranking officers. Add in gargantuan losses of tanks and so forth, and the Russian inability to replace tanks and warships due to the effect of sanctions, and it is clear the war is flatly, plainly unsustainable for Russia. Ukrainian sources are claiming today to have destroyed a Russian command center, killing two Russian generals and severely wounding a third.

At this point, I'm willing to say that Russia, far from being a major global military player, is just Argentina with nukes - a military very effective at committing atrocities, but unable to fight against even somewhat modern armed forces with the will to stand and fight; a military hollowed out by corruption, nepotism, sycophancy, inefficiency, and the hubris and incompetence of its leadership.

[dismalist]

Yup, Stockmann, yup.

Have been totally surprised.

[mamselle]

Yes, but what does it take to make them STOP, and can it please happen while there are people left alive in Ukraine to do the re-building?

All the rhetoric means nothing as long as innocent civilians and their defenders are piling up in unmarked graves and body bags.

M.

[dismalist]

Yes, but what does it take to make them STOP, and can it please happen while there are people left alive in Ukraine to do the re-building?

All the rhetoric means nothing as long as innocent civilians and their defenders are piling up in unmarked graves and body bags.

M.

si vis pacem, para bellum

[quasihumanist]

Looking like he won the war is now existential for Putin.  He will end up popping a few small nukes on Kiev to do so.  China will take advantage of the situation to turn Russia into a big North Korea, with oil they can buy on the cheap.

The time to stop this war was 30 years ago, when we could have dumped a few hundred billion dollars in aid to Russia to build a modern economy.  But we were too cheap.

[mamselle]

Actually, efforts were made to revisit the economic structure of Russia as soon as the USSR was disbanded.

Very sorry to say, two of those sent to help made oligarchs of themselves and ruined the whole thing.

Watching, it felt like Q by the pool in the first Star Trek movie.

"Oops, there was your chance for life..."

M.

[dismalist]

No, no, no people. The economic stuff sounds like Lyndon Johnson trying to bribe the North Vietnamese with a Tennessee Valley Authority project.

Putin said at the annual Munich Security Conference in 2008 that NATO could not go any further. Then he stole Crimea in 2014. Ukraine said let's be part of NATO. The West said -- what?

There's nothing strange with any of this. That's how countries behave.

What is wrong for the past is that the West has had no policy to deal with Russia. Russia is not going away and it will not stay militarily weak. Demonizing Putin is not a policy for dealing with Russia, it's an excuse for not having one.

Now that there is a war, only helping Ukraine helps -- Ukraine.

Tragedy it's come to this. We will never learn whether this war could have been prevented.

[mamselle]

Well, actually, there was a program, but it was derailed by greed. It died a-borning.

But the situation now, is, yes....end the war, and save Ukraine, that's all.

M.

[dismalist]

Well, actually, there was a program, but it was derailed by greed. It died a-borning.

But the situation now, is, yes....end the war, and save Ukraine, that's all.

M.

Nay, nay, nay! Fuel the war to save Ukraine.

I know it's tough to get one's head around this. War rots, but once in, ya gotta win.

si vis pacem, para bellum

[mamselle]

I do see that, as well, of course.

But things could have also been different, that's all.

M.