Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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While unsurprising you didn't make it beyond the part you didn't like to hear, it's still disappointing. I'd have been interested to hear you refute the facts he goes on to state that corroborate his opinion. James Galbraith is a highly respected economist and university professor and has been demonstrably correct about this issue since late 2022. You are neither. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's delusional nonsense continues to be cited in the Western media as reasons for why the sanctions will one distant halcyon day be effective and Galbraith is correct to run down the flaws of his thinking. If you're able to refute his concrete points instead of dismissing them before you've even heard them, go ahead.
From the last day alone there have been 2 more mainstream articles on this issue of the Russian economy. Here's CNN talking about how Russia is currently producing 3 times more artillery than the entire West combined:
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/...shell-production-us-europe-ukraine/index.html
That article is relevant because, per the video you couldn't make it through, Sonnenfeld was saying back in April 2022 that the sanctions would cripple the Russian economy/war machine and lead to Ukraine's victory by 2023. They would make it nigh-on impossible for Russia to produce weapons at the required rate. Crucially, this was also the thinking of the idiots in Washington and London who trust him as a source; colonial holdovers who believed that the world's borders start and end with "the collective West". The ONLY way Ukraine could ever have won this war was if the West succeeded in crashing the Russian economy in 2022 (this is reportedly what they promised Zelenskiy they would do if he agreed to keep fighting back in April 2022). They didn't, because to do that required getting the likes of China, India and the rest of the global south to go along with it. The result is this attritional shitshow that Ukraine is fated to lose and for which the Pope is apparently a "piece of sh*t fascist-sympathising c*nt" for stating the obvious that peace talks are required now ("BUT YOU СAN'T NEGOTIATE WITH PUTIN! HE BREAKS EVERY AGREEMENT HE EVER MAKES!" - yeah, the entire non-Western world has a 23-year track record that suggests otherwise. Putin is not the only common denominator here, but looking in a mirror is not the West's strongest point).
Here's the 2nd article from yesterday:
https://www.economist.com/finance-a...sias-economy-once-again-defies-the-doomsayers
That article is notable because it was doing very well up until the very last line. It lays out why the Russian economy keeps on "defying the doomsayers", points to its good relations with every country on earth that isn't "the West", but then ends with: "The world's pariah economy is once again back on track". There we see it again, the West's habit of refering to itself as a synecdoche for "the world". An entire article talking about how the vast majority of the planet continues to do business with Russia...and then you describe it as 'the world's pariah".
Long ago I had 2 hopes for a silver lining to this war - 1) an improvement in media literacy among Western people (that is, 26 months into this war, you see a tweet from some random moron saying "change my mind" after posting a picture of foreign flags in Ukraine like he's setting up a first XI for a football match, and you choose not to promulgate it because you recognise it's utterly imbecilic), and 2) the West will get over itself and realise it is nowhere near as powerful and influential as it imagined it was back in 2022. More importantly going foward, I hoped the West would realise why so much of the world is not going along with its agenda (spoiler alert, it's not because "they hate freedom and democracy"). Unfortunately the opposite is happening. Media literacy is as bad as it has ever been and the West continues to lead Ukraine down the garden path.
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Sonnenfeld is a character. He teaches leadership and corporate governance, so it's puzzling how he's become a go-to source in a field beyond his expertise, i.e. sanctions. His job is literally - for example to draw on a current issue - to call for Boeing senior leadership to have all of their bonuses cancelled and clawed back.
Love the peace talks are required now camp. Ukraine should supposedly talk about a peace deal which would include giving to on a part of its territory cause sure as hell Russia won't give up on it.
But Putin is portrayed as someone who's ready to talk about a peace deal after occupying a 3rd of Ukraine and bombing it every day.
I guess he's a leader who just wants to live in peace and trade with other nations.
But Putin is portrayed as someone who's ready to talk about a peace deal after occupying a 3rd of Ukraine and bombing it every day.
I guess he's a leader who just wants to live in peace and trade with other nations.
Peace in Ukraine now would essentially mean Ukraine permanently giving up its sovereignty while Putin is getting time and space to start preparing for his next adventure, probably in the Baltics. Russians and their useful idiots elsewhere are obviously happy with that scenario but Ukraine can't afford giving up now, as hard as it is with western dithering.
Ukraine-based Russian armed groups claim raids into Russia
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68541911
ATACMS for Ukraine.
Well, as long as you get to feel superior about your claimed media literacy advantage over the collective West, that's something at least.
3:00 - A final stake in the heart to the arguments of any remaining Putin apologists about the lie that Russia invaded Ukraine to stop NATO expansion. The addition of Finland alone has doubled Russian border territory with NATO countries, so if NATO was always the concern, then why hasn't Putin redeployed half of his troops in Ukraine to the Finland border ?
The west as you call it is very powerful but that needs agreement amongst all parties. Sanctions don't ever seem to work but not providing weapons is a disaster. Its like one of the reasons I hate eu countries, they talk and talk but do nothing, a stray missile on a nato country might help everyone.
Sanctions are effective if everybody take part.
The sanctions against Russia might be the hardest ever but only the US and some Western democracies are really following them. It doesn't help if China gives a damn and India imports 33x more oil from Russia than before the war.
I thought the West was controlling the insurances of the tankers. Unfortunately, this seems also to have only a minor effect on Russian oil exports as well as the introduced price cap.
Many countries of the global south more or less support Russia because they want a multipolar world. It's the reality many Europeans don't want to hear.
The sanctions against Russia might be the hardest ever but only the US and some Western democracies are really following them. It doesn't help if China gives a damn and India imports 33x more oil from Russia than before the war.
I thought the West was controlling the insurances of the tankers. Unfortunately, this seems also to have only a minor effect on Russian oil exports as well as the introduced price cap.
Many countries of the global south more or less support Russia because they want a multipolar world. It's the reality many Europeans don't want to hear.
Good. Hopefully, that will provide the Ukrainians a much-needed morale booster to hit back at the Putinist army in other areas in the next 72 hours.
It does look like it amounted to anything, so that’s unlikely.
Yeah, the world is just impatient is all. Understandable of course considering the horrors Putin is inflicting. It IS a matter of time, just talking years, not months.
It may only be me but it has been a very long time since a heavily media-covered conflict took this long until major military operations on all sides were suspended or so.
To be very honest, the level of Ukrainian resistance in the last 2 years kinda made us expect Russia would go eventually out with tails between their legs by now. FYI: China abandoned their idea of taking over Vietnam after a single month of conflict in 1979 because losses there were just not sustainable, not even to the most populous country on Earth.
Afghanistan was +20 years and ended worse off. That is why is unlikely that Putin can't win in the long run. You can't hold a country that opposes your regime. Negotiations will always be in his favour because will be de facto accepted. But Ukraine will be destroyed in the process so Ukraine is the one that needs to decide
Every single Western leader with an IQ greater than room temperature now says that this war will end at the negotiation table. Last week the CIA director William Burns visited Kiev for his 10th meeting with Zelenskiy. Yesterday, back in Washington, he gave over 2 hours of testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Here is what he said regarding the push to get the $61 billion to Ukraine (my own emphasis and underlining to illustrate the point):
"With additional funding, Ukraine should be able to regain the offensive initiative by the end of this year or early 2025. Such a shift would put Ukraine in a stronger position to negotiate with President Putin of Russia"
You see the shift in language? It's not just the amorphous "negotiation table" anymore (at which Zelenskiy has signed a law making it illegal to sit down with Putin), it specifies "President Putin of Russia". This is not accidental, this was from his scripted opening statement to the Committee. These guys are very careful with the language they use. For all you folk saying "Ukraine will never negotiate with Putin!", the CIA director is saying they will have to, and he's saying it days after meeting with Zelenskiy (a meeting incidentally that has now led to reports in Ukrainian media that Kuleba is about to be fired as foreign minister). Putin's going nowhere. 2 years ago the pipe dream was to collapse the Russian economy, reclaim all of Ukraine's territory, and cause the downfall of Putin's regime. In other words, the military defeat of Russia. Now the new shambolic masterplan is to just about keep Ukraine in the game until next year, when yet another 'counter-offensive' will attempt to "strengthen Ukraine's position at the negotiation table" (nobody during the hearing yesterday pressed Burns on whether that wasn't meant to be the point of the last 'counter-offensive' that resulted in tens of thousands more dead Ukrainians).
So you can dismiss the "peace talks camp" all you like, but you'd be dismissing everyone from Biden to Blinken to (as of yesterday) Stoltenberg (his new definition of 'Ukrainian victory' is some vague horseshit about "retaining their sovereignty").
I just watched General Pat Ryder's Pentagon press briefing from today. He was pressed on his use of the term "Ukraine must win this fight" (the question put to him was: "Do you mean win this war?"). He of course evaded the question, as they all now do. But the shift in language from "win the war" to "win this fight" is in anticipation of Ukraine eventually giving up the regions Putin has annexed. I guess Kiev and Lviv will retain some form of "sovereignty" - if "sovereignty" means "saddled with unpayable debt for generations" - and that's what the West will call a "victory" for Ukraine. Only the delusional lunatics among Zelenskiy's sprawling network of "advisers", plus irrelevant foreign ministers like the Lithuanian and Polish guys, still talk about "Ukrainian victory". Anyone of any importance knows how this is all going to end. At this stage in the war the only people who are still fooled about Ukraine's situation are those who want to be fooled (or else they're shameless senators like Richard Blumenthal and Lindsey Graham, whose primary interest now is getting their donors at Raytheon and Lockheed Martin one last big 61 billion dollar taxpayer-funded payday). I only wonder if the White House regrets hauling Mark Milley in for some political re-education back in December of 2022 when he said that then would be the best time for Ukraine to negotiate.
It's yet another example of strategic incoherence from the West. "Negotiations are futile because Putin can't be trusted...BUT, this war will inevitably end at the negotiating table with Putin representing the Russian side". If it's accepted that this war will end in negotiations with Putin then my question for Western leaders is: what exactly are you waiting for? For another 40,000 Ukrainian conscripts to die 'weakening' the Russian army for you a bit more, only to then have them agree to a peace arrangement they could have got now? For the military industrial complex to get a couple hundred more billion from the taxpayers? As I keep on asking: what on earth is the goal here? What is the strategy? Answer (per multiple Western diplomats) - there literally isn't one. They're making it up as they go along, 'led' by a total imbecile in Jake Sullivan. So when William Burns says repeatedly yesterday: "Our allies around the world are watching what we do in Ukraine", I think to myself "Yeah, I hope they are. I hope they see what a total lack of a coherent game plan you have for Ukraine, because you're up next, Taiwan".
This is certainly true about the multipolar world, but their support goes deeper than that. To take India as an example, back in 2022 the Indian foreign minister Jaishankar was on a stage fielding accusatory questions from Western media about why India continued to do business with Russia. On stage with him was Anthony Blinken who said he was there "to tell India that Russia is not a reliable partner" (the subsequent 2 years have lanced most of the condescension from Blinken). With his customary beautifully-controlled sarcasm, Jaishankar suggested that India itself would decide who has been a reliable partner for his country thoughout history, given that it was America that - for all its talk of cherishing "democracies" like India - has chosen instead to arm to the teeth a military diсtatorship on their doorstep.
This is why it was obvious to anyone with a rudimentary grasp of history that the sanctions would not work as Yellen, Biden, Blinken and that cretin Sonnenfeld said they would. The majority of the world thinks the West losing this war in Ukraine will be a good thing, and history points to why.
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Well no one cares less about the people he's supposed to rule than Putin. In terms of comparable wars, I really think you do have to go back to WW2 and Germanies expansions into Czech republic / Poland, except it didn't go as planned so he's just hanging in there or something.
Media coverage, remarkedly, is also pretty similar to those times as far as internal Russia goes.
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US foreign policy is full of terrible mistakes alienated many countries around the world.
The US always claimed to export freedom and democracy as well as to help these countries to develop but in the end they foremost were following their own interests.
Still I firmly believe out of 3 the geopolitical powerhouses, the US are by far the lesser evil.
Maybe the Indian foreign minister should have some talks with German politicians. Until March 2022 they were saying exactly the same about Russia. I'm sure today they would tell him a complete different story though.
Don't spook him, or he'll make 25th last post in this thread.
A month or two before the Ukrainian counter-attack that reclaimed lots of land in 2022, he was sitting on here and with precisely the same tone and sense of superiority mocked people for thinking that the counter-attack would ever happen or could ever work.
Oh, I know. He claimed a lot of things in his first posts that he doesn't really like to come back to.
He's much more into making predictions than verifying them and much more into decrying the state of the discourse in The West™ than he is into engaging anyone's actual arguments or adhering to his own alleged standards. When Glaston was banned I naively expected that he was going to mellow out, but no, it just meant that he needed to start finding Glaston everywhere he looks.
Phone call between Macron and Putin on 20th of February 2022. Nothing groundbreaking, but interesting to hear a conversation between 2 world leaders talking nontheless.
It also underscores how incredibly deceptive and manipulative Putin is, coming across as an honest broker to western leaders, all the while being fully committed to invading irrespective of any negotiations.
You see one post you've seen all of them.
He just wanted to play hockey and exercise.
Putin was already sounding deluded in that video. The French government people listening to the conversation had the same "WTF?" reaction that any of us had when we first heard any of Putin's talking points 2 years ago and ever since.
A genius, huh, Donald?
Remember everyone, this is all because NATO exists. Imperialism? What is that? 
I'm surprised they released this clip. Yes, the content of the phone call isn't particularly groundbreaking but still.
Oh, absolutely, because Western leaders are the epitome of 'honest brokers,' aren't they? They spun a web of lies to drag us into the Iraq war. Add to that a 20-year military holiday in Afghanistan, some sneaky business in Syria, and a bit of meddling in Libya. The results? A whole lot of death, chaos, and enough displaced people to spark a worldwide refugee crisis. If anyone's been through all that and still takes the foreign policy bigwigs at their word, they've definitely missed a memo or two!
What the war in Ukraine has really laid bare is how much we've let our production capabilities and defense industrial base erode. It's like we've been caught with our pants down. At the war's start, we were churning out 15,000 artillery shells a month. Two years down the line? We've only managed to nudge that number up to 29,000. Meanwhile, the Russians are outproducing us by 10 times. It's a bit of a joke, honestly. Making a shell costs us a whopping $5,000 to $6,000 each, but the Russians can do it for less than $400.
Remember when all the big news outlets were yelling about how Russia was just a bunch of corrupt officials running a shell of a military? Turns out, we're the ones burning money 10 times faster than they are. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
And then there's all this talk about sending more aid to Ukraine to 'weaken Russia.' But from where I'm standing, it looks like every move we've made has only beefed up the Red Army. They're cranking out military gear like nobody's business, becoming tougher against sanctions, and looking more ready to throw down than they were two years ago. Biden's big talk at the start? It's all boomeranged. He was all about diminishing Russian strength and preventing their war-waging capabilities. On the contrary, Russia now boasts a larger, more weaponized, and battle-hardened military, especially adept at countering Western armaments.
Economically, too, Biden's promise to crush Russia with sanctions has turned into a bit of a punchline. Their economy's outpacing the G7, while our friends in Europe are taking the hit. Talk about a plan backfiring.
And don't get me started on the humanitarian side. Biden said we'd ease the Ukrainians' suffering. Instead, we've dug them into a deeper hole with this proxy war and our 'fight to the last Ukrainian' stance (to quote Lindsay and Mitch). It's led to a disaster: over 10 million people, mostly women and kids, have fled the country. Half a million casualties. And with a chunk of the population being non-working pensioners, we're staring at the demographic collapse of Ukraine.
So, when you take a step back and look at it all, it's been a disaster. Yet, you can bet the media will keep on weaving stories about how more aid, some shiny new weapons, or a fresh counteroffensive is going to turn things around. Always another glittering story to keep us hooked.
This ain't new content - this was released a few years ago, perhaps a few months after the Russian invasion.
Alright, I don't remember that. I only remember a phone call with Zelensky on day 1 of the invasion.
Love your post, this is the best part. So its the West fault for all this not Russia. If West has just let Russia do their thing it would be over in weeks and there would be peace? Or better yet with sending arms the West is prolonging the war, the same war Russians actually want to end I guess.
Its not Russia's fault millions of people are fleeing and there are half a million casulties its the west who dragged blameless Russia into war who just wanted peace and normal life. Poor, old Russia.
I guess if Trump becomes president it all comes true, I hope he'll end all this suffering with a peace deal in which Ukraine will let go of its territory. But ups Putin doesnt really want to talk peace now his army has the initiative. He supposedly wanted that only when things werent so rosy, but most probably it was just a propaganda to portray the West as the real agressor.
It seems to me it makes you excited while you write about the mighty Red Army.
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Not really surprising. Russia turned their economy into a war economy.
Same reason again. A war economy is more or less self-sufficient. The demand for new weapons, ammunition and equipments is unlimited. Russia prints ruble and parts of their industry are flourishing. Necessary foreign currencies they get through the exports of gas, oil and other resources, which the Western sanctions couldn't hurt much as India and China stent following.
I firmly believe Putin's real trouble will start, when he had to reverse the switch from war economy to a normal economy which is much harder to do.
At this point he's just wumming.
This is what all the pro-Russia comments always come down to, in the end. From @DT12 to @Suedesi, from Trump to Orbán, it's the same: they're telling everyone to give up on Ukraine and let Russia win. That's all there is to it. Every argument about how wonderful Russia's economy is, all the handwringing about the West and the feigned concern about Ukrainian casualties, each condescending remark amounts to the same thing: Russia should be allowed to win and do as they see fit with Ukraine.
Once Putin turns to the Baltic states, these people will be back with the exact same message.