And these are the kind of pointless dumb western tweets that just make things worse. It's so pointless and dumb, that you just have to wonder who and why put it out there. The US knows full well that Russia can't fully invade Ukraine currently.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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And these are the kind of pointless dumb western tweets that just make things worse. It's so pointless and dumb, that you just have to wonder who and why put it out there. The US knows full well that Russia can't fully invade Ukraine currently.
Yeah, he doesn’t need Donbass on its own. I did hope that they would find a compromise although and someone would budge in before it escalates to a full-time war.
Much like the splinter regions in Georgia and Moldova, the Donbas is much more useful for Putin as a part of Ukraine than Russia. It blocks Ukraine from joining NATO and likely the EU as well.
You could also argue that controlling up to the east of the dnepir is a nice strategic buffer from NATO. If Ukraine did join nato, it could control/remove that buffer without interference.
I think Odessa is also a big problem for Putin, but that he's too risk averse to solve it.
At this point, I think the Russians are reasonably aware of how compromised their intel operations are.
I’m sure he’s absolutely fuming about the leaks.
what what? Surely that was clear enough? If you want to understand something, don't get your info on twitter, facebook or other social media. Particularly not for fast-developing crisis.
This whole US strategy is a very interesting topic. The first question is has something similar been done before?
The other interesting aspects is that to work it is partially depending upon creditability, at least as far as all the other observers in the world are concerned. Russia will know or not if the claims match their intentions and operations. But for everyone else the credibility rests on 2 things it seems: that what we know about US intelligence capabilities leads us to believe that they would be able to know about Russian intentions and plans, and that we don't think the US is outright fabricating/lying.
It's interesting that they're still getting credibility on all of this not being fabricated given the Iraq WMD situation. I think its resting on the fact that the US is on the defensive side to a degree in this instance, and also that they've already made clear that they don't intend to directly intervene here if it kicks off. From that position I think people perceive that there's little value for them in just fabricating claims. If they're proven wrong by Russia not invading then it is seen as little to no harm done. In that case you'd just wonder if the strategy could work again, or if they'd get into a "boy who cried wolf" situation?
"Unfortunately yes". Not sure he feels that unfortunate.
I’m still very skeptical about this. Mostly they’ve escalated the conflict week after week by putting Ukraine at risk — if Russia doesn’t invade, U.S. behavior stopped the threat, if Russia did invade… we told you so. And what did they leak exactly in the end? That Russia was going to stage a fake attack by Ukraine to righteously step up to defend poor Donbas & Lugansk? I mean, I could’ve told that to you in the summer or 5 years ago, given that I knew that the invasion was going to happen for a fact.
What you wrote is what perplexed me. I do think that there is value because people from the start decided that if no invasion happened, it would be the result of the leaks and not of the initial intentions. It's a win-win situation for the US which is quite something when everyone knows that the US will have no issue lying-fabricating.
They did get Russia to simultaneously declare it wont invade and even claim withdrawal and go in the next day (if latest report is accurate).
Yeah, the whole entirety of Russian media are on it after months/weeks of laughing off the potential escalation of this as a non-possibility. I don’t think that this is going to stop now, the wheels are in motion. Shit.
On that, the other day I didn't mention something that the french defense minister and made me chuckle. Apparently Putin and Lavrov kept saying everything and its opposite during their conversation with himself, Macron or Scholz.
Yeah, and? Russia would’ve always state that they don’t have any plans of invading before suddenly witnessing some horrible war crimes committed against people of DNR/LNR and jumping in to protect them with conveniently placed army battalions fully equipped for a large-scaled military campaign.
What is the word among Russian people? The ones I’ve spoken to, don’t particularly seem to care that much.
I get that alarmism would be increasing tensions and detrimental if it was made out of thin air, or "stretching" very circumstantial evidence. But its not the case here is it? Russia hasn't even offered that strong a denial I feel. Their denial is more "the troops are training, I won't invade... but we really really need to talk about my security concerns. Also here's an essay about Ukraine being historically part of Russia". It's not convincing at all.
But I'm all ears if I misunderstood what you meant.
Russia will state that, but the public inside Russia may make the connection that its extremely unlikely Ukraine deicded to escalate in this very moment, and its kind of a miraculous coincidence that this all happened when the west said it will. Also, this discredits Russia in bigger way internationally which may impact future negotiations.
So from your point of view the US is doing this just to claim a win on a matter where the outcome was always going to be the same (no invasion)?
I doubt there are many from the Russian leaks.
You said that there is little value in lying and to that I said that there is value to lying, damaging Russia's position diplomatically a little bit more is valuable and if what you say isn't verifiable then you can actually lie particularly when Russia has little credibility.
I'm not telling you that it's my point of view of the situation, just that hypothetically there is value in lying and a pretty big value.
Why? You think Russians wouldn’t have been infiltrated by the US?
I’m not talking about them stating that Russia is planning an attack. I’m talking about weird either very specific or very vague leaks about the potential dates or provocations that, by Raoul’s estimations, we’re supposed to spook Putin because of their scary accuracy… it turned into a farce, especially when they were asked for even a bit of evidence. I simply don’t think that U.S. had acted in the interest of deescalating that conflict — they, just like Putin, pushed their argument as far as possible, trying to force him to fold. Because U.S. doesn’t lose much in any outcome — if Putin backs off, they’ve managed to bully one of the biggest players in the world by words alone; if Putin invades, they’ve told the world about it weeks/months ago (who cares about the details).
Again — U.S. didn’t initiate this conflict and no way their involvement here is comparable to Russia’s. But it served only its own interests (despite, as usual, acting high & mighty), willingly putting Ukraine at risk — so it shouldn’t get out of this situation with a round of applause.
It’s highly unlikely that the actual plans were shared in advance with anyone outside of the immediate circle. Although you should never underestimate stupidity of people involved in such operations, as we’ve seen with Navalny’s poisoners and Salisbury spire-watchers.
Nah, as someone from inside Russia, no one would care about that coincidence. Those that would believe the version about Ukrainian invasion would believe anything — those that won’t believe it wouldn’t have believed it even if the West wasn’t warning us all that this will happen.
Fair enough , if you say there is no middle ground left any longer.
The ones I've spoken to are apathetic. But generally know a person or more in the army, so if bodybags start coming home, that'll change I guess.
Agreed.
It's either Lingard or Maguire.
The whole thing gained traction by being consistently fuelled from two sides, neither of which was Ukraine. Russia wanted to minimise NATO's influence etc., U.S. needed to showcase its power after the fiasco at Afghanistan — hence the very active (albeit, very different) participation from both sides in that weird confrontation.
The ideal scenario for U.S. would be to make this thing as big as it possibly get and then resolve it by diplomatic means. The main issue is that if everything goes tits up like it did now, U.S. doesn't really lose that much — certainly not in terms of the reputation. So it was willing to push it as far as possible, despite Ukraine asking them (well, and the collective West but U.S. spearheaded that movement) not to. Russia is the aggressor but U.S. willingly played a very risky game — the issue is that it wasn't risky for them, it was for Ukraine.
Around me it's kind of a doomed hopeless apathy — to be fair it had formed before the whole Ukraine crisis but it only adds up. Others try not to think about it, hoping that it simply won't happen. I haven't met with anyone who would be enthusiastic or even optimistic about it but it's understandable as someone with those political views would unlikely appear anywhere near my social circle.
Still, where’s US involvement here? Besides simply leaking the intel to try and prevent the inevitable attack as it won’t go into direct confrontation? It’s only Russia who’s pushing here, wtf.
Passport numbers redux.Wonder what @antihenry would be saying about this right now.