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For what it's worth, the general opinion of many hardcore pro-war Russian commenters that I've seen is quite different. They think that Putin should have launched a full-scale invasion in 2014 but was too cowardly and too dependent on connections with the West to do it, that he was very conflicted about intervening in the DNR/LNR back in 2014 and would have been happy with just Crimea, and that he then spent the next 8 years trying to reach a de-escalation with the West on the matter of Ukraine while failing to take the steps that would have been necessary to prepare the Russian army for a war of this scale. Steps like replacing his loyal cronies with competent leaders, expanding production of drones, and so on. Also that he is too closely connected with oligarchs who own property in the West and send their kids to live there, hence has no desire to enter into a true confrontation with the West and was always hoping that the West would agree to, at most, have a little proxy war with him in Ukraine that would not threaten any serious break in relations.
If this view of things is accurate, I could add as an immediate corollary that last February, Putin was hoping to have a quick shock and awe campaign that would quickly result in Ukraine offering concessions so that the whole thing could get de-escalated and the West would put up with the fait accompli. Which of course deeply misunderstands how ideologically committed Western foreign policy makers are to defending Ukraine, but it would not be the first time that Russians misunderstood the West. In any case, when the shock and awe campaign turned into a clusterfuck, Putin's only choices were either a humiliating withdrawal or to expand things into the full-scale war that he never wanted.
In short, many Russian hawks believe that far from being a careful long term aggressive planner with a strategy for seriously threatening NATO, Putin is actually a cautious and incompetent leader who has never been willing to confront the West in a serious way until he had a bit of a change of heart sometime around 2-3 years ago, but even then was not ready or able to do what it would really take to succeed and instead blundered into the current situation. Now, I am not saying that this view of things is necessarily true. But it is an interesting other perspective on things.
In any case, I think that Poland is almost certainly out of the question. The Russian army has barely managed to take the relatively small parts of Ukraine that it currently controls and simply does not have the strength to take on Poland's military in open combat while at the same time fighting Ukraine. And that is before we even get to the whole matter of NATO's Article 5, which there is close to 100% chance would be invoked if Russia attacked Poland and would mean either a swift defeat of Russia's conventional forces or nuclear war.
All that said, I did not think that Putin would invade last February, nor did I think that the Russian army would be quite as incompetent as they were, so take everything I say about this with a grain of salt.
I don’t think this narrative is accurate at all.
Putin had connections to the oligarchy during his rise to power. Anyone who would’ve attempted to climb that mountain would’ve had to have dealings of one kind or another with them at some point. There’s no avoiding that. But once he got in, he broke the back of the oligarchy quite thoroughly. Whether you want to say he just replaced it with his own well connected inner circle, is another matter, but that isn’t the point.
Putin never had a desire to annihilate Ukraine and go to war with it. There’s nothing that actually substantiates that, beyond people’s mere speculation. There’s nothing nobody can point to directly that’s the smoking gun which establishes that intent. Victims of the MSM and the American propaganda system loved to go around initially and proclaim, “Putin is losing the war! Their military is overreaching! They’ve overspent themselves!,” but it never dawned on them for even a moment that Putin was never trying to go full Mike Tyson on Ukraine.
The fog of propaganda is ‘dense’. On both sides. I think this comment doesn’t crack through the effort of the west’s attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of its citizens.
It's clearly absurd to think that the current situation is one that Putin wanted. Whatever he was trying to achieve, it wasn't this.
I don't think his desire was to annihilate Ukraine, to be clear. I don't even think his initial goal was to annex Ukraine. I think his desire was to kill Zelensky and install Yanukovych as a friendly leader. Obviously things didn't work out the way he wanted and we're now on plan D or something.
True, and I agree with that. But that argument has a very small payload, and I don’t accept that framing of the issue. I think if you look at it more through a geopolitical and International Relations (IR) lens, ask yourself what Putin should’ve done if you were in his situation. I can’t think of a good decision to make either, but his hands were tied.
Did you know that Yanukovych was the democratically elected President of Ukraine before the western backed Maidan coup happened?
I don't believe for a second that this was an inevitable war forced on a reluctant Putin. He had choices at every point - the most important of course being the choice to invade Ukraine, which he could have simply not done. Now, he may have decided that war was the best path forward for his interests - and maybe that was even a rational decision based on the information he had at the time. He certainly wouldn't have been alone in thinking that Ukraine would not be able to put up much of a fight. But I highly suspect that if he had known the path that the future would take, he would have chosen differently.
His hands were not tied. He made a decision - and it was the wrong decision.
Yes. I'm also extremely confident he no longer has popular support in Ukraine.
How do you choose to interpret the Minsk Accords? If the west is unwilling to respect your security concerns. The problem I see in your logic is that it fails to take the Russia side of the equation seriously. This is why I ask you the same question the pro-western side can’t answer either. Given the events leading up to the crisis, if you were Putin, what would you have done?
Interesting that you seem to suggest coups can be justified in light of this logic. It wouldn’t surprise me why the west would believe it. That’s the inherent nature of political hypocrisy and duplicity. But it’s also good to know that disputing democratic elections is now in vogue if the vote goes the wrong way. The US proved that when it disputed the results of the people in Donetsk and Luhansk.
If Russia would invade and conquer Spain they would complain about security concerns posed by Portugal.
Russia's problem is that they want to be treated as superpower. They are not. That is why West refused to treat their demands seriously (and they demanded for example demilitarization of Poland and similar nonstarters).
Try to unfuck Russia. Starting from stealing less.
Definitely avoid speedrunning population collapse in Ukraine and Russia by increasing scope of ongoing war.
Yes, for example I am 100% fine with couping genocidal leaders, also when they were elected as long as there is plausible less murderous alternative. (note: not claiming that this specific one was genocidal, just giving a clear example where it would be blatantly correct if alternatives were exhausted)
I am not treating democracy procedures as the highest virtue. Note that in this specific cases current ruler had no support from population. Whether Maidan was a coup or not is an interesting question BTW.
Ukraine isn't Spain and wanting your security concerns to be respected w/re to a country which is on your border and <300mi from your capital isn't demanding someone pretend you're a superpower, but pretend you're a country with any sovereignty whatsoever, something which is clearly a bridge too far for the US and its satrapies.
there is no serious argument that Russia, or any country, doesn't have legitimate security concerns in what happens in the country directly on its border and arguing a country claiming such is akin to demanding the world treat them as a superpower is nonsense
are you under the impression that Russia is not far more unfucked now under Putin than before he came to power?
Russia swallowing up over 10,000,000 ethnic russians seems to be a good strategy to stave off population collapse
What pro-russian or at least neutral, non-Western sources of information do you use to form your opinion about this topic?
That exact same argument would apply to Ukraine. Are they justified in treating every dead Russian as a slight reduction to “security concerns?” Maybe they should have invaded first.
Russia isn’t playing at being a superpower because they have security interests. Everyone has those. They’re playing it because they’re acting on them in a way that normal powers either can’t or won’t.
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