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tl;dr some quick attempts to get inside the mindset at the Kremlin concerning events in the war, in the run-up to Putin's speech expected in a few hours. Everything below could be immediately and awkwardly falsified if he announces some desperate escalation like general mobilisation or a nuclear strike against a Ukrainian military target.
Ever since the Ukrainian successes in the northeastern campaign, I've been trying to get inside the mindset of the Kremlin to figure out what their likely response is.
One thing that is almost certainly true (and easily underestimated) is that they are in their own psychological bubble, and there is no elite team of intelligence operatives whose primary job is to give Putin objective analysis. Human minds don't work that way: we easily form fenced-off epistemic communities that downplay our shameful fears and play up our pride. You can even see this reading the reports of US decision-making throughout the Cold War, when interservice rivalry ran hot and the USAF nuclear strategy advisors were giving opinions based not on what was in humanity's interests or even the USA's, but instead what would get them the most planes and status compared to the army and navy. And of course, you can see it easily on reddit, even getting a rush of ideological whiplash as you flit from one politically aligned sub to another.
(What about people like Girkin? Well, he's a doomer, and an outsider, and his criticisms are mostly quite careful. As far as I've noticed, he talks about the conduct of the war, not the wisdom in initiating it in the first place; or he says that Russia should be more committed, without once questioning whether the war is winnable even with full commitment.)
Given all the above, I think a useful and necessary starting point for understanding Russia's position is to try to imagine what your view would be if Russia's strategic situation was a lot better than you probably currently think it is (this is one reason why contrarian posters are valuable to any subreddit that takes itself intellectually seriously).
What does this involve? Maybe it means you think that Ukrainian morale is weak. Maybe you think that the EU is less united than it appears, and winter will be harder than Europeans are prepared for. Maybe you think that the United States is being opportunistic and will drop Ukraine without looking back when the conflict starts to swing back Russia's way. Above all, you're probably convinced that there won't be another breakthrough like in Kharkiv oblast: that was a one off, heads have rolled, and now discipline and morale have been restored to the troops. Reinforcements are coming in, Iran is sending useful drones, and the forthcoming referenda will encourage a surge of volunteers from the DPR and LPR.
Let's say that you, like Putin, were in the grip of this relative sunny outlook. What would follow from it for your reflections on the wider strategy of the conflict?
Above all, I think you would be aiming to take the long view of things, because the fundamentals are on your side. Forget today's battles and next week's offensives - focus on longer-term military-industrial capacity, and associated active measures in the Russian and foreign populations. You probably don't want to risk a general mobilisation - that might compromise your longer-term war fighting ability - but you want to get as many new volunteers as possible, ideally from less economically active areas of the country. And finally, nuclear weapons wouldn't be on the table; after all, you're winning this war, albeit more slowly and less gloriously than you'd hoped. Why would you risk alienating friends and allies and giving NATO a chance to intervene?
But you might ask, at what point does this Pollyanna-Putin outlook begin to crumble? When does the filter bubble burst, and Putin has his Downfall-style meltdown? When Ukraine liberates Kherson? Lysychansk? Donetsk? Sevastopol? I think the only answer we can give here is that people in general are very bad at facing up to uncomfortable realities, and can keep themselves from accepting painful truths for their entire lives if necessary. Or think of psychologist's Leon Festinger's now famous work on cognitive dissonance on doomsday cults: when the doomsday prophecy fails, people will go to great lengths to avoid accepting that they've been duped. I expect Putin to go out the same way, with his final thoughts being confidence that Russia can still be victorious, even as he has an unfortunate fall from a window.
("What about you doglatine? Why are you so sure that Putin's the one in the filter bubble rather than you?" Answer: Well, I've been trying to make clear predictions throughout this conflict both online and to my circle of geopolitics friends - this post is in that same vein - and I'd say I'm fairly well calibrated so far in terms of events on the ground. Part of the appeal of making explicit predictions is to try to break yourself out of these epistemic lagoons in the first place. All that said, I recognise that of course I'm in a filter bubble, sometimes through deliberate choice (once the novelty value wears off, it's just not fun to consume propaganda you disagree with). But even if my intentions were pure, filter bubbles are all but inescapable. Usually the best you can hope for is to get good at spotting the early signs of a bubble collapse so you can make a clean exit with your life savings and a modicum of your dignity intact. But that's far easier said than done)
In any case, I am curious what others think.
I think any analysis that focuses on the internal mental states and thoughts of other people is doomed. It's a mistake I made myself just prior to this conflict, in which I could not envision what could possibly motivate Putin to invade Ukraine. Suitably chastened, I'll restrict my analysis to the best facts we have, which at current point are:
1: Ukraine has held. You can blame western weapons and aid if you want, but the point is the Ukrainian people have used that aid to hold off the Russians. All the military aid in the world didn't do shit for the Iraqis or Afghans, because they had no nationalistic impulse to bind them together. Ukraine is finding and founding their national myths for the future, if they survive.
2: With the recent offensive, the Ukrainian military has proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they can run a competent conventional military offensive operation, which isn't nearly as simple as civilians might think. What's more, it has worked at least to some significant degree. Once again, you can blame western weapons or badly trained Russian troops, but both those things are realities.
Early on, I was fairly pessimistic about Ukrainian chances in a stand-up war with Russia, and I think the fundamentals do still favor Russia. But we are seeing the cracks in this consensus idea. Yes, Russia could mobilize fully, but will their economic and political system withstand the strain? Yes, they could nuke, but that doesn't solve their problem. They're trying to annex this territory, after all. What is becoming clear is that without committing significantly more resources to the fight, Russia is not on track to defeat Ukraine outright. We don't know if Ukraine can continue their offensive, or repeat their success, but the idea that Russia can ignore their military capability is now dead. Beyond that, speculation can take a man anywhere he wants to go.
I think you always need to try to think how other people are thinking. I believe the Great Don Vito Corleone said something like that along with The Art of War.
I will admit to being wrong on Putins mental state. I thought he was a cold but rational master strategist. Perhaps he was once that and in old age he’s slipping.
I thought Russian elites want to live in the west once they have money (still think this is largely true) and Putin was largely one of those people.
I thought Russia would largely be happy atleast the elites with making money selling commodities to the west.
One thing is the worlds gotten weird since COVID. Far more irrational decision making. So many weird things. Academics not being willing to break certain ideological lines. News that seems purely propaganda. Riots in American cities over largely fake stats. Republicans having a legitimate riot - largely expected something like the boring normal gop tea party protest. China seems to be killing themselves with zero COVID. San Francisco and Chicago giving up their livable pro-business governance with an agreement they pay public sector workers well and turning into poop city and in Chicagos case unlivable actual murder/theft on the business class.
Honestly sometimes it just seems like lockdowns rotted everyone’s brains.
In Putin's case, I blame oil prices giving him delusions of Russia being great again, or at least having the opportunity to project its power with minimal consequences. That led to the South Ossetian war, which scared many Ukrainians, but probably not enough to make them consider joining the EU/NATO if oil prices had remained high. The 2014 invasion of Ukraine happened to occur at the end of the 2011-2014 oil price spike, right before the 2014-2016 dip. That intervention would presumably have gone easier for Russia if oil prices had remained high for a decade or more. That intervention created a series of entanglements that Putin cannot free Russia from without losing face on a regime-threatening scale.
January 2022-February 2022 saw crude oil prices return to a little above their trend levels. Maybe Putin thought that, if he could act when oil prices were at the start of a 3-5 year boom, this would give him the room to sort things out in Ukraine. Of course, he also underestimated Ukrainian resistance, but a lot of rational and well-informed people did that. I mean, I did that, and I'm the smartest, most well-informed, and most handsome person I know.
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I have a mental model of Putin that I believe has held up well, though I can't claim anything like complete predictive power. I think his goals are Russian-nationalist; his preferred methods are more security-state than economic; and his beliefs include survival requires growth.
The post-Cold-War 90s were a massive paradox, nowhere more sharply felt than Russia. If you'd asked a Soviet citizen of the late 70s or early 80s, "imagine the range of possible outcomes where the USSR decisively loses the Cold War within the next 10-15 years," the real outcome would have been dismissed as a ludicrously optimistic drug-induced fever dream. At the same time, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting economic chaos in Russia were deeply traumatic on a societal level.
When Putin came to power, he was looking at a cratered population replacement rate that by the numbers predicted that Russia would not be a viable nation-state by 2100. Reversing this trend became his life's work. In order to create a Russia that would choose to produce the next generation, Putin needed to rebuild a sense of pride and accomplishment that had been savagely damaged by the failure and collapse of the Soviet Union. Not only had the Cold War ended in Soviet defeat, it had ended with an American triumph, and the prosperity-bordering-on-decadence of the American 90s only made the Russian dislocations cut more deeply. I don't know to what extent Putin's anti-Americanism is ideological, but I think it's sufficiently explained by a strategic choice to build up Russian confidence by undermining American successes and pushing for American failures.
(A sadly common mistake in the US is to insist on putting Putin in our cultural context rather than his own. "Putin is a Trump supporter! Putin is a fan of Hillary!" No. Putin prefers Putin and/or Russia. To the extent that he cares about American leadership, he'd prefer the self-sabotage of poor decisions generally, and any policy choices that gives him a freer hand to operate elsewhere.)
In the case of Ukraine, I think Putin was taking steps to re-establish Russian Great Power status by enforcing a sphere of influence. I was also quite surprised by his full-bore invasion including a major strike towards Kyiv; I thought he'd continue the salami-slicing tactics of the past 10 years in Georgia and Crimea, this time with the Donbass as his target. Evidently, he decided that the Western non-response to the salami-slicing indicated a weakness that he was free to exploit with escalation to large scale conquest. He was wrong, on a great number of levels.
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I think the idea is to use the troops to secure the "1000 km of frontline" to prevent any more Kharkivs and then just continue the slow methodical grind in Donbass (and other parts of the four oblasts they don't yet hold?). It's not going to be a tactic for conquering entire Ukraine, but I don't think that's in the cards, unless there's some complete collapse or something else changing the picture considerably. (Though Belarus joining in or a sudden surprise attack in the Northern front areas Ukraine has retaken might change the picture considerably.)
On the topic of securing lines: any comment on Finns and Balts blocking escape for Russians who flee mobilization, Latvians allegedly even planning deportation for residence permit holders? I mean, is this just reflecting the popular desire to inflict punishment on Ruskies cost be damned, or that old chestnut that «if we force them to stay, they'll effect a regime change»?
Because I guarantee you that there will be no bottom-up regime change. They'll just get caught, drafted, trained and sent to fight in Ukraine.
"Russians do not care their country is hurting Ukrainians" => "Finns/Balts do not care their country is hurting Russians"
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Sigh. What needs to be understood about this issue that the border thing is not a new issue for Finland; it goes back to the summer, expect back then it was not about draft dodgers or regime opponents, simply about why the Finnish border was open for hordes of tourists, at least stereotypically your stolid "non-political" middle class, seeing it as their sovereign right to continue cross-border shopping or use Helsinki to go on an Italian flight despite all this war business and of course getting into very non-political fights with Ukrainian refugees in Finland while doing so.
The Finnish government indicated that it sees this as a problem and wants to end this tourism, but it can't do so, since there's a law issue, and Finnish governance is all about being sticklers about formal procedure and following laws and regulations to the letter. This thread by Finnish nationalist politician explains this tendency and its roots quite well, though I disagree with him on whether the border closure would have actually done anything to destabilize Russia ("When the Russian middle-class cannot go on holiday they'll overthrow Putin etc.").
This issue continued to build up, in large part because it has provided a good populist attack vector for Finland's right-wing opposition bent on accusing the Finnish center-left gov't of being weak on Russia and also in part because it has led to our little brother nation Estonians and other Baltics calling Finland an unreliable ally. This rose to a fever pitch just before Putin's mobilization announcement, making it all but impossible for border closure proponents even consider backing down and making it even harder for the Finnish government to maintain "b-but... the law..." position. Any arguments that now the border-crossers are going to be mobilization dodgers are just going to be met with newly-minted claims that since Putin and Shoigu implied that it's West that Russia is at war with, young Russian males crossing the border might just be destabilization agents and a danger to Finland.
Anyway, one more proper argument that I'd say might have weight is that if the intent is mobilizing 300 000 soldiers and the task has been delegated down to regions with quotas, any potential mobilization avoiders fleeing abroad might just mean that the positions they might have filled in the quota would just be filled by some poor schlubs who don't have the money to utilize this option.
In Russia there exists a meme that Russia has no middle class...
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There's a further issue, which I didn't see mentioned here, of being a long-term casus belli by Putin or similar russian nationalists.
Putin has repeatedly used ethnic russians as pretexts to intervene, or threaten intervention, around the region. Much of the pre-February rhetoric from Moscow on multiple fronts could be leveraged against Russia's more northern neighbors, which was one of the reasons Europe reacted as strongly as it did when Putin followed through with his threats with actual invasion. Just from this angle, significantly increasing the Russian national population in the border states- who are almost certainly going to locate themselves to the ethnic russian enclaves- strengthens an ethnic-based framing of a future pre-conflict narrative.
Further, there's also a point about what sort of Russians would be coming to reside in Finland/border states. Before this week, you could at least make an argument that these people were the minority of Russians who actively opposed the war, and were signalling their sincerity by leaving at cost to themselves. But these were the exceptions for a reason- among which being that most Russians, apolitical nationalist as they were, maintained high approval polling of Russian nationalist incursions in the region without issue, ie the potential threat against Finland or others... up unto the moment it potentially involved them.
If you work from the general assessment that Putin's approval numbers are genuinely high and representative of Russian people, and that these new would-be migrants are representative, they're drawing from the same overlapping ven diagram. These are not anti-imperialists who were committing to not associating with imperialism at personal cost, these are drawing from passively supportive imperialists who are only not associating with imperialism because it risks a personal cost... and who, if safe from that cost, have no history/credibility that they won't just go right back to vaguely supporting russian imperialism, only from inside the border territories where they could serve as a casus belli.
Is it a generalization? Sure. But it nests on real security threats (Putin using Russian ethnic ties as a basis for unprovoked war), and with a presumed- and at least not disproven- demographic overlap of the very target audience who have been passively supporting such revaunchism through political support so long as the nationalist element didn't harm them.
Now, one could make an argument that this compliant and low-pain tolerance is why they should be accepted- that they wouldn't be willing to tolerate social pressure opposing their nationalism- but this is where we go back to where they would likely go (existing or new Russian enclaves), what they could do wittingly or unwittingly (be sanctuary/support for Russian destabilization efforts), and whether they'd default back to Russian nationalism if social pressure from non-Russian social pressure targetted them.
I think this is a non-issue that gets propped up as a convenient justification for visa bans, and has no real significance whatsoever.
Wars are fought with soldiers, planes, tanks and missiles, not with flimsy excuses. Providing or withholding such excuses does nothing to help or harm the enemy. Suppose there were zero Russians or Russian-speaking people in Ukraine this February. Would it stop Putin from declaring the war? No. Would it make things harder for Russia on the international diplomacy angle? No. Would it stop Russian tanks from rolling into Ukraine? No. Would it make harder for Putin’s propaganda to boost support for the war among the Russian citizens? No; in fact it would make things easier because an important anti-war thesis is that the Russian army is essentially bombing Russian-speaking cities.
The pro-war thesis is that Russia is bombing Russian-speaking cities because they're held by anti-Russian oppressors, oh and that it's the anti-Russian nazis who are doing the worst bombing anyway.
The counterpoint to 'propaganda doesn't matters' is that the Russians expend significant amounts of time, resources, and center much of their international diplomatic strategy around it. They seem to think it matters, and the Russians will base their decisions on what they think is important, not what you think is a non-issue.
Propaganda can manufacture any other cause and work with it, they’d just say the Ukrainians planned to retake Crimea and roll with that.
Or remember the time they invented an insane conspiracy theory about NATO plotting to attack Russia with biological weapons developed in secret bio labs in Ukraine? That would work too
Putin doesn’t need a proper casus belli to start a war. He doesn’t need democratic approval; international legitimacy is a lost cause for him, so not a factor too (contrary to Hitler w.r.t. Sudetenland, for instance)
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This looks like another serving of your isolated rigor. Not so long ago you jeered about Russian incapability to respond to possible blockade of Kaliningrad due to exhaustion of troops and materiel, especially in the region; now you mention the threat of draft dodgers (drafted, to begin with, due to further exhaustion) becoming an «oppressed minority» pretext for invasion (of a soon to be NATO country). Which army will be doing that? And army of which state, seeing as Russia isn't likely to survive this?
"loading Dean model"
So how exactly do they change incentives for another invasion? Will this framing be recognized as legitimate by any party of interest, after Ukraine? Certainly not, unless long COVID makes us all unable to form long-term memories.
Is an invasion likely to be assisted from within by those who noped out of the current round of imperialist adventurism? I don't think so.
Will this pretext be recognized as less far-fetched than one relying on already-present Russian minorities who are clear civilians and not draft-dodgers? That's 1/4th of Latvian population, by the way. It will not. (From what I can tell, many of those Latvian Russians are USSR nostalgists, despise their host country and their disenfranchisement/deportation would be prudent, and same for their ilk in other countries; but this is another issue, and their genesis is different too)
Anyway, I have one idea about precluding this scenario: don't give them citizenship or long-term permits. (Nobody intended to, of course.) And needless to say they could be kicked out once the war is over.
Adjudicating their morality and stance on the war can be done on a more or less effortful case-by-case basis. Few of them will be ideological peaceniks willing to emigrate at personal cost just to protest etc., but few people ever deviate from vague my-country-right-or-wrong and my-family-comes-first mentality. Hopefully Europeans can tell a gopnik who pissed his imperial pants once asked to walk the walk from an autistic guy who's been learning Portuguese and Leetcoding the last six months (such as a few of my pals left behind); a 15-minute pen and paper test could suffice.
More importantly, this isn't only about them and their would-be hosts. All of them are non-combatants for now. In case of Europeans proceeding to assist the mobilization, they are getting drafted and sent down South as reinforcements.
I don't buy your long-term explanation. What's being done is pure unstrategic pettiness and moral grandstanding.
And if this is grand strategy, it's one you tactfully decided not to bring up: safer for Finns and Balts to have them die killing Ukrainians.
They could do all these things. My impression is that most Latvians just have an instinctive reaction – Russians bad therefore we shouldn't let them in even if they are avoiding being sent to Ukraine to kill more Ukrainians. No one really wants to think deeper because that would require one to compare which is the lesser risk – allowing more Russians into the country or risking them to be sent to Ukraine. Covid experience have taught us that such nuanced thinking is too complicated for policy makers. They operate more on the level of Idiocracy – covid bad, make lockdowns (electrolytes good, give plants electrolytes).
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Could you give me an example of what "Russia doesn't survive this" as a scenario looks like, both in terms of how that phrase cashes out and how we get from here to there?
I can, but it deserves an effortpost. Basically, it's not so different from late stage Russian Empire and USSR, only more dystopian, and it'll be scripted on the basis of Kamil Galeev's wet dreams.
It starts with war exhaustion in the ethnic provinces and far periphery (Saha, Dagestan...), provoking sabotage and conspiring in draft avoidance, which then grows into collective scorn for Moscow loyalists who fight against it, and general insubordination to the federal center. This provokes relocating additional police and, soon after, interior troops there, which exposes economically precarious Russian provinces to organized crime, that has been symbiotically coexisting with local administration.
Economy keeps tumbling down; military expenses grow; infrastructure and social services decay, perhaps evoking petty crime and protests of feeble desperate pensioners that need to be put down; everyone with half a brain tries to flee, increasing the load on border patrols and such; Ukraine/NATO keep crossing «red lines» without nuclear response, eroding the credibility of threats; manpower wanes, and less prestigious interior troops too are getting consumed by the war effort – when they fail to provide a quota of conscripts from a province. At some point, state capacity is overextended so much that there's no effective control over a region with a particularly capable criminal or ethnic leadership, nor political will to subjugate it, and it gets ignored by propaganda, like the Ukrainian bombing of Belgorod is mostly ignored now. And those new local elites decide that they needn't be burdened by the toxic Muscovite brand, nor bear the cost of sanctions. They either declare independence outright, or stop paying taxes and begin to surreptitiously trade with international actors cutting out Moscow middlemen. When it becomes clear that Moscow cannot put this down, it sets off a chain reaction and economically, logistically, demographically handicaps Moscow even more.
Soon, the breakdown of order in the interior army begins as local regimens decide that they can be paid as well by breakaway provinces and risks do not justify benefits. At some point Putin's regime either collapses, or its domain is reduced to an impoverished, desperately coping rump state; maybe Zolotov/Kadyrov/Prigozhin/Dyomin/janitor uses the snuffbox at last and pleads for mercy at the condition of accepting American General Governor to sort things out, dismantling Russian nuclear arsenal and personal safety.
This is one relatively optimistic scenario of how Russia might end, with combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties in the low tens of millions over 15 years.
Nuclear use would make it worse but not very different.
Putin's success at maintaining order, coupled with proliferation of the attitude Dean ascribes to Baltics and Finns, could make it substantially worse.
Some of that is already happening.
Galeev in his Russian channel, with more of the mask off than on Twitter:
The positive scenario is to walk around like a fucked bitch of a douche bag, under sanctions and paying reparations for decades. We could say that our grandchildren will make it, but let's be realistic. Given the demographic dynamics – they won't be your grandchildren.
Negative – a candidate for nuclear bombing. After that, see point 1.
The common denominator in both scenarios is the «fucked bitch of a douche bag».
At the same time it is possible to cast off the seal of scum: if you change the brand. Look at the Austrians, for example – they made it work very cleverly after World War II.
If you value the future of your children and your region, start thinking about a new brand right now. Just like Austria isn't getting called out for Hitler (although it would seem...), neither will independent Siberia/Urals/Pomorye get [called out for Russia].
And everything associated with Russia will be banned for generations and to a greater extent than it was with Germany. Because no one will be able to explain why those fuckers couldn't sit at home.
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I don't think you meant to attach this screenshot. What's that fanfiction you're reading?
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A future army, because this is a future-threat consideration.
Now, you might disagree with me on the prospect of Russian re-armament post-war, but this is a subject that explains your perceived inconsistency.
(Unless we really wish to get semantic on my isolated rigor, as the topics I discuss are isolated by nature.)
I also disagree on this, though with the caveat that if Russia were to fracture, I can easily sketch out scenarios that could manifest in our lifetime in which the US-European alliance fractures for a lack of Russia, the inter-European alliance fractures as a result of a lack of common position on how to deal with a broken Russia, and that a balkanized Russia with nukes could see interests in destabilizing neighboring European nations as fractured Europe and fractured Russia interact.
Which 'they'? The Russians, or the Finns?
'No change' is not an improvement for the Finns, because the Russian nationalist paradigm was willing to accept the Ukrainian invasion basis as legitimate. To this date, there's been no Russian cultural turn against the basis of the Ukraine war, only the lack of a successful execution.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Ilforte, but less than a year ago you didn't think there was any chance that Russians would wage war on Ukrainians, and lectured me that I would never understand Russians or the region.
I'm going to advance another difference in world views: I do not believe the Russians who are noping out of the current round of imperialist adventurism oppose Russian imperialism in principle, as much as a personal skin-in-the-game that only applies so long as they do have skin in the game and can't go back to being mostly apolitical passive supporters, and I do not believe that migrants renounce everything about their origins even when they flee, let alone views that are odious to their new neighbors of choice.
Intra-American state, inter-EU migration, and inter-continental migration trends of the last decades do not support the later. The fact that the most recent Russian nopers are leaving now, and not a week ago, supports the later.
It's not another issue, it's an extension and continuation of the same issue- a unloyal minority that approaches their host country from the perspective of cultural chauvenism and nostalgia for the external imperial oppressor. If this sounds at all familiar to the current Russian president who has had high support from the Russian public- from which these new migrants are coming- this is probably because Putin's support base is composed of, and has been cultivating, the same.
If one views the demographic issue as a problem, making the problem bigger does not make the problem better.
Except they wouldn't, because the modern Europeans don't have the same attitude towards ethnic cleansing from claimed sovereign territory as the modern Russians, even self-exiled ones.
Worse from the present-decision maker perception, even if they were inclined to do so (say that you are right and I am wrong), they might not be able to muster a political coalition to do so if more Russians are let in, as a new population inflow entails new economic interests that, once entrenched, are harder to expunge than to prevent forming in the first place.
Alternatively, they could not make new case-by-case beuracratic systems for unknown thousands of potential applicants whose approval would make their domestic ethno-demographic instability functions worse for the sake of people who until last week were supportive of Russian imperialist revaunchism.
No, not more importantly. The Russian emmigrees are the less important part of this balance of concerns.
The most important consideration of Russian migration to other nations isn't the Russian status as non-combatants, it's whether the other states give sovereign permission. Russians do not have an inherent right to freely migrate to neighboring countries and set up new lives amongst the Finns and the Balts or the Ukrainians or anywhere else at will. Ethnic russian migration interests do not pre-empt the interests, or sovereignty, of their non-Russian neighbors.
Well, yes, the Finns and the Balts governments are making decisions to prioritize their own safety. Why shouldn't they?
The responsibility of a nation is to its people, a state to its citizens, and a democracy to its voters. Ukrainians are none of these in the Baltize area. Neither are Russians.
You treat this as some betrayal of some broader solidarity, but there is none to be betrayed. The Russian nation demonstrated that, with the general approval of many who are now seeking to flee.
This is barely responsive to my post. Which I suppose happens when one's argument is shown to be without merit and there's no incentive to admit as much.
I dismiss this, because a) in no realistic event can those Russians hope to get long-term residence in Finland or Latvia and b) nobody there is even arguing that this is a risk, instead complaining about being a transit country or that Russians have to take responsibility or some such.
Why Finns, how could that fit the context? Those little miscommunications are a repeating pattern with you, and they are very telling.
Russians of course. Your starting thesis was: Putin has repeatedly used ethnic russians as pretexts to intervene, or threaten intervention, around the region... significantly increasing the Russian national population in the border states- who are almost certainly going to locate themselves to the ethnic russian enclaves- strengthens an ethnic-based framing of a future pre-conflict narrative
How, exactly, does this work? Surely you understand that wars of conquest waged by non-democratic states are not contingent on objective reality behind claimed moral justification, so this framing is as strong or as weak as the propaganda makes it. (Even absence of Russians can be spun into an ethnic cleansing story, if one tries). Your response on the same point to @hustlegrinder is similarly lacking in your usual causal clarity.
Are you really one to talk so smugly of this, given that your specific explanations for the Russian military buildup (forcing the NS2 issue or something) didn't differ much from mine and also implied no war? Also, «any chance» sounds very strong. But okay, I never quantified it, and indeed it seemed implausible, which in retrospect was stupid of me.
And before:
Assuming this is true: this is but a spin on the casus belli thesis (technically, was a spin on that thesis, now it's just a speculation on morality). The casus belli issue has already been addressed. Without it, what exactly does this add? If they consistently oppose being drafted for base egoistic reasons, they are even less likely to help out with the invasion of the host country (which would be even more personally dangerous). Is this about strategic security, helping Ukraine, or about punishing people who supposedly don't oppose Russian Imperialism in principle?
Wut? This if literary fluff in the shape of a coherent argument. I believe you can do better in distinguishing issues.
This gave me a pause. Perhaps we have differences in worldview regarding what constitutes ethnic cleansing, too? Wiki sounds about right: «Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous». I don't know man, this doesn't sound like, um, issuing short-term residence permits or erecting refugee camps for draft dodgers from a multinational neighboring state.
I imagine in a more equanimous state you'd have remembered that, and managed not to make this into another cause for a lame attempt at deadpan comedy.
This is some heavy stuff.
In any case, if Europeans do not believe in ethnic cleansing, like you assert, they might not believe in collective ethnic responsibility like you do, either.
Right, thanks. Admittedly I suspected this will be how you'll read it, which is why I wrote it ambiguously like this, and I know this isn't my broken English but your blinding, zoological ethnic prejudice that predictably determined this queer reading. Pease spare me more snark; few things could be funnier than what you're doing here on reflex, condescendingly explaining sovereignty to an imagined petulant Imperialist who asserts such a right to freely immigrate and colonize. (I don't believe in the usefulness of the doctrine of rights at all, in any case – at the bedrock, there are only interests and capabilities).
My claim here was that the subset of Russian males attempting escape and not posing current military threat will, in the case of being turned back, be mobilized for war (primarily in Ukraine), reinforcing Russian forces that are currently attempting annexation of parts of Ukraine. Which is, indeed, from the official European point of view, somewhat bad and more important than welfare of those males, and (I argue) more important than special pleading about ethnic blocs of the far future, weird definitions of ethnic cleansing, low moral qualities of all ruskies who leave home when staying becomes immediately life-threatening, and other 300 IQ bullshit.
Sure, they take care of their own. Can't say anything against it! I don't believe in the doctrine of rights, after all.
And of course they're under no obligation to spell it out. Because there is a pretension of broader solidarity, and it's convenient in many ways.
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This sounds like an example the more-general problem of determining whether people fleeing a place wrecked by bad policies are more likely to oppose them (because their last home was wrecked by them) or support them (because those policies had support in their old home and they may not have made the connection.) I admit the example that comes to mind is "Californians fleeing to redder states" but whether one approves of that example or not, I think it at least suggests that often it's not so easy to distinguish which is which as it may be in this mobilization case.
Pretty much, only instead of needing a majority dynamic (the issue of California idea exports wouldn't matter much if most Californians fleeing didn't share them), the nature of security threats is that they're disproportionate in impact to their population number. Even just a 5% over Russian sympathizer rate would be a major pool for Russian influence operations to be run from, and through.
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Understandable, thanks for the explanation.
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Blocking people fleeing conscription and sending them back so they can fight in the Russian army sounds really dumb. If they want to help Ukraine they should be throwing open the borders to any able bodied Russian between the ages of 18 and 45. Maybe I'm missing something.
Also, that would be privileging middle aged able-bodied men... pretty unwoke.
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Finland and Baltic countries are small. What if you unexpectedly get, say, 5 million of Russians escaping conscription and while these 5 millions are much likely to support Russian Imperialism than those in Russia, they still be far apart in values from what expected to from Finland/Baltic resident.
80 years ago, USA and many countries didn't accept Jews escaping Nazis even those had >80% chances to die under Nazis (thought, we know it in hindsight).
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If they stay in Russia, civil unrest is more likely. You don't want to give Russia a safety valve to get rid of sources of civil unrest.
Just having large numbers of Russians in your country is dangerous because Russia treats them like the Sudetenland--they're used as an excuse to invade.
Some may be spies or saboteurs.
This is above and beyond the usual problems from having lots of immigrants.
I think #2 is a paper tiger for countries in NATO; Russia could not plausibly gain anything from invading a NATO member, so whether it has an excuse to do so is not very relevant.
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That kind of stuff really turns me off on the "rational cowardly West deceived Ukraine into hating us" propaganda, in particular. Hell, if you ask me, it's more like gigachad strong aura Ukro-Russophobes who rubbed off on the entire West. I do not recall such moods being so visceral among the common folk in the West before.
With number of protected classes increasing every day, people still want to hate someone.
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