He must have calculated that any sanctions from the West would be ineffectual. Sadly that’s not an unrealistic prediction.
Either he occupies the whole country, or he occupies enough to put his own regime in, but then he would have to support it long enough to organize his own Ukranian army which could take years.
I predict Russia will have control of everything they want in the Ukraine in 5-7 days. It’s flat terrain which makes it a lot easier then Afghanistan.
When Putin was taking about “de-nazification” I would predict that means a whole bunch of Ukranian political, military, and society leaders are going to get carted off to labor camps in Siberia or shot. I think Vlad will want to “decapitate” independant Ukranian nationalism, at least for this generation.
The KGB on Stalin’s orders did much the same to the Polish pre-WIII military right after they jointly invaded the country with the Germans in 1939.
So, I purposely don’t watch the news. I haven’t in years. Occasionally, I will school myself up on something that I find interesting. I am just beginning to read up on this situation.
I have no opinions yet. Just questions. I’m interested in some opinions….
Why is Putin objectively in the wrong here?
Did portions of Ukraine not declare their own independence and are they not in favor of Russian intervention?
Why are those people not considered freedom fighters?
The United States has a history of providing support to populations that declare their own independence. What makes that different from what Putin is doing?
If Texas declared independence from the United States, they would receive support from numerous nations. Why is Russia the bad guy here?
I am also beginning to read about treaty agreements from 1990 that NATO would not expand eastward. That seems to have happened. Why would Russia not have a legit beef about that?
In a nutshell, Putin is invading in a land-grab,
most likely for resources, a show of force to the West and a show of force to the Russian people to confirm that he’s the man for the job. No matter what bullshit he tries to coat it in, wether it’s the NATO boogeyman or the ‘liberation’ of Russian sympathisers (both notions are laughable), it’s an invasion and an unprovoked attack on a neighbouring country.
Regardless of what the rest of the world may think, this seems to me to be a matter of principle and leadership in his eyes. He has to know there’s a good chance he’s going to fuck around and get himself killed. He’s playing with fire.
That’s a flimsy argument though, unless there’s hard evidence. Anyone can argue that any election is phony at any point. It’s just talk. That means nothing. Without evidence it just sounds like the crazy shit people’s dads talk about on Facebook with their stupid friends.
So there was a vote. How long ago, and what was Ukraine doing in response to that vote?
Interestingly, I happened to sign into FB today and was immediately bombarded by some pages suggested for me that seemed to clearly be Russian troll farm material.
One had a confederate flag icon and was called something like “Preserving the Heritage” and a very tasteless meme stating that the Civil War increased the number of slaves because it forced the US government on people who didn’t want it. Given I have never lived in the South or liked any pages or groups remotely related to that, it and the 4-5 other similar items in the last 24 hours is certainly anomalous.
Russia has game for weaponising local sympathisers or ‘Russian-speakers’ (meaning locals with Russian ties) in most of the ex-soviet countries. These minorities are generally used as an excuse to fuck about. In the Ukraine’s case, Putin claimed that Russia will be saving the separatists in the Donbas region from genocide (which hasn’t happened) and this justifies his intervention.
If this was true, why attack the country on four fronts, why aim for the Capital, why assault The Chernobyl plant, why claim that this was all an exercise 24 hours ago etc. It’s a bullshit excuse for an invasion, more for the Russian people than anyone else, the media (apart from elements of the web) is state controlled so they don’t have any reference outside of what Moscow tells them.