What do you mean by the term "near-peer"? It seems to me that Russia has demonstrated better capabilities than the US has during the course of this conflict.
It's pretty hard to be a peer of a power which is always at war somewhere when you haven't fought a major war against a real army in 80 years. War is like everything else; you learn by doing.
"Russia has demonstrated better capabilities than the US has during the course of this conflict"
If any NATO staff officer was so inept as to cause a 20km traffic jam for the main armed force, as happened to the Russians outside Kiev, it's likely most NATO senior officers would die ... of laughter.
No sane person can see any connection between the Russian military clown show in Ukraine today and the great operations in the Eastern Front during WW2.
To be fair, you are comparing practice (Russians outside Kiev) with a theoretical situation of some NATO staff officer. I do not remember recently any NATO operation of similar scale against similar adversary, so pretty theoretical. If NATO decides to do anything of similar scale in Europe against Russia, then we can talk.
The entire initial Russian operation, across all sectors in Ukraine, comprised less than 200,000 troops.
Not much of a scale and in WW2 Russian, American, German and British staff officers planned many larger movements than that without the traffic mess of 2022.
Only the Russians seem to have forgotten how to do competent staff work.
Not recent but maybe the armored movements at the start of the First and Second Gulf Wars showed good staff work and no traffic jams in an area with few roads and over 200,000 US troops.
And yet, Ukraine's Air Force had been taken out so Russia's big "traffic jam" of tanks wasn't a big deal. They sat there, then went back home. Lived and learned.
NATO has always had a way out: they simply arm the Ukrainians until the Ukrainians either win or collapse. That has been NATO's strategy from the beginning, and it remains NATO's strategy now. That was what the GOP Presidential hopefuls meant when they pontificated on the importance of "degrading Russia" when fielding debate questions on Ukraine.
NATO has never been invested in actual Ukrainian victory. NATO's objective has always been to pin down and attrit as many Russian forces as possible. That Russia has not managed thus far to break the stalemate along the front line suggests that objective has been met to a significant degree. Even if Avdivka falls, it will have come at a significant cost to Russia. From NATO's perspective, that's what counts.
We should not be looking at whether or not Ukraine can prevail on the battlefield. We should instead be considering what will be the state of Russia's military once the fighting is done in Ukraine, one way or the other.
Will Russia be in a position to project serious military power elsewhere?
Will Russia be able to re-establish its influence over the Caucasus?
Will Russia be able to threaten Poland or the Baltic States? (Assuming, of course, that Putin aims at some point to confront a NATO country militarily).
Ukraine may very well be running out of soldiers. I would not make the assumption that this matters to NATO at all.
There is no stalemate on the front line. I think the risk is that the lunatic Poles or the Lithuanians or both will try and attack Kaliningrad.
As for Russia, I think they will emerge very much stronger. They will now know what works and what doesn't, and their military industry will keep churning.
I hope we avoid a bigger war in Europe, but maybe not.
There has been minimal exchange of territories on the front line since the major Ukrainian offensives which recaptured Kharkiv and Kherson.
That's a stalemate by definition. It may be about to break down, but it hasn't done so yet.
As for Russia emerging stronger...they would be the first country to do so in all of human history. Wars as a rule weaken armies, they do not strengthen them. Wars of attrition are especially hard on armies and it can take time for a "victorious" army to recover from such a war.
Given that Russia is facing population decline--something which losing hundreds of thousands of young men to the war in Ukraine is not going to help at all--it is not realistic to expect the Russian army to emerge from this war stronger than when Russia went into it.
As for Russia keeping their military industry churning, that presumes their civilian consumer industry can operate adequately as well. That's a generous assumption at best, and a completely erroneous one at worst. And even Russians, who are historically known for their ability as a people to sacrifice and do without, will only endure economic privation on the home front for so long before getting restive.
It was economic turmoil that catalyzed the February Revolution in 1917 which toppled the Romanovs. It was Russian realization of just how sclerotic and dysfunctional the Soviet economy was in 1988--courtesy of Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika--which left the Soviet system without any political legitimacy, resulting in its dissolution in December 1991.
With Russia's principal trading partner China sliding into deflation and economic collapse, betting on Russian economic prosperity in the future is a very risky bet indeed.
This is 180 degrees backwards. NATO went to war in order to weaken Russia, and achieved exactly the opposite. Russia has massively increased its military capabiliity, the size and quality of its armed forces, and its economic independence from the West, while strengthening its relationships with non-Western countries such as China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.
In 2 years, Russia has shown that it can stand up to the previous sole superpower and defeat it militarily. As Steven says, "Russian leaders are starting to act as if they smell blood". Putin is riding high, while the West is hopeflessly divided.
Correct. Neo-con strategists in Washington were certain that they would be able to bring economic and diplomatic ruin on Russia. They couldn't imagine that virtually the entire Global South would find Russia's narrative more credible and refuse to boycott it. There is nothing worse than believing your own propaganda.
What facts are you talking about? Ukraine is unable to hold elections. Russia will hold elections and Putin will win overwhelmingly. In the U.S., there is little of confidence as democracy takes a back seat to keeping opposition leaders off the ballot. Russia's economy is growing, while the EU economy is stagnant.
"Putin has reason to believe that time is on his side. At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a war of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin’s hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the war remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured.
Western officials’ promises of reinvigorating their own defense industries have collided with bureaucratic and supply-chain bottlenecks. Meanwhile, sanctions and export controls have impeded Putin’s war effort far less than expected. Russian defense factories are ramping up their output, and Soviet legacy factories are outperforming Western factories when it comes to much-needed items like artillery shells.
The technocrats responsible for running the Russian economy have proven themselves to be resilient, adaptable, and resourceful. Elevated oil prices, driven in part by close cooperation with Saudi Arabia, are refilling state coffers. Ukraine, by contrast, depends heavily on infusions of Western cash.
Putin can also look at his foreign-policy record with satisfaction. His investments in key relationships have paid off. China and India have provided an important backstop for the Russian economy by ramping up imports of Russian oil and other commodities."
Isn't it true that when you boil it all down, Russia had two choices. It could either agree that the US could move its forces, including nuclear-capable missiles up to its borders or it could go to war?
Prior to February 2022, Russia was Europe's principal energy supplier. That was significant economic leverage--leverage that was growing when NordStream 2 was being built.
Now Russia's energy exports to Europe are all but gone, and so is that leverage.
People forget that the Soviet Union collapsed not because of any failure of its military but because its economy could not keep up with the West. Economic leverage is always vastly superior to military leverage when it comes to geostrategic influence. Russia had economic leverage and abandoned it in favor of military leverage in Ukraine. That was never a smart move by Russia.
By this logic, Russia now has leverage over China and India with combined population of 2.8 billion. EU population is less than one sixth of that. The locus of power and economic might has shifted.
Russia is already delivering to China all the crude it can through the ESPO pipelines. And China is declining to help fund the construction of additional pipeline infrastructure to expand Russian overland delivery to China.
Russia's biggest oil terminal is in Novorossyskk, on the Black Sea, followed by Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic.
All of Russia's energy infrastructure is designed to deliver energy--oil and natural gas--primarily to Europe and only secondarily to China.
Yes, if Russia can build out the pipeline infrastructure to China and India, that would be a far larger market than Europe. If Russia started building that infrastructure today the earliest it could come online would be in the mid-2030s. Eastern Siberia is a whole lot of miles and miles containing nothing but miles and miles--building energy delivery infrastructure through that part of Russia is going to be no small engineering accomplishment, nor is it going to be cheap.
With a declining population (a demographic situation not helped by losing hundreds of thousands of young men in Ukraine), whether Russia will be able to marshal the manpower needed to build out that infrastructure becomes ever more problematic with each passing year.
Sorry that's just BS. Even the Soviet Union was a reliable provider of natural resources. Russia was just as dependent as Europe. One can't without the other. Now Russia delivers oil and gas to India and China, who them sells it back to Europe. The only thing that has changed is that Europe pays significantly more for their oil and gas.
2 - Russia is getting a lot less money for their oil.
Also, I never said Europe was "independent". In fact, the military war of attrition in Ukraine is mirrored by an economic war of attrition between Russia and Europe.
It's true that Russia is facing a population decline. (Baltics, Poland and ukraine have one of the lowest fertility rates in the world btw). But haven't they gained another 6 million new people through the annexation of Donbass?
Should Russia win, the fertility rate may also jump up due to a revival of nationalism and patriotism. France and Germany recovered as well after Ww1. It's not unrealistic.
And the Chinese economic collapse is just a hoax. They grow 4% and you Americans think they will go down the drain tmr lol. That's one way to ignore your own deficit.
Russia's population decline is a decades old phenomenon at this point.
France at the end of WW1 encountered population decline pretty much solely because of WW1 and pretty much only during WW1. However, even at that by the outset of WW2 France only succeeded in getting back to its pre-WW1 population. There was no "baby boom" as happened in the US after WW2.
It therefore does not track to hypothesize a "baby boom" in Russia should they emerge victorious from the war in Ukraine. Yes, it "could" happen--history and statistics argue against it.
As for China's economic situation: Evergrande is in liquidation. Country Garden is very likely soon to follow. Two of the largest property developers in China are going to have their assets sold off piecemeal--which means the Chinese real estate market is still a long ways off from seeing a bottoming out in real estate prices.
That's a problem for China in several ways. First and foremost 70% of household wealth is tied up in real estate--collapsing prices mean wealth destruction at an appalling scale. Second, local governments and their "off the books" financing vehicles rely on land sales and property development to generate needed cash for government operations. Declining prices and a collapsing real estate market means those land sales are greatly constrained, and thus so are government finances. Third, the capacity for local governments to service their debts is coming under considerable strain.
Beyond that, there's the reality than in the past year, the major Chinese stock indices have declined between 15 and 30 percent--that's well past correction territory and deep into bear market territory. Year to date for 2024, Chinese stocks are down hard, and that's AFTER Beijing poured a bunch of money into the markets.
China's manufacturing has been in contraction for most months since 2022, and that's before one factors in the impact of surging shipping rates from Chinese ports to Europe and the Eastern United States because of Houthi missile mischief in the Red Sea.
China's youth unemployment up until June of last year was north of 20%, after which China just stopped reporting youth unemployment until very recently, when youth unemployment was "down" to a mere 14%. This is bad for several reasons, but the main one is that China is losing the future productivity of those unemployed young people--a big deal since their population decline is happening fairly rapidly and their population is aging equally rapidly.
Consumer price in China are persistently flirting with deflation despite significant injections of money into the system by Beijing. As goosing the money supply is generally understood to cause inflation, that Beijing can goose the money supply and still not avoid deflation does not say anything good about the Chinese economy.
It's very difficult for people to understand that battle experience is worth a lot more then attritional losses, especially at the relatively low level experienced in the Ukraine war (its big by post WWII standards, but tiny compared to the Russian population and GDP).
The Red Army lost far far more in WWII, and it was still stronger in 1945 then 1941.
We turned a non-enemy country that was perfectly happy trading with us and with no ideological differences into an skilled and experienced enemy that shares a border with our primary geopolitical advisory and can provide them with many of their strategic deficiencies.
Great take-down of claims that Putin's "secret plan" is to march across Europe. Why this twaddle is repeated constantly is baffling. Who is actually buying this?
Initial reaction from Russian MoD press service Zvezda was that meaningful changes to existing pattern of events are not expected. As per the message from Zelensky, they point out that Kiev now does have a chance to attempt organizational reforms, but Syrsky doesn't have anything really new to offer. So all the pressures on Kiev and the trend of deterioration will go on.
I would add myself that the Bandera faction hasn't gone anywhere, either. They're entrenched, and will continue to both complicate US efforts one month and be cynically used by the US the next - making stability impossible.
Finally, it was interesting that the initial announcement from Zelensky on twitter, contained a figure for the AFU headcount. 1 million people. I take that to mean, for budgetary purposes - and Kiev did a good job negotiating if the sponsors come thru with funding in proportion to that.
I think your argument would be more effective if you calmly explained why you think the EU Commission is "illegal" and why it would require a constitutional provision. Calling people Criminals and Idiots is not convincing to anyone.
Sorry, you right, but that day I red an article about Carlson interview to Putin that made me really upset. An idiot (but I can't name him differently) from EU Foreign Affair declared that Carlson could be punished as of the "fascist" Digital Act approved by EU Commission, ONLY!
The EU Commission is Illegal because can you think of a US Nation without a Constitution common to all the States? Don't think so, if there wasn't US were dissolved in different Nations instead to be United many years ago...
It's twice as ILLEGAL and Fascist because EU Commission can rule without submitting his law, rules, act to the EU Parliament. EU parliament has ONLY a consulting role... ridiculous, anti democratic as ever after the WWII ! 😅
So Let's think about any country in the Western world, whoever: US, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia or Spain that has that kind of illegal Governments that are not voted by the citizen, that are not force to deal and get approvals by the Parliament/Congress or any Agency that control who's got the power... Can you?
In my country, in EU, it's called nazifascism... sorry, but we have a certain experience about 100 yrs ago! 😉
But to go even further, as I think you know, some as 20/30 yrs ago before the Euro coins, EU tried to have a common Constitution, but when they did a "trial referendum " in a couple of countries, in France wasn't accepted. So they gave up... and choose the Nazi way to govern EU... Simple, easy, isn't it?
Then let's move to" idiots": I use "idiot" as brainwashed, as servant, as fascist militia, or nazi one if u like, that execute orders coming from other Countries or from the people in power without any critic.
Today most of the people in western societies are idiots, but they didn't born as, they grew up like that. Thanks to Propaganda first, mainstream TV, and the heart, the most explosive and powerful arms to make them idiot were the invention of Socials like Fakebook, Google, Twitter.
Then Instagram and Whatsapp, but if you remember these one were 2 lovely apps for iPhone, pretty useful and pretty interesting until... that puppet of Zuckenbergh bought them and transformed them as arms of espionage, data collecting, intrusive political advertising, people brainwashing.
Have you seen the nice doc " The Great Hack" on Netflix? if not please watch it.
So, to conclude, today in the west, freedom ( of speech too) and rights are just 2 stupid words, completely useless because not only there are Governments as EU Commission that rule and act without anyone's control and without respecting a Constitution chart, but citizen are becoming more and more idiots, txs to technologies that are used to control them, And txs to the Education system that teach and grow kids as idiots, without any critic sense and instruments to choose freely and interpret the history and reality.
Sorry for the long explanation, but was required by your query: 😉
Ukraine is now (sort of) run by an ever more cornered Troika of Zelensky, Yermak and Budanov in Kiev.
The current desperate purge of those 'not focused enough on attack' seems paradoxically defensive, as Poroshenko, Klitschko, Zaluzhny and others (not so sure about old Yulia) see the weakness of the corrupt, authoritarian, increasingly unpopular Troika.
Budanov is sly enough to see that himself replacing experienced, popular Zaluzhny would be a can of trench worms, so they brought in Syrsky as some kind of fall guy. They've tried to play him off against Zaluzhny in the past.
He has sometimes been good tactically but is no strategist like Zaluzhny - which is why Zaluzhny replaced him earlier. Many blame him for drawing forces away fron the Southern front last summer to his Eastern command, compromising the failed offensive.
I guess he doesn't quite get the desperate last-ditch Troika strategy he's being drawn into.
But my main question is: What was Queen Victoria Nuland's role in the putsh?
Syrsky is a walking disaster. He will throw thousands of reserves into Avdiivka and they will be annihilated. The war is reaching an end point, and people will soon be in the streets in Kiev as the regime crumbles. This is a classic end game, no less. I don;t think NATO can save Ukraine. It is too far gone.
It's difficult not to link the Kyiv Troika reaaranging the deck chairs on their Titanic, with the imminent fall of Avdiivka. Everyone compares it to Syrsky's doomed, strategically disastrous defense of Bakhmut.
It's not difficult to imagine a showdown a couple of weeks ago between Zaluzhny arguing for strategic withdrawal, against Zelensky and Budanov insisting against all military logic on another doomed symbolic battle costing thousands more lives. And for that, Syrsky's their man.
It's crazy: delusional Zelensky hoping for a miracle if he believes his own rhetoric enough, and Budanov still perhaps hoping he can break the logjam in allied support by deepening the crisis.
Meanwhile Russian forces are about to cut the main supply - and exit - road in northern Avdiivka, as Syrsky sends pointless reinforcements to the area northwest of the new chokepoint.
If the Russians, as seems increasingly likely, cut off the city over the next fortnight, isolating a garrison of around 4,000, it really would be the end of Zelensky's tragicomedy.
In the end you can't separate the internal struggle in Ukraine from what directives they are getting from their NATO sponsors, especially Nuland, who has zero military background. If it is true that Nuland went to Kiev to prevent Zaluzhny's dismissal, she failed. But the bigger failure is to shape means to ends in military terms. The "arsenal of democracy" is pretty much empty cupboards. So how do you keep up the pretense of fighting Russia. In the end the Biden administration and NATO have helped condemn Ukraine to a near certain death.
I do understand that many in the Pentagon backed Zaluzhny, but was Vicky taking their message or her.own (I doubt that Biden actually had a coherent message to take)?
Nuland will be losing her job as Deputy at State soon, as the White House focuses more on China.
After her visit there was a bullish message from Kyiv telling observers to expect dramatic new developments with new weapons...
I guess we may find out more some day, as we eventually learned more of her role in 2013-14 and the first war, or rather the beginning of this 2014-2024 war.
I think their task is likely to maintain the status quo to the extent possible, thru the start of the next US presidential term or its first year or something like that. A stretch, but less impossible than their goal for last year. Each day, lets say, consume 700-1000 casualties and yield on average 5-10 sq km total across the front. On paper, that adds up, provided US is willing to arrange the hardware, the funds, and keep the regime in control. Which in turn means keeping the various thugs and businessmen satisfied.
Syrskyi commanded all ground forces in Eastern Ukraine during the Fall 2022 offensive that pushed the Russians well beyond the Oskol River, easily Ukraine's most notable counteroffensive. In the past he was also Zaluzhny's superior.
That said, he may have been chosen to deflect blame for Avdivka from the president and because he was willing to follow political directives like fighting on in Bakhmut. It's hard to see any gain from this for Ukraine as opposed to the presidential faction.
People have to understand the theory: THE 2 WARS ARE LINKED.
Israel would have NO runway on it's "mideast project" without Russia being tied-down/pre-occupied in UKR. NONE. In a counterfactual universe, the mideast project would've been stalemated in the first 2-3 weeks of that conflict.
So this theory suggest the policy we see: UKR is NOT to surrender/make-peace till time as mid east war bears "fruit".
Israel had plenty of "runway" in 1967 during the Six Day War, when Russia was unencumbered by war and the US maintained a full arms embargo against Israel.
Israel's military has only gotten stronger as war has gone high tech: Israel's economy runs on high tech, leading the world in areas like machine vision (Mobileye), drones (Rafael, Israel Aerospace, Elbit) and armor protection (Rafael, Plasan).
Russia's economy, by contrast, remains at Third World level ("Ethiopia with rockets"), importing "technology" from Iran and North Korea and exporting oil, metals, grains and prostitutes.
third world? in 2nd year of full on NATO proxy war! ok....
You are blind to Russian footprint in Middle East. You notice Syrian gov is still there? I know you'd bay for blood (it is the cultivated US middle class conditioned response) but Assad is still there. This "third world" country can obstruct your plans in 2 minutes. It has completely disrupted Africom. What? You dint hear bout it on CNN? Just because your media cultivates the middle class like a pearl don't mean reality stops on the outside world.
Right, the Syrian government, an economic and technological powerhouse, is that the one you mean? Or the insignificant, impoverished, backward state of no importance in the world?
Russia had good relations to Israel and just like the rest of the world, had been willing to look the other way on Palestine. The Israeli overreaction to Oct 7 unexpectedly changed that state of affairs. But that's beside the point here. Russia was a limited factor in the middle east other than Syria ofc.
I'd say the common link is the US sanctions regime. In particular the US policy of sanctions vs China, at a point when their role in global industrial supply chains is roughly comparable to the agricultural role played by the sun. I guess the twitter crowd nowadays refers to this as "DC brain". It's a persistent condition and so neither conflict is going to end anytime soon.
yeah yeah yeah. Russia has "good" relations with Trump. He dint lift a FINGER to prevent the Ukraine war despite being IN IT FIRST HAND( Manafort). By now you should know the full depth of 2-facedness of empire.
What do you mean by the term "near-peer"? It seems to me that Russia has demonstrated better capabilities than the US has during the course of this conflict.
It is usually referred to as a near peer on the prejudice that the US has no actual peers. I stayed with the conventional, if flawed, usage.
It's pretty hard to be a peer of a power which is always at war somewhere when you haven't fought a major war against a real army in 80 years. War is like everything else; you learn by doing.
"Russia has demonstrated better capabilities than the US has during the course of this conflict"
If any NATO staff officer was so inept as to cause a 20km traffic jam for the main armed force, as happened to the Russians outside Kiev, it's likely most NATO senior officers would die ... of laughter.
No sane person can see any connection between the Russian military clown show in Ukraine today and the great operations in the Eastern Front during WW2.
To be fair, you are comparing practice (Russians outside Kiev) with a theoretical situation of some NATO staff officer. I do not remember recently any NATO operation of similar scale against similar adversary, so pretty theoretical. If NATO decides to do anything of similar scale in Europe against Russia, then we can talk.
"NATO operation of similar scale"
The entire initial Russian operation, across all sectors in Ukraine, comprised less than 200,000 troops.
Not much of a scale and in WW2 Russian, American, German and British staff officers planned many larger movements than that without the traffic mess of 2022.
Only the Russians seem to have forgotten how to do competent staff work.
Any recent NATO operation of a similar scale to compare?
Not recent but maybe the armored movements at the start of the First and Second Gulf Wars showed good staff work and no traffic jams in an area with few roads and over 200,000 US troops.
And yet, Ukraine's Air Force had been taken out so Russia's big "traffic jam" of tanks wasn't a big deal. They sat there, then went back home. Lived and learned.
Thanks!
different terrain tho
Nothing is for certain but, it sure seems like there will many more dead Ukrainians with Zelensky’s purge.
or you can put it another way, there won't be any less
NATO has always had a way out: they simply arm the Ukrainians until the Ukrainians either win or collapse. That has been NATO's strategy from the beginning, and it remains NATO's strategy now. That was what the GOP Presidential hopefuls meant when they pontificated on the importance of "degrading Russia" when fielding debate questions on Ukraine.
NATO has never been invested in actual Ukrainian victory. NATO's objective has always been to pin down and attrit as many Russian forces as possible. That Russia has not managed thus far to break the stalemate along the front line suggests that objective has been met to a significant degree. Even if Avdivka falls, it will have come at a significant cost to Russia. From NATO's perspective, that's what counts.
We should not be looking at whether or not Ukraine can prevail on the battlefield. We should instead be considering what will be the state of Russia's military once the fighting is done in Ukraine, one way or the other.
Will Russia be in a position to project serious military power elsewhere?
Will Russia be able to re-establish its influence over the Caucasus?
Will Russia be able to threaten Poland or the Baltic States? (Assuming, of course, that Putin aims at some point to confront a NATO country militarily).
Ukraine may very well be running out of soldiers. I would not make the assumption that this matters to NATO at all.
There is no stalemate on the front line. I think the risk is that the lunatic Poles or the Lithuanians or both will try and attack Kaliningrad.
As for Russia, I think they will emerge very much stronger. They will now know what works and what doesn't, and their military industry will keep churning.
I hope we avoid a bigger war in Europe, but maybe not.
There has been minimal exchange of territories on the front line since the major Ukrainian offensives which recaptured Kharkiv and Kherson.
That's a stalemate by definition. It may be about to break down, but it hasn't done so yet.
As for Russia emerging stronger...they would be the first country to do so in all of human history. Wars as a rule weaken armies, they do not strengthen them. Wars of attrition are especially hard on armies and it can take time for a "victorious" army to recover from such a war.
Given that Russia is facing population decline--something which losing hundreds of thousands of young men to the war in Ukraine is not going to help at all--it is not realistic to expect the Russian army to emerge from this war stronger than when Russia went into it.
As for Russia keeping their military industry churning, that presumes their civilian consumer industry can operate adequately as well. That's a generous assumption at best, and a completely erroneous one at worst. And even Russians, who are historically known for their ability as a people to sacrifice and do without, will only endure economic privation on the home front for so long before getting restive.
It was economic turmoil that catalyzed the February Revolution in 1917 which toppled the Romanovs. It was Russian realization of just how sclerotic and dysfunctional the Soviet economy was in 1988--courtesy of Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika--which left the Soviet system without any political legitimacy, resulting in its dissolution in December 1991.
With Russia's principal trading partner China sliding into deflation and economic collapse, betting on Russian economic prosperity in the future is a very risky bet indeed.
This is 180 degrees backwards. NATO went to war in order to weaken Russia, and achieved exactly the opposite. Russia has massively increased its military capabiliity, the size and quality of its armed forces, and its economic independence from the West, while strengthening its relationships with non-Western countries such as China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.
In 2 years, Russia has shown that it can stand up to the previous sole superpower and defeat it militarily. As Steven says, "Russian leaders are starting to act as if they smell blood". Putin is riding high, while the West is hopeflessly divided.
Correct. Neo-con strategists in Washington were certain that they would be able to bring economic and diplomatic ruin on Russia. They couldn't imagine that virtually the entire Global South would find Russia's narrative more credible and refuse to boycott it. There is nothing worse than believing your own propaganda.
The facts say the complete opposite, but whatever. You can believe whatever narrative you find most comfortable.
What facts are you talking about? Ukraine is unable to hold elections. Russia will hold elections and Putin will win overwhelmingly. In the U.S., there is little of confidence as democracy takes a back seat to keeping opposition leaders off the ballot. Russia's economy is growing, while the EU economy is stagnant.
As even the Wall Street Journal admitted recently, "It's Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia's Defeat" (https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/17wvgft/essay_its_time_to_end_magical_thinking_about/).
"Putin has reason to believe that time is on his side. At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a war of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin’s hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the war remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured.
Western officials’ promises of reinvigorating their own defense industries have collided with bureaucratic and supply-chain bottlenecks. Meanwhile, sanctions and export controls have impeded Putin’s war effort far less than expected. Russian defense factories are ramping up their output, and Soviet legacy factories are outperforming Western factories when it comes to much-needed items like artillery shells.
The technocrats responsible for running the Russian economy have proven themselves to be resilient, adaptable, and resourceful. Elevated oil prices, driven in part by close cooperation with Saudi Arabia, are refilling state coffers. Ukraine, by contrast, depends heavily on infusions of Western cash.
Putin can also look at his foreign-policy record with satisfaction. His investments in key relationships have paid off. China and India have provided an important backstop for the Russian economy by ramping up imports of Russian oil and other commodities."
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/s/russia-matters
You have some reading to do, but it does answer your question.
There is so much wishful thinking in there that you must have been kneeling by your bed when you wrote it.
The perennial china-about-to-collapse is the icing on the cake
I was yesterday in a huge new Zeekr saleroom opened 3 weeks ago in the busiest shopping street in Amsterdam.
Very sleek, powerful, cheap EVs.
I asked 'Is this a European branding of PYD, which just overtook Tesla for global market share?'
No, they said, this is the second biggest Chinese EV producer, Geely, that also owns Volvo and other top European brands...
You know the Chinese economy is collapsing?, I asked.
And we both laughed.
Isn't it true that when you boil it all down, Russia had two choices. It could either agree that the US could move its forces, including nuclear-capable missiles up to its borders or it could go to war?
No. That is not true.
Prior to February 2022, Russia was Europe's principal energy supplier. That was significant economic leverage--leverage that was growing when NordStream 2 was being built.
Now Russia's energy exports to Europe are all but gone, and so is that leverage.
People forget that the Soviet Union collapsed not because of any failure of its military but because its economy could not keep up with the West. Economic leverage is always vastly superior to military leverage when it comes to geostrategic influence. Russia had economic leverage and abandoned it in favor of military leverage in Ukraine. That was never a smart move by Russia.
By this logic, Russia now has leverage over China and India with combined population of 2.8 billion. EU population is less than one sixth of that. The locus of power and economic might has shifted.
Unfortunately for Russia, most of its pipeline infrastructure runs west and not east--towards Europe, not China and India.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/russia-has-a-pipeline-problem
Russia is already delivering to China all the crude it can through the ESPO pipelines. And China is declining to help fund the construction of additional pipeline infrastructure to expand Russian overland delivery to China.
Russia's biggest oil terminal is in Novorossyskk, on the Black Sea, followed by Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic.
All of Russia's energy infrastructure is designed to deliver energy--oil and natural gas--primarily to Europe and only secondarily to China.
Yes, if Russia can build out the pipeline infrastructure to China and India, that would be a far larger market than Europe. If Russia started building that infrastructure today the earliest it could come online would be in the mid-2030s. Eastern Siberia is a whole lot of miles and miles containing nothing but miles and miles--building energy delivery infrastructure through that part of Russia is going to be no small engineering accomplishment, nor is it going to be cheap.
With a declining population (a demographic situation not helped by losing hundreds of thousands of young men in Ukraine), whether Russia will be able to marshal the manpower needed to build out that infrastructure becomes ever more problematic with each passing year.
And global warming means that the Artic route for energy exports to China is since 2022 viable.
Sorry that's just BS. Even the Soviet Union was a reliable provider of natural resources. Russia was just as dependent as Europe. One can't without the other. Now Russia delivers oil and gas to India and China, who them sells it back to Europe. The only thing that has changed is that Europe pays significantly more for their oil and gas.
Two key things have changed.
1 - Russia is producing a lot less oil.
2 - Russia is getting a lot less money for their oil.
Also, I never said Europe was "independent". In fact, the military war of attrition in Ukraine is mirrored by an economic war of attrition between Russia and Europe.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/will-europe-de-industrialize
And Europe may not win. Thing is, as with all attritional war, even Europe not winning is not the same as a Russian "victory".
It's true that Russia is facing a population decline. (Baltics, Poland and ukraine have one of the lowest fertility rates in the world btw). But haven't they gained another 6 million new people through the annexation of Donbass?
Should Russia win, the fertility rate may also jump up due to a revival of nationalism and patriotism. France and Germany recovered as well after Ww1. It's not unrealistic.
And the Chinese economic collapse is just a hoax. They grow 4% and you Americans think they will go down the drain tmr lol. That's one way to ignore your own deficit.
Russia's population decline is a decades old phenomenon at this point.
France at the end of WW1 encountered population decline pretty much solely because of WW1 and pretty much only during WW1. However, even at that by the outset of WW2 France only succeeded in getting back to its pre-WW1 population. There was no "baby boom" as happened in the US after WW2.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009279/total-population-france-1700-2020/
It therefore does not track to hypothesize a "baby boom" in Russia should they emerge victorious from the war in Ukraine. Yes, it "could" happen--history and statistics argue against it.
As for China's economic situation: Evergrande is in liquidation. Country Garden is very likely soon to follow. Two of the largest property developers in China are going to have their assets sold off piecemeal--which means the Chinese real estate market is still a long ways off from seeing a bottoming out in real estate prices.
That's a problem for China in several ways. First and foremost 70% of household wealth is tied up in real estate--collapsing prices mean wealth destruction at an appalling scale. Second, local governments and their "off the books" financing vehicles rely on land sales and property development to generate needed cash for government operations. Declining prices and a collapsing real estate market means those land sales are greatly constrained, and thus so are government finances. Third, the capacity for local governments to service their debts is coming under considerable strain.
Beyond that, there's the reality than in the past year, the major Chinese stock indices have declined between 15 and 30 percent--that's well past correction territory and deep into bear market territory. Year to date for 2024, Chinese stocks are down hard, and that's AFTER Beijing poured a bunch of money into the markets.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/000001:SHA?comparison=SHE%3A399106%2CINDEXHANGSENG%3AHSI%2CSHA%3A000300&window=YTD
China's manufacturing has been in contraction for most months since 2022, and that's before one factors in the impact of surging shipping rates from Chinese ports to Europe and the Eastern United States because of Houthi missile mischief in the Red Sea.
China's youth unemployment up until June of last year was north of 20%, after which China just stopped reporting youth unemployment until very recently, when youth unemployment was "down" to a mere 14%. This is bad for several reasons, but the main one is that China is losing the future productivity of those unemployed young people--a big deal since their population decline is happening fairly rapidly and their population is aging equally rapidly.
Consumer price in China are persistently flirting with deflation despite significant injections of money into the system by Beijing. As goosing the money supply is generally understood to cause inflation, that Beijing can goose the money supply and still not avoid deflation does not say anything good about the Chinese economy.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/chinas-unstoppable-economic-collapse
China's economy IS in a bad state. The data across the board shows China's economy to be in a very bad state. Yes, it is collapsing.
It's very difficult for people to understand that battle experience is worth a lot more then attritional losses, especially at the relatively low level experienced in the Ukraine war (its big by post WWII standards, but tiny compared to the Russian population and GDP).
The Red Army lost far far more in WWII, and it was still stronger in 1945 then 1941.
We turned a non-enemy country that was perfectly happy trading with us and with no ideological differences into an skilled and experienced enemy that shares a border with our primary geopolitical advisory and can provide them with many of their strategic deficiencies.
Great take-down of claims that Putin's "secret plan" is to march across Europe. Why this twaddle is repeated constantly is baffling. Who is actually buying this?
Nice summary.
Initial reaction from Russian MoD press service Zvezda was that meaningful changes to existing pattern of events are not expected. As per the message from Zelensky, they point out that Kiev now does have a chance to attempt organizational reforms, but Syrsky doesn't have anything really new to offer. So all the pressures on Kiev and the trend of deterioration will go on.
I would add myself that the Bandera faction hasn't gone anywhere, either. They're entrenched, and will continue to both complicate US efforts one month and be cynically used by the US the next - making stability impossible.
Finally, it was interesting that the initial announcement from Zelensky on twitter, contained a figure for the AFU headcount. 1 million people. I take that to mean, for budgetary purposes - and Kiev did a good job negotiating if the sponsors come thru with funding in proportion to that.
If those bunch of nazi of EU Commission want to play wars, fine, let them go on the field and fight!! IDIOTS, CRIMINALS!
EU Commission is ILLEGAL! No Constitution NO Commission or Parliament!!
I think your argument would be more effective if you calmly explained why you think the EU Commission is "illegal" and why it would require a constitutional provision. Calling people Criminals and Idiots is not convincing to anyone.
Sorry, you right, but that day I red an article about Carlson interview to Putin that made me really upset. An idiot (but I can't name him differently) from EU Foreign Affair declared that Carlson could be punished as of the "fascist" Digital Act approved by EU Commission, ONLY!
The EU Commission is Illegal because can you think of a US Nation without a Constitution common to all the States? Don't think so, if there wasn't US were dissolved in different Nations instead to be United many years ago...
It's twice as ILLEGAL and Fascist because EU Commission can rule without submitting his law, rules, act to the EU Parliament. EU parliament has ONLY a consulting role... ridiculous, anti democratic as ever after the WWII ! 😅
So Let's think about any country in the Western world, whoever: US, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia or Spain that has that kind of illegal Governments that are not voted by the citizen, that are not force to deal and get approvals by the Parliament/Congress or any Agency that control who's got the power... Can you?
In my country, in EU, it's called nazifascism... sorry, but we have a certain experience about 100 yrs ago! 😉
But to go even further, as I think you know, some as 20/30 yrs ago before the Euro coins, EU tried to have a common Constitution, but when they did a "trial referendum " in a couple of countries, in France wasn't accepted. So they gave up... and choose the Nazi way to govern EU... Simple, easy, isn't it?
Then let's move to" idiots": I use "idiot" as brainwashed, as servant, as fascist militia, or nazi one if u like, that execute orders coming from other Countries or from the people in power without any critic.
Today most of the people in western societies are idiots, but they didn't born as, they grew up like that. Thanks to Propaganda first, mainstream TV, and the heart, the most explosive and powerful arms to make them idiot were the invention of Socials like Fakebook, Google, Twitter.
Then Instagram and Whatsapp, but if you remember these one were 2 lovely apps for iPhone, pretty useful and pretty interesting until... that puppet of Zuckenbergh bought them and transformed them as arms of espionage, data collecting, intrusive political advertising, people brainwashing.
Have you seen the nice doc " The Great Hack" on Netflix? if not please watch it.
So, to conclude, today in the west, freedom ( of speech too) and rights are just 2 stupid words, completely useless because not only there are Governments as EU Commission that rule and act without anyone's control and without respecting a Constitution chart, but citizen are becoming more and more idiots, txs to technologies that are used to control them, And txs to the Education system that teach and grow kids as idiots, without any critic sense and instruments to choose freely and interpret the history and reality.
Sorry for the long explanation, but was required by your query: 😉
What exactly is the bottom line here?
Ukraine is now (sort of) run by an ever more cornered Troika of Zelensky, Yermak and Budanov in Kiev.
The current desperate purge of those 'not focused enough on attack' seems paradoxically defensive, as Poroshenko, Klitschko, Zaluzhny and others (not so sure about old Yulia) see the weakness of the corrupt, authoritarian, increasingly unpopular Troika.
Budanov is sly enough to see that himself replacing experienced, popular Zaluzhny would be a can of trench worms, so they brought in Syrsky as some kind of fall guy. They've tried to play him off against Zaluzhny in the past.
He has sometimes been good tactically but is no strategist like Zaluzhny - which is why Zaluzhny replaced him earlier. Many blame him for drawing forces away fron the Southern front last summer to his Eastern command, compromising the failed offensive.
I guess he doesn't quite get the desperate last-ditch Troika strategy he's being drawn into.
But my main question is: What was Queen Victoria Nuland's role in the putsh?
She herself is being replaced in Washington...
Syrsky is a walking disaster. He will throw thousands of reserves into Avdiivka and they will be annihilated. The war is reaching an end point, and people will soon be in the streets in Kiev as the regime crumbles. This is a classic end game, no less. I don;t think NATO can save Ukraine. It is too far gone.
It's difficult not to link the Kyiv Troika reaaranging the deck chairs on their Titanic, with the imminent fall of Avdiivka. Everyone compares it to Syrsky's doomed, strategically disastrous defense of Bakhmut.
It's not difficult to imagine a showdown a couple of weeks ago between Zaluzhny arguing for strategic withdrawal, against Zelensky and Budanov insisting against all military logic on another doomed symbolic battle costing thousands more lives. And for that, Syrsky's their man.
It's crazy: delusional Zelensky hoping for a miracle if he believes his own rhetoric enough, and Budanov still perhaps hoping he can break the logjam in allied support by deepening the crisis.
Meanwhile Russian forces are about to cut the main supply - and exit - road in northern Avdiivka, as Syrsky sends pointless reinforcements to the area northwest of the new chokepoint.
If the Russians, as seems increasingly likely, cut off the city over the next fortnight, isolating a garrison of around 4,000, it really would be the end of Zelensky's tragicomedy.
In the end you can't separate the internal struggle in Ukraine from what directives they are getting from their NATO sponsors, especially Nuland, who has zero military background. If it is true that Nuland went to Kiev to prevent Zaluzhny's dismissal, she failed. But the bigger failure is to shape means to ends in military terms. The "arsenal of democracy" is pretty much empty cupboards. So how do you keep up the pretense of fighting Russia. In the end the Biden administration and NATO have helped condemn Ukraine to a near certain death.
Thanks, Stephen.
I still don't understand Nuland's trip.
I do understand that many in the Pentagon backed Zaluzhny, but was Vicky taking their message or her.own (I doubt that Biden actually had a coherent message to take)?
Nuland will be losing her job as Deputy at State soon, as the White House focuses more on China.
After her visit there was a bullish message from Kyiv telling observers to expect dramatic new developments with new weapons...
I guess we may find out more some day, as we eventually learned more of her role in 2013-14 and the first war, or rather the beginning of this 2014-2024 war.
I think she was faking it.
I think their task is likely to maintain the status quo to the extent possible, thru the start of the next US presidential term or its first year or something like that. A stretch, but less impossible than their goal for last year. Each day, lets say, consume 700-1000 casualties and yield on average 5-10 sq km total across the front. On paper, that adds up, provided US is willing to arrange the hardware, the funds, and keep the regime in control. Which in turn means keeping the various thugs and businessmen satisfied.
"Syrskyi is not known for achieving victories"
Syrskyi commanded all ground forces in Eastern Ukraine during the Fall 2022 offensive that pushed the Russians well beyond the Oskol River, easily Ukraine's most notable counteroffensive. In the past he was also Zaluzhny's superior.
That said, he may have been chosen to deflect blame for Avdivka from the president and because he was willing to follow political directives like fighting on in Bakhmut. It's hard to see any gain from this for Ukraine as opposed to the presidential faction.
People have to understand the theory: THE 2 WARS ARE LINKED.
Israel would have NO runway on it's "mideast project" without Russia being tied-down/pre-occupied in UKR. NONE. In a counterfactual universe, the mideast project would've been stalemated in the first 2-3 weeks of that conflict.
So this theory suggest the policy we see: UKR is NOT to surrender/make-peace till time as mid east war bears "fruit".
It's evil, machiavellian, and nasty.
Israel had plenty of "runway" in 1967 during the Six Day War, when Russia was unencumbered by war and the US maintained a full arms embargo against Israel.
Israel's military has only gotten stronger as war has gone high tech: Israel's economy runs on high tech, leading the world in areas like machine vision (Mobileye), drones (Rafael, Israel Aerospace, Elbit) and armor protection (Rafael, Plasan).
Russia's economy, by contrast, remains at Third World level ("Ethiopia with rockets"), importing "technology" from Iran and North Korea and exporting oil, metals, grains and prostitutes.
Nasty indeed.
third world? in 2nd year of full on NATO proxy war! ok....
You are blind to Russian footprint in Middle East. You notice Syrian gov is still there? I know you'd bay for blood (it is the cultivated US middle class conditioned response) but Assad is still there. This "third world" country can obstruct your plans in 2 minutes. It has completely disrupted Africom. What? You dint hear bout it on CNN? Just because your media cultivates the middle class like a pearl don't mean reality stops on the outside world.
???
" Syrian gov is still there"
Right, the Syrian government, an economic and technological powerhouse, is that the one you mean? Or the insignificant, impoverished, backward state of no importance in the world?
This is what you're measuring against: https://www.timesofisrael.com/intel-officially-launches-most-significant-chip-lineup-sired-in-israel/
They're linked but not as described.
Russia had good relations to Israel and just like the rest of the world, had been willing to look the other way on Palestine. The Israeli overreaction to Oct 7 unexpectedly changed that state of affairs. But that's beside the point here. Russia was a limited factor in the middle east other than Syria ofc.
I'd say the common link is the US sanctions regime. In particular the US policy of sanctions vs China, at a point when their role in global industrial supply chains is roughly comparable to the agricultural role played by the sun. I guess the twitter crowd nowadays refers to this as "DC brain". It's a persistent condition and so neither conflict is going to end anytime soon.
yeah yeah yeah. Russia has "good" relations with Trump. He dint lift a FINGER to prevent the Ukraine war despite being IN IT FIRST HAND( Manafort). By now you should know the full depth of 2-facedness of empire.
was I talking about Trump?