Can anyone explain why Putin wants Ukraine so badly? Is it natural resources, geography, or simply a "the country must grow" mindset?
Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
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Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#852I love threads like these bc it really makes clear how knowing like 2 years' worth of C++ turns you into the world's greatest strategic genius
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#853Can anyone explain why Putin wants Ukraine so badly? Is it natural resources, geography, or simply a "the country must grow" mindset?
Access to the Mediterranean would be the traditional reason Russia has wanted to control Ukraine
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#854What is the endgame here? Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily. If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much. If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO). The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss. But it doesn't make sense that a nation as soph…
In most traditional contexts, risk is defined as severity x probability.
You outlined the severity of NATO intervention. That is to say, you only described half of the equation. It could very well be that Russia assumes the probability of NATO intervention is disproportionately low, meaning the risk calculation is also low. Maybe they think that balance outweighs the economic risk.
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#855Earlier quoted context omitted.
The speech of a bully, of an aggressor. The only correct reply is a direct retaliatory attack on his offensive positions.
The reason Putin is invading is because he knows the U.S. is weak, its leadership is politically weak, and there's very little it will do, and even if it does, it doesn't have popular support. It's the effect of clear incentives. If the U.S. intervenes, a retaliatory cyber op from Russia against critical infrastructure would make america amish again. Then, wait until midterms when the president loses the house and se…
This would be true if we were still on the previous administration, but I think we're back to our regularly scheduled programming now.
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#856Another Russian here. I don't agree and don't support this action. We anticipate long years if not decades of isolation, even more stagnating economy, even more authoritarian government. By all means it's a terrible thing. For both Russians and Ucrainians alike. But... The drama around it as portrayed in Western media is ridiculous. There won't be major loss of life nor any "war" in conventional sense. It would be no…
can you tell me what pro-Putin Russians think about this? The ones that are not brainwashed? Like, how does Russia gain anything from this action? It only stands to lose economic ties in an ever increasing interconnected world. When Oil and Gas won't be king in 20 years, Russia is doomed without more cooperation with advanced countries. What are people thinking? What is the reason behind all this?
I'm sure they think "we dont want the usa puppet masters anywhere around here". Which is exactly what Putin is writing in his speeches about. Have you read the speeches on the Kremlin's website? There is an english version that explains pretty much every reason that a pro-Putin Russian would gobble up as gospel.
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#857Earlier quoted context omitted.
Long story short, Putin's plan is, depending on how Ukraine goes, to further attack Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, maybe Finland (they'll join NATO by the end of the year if not sooner as will Sweden), maybe Poland , and push the United States and UK out of Europe. If Ukraine goes very well, this will be sooner. If Ukraine goes poorly but he still wins and installs a puppet government, it'll be on a longer time…
This whole Trump being pro-russia needs to die. It's so dumb. If repeated enough times it'll become truth unfortunately. Trump looked to increase NATO defenses and aggressively pump oil and gas to crash the global price of Russia's chief source of foreign exchange. That's hardly pro russian. Ironically, Biden comes in and kills oil production in the US, forcing us to then rely on external oil markets for our resource…
Trump has consistently parroted Russian propaganda over his own intelligence while in office, and has not stopped since leaving office:
https://theweek.com/russo-ukrainian-war/1010547/fox-news-hos...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/putin-eyes-ukraine-invasion-...
The oil and gas pumping you mention started under Obama, and responding to an attack on American forces with lethal force is an incredibly low bar. The other state department actions don't change that his administration was vocally pro-Russia.
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#858What is the endgame here? Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily. If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much. If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO). The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss. But it doesn't make sense that a nation as soph…
It's really not about Russia, it's about Putin desire to be a famous dictator like Stalin and Hitler.
He already got high-score as a billionaire dictator of Russia with gigantic palaces and whatnot. He already did some 'small' wars and expanded Russia's territory.
Now he wants to play big and defeat a major country and be considered a major player like USSR was.
There's no profit in it.
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#859Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the risk of direct NATO military intervention is very low, due to Ukraine not being a member state. As the Nato secretary said, they will support Ukraine, but made it clear the security guarantees are only for allies. "I think also that we need to realize that Ukraine is a highly valued partner. We support them with military support, with political support, with the cyber defences, with equipment. Different A…
Think for a moment about the signal this sends to all the other non-NATO members around the world.
Most countries outside the US and Western Europe has been mostly measured in their statements on today's events, see for eg Israel, Turkey etc.
Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
#860Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss. Which means that they might actually believe the risk of NATO intervention is low. Or they see it like Poker as an "all in" move. Either lose now on their own terms in Ukraine or eventually they lose anyway as Ukraine joins NATO and Russia's nuclear advantages are "neutralized". Meanwhile there's the chance NAT…
This is pretty close to how I view all this. Putin knows the game is lost and so this is an all-in gambit in the hope of forestalling the inevitable.
What "game" is lost? Nobody is threatening to invade them. Why don't they create better future for their people the peaceful way - pursue math, education, science, even encourage tourism.