The Russian space program was the most impressive thing to me about Russians, so to see it destroyed before my very eyes saddens me. Russians are quite clever about making do with little, but I don't see how a declining country like Russia is today can compete with the Indian or Chinese space programs, who are also doing amazing things that don't get a lot of press in America.
> The Russian space program was the most impressive thing to me about Russians, so to see it destroyed before my very eyes saddens me.
It's been dead for thirty years. Russia has done an admirable job using, reusing, and repurposing tools developed during the Soviet Union's existence, but that is all they have had going for them - aside from cash related to Mir and ISS and the associated launches, which kept the whole thing on life support.
I was listening to a podcast recently where they were discussion the best possible outcome for Russia in the comming years and there conclusion was a strong but benevolent dictator (maybe a women) that slowly paves the way towards democracy.
There sentiment was that Russia is not ready for democracy right now because of years and years of propaganda and suppression of an intellectual elite.
> There sentiment was that Russia is not ready for democracy right now because of years and years of propaganda and suppression of an intellectual elite.
Propaganda and suppression of an intellectual elite are symptoms. The root cause is the possibility for a small group of greedy people to pump oil and gas, get a lot of profits, and to finance a repression machine allowing to cement the status quo. All this scheme is leads inevitably to a simple economy and a concentration of power, when democracy is considered as a threat to profits of a small powerful group.
If there was no possibility to sell oil and gas, then it would be appropriate to discuss if a benevolent dictator might help to build a democracy. While this possibility persists nothing will help. Now it seems West is going to ban exports from Russia (I'm very excited), but there is China. China will benefit from supporting Russia on it's way to a North Korea scenario. So I believe there is no hope for a democracy in Russia.
Unfortunately that seems very likely. Though I have vague hope for a "twist" wherein the invasion energizes Ukraine and leads them to have a new "slavic cultural bloom". If that happened and they rid themselves of the excessive corruption and their economy grew with it there could then be a spillover effect back to Russia.
The brain drain will get a huge spike again unless they’re literally stopped from leaving the country. So all industries will be affected for a long time
Half the software engineers and other STEM professionals I know that lived in Russia have left the country in the last month, me included. Most don't have job offers or money to last more than a couple of months, some don't even have their passports.
Capitalism is the best way to do it: just hire people who are leaving. It's a pure win-win situation.
There is a direct and very strong correlation in Russia between person's level of education, his worth on the labour market and his disdain for the Russia's policy. While majority of Russians support fascist regime and criminal war against Ukraine, majority of those who leave now, especially those with fluent English and internationally valued skills absolutely do not.
Do countries accept refugees without passports? I can't imagine living a stateless/undocumented existence in some random country to be better than a relatively middle class life in russia.
Armenia accepts Russian citizen by internal Russian ID. It's confusing, because internal id is called "passport" in Russia, and passport is called "foreign passport" — a legacy of a system that was (and still is) designed to impose prison-like discipline on it's own citizens and limit their ability to go abroad.
But technically Russian government isn’t killing their citizens unless you were conscripted.
And for all it is western governments don’t have a good history of accepting refugees, let alone refugees who just decided the leave the country because it’s just not too good there.
Getting asylum for is much harder than you might think when it's come to someone from Russia.
Getting into EU using all legal (or illegal) ways and trying to get asylum is good option for people who actually running from war when their home being bombed. But if you're from IT and used to higher quality of life and also need some comfort to work efficiently then it's not an option - because finding a job takes time.
Why bother, Brahmos is likely unstoppable for its purposes for quite some time. Brahmos 2 is likely going to work too so there's no reason to man-month it.
I had assumed that Russia would want to embrace trying to land first stage boosters after SpaceX proved it was do-able. With the vast amount of territory they have they could avoid the trouble of trying to land on a droneship and perhaps even develop a large structure to catch fairings downrange.
Roscosmos are working on a launch system with a re-usable first stage, Soyuz-7 or Amur [1]. The renders they've released are basically just a tweaked Falcon 9, except this one will be re-usable 100 times over!
Whether Amur will ever fly, or even become hardware ... I'm not holding my breath.
I do wonder if Elon meant a certain 2 nations when Tim Dodd was with him on the Starbase tour.
There was a Raptor 1 full upclose to which he said something along the lines of, paraphrasing, "If you copy these then good luck to you, you're in for pain".
I'm sure they still know a thing or two about rocket engine design(!) but I can't help think that brain-drain will get the better of them sooner or later. These things require innovation, not just brute forcing old designs.
You are vastly overestimating Russia ability to innovate. Russia has basically not innovated since the Soviet Union. Angara rocket is supposed to be the 'next generation' rocket and its adoption has been painfully slow.
The idea that they could just build a reusable rocket is just not in the car.
Mostly what the Russian space program has been doing is announcing one absurd program after another. The amount of power-point designs announced by Russia is comical. They have announced a reusable rocket but like so many of the other projects, its mostly just propganda.
They have been using the same rocket for like 30 years. I'm not sure they are organizationally equipped to innovate anymore. Similar to the standard NASA contractors, who are rearranging shuttle parts to make the SLS and costing and order of magnitude more than even SpaceX's outlandish experiments from scratch.
Also its entirely possible the cost of a Soyuz launch is cheaper than a Falcon9 despite re-use, due to it being used for so long and slightly smaller.
Well, previously commercial outfits were choosing SpaceX in large numbers. So if Soyuz is cheaper, why not Soyuz. Both these vehicles have government orders which are never going on a foreign platform, so there is no price cap for those, but if I'm a comms satellite outfit (and there isn't currently a war) surely I just pick whichever is cheapest?
Soyuz isn't really in the same class as F9; its GTO payload is something like 2.5t, where F9 is like 5.5t. (The equivalent launcher on the Russian side was Proton at 6+t. And indeed, it sold lots of commercial launches until eclipsed by F9/FH... and its own poor reliability.) So Soyuz wasn't really competitive for most commercial launch, which until recently was largely GEO comsats. It was well-suited for MEO and LEO, which (until recently) was mostly scientific and surveillance, which is mostly government customers. But it was also well placed for the new commercial LEO com constellations, until they decided to throw that away.
Yes, the decline russia will face is tragic, and for what? At best they will own some land that has had all the buildings and infrastructure ground to dust and citizens who have all been murdered. Russia is spending tremendous resources to destroy more resources, but physical and social. It is the stupidest thing I've seen in my life.
I don't think there was any scenario where the invasion was a benefit to Russia. But if it had gone the way most analysts had expected, with Kyiv falling after four days, it could have been a benefit to Vladimir Putin. With the invasion having gone horribly wrong it's clear to everyone that it's in Russia's best interest to withdraw immediately. But what's in Russia's best interest isn't necessarily in Putin's personal interest. So better to keep on killing Ukrainian men, women, children by the thousands to save his own skin.
Some call Putin a "genius". I'd call him something different.
He's also sending Russian soldiers into death. Mutiny is hard and complicated, and runs a huge risk for your life and life of your family, so even those convinced they are doing the wrong stuff will have a hard time stopping themselves.
Not to mention that reproduction rates both in Russia and in the Ukraine are below replacement levels, so they'll have more land for a shrinking population.
Wasn't that the case in Western countries as well 30 years ago? Basically, formerly communist countries are 20-30 years behind in the sociological development, even if they catch up economically in some aspects earlier (though those are closely intertwined, because they are still at "I can't reasonably provide for more than 1-2 children").
Before I begin to offer a different view, please allow me to say that I in no way condone what is happening.
So why is Putin invading Ukraine now? There are several logical reasons if you understand Russian history, geography, psychology and demography.
In terms of history, in the past 500 years, Russia has been invaded several times from the west. Specifically, Moscow has been attacked and conquered six times in its history by foreign armies, and usually via the same routes. This is also where geography plays an important role in understanding the Russian invasion.
In terms of geography, the Carpathian Mountains are a natural land defence between the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea. Indeed, in the days of the USSR, under the Warsaw Pact, the Russians could project military power in the land gaps either side of the Carpathian Mountains on Baltic and Black Seas. This is where NATO expansion has worried the Russians because, post the USSR, I speculate they feel Moscow is exposed, and is being encircled by NATO.
I also speculate the psychology of the Russian leadership is one of paranoia of land invasion, and they want to push out territory (or at least project military power) to fight an invasion from the historical routes Russia has been invaded from. Post-communist Russia has been doing just this and is why Crimea was effectively annexed by Russia (because they wanted to project naval power into the Black Sea).
From a US perspective we like to think that the US was the biggest factor in the Allied win of WWII, but little thought is given to how important the Russians were and how many Russians lost their lives. This is where, most mainstream media has completely omitted the rise of far-right violence and politics in Ukraine. No one in the West wants to think they are supporting Nazis even if they are fending off the Russians. Please note that I am not saying that all Ukrainians are far-right, however I speculate that the Russians do care about the rise of the far right in Ukraine (as it is along their border), and from their perspective see it as stopping the rise of another WWII Nazi-Germany type situation.
Lastly, demography plays a part because Russia has had several 'baby busts', that is not enough babies have been born. I speculate that the Russian leadership believes that if Russia does not plug the geographic routes for invasion now, it never will.
Sadly, I also don’t see Russia stopping with Ukraine. If the Russians will stop at nothing to gain geographic security this puts Russia in a direct confrontation with NATO member states. I also worry about the second order consequences, like the loss of life and suffering that will happen due to a loss of Ukrainian wheat crops, and the loss of global crops due to sanctions on fertilizers from Russia.
It isn't that an attack was likely, it is the fact that an attack could overtake Moscow much easier if one did happen. It is like people who keep assault rifles in their home in extremely safe neighborhoods.
From Moscow's perspective Ukraine could have a Nazi party take over at some point in the future. Those Nazis may think about finishing the job Hitler failed to do and take Moscow.
No it can't. Ukraine doesn't and can't have nukes. Russia has thousands of nukes. This doesn't even begin to make sense. Nobody can invade a nuclear power, let alone one with as many nukes as Russia.
> From Moscow's perspective Ukraine could have a Nazi party take over at some point in the future.
This is their propaganda. It's that logical fallacy; anything could happen, therefore this. Far-right gets very little support in Ukrainian elections, and neo-nazism is a bigger problem in Russia, Poland and Hungary than in Ukraine. Maybe Russia should be scared of Hungary; fair enough. But Ukraine? Azov is a large problem that needs to be dealt with, but it has nothing to do with neo-Nazis inside Ukrainian politics or leadership or broader society. If they wanted Ukraine to deal with Azov, they would stop threatening Ukraine, and then Ukraine wouldn't have the need for Azov. If you create an intense need for defence, then of course Azov isn't going to be dealt with. Azov is purely the fault of Russia.
They (Azov battalion ) are 1000 - 1500 (depending on source) people , and apparently only 10% - 20% of them are self proclaimed Nazis. Even if all of them are, It would surprise me if this was even the biggest Ukraian Nazi group.
Most Westerner nations have more, hell In US you would be hard pressed to find a state that has less of them.
Not trying to excuse them. Any white supremacist and/or nazi has no place in modern society. Just trying to put things in perspective. If Azov is all the nazis that Ukraine has, they are better than most western countries.
Please enlighten me, what other European country not only gave the arms to a Neo-Nazi gang (making it a government supported armed gang), absolved them of from any persecution from their misdeeds (including torture of civilians, as documented by OHCHR) AND incorporated it as a full featured unit in it's own army?
Complete with a wolfsangel, black sun and reichsadler on the coat of arms, you know, a long standing historical symbols of Ukraine along with vyshyvanka ?
Can you imagine something happening in a present day Germany? Poland? Latvi... well, in Latvia it could happen just fine, sure thing.
The problem is not in Azov, the problem is what there is too many nazi (real nazi, adoring AH and German nazi, not just 'extremely nationalistic' ones) everywhere in Ukraine, including government AND army. If the layer of shit in the cake is only 2% it is still a cake with a shit layer.
> If Azov is all the nazis that Ukraine has, they are better than most western countries.
No, Azov isn't 'all the nazis' sadly. In the first week of war there was enough UPA flags in the videos to tell that.
Germany and Poland aren't under existential threat from Russia. If your neighbor wants to invade you and has 3x the population, you can't pick and choose who you're going to let defend your country. Therefore the blame for tolerance of Azov is purely on Russian aggression.
Look at Mariupol right now. The only reason it's still standing is because of Azov. This shows that the tolerance of Azov was unfortunately necessary in order to stop Russian aggression. If you are upset by Azov, blame Russia.
Oh, sure, the shit started only month ago and there was nobody else to defend except a Nazi unit of a regular army, amirite? And it didn't existed for 8 previous years, right?
> the blame for tolerance of Azov is purely on Russian aggression.
... blame for tolerance? What?
> The only reason it's still standing is because of Azov
Or maybe they just don't want to surrender because they somehow know they would receive the same treatment they gave all those years?
> This shows that the tolerance of Azov was unfortunately necessary in order to stop Russian aggression
And now you are justifying a literal Nazis... Or maybe you are just actually sympathize with them?
No, it started well before that, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and when Russia poisoned a democratically elected leader of Ukraine, and when Russian state controlled media and Putin's own essays constantly talks about empire building and Ukraine not even existing, and given Russia's history of invading other neighbors (Georgia). That you actually said "the shit only started a month ago" shows me you're acting in complete bad faith in defence of the fascist Russia and I'm terminating the conversation here.
If you google "100 year history of Europe" you will see that older people like Putin are very aware of how drastically borders and governments have changed, even including countries that have nuclear weapons. To say that no one is going to invade Russia today is accurate, but from the Russian perspective the future of Russia is far from secure, they feel like they have to fight to preserve Russia.
> they feel like they have to fight to preserve Russia.
I get that's part of what the propaganda is saying, and therefore some part of the population will believe it strongly. I am just saying it is not believable.
Certainly, they have to fight to preserve rule by Putin, which is all that is under threat. Failing to invade might have made him look weak. Pulling out would make him look weak. The moment he starts to seem weak, he's out, and shortly dead.
USSR's borders were not changed by external powers. And England? Do you mean the end of Empire? I'm not sure on the dates but it mostly predates nuclear deterrence.
If you are not sure you can google "European border changes over the past 100 years" and also Google "Dates that countries became nuclear"
As far as the USSR collapse having nothing to do with external powers, that is an interesting take, I thought the Cold War was a big part of it, but maybe not?
> From Moscow's perspective Ukraine could have a Nazi party take over at some point in the future.
Moscow doesn't care about Nazis; it's essentially a fascist state itself, and has been backing neo-Nazi groups among the separatists in sponsors (like the Sparta battalion) before Azov was involved in the conflict, much less incorporated into the National Guard.
It only cares that Ukraine has a government now (not potentially in the future) that it isn't a willing puppet of Russia like the Yanukovych government was, or like Lukashenko’s government in Belarus is.
Russia is more worried about a democratic Ukraine joining the EU than a far-right government. A democratic country on their boarder is far harder to control from Moscow, simply look at Belarus for proof of that. Nutty dictator in the pocket of Putin.
That anyone can even entertain that Russia is WORRIED about Nazis or far-right poltics in Ukraine is laughable, they WANT that government. It's propaganda 101.
> In terms of history, in the past 500 years, Russia has been invaded several times from the west. Specifically, Moscow has been attacked and conquered six times in its history by foreign armies, and usually via the same routes.
If they think Moscow is too close to a border for safety, they should cry themselves to sleep and try to find friends to protect them. Is there any capital city in the world further from the closest border or ocean, besides Brasilia?
Thank you for your comment, you are right that nuclear deterrance is important and should be factored into any military conflict. However, you've assumed that nuclear deterrence cannot be nullified, or that robots or drones (or say a bat virus) will not be weaponised to be a threat to a conventional military (or nuclear deterrent). I'm not so sure, all war brings surprises and unexpected developments. My guess is that we’re going to see hybrid wars in the future where it isn’t obvious that an attack has been made. Indeed in "The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons", by Xu Dezhong, it was speculated that WWIII would be fought with bioweapons. It’s quite an eye opener considering it was published in 2015.
If I was a military strategist, I would want geographical strategic advantage and maximum future flexibility.
Why write such a long posts only rehashing Russian propaganda? Removing the propaganda part, the bunch of those long posts of yours today could have been stated 10-20 times shorter as "Russia has decided to genocide a neighbor and to use the resulting wasteland of the neighbor's country as a geographical buffer".
Should the world allow it to happen? All countries have had centuries of wars. I don't see why Russia qualifies for an exception allowing it to genocide Ukrainians.
For the people not familiar with related terms - the UN definition of genocide https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml. Putin was very clear in his editorial and speeches that the destruction of Ukrainian ethnic and national identity is the main goal of the war.
I have literally said, "I in no way condone what is happening". Also, please don't start jumping to conclusions that I'm just a parrot of Russian propaganda.
It shocked me that I never considered that I would see an invasion, and let's be frank, a war in Europe.
Of course, I think there should be a halt to the hostilities... but I believe in seeing the world as it is and dealing with that, with a view to work towards what it should be. Sadly, the US and others like the UK, won't risk a NATO/Russian war. That's the only way I see the Ukrainian invasion ending.
The idea of land invasion is laughable. I mean seriously, Germany was basically not even spending anything on their defense.
The idea that NATO would get its finger out of its ass to do that is basically impossible.
And even so, that ignore nuclear power.
I know more about Russian history then most people and was interested in the topic before this war, and Russia certainty has interest there. But strategically this was the worst single plan imaginable.
>In terms of history, in the past 500 years, Russia has been invaded several times from the west. Specifically, Moscow has been attacked and conquered six times in its history by foreign armies, and usually via the same routes. This is also where geography plays an important role in understanding the Russian invasion.
If I was saying to somebody we should invade Russia they would understand that it was a joke, because nobody gets away with invading Russia. Nobody. It never ends well. Russia is not the place people go make a name for themselves as conquerors. It is the place conquerors go to die.
I see you're getting a lot of pushback on this. IMO, this guy knows what he's talking about. Not in the sense that it's absolutely correct. In the sense that this is what Russian Nationalists actually believe and think.
Keep in mind, the Russians that think like this mostly only speak Russian. If they speak any other language also, they choose to spend most of their time in the Russian-language world. They consider Russia their motherland, and aren't about to leave to nations they consider foreign and hostile just because things might be tough for a while. They're not listening to Western news even when they were allowed to, and they don't know or care much what Westerners think.
Are such types of people "ignorant", "uncultured", and whatever else you might call them? Kind of, yeah. But what nation can survive long without any such people, especially in the face of the invasions they've faced in the last few hundred years.
These are the people who are Putin's base and make up most of the Russian elite. They're also the ones that will decide whether he stays in power or goes. They really do think that those uppity Ukrainians had it coming, don't know their place, have no business considering themselves a country and cozying up to Nato, etc. I'm pretty sure if he does end up getting the boot, it will be because his backers are horrified at how much he let the once-mighty Red Army degrade and how vulnerable he let them become to the West, not because they realized that Ukraine deserves to be independent after all.
The trouble is, Putin and his crew spewed a little too much propaganda, and believed it a little too hard. They talked up how Ukraine was a bunch of drug-addled half-assed wannabe Nazis to themselves so hard that they actually believed it. They went in with a plan based around those assumptions. The trouble is, it seems they were quite wrong and are getting their asses handed to them. So what are they gonna do now? I don't think that pulling out and going home with their tail between their legs is gonna be a good option for Putin. Beats me what they'll actually do, but I'm afraid it won't be pretty.
If you really want to understand things, you need to understand that it's a different culture over there. They really do believe this stuff. The few Westernized people who think it's all terrible are a tiny, unrepresentative minority. Don't make the mistake of thinking that everyone everywhere is really just like us, with maybe just a couple of weird assholes in charge for some reason. Our enemies are sincere. America has made such assumptions more than once in our past, and got our asses handed to us over it. Now it's Russia's turn, at least as long we we don't screw things up even more than they did.
Jewish democratically elected president and yet you repeat the lie that this war is about nazis. Jewish people are persecuted by nazis, not elected to the presidency by nazis.
Russian land invasion fears as speculation for why Russia invaded, but this war started many years ago when Russia took Crimea and Crimea doesn't have a land connection with Russia. Russia shares a sea with Crimea, but not land. What Crimea does have is a lot of oil. So much so that it was a geopolitical threat to Europe's reliance on Russian oil.
This war isn't happening because of baby busts. It is happening because Russia raped Ukraine for oil, but then discovered that holding Crimea against Ukraine wasn't feasible. Crimea gets its water from Ukraine. Russia doesn't have a port for the sea that connects it with Crimea which is always usable. So it has to ship water in, but doesn't have a great means to do so when Ukraine is hostile.
It built a bridge, but that sort of infrastructure is vulnerable in the event of war.
Stealing Crimea turned out to be expensive. Meanwhile, Ukraine was modernizing its armies and pretty upset that its land was stolen from it.
So they call them nazis, which in this case really means people willing to defend their land, but who cares about actual meanings when you can just repeat Russian propaganda?
If Russia waits, Ukraine continues to modernize. Eventually the war starts on Ukraine's terms and instead of humiliating international defeat now they would have gotten a crushing and humiliating international rout later. The defeat is Ukraine retaking Crimea. It isn't an invasion of Moscow. The war with NATO that Russia is afraid of isn't NATO invading Moscow either. It is NATO supporting Ukraine's efforts to retake Crimea.
Which is why Russia was so desperate to do this now, even though it was a bad decision. Every moment they waited Ukraine was getting stronger. They wanted to win now to stop them from facing justice later. Except they miscalculated. Ukraine grew stronger faster than they realized. Moreover, their espionage wasn't as effective as they had hoped. They wanted to win quickly. They hoped to just take Ukraine and be done.
They didn't. They blundered. This blunder goes back many years. As far back as the invasion of Crimea itself.
The kicker? Oil isn't the currency of the future. They blundered over the resource that everyone is going to be trying to get away from.
There's far right movements in more places then Ukraine, what makes Ukraine special in its movement compared to those elsewhere in the west?
I'm also not sure Ukraine would have had the ability to be a Nazi-Germani situation, their military stands no chance. What would they have tried to conquer and not quickly been pushed back from doing so?
This is why I feel that argument makes no sense to me, and sounds like a big pretext for something else, which in my opinion is more about Putin's holding on to his power and authoritarianism.
Personally, I think Russia's best future is to do what Ukraine was trying to do. Become a part of the west, democratize properly with real term limits and all, tackle corruption, regulate your oligarch to favor more competition, etc.
My thoughts though is that Putin is the one that loses most if Russia were to do that, and he was afraid that Ukraine would set an example, if Ukraine did it and it turned out good for them and their people, Putin would be put in a bad spot.
But I'm interested in your thoughts, because it's true I don't know as much about the geopolitics around Russia.
I never thought Russia would invade, I kept hearing the US warnings and thought it was BS. I was proved wrong, so I had to reassess my model of the world. I went to first principles... geography, history, demographics, psychology, and tried to understand it from the Russian perspective. I'm not Russian, I haven't talked to any Russian, it is pure speculation on my part.
I think a lot has been made of comments about the far-right elements in Ukraine, but it is coming from my analysis that politics is becoming bifurcated and extreme on both ends of the political divide. You quite rightly point out that there are far right movements in more places than Ukraine, and I completely agree. I worry a lot about the rise of nationalism and I think any politician is a fool to ignore it... sadly many of them have exploited division and nationalism for their own ends. Indeed, Putin can be exploiting it as an excuse for the war, but we should acknowledge that there is a modicum of truth to it, which makes the propaganda effective.
As for Putin's holding on to his power and authoritarianism, I think there is an element of that, but there are all the people under him that have vested interests in continuing the regime. In the West we think that democracy is the best system, and I think we don't question that. If you do question it, you'll see that it's actually quite fragile and relies on belief in the legitimacy of the elections, and a stable society where wealth inequality doesn't get out of hand. Increasingly the West is doubting elections Brexit/Trump/Biden, society is unstable with protests and riots, and wealth inequality is growing to historical extremes. Indeed, the Russian, Chinese revolutions and Hitler's rise to power came out of a similar situation.
Lastly, I haven't mentioned speculation that Ukraine could be sitting on vast offshore oil and gas reserves in the Black Sea. If this is correct, Ukraine would be of prime interest to the EU and probably fast track EU and, or NATO membership. Obviously, this would threaten Russian interests.
I hope that helps explain my thinking. I'm not an expert. I just tried to refactor my thinking and I just tried to start from first principles. I hope all the death and destruction stops.
If NATO were genuinely a threat to Russia, I'd expect NATO jets to "stray" into Russian airspace as often as the Russian planes stray into UK airspace north of Scotland, or China flies over Taiwan.
NATO doesn't do this. Or at least if it does, it's remarkably poorly reported by some of the press in the UK that I would expect to gleefully report if it were true.
Also, if you want 'second order consequences' take a moment to think about the brain drain of many under-30 Russians (I'm picking an arbitrary age), that have grown up with the Internet and western food. They're leaving as we type.
Then, there's the demographic problem. There are fewer young men in Russia.
Even fewer due to COVID, and now due to the events of the last few weeks. And who knows how many Russian teens and 20-somethings will be dead in a month or two?
How do you "protect yourself" from perceived invasion from the west with fewer and fewer people in the army? Bigger weapons? I hope not.
Russia are losing their youth on two fronts.
Well done Putin, you've ruined your country for decades.
I completely agree about the Russian brain drain issue, and about the extreme cost of sending young Russian men (many of whom are only sons) off to die. All of it, on all sides, is a huge waste and tragedy.
However, with regards to your statement about overt military operations threatening Russia, have you considered all the covert stuff? The CIA have been running operations in Ukraine for a long time and I think it would be fair to say that the Orange Revolution was helped along by Western intelligence agencies.
> There are fewer young men in Russia. Even fewer due to COVID
Quite possibly the economy could be better after COVID? Something that mostly kills off older retirees could reduce economic drain (although it depends on lots of factors).
All those invasions of Russia from the West were failures that did not have any long-term consequences.
Moreover, those invasions were all personal affairs. Dictatorial leaders like the Swedish kings, Napoleon or Hitler wanted to beat the Tsar/General-Secretary or whatever the master of the Russians called himself and take his possessions.
It was not like the majority of the citizens of those countries cared about the Russian lands and wanted them.
Now, when all the Western neighbors of Russia have democratic governments, continuing to say that there exists any danger of invasion for Russia is ridiculous.
While during the last 500 years there were a few failed attempts to invade Russia, on the other hand Russia has continuously invaded very successfully both its Western and its Eastern neighbors, becoming from a relatively small country one of the largest empires, and it remained the largest country after the British Empire decomposed.
On all the territories that they invaded, the Russians have implemented brutal policies against the natives, both during the Tsars and during the communists.
Especially during the 19th century, the Russians, while expanding continuously toward the West, claimed that they were "liberating" various populations from the non-Christian Ottoman exploitation.
In reality the new "Christian" rulers have always proved to be much greedier than the former Ottoman rulers and much more aggressive towards the non-Russian populations. The former Ottoman empire was much more tolerant towards minorities, regardless of their religion (as long as they paid the imposed taxes).
So no, any justification of Russia being some kind of victim of invasions, when it is Russia who invaded successfully and relentlessly all its neighbors during 500 years, and thus needing today some imaginary vital space for its protection, is completely baseless.
Moreover, because the post above mentions that the Russians would like to reach the Carpathian Mountains, supposedly for a better protection of their Western border, it is good to know that before WWII Russia/SSSR never reached until the Carpathian Mountains.
After WWII, according to the agreements with Roosevelt and Churchill, the Soviet Union incorporated large parts from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Those parts included a segment of the Carpathian Mountains and it is thus how Russia reached them.
However Stalin included much of what was taken from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania into Ukraine.
Therefore when Ukraine opted out of the Soviet Union, Russia lost the access to the Carpathians, so they probably regretted that Stalin has chosen to include those parts in Ukraine (which made more sense geographically) instead of in Russia proper.
> All those invasions of Russia from the West were failures that did not have any long-term consequences
Excuse me, are you considering WWII fatalities as "no long-term consequences"?
> while expanding continuously toward the West, claimed that they were "liberating"
And Nazi Germany claimed they were "liberating" [from the Red Plague] the countries they invade. Well, they liberated Jews, Poles, Slavs from their lives, I can't deny that.
Even if WWII caused a huge number of deaths among Russians, the consequence of WWII for Russia and the Soviet Union was that they became immediately richer than ever in their entire history.
At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union incorporated a few whole countries, the Baltic countries and large parts from its other neighbors, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, also some Japanese islands.
Besides these huge occupied territories, the Soviet Union stole huge amounts from the Eastern European countries occupied by it. A large number of German factories have been taken and moved piece by piece in Russia, where they constituted the basis of many Soviet industries after the war.
In all the other East European countries, especially during the first 2 decades after WWII, the Soviet Union continued to steal every year much of the useful production of various agricultural products and mineral resources, usually under the camouflage of mixed companies, partially owned by the Soviet Union and by the local country, but in which the Russians dictated, with the support of the Soviet army, which still occupied those countries.
Several East European countries had to pay huge war reparations to the Soviet Union, even if the history of the war was completely opposite from what the Russians claimed, i.e. it was Russia who attacked and occupied parts of those countries at the beginning of WWII and not the other way around. Nonetheless, the victims of the Russian invasions not only lost large territories, but they have also paid war reparations for defending themselves, continuously for about 20 years after WWII.
So yes for Russia, with the help of their US & British allies, WWII had unbelievably good consequences, better than any of the other wars initiated by Russia.
Of course the beneficiaries of all the wealth stolen from the neighbors of the Soviet Union were not the many millions of simple Soviet citizens, but only the communist leaders and their families, who have always secretly had access to many luxuries that were completely forbidden for normal people.
Ignoring morality entirely for a moment it is rather remarkable that Russia watched the US experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and said "yes, we'd like that for us, but on hard mode".
Ignoring morality entirely for a moment, it is rather remarkable that the US watched the Russian experience in Afghanistan and said, "yes, we'd like that for us."1
Minority in a larger country, minority wants to separate into its own country, the main country won't let them, some conflicts and shooting, shelling, killing, and an "outside player" steps in and starts destroying the main country.
I was a freshman in college at the time and we discussed it in a geography class.
We all agreed that a nation state based approach to the problem of terrorism was absurd, but there was no way any US president would do anything less. Remembering the phrase "a wartime president has never not been re-elected" turns my stomach. Iraq of course was another matter, but Afghanistan was more of a greek tragedy.
One of the pillars of supporting dollar as world reserve currency (and thus having endless credit) is showing that it’s backed by strong security force. Thus it necessitates periodic demonstrations and actual training of said security force. Thus constant deployment to some far countries to “fight for piece”.
Well yeah, and americans trained osama bin laden to fight them. Oh how the turntables...
So we basically agree, that both countries are bad, but we somehow act as if somehow americans are the "good guys" for bombing weddings in pakistan and killing afghanis, and bunch of other people, and that russians deserve the sanctions, while other countries currently occupying eg. syria don't.
The US are the good guys, quite obviously. That's why nearly all the good - liberal, democratic, freedom-oriented - nations are specifically aligned with the US, and why Russia's only pals are tyrants. It's also why Ukraine is friends with the US (despite the distance and cultural separation) and is fighting a war against Russia, because Russia are the bad guys (anti democratic, anti liberal, regressive, dictatorship, conquest-oriented).
Nobody thinks the US are the good guys for bombing a wedding in Pakistan. It's for countless other reasons that people still think the US are on the side of good, as it always has been. You're of course attempting to use a particularly weak argument to prove a massive claim. The US doesn't have to be perfect to be good. What Germany did in WW2 doesn't preclude them from being good now; what the British Empire did doesn't preclude them from being good now; and so on.
The US have been such extraordinary good guys across time, we even saved millions of Russians from starvation by their own government (even while Russia was broadly considered an enemy of the US at the time, we saved them anyway):
Things like that are what have built the US moral credibility, which stacks against its various mistakes (and everyone here knows well all the prominent US mistakes).
The US invaded Germany, the US invaded Italy, the US invaded France (and several other European nations), the US invaded Japan, the US invaded Korea. Now contrast what the US did after invading Europe, with what Russia did. It's the difference between being the good guys and being the bad guys, just ask Poland what the difference is - they know exactly what the stark separation between the US and Russia represents (the difference between freedom and slavery, affluence and poverty). There's a reason why Poland welcomes US soldiers on its soil, and why they'd fight to the death to keep Russian soldiers out of their territory. Ask Czechia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania what the difference is, they all know.
Why are all of Russia's weaker neighbors afraid of it? Meanwhile, there's affluent, free, peace-loving Canada, not afraid in the least (witness their military spending) that the US superpower of the last 75 years would invade and attempt to conquer them. The difference between the US and Russia could hardly be any greater, now or in the past. The Canadians know it, the Polish know it, the Ukrainians know it.
What Russia is doing right now is evil, and they are the villains in this war, regardless of what they did in the past. We don't need to eg go into the history of the Holodomor and other things Russia has done to Ukraine and its people to demonstrate their evil, all we need is to focus on what Russia is doing at present (intentionally genociding the civilians of Ukraine). Russia are the bad guys and it couldn't be any more clear than it is - which is again why Ukraine (freedom-seeking, aspirational democracy, liberal-leaning, West-leaning) is asking the US to help them fight against Russia and why Ukraine appeals to the US about shared liberal values just as they have with other European democracies.
The US didn't train bin Laden. It didn't invent Al Qaeda. It didn't train or create the Taliban either. Funding various Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the decade prior to the founding of the Taliban, doesn't equate to training bin Laden.
> Why is US good for attacking various middle eastern, african and south american countries, and russia is bad for attacking ukraine?
Intent matters. Iraq was not a sovereign nation when the US invaded, it was a slave encampment (its people had no human rights), its majority Shia population was held hostage - genocided and constantly tortured - by the minority Sunni Hussein regime. There's no such thing as a sovereign dictatorship; there can be no claim of sovereignty where there are no human rights. Any free nation had a moral right to invade Iraq, if it so chose, to attempt to remove Hussein's regime and attempt to free the Iraqi people from the grip of his regime. The US didn't go into Iraq to conquer it, or annex its territory, or steal its oil (which is why today Iraq is free-standing and has such enormous oil revenue pouring into its government coffers).
Did the US have a moral right to invade Nazi Germany? How about Fascist Italy or the Empire of Japan? Did the US have a moral right to invade France and help free it from the Nazis and Vichy France? Yes it did, of course, and the same moral principle in action there was just as valid in regards to Iraq and the Hussein regime that was holding the majority in Iraq hostage. Which simultaneously doesn't mean it was rational for the US to invade Iraq (as it wasn't willing to dedicate the extraordinary resources necessary to provide the security to prevent the civil war between the Sunni and Shia, which would have required far more troops and financial investment).
So even though the US rationally should not have invaded Iraq, the democratic world understands the US didn't go into there in the name of conquest. The democratic world understands the US didn't invade France, Italy or Germany to conquer them. That's why the US is still viewed as good, because intentions matter. It went into Iraq with a very naive belief that - with its superpower might - it could nation-build a new democracy relatively easily in the Middle East. And when the civil war broke out between sectarian groups, the US stood between them and tried to stop it, at great loss to the US in blood and treasure. The US didn't try to take Iraq's oil (India and China are the biggest recipients of Iraqi oil today), it lost over a trillion dollars from the invasion. It's entirely fair to call the US invasion of Iraq a gigantic blunder, a foolish mistake, an act of arrogance by a superpower that thought it could materialize a democracy easily out of thin air. The good nations of the world understand the US didn't try to conquer Iraq for its own empire, that annexation of Iraq wasn't its goal, which is why NATO is still standing and why the US allies in Europe didn't abandon the US.
The US spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to nation-build Afghanistan to progress the nation forward, including shepherding the first democratic elections in its history. The US effort failed, it was naive in regards to what it would take to accomplish a positive, sustainable outcome in a nation as backwards and poorly developed as Afghanistan. The US is regarded as the good guys in regards to Afghanistan, because of what its intentions for the nation were (compare it to the Taliban and who the friends of the Taliban are - exclusively tyrants and theocrats). Russia went into Afghanistan in the name of conquest, to make it a de facto part of the Soviet Empire, it didn't aim to build a free, democrat nation there.
Russia has gone into Ukraine solely to annex its territory and conquer it for the goals of the Russian Empire, as per Putin's own oft stated world view (of how things should be). Ukraine is a burgeoning democracy pursuing liberal values, Russia is a brutally repressive dictatorship with no human rights that has largely been ruled by one tyrant after another for centuries. Russia's intentions are plainly evil, they aim to enslave the Ukrainian people and destroy their pursuit of liberal values, to force them to be part of Putin's imagined new Russian Empire.
> Russia has a minority living parts of ukraine, and the ukranian neonazis (which became a part of the official national guard in 2014) have been attacking them for years now.
Azov is smaller, both absolutely and as a share of the forces on the relative side, than the neonazis among the separatist forces it operated against even before the full-scale direct genocidal invasion by the militarily aggressive totalitarian corporatist ethnonationalist (or, more succinctly, fascist) Russian regime that had both invaded parts of Ukraine in 2014 and sponsored (and in some cases covertly supplied) the separatist forces.
Since when did the UK surround and starve Baghdad??? These are completely different situations.
In Mariupol, thousands of civilians have died in days of Russian bombing (the mayor estimates up to 20 000, but 4000 already certified) - including the deliberately shelling of civilian buildings by Russian forces. They've cut off power, heating, water, and have bombed theatres, schools, hospitals. Corpses are rotting in the streets.
So, destroy a country for one man? Good guys americans!
> When in recent history did the UK surround a city of another country and starve it to death whilst deliberately shelling civilians?
Yugoslavia, 1999... civil buildings were actual targets, not just "accidents"... from tobacco factories, to public television, bridges, etc. Also cluster bombed a city... If you count the "mistakes", also a passenger train, bus, group of escaping refugees, hospitals, schools, etc. Oh, and let's not forget the chinese embassy.
As the parent correctly pointed out, it's not even remotely close to comparable.
The Russians are intentionally destroying entire large cities, intentionally committing genocide against thousands of civilians in Ukraine. Intentionally seeking to starve and deprive the civilian population of the basic requirements of survival to further their conquest aims. At the rate Russia is going, it'll have intentionally murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians before the war is likely to end.
>At the rate Russia is going, it'll have intentionally murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians before the war is likely to end
And it will pale in comparison to the 300 thousand civilians killed in the US intervention in Afghanistan alone. At least Russia will likely succeed in it's military objectives.
The US didn't kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. You're conflating two entirely different things. You're pretending the US shot, bombed and killed all those civilians, when in fact that was an Iraqi-on-Iraqi sectarian civil war that produced such high civilian deaths, a civil war which the US spent enormous resources trying to stop.
Russia is directly, intentionlly killing the civilians in question in Ukraine. They're doing it on purpose, aiming for the civilians, to terrorize them into submission (and Russia has a very long history of this form of intentional terror-war against civilian populations in the name of conquest). Russia's genocide of Ukrainian civilians isn't a mistake of aiming, it's not an accident of war, it's not a whoops, they're trying to kill them and starve them (see what they're doing to Mariupol at present).
The difference between the two situations is exceptionally obvious and morally clear.
US bombed and killed many civilians in bombing of yugoslavia in 1999... even hit a passenger train and then had to speed up the footage to make it seem like an accident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing (also a bus, tv station, many more bridges, tobacco factory, a group of escaping refugees, etc.)
This is urban warfare... ukrainian army hides in civilian buildings, shoot down at russian soldiers and tanks, tanks shoot back, and the damage a tank does is what you then see on tv. There were (now removed) videos on youtube, of ukrainian people trying to get the ukranian army out of their apartment building just because of that.
Can’t grab a link right now but that’s from the Mariupol mayor’s office and reported in The Economist this week. 4000 dead certified at the morgue but 20000 is mayor’s estimate. Doesn’t seem unreasonable an estimate given the backlog and reports of corpses in the street yet to be collected, along with missing persons from bomb shelters etc
>You're pretending the US shot, bombed and killed all those civilians, when in fact that was an Iraqi-on-Iraqi sectarian civil war that produced such high civilian deaths,
Typing this and not realizing the obvious parallels to the Donetsk and Luhensk regions of Ukraine is laughable, and forces me to assume you lack the background necessary to make a real comparison between these two situations.
The separatist people's republics comprise roughly 15% of the enemy force in Ukraine. For most of the Iraq War, Iraqi Security Forces comprised 82% of the anti-insurgency forces. During the civil war period when most of the civilians were killed, the US only comprised roughly 5% of the soldiers, and they were on the third side trying to stop the fighting.
The US-led invasion of Iraq had ~4,000 civilian casualties in its month and half of fighting.
The Iraqi civil war had 70,000 civilian casualties in its 2 years.
The War in Donbas had 350 civilian casualties in its 8 years of fighting.
The Russian invasion has boosted that over 10,000 in less than a month.
Not that long ago, I was under the impression that americans knew that they were the "bad guys" in all of those wars, but stood quiet, because they gained cheap oil and other benefits from most of them. I also got that sentiment from eg. the french, when their governments did something bad in any of their (former) colonies. There were even movies/documentaries (Michael Moore comes to mind), or even historic conflicts (vietnam and the Hippie culture around it), showing the US doing bad stuff around the world.
And now? It makes me sad, that so many american people actually consider themselves the "good guys" for destroying random countries and killing people there. Like they did nothing bad, when they bombed peoples houses, occupied their countries, stole their oil, etc.
No you misunderstand, Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty much a tie in my mind, and should the USA invade anyone in the future, please sanction us until I starve to death or leave.
I don't think 900 servicemen supporting the local SDF to defend certain locations in a de facto autonomous region is really comparable in any way to Russia sending 200,000 soldiers to conquer a sovereign nation and indiscriminately shell all major cities.
If eg. mexico bombed the shit out of USA, because it didn't like their leaders, basically destroyed the country, change the government, kill a bunch of people, and then leave behind 900 mexican soldiers, would you see those soldiers as "someone defending you", or as an occupation?
My point is that this will change given that we’re past the point of no return with climate change. To be clear, I’m not championing them. I’m just stating a highly likely future.
