The Washington Post ran a simply stunning story two days ago: Ukraine’s offensive derails secret efforts for partial cease-fire with Russia, officials say. As we will explain, if this account is accurate, it would mean Russia was willing to trade away its best weapon in the war against Ukraine, its campaign against Ukraine’s energy supply, for effectively nothing. This bad exchange would be made worse by the fact that it is very clear that Russia has conducted its campaign so far to minimize the deaths of Russian soldiers. The war on the grid is the cheapest, easiest, and lowest risk way for Russia to drop the hammer on Ukraine. Why give that up for very little in return?
Any agreement along these lines would indicate Russia is over-eager for a way to end the conflict, that it sees the war moving in the direction of requiring Russia to subdue nearly all of Ukraine, say save Galicia, which would also be severely damaged by Russian operations. That would mean an open-ended process of occupation and then installation of puppet governments in the areas that did not have ethnic Russians as a large proportion of the population. A less costly but not-very-nice-looking-to-the-international-community alternative we have repeatedly discussed, building on John Helmer’s discussion of creating a very large DMZ, the width of the longest-range mobile-launched weapons NATO possesses, now the 500 km Taurus missile. Our variant of this idea would be to add that areas that look impossible to control politically and could thus be staging grounds for terrorist acts would be kept de-electrified, reducing them to the condition of the Unorganized Territory of Maine.
We’ll look at the Washington Post report and point to an obvious way to make sense of it, that it greatly exaggerated how far along these talks actually were. It is not hard to see that given Russia’s repeated statements about Western duplicity, lack of legitimacy of Ukraine leadership, and the fact that Ukraine is merely a US/NATO pawn, that Russia would set reasonable conditions that Ukraine would be unable to meet. In this scenario, there was no reason not to indulge the feelers, midwifed by Qatar, because they would inevitably founder. But Russia would benefit they ever came to light by demonstrating that it was willing to negotiate but that neither Ukraine nor its NATO masters could consummate the deal.
But if these talks were actually serious and advanced, as the Post indicates, the picture is far darker for Russia unless Russia wanted to use the question of “And who can sign this deal?” to undermine the status of the Zelensky government.
In light of that, another thesis is more probable: that this story is part of a deception operation, to cover for the fact that Ukraine entertained or perhaps even whispered to Qatar about this scheme in order to provide yet more cover for its Kursk invasion.2 How could Ukraine possibly want to scupper what looked like a one-sided deal, even if the odds of it happening were not all that high?
But before we turn to the article, some brief context. Ukraine invaded Russia on August 6. This is a low population area with little strategic importance. Nevertheless, any successful Ukraine entry into Russia, save a short-lived raid, is a very very bad look for the Russian government.
Commentators posited that Ukraine had one or two objectives: to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant, about 60 kilometers from the border, and to force Russia to divert soldiers from the line of contact, giving over-stretched Ukraine forces some relief. Even with Russia being a bit leisurely in opposing the Ukraine advance, it seems to have been blocked about 10 km into Russia, which both sides arguing as to who controls the hamlet of Sudzha. And contrary to Ukraine hopes, Russia has not redeployed troops from the Donbass battlefront but instead has sent in men from reserves inside Russia.
Some have added a third rationale: to shore up flagging support from the US and NATO states and morale at home by showing that Ukraine could still land a punch. The wee problem with that line of thinking (even if some in Ukraine and NATO were of this view) is that a short-lived success accomplishes little, even before getting to the fact that it increases the Ukraine burn rate. For instance, Germany has confirmed it is sending no more weapons to Ukraine out of budget constraints. No amount of flash-in-the-pan wins will change that.
Many commentators have stressed that this attack was a big strategic own goal, a Battle of the Bulge in miniature. Ukraine has had to pull troops from the front lines elsewhere to shore up its Kursk operation. Russia has been systematically destroying scare Ukraine equipment, particularly armored vehicles, missile platforms, and the components of a full Patriot air defense battery.
However, Russia experts, such as Mark Sleboda, point out that this incursion was a huge embarrassment to the Russian government, so the Anglosphere media is correct on this point. The West is hyping reports of Russians in the Kursk area being angry at the Kremlin, but it appears the far more preponderant reaction is fury with the Ukraine government and NATO, and an even harder resolve to keep prosecuting the war.
And this was a NATO drill. The Russians destroyed three HIMARS launchers and the afore-mentioned Patriot system. Those cannot be operated without considerable NATO assistance. Anecdata also supports the Russian view:
📌 Kursk Region.#Ukraine’s adventure has been prepared by American and British generals and NATO military staff and intelligence.#Russian soldiers from the field write that they actively hear English speeches and French and Polish on the radios. pic.twitter.com/wYl72kMXSV
— Иван ☦ (@lll_Tatarinov_H) August 8, 2024
The US and NATO are behind the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ attack on the Kursk region, says Scott Ritter pic.twitter.com/kCzKIricHN
— HizBie (@hizbie_) August 19, 2024
Keep in mind that Putin has also taken the position that the use of Collective-West supplied targeting and surveillance data is tantamount to foreign actor involvement.
An addition bit of context is, as we stated above, that Russia’s General Staff intended to use attacks on the electric grid to finish off Ukraine. From John Helmer’s Buzzer Beater – Russian General Staff Aims at Ending the Ukraine by Electric War in June. As Helmer explained, a big objective was to drive the civilian population westward so that when Russia attacked, it would be less constrained by the need to avoid targeting civilians:
As the Ukraine’s peak summer electricity season approaches, the list of the Russian General Staff’s Electric War targets is shrinking. This is because almost all the Ukrainian electricity generating plants have been stopped. What remains for destruction are the connecting lines and distribution grids for the Ukraine’s imported electricity from Poland and other European Union neighbours. The microwave and cell telephone towers, and the diesel fuel stocks which are powering the back-up generating sets are next.
“There’s no keeping the Ukrainian cell network up any more than there is keeping up the electrical grid,” comments a close military observer. “The General Staff have set the flow of Ukrainian refugees west as inversely proportional to the flow of data and electrons over Ukrainian airwaves and transmission lines. We can expect that relationship to be set to highly inverse before the summer is out. What calculations have been made regarding things further west are just beginning to become evident.”….
In the very long history of siege warfare, there has never been a case of letting the enemy’s civilian population run safely away from his castles and cities until the fortifications and army which remain must choose between surrender and destruction….
The NATO military engineer has compiled his forecast list of Russian targets in the coming days. “We should expect the commercial fuel storage and distribution network to be hit. These are legitimate military targets as the Ukrainian military relies on them to support its war effort. The railways should be hit as well. There’s no good military reason to allow them to keep functioning. Given the NATO country endorsements for striking Russian territory targets, I don’t see the rationale on the Moscow side for leaving unscathed the rail network connecting Lvov and Kiev to Rzeszów [Poland].”
“The target list should include the border switchyards and substations connecting the Ukraine to the European transmission lines. Destroying those and targeting the stations transmitting power from nuclear sources will finish the job. There will be no more load balancing after that. The collapse of Ukrainian logistics, not to mention the society, will follow soon after. If the switchyards connecting the nuclear power plants to the grid are smashed, it’s the end for the Ukrainians.”
As for the Ukraine side of the energy war, despite the Anglosphere media cheerleading occasional Ukraine strikes on Russian oil refineries, which have sometimes set off impressive explosions, there’s no evidence of lasting material damage to any of the facilities, let alone Russian output.2
Now to the Washington Post piece. With this background, it’s hard to see why Russia would have any interest in pursuing this ceasefire scheme, beyond indulging Qatar, with whom Russia would like to maintain good relations. The most logical interpretation is that these talks were actually more on the order of feelers, being brokered by intermediaries who did not have the authority to make commitments. I have no idea about the diplomacy world, but this happens in the very big ticket deal world all the time.
The subhead to the story supports a reading that the exchanges were actually not that far along: “The warring countries were set to hold indirect talks in Qatar on an agreement to halt strikes on energy and power infrastructure, according to officials.” In other words, they’d agreed to discuss a proposal, and not the proposal per se.
Now the text does contain much stronger claims, but the story hinges on the account of a single diplomat “briefed on the talks” who among other things asserted “The official said the two sides agreed to a summit in Doha with just minor details left to be worked out.” That seems wildly implausible given Putin’s personal bitterness over the Western duplicity in the Minsk Accords, with him played for a fool to buy time for Ukraine to build up its forces. The article mentions (and misleads readers) about the last time Russia decided to play nice with Ukraine, the so-called grain deal. The story inaccurately says Russia withdrew from the pact. It in fact was subject to periodic renewal (IIRC every 90 days). Russia did not renew based on non-performance. The agreement was not just about grain. The second set of provisions, integral to the scheme, was for the West to end sanctions on the Russian agricultural bank so that Global South countries, particularly ones in Africa, could buy Russian fertilizer. Russia also complained that the Ukraine grain was going largely to Europe and not poor nations as promised (confirmed by EU countries getting agitated about the deliveries undercutting their farmers), but the big beef was the failure to honor the second big leg of the deal.
The normal journalistic standard is that when relying on anonymous sources, a publication should have three of them to regard a claim as verified. This is not only an anonymous source, but one getting a second-hand account.
Now the fact that some sort of exchange was happening is verified by Ukraine sources (only!). They say a meeting in Doha was on and that Ukraine still wanted to participate (now virtually). But Qatar nixed the idea, not wanting to indulge the sort of one-sided show that has become a Zelensky speciality (recall his peace plan conferences where pretty much everyone but Russia was invited). But given that Russia’s official posture is that it is open to negotiation, it’s can’t refuse to entertain proposals.
Of course, the other obvious problem with the thesis of this story is that Russia knows full well it needs to negotiate with the US, not with its proxy Ukraine. Yet we have the article confirming that the US will have no part of any such talks: “The Biden administration has long said the timing and terms of a potential cease-fire agreement with Russia are for Ukraine alone to decide.”
So the next most likely possibility is that this article is intended to take the teeth out of a successful Ukraine deception operation by depicting the energy war initiative as sincere on the Ukraine side. This idea is not entirely nuts; look how long it took for the repeated Minsk duplicity to become public. And those who outed it were at the very top: first Porshenko, then Hollande, then Merkel. In other words, the considerable number of staffers, including in the US, who were on to this ruse kept quiet about it for years.
Some sources have said this invasion had been in the works for a very long time but had been put off because reasons. Alexander Mercouris has repeatedly said a contact knowledgeable about Russian government operations told him that the Russians knew of Ukraine plans to attack into Kursk two months ago. The timetable lines up with that of the feelers:
The diplomat familiar with the talks said that Qatar has been discussing the arrangement for an energy strike moratorium with Kyiv and Moscow for the past two months.
Mind you, I am not saying this ruse, if indeed that was the card that Ukraine was playing, in any way justifies Russia’s flatfootedness in anticipating the Kursk invasion. Russia should know bloody well by now what it is dealing with in the form of Ukraine’s leadership. Its fondness for terrorism as a substitute for military prowess and its obsession with PR management has only become more extreme as it is becoming obvious, even to occasional readers of the Western press, that the war situation has developed not necessarily to Ukraine’s advantage.
Russia apparently didn’t want to see the forces massing in Ukraine in the Sumy region as preparation for an attack for a host of reasons: it would be strategically stoopid (what Ukraine was marshaling would be insufficient for Ukraine to get far into Russia or hold terrain), it would be therefore be more likely to be Ukraine bolstering defensed before an expected Russian invasion of Sumy. But a just as likely reason, and one I suspect has some currency in Russia, is that the MoD was predisposed to ignore this risk because it would be a nuisance to bolster defenses there.
Now let’s turn to other possible interpretations of this Washington Post piece, accepting its claim that the talks were far along and close to being inked. This is its logic as to why Russia would go along:
The academic added that Russia might be more willing to consider an energy infrastructure deal as a way to lure Kyiv to broader cease-fire talks. Otherwise, he said, Moscow could be less motivated since it believed it could inflict more damage on Ukrainian energy infrastructure than Kyiv was able to on Russian oil refineries.
In other words, the logic is Russia wants out of the war so badly it would trade away its best weapon. This is completely inconsistent with the ever-increasing resolve among the Russian public and Putin signaling over time that more parts of Ukraine are on the menu, such as Odessa and more recently, Kiev.
The only reason I could fathom for a retreat of this magnitude when Russia is winning the war and still increasing the size of its military and its weapons production, it that it has finally started taking a hard look at the end-game problem. As we’ve been pointing out, it is becoming more and more evident that the least bad resolution for Russia is to subdue nearly all of Ukraine, including the potentially very troublesome Western Ukraine (ex nasty Galacia). Russia has seen how determined the US and NATO are to have Russia not win this war. That includes trying to make it into a Pyrrhic victory by trying to bleed Russia with continued terrorism by Ukrainians. That would strongly argue for Russia reducing that exposure by controlling territorial Ukraine and forcing the West into the riskier posture of trying to wage that sort of guerrilla campaign from NATO states.
But one reason that Russia might feel the need to accept even lousy-seeming peace overtures is dependence on its de facto coalition partners. Here I do not mean in the military sense; Russia is more self-sufficient here than the West gives it credit. I mean in the economic sense. Russia succeeded in redirecting its economy to China, India, Turkiye, and Africa with impressive speed. The nations have all stood up to considerable US pressure to respect illegal US and EU sanctions.3
A big reason that Russia has won and gotten even more support from them is that Russia has succeeded in persuading them that it is the wronged party despite being an invader: Russia did everything it could to try to avoid this war (witness the Minsk Accords con and then the West breaking up peace talks in 2022), Russia is working to minimize civilian casualties, Russia is open to talks.
Russia may have felt it had to pursue these talks despite them being at odds with Russia’s interest to keep the support of its de facto coalition partners, particularly China and Middle East states. Recall that China did not participate in Ukraine’s latest one-sided peace conference, regarding them as unproductive with Russia absent. However, China invited Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba for a visit on July 23 to 25 to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine and a potential Chinese part in a settlement. China has taken to playing a soft power card outside the region as a peace-maker, witness its success in end-running the US in brokering a pact between Iran and the Saudis.
However, another scenario (which does not exclude the above scenario, that Russia felt pressured to appease its economic partners) is that Russia saw the talks, if they advanced, as a vehicle for destabilizing the Zelensky government. Putin and other top officials have pointed out that Ukraine has made it impossible to negotiate any deal with Russia via a Constitutional amendment forbidding that as long as Putin is in charge. On top of that, Russia has taken to depicting that Zelensky is illegitimate, that the Ukraine Constitution does not allow for a President to continue in power even under martial law. Putin has opined that his reading of the Ukraine Constitution is that authority is now in the hands of the Speaker of the Rada, but Ukraine legal experts need to settle that question.
Regardless, at some point (and it really should occur early rather than late in a deal process), Russia cqn quite legitimately question the authority of its counterparts to enter into binding commitments. It would look particularly bad for Russia to be theoretically willing to enter into an extremely Ukraine-favorable deal but be unable to deliver because the present government could not make a binding deal.
Needless to say, even though the intent of this planted-looking story may have been to get in front of yet another instance of Ukraine duplicity, the Russians and Qataris and Chinese already have a better grasp of facts. And if they surmise Ukraine used the pretext of peace talks to play yet another dirty, no wonder the Russian are incandescent.
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1 The Post depicts Qatar as proposing this pact. However, given that that the Post also depicts it as arising after the second, peculiar one-sided Zelensky peace conference, that there was not at least some Ukraine input and quite possibly instigation given the impact of the grid attacks.
2 The Post claims otherwise. I do not have time to prove a negative, but as Lambert is wont to say, I do try to pay attention. I have yet to see anything from an independent source confirming that the Russian energy system has suffered meaningful damage from the Ukraine attacks.
3 Economic sanctions are illegal when not approved by the UN, not that the US cares about such niceties.
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I think we have to treat this single-source story with a great deal of skepticism.
(1) It has been officially denied by Maria Zakharova. Of course, this alone doesn’t disprove it, but she strikes me as a straight shooter as opposed to the liars in the US State Dept.
(2) It took almost 2 weeks after the Kursk offensive began for it to come out. Again, not dispositive by itself, but certainly if the story were true the negotiations would have broken down the minute Zelensky/NATO sent forces across the border. Sure, it could have been kept under wraps for a week or two, but the odds of somebody blabbing before then seem higher.
(3) AFAIK nobody else but the WaPo is reporting it. The WaPo has in the past been suspected of publishing false and misleading stories at the behest of US intelligence agencies. The “six men and a boat” story about NS2 is one, if I recall correctly. Also, the WaPO may not be deliberately acting as a conduit for disinformation, but could be unwittingly being used as one by the intelligence agencies, as in the Iraq war.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/washington-post-fair-game-valerie-plame/
(4) It lacks plausibility. Qatar, for goodness sake? Why in the world would the Russians trust a US lackey client-state that is also being used to host the fake, fraudulent Gaza ceasefire talks? Wouldn’t that be subject to crosstalk? Even Turkey would make more sense, although they’re a NATO country and the last time Russia trusted them, Erdogan stabbed them in the back (Azov prisoner exchange.)
China or perhaps some African state would be more of a neutral site.
What would the motive be for the US State Dept or an intelligence agency person to leak a misleading or false story like this?
It makes Russia look weak, it can be used to set the narrative up for the September-October election homestretch that Ukraine isn’t as big of a debacle for the US as it really is.
Another hypothesis is that it was planted to lay the groundwork for getting rid of Zelensky. You know the drill – oh, that awful Z-man, he went rogue and ruined our clandestine peace talks!
Point 1 is key and I confess to not having seen that. Alexander Mercouris reported as of yesterday that both Moscow and Kiev had been mum. I had mistakenly assumed any denial would come pretty quickly.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-denies-media-report-about-indirect-talks-with-ukraine-2024-08-18/
No one broke anything off because there was nothing to break off,” Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, said of the Post report.
P.S. I have posted the denial in the comments yesterday, but the censoring monster ate it, maybe because it had a link to a Russian news site.
No, we run our own moderation screen. But it often turns out I do not read all the comments (as in some come in after I check them). As indicated above, I has assumed a denial would have come pretty quickly, and Mercouris got in an entire two shows where he made mention of this story before the Foreign Ministry swatted it down.
I did allow for the possibility of a thin veneer of substance. Again in the real economy deal world, it happens all the time that parties try to broker deals when not authorized by a principal (they act as if they are, get the other side to at least consider the idea, then go back to the first party and try to get a mandate). Perhaps some people connected to Ukraine got some Qatari officials interested. That might be enough for the Ukraine spin-doctors to have ginned this up to the Post. It does appear that the unnamed official briefed on the talks was somehow duped. Mind you, he likely was briefed by Ukraine, but it seems like Ukraine was able to get at least one person outside the government to vouch for the story. As we noted, that is still unacceptably weak sourcing.
I think a missing part of the puzzle is that Ukraine planned on a ‘lightning war’ thrust into Kursk that would capture or at least hit the Kurchatov NPP, making the timing of talks in Qatar appropriate for a trade of NPPs, giving Ukraine Zaporozhia NPP back.
Lots to digest here in a very complicated set of scenarios.
First off, from the Russian side – it would not surprise me if they were putting out feelers to see if some sort of deal can be reached. My feeling is that Russia has wargamed out all the scenarios for ending the conflict, and none of them look particularly good. They either end up occupying a lot of Ukraine which will be tough to take (lots of big cities to conquer), and maybe tougher/more expensive to hold (especially now that the infrastructure has been partially destroyed), or they have to sell what will look to many Russians like a sell out of the dead soldiers (i.e. just taking the four main Oblasts and not crossing the Dnieper). What would have looked like as a ‘victory’ a year ago, may look like weakness to the Russian public today.
Also, Russias economy. Its proven very robust. But the history of war tells us that war can be very good for a domestic economy in the short to medium term (good old Keynesian spending), but invariably bad in the long term as so many resources have to be diverted into bombs and guns. Invariably, inflation becomes a problem unless domestic spending is seriously capped, which is never popular in the long run. So while militarily, slow and steady makes sense, economically it may not. It could be that Putin, always a few steps ahead of everyone else, is thinking ahead as to how to maintain sustainable growth and realises that a war going on for years on one of its borders is not the way to do it. He may also be thinking of the necessity to prepare for conflict in the Middle East and Russia will undoubtedly struggle if it has more than one front. Putin knows his history, and one thing he will be acutely aware of his how excess military spending in the long term crippled the Soviet Unions economy. Having world beating missiles and aircraft is pretty great, but ultimately this won’t help your economy if you can’t also build decent cars or washing machines.
I’ve been puzzling over Ukraines motives for the Kurst incursion (assuming their is logic behind it, which may of course be giving too much credit to them). I’ve never bought the Battle of the Bulge/Operation Nordwind analogies. Those were last gasp Hail Mary efforts to win on the main battlefield of conflict. This incursion is something different, a whole new front developed at the cost of the main front. It suggests a different strategy by Kiev and its handlers (even if the strategy may be deluded and stupid, it still needs at least to have been discussed and decided upon). The only strategy that makes sense to me is to grab some headline ‘victories’ as a cover for an eventual deal that amounts to capitulation, but can be sold as something a little less humiliating.
Grabbing some territory in Russia gives Kiev something to negotiate with (assuming they can hold it for a few months). It even crossed my mind that Putin may not be unhappy with this – in any deal, the strong side usually has to give the weaker side some sort of fig leaf to sell the deal. So maybe giving Kiev its little victory would be seen by Moscow as a cover for finalizing an otherwise favourable deal for Russia. It is one possible explanation for why Russia was so easily fooled into not taking the incursion seriously until it was almost too late. Maybe the calculation is that a tactical ‘loss’ would be acceptable if it leads to strategic gains – and the ‘gain’ may be a relatively quick deal of some sort.
Now all this sounds a little fanciful – one thing that has become obvious from this conflict is that assuming logic on the western/Ukrainian side is wishful thinking, and that nearly all stories like the WP one is just that – a story told for propaganda purposes. And the only thing we are certain about Moscows plans are that we have no idea what they are. I’m sure there are lots of ‘proposals’ for peace talks behind the scenes which never get anywhere. I would guess its likely that Russia could be simultaneously focused on its own strategy while always remaining open minded to any proposal that may prove advantageous, and so would not necessarily shut down any feelers for discussions, whether from Kiev or elsewhere. The only thing we can say for sure is that Russia is in a very strong short to medium term position relative to the west – Putin will not want to blow this by either giving away too much, or, conversely, by pushing his luck too far.
While this is generally sound, I have to disagree with you on your war economy claim. That is largely Western propaganda. A big impetus for the current strong Russian economy is the need to substitute EU and US supplies with Russian suppliers. This has gone well to a degree that has shocked Russians. One thing that aided the transition was the economic sanctions, which prevented Russian oligarchs from spending much of the profits from their empires on megayachts and London real estate. It was suddenly more attractive for them to invest at home.
Russian military spending as a percent of GDP was 4.9% in 2015 and 5.4 % in 2016, reflecting a post Maidan buildup. (https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/military-expenditure-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html). According to Agence France Presse, Russia’s military spending as a percent of GDP was 5.9% in 2023 (https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsParis/522338.aspx) , well below the 40% of GDP for the US in World War II. Having said that, I dimly recall hearing of claims of spending more like 7% of GDP.
Regardless, Russia is already managing against the issue. The new Minister of Defense, Andrey Belousov, is an economist and apparently a bureaucrat par excellence. His missions are to reduce inefficiency and corruption in military spending, and to direct military production as much as possible to dual military-civilian uses, such as civilian applications of military tech. I also imagine a Russian priority will be increasing arms exports since the Ukraine war is showcasing them to good advantage.
As regards arms exports, one of the ‘successes’ of the west seems to have been to choke out Russian arms sales around the world. There seems to have been a lot of arm twisting going on to persuade nominally neutral countries from buying Russian. With more and more new entrants to the arms market – ROK, China and Turkey to name but three – its become a buyers market and I suspect that Russia will lose out long term. While there may be good reasons for the big dip over the last few years (i.e. a lack of supply), its clear that Russia is struggling recently, and once a customer turns to someone else, its hard to reverse as modern weapons are so interlinked. Russia is way behind where the Soviet Union used to be in exports – its now no.6 in the world in terms of value – it used to be no.2, with everyone else a long way behind it and the US. China has grabbed a huge chunk of its market, often with re-engineered Russian technology.
As for the economy as a whole, I agree that current spending seems relatively sustainable, but there are other factors involved – a key one being labour. Russia has a serious shortage of working age males and war doesn’t help that. Its demography has improved a little since the catastrophe of 30 years ago, but its still not great. I also think there are internal production strains under the surface. The close new friendship with north Korea seems to have worked out far more in Kims favour than Russia – this indicates to me that possibly Russia has been struggling with a few more bottlenecks than are obvious. Another ‘big’ issue is Russia-China. While everything seems rosy from a distance, there are plenty of whispers that Xi sees this as a ‘big brother/little brother/ partnership, with guess who as the big brother. Russia will not want to see its domestic industries (cars and heavy vehicles in particular) damaged by becoming an effective dumping ground for surplus Chinese production.
The perceived labor shortage in Russia is mostly (according to researchers) due to the huge reallocation of Russian labor force that started with Covid-19 “crisis”. Meaning that the official statistics of unfilled vacancies are more reflective of the SME companies not having yet found the flexibility nowadays required by the workforce to fill those vacancies. It doesn’t mean there are no people available to do the jobs, it means the conditions offered are not matching the conditions asked (remote work, higher salary etc).
In general Russian labor force size is still gaining from the pension age reform a few years back, and at the same time suffering from the diminished migrant labor. To an extent, the Russian labor force is also quite flexible regarding the work hours it can put in. A half an hour longer workweek can substitute for over a percentage of underemployment. Most of the weapons industry is now using a six day workweek.
Or,in other words, Russia indeed has demographic issues (originating from the 1930’s and 40’s), but the situation is nor as dark as it may seem.
I can’t really comment in any detail on Russia’s labour market or demography, there are always far more examples of ‘stickiness’ in one direction or another than economists will own up to (many are cultural), but I think a key issue is not absolute numbers of workers, but the workforce capability. I saw a comment recently on Israel’s problems which suggested that there are only 300,000 workers who really ‘matter’ (i.e. key high productivity workers), and losing even a relatively small percentage of them is what could kill the economy. Its a simplification of course, but there is some truth to it I think with modern economies (mind you, the people who think they are part of this elite often are the exact opposite).
I’m not suggesting this is an problem for Russia – I really don’t know. But an issue with modern warfare is that its relatively high tech, which means that it relies far more on having very high quality officers and soldiers (and weapons designers/factory technicians) in key areas than in the past. So if there is a loss of good quality workers in their prime to the ‘productive’ economy, there could be problems stored up for the future. It does seem to me that compared to the US and China, a potential shortage of the highest quality workers in the future could be a much bigger problem, as it neither has the gigantic number of new graduates of China, nor the immigration potential of the US, or to a lesser extent the EU or Britain (both of which still attract a lot of top quality graduates, notwithstanding recent problems). And this isn’t to factor in the long term brain drain from Russia to other countries.
Russia cranks out roughly as many STEM graduates annually as the USA does, so actually I don’t think it will have a shortage of skilled educated labor going forward. The problem it faces already is with low-skilled labor, and this is worsening due to the ongoing post-Crocus City crackdown on guest workers from (Muslim) Central Asia. I see no easy solution to this growing labor shortage, and I suspect it will get worse (i.e., more inflation) before it gets better.
The usual solution is imported labor. The Middle East does it. There are even weird arbitrages, with Israel having used a lot of Thai workers in ag, when Thailand gets construction workers from Myanmar and other muscle jobs from Laos and Cambodia.
‘Russia cranks out roughly as many STEM graduates annually as the USA does’
I saw a chart showing that. But it also showed that they did that for a population of 144 million while the US does that for a population of 335 million.
Russia just gained most of four Ukrainian provinces and their population. These were suffering economically in the period since the Maidan. I suspect there is a lot of economic slack to be taken up. And a hot domestic labour markets brings forth its own solutions, of immigration and/or automation.
Russia can keep punching the Ukraine for years economically. The question is political, how does it reach a final settlement with its feet on a Ukraine-shaped rug in front of the fire? This is what the domestic audience wants and Putin presumably wants this wrapped up for his successor.
This is something that Western propaganda has been pushing. Do you have anything beyond “whispers”?
With regard to arms exports, I’m no expert, but common sense tells me that having successfully countered U.S. weapons on the battlefield has done much to improve Russia’s prestige in this field. Given the accompanying diplomatic gains in Asia and the global south, any “choking out of Russian exports” is undoubtedly a temporary thing at most.
Russia is now a superpower again — no ifs, ands, or buts. In contrast to the U.S., they’ve shed much unhelpful baggage from their previous superpower incarnation. The future has never been brighter, despite western propaganda to the contrary.
You are right about Putin in my view. iHe’s never been overly aggressive militarily, so any overextension will probably not occur during the remainder of his rule. As you said, he will stay the course.
LOL, whispers fom MSM, directly from their man in Havana. I can’t believe people on this site are falling for the “junior partner” meme. That’s on a weird level.
The impulse towards some kind of Westphalian settlement between all nations is a very strong motivator for both China and Russia and is the essence of their impulse towards multipolarity. China wants to create a unified country by incorporating Taiwan (which for many years claimed to be China and held China’s Security Council seat) and has no significant history of expansionism beyond it’s historical territories, and Russia has tended to expand as a consequence of being attacked by a neighbouring state acting on its own account or as a proxy so it’s best to take the big brother/little brother concept as a nonsense unless one of the brothers is attacked and obviously needs a little help to give the attacker a good kicking.
As regards arms exports, what’s choking out Russian arms sales around the world, is their own little conflict that they are redirecting most of their production towards.
Judging by your graph, they have been stacking war material ever since 2018, but Western “experts” could not figure that out. I guess they were too busy opening Champagne and celebrating Russia struggling with more and more stuff in storage.
US seems to be sputtering along (maybe toward the edge of the cliff) as a “war economy.” I wonder if the Imperial policymakers believe the productive capacity of the US is robust enough to engage in that “1984”-style perpetual war with the chance of actually bleeding out Russia and the BRICs. Pretty clear, from the wide franchise of “Color Revolutions R Us,” that the Fokkers in charge are wedded to the Great Game to its end.
Who knows if Russia the nation has the staying power it must have, to have any chance of finally trampling those Fokkers. Who, like the playground bullies of my youth, run off the teacher-patrolled area, punch some hapless smaller kids, then run back onto the safe space ahead of retaliation.
I hate to say it — my country’s rulers need to be burned down. They clearly are all in, everywhere, and like termites, you can kill some of them off, but they just keep chewing their tunnels and nests through the world’s house. And the bio labs are still working away in lots of subject nations, looking no doubt for a knockout punch, along with all the other salients — cyberspace, autonomous Terminator robotics, nukes in space, NGOs. Et centera.
Still hoping that Russia has key plans to defeat the effing “combined west.”
Glad I am old enough to see and accept my own personal finish line. So sorry for younger people who will have to live through the coming whirlwind.
Me, too. I’ve got 3 grandkids under 10.
If I were placing bets I’d bet on russia. They survived the 90’s, granted a miracle occurred, yeltsin resigned right after picking putin. Plus earlier they survived and triumphed after the German invasion in ww2, and the French one a century earlier. They’re a hardy lot.
The us has had a generation of neolib short termism. We don’t manufacture, we import courtesy of our reserve currency. We invest for this quarter, have little concern for the next decade. What have we done without lately? As a country we’re overweight (not least me.) eu is a poor place cutting itself off from russia, cutting off China will be worse. Row has the resources, we’ve got paper. We’re the bull in the China shop, what’s the future in that? And our selection for leader this fall? Imo depressing.
“I wonder if the Imperial policymakers believe the productive capacity of the US is robust enough to engage in that “1984”-style perpetual war with the chance of actually bleeding out Russia and the BRICs.”
What if they don’t believe it has to be robust…for now? Proxies are continually nurtured and upheaval continues to present itself in various forms in BRICS regions.
For now, it may be enough for the US to have BRICS (another conference coming up in October and in Moscow) preoccupied with matters related to war than development.
A problem with US’ manufacturing economy is too much of it is in the war business! A second factor is most of it is assembly depending on a long supply chain a lot in East Asia.
IOW, US has little industry to mobilize, and in one case could be at war with China a major component of the supply chains.
This may reflect why BRICS go slow on egging WW. III.
China selling the rope…. Said Lenin
And I’m still not convinced that the US hates China more than its own working class.
A problem with US’ manufacturing economy is too much of it is in the war business! A second factor is most of it is assembly depending on a long supply chain a lot in East Asia.
[ Nicely expressed. ]
What is very confusing is to see, all over again, how the West makes of PR/narratives it’s main strategic goal. Let’s cause some embarrassment, such an important goal, no matter how many brigades are sacrificed for it. We are winning! Putin is embarrassed. I think this important point was made first by J. Baud. The Western military is indeed led by Public Relations people, like Zelensky himself. I believe one thing Z. cannot stand is to loose protagonism. So, with such big “wins” the Russians will have no other choice but to negotiate according to these “strategists”. I know it is difficult to digest this, almost unbelievable, but it is exactly the way it is going. Forget about the military logic.
The irony is that the West, for all its victories in PR battles, is losing the PR war. All the Western media outlets dutifully report that Putin destroyed the NordStream pipeline. Six months later it’s clear that this was nonsense. Same for almost every big story over the course of the war. Yes, it’s scary and depressing that the Western governments and media have been getting away with this, but it’s ultimately self-defeating. What is the Ukraine “VICTORY IN KURSK” headline really worth at this point? It will be exposed even before the November election in the US.
I suspect GRU or SVR infiltration.
How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? We went down to the spot to find out
Yet, if there were indeed negotiations in course, and as per The Duran, with more ample scope than that supposed energy deal, following this bent logic by the West it is possible to speculate that the objective of the Kursk offensive was precisely to derail any possible negotiation by causing outrage in the Russian side. That would explain extensive usage of Nazi symbology by the Ukrainians. Possibly the Kursk NPP was designed as the military objective to trick the Ukrainian military into this trap. I can imagine that the current US administration doesn’t want any negotiation in Russian terms before the elections in November. PR all over again.
The latest THE DURAN is here, by the date of Aug. 19th, evening I guess:
https://theduran.com/whats-behind-wapo-russia-ukraine-energy-ceasefire/
I am not sure if this is the same you are referring to.
But if this is/was indeed part of a major BRICS attempt – not about ZNPP or , sry, laughably about RU energy grid – but actually the war itself – THEN I buy the story.
But anything below that “ample scope” is for me a WaPo narrative.
And the WaPo of course mentions BRICS with not a single word.
As far as I can see.
Ending the war is mentioned I believe once in this, as is “legacy paper tradition”, way overblown piece of nothingness.
Well, everyone listen to Mercouris it´s merely 20 min.
But the fabrication of the West and their spin to this is again embarassing.
Russia has denied the story and has said no talks were happening. I am embarrassed not to have seen that before the story went live.
we’re at the “so the Ukraine side are all Nazis, so what?” stage in the narrative after spending so much time on the “there are no Nazis in Ukraine, it’s all Russian propaganda” and “Yes, there are some Nazis in Ukraine, but they’re not representative” stages.
It could be that Putin, always a few steps ahead of everyone else, is thinking ahead as to how to maintain sustainable growth and realises that a war going on for years on one of its borders is not the way to do it.
He raised this same point in one or another address last year. Could’ve been a Valdai discussion, but in the mind’s eye he was standing at a podium so maybe SPIEF or some press conference. I store these little admissions away in my brain folds, but don’t do such a great job cataloging them in spaces external to my cranium. Apologies.
It even crossed my mind that Putin may not be unhappy with this – in any deal, the strong side usually has to give the weaker side some sort of fig leaf to sell the deal.
The relevant portion starts at about 1:45. Mr. Putin is in dealmaking mode so I have a hard time believing his public statements these days, but he seems to pull up some real emotion here so who’s to say?
Is it another possibility that this story was intended to show Zelensky is secretly negotiating? Azov has said they’d execute him if he tried.
I hope Russia has gamed out how to extirpate Azov and Right Sector and all the other swastika-adorned thugs and hooligans that will indubitably be doing meaningless acts of Gladioterrorism in Russia and captured Ukraine, and I believe already in the dying corpse of Europe.
Anomie is strong in these ones. And the impulse to “run amok,” a recognized DSM category manifesting more frequently in the Combined West, as the screws are turned ever tighter on the mopery by the Looting Class… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amok_syndrome
I have joked that most of them have an undue fondness for tattoos, so it may not be that hard to identify them if Russia can get its hands on them.
The tattoo removal and alteration business is probably about to have a boom period in Europe. However, it is difficult to turn a swastika into ‘I love Mother’
That trick worked really well for Nayib Bukele.
That is an interesting thesis.
Reports are that many of the soldiers sent into Kursk are from the neo-nazi brigades, so perhaps this was Zelensky’s way of getting rid of many of them so they dont cause problems for him later?
The same thought did occur to me
Think he could keep such an act secret within that government?
I said 2 years ago provocatively, eventually Zelensky in order to stay safe might choose RU exile instead of US.
I agree with your presentation of the situation that it is totally illogical that Russia would agree to this thing called an energy truse. My teeth almost jumped out of my mouth when I saw first reports of it (no worries just a small partial from a childhood accident). I do disagree with the last paragraph…Here is the past paragraph….”As we’ve been pointing out, it is becoming more and more evident that the least bad resolution for Russia is to subdue nearly all of Ukraine, including the potentially very troublesome Western Ukraine (ex nasty Galacia).”….because IMO this is an irresolvable situation, the worst option being to occupy Galicia the best being to take all of Ukraine Black Sea coast and land up to the Dnipier and then declare what I have termed cyrstal clear redlines and enforce then most especially upon the US and NATO-STAN. I can not see a resolution to this war, so long as the west is The West. (The West is launching invasions into Russian land with impunity for goodnesssakes). Only a change or defeat of The West will end this conflict (just look at how long the conflict in Israel has lasted). Therefore, Russia needs to make the most defensible choice and hold the line and establish deterence.
Clarification – so my quibble is a bit small as we agree on Galicia, but I would not occupy any of western Ukraine.
I don’t think Western Ukraine needs to be occupied, just have the borders with Poland controlled.
Most of the border with Romania, Hungary and Slovakia is kind of rugged or riverine, Moldova is mostly buttressed by Transdnistria. Air space can be controlled. But the Black sea coast must be taken. The Russians can get a bigger open Gaza there…
I am sure that all over Ukraine, people will be happy to not have their menfolk being clubbed and shoved into vans and sent to the front lines with no training…
In my opinion “the West” (or as I call it the Empire) is not slowing down and is not going to be defeated by anyone anytime soon. The Empire has enormous power because it produces (rules-based) order. This is its selling point to ruling classes around the world and these classes like things as they are. We forget that the Washington/NY/Hollywood/Silicon Valley/City of London Empire controls, despite the growth of the internet, most information. Those who are curious go to the internet to do research but the ruling-elites don’t care about that because most people navigate life using myth and memes, e.g., Republicans are “weird” and “Putin is a dictator bent on reconstituting and resurrecting the USSR and even go beyond.”
The ability to manipulate the public gets easier every year as technique of mind-control are refined–these techniques are growing in sophistication because the most brilliant minds in the Empire are focused on mind-control and it f*king works!
It will take a lot more than a Ukrainian meltdown to seriously harm the Empire.
If your premise is correct our armada will have no difficulty shoring up the Israeli carrier and helping them clear Palestine of Palestinians.
I also see the world in terms of the US-centered empire, but the empire’s not in good shape in my view. Just look at the political landscape with regard to Western countries. The governments are unpopular and divided amonst themselves. Yes, the empire’s military-intelligency complex runs things so that the division of, say Republicans and Democrats, does not extend to empire related issues. But they keep losing wars and being exposed as fakes and phonies. If they don’t face up to reality, they will continue losing wars and influence and people will look elsewhere for order.
What about an implosion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o2REr4bs8A
Britain’s Economy Will Only Get Worse | Aaron Bastani meets Gary Stevenson
I agree that the rulling elites everywhere like the system as it is, but this is not sustainable anywhere, and then you have the impeding Climate Crisis while the pitchforks are being sharpened…
After listening to Scott Ritter yesterday a thought occurred to me. What if the Russian government says, OK, the time of the Special Military Operation is over. The Ukraine has invaded Russia so Russia now declares actual war on the Ukraine which means that the gloves come off. No more Mr. Nice Guy. The fact that you may have actual Polish, French and American units fighting in Kursk, aka in Russia, may mean that the Russians will need to give a huge message to NATO. That they don’t get to do stuff like this and think that they can get away with it. The Russian people themselves seem to be hardening too about their thinking about the Ukraine and all those familial bonds between the two country may no longer count for much. Russia may not want western Ukraine but they sure as hell want the Russian-speaking portions of that country but as Ritter pointed out, that does not mean that Russia won’t pound the crap out of western Ukraine. That is Bandera land after all. And I think that after NATO actually invaded Russia here, that allied countries like India and China will agree to any plans that the Russian government has for that country. After all, they could very well be next on the NATO menu.
I think you’ve made the key point. Whatever happened with the invasion of Kursk the Russian government now has, in PR terms, the right to go in full-bore. Putin’s interest in the public opinion in the Empire is not foolish but if he can ignore it by destroying all the infrastructure of Ukraine I think Russia would benefit. I think Putin’s fear is that NATO will similarly go all-in on the war and we would be facing a nuclear threat. I think Putin’s slo-go has to end even though the risks are heavy. We’ll have to see if his military (which has long suffered from corruption) has the ability to do what it takes because I think Putin has not had complete trust in his military.
I discount virtually every word posited by US media on Ukraine.
My observation:
Putin, scarcely known to the US media, is calling Russian Federation response to a replay of Peiper’s SS Panzers’ 1944 wandering into Belgium as a terror operation.
US media are told to point out the Russian terror on the electric grid.
After all I have no concern for the US media.
I discount virtually every word posited by US media on anything, and tend to assume the opposite. If they were to say that the Sun will come out tomorow, I would have to verify it. I find it mindboglling that people take it seriously, but then again, I’m not from the USA and have never tasted the Kool-Aid.
The reason I thought that there might be some truth somewhere in this story is that the main sources are Ukrainian, and it makes Ukraine look really bad. They have this great possible deal and they screw it up with the Kursk attack?
A second vein of dim plausibility is someone from Ukraine got a hearing of sorts in Qatar. Qatar gets points by acting as an international intermediary, so it has incentives to entertain schemes like that. So this idea could have gotten as far as Qatar and died there (as in someone realized this was silly from a Russian vantage, both substantively and the repeatedly made Russia point, “We have no one to negotiate with in Ukraine now even if we wanted to” and decide not to embarrass themselves by trying to interest Russia,
Sunday, August 18, 2024
Time To Save One’s Own Ass. From Martyanov/Economist
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/08/time-to-save-ones-own-ass.html
Talk about making the Ukraine look bad. BTW..doesn’t seem like there has been all that much damage to Russian Energy infrastructure to enter any negotiations. And finally…Martyanov has been pointing out that the Kursk Governor has some explaining to do to Moscow.
Thanks always for your hard work.
Thanks for pointing out Martyanov.
From what I gather here the sources being Ukrainian however in a strictly WaPo sphere context – i.e. anti-RU by design – takes away any credibility. To argue on the grounds of “hurting UKR” is insignificant to Kiev. They full well know it is hurting their own people.
Nicolai Petro illustrated this in an excellent chapter in his book “The Tragedy of Ukraine” (2022) describing Kiev´s utterly sick and incompetent reaction to Covid. They accepted dead in order to subdue under the US course of denouncing the RU vaccine. Claiming, seriously, the RUs Sputnik was designed to harm Ukrainians (I think this one came from Kuleba).
Major parts of this government are simply crazy.
As Martyanov has repeatedly said and most likely correctly so – I usually am checking his quoted sources and have learned a great deal by doing so – everything we see and hear in the West is surrogate for military sophistication and control over what is really unfolding on the battlefield.
Since the casualties are not real to the European and US public the entire news sphere and politics around any single item concerning this war is pure fiction because it doesn´t hurt anyone.
They put all their expertise into holding up a para-reality. In order to be believeable military operations have to be included into this production of a fake narrative 24/7.
Let me quote the Alan Turing WWII biopic “IMITATION GAME”. The characters are talking about how to keep secret “Operation Ultra” and still use the German intelligence that has been decrypted.
JOAN CLARKE
And then MI-6 can come up with the
lies we’ll tell everyone else.
ALAN TURING
We’ll require a believable
alternate source for each piece of
information we use.
JOAN CLARKE
A false story that exlains how we
got that information, that has
nothing to do with Enigma. And then
you’ll need to leak those stories
to the Germans.
ALAN TURING
And the rest of our military.
JOAN CLARKE
Can you do that?
STEWART MENZIES
Maintain a conspiracy of lies
through the highest levels of our
government? Yes, that sounds right
up my alley.
That seems rather plausible to me: as far as I know, no one reported Russians and Ukrainians actually met. If there was anything, they all went through the Qataris. A lot of fictitious stories could have been generated through this sort of “talks.”
I would dismiss this as yet another wishful thinking report. Russia has no incentive to negotiate any sort of deal because it’s winning and the opposing side is not trustworthy. Putin is in a position of strength. Attitudes within Russia have hardened after recent attacks on Russian territory, including Crocus Hall and other terrorist attacks organized by Ukraine. Russian economy is on a sustainable war production footing and military expenses, while high (6% of GDP) are bearable. Military operations, while slow, are achieving their goal in attritioning the Ukrainian military.
On the other side, Ukrainian government is in a desperate situation. Russian attacks on the electrical system have disrupted whatever industrial production was left in Ukraine. Ammunition is in short supply with no prospect of getting more. Crucially, military equipment is running low. Europe and US scoured the world to supply armoured vehicles for Ukraine this year and there are no more to be had. Ukraine is already converting some of its mechanized brigades to infantry due to equipment shortages. It will be increasingly difficult for Ukraine to sustain its combat capability into 2025. Additionally, there increased internal resistance to the war within Ukraine. Military recruitment officers are routinely attacked and their vehicles burned. Desertion is widespread, estimated to be 150-200K.
So, my reading of the Kursk offensive is that it’s purpose is purely political, basically a propaganda stunt. Despite a long list of Ukrainian brigades involved, the overall strength of the attacking force is 5000 or less, so not enough to take and hold a meaningful amount of territory. It has given Ukraine media coverage it hasn’t seen in months and reinvigorated ‘Ukraine can win’ narrative. It’s also politically convenient with US elections coming up.
The area invasion was staged in has minimal strategic importance, is heavily forested to provide cover and has very limited road network. So while it’s difficult for Ukraine to sustain a force it’s also difficult for Russia to deploy a counter force and retake the area quickly. Ideal if you want to take territory and then hang in there for a couple of months.
I think much of the confusion arises from the loose use of words, as often. I don’t think there was ever the possibility of a “partial ceasefire agreement” being “signed.” In particular, there would never have been a formal agreement. What might have happened is exploratory talks towards an unwritten understanding about how the war would be conducted in the future. This happens surprisingly often in conflicts and does not necessarily imply any direct contact between the parties. Messages of the nature “if you don’t do X then we won’t do Y” can be passed through intermediaries, as in this case Qatar. But I would have thought that the Russians easing up on energy attacks would be only one part of any “deal,” perhaps in return for something the Russians wanted that we haven’t heard about. In any event, such “deal” would have been conditional, and the Russians could have restarted the attacks at any time. So I don’t think we necessarily have to see this as a sign of Russian weakness.
As regards the relationship with the Ukrainian attack into Russia, I’m not sure that there is “a” reason for it. The initiative probably followed the classic political sequence (1) we must do something (2) this is something (3) let’s do it, after which various political and military factions in Ukraine convinced themselves that it was a good idea for one of the reasons discussed.
On the other hand, the continued Russian harping on Minsk, for all that it’s a reasonable propaganda tactic, actually makes it harder for Moscow to make any kind of agreement with Ukraine. The Russians have gone so far out on a limb on this issue that any agreement is likely to be dismissed as a defeat and a humiliating concession by Putin’s enemies. So to this extent this is creating a rod for their own back, and means that the war is likely to last longer, and involve taking more territory, than would otherwise be the case. It may be though–I hope it is and I’ve suggested as much elsewhere-that the Russians will accept a de facto ceasefire when Ukraine is exhausted and the West has nothing more it can do, with formal negotiations to follow at some point in the future.
I assume your example of unwritten understandings could apply to more than just the conduct of the war, but to a gradual wind down to an end-point which is implicitly agreed upon by the major sides. An example, maybe, being the India/China border post the 1962 war which while being ‘disputed’ and occasionally contested on the ground in highly performative non-fatal battles, is pretty much settled in all but written agreements.
It is weirdly fascinating to wonder what the discussions were like when planning the Kursk incursion (and I wonder if the historical resonance of the name had an influence). One thing that has become clear I think is that this was not something cooked up on the fly. It seems to have been impeccably well planned, using some of their best remaining units. It would have taken many months of work to set it up. Was it like Market Garden, an enticing idea that gained such momentum that it became immune to logical objections? Like Operation Ichi-Go, based on a fantasy of opening up a whole new front that would allow everyone to ignore the important front that was in the process of collapsing? Or some sort of multidimensional bluff? I suppose only future historians will be able to work it out.
Yes, it would have to have been well-planned and, therefore, the chief planners for Ukraine (NATO) were directly involved. Remember that the mission of NATO with this war is to weaken Russia in any (and I mean ANY) way. That’s the whole point of the Maidan and the endless CIA color revolutions. The object of the Washington Empire is to dominate and control every square millimeter of the physical and virtual globe–there will be, without a major change in Washington, no end to these efforts at world domination.
“impeccably well planned”
I’m afraid I don’t see this. It fell apart rapidly and failed to reach the target. Even worse for the Ukraine, the Russians have now turned it into a large cauldron that the Ukraine continues to pour men and equipment into.
I guess if the goal was “get a few dozen miles into Russia”, then it was a success. But that is a subterranean bar.
I think it was well planned as a symbolic win by the Ukies based on the assumptions they made, which were incorrect, and well planned by the Russian military who were carefully watching the Ukie build up whilst appearing to be totally unaware of the Ukies’ intentions but did everything possible to make it look like Zelensky’s wet dream of being offered the most inviting target in the world, right down to ensuring the inexperienced Russian forces were given the command to retreat or surrender at the first sign of the Ukie advance. Reality is often not what it seems.
This led to the Ukies, doing what the Ukies always do, pulling some of their best and most committed fighters onto Russian territory, as the Russian correctly assumed would be the case, and then closing the trap. So it was very well planned by the Russian military who would have been heavily questioned by Presdent Putin and his colleagues because they too are well aware of the importance of Kursk as the most important symbol of Russia unleashing her latent strength in the Great Patriotic War.
A very classy set of moves, imho.
I suspect that Ukraine’s next step will be to attack Russia’s power infrastructure via long-range missiles that Biden is now considering (ie, will provide) to Ukraine. Given Russia, despite its vaunted air defense systems, could not prevent long-range glide bomb attacks from fixed-wing aircraft on Kursk bridges, I suspect such attacks will succeed.
My overall feeling is that the West is going to continue to launch increasingly serious attacks on Russian infrastructure until Russia is forced to agree to an unfavorable end to the war or use nuclear weapons on Ukrainian airbases. This is of course a win-win for NATO and the US but the Kursk adventure gives Russia some discretion to justify the use of nuclear weapons on military assets, at least to impartial observors.
I beg to differ with your assumption. Russia was not defending that low-population, largely forested areas. . And the unimportance of that bridge was confirmed by Russia quickly (<24 hours) putting up pontoon bridges, proving the lack of need to expend a lot of resources to protect that bridge.
The Soviets had all sorts of bridging equipment.
They were expected to have no hindrance from NATO blowing bridges to keep them out of Fulda gap.
Last summer we saw how far the West has fallen in the combat engineer force. Lacking mine clearance…..
Did Ukraine lose all the combat engineers to Russia?
Russia shot down 12 out of 12 missiles aimed at the Crimean bridge recently. They are getting better and more experienced at using their superior missile defence system all the time. Kursk will probably be much better defended soon. (Of course, no physical system is 100% perfect 100% of the time, but Russias is pretty near).
There is little practical need to use nuclear weapons (on airbases) with the variety of conventional missiles and bombs available. The ‘tactical nukes’ fantasy is a recurring wet dream of the neocons, part projection, part provocation, part false flag setup..
Like the others, I don’t put much credibility into the Western MSM reporting. I’ve been doubtful ever since they claimed Iraq had WMDs. Their coverage in this war has been outright propaganda the whole time. Right now, what I’m seeing is a lot of cope on the West’s side.
Psychologically, the West isn’t able to come to terms with the fact that they have lost the war. They lost to a nation, Russia, that they infamously dubbed a “gas station masquerading as a country”, when in reality, they were outproduced.by Russia in the industrial war. Decades of neoliberal economics have wrecked the Western industrial base, especially as it was outsourced to China to make the Western rich richer.
The sanctions were supposed to destroy Russia’s economy and they backfired on the West, resulting in a more independent Russia from the West, and one that is with the Asians. The West has also isolated itself on a global stage, especially now with siding with Israel. Russian living standards are growing and it seems they are better off without the West.
Putin was not expected to politically remain in power, and instead the West was supposed to have its Yeltsin like figure that would loot and ultimately Balkanize Russia. There will be no Moscow Maidan coup. Instead, Putin has been strengthened and within Russia, he’s a moderate compared to people like Medvedev.
The Russian people as a whole have woken up, not in the “Western sense”, but in the sense that they understand that Western elites wanted to steal their natural resources and their nation is under threat. As a result, the voices for a harder line are growing in Russian politics. You can see this with the shift in tone. What the West doesn’t understand is that Putn was the most pro-Western politician they were going to get.
Domestically, falling living standards are given rise to populists in the West, many with a strong anti-war bent. There is no support for conscription that would be needed to fight Russia, and young people in the West don’t want to die to preserve neoliberalism, the economic system that screwed them.
NATO has effectively been exposed as a paper tiger, save its nuclear arsenal, which can’t be used without Russian retaliation. It’s economics have proven bankrupt at production and indeed, morally bankrupt. NATO will remain, simply because of its ability to make rich people richer, and because of the West’s desperate hopes to steal the remainder of the world, but it won’t be the powerful threat it imagined itself to be.
One can easily see how psychologically, this is far too painful for the Western elite and the propaganda-like MSM to come to terms with. The hundreds of years of European and later US hegemony are gone.
Losing against Russia will also have huge consequences for the West’s war against China and their hope of maintaining dominance over China as well.
In some ways NATO is a paper-tiger but it is trying to build a real tiger by using this war to rally the sleepy Europeans to return to their warlike habits which, at least in terms of the leadership class, seems to have been revived–it is, I believe the newest fashion.
ste
The key to all this is and has been Germany. Will it dedicate itself to war as it did in the past to give meaning to the life of a largely materialist consumer culture? Whatever Germany chooses to do it is certainly facing a choice. In domestic affairs it has been systematically moving away from civil liberties and even the idea of freedom which Americans, for all their faults, treasure but, it seems, Germany and the rest of Europe don’t seem to care. I think making Europe a new source of militarism in the world was one of the goals of the Ukraine proxy war.
“the idea of freedom which Americans, for all their faults, treasure”.
Absolutely correct – it’s the ‘idea’ which they treasure – the reality is somewhat different. The ‘west’ really has a brass neck to call out Russia, China, Cuba etc. as having ‘authoritarian’ governments. The recent cases of Julian Assange, Scott Ritter and Edward Snowden et al show us just how authoritarian western governments in fact are. Also, there is the ‘money buys votes’ syndrome which perverts any reality from entering into ‘western democracy’.
Another way to view this is to separate ‘The West’ into the US and Europe. Then it looks like sanctions really hurt Europe and helped the US, especially with regard to LNG and the Nordstream attack, which should also be viewed in this light. At this point NATO begins to look like a US protection racket that squeezes tribute for US arms vendors from countries endangered by its policies.
I don’t know if there is any substance to the WP article, but I’m guessing that for most of Ukraine, it will be a very cold, dark, miserable winter.
Russia leisurely approach to the destruction of Ukraine power grid would suggest that it’s not their top priority, or perhaps that they would prefer to avoid totally wrecking the grid. Even now there is again lull in the bombing campaign, the grid is hanging on with rolling blackouts, but hanging on nevertheless. It looks to me like Russia is using the possible collapse as threat, hoping to bargain for something, or to somehow alter Ukraine behavior. They could have destroyed the generating capacity two years ago, but they didn’t do it then and still aren’t doing it now, just gently pointing to the possibility of it.
It may be so damaged that it will fall apart under increased winter loads.
And Russia may not want to look overmuch like Israel. See the Helmer thesis in the post, that they want to gradually herd civilians out.
Russia did 3 different peace deal with Ukraine all fail for simple reason west do not want peace. Its high chance this peace deal is real, look how Russia classified the Istanbul peace deal, noting in that deal needed to classified but putin said Ukraine wanted it, russia is desperate. There is alot of neoliberals in Russia so people shouldn’t underestimate how far they will go to sellout their people. Big question have you guys notice Russia have slow down grid attack in ukraine, so this give big pause
Its WaPo. I wouldn’t believe a word of it. Not to say that there haven’t been tentative contacts behind the scenes in one way or another but as usual the big boss in Washington would scupper it by ‘escalation’ Pretty sure the British had more to do with Kursk than the US. The infighting amongst ‘European allies’ the UK and Washington would make a more interesting read but we’ll never get a hint of that in the MSM anywhere in the West. The UK are absolutely adamant that this war will continue and if they have to go behind the Americans back they will do so .. UK has more to gain and lose, a shattered EU is in its best interests and we are seeing a new alliance of sorts being born (for what it will be worth remains to be seen) between The UK, Poles and the Baltics. They are selling it as the only Bloc that can confront Russia on its borders, as opposed to say the Germans who the US expect to step up. Truth is the majority in Europe have had enough of the war and enough of zelensky but too many weak and vulnerable Govts lack the ability to make a bid for freedom! Russia has options all over the World for energy supplies and new projects, many overland through Eurasia .. safer away from the sea routes. I don’t doubt that any future deal will have an ‘energy’ element to it but that is more likely to be along the lines of dropping sanctions on shipping (or third party shipping to be more specific)
Events like Kursk have a way of spinning off in all directions and causing all kinds of unintentional events to occur. Look now at the front line in Donbas collapsing .. and for what? Bits of land in Kursk where the Ukrainians will end up bottled in or plonked in a cauldron which the Russians will sit on until the AFU surrender (or get annihilated). Its an interesting watch for now if you can avoid the seismic amounts of BS in the Western press.
Great essay and great contributions from many others. I agree with much of what has been sad here and illustrates the nuanced knowledge of everyone here but your ability to deal with the many possibilities inherent in this war help us understand what is going on.
To be clear the situation is highly complex and multi-dimension in actual and metaphorical terms. For me, I start with the beginning and source of this war which is the ambition of the Washington-based empire to control everything possible. This war was meant to punish Russia for willing to lie supine while raped as in the 90s. Putin is rightly seen as a major danger for Washington–as strong leader that cannot be bribed or threatened who possesses what the ancients called virtue (i.e., strength of character). This sort of person does not exist in the leadership class of the Empire itself and its many minor vassals (usually where the US has military bases which is most of the world). We have to understand also that the post-WWII structures created largely by the pre-imperial USA are no longer in play.
Russia is, in a sense, sacrificing itself as a power willing to block the Empire–China is also on that side but China is also deeply invested in the international economy so it can’t fully support Russia. So Russia must play to the gallery of countries not completely married to the Empire (very hard because bribery, threats, assassinations, and CIA covert operatives are everywhere a possibility. So Russia can’t go full out WWII-style on Ukraine but now has the opportunity to actually go at Ukraine with that “full-scale invasion” the Empire’s propaganda organs constantly grind on with. I think the Russians did know about the invasion but were either split on how to deal with it or wanted it to go forward. I think the mistake people make is to think that Russia is a dictatorship because that goes with the American love of comic-book versions of the world–it amazes me that well-educated, sophisticated, hipsters and people my age who are veterans of the hippy and anti-war movements still think in that simplistic way although the ruling class encourages that way of thinking and has powera largely because of the idiocy not only of the ordinary people but the managerial elite.
Seem like all the international crises are waiting for something to erupt wherever they’re going to erupt (or not). We are at some kind of tipping point. Interestingly everything hinges on what Iran chooses to do.
One problem is that too many Americans have a cvomic book notion of what a “dictatorship” looks like. Most countries, even those that are more or less “dictatorial,” like Belarus, generally have “free and fair” (if mainly in technical sense–no overt fraud, etc) elections (I suppose the one huge exception to this is China). That stealing the votes on the election day makes for too obvious and clumsy way to maintain power has long been learned by pretty every regime out there and, as such, governments consolidate power and set themselves for huge advantage on the election day long before anyone casts ballot–Singapore, in particular, has been very adept at this for a long time. Part of what they do (and this applies to even China that doesn’t hold elections for high national offices) is to govern well enough that there isn’t a dangerous accumulation of discontent (after all, Chinese leadership have been paying a lot of attention to how Singapore is governed as an example.) Indeed, Singaporean leadership has been pretty open about why they hold (free and fair) elections: they set them up so that they have a good sense of what the people want, not so that they have the power to drive the ruling party out of power (although, the caveat is that, if they don’t figure out what people want and misgovern, they would lose power–incentive compatibility and all be).
This makes the difference between “electoral authoritarians” and “democrats” much hazier than people think. If anything, the antics used to ensure continued hold on power by, say, the Singaporean leadership, are quite familiar to the methods in American politics (making it difficult for the opposition to organize and field credible candidates and so forth.) One might even say that they are less blatant about “rigging” elections (defind broadly) than US politicians, since they are mainly interested in what people have to say using elections as a tool, not to engineer electoral victory for themselves despite what people want.
Interestingly, this “informational” aspect of democratic rule is not a new idea: Charles Lindblom called this “the intelligence of democracy” (I think that was in late 1950s). If you start treating elections as a legal-technical matter for gaining and maintaining power and start “rigging” it as such, then you forgo this advantage that a functional democracy confers.
Democracies in the ideal sense are definitely on the way out. The power-elite will use them as you say to see what messages will get through. But, as a practical matter, most countries are, basically, oligarchies run by various gangs. It’s far easier to rig election than Americans even want to think about. I’m worried that if the term “weird” has any power as a meme that I’m in trouble. I do know people want normalicy and predictability and don’t care about freedom or any of the principles the Founders talked about at least in the USA. The UK and Germany seem content to eliminate the idea of liberty.
A few things are obvious:
1.) Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition and Ukraine knows it can’t win a war of attrition.
2.) Kursk makes sense given 1.), because it embarrassed Russia, improved morale, and gives them territory they can hold ASSUMING:
3.) There is going to be a negotiated end to the conflict or a protracted cease fire after the American presidential elections, OR
4.) NATO is coming in directly in 2025.
Based on these assumptions, Kursk is not particularly stupid in my estimation.
My sense from the West is that they are acting as if they expect some kind of diplomatic resolution after the Elections, which is not my sense from the Russian side. However, the Russians are not going to publicly indicate they want to end this conflict because it would result in a lose of leverage in negotiations. A peace deal is pretty simple, probably, Ukraine out of NATO, Russia gets the 4 oblasts, drop all the sanctions and asset seizures, and away we go, but the West won’t go for it because of loss of face-if that is the deal on the table. On the other hand, they would be nuts to get NATO involved directly, but they have been nuts so far. So maybe the West is ready to throw in the towel, or maybe they open negotiations but prop up Ukraine with NATO forces. It could be like Nixon and Vietnam, where you had 5 years of peace negotiations while the war raged-although its hard to see how Ukraine has more than a year or two left. (They just defaulted on their Eurobond debt.)
Now everyone can tell me why I am wrong.
Not wrong. There are a lot of plausible outcomes but everything depends on everything else. The key, at the moment, is in the Israel situation. If there is a major war there then the US will run and cut bait in Ukraine or at least that is my guess. Israel is critical to Washington while Ukraine is not. If there is not war with Iran then Ukraine becomes the front line for Washington and NATO will slowly, very slowly, enter the combat depending on who is elected in the US in November. If Trump is elected (somewhat doubtful at the moment) then he will have no interest in Ukraine and he’ll hand the problem to the Europeans unless the CIA threatens him with a more accurate shooter. I don’t see NATO as ever negotiating with Russia even if the US would draw back. European unity depends on hatred of Russia in order to keep their population from realizing the truth of anything.
Aurelien wrote an entire 5000 word post on why it is operationally impossible for NATO to wage war. I have to turn in now but perhaps a civic-minded reader can find and link to it.
One issue is that “NATO” is more of a fake organization than pretty much anyone understands. The charter is exceptionally weak. NATO can’t even get member states to execute on what Star Trek would call its prime directive, defending fellow members when attacked. Article 5 merely obligates them to think about coming to their aid. So decision-making power resides in the member states, not “NATO”
Consistent with that, they have weak armed forces, and their weapons caches have already been bled dry by Ukraine. They are in no position to fight even if they wanted to.
Earlier in the war, Colonel Macgregor, who served for a pretty long time in Germany and still has good contacts, said the most the West could field would be a coalition of the willing of at most 100,000 troops, supplied by the US, Poland, Romania, the UK (which has a pathetically small army) and the Balts. Russia has an army of 1.5 million and its ranks keep growing. And that’s before getting to logistical issues in the NATO countries, like the ones big enough to have much industry liked making their own kit, which = massive logistical complexity.
Several articles could fit your description, but perhaps « NATO’s Phantom Armies. » is the closest:
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/natos-phantom-armies
Especially the part that starts with « Imagine, if you like, the thirty-two current members of NATO around the table, discussing what “can be done.” »
Great point! This highlights the deep, deep corruption of the West (the Empire) in terms of military procurement. I believe, however, one of the prime reasons for NATO being so gung-ho on this was is precisely to change the equation so that within five to ten years this equation will change radically as Europe will be pushed into going back to its old war-making habits. I believe this is genuinely something Washington thinks about. And now that the war mongers appear to have almost complete control of the official media this is possible though I’m skeptical that hedonists can be persuaded that war is a force that gives us meaning.
You might like to consider demographics in Europe. Non-White birthrates outpace indigenous by a wide margin. Any European militaries will have highly significant Muslim components
The European population is still only about 5% Muslim (most of whom I wouldn’t consider non-white, but ymmv. By birthrate difference (and generally younger demographics) alone it’s estimated to reach 7.4% by 2080.
Migration is way, way, way more important factor than birthrate.
You know that NATO or “NATO forces” can’t meaningful intervene directly in Ukraine without it being a complete disaster, but I’m not sure that anyone told Biden or Von der Leyen or any of the other players. They have consistently underestimated Russian capabilities throughout this proxy war, and consistently overestimated NATO’s capabilities, both military and economic. I believe they are stupid enough to think that they can intervene with Polish/French/Romanian forces under national flags as “peace keepers” and back stop Ukraine to the West of the Dnieper River, and free up Ukrainian forces in the West–and Sleboda has indicated his strong belief that this conflict will not end until NATO forces get directly involved in this manner. Remember, these decision are made by politicians who can’t do math and don’t read history, they think everything is public relations and short-term tactics. Its a vibe.
My guess is ukr military surrender, russia friendly ukr leader, and russia incorporating the 4 remaining Russian speaking oblasts including Odessa and Kharkov. And Putin recently called Kyiv a Russian city.
Ukr pop will be forced into eu this winter, it won’t be liveable without electric, which means no water/sewage/heat. Even gas pumps need power.
Re alleged negotiations: RU-UKR have been talking to each other on various matters since 24-2-22, including prisoner exchanges and spice payments (RU oil and gas continue to flow through UKR, and RU continues to pay transit fees to UKR….. a strange kind of war, shades of Milo Minderbinder), so the idea that some kind of discussions were underway in Qatar is credible. Certainly the WP exaggerates how serious they were. What I find most interesting is that some high-level people on the UKR side were talking peace (or at least cease-fire) terms with RU, as this would seem to go against Azov and Zelensky.
Re the Kursk incursion: we are still very much in fog of war territory, but so far I’ve found Martyanov’s regular updates to be excellent. As to why RU overlooked the troop buildup on the UKR side of the border, one factor is that there were actually not all that many units involved (perhaps 3-4 brigades = 6000-8000 or so troops, UKR brigades are smaller than their NATO counterparts), and most of the armored vehicles were wheeled (e.g., fast-moving Strykers) and therefore could quickly be gathered together and raced to the RU border.
Post-Kursk, I cannot imagine that any more Qatar-type peace talks will be possible. Aside from the PR angle, maybe this is why the Kursk operation was launched: to end any more talk of a negotiated peace or even cease-fire. It seems that Zelensky and Azov are determined to fight to the end, even if they wreck UKR in the process.
A lot historical analogies been raised.
US armor loses of Feb 1943 in North Africa come to my mind.
Rommel’s students learned of luring British armor into kessel, and beating them up. Montgomery got the “over cautious” reputation because he broke the British army out of running in to traps.
German commanders drew US armor into a kessel near Kasserine Pass and took them out. Eliminating any armor support to defend the pass. Fortunately, US artillery was brought up soon enough.
The Kursk enterprise has put a lot of NATO assets in a kessel, built after they got stuck.
Hearing that a fair amount of wheeled armor is in Ukraine formations in Kursk. Wheeled vehicles are quieter and usable on improved surfaces…
thanks ilsm as usual
(you might see it more differentiated, but to me following Martyanov this operation is a major blunder and by way of structural deficiencies promised not other outcome)
“Aurelien wrote an entire 5000-word post on why it is operationally impossible for NATO to wage war”
Aurelien’s excellent post explains the lack of doctrine as downfall.
“NATO has none of these things: its national contingents can’t necessarily even talk to each other, its troops have no common doctrine, and it has absolutely no idea institutionally how to fight a war of this kind, even if, by some miracle an operational objective could be agreed upon. In fact, NATO never had an offensive operational doctrine, nor did it have a doctrine for the defense of static fortified positions, which is what Ukraine has been doing. Its only doctrine was for a fighting retreat along its own lines of communication. There is, therefore, no historical precedent to use either.”
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/natos-phantom-armies
Just two comments
A) If Russia says it needs a border to keep it safe from conventional, tactical attack weapons, (and minimize terrorist infiltration at the border) then a buffer zone between Russia and the Ukraine of 500km is not enough. What is to stop the west or Ukraine (with help from the west) to develop long range strike weapons, like what Russian already has? I believe the Kinzhal air launched hypersonic missile and the Zircon both have ranges over 1000km…
The only solution is to occupy what areas are friendly, and create a huge cleared border that completely surrounds and isolated the remainder (to Gazify the Ukraine, without the Genocide or imposition of Apartheid within) this controlling everything that enters or exits the Gaza-Galicia state. Only by this can Russia (substantially constrict ) the inflow of Nato weapons or ‘special trained personnel’ into the what remains of the Ukraine.
2) PR effect is certainly true from my limited vantage point. Some of my PMC friends really believe that Kursk is an excellent move and demonstrates Russian weakness, even despite the fact that Ukraine the Ukraine is running out of men.
I find it interesting that the news sources they read have not pointed out that Zelensky wants to European countries to send back their military age draft men.
They are not military strategist people.
I think that this article misses a possibility, that this is a move by the Zelensky government to shore up its position domestically.
Given the current run of bad news along the front, this could forestall any attempt to hold elections or replace him.
“Any agreement along these lines would indicate Russia is over-eager for a way to end the conflict, that it sees the war moving in the direction of requiring Russia to subdue nearly all of Ukraine, say save Galacia, ”
Galacia and Galicia are different things, the central European region is Galicia.
Apologies, I will correct the spelling.
> Washington Post: Ukraine’s offensive derails secret efforts for partial cease-fire with Russia, officials say
Were the talks really about US trying to pull Ukraine back into line with something binding? Which was also why Zelensky was thrown under bus over Nord Stream? Or was this all an attempt at misdirection in the lead up the Kursk incursion?
Kursk incursion is a bit off from a US perspective given US has gone all in on Israel/Middle East. Did UK/Poland wag the US dog?
WaPo is a source reflecting regime thinking and wishful at that. I doubt Qatar is getting so involved in Palestine and Ukraine and hosting US bases. It is simply too extensive.
Russia will de-electrify Ukraine so Poland and Germany can welcome more guests this winter. There is no intention to leave any functioning energy network inside Ukraine outside DPR
Ukraine is facing Europe in severe economic crisis with mounting unemployment and entrenched inflation together with illegitimate regimes. German regime is terrified of Thüringen election on 1st September and Sachsen election which will upend the Berlin regime just as more Ukies arrive
Thank you, Paul.
My government auditor mum reports how much resource (money, people, activities) are made available to Ukrainian refugees in Buckinghamshire and elsewhere.
There are over 200k Ukrainian refugees, i.e. arrivals from February 2022, in the UK. However, from 2017, another 100k came. Soldiers for training and their families.
Dad’s younger sister teaches near Dusseldorf and reports similar goodies being showered on Ukrainians and notes, like mum, that many speak Russian, not Ukrainian.
Totally unverified, but I did see some days ago a claim that even in the current situation (war, nationalism, refugees) around 80% of Ukrainians use Russian in their Google searches. Which would match quite well the situation before the coup of 2014.
maybe Russia should just skip the middle men entirely and negotiate with Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems to be the most powerful man in America since the Clinton administration.
Hahaha!
Over at MoA, b has a different perspective on this question:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/08/britain-claims-to-have-helped-with-the-ukrainian-invasion-of-russia.html#more
My takeaway from that post is really about the depth and primacy of British involvement in the Ukraine war. I had previously dismissed British enthusiasm for the war as misguided nostalgia for the glory of its former Empire – a do-over of the Charge of the Light Brigade? – but I’m starting to think that there’s something deeper and more sinister there.
Near the end of the post, b quotes the Times (of London)…
“But also the economic implications of {Russian victory} are massive, because we all saw how heavily Britain got hit when he {Putin} first invaded.”
b interprets “how heavily Britain got hit” as referring to the own-goal aspect of Sanctions, but I suspect that The Times was really talking about direct financial losses to the City of London incurred by Russian capture of land and assets inside [former] Ukrainian territory.
I’ve long viewed the war in Ukraine as Russian pushback against the tentacles of faceless “Western Financial Interests”, but it makes even more sense as originating specifically with the City of London. As a USAmerican, I don’t pay a lot of attention to “The City”, as my political battles are more often against “Wall Street”. But I’ve read that a lot of the money looted from the former USSR by Oligarchs wound up in London (along with many actual Oligarchs!), and also that The City is [maybe?] the number one off-shore tax haven on Earth. And it’s easy to see how a pile of money that big would gain, uh, “influence” in British politics, ensuring that politicians they don’t trust can never gain real power (see: Corbin).
And as Britain has lost [all!?] the other sources of its former power (resources, empire, manufacturing, etc), The City is likely the biggest source of [cross-border] income for the country. The USA – with vastly more land and raw resources – still has relevance in the Real Economy of the world (we export food & fuel); while Britain is entirely dependent on “exporting” Financial Services.
US exporters have certainly profited from Sanctions on Russia, but they will still be profitable when the war eventually ends and those Sanctions eventually expire, regardless of who wins & loses. OTOH, The City of London has a lot more at stake in the outcome of the war: not just assets lost or destroyed, but the ability to collect rents from the entire country of Ukraine. (Whatever Rump Ukraine survives this war will be so deeply in debt that its GDP will mostly go to paying interest for the next few generations, until they eventually revolt).
Of course, Wall Street faces similar risks in Ukraine; but Wall Street isn’t the *only* major source for political campaigns in the country, so they don’t have the same level of control as The City does in Britain. Also, I suspect that the City of London has far greater direct exposure to risk in Ukraine than their US counterparts (who have more domestic alternatives, and are also stuck with more governmental regulation than The City?).
Bonus: when the BRICS eventually get around to setting up an alternative system of Maritime Law and Insurance, Lloyds will ring the Lutine Bell one last time, and then sell it to China…
My interpretation of Britain got hit was the price inflation that swept the island. It’s linked to the sanctions but perhaps the financial losses too.