Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday called for an end to the "irrational" war in Ukraine, urging upcoming peace talks in the Middle East to include representation from both Ukraine and Russia.
Are they? It’s difficult for me to tell given I have a language barrier and the vast majority of English-language information is obviously supportive of Ukraine. From what I have understood, it seems that Russia has gained a modest amount of land at significant cost in terms of human lives and internal political stability.
But I am also unsure how much I hear about the civil discontent is reflective of the actual Russian situation, beyond average pacifist sentiment. “Their society is in turmoil!” sorts of stories have been used in past conflicts to keep up public support for wars by making it sound like victory is around the corner.
Discriminating signal from noise in war media requires really active constant effort that I just can’t maintain long term when there are so many conflicts. As much as I want to. I also think the whole thing has been lose-lose for people and the environment, but that’s another topic altogether.
There is actually a lot of information you can read in English language media, but most of it doesn’t make its way into mainstream reporting. However, actual military experts and political scientists give us a pretty good insight into what’s really happening. For example, this analysis from U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin retired after 20 years of service and 12 years working as a modeling and simulations officer in NATO explains that Russian strategy is not about taking territory. Russia is fighting a war of attrition with NATO. The reality is that Russia inherited a massive military industrial complex from USSR, and it is currently able to outproduce NATO militarily. Furthermore, Russia has a much simpler logistics situation in terms of shipping weapons and supplies to the battlefront. Finally, Russia enjoys air superiority over Ukraine and is able to attack deep within Ukraine to destroy supplies and infrastructure. Ukraine has no meaningful ability to do the same within Russia. Furthermore, this is primarily an artillery war and Russia enjoys a huge artillery advantage over Ukraine. This summary of the state of things John Mearsheimer is a very lucid explanation of where the war is at.
Another huge problem for Ukraine is that it’s entirely reliant on western support at this point both militarily and economically. This means that Ukraine has to continue showing results to the west in order to keep support going. This is how Ukraine got pushed into the current disastrous offensive they’re forced to conduct. Russians clearly expected this given that they spent the past 9 months preparing complex multilayered defences that Ukrainian military is throwing itself against as we speak.
Once this offensive burns out, Ukraine will have spent a significant amount of weapons they received from the west, and lost large numbers of their experienced soldiers. This is already happening and it’s being admitted in mainstream western media fairly openly at this point. Russia is already starting a counterattack of their own in the north, and they’ve taken more territory in the past couple of weeks than Ukraine has taken in two months of their offensive. Russia is increasingly fighting against a depleted and demoralized army. All of this was known before the war started, Obama even quipped this in 2016:
Regarding political stability, it’s pretty clear that it’s much higher in Russia than pretty much in any western country. The government is consistently polling between 75% and 80%, and most dissidents have fled at the start of the conflict. We also saw evidence of this when Prigozhin’s attempt at a coup happened. All of the government and military immediately pledged loyalty and denounced Prigozhin. I can guarantee you that anybody who appeared to even remotely support the coup has been rooted out at this point. On the other hand, there is significant political instability in Europe, and anti war parties are polling increasingly high.
The reality is that that people care about their economic situation first and foremost. The economy in Russia is doing well, and even IMF is projecting growth. The war has little impact on day to day life in Russia. On the other hand, Europe is now in recession and people are seeing their economic conditions decline. This is the primary driver of political unrest. I expect we’ll see anti war sentiment to continue growing going forward. I recall seeing that Czech president Petr Pavel say that he expects that Ukraine only has around 6 months left, at which point there’s likely going to be collapse of public support in the west. Once western support stops, Ukraine will have no way to continue fighting the war and will have to accept Russian terms. Russia understands this perfectly well, and this is why they’re conserving their resources and fighting a war of attrition instead of making big and costly offensives to take territory. If Russia can grind down Ukrainian army then they can dictate terms.
Thanks, this seems like a sensible analysis that also accords with my knowledge of the situation prior to the current fighting. The conclusions drawn reflect the outcomes we have seen from other recent internationally-backed conflicts, which makes sense.
As always, the losers are the people who live inside the actual disputed territory, regardless of their background or political affiliations. It won’t be Putin’s or Zelenskyy’s children who step on the landmines long after the shooting stops. No matter how many countries say they commit to remove them.
It’s the US who has the most say in whether this will end. This conflict pulls the EU from cheap resources from Russia, now EU rely more on US, whether it’s resources or military. Especially military since they now have a big bear to fear from, US military industrial oligarchs are making banks from this. You keep provoking the bear, probing the red lines step by step, then there’s no wonder there are consequences. Buffer zone/state existed in history for a reason and it still stands to this day.
Analysis from benefits point, asking question like who profit or benefit the most ?. This will help you step out of the propaganda and misinformation from both sides and think for yourself.
Analysis from benefits is my usual approach, but the difficulty I find in war media is that every story benefits someone, even if it is just in the form of bolstering / weakening public support for something.
Deliberate operational secrecy also makes it more difficult to distinguish the completely fabricated from the exaggerated from the cherry-picked from the genuinely mistaken from the accurate.
I think the reality is that the actual conflict is between Russia and NATO with Ukraine simply being used as a proxy. This is a tragedy for the people of Ukraine as they ended up being cynically used by the west in a misguided attempt to weaken Russia. And I’m not exaggerating here, it’s literally the words of Loyd Austin and what a RAND paper that was published before the war suggested. Russia obviously played the role of the aggressor here and bears full responsibility for that, but the war would not have happened if not for NATO ambition to keep expanding east.
What’s truly tragic is that plenty of western experts have been warning about this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started.
50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:
George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.
Are they? It’s difficult for me to tell given I have a language barrier and the vast majority of English-language information is obviously supportive of Ukraine. From what I have understood, it seems that Russia has gained a modest amount of land at significant cost in terms of human lives and internal political stability.
But I am also unsure how much I hear about the civil discontent is reflective of the actual Russian situation, beyond average pacifist sentiment. “Their society is in turmoil!” sorts of stories have been used in past conflicts to keep up public support for wars by making it sound like victory is around the corner.
Discriminating signal from noise in war media requires really active constant effort that I just can’t maintain long term when there are so many conflicts. As much as I want to. I also think the whole thing has been lose-lose for people and the environment, but that’s another topic altogether.
There is actually a lot of information you can read in English language media, but most of it doesn’t make its way into mainstream reporting. However, actual military experts and political scientists give us a pretty good insight into what’s really happening. For example, this analysis from U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin retired after 20 years of service and 12 years working as a modeling and simulations officer in NATO explains that Russian strategy is not about taking territory. Russia is fighting a war of attrition with NATO. The reality is that Russia inherited a massive military industrial complex from USSR, and it is currently able to outproduce NATO militarily. Furthermore, Russia has a much simpler logistics situation in terms of shipping weapons and supplies to the battlefront. Finally, Russia enjoys air superiority over Ukraine and is able to attack deep within Ukraine to destroy supplies and infrastructure. Ukraine has no meaningful ability to do the same within Russia. Furthermore, this is primarily an artillery war and Russia enjoys a huge artillery advantage over Ukraine. This summary of the state of things John Mearsheimer is a very lucid explanation of where the war is at.
Another huge problem for Ukraine is that it’s entirely reliant on western support at this point both militarily and economically. This means that Ukraine has to continue showing results to the west in order to keep support going. This is how Ukraine got pushed into the current disastrous offensive they’re forced to conduct. Russians clearly expected this given that they spent the past 9 months preparing complex multilayered defences that Ukrainian military is throwing itself against as we speak.
Once this offensive burns out, Ukraine will have spent a significant amount of weapons they received from the west, and lost large numbers of their experienced soldiers. This is already happening and it’s being admitted in mainstream western media fairly openly at this point. Russia is already starting a counterattack of their own in the north, and they’ve taken more territory in the past couple of weeks than Ukraine has taken in two months of their offensive. Russia is increasingly fighting against a depleted and demoralized army. All of this was known before the war started, Obama even quipped this in 2016:
Regarding political stability, it’s pretty clear that it’s much higher in Russia than pretty much in any western country. The government is consistently polling between 75% and 80%, and most dissidents have fled at the start of the conflict. We also saw evidence of this when Prigozhin’s attempt at a coup happened. All of the government and military immediately pledged loyalty and denounced Prigozhin. I can guarantee you that anybody who appeared to even remotely support the coup has been rooted out at this point. On the other hand, there is significant political instability in Europe, and anti war parties are polling increasingly high.
The reality is that that people care about their economic situation first and foremost. The economy in Russia is doing well, and even IMF is projecting growth. The war has little impact on day to day life in Russia. On the other hand, Europe is now in recession and people are seeing their economic conditions decline. This is the primary driver of political unrest. I expect we’ll see anti war sentiment to continue growing going forward. I recall seeing that Czech president Petr Pavel say that he expects that Ukraine only has around 6 months left, at which point there’s likely going to be collapse of public support in the west. Once western support stops, Ukraine will have no way to continue fighting the war and will have to accept Russian terms. Russia understands this perfectly well, and this is why they’re conserving their resources and fighting a war of attrition instead of making big and costly offensives to take territory. If Russia can grind down Ukrainian army then they can dictate terms.
Thanks, this seems like a sensible analysis that also accords with my knowledge of the situation prior to the current fighting. The conclusions drawn reflect the outcomes we have seen from other recent internationally-backed conflicts, which makes sense.
As always, the losers are the people who live inside the actual disputed territory, regardless of their background or political affiliations. It won’t be Putin’s or Zelenskyy’s children who step on the landmines long after the shooting stops. No matter how many countries say they commit to remove them.
It’s the US who has the most say in whether this will end. This conflict pulls the EU from cheap resources from Russia, now EU rely more on US, whether it’s resources or military. Especially military since they now have a big bear to fear from, US military industrial oligarchs are making banks from this. You keep provoking the bear, probing the red lines step by step, then there’s no wonder there are consequences. Buffer zone/state existed in history for a reason and it still stands to this day.
Analysis from benefits point, asking question like who profit or benefit the most ?. This will help you step out of the propaganda and misinformation from both sides and think for yourself.
Analysis from benefits is my usual approach, but the difficulty I find in war media is that every story benefits someone, even if it is just in the form of bolstering / weakening public support for something.
Deliberate operational secrecy also makes it more difficult to distinguish the completely fabricated from the exaggerated from the cherry-picked from the genuinely mistaken from the accurate.
I think the reality is that the actual conflict is between Russia and NATO with Ukraine simply being used as a proxy. This is a tragedy for the people of Ukraine as they ended up being cynically used by the west in a misguided attempt to weaken Russia. And I’m not exaggerating here, it’s literally the words of Loyd Austin and what a RAND paper that was published before the war suggested. Russia obviously played the role of the aggressor here and bears full responsibility for that, but the war would not have happened if not for NATO ambition to keep expanding east.
What’s truly tragic is that plenty of western experts have been warning about this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started.
50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:
George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.