Thanks for asking. My thoughts - the most telling thing about the Wagner rebellion is that while nobody joined him - nobody stopped him either. The intelligence services called up all the Wagner leadership and said we will kill all of your family in 24h if you don’t stop now. You know - a good guys move. The stretngth and weakness of an authoritarian dictatorship is that the people aren’t particularly keen to die for you - they just want to know who’s in charge.

Wagner would have been intentionally liquidated or relocated to Africa by now - they’d fulfilled their purpose. If I put on my Prighozin hat, he would have been better to hold Rostov and Belgorod hostage just as his leadership’s families were. Not that Moscow gives a wet donkey fart about the citizens of Rostov and Belogorod, but - they need those cities to run their Donbas invasion and the logisticis to keep Crimea, and project power into the Mediterranean and Africa. Priggy was a dead man the second he turned his wheels east, but he would have lived longer had he not marched towards Moscow.

I think he realized too late that he had been used, and that all his undeserved wealth was going to be siphoned away.

Exactly. It’s not about encouraging corporate self-defense. It’s about making a way for “nationalizing” assets for the coming post-war power struggle.

Russia’s headed for a new civil war along ethno-corporate warlord lines. The winning faction will have the most military and economic strength. Everyone else will be killed as the new winning faction consolidates power.

Agreed but I don’t think they’ll just pick more bodies with the same war aims. Getting 400k more troops gives him another 12 months or so of burn rate. And wars don’t end when the other side gets to zero troops - collapses hapen when enough people understand that defeat is inevitable and tomorrow’s planned assault isn’t worth dying for. They might be at or near that point already.

Even at Russian standards of mobilization, it takes 2-6 months to get fresh bodies at scale into the line. Those new recruits who are right now working in tire shops, mines, IT offices and coffee shops will be less effective than the low-functioning grunts being blow into spaghetti-O’s in blasted puddles of rainwater and crushed concrete right now. They have less equipment, shit leadership, no experience - which means they’ll die faster. Much faster. And these are not volunteers - these will be conscripts that the Russians didn’t want to tap into before. Society’s sensitivity to their lives being pissed away so that a black hearted gangster ghoul doens’t have to say he was wrong is much higher than the in-it-for-the-money slobs that came before.

If they announced mobilization today, they will endure several more months of crushing losses, oil and gas infrastructure and warehouse destruction, increased shortages and inflation way before the first reluctant mobik is blown out of his boots by ukrainian drones.

Then what? Mobilization by itself doesn’t change the outcome of this war. They’re going to do something else wild and provocative. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Anything else is just buying a small slice of time.

My guess is his death will be personal and quiet. Poison. He’ll be blamed almost coloquially for this whole nasty affair “you understand the game, Vladimir. Now drink your tea”. And then there will be an awful power struggle in Russia along ethno-corporate warlord lines. The winning faction will take considreable time to consolidate their power. Total mystery who that might be, given that his dictatorship cult has deliberately forbidden faction cores that might compete with his own to exist. Lots of power brokers will pick the wrong side and end up dead.

Things will have to get very, very bad again, like the 90’s, before an appetite for an all-powerful national savior strongman emerges again. But glass half full - during that power struggle, Russia will not really have the jam to run state level invasions against it’s neighbours and it will be weaker than it is today when it’s done. Highly likely that Dagestan, Chechnya, Yakutia all break away and Russia shrinks into a rump state similiar to how the Ottoman empire lost its colonies over a long time frame and ended up with it’s current configuration in Turkey.

Unlikely we get a Gaddhafi style bayonet enema on video or a Ceaucescu gutter bleed-out. Russia’s way is to scapegoat the last guy, then pretend to be a society again for a while.

You are very kind! But my two cents isn’t chest thumping triumph in the near term. Quite the opposite. Sort of.

The point of the Economist article is that he fully understands it’s going badly, he understands he is not conquering Ukraine, but the scary part is is completely commited to - put simply - getting more in order to stay alive. It would be better for the world if he continued bashing his brains in against Ukraine chasing a delusional theory of victory.

The fact that they’re unable to advance in Ukraine GREATLY increases the chances he attacks the Baltics, and I mean soon. Like, in the next 1-2 months. And the point of that attack isn’t to take and hold territory.

It’s to try and salvage exposing NATO Article 5 as toothless words on a page. This window of a hollow ‘victory’ is a sweet spot of Trump still holding all the levers of power in the US until the midterms, and the relative unpreparedness of strong, unilateral NATO respons to an attack on Latvia, Lithuania and/or Estonia. Most serious minded thinkers agree that even a U.S. exempt response by European NATO partners will smash the current version of the Russian army in the case of a Baltic invasion.

But that’s not the point. Trump holds the U.S. out of Baltic attack, some Danes, Canadians stationed there die. Finland and Poland probably say “fuck it” and immediately implement air strikes because clearly it’s better to fight an inevitable opponent in someone else’s yard instead of your own. What do Paris, Berlin, London and Rome do? Who knows. They don’t have a lot of new capabilities to offer Ukraine, just more of what they’re already providing. I don’t see those large European NATO forces putting boots on the ground in the Baltics, at least not right away while they assess what Crazy ol’ Vlad is doing. Maybe they sink a few ships in the Baltic fleet and seize more shadow fleet vessels. Trump is going to die - soon. And he might be neutered politically before then. It’s urgent that Russia move while their armies are deployed and he exists to interfere with a unified Western response to their brazen attacks.

Point is - Russia is already pot committed to this war. It has become existential for their miserable hell on earth petromafia project. A defeated, post Putin Russia is headed for a power struggle, and EVERYONE understands that. They have more pragmatic cruelty unifying them than we give them credit for. Russia won’t be any stronger than they are right now for another centrury.

All that to say - he hasn’t made his last move. He will probably invade the Baltics in the next 1-2 months, regardless of a military outcome, and claim the prize is shattering NATO unity and further eroding U.S. partisan politics. Whether that would be enough for “They” to let him live is highly debatable, as that seems a goal of personal vengeance more than it does an issue of Russian strategic triumph.

Moreover, invading the Baltics essentially means much less pressure on the Ukrainian lines, and gives the UA options to think about their next steps. Opening even a brief new offensive will suck scarce resources away from the current fronts. Whatever support Ukraine is getting today might be enhanced signficantly if Russia invades the Baltics, even after that portion of the attack is brief.

But what do I know? What’s your thoughts?

oh you with the flattery. cheers.

Not to be too literal - but there are many things worse than an animal backed into a corner. Like an animal running wild thorugh your kitchen. On balance, this entire affair is horror. But it was always going to happen and i’ll take the current state of affairs over the alternatives.

Dangerous animals need to be killed sometimes.

Ain’t that the truth. Putting on your Black Hearted Ghoul hat for a moment - the smart thing for him to do would have been to pause and get firm concessions on the Donbas territory they already controlled plus Crimea. Something prior to the 2022 Kharkiv counter attack, annouce a ceasefire, say that you’d made your point that they are serious about Russian boundaries. They could have claimed they punched NATO in the nose and showed them to be toothless - which they were until it became clear Ukraine wasn’t going to slip away into history. Reserve your future strength, not showcase how terrible and now ultimately spent their army is. All those billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of men and machines that he’d still have to threaten the West with. Now, the west is financially and materially invested in Ukraine - disengagement will be slow, gradual, and only in the face of a Ukraine-friendly settlement.

But - they’re greedy and stupid, and only know how to escalate. Because they’re gangsters, not strategic military geniuses. It’s often said that Putin is a chess player - that’s horseflop. He’s a poker player who always bluffs, punches down on opponents he doesn’t think will hit back, and counts on his fat chip stack scaring others. Well - now he has blown that stack. His own hubris didn’t allow for a long version of this war.

And now what? Lost the Black Sea fleet. Lost 1.5 million men. Lost their entire soviet hardware inheritance. Became junior partners to China. Lost effective control of Crimea and the Black Sea. Lost allies in Syria, Armenia, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Venezuela. Lost their mischief-making franchise Wagner. Lost their AWACS fleet. Lost 1/2 of their strategic bombers. Lost their 30-year war chest of oil revenues. Lost their primary energy export markets to europe. Lost their ecommerce industry. Lost their oil and gas infrastructure. Lost any young Russian men smart enough to make their way out of the country prior to mobilization. Lost any relationship with Ukraine forever. Lost their fearsomeness. Enlarged NATO. The list goes on.

China has done this kind of short, snap, “prove a point” invasion several times in the last 75 years - against the USSR, Korea, Vietnam, India. China are smart enough to see that the threat of war is worth more than the more uncertain realization of it.

I frankly hope so, as the implementation of any form of no-fly zone in eastern Ukraine is the end of russia’s effective assault capabilities. Their entire war plan is 1) Small squad creeping infiltration 2) indiscriminate drone attacks 3) missile terror attacks. A no-fly zone greatly mitigates 2 & 3 and makes 1 even less effective than it is now.

It doesn’t take any particular genius to see it, and you’re right it’s not new. The moderators already yell at me for too much editorial anaysis, but it’s a good point you’re making. The threat is internal, not external. Creating situations for potential coup plotters to expose themselves to early is a good way to root them out.

Good and sober hypothesis, though I would question if he would define “is this good for me” in such cerebral terms as a ‘public miliary split’. He’s never had any problem personally undermining NATO, and this is his CIA Director flying right to the heart of Mordor without Trump mentioning it - you have to assume therefore it is urgent and backed by whoever is managing Trump’s foreign policy agenda while he fills his diaper with fresh mud. Ratcliffe’s public politics might seem reasonable, but - he has a boss. Trump has never been shy about criticizing even cabinet members when they step out of line.

Splintering Article 5 while Trump can still override american support of it would have many repercussions and it’s not at ALL assured that any of these would be net positive for Trump and Pootz. Nor does it help Trump save face in Iran. There isn’t much time left before his hand is forced in the midterms.

On balance - a russian invasion of NATO sure doesn’t look like it HELPS make Trump look strong or create net new votes. Seems like an ally with presumptive american protection getting invaded would have the opposite effect and would energize anti-trump voters who have even the basest understanding of geopolitics. But - that’s thinking with Trump interests in mind. Putin’s situation is way, way further down the Desperation Highway.

Of course he can always escalate. But so can Ukraine and it’s backers. There’s plenty of moves left to make.

that’s a very good point, but that doesn’t alter the absurdity of it, nor the clear menace to private enterprise. I mean - what you’d WANT the “government” to say in a case like this is that we will help protect you. Not ‘we’re going to take your shit if you don’t provide your OWN air defesne’.

My first reaction was how incredibly dumb this is to say to them. It clearly says that “we can’t stop the drone attacks”, and they’re just shifting accountability or preparing to hollow out the country and steal everything. But then what? The russian army’s air defense is SUPPOSED to be protecting strategic assets like refineries now, and they’re not doing it.

Even if you just accepted the state stealing everything as an inevitability…how’s that going to work out for the new ‘owners’? Refineries are large, fixed, hard to defend targets and Ukraine is getting better at attacking, not worse.

It’s really, really hard to understand the russian mindset. The closest i can come is that despite wearing suits, they are much closer to fur-clad, pre-medieval barbarian beasts in practice. The organzing principle of society is “do as I say, or I will kill you”. Thievery is expected as the norm, according to your station in life. Rules don’t matter, only power does. Empathy is weaknes, and the individual and collective attitude of a russian is that they only care about the 1 square foot of ground they are standing on, and nothing else matters. In this situation, even though the fairly rational, 21st century reaction westerners exepct would be “hey, these attacks on our industry are bad. We should do our best to make them stop”…Russia’s ACTUAL reaction is “hey, stopping these attacks would be hard to do. Let’s put the blame on the victims, and then steal their shit”.

Rabid hyenas.

It also highlights in huge block letters that these are not people you can negotiate with. The state exists to be plundered. The government says not only are we not going to protect you, but we are going to seize all of your assets. Doing this at the large end of the economy with WB & OZON sends a pretty clear message down the chain - if you have anything of value, get it out now.

You’re getting the point - this illustrates how Russia is nothing but a crime syndicate from top to bottom. Thievery is not only not frowned upon - it’s expected. There’s a russian saying that “The man who doesn’t steal, steals from his family”.

It’s incredible that business exists at all. At least for now.

Exactly. Combat effectiveness matters way more than raw numbers. These reluctant conscripts who’ve been smart enough to avoid being drawn into the war so far will have less training, less leadership, less protection, less hardware support and less equipment than the batches that came before them. Which all means that they will simply die faster, and with greater public outcry.

Even if they did recruit the full half million - that’s about a year’s worth of casualties and based on line movement the last couple of years, means maybe 1-2 more mid-sized towns captured. Is it worth killing the entire population of Regina to occupy a destroyed Estevan? (Prarie canadian reference there). But you’re right - the real men in boots that they can generate from this is probably way way less than they want with their fairly arbitrary 500k target. The guys smart enough to avoid being drawn into the army since 2022 aren’t going to suddenly become effective assault forces in the next 2-6 months.

Belarus is in my view totally irrelevant and always has been. Their army is tiny, and fourth rate compared even to the Russian army. It’s mission is intenral repression, not foreign intervention. If they sent an expeditionary force, they’d be wiped out in a month and nothing would guarantee Lukashenko getting the Gaddhafi Bayonet Enema treatment faster.

No doubt you’re right, the one thing you can count on is that life inside Russia will get shittier and shittier. It’s really hard to grasp on a near term basis what a complete disastrous self-own this entire war has been for them. A historic self-own on a par maybe only with the Persian Empire being completely destoyed by misadventure into Macedon and trying to show upstart Alexander who the real Big Dog of the age was.

Thank you. The real pivot of this war is that Russia simply cannot stop Ukraine from making and deploying drones. Nobody has any counter for them.

Russia is dependent on pushing men into places they don’t belong and then calling that land theirs. You know - a policy of Infestation. But, like garden pests, Ukraine will get them all eventually, as long as they can continue to deploy drones - which seems to be a lot more infinite than Russia’s ability to push fresh meat into the grinder.

The territory isn’t worth very much if it is nothing more than a drone killzone. Pretty hard to occupy, settle and generate economic activity when you’re under constant, personalized bombardment.

The most realistic de-escalation is not a ceasefire per se, but probably a joint exclusion zone larger than the practical operating space of fiber optic drones. Like, 100km or more buffer zone. This isn’t a new concept - when the Romans were expanding, they would create a large de-populated dead zone between their boundaries and that of the neighbors. Anyone and anything caught in the zone was killed - the thinking being that they could avoid a large army build up to invade their borders if the real, habitable border was many, many miles back from yours.

An exclusion zone like this is a major loss for Russia. They are fighting a war of territorial conquest, and retreating back to where they were is the same as a major strategic defeat. But the alternative is to keep bleeding and expending resources to gain less and less uncontrollable Ukrainian land. They don’t have any good choices left. The smart thing for Russia to have done, other than stay home in the first place, would have been in 2023 to fall back to Luhansk and their portion of Donetsk and keep Crimea logistically intact. But - they’re stupid and greedy, so…here we are.

All fair, but your thoughts please on this:

RE: 1 - Time is worth more than fake legitimacy. And troops need some ramp up time, even with barest minimal training, it takes time logistically to outfit and transport even the greenest conscripts. If you need troops today, they needed to enter the pipeline 6 months ago. Waiting for a sham election to legitimize troops you need today doesn’t make any sense, even in Russian thinking.

RE: 2 - The ‘current pace’ is quagmire. Russian territorial gains are near or below net zero at this point, and the next waves of men will have less equipment and hardware support than the last ones did. Capability matters as much as raw numbers do. What even is a theory of victory at this point?

RE: 3 - Infiltration - understood that it looks like progress in a war where not much else is going well for you. But it’s also not compatible with their war aims. The purpose of this war is conquest - and infiltration might work to probe defenses against an enemy that a) can fall back and b) gives a damn about the lives of it’s men. But infiltration is not a good strategy for occupation.

Just look at the american experience in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Fine - if you can push your forces into territory, great. But if the other side doesn’t stop killing them with drones, snipers, counter assaults, IED’s and assassinations, then you can’t pacfiy that territory and can’t get any gains from it. Eventually, you have to leave. The only tactic Russia seems able to execute isn’t compatible with their strategic war aims - which is conquest of territory and regime change. If Ukraine keeps killing every russian within 30km of the front, there’s not much point to holding the ground.

There’s a lot of whinging nay-sayers who say Ukraine is “losing” becuase they don’t realistically have the means to push the Russians out of Crimea and the Donbas. This badly misses the point of ukraine’s strategy. They aren’t trying to push the russians out. They’re trying to make staying impossible.

I don’t think the average Russian is a mindless tank mine runner. They may not value life, even their own. But the ones who have managed to stay out of the war so far are not likely to be quickly turned into idelogical missiles who will bum rush a defensive position with a brick of C4 up their ass to clear the way for the Blyatniks behind them.

I think all Putin is doing is buying time, and that the #1 thing he worries about today isn’t winning the war - it’s in spotting a coup at home before it happens.

Interesting. I haven’t done any homework on Georgia re: why major EU powers would even care. Georgia doesn’t seem to have any particular geopolitical or economic significance, nor a history of EU alliances that would suggest it’s a high priority for them to help repatriate Ossetia & Abkhazia.

You’re thinking about it in terms of a probable military outcome. I think almost all serious minded people expect that this would result in russia getting their heads kicked in. Quickly.

But what I’m suggesting is a brief, murky invasion into the Baltics where the actual military outcome is irrelevant. Yes, they’ll lose. But they’re losing now. We already know that Russia doesn’t give a shit about their losses. The goal of such an invasion isn’t to win - it’s purely to have Trump play his last part in declining to get invovled, and therefore causing a theoretical crisis within NATO about the sanctity of Article 5, and cause more chaos inside the U.S. itself.

And for the record - I don’t think that would have the impact Russia wants. I think some European states would act unilaterally, especially Finland, Poland and maybe Romania. All those states bordering Russia or it’s proxies have much more skin in the game of keeping russia where they are instead of waiting for them to be cheek-to-cheek with their territory.

Russia hopes this is a NATO-breaking move. But frankly, I think everyone in NATO leadership understands what Trump is, and that he will never honor an Article 5 call. But - that they have plans to act without him, and will look to repair the historic NATO relationship after he croaks. Trying to get Trump to honor any commitment is like shooting rubber bands at the stars.