Russia Would Face Severe Consequences for Attack

[applegrove]

Russia Would Face Severe Consequences for Attack

February 18, 2022 at 7:33 am EST By Taegan Goddard 92 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2022/02/18/russia-would-face-severe-consequences-for-ukraine-attack/

"SNIP........

The Economist: “In recent conversations with The Economist businesspeople, diplomats, economists and government officials in Moscow revealed that they could barely fathom the ruinous consequences a war would bring to Russia—consequences which would go far beyond specific sanctions. Imports of high-tech desiderata would disappear, firms would lose their value, access to much of the rest of the world would become fraught, any veneer of respectability would be stripped away.”

......SNIP"

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. Call Putin the names he deserves to be called.....

TYRANT
DICTATOR
WAR MONGER
PARIAH

Being truthfully labeled will win him very few friends. But NEVER underestimate him. Once KGB, always KGB.

[PortTack]

2. The guy has f..king lost his mind! Does he want revolution at home?

[maxsolomon]

5. He's not concerned with that.

He has successfully oppressed the opposition and independent press.

Where there is resistance, he puts it in prison: Navalny, Pussy Riot.

Putin will rule Russia until he passes. He's only 69, so figure 15 years more, min.

[sarisataka]

3. Only if the world enforces them

And Russia survived as the Soviet Union without a veneer of respectability

[Sympthsical]

4. Points for using "desiderata" in a sentence

You do not see that word often.

[maxsolomon]

6. How will they go on without desiderata?

The Desiderata Supply Chain will be shattered!

[DFW]

7. Do the Russians care? YES!!

Last edited Sat Feb 19, 2022, 06:11 AM - Edit history (1)

But Putin does not.

If he wants to try to take Ukraine by force, all he has to do is say the word, and his army marches in. His air force will conduct lightning strikes on Ukie air bases to take out as many of their planes on the ground as they can, and fifth columnists in place will sabotage as many of the defenses as they can.

Putin is using the pretext of NATO forces on his border (and he considers Lukashenko his personal property at this point, three fifths of a Russian) to put his 150,000 of his forces on NATO's border. He'll need them too, because the Ukies despise the Russians, as a rule. The Russians would be about as welcome in Kiyv as they were in Prague in 1968. Putin doesn't care. He wants the old Soviet Empire back, and he wants it in his lifetime. He wants it NOW. His imperial designs constitute "getting the band back together," and he doesn't mean just using music scenes with Aretha Franklin in a diner, either. If fifty thousand Ukrainians are subject to violent deaths resisting the invasion and subsequent occupation, he does not care. If twenty thousand Russians come home in boxes, he doesn't care about that, either. Who is going to protest? No one that has any prospect of longevity, that's for sure.

I doubt we can get enough surface-to-air missiles into Ukraine, train enough of their forces to use them, and then get enough ground to ground missiles in place so the Ukies can stave off a well-planned attack, and you bet that any attack will have been planned out to the last snowflake. It will also be ready to launch way before we have decided to arm the Ukies to the teeth. The Ukies may not believe they can die in combat and go to Allah's garden where 72 virgins await each soldier. But--for a while they do believe their country is worth fighting for. Putin may not care, and he may be powerful enough to suppress all internal dissent. Sooner or later, though, that porous border with Poland will be letting a LOT of opposition through, and they will be armed with more than political cartoons. Polish is very similar to Ukrainian linguistically--more so than to Russian. The two languages are like Swedish and Norwegian. They really don't even need a translator.

What I can't get my head around is the fact that in today's Europe, where this kind of shit is unnecessary and REALLY passé, that Putin thinks he can really do it without consequences that can imperil his rule (for no one even thinks of imperiling his country--who would want it?). In Europe, big invaders always fall. Living in their own self-built nationalist paradise is never enough for them. Napoleon, Hitler, they all went too far. Putin will, too. If he invades Ukraine this year, my prediction is he doesn't survive the decade. It won't be the west that does him in, either. It will be his own people, who, remembering Stalin, will be saying, OK, that's ENOUGH.

[applegrove]

8. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe (I guess Russia is considered Asia). Doesn't

Russia remember how hard it was for others to invade a big country in winter when Europeans invaded in the last 250 years?

[DFW]

9. Ukraine is the largest country wholly within what is considered Europe.

The line of demarcation, while always subjective, is usually considered the Ural Mountains. West--Europe. East of them--Asia. So Russia is still thought of by Europeans as the largest European country--as well as one of the largest in Asia. Friends who have traveled the Trans-Siberian Railway have told me that you really get a feel how vast the place is after ten days of Siberia going on forever and ever.

No one conquers Russia. THEY conquer other people. As, it would appear, is imminent once again. Ukraine was rarely independent. Since Peter the Great, its status as part of the greater Russian empire was more or less given, if not downright official. Its "independence" as a "Soviet Socialist Republic" was a fiction no one believed. But after 1991, they finally DID get a chance at their own show. Yeltsin never had any imperialist ambitions about restoring Russian rule over the old Soviet Empire. But Yeltsin was always a civilian. Though originally from Siberia, he rose through the civilian ranks to become mayor of Moscow. Putin was uniformed KGB. Guns and insignia. When stationed in East Berlin, he was involved with some of the executions of uncomfortable political prisoners. I saw his former residence in Potsdam, and the execution wall a few houses down that still had the bullet holes in it.

The Czars always thought it was their destiny to rule over a pan-Slavic empire. Putin seems to think he is heir to that tradition. Ukraine used to be known as the bread basket of the Soviet Union, with its vast agricultural areas in the west. Putin is sly enough to know what a disaster the socialist kolkhozy (collective farms) were, but he also knows that his people have to eat, and he'd prefer not to have to import grain for hard currency. Russia has already been importing huge amounts of grain from other agricultural countries (such as Argentina). He'd rather pay with his own rubles, at prices he can set, than in dollars he has to buy on the open currency markets. I suspect his desire to take Ukraine by force is as much about economics as a historical pipe dream. This time, though, it's a gamble. He will not be welcomed with open arms, and I think he knows it. I think he is just gambling that the west will not intervene with our own forces, and he is almost certainly right. I think it is very cold of him to write off what will surely be a staggering human cost. But he remains the same old KGB guy, who watched political prisoners get executed at that wall, and then went inside for tea. I doubt a few dozen thousand dead Ukrainians and a few thousand dead Red Army soldiers are enough to lose him any sleep.

[applegrove]

10. Yes. Putin is a psychopath.