Finland starts construction of Russia border fence - "Finland has begun constructing a 200km (124 mile) fence on its border with Russia to boost security. The Border Guard said it will be 3m (10ft) tall with barbed wire on top. Finland shares the longest European Union border with Russia, at 1,340km (832 miles). At present, Finland's borders are secured primarily by light wooden fences. Finland decided to build the fence due to a rise in Russians seeking to escape conscription to fight in Ukraine... In September, large numbers of Russians started fleeing to Finland after President Vladimir Putin ordered a mobilisation of reservists to fight in Ukraine."
Weird. I thought walls don't work. And fences are even weaker than walls
Why would you want to stop military aged men defecting?
Meme - Putin: "IT'S The WEST'S FAULT. HOW DARE UKRAINE DEFEND ITSELF. *skulls*"
A Scholar of Stalin Discusses Putin, Russia, Ukraine, and the West - "The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had NATO not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today. What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today. I would even go further. I would say that NATO expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we’re seeing again today. Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in NATO? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in. In fact, Poland’s membership in NATO stiffened NATO’s spine. Unlike some of the other NATO countries, Poland has contested Russia many times over. In fact, you can argue that Russia broke its teeth twice on Poland: first in the nineteenth century, leading up to the twentieth century, and again at the end of the Soviet Union, with Solidarity... The worst part of this dynamic in Russian history is the conflation of the Russian state with a personal ruler. Instead of getting the strong state that they want, to manage the gulf with the West and push and force Russia up to the highest level, they instead get a personalist regime. They get a dictatorship, which usually becomes a despotism. They’ve been in this bind for a while because they cannot relinquish that sense of exceptionalism, that aspiration to be the greatest power, but they cannot match that in reality. Eurasia is just much weaker than the Anglo-American model of power. Iran, Russia, and China, with very similar models, are all trying to catch the West, trying to manage the West and this differential in power... The problem for authoritarian regimes is not economic growth. The problem is how to pay the patronage for their élites, how to keep the élites loyal, especially the security services and the upper levels of the officer corps... You have to remember that these regimes practice something called “negative selection.” You’re going to promote people to be editors, and you’re going to hire writers, because they’re talented; you’re not afraid if they’re geniuses. But, in an authoritarian regime, that’s not what they do. They hire people who are a little bit, as they say in Russian, tupoi, not very bright. They hire them precisely because they won’t be too competent, too clever, to organize a coup against them. Putin surrounds himself with people who are maybe not the sharpest tools in the drawer on purpose. That does two things. It enables him to feel more secure, through all his paranoia, that they’re not clever enough to take him down. But it also diminishes the power of the Russian state because you have a construction foreman who’s the defense minister [Sergei Shoigu], and he was feeding Putin all sorts of nonsense about what they were going to do in Ukraine. Negative selection does protect the leader, but it also undermines his regime."
Will China let Putin's regime collapse, or risk all to save a feckless ally? - "China’s Xi Jinping faces an excruciating choice. He can stand back and allow Vladimir Putin to lose the war in Ukraine, leading to the downfall of his key strategic ally. That would risk the emergence of a Western-leaning government from the ruins of defeat. It would be the end of Xi’s revisionist grand plan to end American hegemony and rewrite the rules of the global order. It might also be the political end of Xi himself. The alternative is for Xi to rescue his floundering accomplice. That implies a vast and open-ended commitment along the lines of FDR's lend-lease for Britain in 1941. It would guarantee a world historical confrontation with the democracies and the international economic system... “The fundamental interest of the Chinese is to stay alive and prosperous, not to commit economic suicide by supplying lethal weapons to the losing side”... Yet American intelligence has concluded that Xi Jinping may be preparing to do exactly that. The evidence has been sufficiently compelling to alarm Western allies as well... “In recent weeks it has finally dawned on Beijing that Russia is losing this war and actually could suffer a catastrophic defeat,” he said. “The fear now is that the war could lead to regime change. There is a chance of a pro-Western administration emerging in Moscow. This is the nightmare for China.” What is clear is that Russia is careening headlong into a fiscal and industrial crisis as hydrocarbon exports dry up, and therefore cannot sustain full-scale offensive warfare for many more months. “The toughest sanctions on our oil products were introduced only at the end of 2022. This year our exports will be half last year's,” said Russian economist Konstantin Selyanin... China has the means to prop up Putin’s regime – within limits. It has $3.2 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, including $867bn of US Treasuries, and more via proxy holdings in Belgium – which raises interesting questions if the US-China economic war rises to the next level... The West also controls maritime supply routes for oil, coal, liquefied natural gas, iron ore, and soybeans. China could find itself in the same sort of position as Japan after Roosevelt imposed the US oil embargo in 1941. The Chinese and Western economies are so intertwined after 30 years of globalisation that further escalation amounts to mutual economic harm, but that does not mean that the consequences are equivalent... Mr Magnus said China could extend credit lines through the three state agencies that fund the Silk Road but this initiative has gone badly wrong, with more and more countries pleading for debt relief. “China has lost its appetite for lending,” he said. China’s foreign minister Wang Yi says his country will not supply weapons. His charm offensive in Europe over the last week seemed mostly aimed at trying to separate France, Germany, and Italy from Nato hardliners, while also fanning conspiracy claims about the role of US special forces in bombing the Nord Stream pipelines. Chinese and Russian officials are singing from exactly the same hymn sheet on Nord Stream, which indicates the flavour of the coming Chinese peace plan. The problem for Xi Jinping is that he is fatally invested in his strategic bromance with Putin. He declared “limitless friendship” days before the invasion, signalling his support for military action. A Russian debacle leaves having to explain a colossal and unnecessary setback for Chinese interests. “I don’t think he could survive that after the bromance. It would set off a leadership crisis in the Communist Party, and opponents would use it to get rid of him”... “His authority is already gravely diminished. You can see that in the way he was forced to abandon zero-Covid after the Party Congress. He cannot afford to reverse another of his signature policies”... Xi has used China’s state media to parrot Russian propaganda on the conflict since the war began. He has undermined a core tenet of Party doctrine: that the principle of territorial integrity under Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter must be upheld religiously. By backing Putin’s neo-colonial land grab he has undermined 75 years of Chinese diplomacy, not that the global South seems to care. Brazil’s Lula blamed Ukraine for provoking the attack. South Africa’s Ramaphosa is soon to hold joint military manoeuvres with Russia and China, as missiles rain down on Ukrainian children. Powerful figures in the Communist Party think Xi has devalued the Chinese moral brand and damaged Chinese economic interests by aligning with Putin’s deranged regime. They think he has picked unnecessary fights with the West, provoking hi-tech sanctions before China is close to technology parity. They think he has killed the growth miracle by turning his back on Deng Xiaoping’s market model. Above all, they think he has misjudged the global correlation of forces. And they are waiting for him to trip."
Has Putin's war failed and what does Russia want from Ukraine? - "Even now, Russia's leader describes the biggest European invasion since the end of World War Two as a "special military operation". Not the full-scale war that has bombed civilians across Ukraine and left more than 13 million either as refugees abroad or displaced inside their own country. His declared goal on 24 February 2022 was to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine and not occupy it by force, days after backing independence for eastern Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian proxy forces since 2014. He vowed to protect people from eight years of Ukrainian bullying and genocide - a Russian propaganda claim with no foundation in reality. He spoke of preventing Nato from gaining a foothold in Ukraine, then added another objective of ensuring Ukraine's neutral status. President Putin never said it out loud, but high on the agenda was toppling the government of Ukraine's elected president. "The enemy has designated me as target number one; my family is target number two," said Volodymyr Zelensky. Russian troops made two attempts to storm the presidential compound, according to his adviser. Russian claims of Ukrainian Nazis committing genocide never added up, but Russian state-run news agency Ria Novosti explained that "denazification is inevitably also de-Ukrainisation" - in effect, erasing the modern state of Ukraine. For years, the Russian president has denied Ukraine its own statehood, writing in a lengthy 2021 essay that "Russians and Ukrainians were one people" dating back to the late 9th Century. A month into the invasion and his campaign goals were dramatically scaled back after a retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv. The main goal became the "liberation of Donbas" - broadly referring to Ukraine's two industrial regions in the east of Luhansk and Donetsk. Forced into further retreats from Kharkiv in the north-east and Kherson in the south, that aim remains unchanged, but it has shown little success in achieving it. Those reverses on the battlefield rushed Russia's leader into annexing four Ukrainian provinces last September, without having full control of any of them: neither Luhansk or Donetsk in the east, nor Kherson or Zaporizhzhia to the south. To bolster his depleted forces President Putin announced Russia's first mobilisation since World War Two, although it was partial and limited to some 300,000 reservists. A war of attrition is now taking place along an active front line of 850km (530 miles) and Russian victories are small and rare. What was meant to be a quick operation is now a protracted war that Western leaders are determined Ukraine should win. Any realistic prospect of neutrality for Ukraine is long gone... A year into the war, he talks of Russia fighting to defend its "historical frontiers" and "rebuilding peaceful life in Donbas and Novorossiya", spelling out that Ukraine's southern territories are part of his project, just as much as the east. The biggest success President Putin can lay claim to is establishing a land bridge from Russia's border to Crimea, annexed illegally in 2014, so it is no longer reliant on its bridge over the Kerch Strait. He has spoken of the capture of this territory, which includes the cities of Mariupol and Melitopol, as a "significant result for Russia". The Sea of Azov, inside the Kerch Strait, "has become Russia's internal sea", he declared, pointing out that even Russian Tsar Peter the Great did not manage that... Kyiv believes Russia is also seeking to depose the pro-European government in Moldova, where Russian troops are based in the breakaway region of Transnistria bordering Ukraine... At home, Russia's economy on the surface appears to have weathered a series of Western sanctions for now, although its budget deficit has soared and oil and gas revenue has fallen dramatically. Any attempt to gauge his popularity is fraught with difficulty. Dissent in Russia is highly risky, with jail sentences handed out for anyone spreading "fake news" about the Russian military. Those opposing Russia's leadership have either fled or, as with main opposition figure Alexei Navalny, been thrown into prison... Russia's long-time leader was also desperate to prevent Ukraine from entering Nato's orbit, but his attempt to blame the Western defensive alliance for the war is false. Not only did Ukraine reportedly agree before the war a provisional deal with Russia to stay out of Nato but, in March, President Zelensky offered to maintain Ukraine as a non-aligned, non-nuclear state: "It's a truth and it must be recognised." No end is currently in sight. Ukraine's position is that Russian troops must pull back beyond Ukraine's internationally recognised borders for there to be peace. It is backed by a UN resolution passed by 141 votes to five, days after the invasion. By annexing four regions Russia does not even fully control, Vladimir Putin has made it very hard for himself to give them up. There is little prospect for now of a ceasefire or peace talks... Nato's expansion comes as a response to the Russian threat - Sweden and Finland only applied to join because of the invasion. Blaming Nato's expansion eastwards is a Russian narrative that has gained some ground in Europe. Before the war, President Putin demanded Nato turn the clock back to 1997 and remove its forces and military infrastructure from Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In his eyes, the West promised back in 1990 that Nato would expand "not an inch to the east", yet did so anyway. That was before the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, so the promise made to then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev referred merely to East Germany in the context of a reunified Germany. Mr Gorbachev said later that "the topic of Nato expansion was never discussed" at the time. Nato maintains it never intended to deploy combat troops on its eastern flank, until Russia annexed Crimea illegally in 2014."
Clearly Gorbachev was lying and was a CIA agent
Russia general who led crackdown on dissent ‘kills himself’ after being fired by Putin - "A Russian general who led the oppression of journalists, opposition activists and protesters is claimed to have killed himself a month after he was relieved from his post by Vladimir Putin. Major General Vladimir Makarov, aged 72, was previously the main organiser in the “hunt” for those deemed an inconvenience by the Kremlin, according to Russian journalists. But he was reported to have been recently forced into retirement from his role as deputy head of the Main Directorate for Combating Extremism, a department established in 2008 which persecutes protesters and monitors opposition sentiment on social media... Makarov is the latest in a series of deaths ruled to be suicides among senior Russian security figures, including retired FSB Major General Yevgeny Lobachev and Major General Lev Sotskov, of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The independent Telegram channel VChK-OGPU quoted relatives as saying Makarov had become depressed a month ago after losing his job and “could not find a use for himself in civilian life”... Russian authorities use the term “extremist” to describe a range of opposition groups – such as jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation – or media that have been banned for organising anti-government protests or disseminating information considered detrimental to the state. The Kremlin has tightened its grip on information in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, bringing in strict censorship regulations enabling it to control the narrative over what Mr Putin has branded his “special military operation”. The crackdown has seen many of the last remaining independent outlets in Russia, and their journalists, branded “foreign agents” and “undesirable organisations”, a designation which effectively outlaws publications from operating in Russia. It corresponds with a brutal repression of public dissent, with 19,335 people reported by independent monitors to have been arrested during demonstrations against the war in Ukraine."
Russian industry fails to meet the needs of new offensive - " This is indicated by senior Russian officials calling for more progress in Russia’s defence industry. Russian President Vladimir Putin had publicly admonished the Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov for “fooling around” with taking so long to secure civil and military aircraft contracts on 12 January."
Belarusian foreign minister died by suicide after meeting Putin’s officials: report - "Long-serving foreign minister Vladimir Makei, 64, was reported to have suffered a heart attack when he died suddenly on Nov. 26. But according to reporting by the independent Belarusian media outlet Nasha Niva, citing four unrelated sources, the liberal-leaning Makei took his own life four days after attending the summit in Armenia. “Makei’s friends say he was painfully upset by the collapse of the course he was leading,” reported Nasha Niva, adding that those close to him did not believe he was murdered. Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko aimed to replace Makei, who had served as his top diplomat since 2012, according to the news outlet, although it was unclear whether this was at Moscow’s behest."
Christopher Hitchens On 'This American Moment' - "they are going to try and regain their temporarily lost influence in Eastern and Balkan Europe, in any case. So the quicker we can get as many members as we can under the protective umbrella in this period of Russian - what shall we call it - eclipse, the better. I think the second view was the more intelligent one. The Russians are going to be expansionist whether we provoke them to it or not. For example, the Russians keep saying that we're trying to encircle them. In what sense does the independence of Kosovo, a land-locked province, former Yugoslavia, with no common border with Russia, threaten Russia with encirclement? In what sense does the independence of the Baltic states - which the Soviets gained as territory in a deal with Hitler, a direct bargain between Stalin and Hitler - would it constitute an encirclement? This is insulting. In what sense does the independence of Georgia constitute an encirclement? What we are facing, and we may as well give it its right name, is what I called it earlier, a chauvinistic, theocratic in part, xenophobic Russian imperialism."
Putin humiliated by Russian mercenary chief as he slams Kremlin generals as 'a bunch of clowns' - "Moscow’s generals have been dubbed a “bunch of clowns” in a withering putdown by oligarch henchman Yevgeny Prigozhin. Mr Prigozhin runs the Wagner private army which is estimated to be around 50,000 strong, and is seen as a potentially significant threat to the Kremlin leader. In a dig aimed at Moscow, the Wagner leader claimed his fighters, comprised mainly of convicts in uniforms, have achieved greater heroics during the Ukraine war than Soviet soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad. The Russian commander-in-chief, General Valery Gerasimov, also came in for criticism, after he ordered Russian soldiers to shave off their beards as part of a discipline drive. Prigozhin described defence chiefs as a “bunch of clowns” who seek “glamorisation of the army”. “Female war correspondents go into the absolute heat of [war],' said Prigozhin. “Jail inmates fight better than units of the Guards. Servicemen with broken spines pass on their military experience at training camps, moving around like robots. “And a bunch of clowns try to teach fighters exhausted with hard military labour how many times they ought to shave — and what kind of perfume they must use to greet high commanders... The warlord has become a thorn in the side of Putin as a result of his frequent rants about the state of the Russian Armed Forces... Russia’s military has been further embarrassed as the British Ministry of Defence reported that General Colonel Mikhail Teplinsky, another top Russian general, has been dismissed as one of Moscow’s key commanders in Ukraine... “Teplinsky's dismissal is likely another symptom of continued divisions within the senior hierarchy of Russia's operation as General Valery Gerasimov attempts to impose his personal authority on the campaign.”"
Damn psy ops!
There is no path to lasting Russian victory | Financial Times - "Imagine that Putin’s forces achieved some kind of malign miracle, defeated Ukraine and overthrew the Zelenskyy government. What then? The reality is that a wounded and isolated Russia would then be stuck in a decades-long guerrilla war that would make Afghanistan look like a picnic. Occupying forces or a collaborationist government in Kyiv would be under constant attack. “Victory” would lock Russia into a long-term disaster. Putin and his allies continue to take comfort from history. Russia suffered terrible defeats at the hands of Napoleon and Hitler — but ultimately prevailed. But those wars were defensive. Knowing that they had nowhere to retreat, the Russians fought to the bitter end. This time it is the Ukrainians who are defending their homeland. In previous great wars, Russia was also part of a bigger European coalition. But now, as Dmitri Trenin, a pro-Kremlin strategist, observed in a recent article: “For the first time in Russian history, Russia doesn’t have any allies in the west.” In fact, the anti-Russia coalition extends well beyond Europe. As Trenin gloomily adds: “The degree of cohesion among English-speaking countries, Europe and Asian allies around the United States has reached previously unseen levels.”... A reliance on the global south involves a reorientation of the Russian economy, which for the past 30 years has been built primarily on energy exports to Europe. Russia is also now dangerously dependent on China. How did Putin get his country into this mess? The roots of the problem are his failure to accept the loss of great-power status, something other European states had already faced up to... The European order that Putin looks back to nostalgically was built around great-power rivalry. Unable to comprehend a new system — based on co-operation among states, under the umbrellas of the EU and Nato — Putin has ended up isolating Russia from the entire European continent. As Angela Stent of Georgetown University puts it, “Putin has closed the window on Europe that was opened by Peter the Great” in the 1700s. If Putin had been willing to accept that Russia was permanently in the tier below the superpowers, there would have been opportunities for Russian statecraft to play the role of a balancing middle power. Instead Putin over-reached in Ukraine. The ironic consequence is that Russia is likely to emerge from this war even further diminished as a global power. Russia’s desperate situation has led to a certain nihilism among some of the country’s elite, with television talking heads fantasising out loud about nuclear war and Armageddon. Russian strategists who make the argument for fighting on increasingly do so not because they see a realistic prospect of victory, but because defeat is too hard to contemplate. In his bleak article, Trenin, a former Russian military intelligence colonel and then director of the now-closed Carnegie Moscow Center, argues that “while a theoretical path to surrender exists” for Russia, this option is unacceptable because it would entail “national catastrophe, probable chaos and an unconditional loss of sovereignty”."
Vladimir Putin thinks the West will self-immolate – and he may be right - "Ukraine is not on course for outright victory. Quite the contrary, as it stands it cannot eliminate Russian forces and, in fact, is increasingly on the back foot. Zelensky’s reconquest of the country is faltering. With the West dithering on supplying tanks, he does not have sufficient weapons to launch a preemptive strike before Putin escalates in spring. For all the weakness of Putin’s military, we are heading for, at best, a catastrophic stalemate, and at worst, a decisive Russian breakthrough. Although Ukraine has the numbers and resolve to uphold its sovereignty, its Russian counterparts have superior stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. Moreover, the Kremlin is reportedly set to mobilise half a million new conscripts as it seeks to escalate the war from drones and artillery to planes and tanks – a massive shift. This makes the West’s current strategy increasingly untenable. Until now, it has lent Ukraine just enough help to drag out the war in an effort to grind down the Russian military, while stopping short of the kind of intervention that might decisively shift the outcome. But as Russia changes the conflict’s dynamics, Ukraine, deprived of the necessary capabilities, could quickly go from having the upper hand to a cataclysmic rout. Nor does the West’s bid to isolate and annihilate the Russian economy appear to have entirely worked: Russia has a record trade surplus as it exports natural gas at higher prices. Its financial system remains intact and its manufacturing sector is weathering sanctions. Put simply, this has the ingredients of a perma-war. Logistically, it could go on for years. Psychologically, both sides are determined. The Ukrainians are fighting for their sovereignty and freedom. Russia, meanwhile, views its Ukrainian cousins as fallen fornicators, sucked into the West’s “empire of lies”. Russia’s chattering classes call for their extermination with a mixture of revulsion and paternalistic guilt. Still, the West is not mentally prepared for anything other than a Ukraine victory. We don’t want to contemplate the unsettling fact, for example, that even if the final outcome of the war is murky, the myth of American hegemony will be shattered... His declaration of war has brought a world economy built on cheap energy and just-in-time supply chains to the brink of disintegration. Free trade, with its alleged semi-mystical powers to spread liberal values and peace, has been exposed as a false god. Nowhere are the ramifications felt more keenly than in Germany, which has adopted this benign mercantilist vision of the world most eagerly among Western nations
Meme - "Ghost of Kiev Wins Again"
"How can anyone fall for such a psyop?"
"Le based Russia fighting globohomo"
*MAGA hat, finger, based drink*
Recognition of Donbass republics not in line with Minsk accords, says Kremlin - "Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken note of the State Duma’s request to recognize the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR) but such a move won’t be in line with the Minsk Agreements, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters"
Russia's Recognition of the DPR and LPR as Illegal Acts under International Law - "On 21 February 2022, following a televised address, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin signed the decrees recognising the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)"
Weird. Russia shills keep accusing Ukraine of breaking the Minsk accords and thus being responsible for the war
Russian sausage tycoon Pavel Antov dies in Indian hotel fall - "Russian sausage tycoon Pavel Antov has been found dead at an Indian hotel, two days after a friend died during the same trip. They were visiting the eastern state of Odisha and the millionaire, who was also a local politician, had just celebrated his birthday at the hotel. Antov was a well known figure in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow. Last summer he denied criticising Russia's war in Ukraine after a message appeared on his WhatsApp account. The millionaire's death is the latest in a series of unexplained deaths involving Russian tycoons since the start of the Russian invasion, many of whom have openly criticised the war. Reports in Russian media said Mr Antov, 65, had fallen from a window at the hotel in the city of Rayagada on Sunday. Another member of his four-strong Russian group, Vladimir Budanov, died at the hotel on Friday. Superintendent Vivekananda Sharma of Odisha police said Mr Budanov was found to have suffered a stroke while his friend "was depressed after his death and he too died"."
Russia Ukraine Conflict: What Have We Bargained for? | National Review - "The NATO alliance’s duties have been radically expanded with no radical expansion in the share of the alliance’s burdens shouldered by Europe. Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist project is at odds with the democratic and liberal-internationalist values that are used to sell the conflict abroad. The conflict’s financial and moral costs to the U.S. have been growing for nearly a decade, and taking on Ukraine as a permanent dependent will grow them even more. The arc of the conflict is just as likely to encourage as to discourage Xi in his pursuit of Taiwan, given the ways in which our enmeshment in Europe will deplete our attention, resources, and will to be the world’s cop. And finally, no conflict in this blood-stained area of the globe is a mom-and-pop bingo game in which you can cash out your modest investments at any time; Vladimir Putin and Russia have a say in how this ends... While it’s true that China may be chastened by Russia’s failure, it may also be delighted to see the U.S. arming Ukraine rather than Taiwan, and pushing the number of American troops in Europe above 100,000. It may notice that the U.S. is now discussing giving 30-year-old Bradley fighting vehicles to Ukraine precisely because it is running out of weapons for the Ukrainians. It may also notice that the U.S. is entering a weapons supply-chain bottleneck. U.S. planners are already noticing that our weapons industry cannot keep up with the artillery demands of the war in Ukraine. China may notice that we are investing all these resources and attention in Europe even as our national-security strategy disclaims the goal of being able to fight two major wars at once... just “four months of support to Ukraine . . . depleted . . . a third of the US Javelin arsenal and a quarter of US Stingers.” China may also notice that, historically, our involvement in one war makes Americans less eager to enter another... The Ukrainian government’s ultra-nationalist project is in some ways understandable in light of Russia’s invasion and Putin’s denial of a distinct Ukrainian national and ethnic identity. But it is also incompatible with what Westerners understand as basic freedoms. Ukraine began banning political parties it did not like in 2014, starting with the Communist Party. It eventually banned many of the successor parties that grew out of the dissolution of the pro-Russia Party of the Regions, which was represented strongly in the Donbas. Media outlets critical of the government are routinely shut down. For these and other reasons, Ukraine has never been rated as a functioning or mature democracy, even by heavily biased NGOs such as Freedom House. War is predictably making things worse. “De-Russification” laws recently passed by Ukraine ban the performance of Russian plays. They restrict Ukrainians from importing more than ten Russian-language books at any one time. They forbid publishing writing in Russian unless a Ukrainian equivalent is also published and offered as the first and primary option. This is in a nation where perhaps 20–30 percent of adults have no proficiency in any other language but Russian. After prosecuting several priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (one that is still technically tied to the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate), Zelensky has demanded the suppression of the entire religious communion, which includes 1,200 parishes, and the loyalty of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens. Because of Ukraine’s perilous economic situation, the U.S. is subsidizing not just the Ukrainian military, but the basic functions of the Ukrainian government. Ukraine is certainly the aggrieved party in this invasion, and it qualifies as the David against the Goliath, whose own corruption is well established. But in many ways, Ukraine remains a dysfunctional and corrupt state that depends on the personal rule of oligarchs to function, and it is becoming more illiberal, not less, in this war. Ukraine’s corruption will matter a great deal at the end of this war. The war has wrecked the country’s economy. Estimates of reconstruction costs have risen to $750 billion, and will continue to rise as the war drags on and Russia bombards more of Ukraine’s infrastructure. Even if Russia is beaten back, it hasn’t suffered nearly the economic damage Ukraine has. And so, if reconstruction and rearmament and a reconfiguration of Ukraine’s economy aren’t paid for by someone, Ukraine will quickly find itself at Russia’s mercy again. The thought of shoveling nearly five times Ukraine’s pre-war GDP through its corrupted institutions should make anyone wince. Will anyone signing the checks ask where the money goes? The Pandora Papers revealed some of Zelensky’s offshore holdings and financial relationships with others in his government, denting his popularity in Ukraine, though barely registering as a blip in the more tightly wound press of the West. As surely as Ukraine’s government is seeking to de-Russify its language and culture, it will seek to cut economic ties to Russia. This is a massive project that will make mere post-war reconstruction look like a one-night party. It begins to seem an even bigger lift when you consider that the European Union, nearly 20 years after Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic joined, hasn’t entirely replaced the Cold War–era energy infrastructure — such as the Friendship Pipeline — that partially ties those countries’ economies to Moscow. EU membership is not in the immediate cards. Germany is still angry at itself for letting political cultures as corrupt as Greece into the union, so it’s not going to consent to Ukraine’s joining anytime soon. And anyway, joining wouldn’t really be in Ukraine’s interest, either. As every Eastern European country has learned, membership in the EU can mean an enormous brain drain... degrading Russia’s military capacity is only a good thing if it is connected to an achievable strategy. Without that strategy, it just sows enmity toward the United States among the Russian people themselves, who are perfectly capable of seeing our intel agencies and Defense Department bragging about and taking exclusive credit for sinking their ships and killing their generals and soldiers."
This doesn't even consider the cost of letting Russia win, though
