RUSSIA – Ukraine conflict / crisis Explained | Everything in detail | Geopolitics
By Amit Sengupta – 2,089,915 views –Feb 7, 2022 – Some comments below
This was extremely informative. Thank you for putting this together. As “westerner” trying to figure out what the hell is going on here and why what the media is telling us makes no sense, I finally have some clarity.
There is a fundamental issue in all of this. With the expansion of the EU and NATO after the fall of the Soviet empire, Russia feels threatened, and this is a historic feeling in the face of the West for the experiences with Napoleon and Hitler. The fact of possessing a vast territory was fundamental for the final victory in both cases. The retreat and scorched earth tactics were decisive for Russia. Today war is different, distances are no longer so important, but they remain vital in Russian and Putin’s psyche.
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Analysis
Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine Has Well And Truly Begun
– Here Are Three Ways It Could End
Sky’s Deborah Haynes outlines the three most likely scenarios; from a relatively straightforward victory for Vladimir Putin, to a protracted resistance which could ultimately threaten his authority.
Deborah Haynes | Sky News
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in defiance of Western warnings about incurring unprecedented sanctions, sent warplanes, soldiers, and ships to attack Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops are battling hard and – in some cases – effectively. A Ukrainian source and a Western source have said that Russian forces did not advance as far as they had planned during the first day of what appears designed to be a lightning fast intervention.
But given the vastly superior firepower of the Russian military, the odds are stacked heavily against Ukraine – at least during this initial phase of the invasion.
Kyiv is under threat, along with large swathes of the south and east of the country. In the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “a new iron curtain” is falling across Europe.
The big question, is what will happen next?
There are multiple possible scenarios, but they probably fit around three different ends of the spectrum:
From all-out Russian victory, to a quick win evolving into long-term retreat.
1. Russian Victory Heralds Dawn Of New Era
At one end, Mr Putin achieves an initial military victory, topples the democratically-elected government and successfully installs a puppet regime.
This new administration turns the nation firmly eastwards, rejecting previous desires to join the EU and the NATO defence alliance – both red lines for the Kremlin.
And of Ukraine’s more than 40 million people, those who can leave and want to go do, while those who stay behind adapt to the new normal.
For Moscow, it attempts to mitigate as much as possible the impact of the West’s punitive sanctions, forging ever closer ties to the world’s largest authoritarian power, China.
The lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would then feed the aspirations of other authoritarian regimes, particularly in Beijing, at the expense of liberal democracies.
THE WEST IS LEFT LOOKING EXPOSED, WEAK, AND UNABLE TO DEFEND THE FUNDAMENTAL VALUES OF THE RULE OF LAW, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS THAT HAVE UNDERPINNED THEIR PROSPERITY FOR DECADES.
President Xi Jinping of China would doubtless be planning his next move on Taiwan, shaped by Russia’s actions over Ukraine.
All this could well spell the dawn of a new era where great powers impose their will over weaker rivals.
It would also mean the end as we know it of what is known as the international rules-based order that has shaped the world since 1945, benefitting democracies and hampering authoritarian governments.
2. Putin’s Forces Dominate A Divided Ukraine
The second scenario is only marginally less bleak from a Western perspective.
Mr Putin succeeds in taking and holding Ukraine’s entire coastline, stretching along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, cutting off the country’s ability to export.
It cripples the economy, leaving a rump state to be ruled by a weakened government in Kyiv.
AN EAST-WEST GERMANY-STYLE DIVIDE WOULD THEN CUT THROUGH EUROPE.
All parts of Ukraine under government control would be able to build closer ties with Western allies, while the other part of the country is absorbed back into the Russian sphere of influence.
3. Effective Resistance Leads To Protracted Guerrilla Warfare
As for the other end of the spectrum, there is the very real likelihood of a powerful and effective Ukrainian resistance to counter any Russian occupation or Russian-imposed government.
It could drag Moscow into a protracted guerrilla war in Ukraine, triggering discontent in Russia as the number of Russian soldiers killed and wounded grows, along with the financial cost of the mission. This is a situation that ultimately threatens Mr Putin’s authority.
This is the kind of scenario Boris Johnson appeared to favour when he gave a televised address to the UK.
The prime minister said: “OUR MISSION IS CLEAR — DIPLOMATICALLY, POLITICALLY, ECONOMICALLY – AND EVENTUALLY, MILITARILY – THIS HIDEOUS AND BARBARIC VENTURE OF VLADIMIR PUTIN MUST END IN FAILURE.”
Speaking on Thursday afternoon, one Ukrainian source said that he was ready to resist.
“I HOPE THAT A COUP IN RUSSIA IS ALSO POSSIBLE, OTHERWISE THE WORLD IS IN DEEP TROUBLE.”
Why I Blame The Arrogant, Foolish West:
By Peter Hitchens | The Mail On Sunday
We have been utter fools.
We have treated Russia with amazing stupidity. Now we pay the price for that. We had the chance to make her an ally, friend and partner.
Instead we turned her into an enemy by insulting a great and proud country with greed, unearned superiority, cynicism, contempt and mistrust.
I have to endure, often several times a day, listening to people who are normally perfectly sensible and reasonable, raging wildly against Russia and Russians.
Once, I was just like them. I had the normal anti-Russian prejudice of so many Western people.
But, by great fortune, I am not like them now. I lived in Russia; I knew Russians as friends. I learned to distinguish between what was Russian and what was Communist.
And I saw something most people will never see – a pivotal event in history, when we could have changed the world for the better.
One of the most joyful moments of my life was the day Communism died in Moscow.
I could have sworn the sky was actually clearer and brighter, the people looked happy instead of downtrodden – even the revolting, corrupt traffic police, for once, went into hiding.
The litter bins were full of red-and-gold Communist Party membership cards, burning merrily in the late summer sunshine as they dissolved into grey ash.
So I drove my red Volvo through the liberated city, a lot faster than usual, proudly displaying the special yellow number plate (with its ‘K’ for ‘Korrespondent’ and its ‘001’ for Britain, top nation) which had up until then simply made me a target for bribe-hunters and officious cops who prevented me from going on picnics in the missile-crammed woods outside the city.
I even found myself singing the hymns of my childhood.
Just a few days earlier I had been sunk in the most abject gloom. Communism, after a long retreat, had struck back.
The reforming Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been kidnapped in his Crimean holiday home.
Tanks, barrels aslant and tracks grinding the surface into dust, came growling down my majestic Moscow street in the early morning light.
This was not some ancient newsreel. I was there, and it was unfolding before me in full colour.
My elite block of flats, which I shared illegally with dozens of hoary old Stalinists, KGB men and Kremlin loyalists, exploded into exultation as this nasty putsch unfolded.
Neighbours who I’d previously thought of as sweet old pensioners stiffened their spines, grew several inches taller, donned crimson armbands, and set up a propaganda stall in the lobby.
The horrible thing, which I had thought was dying, was coming back to life.
These were the people I hated and had seen defeated in Prague, Bucharest, Budapest and Berlin.
I had thought they were done for. Was it possible they were on their way back, as their fellow Communists were in China?
Would they, like their Chinese comrades, use their tanks to massacre the people in Red Square and re-establish the iron rule of the Party? That day it all seemed terribly possible.
Then, equally swiftly, the tanks turned around and vanished, the putschists lost their nerve and scattered in a haze of vodka and panic, and it was all over.
It was bliss to be alive in that dawn, as someone once wrongly said of another momentous event. I have never got over it.
The black beating heart of an evil empire had stopped. A black sun had been removed from the sky.
I do not think the world has had such an opportunity since 1945. In fact, it was better, for in 1991 there was no Stalin, no Soviet Communist Party.
WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY THIS WAS FOR THE RICH, STABLE, WELL-GOVERNED WEST TO COME TO THE RESCUE.
Had not Marshall Plan aid revived and rebuilt a ruined Western Europe after World War Two?
Had Britain and the other occupying powers not vowed to bring democracy, freedom and the rule of law to a prostrate Germany?
Was this not a moment for an equally unique act of generosity and far sight to Russia?
NO IT WASN’T. What was unleashed instead was an army of carpetbaggers from the West, shouting about the free market, who quickly found their match in the crooks and corruption experts, many of them high Communist officials, who rushed to exploit and fool them.
At the same time formal ‘democracy’ was introduced – that is to say, there were some elections, which were of course rigged by big money.
And in the minds of Russians whose savings were vaporised, who were turned out of their homes by thugs, who lost their jobs and pensions, DEMOCRACY BECAME A SWEAR WORD.
IT IS A FASCINATING CONTRAST to watch the antics of governments and people who now claim to despise Vladimir Putin for his aggression, for his suppression of freedom and for his corruption – these same people – did not seem to be bothered by these things when his forerunner, Boris Yeltsin, did them.
Yeltsin, a former Communist machine politician with a far from perfect past, ordered tanks to shell his own parliament, while his police shot down demonstrators.
He savaged Chechnya. His own re-election to the presidency stank of money.
Corruption under his rule was so flagrant and grotesque that, when he quit, many Russians welcomed with relief the return of what the film-maker Stanislav Govoryukin called ‘normal corruption’.
Yeltsin, often paralysed with drink, was a welcome guest in the West, even the White House, despite his embarrassing and crude behaviour.
But Yeltsin, unlike Putin, did nothing to control the oligarchs, allowed the West to continue its rape of Russia’s economy, and – above all – made no protest against the humiliation of his country by the continued expansion of NATO eastwards across Europe.
This was by then a more or less openly anti-Russian alliance – who else is it directed against?
It wasn’t just that the West had promised not to do this, as numerous documents now show beyond doubt.
It was that the leading protesters against this NATO expansion were not Russian nationalists but highly intelligent and experienced independent figures.
Then came the brilliant American diplomat George F. Kennan, a man nobody could accuse of being soft on Communism.
But, unlike so many others, he could tell the new transformed Russia apart from the old USSR.
Kennan had been architect of the USA’s policy of containment of the USSR. He came out of retirement to deplore Bill Clinton’s support for pushing NATO east. I quote his prediction at length because he was so right.
‘I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War,’ said Mr Kennan. ‘I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies.
‘I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.
‘NATO expansion was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.
‘What bothers me is how superficial and ill-informed the whole Senate debate was.’
He added: ‘I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.
‘Don’t people understand? OUR DIFFERENCES IN THE COLD WAR WERE WITH THE SOVIET COMMUNIST REGIME.’ EXACTLY.
After 1991 Russia had, for the first time since the Bolshevik putsch of 1917, got the chance to build a new and free society.
AS Mr KENNAN PUT IT, NATO EXPANSION WAS AN INSULT TO RUSSIAN DEMOCRATS.
‘WE ARE TURNING OUR BACKS ON THE VERY PEOPLE WHO MOUNTED THE GREATEST BLOODLESS REVOLUTION IN HISTORY TO REMOVE THAT SOVIET REGIME.’
It is my unflinching view, amid all the current anti-Putin hysteria, that the leaders of the West have made the crisis we now face today out of thin air.
I also happen to think that many of them, for varying reasons, are such lightweights that they enjoy the chance to posture and threaten – and do not realise this is deadly serious.
IN HINTS, IN PLEAS, IN PUBLIC SPEECHES AND PRIVATE APPROACHES, RUSSIA HAS BEGGED US FOR YEARS TO SHOW IT THE MOST BASIC RESPECT.
OUR RESPONSE HAS BEEN TO REACT WITH MISTRUST AND ABUSE, and with blatant attempts to worsen the situation in Ukraine and Georgia, two incredibly dangerous flashpoints where real war might all too easily begin.
Having been there when everything was possible, on that Moscow summer’s day in 1991, I cannot forgive or forget this great missed opportunity to bring Russia into the free and lawful world.
And I think the peoples of the West should think very carefully before they follow the path to a new and bitter division of Europe.
It is wholly avoidable. It gains us nothing. And it might lose us everything.
Given what Peter Hitchens | The Mail On Sunday is saying, I surmise that – he believes – NATO is an anti-Russia Alliance. We had the chance to make Russia an ally, friend and partner, he wrote. It seems that we missed an opportunity for the rich, stable, well-governed west to come to the rescue of Russia. In fact, the author asked some valid questions:
Had not Marshall Plan aid revived and rebuilt a ruined Western Europe after World War Two?
Had Britain and the other occupying powers not vowed to bring democracy, freedom and the rule of law to a prostrate Germany?
Was this not a moment for an equally unique act of generosity and far sight to Russia?
We failed because of capitalist greed and corruption.
MSNBC is reporting that Putin wants to re-negotiate the “terms of the end of the cold war”
The author thinks the peoples of the West should think very carefully before they follow the path to a new and bitter division of Europe.
I say, if all Putin is asking for is respect for Russia – then stop messing with their national pride – it is time to get back to the table and Jaw – Jaw – Jaw …. It is much better than War – War – War!
Considering how the world right now is punishing Putin with sanctions and protests (including Germany),no one has ever been so wrong in their analysis as the author has been.Maybe he needs to make an updated commentary saying forget everything I have said here is a new and improved commentary.