US intelligence: Russia plans to attack Ukraine early next year

Their side of the story.

Pres Putin demands:

 

Meanwhile, with an atypical lack of foresight, Germany is closing two more nuclear power plants because, you know, nuke is bad? Thus do they increase their dependence on Soviet (oh, I meant Russian) gas deliveries. Idiocy.

 

I haven't looked at the reason for the closures, but could it be obsolescence? Nuke plants wear out, as ours did in San Diego. (San Onofre.)

 

Because Germany is rife with earthquakes? Ugh.

 

Well, he's right actually. When the USSR placed missiles in Cuba our sainted President Kennedy essentially threatened to push The Button. I don't think he was bluffing, either. Certainly Kruschev didn't think he was bluffing.

It is an historical fact that great powers want compliant buffer states. That's why the USSR created and dominated Eastern Europe, that's why the United States engaged in Manifest Destiny and has long dominated Mexico and Canada, that’s why Imperial Japan seized the Korean Penninsula, that's why the USSR did not annex Outer Mongolia but the Chinese didn't either.

Just imagine what we would do if Canada contracted a military alliance with China. As for Mexico, we would find some excuse to back a revolution or as a last resort, invade. We've done it before now.

The breakup of the Soviet Union exposed Mother Russia to her enemies in a way that ran counter to every Czarist instinct.

Given all this, I'm not so sure we should press our advantages in Eastern Europe or the South China Sea. We are interfereing with matters of basic national security of countries we really don't want wars with.

I'm curious, Lerner. Are you able to understand Putin directly without translation?

 

While this is basically true, with the shrinking of the world, compliant buffer states are becoming less relevant. Longer range weapons and a global economy are shrinking the world and making those considerations less critical.

I might take slight issue with the characterization of us interfering though. We are supporting a sovereign nation that is being further threatened by a bully neighbor that has already annexed part of Ukrainian territory. While admittedly getting a slight bonus of also perhaps slowing down Russian aggression.

I suspect that Putin is more interested in playing to his political base and painting himself as a nationalist and strong leader than he is really worried about NATO.

 

Whether Putin and Xi should feel threatened isn't really the point. My guess (and that’s all it is, a guess) is that they DO feel threatened. My observation is only that China and Russia are behaving exactly as history suggests they will behave.

 

Putin was not content with maintaining Russia's internal stability and territorial integrity, and began punishing neighboring countries that sought to move closer to the West and disengage from Moscow's influence.

Putin. As a KGB officer stationed in East Germany in the late 1980s, saw up close the degeneration of the Soviet empire and the tearing of the homeland - as he sees it - into pieces of state. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the communist bloc, Putin revealed that he was forced to work as a taxi driver to supplement income in the days of the economic crisis that characterized post-Soviet Russia, for him it was personal, professional and national humiliation.

"We have become a completely different country. And what has been built for more than a thousand years has been largely lost,"
Putin said in a special program to mark three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union. He said 25 million Russians in countries that have become independent since then suddenly found themselves cut off from Russia, part of a "major humanitarian tragedy." In recent years, the Russian president has reiterated his view that the disintegration of the Soviet Union is the greatest "geopolitical disaster" of the 20th century.

State of affairs:
The political opposition no longer exists. Its senior officials, led by Alexei Navalny, were imprisoned or went into exile. The public is not allowed to demonstrate due to various restrictions, some of which are excused in the corona plague, and the election campaigns are a pre-determined show that evokes mostly indifference among the citizens.
And having gained full control of the present, Putin is focusing on rewriting the past in order to justify future acts inside and outside Russia.
The textbooks in the schools glorify the achievements of the Red Army in stopping the Nazis at the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad, but whitewashing and obscuring the mass executions in the days of Stalin's "Great Terror," the heavy famine and poverty, and the "Big Brother" rule.

The death penalty does not exist in the rule-book - only mysterious assassinations of dissidents - and supermarket shelves are not empty of food, but the state is everywhere.
Surveillance cameras are scattered everywhere, sites of rights organizations are shut down galore and American technology companies are fined tens of millions of dollars for "banned content."
Russia is also working to establish an independent Internet network, which will allow it to disconnect from the global network when needed. Such a need may arise in the outbreak of a confrontation with the West or the beginning of a protest that will concern the Kremlin.

Western sanctions may have hampered Russia in eastern Ukraine, but they have not changed Putin's foundations on which he bases his strategy.
NATO's proliferation to the east, which is a result of Russian aggression, is presented by it as a threat to Russia and therefore it must respond accordingly - and so on. God forbid.
Therefore, when he declares these days that Ukraine's accession to NATO is a "red line" for him, he should be believed.
This does not mean that a new attack on Ukraine is a done deal.
The United States and Europe have made it clear to Russia that it will pay a heavy economic price, and an open war that could claim many casualties is not part of Putin's tactics,
which favor the use of proxy forces and cyber-espionage against rival countries to undermine Western democracies. Russia had already done a similar exercise in the spring, concentrating tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine's borders and causing great concern in the West, only to temporarily withdraw following a summit meeting between Putin and US President Joe Biden in Geneva in June. Relations between the powers have continued to deteriorate since then, and in an effort, perhaps last, to prevent a military clash in Eastern Europe.

Some analysis stated:
Putin will continue to believe that Ukraine is an artificial state, a territory plundered from Mother Russia, and to ignite this mindset in his mobilized media.
Kiev is begging Washington and European capitals to accept Ukraine into the ranks of NATO, but Western leaders are reluctant to fulfill the promise made to it many years ago. The ground for a "historic repair" he plans to make.In his view, war is peace, oppression is freedom and human rights organizations are foreign agents threatening the peace of the nation.

 

Its all possible as you state, it can be propaganda but I know people who after fall of the Soviet union had to supplement their income while working in government and simply not getting payed for many months. Or when got payed the pay was so low you couldn't survive on it only.

 

Ukraine has not applied for membership to NATO. NATO has not asked Ukraine to join NATO. Ukraine is NOT joining NATO anytime soon. This is just a crisis that Putin has fabricated. The question is why? Has he fabricated the crisis because he is really going to invade or has he fabricated the crisis for other reasons? Unknown.

 

Likely internal. Things aren't going to well for him in Russia right now.

 

Same strategy that took portions of Ossetia etc.
Russian TV is showing that Russians in Donbas and other area are being under assault on a constant basis.
The separatist forces of the war in Donbas is the umbrella term for the military formations affiliated with the unrecognized pro-Russian breakaway regions in Ukraine.

 

This I definitely agree with. The question in my mind is whether he thinks he will need to invade, actually wants to invade, or is just putting on a show. It's on that spectrum someplace, I'll guess. Heck even Putin may be trying to decide himself?

 

The Nazis did that regarding Germans living in Poland. Around August 1939, as I recall. Didn't end well.

 

Didn't end well, true. But Hitler got greedy. If he'd held to his treaty with Russia, Europe might be generally divided into 3 countries today, Great Britain, Germany, and the USSR.

 

The non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR was always a temporary measure--for both of them.

Hitler was always a sworn enemy of Bolshevism. And Stalin knew Hitler was gunning for him. But Hitler needed to keep the USSR at bay while he took over much of Europe. That's why when Germany invaded Poland from the west, the USSR invaded from the east. They split up Poland. But Hitler played it to far. He truly believed France and the UK would not come to Poland's aid. (With good reason after the experiences in the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.) Neither did Stalin, who was not aligned with those states in a treaty protecting Poland. Thus, his land grab.

The one with clarity around all of this was Hermann Goering. He knew attacking France, and especially England, was a mistake because he also knew Hitler would not refrain from attacking the USSR. Still, he went along and got a great deal of credit for defeating France. But his effort to establish air superiority over the UK failed, stalling any invasion of the British Isles. Hitler then decided to turn his attention to the USSR, figuring he could make peace with Britain. He woefully underestimated both the UK's will to fight and the impact on the war of the US's entry into the conflict after Pearl Harbor.

Once the US got into the war, the career military people in the German army, navy, and air force knew it was only a matter of time. They wanted to pursue a peace agreement with the West so they could press the USSR for a deal to stop hostilities. Or, at least, to be able to concentrate their full forces on the Soviets. Expecting to be treated as diplomats, they were instead scorned and shunned by the West and a total destruction of Germany was a certainty.

 

Yes, all absolutely true. Hitler hated Stalin and the Communist regime far more than his western neighbors. It is still chilling for me to think that if the non-aggression pact between USSR and Germany was respected by both sides, I think there's a reasonable chance Germany could have held on to their ill gotten gains. The cold war era would have been an interesting three antagonist rivalry. The communist bloc would have likely been much stronger in that scenario?

Admittedly nothing but a fantasy fascination though.

 

As someone actually coming from one of these quote-unquote compliant buffer states, I have a fig bucking problem with that. Not even asking to back up the characterization of the Kremlin mob state as a "great power", their definition of "compliant buffer state" is "poor and corruplty run", and the only reason Russia has anything to worry about, security-wise, from these countries is Russia's own actions. Besides, they can't even keep the peace in their own tiny province without bombing the sh*t out of it, exporting a bunch of confused folks out (including, just for a rando example, BOSTON MARATHON BOMBERS), and poisoning people far outside their borders from time to time.

Also, here is a weekly reminder that supporting Ukrainian self-determination and territorial integrity just happens to be a responsibility US took upon itself, ink to paper, in exchange for Ukraine giving up the THIRD BIGGEST NUCLEAR ARSENAL IN THE WORLD. And giving most of the nukes to Russia, of all countries, because to the brilliant US State Department that looked like the choice that "promotes stability".

Honestly, what would have been best is if Ukraine negotiated a roadmap to NATO membership in exchange for all these nukes. Would be best for everyone, including Russia; would have removed some temptation. Unfortunately, we demonstrated a colossal lack of judgement by wasting our first free elections in centuries just to leave the "reformed" Communist Party bosses to run the country, and these negotiations, for us.

He was an adult when Soviet Union broke up; of course he's able. So am I, if someone forced me to listen to the voice of that evil geriatric creature. I'll not do it willingly.