How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[Jimmy Higgins]

One of Putin's high-ranking FSO security officers managed to defect while in Kazakhstan in October, 2022. The AP is now reporting on the defection, so there is some new information on what he has revealed about Putin's life and daily routines. Basically, he is running like a scared rabbit from bunker to bunker, often putting out false reports of which bunker he is holed up in. He is in very good health and gets regular checkups. He doesn't use cell phones or the internet and has a special train that whisks him from location to location. Since the renewed invasion of Ukraine, he has become much more paranoid and in fear of his life.

See:

‘He’s a war criminal’: Elite Putin security officer defects​

He's in very good health and gets regular checkups? That is an odd thing to say.

What did you expect? The rumors that he has three kinds of cancer and Parkinson's never seemed very plausible to me.

I expect them to say he is a very good health. Being in very good health implies regular checkups. So when they say it, it sounds like he sees the doctor more than usual. Either meaning he is paranoid about being poisoned or there is something wrong.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

He suffered a massive stroke, so it's likely he would have died anyway, but the evidence suggests that nobody was brave enough to even attempt to make his last minutes of life more comfortable.

Being a tyrant with absolute authority isn't always a good thing, even for the tyrant himself.

Not being a greedy, murderous, tribal psychopath I've often wondered about the social dynamic that gives rise to a Stalin. It seems there is early competition for leadership and supremacy. Eventually the most ruthless ruler emerges having made sufficient loyalties to prevail in the short term. In the long term those loyalties don't matter anymore and the individual ultimately rules by terror.

 

[lpetrich]

NATO - News: Finland joins NATO as 31st Ally, 04-Apr.-2023

Speaking ahead of the ceremony, the Secretary General thanked President Niinistö for his outstanding leadership and for leading Finland into the most successful Alliance in history. “I am deeply proud to welcome Finland as a full-fledged member of our Alliance and I look forward to also welcoming Sweden as soon as possible,” he said. “Joining NATO is good for Finland, it is good for Nordic security and it is good for NATO as a whole,” he added. The Secretary General also noted that Finland’s accession shows the world that President Putin failed to “slam NATO’s door shut.” “Instead of less NATO, he has achieved the opposite; more NATO and our door remains firmly open,” he said.

Why did Sanna Marin lose Finland’s election? | Finland | The Guardian - "Popular centre-left leader beaten on economic message amid European trend towards political splintering"

Her dancing was not a big issue.

“It made her fans more enthusiastic, and her enemies more critical,” says Jon Henley, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent. “At most, it accentuated the differences.”

About Petteri Orpo, leader of the National Coalition,

“I saw somebody tweet that the world has returned to its natural state of being unable to recognise the Finnish prime minister in a crowd,” Henley says. “He’s not a very charismatic character.”

But while Orpo is unlikely to achieve international political rock star status, he is seen as a moderate and experienced figure and is trusted on the economy.

SM's party picked up votes, but the National Coalition and the Finns also did so.

The Finns’ route into government is not straightforward, though. Two possible coalition partners, the Greens and the Centre party, ruled out entering any coalition on Monday, the Helsinki Times reported. Other smaller parties have said they would not join a coalition of which the Finns are a part, while more moderate backbenchers in Orpo’s own party have reservations about making concessions to them.

 Finns Party - formerly the True Finns party - "is a right-wing populist political party in Finland.[17] It was founded in 1995 following the dissolution of the Finnish Rural Party."

 

[robnisch]

He suffered a massive stroke, so it's likely he would have died anyway, but the evidence suggests that nobody was brave enough to even attempt to make his last minutes of life more comfortable.

Being a tyrant with absolute authority isn't always a good thing, even for the tyrant himself.

Not being a greedy, murderous, tribal psychopath I've often wondered about the social dynamic that gives rise to a Stalin. It seems there is early competition for leadership and supremacy. Eventually the most ruthless ruler emerges having made sufficient loyalties to prevail in the short term. In the long term those loyalties don't matter anymore and the individual ultimately rules by terror.

The Death of Stalin - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Sorry for derail.But, I thought of this.

 

[Copernicus]

One of Putin's high-ranking FSO security officers managed to defect while in Kazakhstan in October, 2022. The AP is now reporting on the defection, so there is some new information on what he has revealed about Putin's life and daily routines. Basically, he is running like a scared rabbit from bunker to bunker, often putting out false reports of which bunker he is holed up in. He is in very good health and gets regular checkups. He doesn't use cell phones or the internet and has a special train that whisks him from location to location. Since the renewed invasion of Ukraine, he has become much more paranoid and in fear of his life.

See:

‘He’s a war criminal’: Elite Putin security officer defects​

He's in very good health and gets regular checkups? That is an odd thing to say.

What did you expect? The rumors that he has three kinds of cancer and Parkinson's never seemed very plausible to me.

I expect them to say he is a very good health. Being in very good health implies regular checkups. So when they say it, it sounds like he sees the doctor more than usual. Either meaning he is paranoid about being poisoned or there is something wrong.

The source is not "they", but the FSO defector named in the article. He said that in the context of contradicting the widespread rumors that Putin's health is bad. If Putin were ill, he would know, because Putin gets regular medical checkups. He isn't taking any chances. He is also an extreme germophobe (like Trump) and takes extraordinary measures not to let people who might be infected get near him.

 

[bilby]

He suffered a massive stroke, so it's likely he would have died anyway, but the evidence suggests that nobody was brave enough to even attempt to make his last minutes of life more comfortable.

Being a tyrant with absolute authority isn't always a good thing, even for the tyrant himself.

Not being a greedy, murderous, tribal psychopath I've often wondered about the social dynamic that gives rise to a Stalin. It seems there is early competition for leadership and supremacy. Eventually the most ruthless ruler emerges having made sufficient loyalties to prevail in the short term. In the long term those loyalties don't matter anymore and the individual ultimately rules by terror.

The Death of Stalin - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Sorry for derail.But, I thought of this.

That's an absolutely brilliant movie, and I suspect is also one of the most accurate portrayals ever of the titular event, that has inevitably been very obscure in its details.

 

[robnisch]

He suffered a massive stroke, so it's likely he would have died anyway, but the evidence suggests that nobody was brave enough to even attempt to make his last minutes of life more comfortable.

Being a tyrant with absolute authority isn't always a good thing, even for the tyrant himself.

Not being a greedy, murderous, tribal psychopath I've often wondered about the social dynamic that gives rise to a Stalin. It seems there is early competition for leadership and supremacy. Eventually the most ruthless ruler emerges having made sufficient loyalties to prevail in the short term. In the long term those loyalties don't matter anymore and the individual ultimately rules by terror.

The Death of Stalin - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Sorry for derail.But, I thought of this.

That's an absolutely brilliant movie, and I suspect is also one of the most accurate portrayals ever of the titular event, that has inevitably been very obscure in its details.

I have always wondered how accurate the characters were. Bumbling buffoons?

 

[Copernicus]

He suffered a massive stroke, so it's likely he would have died anyway, but the evidence suggests that nobody was brave enough to even attempt to make his last minutes of life more comfortable.

Being a tyrant with absolute authority isn't always a good thing, even for the tyrant himself.

Not being a greedy, murderous, tribal psychopath I've often wondered about the social dynamic that gives rise to a Stalin. It seems there is early competition for leadership and supremacy. Eventually the most ruthless ruler emerges having made sufficient loyalties to prevail in the short term. In the long term those loyalties don't matter anymore and the individual ultimately rules by terror.

The Death of Stalin - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Sorry for derail.But, I thought of this.

That's an absolutely brilliant movie, and I suspect is also one of the most accurate portrayals ever of the titular event, that has inevitably been very obscure in its details.

I have always wondered how accurate the characters were. Bumbling buffoons?

It's a dark comedy that isn't really meant to be taken seriously. I got some laughs from it, but I also felt that the British and American actors were behaving more like Brits and Americans trying to act like they thought Russians behaved. Frankly, the film would not have been as funny or enjoyable if their behavior had been more accurate.

After Stalin's death, his corpse was put next to Lenin's in the Lenin Mausoleum out in front of the Kremlin, but Khrushchev made sure that it was buried behind the Mausoleum in a grave without a headstone. Khrushchev knew him well and truly hated him. The Brezhnev regime was just starting in 1965, when I visited then on a university Russian language study tour, so I saw the grave without the headstone--just a slab in the ground with a brief inscription. The headstone was restored later on (during the Brezhnev era, IRRC), and Stalin is currently being rehabilitated by the Putin regime as some kind of great national hero. (IMO, he was a worse monster than Hitler, primarily because Hitler did not live as long and have as many opportunities to murder, harass, and torture people.)

 

[bilby]

He suffered a massive stroke, so it's likely he would have died anyway, but the evidence suggests that nobody was brave enough to even attempt to make his last minutes of life more comfortable.

Being a tyrant with absolute authority isn't always a good thing, even for the tyrant himself.

Not being a greedy, murderous, tribal psychopath I've often wondered about the social dynamic that gives rise to a Stalin. It seems there is early competition for leadership and supremacy. Eventually the most ruthless ruler emerges having made sufficient loyalties to prevail in the short term. In the long term those loyalties don't matter anymore and the individual ultimately rules by terror.

The Death of Stalin - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Sorry for derail.But, I thought of this.

That's an absolutely brilliant movie, and I suspect is also one of the most accurate portrayals ever of the titular event, that has inevitably been very obscure in its details.

I have always wondered how accurate the characters were. Bumbling buffoons?

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this aspect of the characters is completely accurate.

Of course, they were also cold blooded killers; But we often make the mistake, particularly with dictators and wannabe dictators, of thinking that their bumbling buffoonery means that they aren't also murderous and evil.

They were men of limited intelligence, chosen for that trait by Stalin because competent men would have been a threat to his power.

And what intelligence they did have, they expended almost in its entirety on keeping themselves alive in a world of capricious and unpredictable death, wherein the sole means of survival was to ensure that Stalin was simultaneously amused, satisfied, and unthreatened by the things they were seen to be doing - a critically difficult balancing act whose primary trick was to be ready with evidence that they both were, and were absolutely not, responsible for whatever happened. That evidence would then be revealed (and the opposing evidence concealed or destroyed) only once it became clear whether a particular case had pleased or displeased Uncle Joe.

Much of the bumbling buffoonery is likely attributable to PTSD; Working closely with a dictator like Stalin must be far more stressful than working in explosive ordnance disposal. At least a bomb disposal expert isn't also risking the lives of his family and friends.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And what intelligence they did have, they expended almost in its entirety on keeping themselves alive in a world of capricious and unpredictable death, wherein the sole means of survival was to ensure that Stalin was simultaneously amused, satisfied, and unthreatened by the things they were seen to be doing - a critically difficult balancing act whose primary trick was to be ready with evidence that they both were, and were absolutely not, responsible for whatever happened. That evidence would then be revealed (and the opposing evidence concealed or destroyed) only once it became clear whether a particular case had pleased or displeased Uncle Joe.

Much of the bumbling buffoonery is likely attributable to PTSD; Working closely with a dictator like Stalin must be far more stressful than working in explosive ordnance disposal. At least a bomb disposal expert isn't also risking the lives of his family and friends.

It's not difficult to figure how a Stalin or a Putin or a Hitler can come to have power. But I can't quite figure out how such a person stays in power for very long. Is it that the rest of the population are just a bunch of emasculated cowards? What's the dynamic? Stalin's enemies were numerous and he had people killed at will. He wasn't doing it himself. Is it a fear of capture and torture? I suspect propaganda plays the most important part as people want to believe and not threaten their tribal identity which they perceive to be their survival. It's clinging to an abusive guardian to an extreme I suppose.

I just can't quite figure out how someone can act with such monstrous impunity for so long, literally dying in fear of his life, a life ignominious in the end, yet still able to maintain control. I guess it's personal survival in the end, not looking beyond one's own life to something larger maybe, and so you endure the ignominy and the hopelessness and the brutality because at least you are still alive.

 

[Copernicus]

I just can't quite figure out how someone can act with such monstrous impunity for so long, literally dying in fear of his life, a life ignominious in the end, yet still able to maintain control. I guess it's personal survival in the end, not looking beyond one's own life to something larger maybe, and so you endure the ignominy and the hopelessness and the brutality because at least you are still alive.

The trick is to eliminate anyone who has a hint of becoming your replacement and to convince everyone that their lives depend on the loyalty they demonstrate. Stalin would often kill people who had been close advisers and even bloody henchmen. Putin is exhibiting a little of the same behavior by taking Prigozhin down a notch. Prigozhin has been positioning himself as a potential successor to Putin, so now the basis for that success--the vaunted Wagner commandos--suddenly find it very difficult to get ammunition in major battles.

 

[TV and credit cards]

I just can't quite figure out how someone can act with such monstrous impunity for so long, literally dying in fear of his life, a life ignominious in the end, yet still able to maintain control. I guess it's personal survival in the end, not looking beyond one's own life to something larger maybe, and so you endure the ignominy and the hopelessness and the brutality because at least you are still alive.

A well kept police force helps. In an authoritarian system, those who gravitate toward such jobs are people capable of killing. They will follow orders and kill without hesitation. Protester generally do not have it within them to do such violence. Even pushed to their limit, it is difficult to go to such an extreme. Most people try and reason while their adversary is stone-faced and smirking inside. Average people yell, push, throw things but when the police come, they run. Look at how within a demonstration the police can be outnumbered a hundred to one, yet the hundred will flee. Any half dozen of them armed with nothing can overwhelm any one police there yet they don't.
You have to be willing to die. You have to be willing to kill without hesitation.
These killers are why women and children are told not to try and talk their way out of an abduction but to scream and fight with everything they've got immediately. To never think they will get out of it somehow if they cooperate. They make the mistake of thinking their abductor is empathetic.
We've all heard the stories of the treatment of immigrants by some within border patrol often for the amusement of border patrol. Treatment of Iraqi prisoners by some US military. You cannot reason with people like this. You cannot appeal to their sense of empathy. They are pleased by the suffering of others.

And you really only have to cow the first generation. Successive ones don't know what they're missing. Look at North Korea. People starve, watch their children starve but not fight back at the authorities that appear better fed than them.

It's frightening how people willingly accept their lot in life.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And you really only have to cow the first generation. Successive ones don't know what they're missing. Look at North Korea. People starve, watch their children starve but not fight back at the authorities that appear better fed than them.

It's frightening how people willingly accept their lot in life.

Like you said, they don't know any different. This certainly fits the Russian state as its population has no memory of ever being free in the sense we understand freedom in the west. Same goes for China, North Korea, etc. This is probably the most important point, that the population can be easily exploited because it has never experienced how freedom actually operates in a free state.

 

[Copernicus]

And you really only have to cow the first generation. Successive ones don't know what they're missing. Look at North Korea. People starve, watch their children starve but not fight back at the authorities that appear better fed than them.

It's frightening how people willingly accept their lot in life.

Like you said, they don't know any different. This certainly fits the Russian state as its population has no memory of ever being free in the sense we understand freedom in the west. Same goes for China, North Korea, etc. This is probably the most important point, that the population can be easily exploited because it has never experienced how freedom actually operates in a free state.

None of the former Soviet territories had democratic traditions, yet many have made the transition. Russia was a bit different only in that they felt the loss of empire rather than the acquisition of freedom. What many remember is the wild 1990s and the Yeltsin years, where everything was chaotic and in freefall. That was an extremely chaotic experience for those living in Russia, who did not know how they were going to survive or what would bring some stability back into their lives. When Putin forced Yeltsin from office on New Years Eve in the year 2000, things began to improve, return to stability, and eventually bring prosperity. So many associate the period of greater personal liberty with a life of chaos and uncertainty. Putin may be taking away the freedom of protesters, but people value stability, food, and shelter above "being free" in the sense of personal liberties. It's not that they don't also want the civil liberties, but, if they have to choose...

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

None of the former Soviet territories had democratic traditions, yet many have made the transition. Russia was a bit different only in that they felt the loss of empire rather than the acquisition of freedom. What many remember is the wild 1990s and the Yeltsin years, where everything was chaotic and in freefall. That was an extremely chaotic experience for those living in Russia, who did not know how they were going to survive or what would bring some stability back into their lives. When Putin forced Yeltsin from office on New Years Eve in the year 2000, things began to improve, return to stability, and eventually bring prosperity. So many associate the period of greater personal liberty with a life of chaos and uncertainty. Putin may be taking away the freedom of protesters, but people value stability, food, and shelter above "being free" in the sense of personal liberties. It's not that they don't also want the civil liberties, but, if they have to choose...

They are not making an informed choice. They don't have any experience living in a state where they were free. They cannot relate to being free like we can in the west. They aren't making a choice between freedom and tyranny, they're making a choice between stability and chaos and have no idea what civil liberties actually are.

 

[bilby]

And you really only have to cow the first generation. Successive ones don't know what they're missing. Look at North Korea. People starve, watch their children starve but not fight back at the authorities that appear better fed than them.

It's frightening how people willingly accept their lot in life.

Like you said, they don't know any different. This certainly fits the Russian state as its population has no memory of ever being free in the sense we understand freedom in the west. Same goes for China, North Korea, etc. This is probably the most important point, that the population can be easily exploited because it has never experienced how freedom actually operates in a free state.

None of the former Soviet territories had democratic traditions, yet many have made the transition. Russia was a bit different only in that they felt the loss of empire rather than the acquisition of freedom. What many remember is the wild 1990s and the Yeltsin years, where everything was chaotic and in freefall. That was an extremely chaotic experience for those living in Russia, who did not know how they were going to survive or what would bring some stability back into their lives. When Putin forced Yeltsin from office on New Years Eve in the year 2000, things began to improve, return to stability, and eventually bring prosperity. So many associate the period of greater personal liberty with a life of chaos and uncertainty. Putin may be taking away the freedom of protesters, but people value stability, food, and shelter above "being free" in the sense of personal liberties. It's not that they don't also want the civil liberties, but, if they have to choose...

This is also the reason why Americans tolerate employment conditions and healthcare provision that, in most of the rest of the developed world, would lead to mass civil unrest.

 

[Copernicus]

None of the former Soviet territories had democratic traditions, yet many have made the transition. Russia was a bit different only in that they felt the loss of empire rather than the acquisition of freedom. What many remember is the wild 1990s and the Yeltsin years, where everything was chaotic and in freefall. That was an extremely chaotic experience for those living in Russia, who did not know how they were going to survive or what would bring some stability back into their lives. When Putin forced Yeltsin from office on New Years Eve in the year 2000, things began to improve, return to stability, and eventually bring prosperity. So many associate the period of greater personal liberty with a life of chaos and uncertainty. Putin may be taking away the freedom of protesters, but people value stability, food, and shelter above "being free" in the sense of personal liberties. It's not that they don't also want the civil liberties, but, if they have to choose...

They are not making an informed choice. They don't have any experience living in a state where they were free. They cannot relate to being free like we can in the west. They aren't making a choice between freedom and tyranny, they're making a choice between stability and chaos and have no idea what civil liberties actually are.

But those of us who grew up in prosperity and freedom did not make an informed choice either. I don't think that was, or is, the issue. I was there in 1997 and got a chance to see the poverty, chaos, and desperation. People were doing anything they could to survive, especially older Russians who had fewer options for survival. The people we met knew exactly what freedom was, and many expressed a fear that those who had run Russia into the ground--the Communist Party opportunists--would come back into power. And they were right, because those were the people who knew how the government and institutions in place actually worked. In many cases, ordinary Russians seemed better informed than Americans about the nature of democracy. They wanted Democratic rule, and there are still a great many people in Russia who yearn for democracy and freedom. It's just that they don't want democracy if it means they will starve or have no opportunity to improve their lives.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The people we met knew exactly what freedom was, and many expressed a fear that those who had run Russia into the ground--the Communist Party opportunists--would come back into power. And they were right, because those were the people who knew how the government and institutions in place actually worked. In many cases, ordinary Russians seemed better informed than Americans about the nature of democracy. They wanted Democratic rule, and there are still a great many people in Russia who yearn for democracy and freedom. It's just that they don't want democracy if it means they will starve or have no opportunity to improve their lives.

It seems to me that if that were true then once stability was restored then basic freedoms would follow, something that according to the logic you propose still doesn't happen. Maybe it will in time but it never has in the history of the Russian state. If two people can be different it follows that two groups of people can be different. You are claiming that all those Russian people including I assume the despots also want democratic freedoms. If that were true those freedoms should materialize. There has to be a reason that doesn't happen. I assume you are saying that it is indeed happening albeit very slowly and will take much time.

 

[Copernicus]

The people we met knew exactly what freedom was, and many expressed a fear that those who had run Russia into the ground--the Communist Party opportunists--would come back into power. And they were right, because those were the people who knew how the government and institutions in place actually worked. In many cases, ordinary Russians seemed better informed than Americans about the nature of democracy. They wanted Democratic rule, and there are still a great many people in Russia who yearn for democracy and freedom. It's just that they don't want democracy if it means they will starve or have no opportunity to improve their lives.

It seems to me that if that were true then once stability was restored then basic freedoms would follow, something that according to the logic you propose still doesn't happen. Maybe it will in time but it never has in the history of the Russian state. If two people can be different it follows that two groups of people can be different. You are claiming that all those Russian people including I assume the despots also want democratic freedoms. If that were true those freedoms should materialize. There has to be a reason that doesn't happen. I assume you are saying that it is indeed happening albeit very slowly and will take much time.

I cannot predict the future of democracy in Russia or the US. The fact is that there is a worldwide trend to reduce or eliminate democratic processes worldwide, and especially in the United States now. Historian Timothy Snyder has a great book called  On Tyranny that describes the mechanism of a democratic government sinking into autocracy. What happened to the post-Soviet democracy in Russia followed many of the prescriptions in that playbook, although the classic example is the  Weimar Republic. If you want to take a historical perspective on how democracy doesn't work, you should read that and some of his other writings. Russia has a long and complex history, so I think that blaming the rise of Putin on the character of the Russian people is too simplistic. There is some truth to the point that Russia lacked systemic safeguards such as a strong independent judiciary, but that isn't about the character of the Russian people per se. Americans living under such conditions would be likely to behave in exactly the same way that Russians did, and it is no accident that there are strong efforts to compromise the judiciary here, in Poland, in Hungary, and in many other places people can be panicked into sacrificing democracy to gain what they think of as greater security and stability.

 

[Jayjay]

The recent leak seems to be a huge blow to US, and also quite harmful to Ukraine's war effort.

Among the leaks there was a revelation that Ukrainian air defense will start to buckle in late May. This confirms to Russia that their tactics are working, so of course they will continue the missile and drone campaign.