Ukraine war mega thread

[sabang]

by David Stockman Posted onSeptember 28, 2022

The messages are coming in loud and clear today – from the crashing pound, to repudiation of establishment governments in Italy, Sweden and more to come, to Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s call to end the Sanctions War and do so pronto.

So let’s be clear: Washington’s dunderheaded intervention in the intramural spat between Russia and Ukraine and the accompanying global Sanctions War is the surely the stupidest, most destructive project to arise from the banks of the Potomac in modern times. And the architects of this perfidious folly – Biden, Blinkin, Sullivan, Nuland, et. al. – cannot be condemned harshly enough.

After all, this madness is being pursued in the name of abstract policy norms – the rule of law and sanctity of borders – that make Washington a laughing stock. More than any other nation on planet earth (and by a long-shot), it has serially and blatantly violated these standards scores of times in recent decades.

Among other actions, Washington’s interventions in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, etc. were not only pointless; they were also a self-evident violation of the very rule of law and sanctity of borders upon which Washington now beats its breasts ever more stridently.

Moreover, by wallowing in this unhinged hypocrisy Washington has abandoned every semblance of commonsense as to why this conflict happened in the first place and why it is wholly irrelevant to the national security of the American homeland, or, for that matter, Europe, as well.

The fundamental fact is, aside from the historically short interval of iron-fisted communist rule during the Soviet era, Ukraine had never been a nation-state within its post-1991 happenstance borders. In fact, for upwards of 275 years before 1918 much of its territories were borderlands, vassals and outright provinces of Czarist Russia.
So we are not dealing with the invasion of a long-established, ethnically and linguistically coherent state by its aggressive neighbor, but with the leftover potpourri of separate tongues, territories, economies, and histories that were smashed together by brutal communist rulers between 1918 and 1991.

Accordingly, the fast-approaching dark, cold winter of stagflationary collapse in Europe is not being done in heroic defense of the grand principles proffered by Washington and NATO. To the contrary, it amounts to the pointless and grubby business of preserving a vile status quo ante that was confected on the lands north of the Black Sea, not by the ordinary course of historical evolution and nation-state accretion, but by the bloody-hands of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev.

In any event, the staggering economic costs for the everyday peoples of Europe in pursuit of such a threadbare and illegitimate purpose is starting to register among the long-suffering victims of Brussels’ elitist rulers. Hence the thunderbolts from the Italian elections this weekend and Viktor Orbán’s parallel appeal to the European Union to lift sanctions and thereby potentially reduce energy prices by half in one swell swoop.

Nor is Orbán the only one calling for an end to sanctions, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotaki calling for a repeal of Russian sanctions as well. Other political leaders, such as Matteo Salvini, who leads the conservative League party and will be a major force in Italy’s new government, says that Europe needs a "rethink" on Russian sanctions due to the harmful economic effects.

Likewise, the conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has also been pushing for an end to sanctions and an re-opening of the Nord Stream 1 & 2 gas pipelines due to soaring energy costs in Germany. AfD member of the Bundestag, Mariana Harder-Kühnel, for instance, recently echoed Orbán’s call.

"The EU bureaucracy has turned the screw on the sanctions, and now we are paying the bill," she said.

In this context, the ructions since Friday in the FX market for the pound sterling speak more powerfully than anything else.

The British pound briefly plunged to its lowest level ever early this AM, touching $1.0349 during Asian trading hours, breaking through its previous record low of 1985. Moreover, today’s cliff-dive followed a tumble of 3% on Friday, after the new Truss government announced sweeping tax cuts and a massive energy bailout for businesses and individuals.

Likewise, the price of U.K. government debt has fallen in tandem with the pound, with yields rising sharply again today. The 10-year government bond was yielding 4.11%, up 28 basis points from Friday and a staggering 342% from the 0.93% yield of just one year ago.



For want of doubt, here is the path of pound sterling over the last twelve months. That’s a massive thumbs down by the FX markets if there ever was one.



But the relevant point here is not all the Keynesian palaver about the "mistake" of lowering the 45% top income tax rate and removing other disincentives to work and investment that take UK marginal rates as high as 60%. These reductions in the crushing tax rates that Conservative and Labor government alike have erected atop the UK’s lavish Welfare State are long-overdue and will, in fact, stimulate compensatory economic activity.

What’s actually going to destroy the remnants of the UK’s fiscal sustainability is Truss’ utterly foolish plan to freeze all energy prices for all citizens and businesses at a cost of upwards of $200 billion per year or 5% of GDP. But that’s neocon insanity run amok.

If London wants to relieve its consumers of onerous energy prices and utility bills it only need follow Orban’s advice and terminate its Sanctions War against Russian energy, food and other commodity exports. And it wouldn’t cost the Exchequer a dime.

That is to say, the pound’s crash ought to be a general wake-up call to Europe and Washington, too. By declaring war on the productive and peaceful commerce with Russia that previously prevailed, Europe’s leaders – -especially the new government of United Kingdom – have sacrificed their own prosperity and the living standards of their citizens in behalf of a prodigiously corrupt, anti-democratic regime in Kiev that is dedicated to preserving intact nothing more noble than the dead hand of the Soviet Presidium.

Or as our friend James Howard Kunstler rightly summarized:

Let us agree that the place called Ukraine was never any of America’s business. For centuries we ignored it, through all the colorful cavalry charges to-and-fro of Turks and Tatars, the reign of the dashing Zaporozhian Cossacks, the cruel abuses of Stalin, then Hitler, and the dull, gray Khrushchev-to-Yeltsin years. But then, having destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and sundry other places all on a great hegemonic lark, the professional warmongers of our land and their catamites in Washington made Ukraine their next special project. They engineered the 2014 coup in Kiev that ousted the elected president, Mr. Yanyukovich, to set up a giant grifting parlor and international money-laundromat. The other strategic aim was to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership, which would have made it, in effect, a forward missile base right up against Russia’s border. Because, well, Russia, Russia, Russia!

So we return to the question at hand: Every Ukrainian presidential election since 1991 has revealed a nation radically split between pro-Russian populations in the east and south and anti-Russian nationalists in the center and west. When the mailed fist of communist rule was removed, in fact, Ukraine became a territory yearning to be partitioned into more amenable jurisdictions of governance.

For instance, here is the results of the 2010 election that put a pro-Russian politician in the president’s office and at length gave rise to Washington’s putsch during the Maiden uprising that soon drove the country into civil war.



The above map barely does justice to the actual figures. In many of the yellow Tymoshenko-supporting areas the vote was 80% or higher in favor of the latter’s nationalist candidacy, while in the much of the blue area the pro-Russian Yanukovych won be similar massive pluralities.

Yet this wasn’t a one-time fluke of short-term electoral politics: It was actually the recrudescence of the manner in which the fake nation of Ukraine was put together during the last three centuries.

Prior to the end of WWI, there was no Ukrainian state. Like the artificial and unsustainable polities of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which were confected by self-serving politicians at Versailles (especially the domestic vote seeking Woodrow Wilson), Ukraine was a product of geopolitical engineering – in this case by the new rulers of the Soviet Union.


..... The territory of Ukraine is a mosaic of other people’s lands. If we want to stop this insane war and ensure peace in Europe, instead of calling Russia’s sponsored referendum in Eastern Ukraine a sham, we should conduct an honest referendum in all the disputed territories under the auspices of the UN and let the people decide what government they want.

FULL- https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2022/09/27/washingtons-pointless-war-on-behalf-of-a-fake-nation/

[misskit]

‘He will continue to choose escalation’ Russia’s strategic options post-annexation – and how far Putin might go


Today’s official annexation of four Ukrainian regions by Russia is the most serious act of escalation since the start of the Russian invasion. Its purpose is clear: the Kremlin would like to draw a new “red line” that cannot be crossed by the Kyiv leadership and Ukraine’s western partners. Earlier today, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said in his annexation speech that Russia will “defend its land” and “its people” on territories that Russia now claims to be its own. But the Kremlin has no tools for making its opponents respect this new revision of Russia’s state borders. What’s very clear instead is that Kyiv is fully prepared for an escalation, with the assurance of support from countries in the West. The United States has already committed to increasing its arms supplies to Ukraine. The Ukrainian army is likely to continue its offensive, and it’s fully determined to regain control over occupied territories. The Kremlin, as as a result, is likely to up the ante.

The annexation’s aim is to stall the Ukrainian offensive until Russia’s mobilization begins to make a difference at the front. The Ukrainian forces are actively striving to recapture the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, and the Russian side has limited means for halting their progress. The Kremlin’s delay of mobilization – for the first seven months of the invasion – contrasts against the decisiveness of Ukraine’s President and government, who mobilized the country immediately, and continue to do so. The result is that the numbers of Russia’s infantry currently at the front are significantly less than Ukraine’s.


Russia’s partial loss of occupied territories in the Kharkiv region did not stall the progress of the Ukrainian forces. They are now on the offensive in the northern part of the Donetsk region, intent on clearing the whole north of Luhansk area, including the districts of Svatove, Starobilsk, Sievierodonetsk, and Lysychansk.


Russia’s so-called “partial mobilization” (which is, in reality, a full-scale mobilization) cannot solve this problem instantly. Not all new conscripts can be sent to the front right away, without training or preparation. Most of them will be formed into new units, and organizing those may take several months. This was the case in Ukraine itself when, over the summer, it had effectively two separate armies: one of them, limited in number and with dated equipment, tried to hold back the invaders. The other, armed with up-to-date weapons from the West, was training and preparing (not just at home, but also abroad) for an offensive in the fall.


In this context, the Kremlin decided to raise the stakes. Russia now officially speaks of this war as involving the US and NATO (as stated, for instance, by the Foreign Ministry’s Information Director Maria Zakharova). In this frame, Russia becomes the underdog, whose military resources are outweighed by its opponents’ – in contrast with the early phase of the invasion, when Russia had a military advantage over Ukraine. Russia’s current situation presents just the kind of case for which, beginning in the 1980s, Soviet, and later Russian military theorists developed a special strategy for containing adversaries who possess greater reserves of high-precision weapons.

Escalation is the Kremlin’s way of trying to intimidate both Ukraine and NATO. Since it hasn’t worked so far, the stakes will continue to rise.


Russia’s “containment strategy” implies a hierarchy of weapons use (and threats of using certain kinds of weapons). It includes both conventional and nuclear means of pressuring the adversary. This strategy can be aimed not solely at the enemies’ military potential, but also at their “will to persevere.” The current annexation of Ukrainian regions (that is, the formal extrapolation of Russian sovereignty onto those regions, and their inclusion in the Russian Federation), as well as Putin’s promise to “defend” them by all available “powers and means” is a trigger for launching a “containment” operation against Ukraine and the NATO countries that support it.


The problem is that neither Kyiv nor the NATO countries are going to be impressed by the new “red line” drawn by the annexation “treaties.”


Instead, the West is likely to respond with its own reciprocal escalation measures. (Actually, it is already responding, since the United States is already committed to doubling Ukraine’s supply of HIMARS/MLRS artillery rocket systems, and to supply additional air defense systems to boot.) Probably next in line are the deliveries of long-range ATACMS tactical missiles for the same HIMARS, which can hit targets hundreds of kilometers from the front with high-powered ammunitions. (The United States had repeatedly refused to supply these missiles in the past.) Russian authorities have referred possible deliveries of such weapons as “crossing the red line.”


Ukraine is set to continue its offensive in northern Luhansk region and to try encircling a large Russian grouping in Lyman (Donetsk region). Ongoing mobilization is also going to continue. Ukrainian officials will discuss the full response to the annexations at the Sept. 30 meeting of Ukraine’s National Security Council.


In the words of Dmitry Trenin, the former head of Moscow’s Carnegie Center who is now attempting to justify the Russian invasion, “the West has lost its fear”:


Our American colleagues have often repeated casually: “We thought that you could pose a real danger, but it turns out, it was all a total bluff.” So why should we limit ourselves? Nothing else [except fear] can contain our adversary, if we’re speaking seriously.
This indicates that the Kremlin is driven to continue raising the stakes, so as to prove that Russia really is ready and willing to use all of its available “powers and means.”

The Kremlin is considering a number of possible moves, from sanctions to a nuclear strike. None of them, however, can guarantee victory. Meanwhile, the annexation that just took place leaves no room for a peaceful resolution.


The list of “powers and means” actually available to the Kremlin is not very long. Here it is:


Massive attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. On Sept. 16, Putin said that the strikes on electric stations in Kharkiv and Kremenchug were meant as “warnings” to the Ukrainian leadership. The energy infrastructure (being the most vulnerable) is likely to be targeted in a bombardment campaign.


A tactical nuclear strike, or threats of using nuclear weapons, accompanied, possibly, by demonstrative use of such weapons in unpopulated areas.


Economic measures against western countries that support Ukraine – for instance, a reduction of Russian energy exports in the winter.


Continued mobilization until the Russian forces at the front reach numerical parity with the Ukrainian army, or else gain a numerical advantage.


All of these steps involve significant organizational and logistical difficulties, as well as threats to the internal stability of Russia’s governance. All of them have the potential for further, uncontrolled escalation, and none of them guarantee success. The “containment strategy” designed in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s was meant to lead to peace, or to freezing the conflict on such terms as could be acceptable to Moscow.


In their Faridaily newsletter, the journalists Farida Rustamova and Maxim Tovkailo write that Russia’s ruling elites are leaning in the direction of further escalation. The situation will become more acute in the coming months, and what remains is to hope that no nuclear war will ensue. According to Faridaily’s source close to the Kremlin, “the conflict must reach a point past which the sides will sit down and start negotiating.”


But it’s going to be exceptionally difficult to negotiate – perhaps even impossible. The annexation comes with an inconvenient side effect: from now on, the only kind of peace acceptable to the Kremlin is the kind in which the four Ukrainian regions just annexed by Russia, as well as the Crimea, annexed in 2014, remain under Russian control. And Putin himself seems intent on raising the stakes to the bitter end.


As another source speaking to Faridaily said about Putin (with whom the source had worked “for many years”), Putin “always chooses escalation – and afterwards, at every single unpleasant fork [in the road], he will continue to choose escalation, right up to [using] nuclear weapons.”

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/09...ose-escalation

[sabang]

G7-

USA +
[Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom ]

aka- the Past



SCO-

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a Eurasian political, economic and security organization. It is the world's largest regional organization in terms of geographic scope and population, covering approximately 60% of the area of Eurasia, 40% of the world population, and more than 30% of global GDP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation


aka- the Future.

[misskit]

And it the SCO is soooo important that it is in large bold font. So there!

[bsnub]

^^

This is a thread for news about the war in Ukraine. Not you're absurd pontificating.

[sabang]

The buffoonery in Ukraine has much to do with the recent and ongoing expansion of SCO. Not to mention the diminishment of the other, US vassal states in the G7.

[bsnub]

Meat grinder for the Russians...

LYMAN/FLASH TRAFFIC/ 1940 UTC 30 SEP/ RU forces in the Lyman area are reported to be isolated. UKR reconnaissance elements are said to be in possession of the O-0528 and O-130501 HWYs south of Zarichne. Artillery now covers these roads.

[kingwilly]

weep. UKR is about to reap a whirlwind.

They have been experiencing such. It started in 2014.

But reap implies they deserve it, they don't.

[harrybarracuda]

The buffoonery in Ukraine

What sort of low life calls war crimes and slaughter "buffoonery"?

Scum

[sabang]

Your decayed mind is utterly symptomatic of your decaying nation.

[panama hat]

But Russia has turned it's back on you, and looks east.

East? A basic knowledge of geography would certainly help . . . Putin has the same problem.

The SCO is now more important than the G7.

The buffoonery in Ukraine has much to do with the recent and ongoing expansion of SCO. Not to mention the diminishment of the other, US vassal states in the G7.

It's getting worse. This is what you're going with now? I guess when you're beholden to a madman who keeps shifting the goalposts you have to end up looking foolish and grasping at straws.

[sabang]

I agree. This war could have easily been avoided, and should have been. The European people are innocent victims too.

[sabang]

Oh look, it's the self declared economist who doesn't even have a grasp of numbers, or simple arithmetic.

[bsnub]

Oh look, it's the self declared economist who doesn't even have a grasp of numbers, or simple arithmetic.

You will do anything to drag the thread off the topic of the war in Ukraine, which is the subject of this thread because you do not want to face the reality that Russia is losing the war. Your posts are off-topic, and they belong in the doghouse.

[misskit]

^^^Talk about a broken record.

[sabang]

Given the massive damage it has caused Europe and the World in general kitty, yes you might say I am stuck on that groove.

[misskit]

How will the world stop Putin from taking anything he decides to call Russia in the future? If he is not stopped now, his land grabs will multiply. Do you disagree?

[misskit]

Special Report: Assessing Putin’s Implicit Nuclear Threats After Annexation
Sep 30, 2022 - Press ISW


Russian President Vladimir Putin did not threaten an immediate nuclear attack to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensives into Russian-occupied Ukraine during his speech announcing Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory. Putin announced Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts on September 30 even as Ukrainian forces encircled Russian troops in the key city of Lyman, Luhansk Oblast, immediately demonstrating that Russia will struggle to hold the territory it claims to have annexed. Putin likely intends annexation to freeze the war along the current frontlines and allow time for Russian mobilization to reconstitute Russian forces. The annexation of parts of four Ukrainian oblasts does not signify that Putin has abandoned his stated objective of destroying the Ukrainian state for a lesser goal. As ISW assessed in May, if Putin’s annexation of occupied Ukraine stabilizes the conflict along new front lines, “the Kremlin could reconstitute its forces and renew its invasion of Ukraine in the coming years, this time from a position of greater strength and territorial advantage.”

Institute for the Study of War


I posit these people know more about what is really going on than David Stockman.

[harrybarracuda]

Oh look, it's the self declared economist who doesn't even have a grasp of numbers, or simple arithmetic.

Look, sabang is now replying to his own posts. Has definitely lost his marbles.

[sabang]

^^^ Yes, actually I do. I think he just wants Novorussiya back- and the Ukrainian government and it's puppetmasters can shoulder a large amount of the blame for this. There is no question that the newly minted Russian citizens of the four provinces overwhelmingly support the reunification. The real question now is will he stop there, or proceed on to Kharkiv, Odessa and maybe even Dniepr. I don't frankly see why he, or Russia, would want a bar of the rest of 'Ukraine'.

[pickel]

There is no question that the newly minted Russian citizens of the four provinces overwhelmingly support the reunification.

Kool-aid

[bsnub]

There is no question that the newly minted Russian citizens of the four provinces overwhelmingly support the reunification.

Another of your many bald faced lies.

The real question now is will he stop there, or proceed on to Kharkiv, Odessa and maybe even Dniepr.

That is not the question at all. Putin was already driven out of Kharkiv and is currently being driven out of Donetsk oblast. He will never see Kharkiv again, much less Odessa. Russia is losing this war and will face total defeat.

In short, Putin is having has ass handed to him on a plate.

[sabang]

Talk about a scratched record.

[Shutree]

This war could have easily been avoided, and should have been.

It could have been avoided by Putin. He chose a path of inevitable conflict, expecting rapid success and weak opposition from Ukraine and the West in general.
In my view he has spent many years moving the pieces into place, ostensibly integrating Russia into the global economy and particularly the European economy, creating a dependence on Russian energy exports and simultaneously amassing record foreign exchange reserves with which to buy (restricted) technology that he needed for his missile program whilst also laughing into his sleeve at us all. He created an internal Internet for Russia so that they could be self-sufficient when the day came.
His plan has always been a new, greater Russia. Georgia was part of that and the 2008 war there was almost a template for the Ukraine war. Then he took Crimea and he got the easy result he expected, the West sighed and Putin gained strategic naval assets in the Black Sea. Then he moved on Ukraine, encouraged in part by Trump's blocking of assistance to Ukraine, how Putin must have laughed about that unplanned piece of good luck. Obviously Maldova and Belarus would be reincorporated next and once he was sure Europe had no will to fight it would be the Baltic States. In his dreams, maybe even Kazakhstan.
Those who say appeasement could have prevented the current conflict are correct, but it would have gifted Ukraine to Putin and then what? He completely ignored Russia's signature on the Budapest Memorandum and would cheerfully ignore any other agreements when they no longer suited his purpose. I have said it before and maybe I'll not say it again after today. Chamberlain signed a pact with Hitler 84 years ago, declared "Peace for our time" and within a year Hitler marched into Poland and WW2 had begun. Those who think appeasing Putin was the right way forward are either naïve in putting their wishful thinking above the lessons of history or wilful supporters of a tyrant.
Stopping Putin is the only choice.

[sabang]

I am in highly esteemed company in my assertion- senior statesmen, academics and the like. i will leave it there, or i will be accused of being a scratched record again.