Portending a long muddy future where "Ukraine" marks one as western, "the Ukraine" marks one as fascist, and "the ukraine" marks the border zone permanently depopulated by raiding.
It took me months to stop saying "The Ukraine." Fortunately, I had fixed my speech before the newest invasion.
Saying The Netherlands means you think it should be part of Russia.
I don't know how the war ends. Invading Russia certainly seems cheering to me and I think Ukraine will win, but the cost is tremendous and climbing.
So from what I gather, this invasion was done largely by anti-Putin Russian far-right fascists. I'm vaguely aware of Putin having far-right fascist critics (it came up in the Navalny documentary), but why don't they like Putin? He seems pretty fascist?
6: At this point, because he hasn't won with the winning power of winningness. If he was a better leader he would have crushed Ukraine by now. Or so I understand the reasoning.
I'm pretty sure these groups were anti-Putin already before the war.
Per FT the raid was carried out not by Ukrainians but by Russians who are (1) literally Nazis and (2) using USG-supplied vehicles. While applauding all policies which result in Nazis being killed, and even more so in Nazis being killed by other Nazis, I question the wisdom in this particular case. Let them do their Death Rides somewhere else. Like, idk, Bakhmut.
There are US fascists who think Trump didn't go far enough. One of them is Trump.
9 it shows that Putin is weak and incapable of defending Russia's borders and it will probably result in Russia pulling units out of Ukraine on the eve of the coming AFU counteroffensive. I think it was smart and hilarious to boot.
9: Sure, but (1) the raiding-fixing strategy cuts both ways (as the Russians showed over the winter) (2) fuck Nazis (3) the US equipment involved is gratuitous sand in the gears (a day after Biden finally moved on F-16s, no less), and (4) fuck Nazis.
Fuck Nazis, yes. But you have one group of Nazis more or less aiding a state that the other Nazis consider part of a Jewish conspiracy, you're looking at different levels of Naziness.
Classic root for injuries type situation
|| NMM to Kenneth Anger.
What a filmmaker.
|>
Zero Nazis is still a really good goal.
Given that both sides in the war have some far-right adherents, it is definitely worth noting that Ukraine
a) has not very many of them
b) doesn't have them in charge and
c) is sending them on high-risk distraction raids where they don't have a chance of committing atrocities
- three areas in which there's a sharp difference between Ukraine and Russia.
I am reminded of someone, in the late 18th century, asking Pitt whether it was a good idea to raise Highland regiments and train them in modern warfare, given that a lot of them were being raised from areas which had not too long ago been strongly Jacobite (ie far-right sectarian insurgents) and the only reason that the insurgents had lost is that they hadn't been trained in modern warfare.
Pitt's reply was, from memory, "I am not concerned. After they are raised I shall send them to North America, and I do not expect that many of them will return."
4
The correct name is "The Spanish Netherlands"
I've never understood Russian Nazism. Like, Fascist ethnochauvinism sure, but Nazism specifically? Why adopt the specific ideological trappings of people who thought you were untermensch?
re: 23
I think they agree with the basic idea that there are untermenschen, they just disagree about the exact extension of the set of untermenschen: Jews, yes; non-white people, yes; Slavs (Russian variety), no.
23: that's a minor detail. The rest of the programme is great, from their point of view: antisemitism, racial purity, nationalism, militarism, conservative social policies, strong links with the church, leader worship, paranoia, even expanding your empire into eastern Europe, all those things are long-term winners in Russian politics. (Back in the 1990s Russia even had Tatar Nazis. Slogan, "Nationalists of all lands, unite!")
The real crime of the Nazis, as far as modern Russia is concerned, is attacking Russia and obviously they aren't in favour of that, but everything else is fine.
I was going to say 26, yes. In mainstream Russian discourse, the evil of the Nazis consisted first and (mostly) last in attacking the motherland.
The Nazis were not big on churches.
I think the Russian fascists are because it's a national church.
These particular Russian Nazis don't seem to be all that opposed to invading Russia.
the raid was carried out [...] using USG-supplied vehicles
Had me thinking "the drywall company?!" for a moment.
Nazis are not known for the quality or consistency of their intellectual program.
At the beginning of the invasion Putin was claiming that Zelenskiy (!) was a Nazi. Has he walked that back or is is he just relying on it being forgotten under the rest of the enormous pile of shit he spouts?
Don't buy Chinese drywall. There have been issues.
"At the beginning of the invasion Putin was claiming that Zelenskiy (!) was a Nazi."
Ah, that explains why Putin has supplied Zelensky's army with so much materiel.
But of course, see above, he means it in the Russian sense of "enemy of Russia".
22 Not so fast, there.
Has he walked that back
I don't think he ever walks back anything, at least rhetorically.
Ukrainians-as-Nazis was also the propaganda line in the US of the leftists-who-hate-liberals -- the folks who are rooting for a Russian victory. I haven't heard much of that lately though.
I get it. Liberals are annoying. But I don't think we're annoying enough to justify cheering Putin.
"but why don't they like Putin? He seems pretty fascist?"
At a guess, because they want more power than he is inclined to give them, or because he's been feathering his own nest by stealing from the state and thus weakening it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/08/russia-race
In addition to Tina Turner, the most important Ohioan also died. The "It's not much but it's honest work" guy.
33: Nope. Doubling down every day.
21.c: They occupied at least one village for several hours. Ample opportunity for atrocities.
21 reaminder: Comity.
Russians aren't very efficient compared to Germans. They probably need more time to atroce.
But of course, see above, he means it in the Russian sense of "enemy of Russia".
This is very much key to understanding (bits and pieces of) the situation. "Nazi" in Russian is seldom much about the ideology of Hitler, and very much about the military goals of Hitler. A whole bunch of the 1917 revolution was red-on-red violence.
bunch of the 1917 revolution and several decades thereafter.
If this signals to the east-of-the-Urals provinces that Moscow is stretched too thin to keep a lid on internal dissent, things could get unstable quickly.
48 I am skimming a not good at all book on this very subject right this very workday.
The last book I read about the Russian Far East was John Vaillant's excellent The Tiger, so I imagine that with Putin distracted a group of dissident and hungry Siberian tigers are about to declare a breakaway state.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/1337944474?oclcNum=1337944474
48. Internal dissent has an ethnic dimension in much of Russia. Crimean Tatars are unhappy, a disproportionate number of dead in Donbas are Buryat. Bashkir and Chuvash are populous nationalities, and there are other Tatars. As far as I know, there's a strong history of not engaging in empty protest.
Also the distinction between politician and organized criminal is fuzzy, as in Russia itself. Kazakh protests of last year are probably worth reviewing, dynamics of the security response and power shifts afterward. My cartoon understanding is that the dictator's nephew or some other near-center figure lost face in the security services (maybe also lost criminal money as a consequence? that report wasn't clearly sourced) and responded by either starting or hugely amplifying street protests.
Meanwhile, closer to home: https://www.jta.org/2023/05/24/united-states/the-florida-mom-who-got-amanda-gormans-poem-restricted-says-shes-sorry-for-promoting-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion
52: Sorry you got stuck with a crappy book. In my mental geography of DC, Jamestown is rightish tending toward nutty. Polish writing about Russia can be its own special kind of invective, even if we're talking about Polish descent rather than actual Poland.
I have the feeling that some of these guys -- Paul Goble comes particularly to mind -- have stared too long into the abyss of Russian history/politics, and some pretty weird stuff is starting to stare back. And what the heck happened to Anatol Lieven? He seems to be all-in on letting Russia do some conquesting.
Anyway.
And what the heck happened to Anatol Lieven?
Yes, I noticed that. Pity. His book on Pakistan was excellent, I thought. I suspect it's just overlearning from Iraq: because the Iraqi army was pathetically useless and all aid sent to it was wasted, the same must be true about the Ukrainian army; because the Iraqi army couldn't fight without US troops alongside it, the same must be true about the Ukrainian army, etc etc.
This guy isn't nutty (so far, policy prescriptions we'll see), but there's a huge amount of wishcasting. He's accurately adducing lots of reasons the federation could or should collapse, but essentially none that it actually will. Basically I'm just skimming for the notes, some of them promising.
Interesting piece by some senior British military doctors - how best to protect civilian hospitals in wars with adversaries like Russia who treat hospitals as a target. https://wavellroom.com/2022/07/27/dread-cross/
Particularly telling, the note that it might be an advantage if the radio emissions of medical equipment were easily confused with those of military systems, because hospitals are likely to be a higher-priority target than combatants!
It could be an advantage to us, because it's quite difficult to make a convincing decoy that looks like a tank or an MLRS, but a convincing hospital decoy is just an empty heated tent with a TV in it and a red Cross on the roof. You could spam the battlespace with them and the Russians would waste hundreds of missiles.
57: I knew his work mainly from The Baltic Revolution, which was tedious but solid, as far as I could tell. It's odd that someone who was so aware of the role of society in the Baltics could miss it in post-2014 Ukraine. Pity, as you say.
58: "Wishcasting" is a lovely word. Stealing. Any new lines along which the federation could collapse? I may be out of touch, but I'm not really seeing it.
62: Stole it myself. Circle of life.
Don't know what's new to you. He's pushing the inequalities intra-ethnic Russians, as well as interethnic.