This idea if far too cute. In reality, the rest of Europe definitely doesn't want to permanently house and feed 10 or even 20 million Ukrainian refugees. We want them to return to their own country sooner rather than later and thus need Ukraine sufficiently intact.




I'm not convinced by this argument. Back in 2014, the Russian propaganda was a lot more successful at getting their spin on the events out and receiving the unspoken, tacit approval of a lot of Western observers. It seems like their propaganda was just less effective this time around, probably because the underlying facts are much less favorable to their cause than in 2014. Back then, most people could understand why Putin annexed Crimea and why he created a frozen conflict in the Donbass region. But now, in 2022, most of us still struggle to understand the rationale of this invasion.

When there were valid arguments in favor of the Russian position (2014), they were able to hold their ground in the battle over public opinion. That they're losing this war decisively this time around is imho based on this invasion being irrational and just such an evidently horrible idea, rather than a biased Western MSM. The media is biased, don't get me wrong, but that's not the reason why the Russian position isn't getting traction - the reason is that the Russian position is pure bullshit and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 22 2022 05:50pm

It's a cold reasoning that is certainly not "cute" and it's happening right now.
Make a comparison of the cost of war/weapons + sanctions -vs- food + housing of ukrainians refugees at european level...

1 million refugees is probably 1 to 1.5 billions per month

Think tanks in 2016 or 2017 estimated that housing 2 million middle eastern and/or african asylum seekers would cost Germany around €55 per year. Other countries are less generous with their benefits, or have cheaper cost of living (say Spain or Poland), so the figure for an EU-wide distribution of Ukrainian refugees would come cheaper than that.

Still... if just half of Ukraine's population of 44m were to flee the country toward the EU, we'd be talking about costs of up to 22*55 = €1.21 trillion per year. That's a worst case scenario/upper limit and I would expect the Ukrainians to integrate much more quickly, but it gives you an idea of the scope we could be talking about. And that's just public expenses and doesn't include effects like surging housing prices due to the increased demand.


So no, even from a coldhearted, purely economic perspective, it is not in Europe's interest to let Ukraine get completely destroyed.

In 2019, Petro Poroshenko amended the Ukrainian constitution that basically enshrined a commitment to join NATO and the EU. Post 2014 Ukraine made a commitment to slowly de-Russify Ukraine culturally, linguistically, (even though close to 1/5 of the population in Ukraine is ethnic Russian). Schools that were previously teaching in Russian now had to teach in Ukrainian, it was slowly pushed from television, and so on. I posted an article from aljazeera written by an Ukrainian who talked about what happened to any pro-Russian political parties last year, go read it if you have a few minutes. Between 2014 to prewar you had Azov battalion thugs literally kill pro-Russians in peaceful cities (no not an exaggeration, look up Mariupol fire that killed 30) including many other examples that honestly would never be mentioned in any western outlet. The Ukrainian legal system largely ignored these targeted crimes because after all fuck the Russians, they took Crimea, they were in the eastern regions so these types of things were basically forgiven.

The rationale is simple really. They were losing Ukraine from their sphere of influence, and just because Ukraine wasn't joining NATO this year or maybe next year it's pretty clear that was in the works and it was going to happen. It's easier to understand and rationalize their actions when you look at it with these realities. I don't understand why you guys insist on holding a view that Putin and Russia is behaving illogically and the only reason they did this because they're bad. Bad actors also behave logically and in their best interests, this is that.




That seems kind of high 55k euro a year is good living in most of Europe IMO. With Europe's aging population i think many parts of Europe would be okay with some (less than that) immigration for cheap labor. I think initially maybe first few years they would be an economic drain but given enough time and integration I think they would be a net positive economically for EU GDP.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 22 2022 06:58pm

Following your insta 22 millions people it's 400 billions/year => But yet we are at 1 month and it's 3.5 millions, and check out the cost per month in moldavia or poland.

You just deliberately miscounted and overestimated the cost. Should go to east front for that.

/e Imo it will be 200 B cost for first year. +/- 50B

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Mar 22 2022 06:47pm

thats just 1k per person

you can do that in moldova or so, but not in germany or france



this refugee crisis is already getting exploited not only by the asylum industry, but the government and corporations as well to grab some cheap labor for certain sectors

they wanna throw work permits and integration courses out there in no time

Nah, many are children and they are integrated with the mother, so it's less than 1.5k.
Some have money, family in other countries, and there's also this:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/asked-sussex-mps-d-house-050000269.html
100k the first day.

Btw I'm sure you and Black XistenZ have a spot at home for an old lady. bb)

In 2014, ethnic Russians in Ukraine had just betrayed their country, became separatists, started fighting against Ukraine's official police and military and allied with the enemy who had just stolen territory from Ukraine - gee, I wonder why the Ukrainian government felt it was a good idea to de-Russify the country and crack down on pro-Russian parties.

The Azov battalion is a bunch of shady dickheads, I'll give you that. These reports about their crimes might be blown out of proportion by Russian propaganda, or they might be true - in any case, their actions do not confirm the official Russian narrative on this war, namely that the Ukrainian government consists of fascists/nazis who were plotting genocide against ethnic Russians.





Oh crap, I missed to add the quantity: the think tank number was a cost of €55 billion per year for housing the 2 million asylum seekers. That's what the 55 was referring to, not 55k per person per year.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 22 2022 09:02pm

TL;DR Russia has no real and rational strategic interests in Ukraine, ya okay

I think the propaganda was less effective simply because full-fledged invasions are never popular and there is no simple reason the layman can understand. It is harder to do propaganda using convoluted arguments about geostrategy. The Russians tried to make a bullshit "simple" reason with cleaning Ukraine of Nazis thing, but were much less successful than US with WMDs
In any case I don't think the trend of uproar in the West is shared by most of the world. China, India, Middle East, and more places around the world are more understanding of Russia's motivations than the average Westerners.

So the Russian stock market re-opened yesterday for bond trading, and it didn't collapse. Yields spiked 20%, then dropped to 13% at close, the ruble holds down about 25% from before the invasion, interest rates are at 20%
Russia is clearly taking an economic hit so far, but the supposed catastrophic effects aren't manifesting. Considering the rest of the world is in problem territory (look at US inflation), they're doing worse, but not falling apart.

So this has been the full brunt of unrestrained economic warfare against Russia, the west pulling out all the stops to throw up a new iron curtain, and the result has been mediocre. Clearly not enough to stop Russia. And without the EU, India, China or mideast joining in the effort, Russia doesn't seem to face any looming threats. Joe Biden first promised that the threat of sanctions would forestall a Russian invasion, nevermind his opening the door by promising no military response. Then when that fell through, he promised these sanctions would cripple the Russian economy and bring them to their knees where they'd have no choice but to back off. Again, didn't happen. A big huff and a puff and didn't blow his house down.
If our approach isn't working, we should rethink it