For sure, I don't think Russia really wants the headache of western Ukraine. Even war wives aren't very meaningful. Last I heard, Russia still has a deficit in their male population. Somewhere around 87 males for every 100 females. Russian women already have to compete to get a man. It's doubtful flooding more women in would be taken well by the women they already have.

Part of the Tucker interview was pretty interesting though, where Putin was talking about areas of Ukraine that historically belonged to not Ukraine, but were carved off from other nations, and are still ethnically of those nations. Dunno if that figures into anything, just, why would he bring it up if it wasn't a back burner subject?

The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin

The listening post in the Ukrainian forest is part of a C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border. Before the war, the Ukrainians proved themselves to the Americans by collecting intercepts that helped prove Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of a commercial jetliner, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The Ukrainians also helped the Americans go after the Russian operatives who meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Around 2016, the C.I.A. began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that C.I.A. technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)

And the C.I.A. also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence.

/.../

Mr. Putin has long blamed Western intelligence agencies for manipulating Kyiv and sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.

Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the C.I.A., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.

/.../

The C.I.A.’s partnership in Ukraine can be traced back to two phone calls on the night of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day before Russia’s full-scale invasion

Source: New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/the-spy-war-how-the-cia-secretly-helps-ukraine-fight-putin.html

The third year of a 3 day operation begins. Paper tiger.

LMAO

Some say the Devil is dead...



This post was edited by Norlander on Feb 25 2024 02:21pm

Why would NYT run this. I don’t understand.

CIA overthrow and deep penetration within UA has been Putins main talking point for years. Why confirm it?

This post was edited by Malopox on Feb 25 2024 02:36pm

The larger issue to me, from the American point of view, is that "woke" army ads don't work. They don't drive higher recruitment, and DEI racism in the army is actively sabotaging recruitment from the army's historic recruitment base. In any case, universal conscription is the future.

Mostly Crimea, but since Russia controls the left bank of the Dnieper River, they can strangle Ukraine's economy by shutting transport along the river down any time Ukraine thinks about shutting down the North Crimean Canal again.


Putin isn't paying the price, the rubes and rabble which make up the rank and file of his military are.


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When Putin's man in Kyiv, Viktor Yanukovich, was losing to the leader of the pro-Western opposition, Viktor Yushchenko, he literally had Yushchenko poisoned. And the pro-Russian side tried to steal the election via fraud, leading to the supreme court of the country ordering a revote which Yushchenko won, sparking the so-called Orange Revolution. Yanukovych then won the next election in 2010 because the other side had proven to be corrupt and inept. As soon as the pro-Western forces in the country wanted to formally align with the West (by signing the association agreement with the EU), Moscow interfered yet again and had their man Yanukovych veto it at the 11th hour, in direct contradiction of a promise he had made on the campaign trail for the 2010 election. When the ensuring outrage got out of control, Russian troops swiftly annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbass.

Long story short, Russia only seems to have given Ukraine a long leash as long as Ukraine didn't dare to exert its sovereignty and challenge its de facto vassal status.


Putin had literally been talking since the 90s about restoring the empire that Russia had oh-so-tragically lost.


See above.


See above, they already did try to twist Ukraine back in 2004 when there was organic momentum on the pro-Western side. And let's not forget that a big chunk of the pro-Western sentiment and momentum in 2013 and 2014 was organic, too. Furthermore, during the 90s and early 2000s, Russia didn't refrain from pulling and twisting Ukraine out of the goodness of their hearts, they stood back because their own country was in shambles and lacked the power to assert itself. Since the mid-2000s (when a commodity price boom boosted their economy), Russia was acting in aggressive and imperialist fashion against its neighbors again, see also the Russo-Georgian War of 2008.

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We've already discussed this point a month ago:
https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=92094408&f=119&p=656354817

In any case, the claim that the Kyiv-controlled parts of Ukraine are categorically poorer than the Moscow-controlled parts is definitely untrue.


You could also phrase it as "Europe got a significant injection of fresh bodies against the backdrop of its crumbling demographic basis". It's mostly Germany where Ukrainian refugees have subpar rates of workforce participation, in the other European countries (like the Netherlands or Poland), they're actually working and contributing just fine. Still a net drain at this point in time, don't get me wrong, but if these people stay, it can be assumed that they will eventually hold their weight, just like the other Eastern European migrants to Western Europe did. Germany handing benefits and entitlements out like candy is a big problem in recent years, but not limited to Ukrainians at all.

In terms of education, socialization and so on and forth, Ukrainians cannot be compared to the types of migrant that Western Europe has been absorbing from the Middle East and Africa over the past decade. A Ukrainian lawyer will find a way to contribute in a Western economy, a goat herder from Eritrea never will. Likewise, even if the Ukrainian lawyer has to work lowly jobs in the West, the generation of her children will be reasonably integrated. Can't say the same about the offspring of Muslim and/or African migrants.



If that were true, then why did Russia try to capture all of Ukraine at the onset of this war? If their initial decapitation move toward Kyiv had succeeded, they would have been stuck with all the oh-so-poor regions of Western Ukraine and all the "hungry mouths to feed".


Fair enough, that's a consistent line of reasoning. (Although I still think that Russia's observable actions contradict this logic, so I'm still inclined to believe in different premises. )

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 25 2024 05:39pm

Big disagree on the notion that it was a conscious, calculated move. If Merkel hadn't lost her fucking mind in 2015, this purported strategy would have backfired spectacularly on Putin. If Europe starts securing its borders with all necessary force at some point in late 2015 or even early 2016, Turkey will do the same on their southern border to Syria. Then, the bulk of the poor, radicalized, unproductive and anti-Assad population would have been stuck, destabilizing Syria even further and making it essentially impossible for Russia to secure the rule of their ally without committing vastly larger amounts of troops and resources.

So at best, the creation of the refugee stream out of Syria was a cynical and incredibly risky gamble from Putin's POV, betting the success of Russia's involvement in Syria on the weakness of one European leader, or perhaps a very small handful of them. No way was this a brilliant 4d-chess move.

Too much is being placed on derivatives of what happened. At face value, Russia helped one of it's only and longest standing allies in the ME. Their primary objective was not to lose Assad, not lose the Tartus port. Basically preserving their influence. Having large swaths of Syrians migrants, puts more strain on EU, contributing to rise of populism helps Putin but lets not lose sight of why he actually supported Assad.