Great Power contentions

[Montmorency]

Ok, guys, I'm not going to go point by point on this, I will just summarize my position.

I certainly believe Ukrainian officials are vastly exaggerating civilian deaths when they speak to the media, and I'm even going to skip the part of weapons being distributed to tens of thousands of civilians in Ukraine.

For Russia, this is a carefully planned operation. They perceive NATO in Ukraine as a grave threat to their security. They will not stop until they achieve their goals. It is very hard to predict duration, but based on what;s going on. I think realistically we can expect some sort of settlement in May or June.

Russia's major goals are recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and firm political guarantees about Ukraine not joining NATO. I think Ukraine still has a chance of keeping Donetsk and Lugansk if they show a willingness for a constitutional change that would allow those regions to be self governed, although probably with Russian peacekeeping force stationed there for a time.

Commenting further on the point of civilian casualties. I would ask if you have seen some of the images of cities on the frontline. There are kilometer-swathes of flats and houses ruined or even leveled, WW2-style. Several million civilians were and still are resident in these cities. It's basically infeasible to only produce hundreds of deaths with such tactics, which we also know killed countless thousands in Syria. Thousands of civilians were killed in the Battle of Mosul, amid less intense fighting, and over a slower advance.

Just one mass grave.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1502759855689457665 [VIDEO]

This is all before you take into account the known deliberate targeting of individual civilians, which includes shooting at almost every single humanitarian corridor. It remains to characterize today's worst incident, the likely killing of hundreds of civilians in a bombing on a Mariupol theater designated as a civilian space.

I don't think Russian position has changed drastically. The goals always were

1) demilitarization (read: limits on armed forces)
2) military neutrality
3) Crimea recognition

Why launch an extremely costly invasion for all that when it would have been easily achieved by negotiations in 2014? Ukraine's military poses no independent threat to Russia, and barely existed in 2014. Putin made a mess for himself by annexing Crimea, even when Russian military basing there was under no threat. He could have negotiated a favorable arrangement with a new Ukrainian government 8 years go, a path he very deliberately foreclosed. Unless we do judge Putin insane, the rational explanation is that his goals were more maximalist.

I've always understood the goal to be political and economic domination over Kyiv, which are the motives claimed by Putin and relayed through state media to the Russian public, and are demonstrated by such actions as the abduction of Ukrainian politicians and activists, and the attempt to install a Kherson People's Republic.

Political and economic part were not a part of equation at any point. Obviously, Russia would prefer Ukraine in their own economic zone, but those were never red lines for Russia. There multiple statements from Russian officials from the last decade that they don't mind Ukraine joining NATO.

Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea and the creation of Novorossiya after the Ukrainian people rebelled when he directed his puppet to reject EU integration. NATO and EU membership, or the pursuit of it, have always been linked, with the notable exception of the UK.

Regarding poor planning and execution... well, it is certainly a possibility. The problem I have with that is that we don't really know what the Russians expected. No one ever said it would be an easy operation. It was western analysts who said that Russia expected no resistance.

It was inferred by the lack of supply, organization, and preparation for a conventional conflict, and the insistence on driving unsupported columns into city centers (a tactic limited to the first week for some reason). While this could also reflect an overall lack of capability on the Russian military's part, the consensus that Putin did not expect protracted conventional resistance is well-founded. There was also that captured document implying a 15-day timetable for the operation.

It remains possible that Putin's goal was always something very limited, but such scenarios do not conform to Occam's Razor, and anyway cannot really redeem Russian performance in its particulars.

To couch my words in a balanced manner, the level of careful planning on the part of the Russians, or how much Putin even allowed to be performed below the political level, remains unclear. (An example of Russian planning, though one I can't verify in mainstream media, is that rented storage space in Kyiv was filled with a stockpile of Russian dress uniforms.)

On the other hand, this operation was very carefully planned by Russia. They worked it out with China to get their backing. A major meeting between Putin and Xi happened on the 15th December, with Xi declaring that Russo-Chinese relations are "more than an alliance".

Has the backing proved more than moral yet?

They have also carefully prepared with OPEC to ensure oil production isn't increased, thus ensuring that the West pays for their own sanctions to a degree.

Cite?

OPEC, Russia Agree to Keep Boosting Oil Output, Jolting Prices

OPEC and a group of Russia-led oil producers agreed to continue pumping more crude, betting that pent-up demand in a post-lockdown world will outweigh any hit to economic activity by the recent permutations of Covid-19.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers led by Russia said Thursday they would raise their collective production by another 400,000 barrels a day in January. The group agreed earlier this year to boost output in such increments each month until production reaches pre-pandemic levels.

The White House had put pressure on the group to accelerate that pace. Many market watchers, meanwhile, expected the group, which calls itself OPEC+, to pause in opening taps any wider. That expectation came amid the uncertain economic impact of new travel bans going up to curb the Omicron variant and fresh lockdowns in places like Europe, which is suffering through another wave of the older, Delta variant.

Oil Price Rise Blamed in Part on OPEC, Russian Output Shortfalls

PEC and its Russia-led partners have promised to increase oil production to pre-pandemic levels this year but are falling short of those public commitments, stoking fast-rising global crude markets.

Last month, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its Russia-led allies increased their collective production by 250,000 barrels a day, or 60% of what the two groups promised for the month, according to the International Energy Agency. Overall, the group is pumping 790,000 barrels a day below its publicly stated targets, said the Paris-based watchdog, which advises industrialized nations on energy.
[...]
OPEC+ cut its production deeply in early 2020 by a collective 9.7 million barrels a day, equivalent to about 10% of global demand at the time. The group has since agreed to restore 6.4 million barrels a day of those cuts. It has promised to further increase output each month by 400,000 barrels a day until the group is back at pre-Covid-19 pumping levels.
[...]
In December, Nigeria, a top African producer, pumped 460,000 barrels a day below its quota, after a malfunctioning barge triggered the shutdown of a major export terminal. In Angola, technical issues and a lack of investment have sent production to 17-year lows.

Last month, Russia pumped below its OPEC+ quota for the first since the group cut output. It had promised to boost output in the month by 20,000 barrels a day, but instead cut output by 10,000 barrels a day, the IEA said, blaming slower-than-expected development of some fields. A Russian Energy Ministry spokesman said he couldn’t immediately comment.

The IEA cut Iraq’s sustainable capacity estimates by 140,000 barrels a day due to lingering bottlenecks in aging southern infrastructure. Pipelines are frequently targeted by insurgents or fail due to lack of maintenance. In the most recent outage, a key oil pipeline to Turkey was knocked out by an explosion blamed on a falling pylon.

Those and other obstacles leave Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. as the world’s only major producers with sizable spare capacity, about 3.25 million barrels a day, according to the IEA.

Since 2014 Russia has always, as far as I know, opposed production cuts, even when the OPEC loosening in 2014-15 dovetailed with sanctions to cause considerable stress to the Russian economy. It took some conflict with the Saudis at the beginning of the pandemic for Russia to agree to a cut. The Saudis are set to return to pre-pandemic quotas in a few months under current protocol. Record profit margins are a more likely barrier to dipping into their limited spare capacity than some secret pact with Russia.

All that tells me they didn't expect this will be an "quick in an out" operation, like the one that happened in Crimea. Ukraine is a huge country with a large population, and most of that population is very anti-Russian at the moment. They knew that Ukraine has been upgrading their army and had NATO equipment and instructors, for years now. I do not think anyone was naive enough to think this would be quick and easy.

It would be naive to overestimate the minds of autocrats.

Here's a bit from Putin's latest address:
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status...16136966828043 [video]

Yes, undoubtedly, they will try to wager on a so-called fifth-column, on national traitors, on those who make money here, with us, but live there. Live there not even in a geographical sense of the word, but by their intentions, by their slavish consciousness. I'm not talking about those who have villas in Miami or the French Riviera [*wink wink*], who can't get by without foie gras, or so-called gender freedoms. The problem is absolutely not in that. I repeat, it's that many of such people, by their essence [?], find themselves namely there, but not here with our people. Not with Russia. This is, by their opinion - by their opinion - a sign of membership in a higher caste, a higher race. Similar people are ready to sell their dear mother if only for permission to sit in the entry hall of this uppermost caste. And they want to resemble it, in every way imitate it. But they either forget or don't understand at all, that this so-called higher caste, if it even needs them, then only as consumables, so as to utilize them for the carrying through of maximal damage to our people.

Well, it will probably be based on verification. After demilitarization, it would be impossible for Ukraine to increase their combat capabilities without Russia knowing about it. That would include tight limits on foreign military involvement.
Most importantly for Russia, that would certainly include Ukraine being legally forbidden from allowing any NATO military equipment on its territory.

Such treaties are usually in effect as long as they are enforceable. So, we can probably expect it will for sure be in effect for at least a few decades, and after that it will depend on the balance of power in the region and the world.

Ukraine's military is the only thing protecting it from Russia, so it seems highly unlikely that they will concede to demilitarization. NATO neutrality on the other hand was always on the table, and even more so now, because if Ukraine can throw off Russia without NATO's direct intervention (assuming this remains the case), why would they need to join NATO?