[archive] why is russia "losing"

 The purpose of the very limited russian involvement in eastern Ukraine is probably not to win the war, but rather to keep it going forever, on as low a level as possible. As long as Ukraine does not control it’s own territory, it cannot apply for membership of EU or NATO.

Fake news 

Ukraine exaggerating Russian involvement

Very simple - people don't want to fight for anything other than freedom of their own country.

Russian military is fighting for money, they are officially either sacked from the army or "on holiday", once they die, no one cares about their bodies.

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There is no distinguished border between “pro-Russian” and “pro-Ukrainian” territories. Even in the westmost parts of Ukraine there are pro-Russian people and in the eastern part there are (or at least were before the war) pro-Ukrainian people.

Even more: people are not born pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian, 15–20 years ago even in Kyiv there was some hostility towards western Ukraine. And if Ukraine lets Russia take Donetsk, I would expect that a number of separatists in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv etc. will also grow. And that means that the war will spread further. The only way to end the war is to make all the parties respect the borders established in 1991.

Any polls you would see from Crimea/Donbas presently go through a double prism of a) Russian hate propaganda which constitutes their only access to information, b) Russian artificial fake reporting.

That would be a good idea. But Luhansk, Donetsk republics together with Russia, Ukraine and European OSCE has signed the Minsk Protocol meaning they should be a part of Ukraine with extended autonomy SMS ther right tio keep their language.

Zelensky however doesn't follow the protocol cause he is pressured by neo nazi groups like Azovs company who might create another revolution if not satisfied, and continues the war in east.

Mmmm, natural resources…?

The East is rich with coal and metals, but mostly coal. It was the coal cradle of USSR and losing that territory would mean massive revenue losses for Ukraine.

Russian side

Ukrainian are nazis

[archive] Putin , Ukraine

 "A few thoughts on the Tucker-Putin interview:

Having watched the interview last night, I've been very interested in seeing the reaction here on this site. A lot of people have focused on 'Putin as an autistic history nerd' (good memes here), while others have stuck to variations on 'look how his history is a lie and bizarre and strange' or 'he whiffed the PR opportunity and didn't give MAGA anything.' 

Ok. The former is funny, the middle is standard signaling and positioning, and the latter is US politics brain. Fine! But there's really tremendous data in here if we want to look seriously. Some points below. 

First, the most important thing is indeed the half-hour history lesson. Not only did Putin start with this, and refuse to be interrupted, he even made a big show of gifting documents supporting his arguments to Tucker. What this tells us is that the history component to the Russo-Ukrainian War is not just a point of legitimation or a general casus belli, but the motivating factor for VVP personally. That's really big! 

I've argued for a year now that we should understand the proximate cause of the war to be Vladimir Putin's deepening historical obsessions, his sense of personal grievance, and the unique isolation that allowed this to fester in the runup to 2022. You can find an article making that case here: ridl.io/putin-s-agency…. If you've taken my undergraduate course on Russian Politics, it's there as well. This interview is strong supporting data for that framing. Note how often Putin dismisses NATO expansion as the reason for action, as well as how much he does not care about Ukrainian democracy qua democracy. He doesn't even think it is a democracy (note the coup discussions). 

Rather, he's clearly motivated - then and now - by historical concerns most of all. And this is important, which some observers may not quite get. He was not always like this! That is, the long rants about history that justify political action have become more and more common in the last ten years, and especially the last four or five. Which fits a model of growing obsession - which, incidentally, also aligns well with Putin's post-2012 sense that only he can stably rule Russia, and that he wants to bequeath a legacy. Tucker wasn't able to get an answer to the core question - why 2022 and not earlier - but this is good material for a obsession interpretation. 

Second, another element that came out strongly was Putin's sense of personal insult and snubbing. He is butthurt by his world leader colleagues. We have dozens of minutes of him talking about the Bushes, about documents signed by the French and Germans, about negotiations generally - all of which end with Russia not getting what was promised or it expected. That could be read simply as justification for Russia's actions (i.e., the hypocrisy of the West) but what is mostly communicated, verbally and through body language, is that Putin himself feels slighted, and that he does not understand why others do not see the world, and the consequences of events, as clearly as he does. This is also quite interesting. 

There is very little reason to believe this interview is anything less than the sincere views of Putin himself, as a smarter-than-average Russian boomer who is trying to explain why he's right, why he's been aggrieved, and why the other sides are just so stupid and shortsighted. He's booming really hard, it's very evident. He's not sharing everything, but he's telling you that he's not sharing everything with a knowing, paternalistic smile while he says it. And he really wants to get it through your thick skull what actually matters. Rurik, Yaroslav the Wise, 1654, Bohdan Khmelnitsky, the Soviet Union and the border changes, leaders just not being reasonable, etc etc. 

Third, I don't think we can understand this interview as some sort of functionalist strategic communication exercise at all. VVP clearly did not care to talk about US political issues, he did not "throw red meat to MAGA" or whatever, he did not rise to the bait several times to get on a cleaner messaging narrative that would sell with an international audience of illiberal or West-skeptical types. At all! It was the above, which means this interview was about what Vladimir Putin himself thought rather than what he thought would sell best. That's incredibly unusual for an interview like this.  

We didn't get anything about cancel culture, or gender ideology, or Biden being senile, or the US being this evil tentacled hegemon that threatens global peace. He was actually incredibly circumspect on that sort of thing. Much more so than in other venues in the recent past. This was Putin as pedagogue-in-chief, trying to educate Tucker not only about history, but also about how the world actually works. Look to the wandering discussion on the Orange Revolution, Yanukovych, the various negotiations, for that. The personal resentment comes out here in a distinct way, as disappointment and confusion as to why other international partners just don't get it the way VVP does. 

Truly, the most framed or set-up part of this interview was the point about the spring 2022 negotiations (note his arg that instead of the Battle of Kyiv being lost, it was a part of a negotiation that got cut short by Johnson's intervention - an interesting assertion). And Tucker got him to talk about future potential negotiations as well. That was also enlightening, as it reiterated Putin's world-weary points that the other side doesn't get it and is stubborn, and that there is a 'reasonable' way out if only leaders would be clear-eyed. 

This is important to keep in mind, especially as Putin seems quite confident the war is going well enough that he can just wait for negotiations to inevitably appear. Also note his regular recourse to proceduralism - negotiations are detailed, complicated, have many moving parts. The bureaucratic KGB and legal background always shines through with Putin at the end of the day. 

Finally, as I've noted, this interview was pretty strange. Tucker tried to move things in a way that fit his own views (NATO expansion, the 'who runs the US' question, demonic forces on earth (?)), which was pretty cringe. But he actually did a decent job overall (sorry!). He asked about Gershkovich and pushed fairly hard all things considered, he got steamrolled by VVP but managed to barely hold on given the very meandering discussion (Putin's framing of 2004 and 2013-14 is genuinely difficult to understand if you don't already know the events quite well), he didn't crash the interview so bad that it ended early, he figured out he had a unique opportunity to let Putin talk, and in doing so he provided us a unique window into VVP. 

It turns out that Putin says the same thing to Tucker as he does to Ru journos, with even more Putinsplaining. Which is illuminating! The history thing is the real deal, as is his belief that negotiations (in Russia's favor and in accordance with Putin's own sense of what is reasonable) are possible. Both of these things are really important for us to get at analytically. "

My notes:

-to follow-

[archive]

 It's becoming clearer and clearer that we're looking at a seismic shift in the US's relationship with the world, between:

1) The US dismantling its foreign interference apparatuses (like USAID 👇)

2) Marco Rubio stating that we're now in a multipolar world with "multi-great powers in different parts of the planet" (state.gov/secretary-marc…) and that "the postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us" (foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…)

3) The tariffs on supposed "allies" like Mexico, Canada or the EU

This is the US effectively saying "our attempt at running the world is over, to each his own, we're now just another great power, not the 'indispensable nation'."

It looks "dumb" (as the WSJ just wrote) if you are still mentally in the old paradigm but it's always a mistake to think that what the US (or any country) does is dumb.

Hegemony was going to end sooner or later, and now the U.S. is basically choosing to end it on its own terms. It is the post-American world order - brought to you by America itself.

Even the tariffs on allies, viewed under this angle, make sense, as it redefines the concept of "allies": they don't want - or maybe rather can't afford - vassals anymore, but rather relationships that evolve based on current interests.

You can either view it as decline - because it does unquestionably look like the end of the American empire - or as avoiding further decline: controlled withdrawal from imperial commitments in order to focus resources on core national interests rather than being forced into an even messier retreat at a later stage.

In any case it is the end of an era and, while the Trump administration looks like chaos to many observers, they're probably much more attuned to the changing realities of the world and their own country's predicament than their predecessors. Acknowledging the existence of a multipolar world and choosing to operate within it rather than trying to maintain an increasingly costly global hegemony couldn't be delayed much further. It looks messy but it is probably better than maintaining the fiction of American primacy until it eventually collapses under its own weight.

This is not to say that the U.S. won't continue to wreak havoc on the world, and in fact we might be seeing it become even more aggressive than before. Because when it previously was (badly, and very hypocritically) trying to maintain some semblance of self-proclaimed "rules-based order", it now doesn't even have to pretend it is under any constraint, not even the constraint of playing nice with allies. It's the end of the U.S. empire, but definitely not the end of the U.S. as a major disruptive force in world affairs.

All in all this transformation may mark one of the most significant shifts in international relations since the fall of the Soviet Union. And those most unprepared for it, as is already painfully obvious, are America's vassals caught completely flat-footed by the realization that the patron they've relied on for decades is now treating them as just another set of countries to negotiate with.

Logic

For logic to become perfect, we assume that logic and rationality would arrive at a conclusion that would be beneficial to the real world. Using pure logic to deal with situations without presence of empathy or emotions can lead to factually correct but realistically damaging decisions. 

We live in a world of unknown. Too many variables important to consider when making decisions, and sometimes it's even hard to see what variables to look for until it blows up on our face. Henry Brighton, a cognitive science and artificial intelligence professor at Tilburg University adds that, 'in a real-world setting, most truly important decisions rely at least in part on subjective preferences. Perfect logic exists, but this is only useful if the results would be beneficial.' We only use logic to justify the decision, and largely rely on unquestioned instincts to make choices. As even the most accurate, factually perfect logic can't deal with the social aspect of humans, in that social implications greatly impact a resolution. “Even if a decision seems to bring a benefit, if it is ill-judged by others, then there’s a cost,”.

Instinct, emotions are for the most part what humans use when making decisions. "Facts on their own don’t tell you anything,” (says Mercier) “It’s only paired with preferences, desires, with whatever gives you pleasure or pain, that can guide your behavior. Even if you knew the facts perfectly, that still doesn’t tell you anything about what you should do.”

Ref.

Goldhill, O. (2022, July 20). Humans are born irrational, and that has made us better decision-makers. Quartz. https://qz.com/922924/humans-werent-designed-to-be-rational-and-we-are-better-thinkers-for-it

BISTEK Recipe

RECIPE FOR BISTEK 

Ingredients:

500g beef sirloin or round, thinly sliced

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons calamansi juice (or lemon juice)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 large onion, sliced into rings

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 tablespoons cooking oil

1/4 cup water (optional, for more sauce)

Salt to taste

Instructions:

1. Marinate the Beef:

In a bowl, combine beef, soy sauce, calamansi juice, garlic, and black pepper.

Marinate for at least 30 minutes (or overnight for deeper flavor).

2. Cook the Onions:

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan over medium heat.

Sauté the onion rings until they are soft and slightly caramelized.

Remove and set aside.

3. Cook the Beef:

In the same pan, add the remaining oil.

Remove beef from the marinade (reserve the marinade) and fry until browned.

Once all beef is cooked, pour in the reserved marinade and add water if desired.

Simmer for about 10–15 minutes or until beef is tender and the sauce is slightly reduced.

4. Final Touch:

Add the cooked onion rings back into the pan.

Adjust salt to taste and simmer for another 2–3 minutes.

5. Serve.