Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Official Thread)
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- Start date
Imagine getting rid of Putin and getting an even worse replacementthink short term, brehs...
imagine not having to worry about Russia.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Imagine getting rid of Putin and getting an even worse replacement
Russia is a shell of what the world thought it was so idk if that even matters
but at the same time, those nukes and still nukesPutin = Hitler
Putin's Lebensraum | by Sławomir Sierakowski & Irena Grudzińska Gross - Project Syndicate
Putin's Lebensraum
Irena Grudzińska Gross: What are the reasons for the war?
Sławomir Sierakowski: The reasons are mostly found in Russia’s political culture and the personality of the leader. In Russia, much depends on the leader, hardly anything on institutions. And when we speak of Russia’s political culture, we need to think about ideologies that have been formulated within Russia – a country where political manifestos still matter. Some of the defining ones today were written by Vladislav Surkov, an influential ideologue of “sovereign democracy.” Some were delivered by Putin in his speeches at the 2007 Munich Security Conference and the 2008 NATO-Russia Summit in Bucharest.
Jeffrey Frankel says the surprisingly potent measures will severely damage the country’s economic and geopolitical prospects.
The world did not believe what it heard on those occasions, because Putin’s ideas were so out of bounds. But the message was clear: Russia is a country whose existence and meaning depends on the feeling of dignity, and dignity comes from claiming territory and being able to inspire respect (that means fear) in others.
Hence the creation, through Russia’s military, of dependent little territories like South Ossetia (in Georgia), Transnistria (in Moldova), and Donbas (in Ukraine). Russia is heavily invested in these statelets, despite already occupying one-seventh of the Earth’s land surface. The late Harvard historian Richard Pipes wrote that the Russian tradition reaches back to the Mongol conquest and stems from Russia’s territorial openness. Orthodox Christianity in the Russian, gnostic version, too, is an all-or-nothing religion – excessive respect for tradition combined with bloody revolutionary zeal. There is no independent social group like the nobility in Poland or the bourgeoisie in Western Europe.
That’s the political culture. As for the leader, he has surprised us to a certain extent because he comes from the KGB. As in judo (which he loves), Putin constantly seeks to turn the enemy’s force against itself. That is why he is constantly launching cyberattacks, influencing elections, and so forth.
Until the invasion, it seemed that Putin would stick to these methods, given that they have proven so successful in dividing the European Union, pacifying NATO, and isolating and bribing individual countries. By starting a war, he went for broke. We are surprised that he went with such a traditional method of waging war. Obviously, his time in power has entered a new phase. After starting with modernization, he focused on securing his power by building a police state. Now he is seeking to maintain his power in history, placing himself among the fathers of the old empire. With this shift, all rational calculations (at least by our understanding) have been abandoned.
Deranged History
IGG: That describes the 30,000-foot view of his actions, but how does it look on the ground?
SS: In all of Putin’s speeches and manifestos, the point of reference is White Russia, not the USSR. This point is generally missed, because people focus on his line about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. But Putin is interested in White Russia, in a Russia comprising all Russian lands: Russky Mir. Though he once consideredallowing Ukraine to go its own way, he changed his mind after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004-05. Maidan in Red Square became his nightmare. Remember, when Putin talks about Ukraine and Ukrainians, he is thinking primarily about Russians living in Russia.
In Putin’s view, Ukraine was created from parts of neighboring countries – primarily Russia but also Poland and Romania. The rest of the “traditionally Russian” lands were given to Ukraine by the Communists. He has always put the following choice before Ukraine: territorial integrity for loyalty to Russia. In his eyes, the Ukrainians broke this contract and can now no longer expect Russia to respect their borders.
IGG: Does that mean that the war will stop at Ukraine? His speech launching the invasion seemed to suggest that it was a war against the United States. He didn’t even mention Ukraine until the middle of it.
SS: Putin is obsessed with the US, and his paranoia deepened during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Obama scrapped plans to build a missile-defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, but he did not withdraw from other NATO efforts. This was not lost on the Kremlin, which sincerely believes that NATO could attack Russia. Putin’s thinking is that there is no neutrality: people are either with you or they are against you. And if someone is right next to you, you have the right to dictate what they do. We are not hypocrites, Putin would say. We tell the truth, unlike the West. We will defend the world order, but we want the world order to be based on spheres of influence.
IGG: So, Putin won’t stop with Ukraine?
SS: There is one simple rule in Russian history: Moscow’s sphere ends where it is stopped last. If Poland was a Russian vassal for three centuries, why shouldn’t it be again? What has changed?
Of course, Russia will be busy with Ukraine for quite some time. But if there is a wider confrontation in which a Russia-China alliance manages to achieve some kind of advantage over the West, Russia will use that occasion to demand additional political concessions. We in Eastern Europe don’t have to wonder about it, because we were already part of the ultimatum that Putin sent to NATO in November.
Those demands concerned not only Ukraine but also Poland and the Baltic states: dismantle NATO military installations; return to the status quo ante of 1997; do not conduct military exercises without our consent. Neither the Polish president nor the prime minister reacted to this at the time.
Putin's Lebensraum | by Sławomir Sierakowski & Irena Grudzińska Gross - Project Syndicate
Putin's Lebensraum
Irena Grudzińska Gross: What are the reasons for the war?
Sławomir Sierakowski: The reasons are mostly found in Russia’s political culture and the personality of the leader. In Russia, much depends on the leader, hardly anything on institutions. And when we speak of Russia’s political culture, we need to think about ideologies that have been formulated within Russia – a country where political manifestos still matter. Some of the defining ones today were written by Vladislav Surkov, an influential ideologue of “sovereign democracy.” Some were delivered by Putin in his speeches at the 2007 Munich Security Conference and the 2008 NATO-Russia Summit in Bucharest.
Jeffrey Frankel says the surprisingly potent measures will severely damage the country’s economic and geopolitical prospects.
The world did not believe what it heard on those occasions, because Putin’s ideas were so out of bounds. But the message was clear: Russia is a country whose existence and meaning depends on the feeling of dignity, and dignity comes from claiming territory and being able to inspire respect (that means fear) in others.
Hence the creation, through Russia’s military, of dependent little territories like South Ossetia (in Georgia), Transnistria (in Moldova), and Donbas (in Ukraine). Russia is heavily invested in these statelets, despite already occupying one-seventh of the Earth’s land surface. The late Harvard historian Richard Pipes wrote that the Russian tradition reaches back to the Mongol conquest and stems from Russia’s territorial openness. Orthodox Christianity in the Russian, gnostic version, too, is an all-or-nothing religion – excessive respect for tradition combined with bloody revolutionary zeal. There is no independent social group like the nobility in Poland or the bourgeoisie in Western Europe.
That’s the political culture. As for the leader, he has surprised us to a certain extent because he comes from the KGB. As in judo (which he loves), Putin constantly seeks to turn the enemy’s force against itself. That is why he is constantly launching cyberattacks, influencing elections, and so forth.
Until the invasion, it seemed that Putin would stick to these methods, given that they have proven so successful in dividing the European Union, pacifying NATO, and isolating and bribing individual countries. By starting a war, he went for broke. We are surprised that he went with such a traditional method of waging war. Obviously, his time in power has entered a new phase. After starting with modernization, he focused on securing his power by building a police state. Now he is seeking to maintain his power in history, placing himself among the fathers of the old empire. With this shift, all rational calculations (at least by our understanding) have been abandoned.
Deranged History
IGG: That describes the 30,000-foot view of his actions, but how does it look on the ground?
SS: In all of Putin’s speeches and manifestos, the point of reference is White Russia, not the USSR. This point is generally missed, because people focus on his line about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. But Putin is interested in White Russia, in a Russia comprising all Russian lands: Russky Mir. Though he once consideredallowing Ukraine to go its own way, he changed his mind after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004-05. Maidan in Red Square became his nightmare. Remember, when Putin talks about Ukraine and Ukrainians, he is thinking primarily about Russians living in Russia.
In Putin’s view, Ukraine was created from parts of neighboring countries – primarily Russia but also Poland and Romania. The rest of the “traditionally Russian” lands were given to Ukraine by the Communists. He has always put the following choice before Ukraine: territorial integrity for loyalty to Russia. In his eyes, the Ukrainians broke this contract and can now no longer expect Russia to respect their borders.
IGG: Does that mean that the war will stop at Ukraine? His speech launching the invasion seemed to suggest that it was a war against the United States. He didn’t even mention Ukraine until the middle of it.
SS: Putin is obsessed with the US, and his paranoia deepened during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Obama scrapped plans to build a missile-defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, but he did not withdraw from other NATO efforts. This was not lost on the Kremlin, which sincerely believes that NATO could attack Russia. Putin’s thinking is that there is no neutrality: people are either with you or they are against you. And if someone is right next to you, you have the right to dictate what they do. We are not hypocrites, Putin would say. We tell the truth, unlike the West. We will defend the world order, but we want the world order to be based on spheres of influence.
IGG: So, Putin won’t stop with Ukraine?
SS: There is one simple rule in Russian history: Moscow’s sphere ends where it is stopped last. If Poland was a Russian vassal for three centuries, why shouldn’t it be again? What has changed?
Of course, Russia will be busy with Ukraine for quite some time. But if there is a wider confrontation in which a Russia-China alliance manages to achieve some kind of advantage over the West, Russia will use that occasion to demand additional political concessions. We in Eastern Europe don’t have to wonder about it, because we were already part of the ultimatum that Putin sent to NATO in November.
Those demands concerned not only Ukraine but also Poland and the Baltic states: dismantle NATO military installations; return to the status quo ante of 1997; do not conduct military exercises without our consent. Neither the Polish president nor the prime minister reacted to this at the time.
PART 2: #11473
Threat Escalation
IGG: They didn’t take the threat seriously.
SS: Not until the invasion. But now there has been a breakthrough even in German politics. The importance of this is hard to overstate. Russia is very closely connected with Germany, not only by gas but also by history. Russian identity today is based heavily on the victory over Nazism and the subjugation and humiliation of Germany in 1945. Relations since then have resembled a kind of Stockholm syndrome, a union of the vanquished with the executioner.
But that arrangement has now broken down. Before, Germany was a friend. It kept the West from reacting too strongly to Putin’s actions; it was economically dependent on Russia; and it was pacifist and largely demilitarized. Now, Germany is rearming, and this will change its status in Russia’s geopolitical orbit. The Russians took great pride in the fact that the Germans were subservient to them there. Now, that has changed. This could hurt them a lot, and it may cause them to be even more paranoid about the West.
IGG: So, you expect the war to expand?
SS: In a classical sense, Poland and the West are not at war with Russia, because there is no direct military confrontation. But Poland is the logistical base for almost all of the world’s military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. NATO is sending Ukraine increasingly dangerous weapons. Bombs are already falling so close to Poland that they can be heard on our side of the border. Russia is not famous for its accuracy. One taboo after another is being jettisoned. Even neutral and faraway states – such as Sweden and Spain, respectively – are sending Ukraine weapons. Many former military personnel from the US, the United Kingdom, and other countries are joining the Ukrainian military. Among them are stars of previous wars, which affects the morale of the Ukrainian army.
Naturally, Russia is threatening the countries that are sending weapons to Ukraine. These moves against it will not be easy to forget, and they are multiplying by the day. We have never been closer to World War III. There is a reason why Putin reportedly has his family stowed away in a bunker in the Altai Mountains. He has been isolated from his surroundings for two years now. We know that he doesn’t use a cell phone or computer. He relies on just a few people. It is hard to say that he has a proper contact with reality.
IGG: Do you think Putin is prepared to use a nuclear weapon?
SS: Yes, of course. Putin likes to point out that his KGB file identified him as having a low propensity for risk-taking. This is a pejorative assessment in KGB terms, but he boasts about it. But he also adheres to the credo that, once a confrontation becomes inevitable, strike first.
Tellingly, Surkov just recently published a manifesto about “the end of shameless peace.” This is an old Nazi cliché from the 1920s. The idea is that the Soviet Union fell without actually losing the war with the West. It was betrayed and humiliated by liberal elites like Mikhail Gorbachev. But Russia is still a great power, and its place in the world should reflect that. It follows that Putin has the right to defend the Russian minority in other countries, just as Hitler did with respect to Germans in the Czech Sudetenland.
Remember when Obama called Russia a “regional power”? That angered Russians terribly. Surkov argues that the settlement established in the 1990s is unsustainable, that it has no structural reasons or justification, and that it does not correspond to the balance of forces – especially today, when Russia’s military is much stronger than it was back then.
The Ukrainian Moment
IGG: Putin has told the Russian people that he is trying to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Did you encounter any fascists or Nazis when you were there?
SS: This myth is similar to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – the fraudulent early twentieth-century Russian text claiming that Jews were plotting world domination. When I was in Kyiv, what I wanted most was to meet the people in power, because they were completely new to me. I had heard criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and I wanted to see if any of it was true.
I am now in touch with his team, and I have the best opinion of them. Many are former soldiers. They are very patriotic. Not even Odessa or Kharkiv (two mostly Russian-speaking cities) will submit to Russia willingly. People who know Russia – including Russians themselves – do not want to join it.
Nationalist sentiments were stronger before. Ukraine deserved this nationalist moment. Every country that is in the process of construction goes through such a moment of self-celebration. Ukraine is doing it very softly, with no nationalist party becoming preeminent. The leader of the Right Sector, constantly present in Russian propaganda during the 2019 presidential election, got only 1% of the vote.
Putin, meanwhile, is the one behaving like a Nazi. His “defense of Russians” rationale is taken straight from Hitler’s Sudeten crisis playbook. The Kremlin has deep ties not only to the criminal underworld but also to neo-Nazis. Think about the licensed opposition that was installed in Donbas under Igor Strelkov. The Wagner Group, a private company of mercenaries whom Putin has deployed in Africa and Syria, was founded by neo-Nazis. Nashi, the pro-Russian Ukrainian party, is a fascist movement. It is Kremlin ideologues like Aleksandr Dugin who are the fascists.
IGG: How should we think of Ukraine now?
SS: Today’s Ukraine, thanks to Putin’s war in Donbas, is a militarized nation. There, for the past eight years, the evening news on television has begun with news from the front. Half a million people had acquired military experience – and guns – from the ongoing war. Their Cossack identity is founded on the concept of struggle, freedom, and independence. Their fighting spirit should be no surprise.
IGG: So, Ukrainian resistance will last a long time?
SS: Not just Ukraine. Poland will also have to militarize, because it is the conduit between Ukraine and Europe. That is bad news for Polish democracy. The current illiberal government will either come to an agreement with the opposition, or it will count on Europe turning a blind eye to what it does at home because it is defending the West. The second option seems more likely to me.
History is coming back. We are all dusting off old books about world order. Intellectually, this is the most interesting moment in my life. Yet at the same time, life as we knew it has ended, especially in Poland.
IGG: That is already apparent. We now have well over 1.5 million refugees, 80% of them are women with children, and the number is growing. How will this influence Polish democracy and European democracy? The wave will spread over the entire EU.
SS: Until recently, Poland was one of the most ethnically homogeneous societies in Europe, rife with anti-refugee, anti-Ukrainian phobias. It is Putin who brought us together. For now, we have enormous enthusiasm and an almost boundless wish to help. And it’s the same throughout the EU – the outpouring of support for the refugees, from governments and ordinary people alike, has shown Europe at its best.
But it cannot last. People will get tired. The emotional economy, like the real one, is cyclical: Today’s euphoria will become tomorrow’s resentment. There will be an expectation of gratitude, a narcissism of kindness, an envy of public assistance. Perfect ground for nationalism. In Poland, what is needed is financial help from the West. Otherwise, Poland will be unable to support such a mass of new arrivals. Poland could suddenly have a 10% minority! To the extent that the refugees fan out across the EU, the impact on European democracy will depend in part on how effectively EU institutions respond to the new challenges member states must confront.
Threat Escalation
IGG: They didn’t take the threat seriously.
SS: Not until the invasion. But now there has been a breakthrough even in German politics. The importance of this is hard to overstate. Russia is very closely connected with Germany, not only by gas but also by history. Russian identity today is based heavily on the victory over Nazism and the subjugation and humiliation of Germany in 1945. Relations since then have resembled a kind of Stockholm syndrome, a union of the vanquished with the executioner.
But that arrangement has now broken down. Before, Germany was a friend. It kept the West from reacting too strongly to Putin’s actions; it was economically dependent on Russia; and it was pacifist and largely demilitarized. Now, Germany is rearming, and this will change its status in Russia’s geopolitical orbit. The Russians took great pride in the fact that the Germans were subservient to them there. Now, that has changed. This could hurt them a lot, and it may cause them to be even more paranoid about the West.
IGG: So, you expect the war to expand?
SS: In a classical sense, Poland and the West are not at war with Russia, because there is no direct military confrontation. But Poland is the logistical base for almost all of the world’s military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. NATO is sending Ukraine increasingly dangerous weapons. Bombs are already falling so close to Poland that they can be heard on our side of the border. Russia is not famous for its accuracy. One taboo after another is being jettisoned. Even neutral and faraway states – such as Sweden and Spain, respectively – are sending Ukraine weapons. Many former military personnel from the US, the United Kingdom, and other countries are joining the Ukrainian military. Among them are stars of previous wars, which affects the morale of the Ukrainian army.
Naturally, Russia is threatening the countries that are sending weapons to Ukraine. These moves against it will not be easy to forget, and they are multiplying by the day. We have never been closer to World War III. There is a reason why Putin reportedly has his family stowed away in a bunker in the Altai Mountains. He has been isolated from his surroundings for two years now. We know that he doesn’t use a cell phone or computer. He relies on just a few people. It is hard to say that he has a proper contact with reality.
IGG: Do you think Putin is prepared to use a nuclear weapon?
SS: Yes, of course. Putin likes to point out that his KGB file identified him as having a low propensity for risk-taking. This is a pejorative assessment in KGB terms, but he boasts about it. But he also adheres to the credo that, once a confrontation becomes inevitable, strike first.
Tellingly, Surkov just recently published a manifesto about “the end of shameless peace.” This is an old Nazi cliché from the 1920s. The idea is that the Soviet Union fell without actually losing the war with the West. It was betrayed and humiliated by liberal elites like Mikhail Gorbachev. But Russia is still a great power, and its place in the world should reflect that. It follows that Putin has the right to defend the Russian minority in other countries, just as Hitler did with respect to Germans in the Czech Sudetenland.
Remember when Obama called Russia a “regional power”? That angered Russians terribly. Surkov argues that the settlement established in the 1990s is unsustainable, that it has no structural reasons or justification, and that it does not correspond to the balance of forces – especially today, when Russia’s military is much stronger than it was back then.
The Ukrainian Moment
IGG: Putin has told the Russian people that he is trying to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Did you encounter any fascists or Nazis when you were there?
SS: This myth is similar to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – the fraudulent early twentieth-century Russian text claiming that Jews were plotting world domination. When I was in Kyiv, what I wanted most was to meet the people in power, because they were completely new to me. I had heard criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and I wanted to see if any of it was true.
I am now in touch with his team, and I have the best opinion of them. Many are former soldiers. They are very patriotic. Not even Odessa or Kharkiv (two mostly Russian-speaking cities) will submit to Russia willingly. People who know Russia – including Russians themselves – do not want to join it.
Nationalist sentiments were stronger before. Ukraine deserved this nationalist moment. Every country that is in the process of construction goes through such a moment of self-celebration. Ukraine is doing it very softly, with no nationalist party becoming preeminent. The leader of the Right Sector, constantly present in Russian propaganda during the 2019 presidential election, got only 1% of the vote.
Putin, meanwhile, is the one behaving like a Nazi. His “defense of Russians” rationale is taken straight from Hitler’s Sudeten crisis playbook. The Kremlin has deep ties not only to the criminal underworld but also to neo-Nazis. Think about the licensed opposition that was installed in Donbas under Igor Strelkov. The Wagner Group, a private company of mercenaries whom Putin has deployed in Africa and Syria, was founded by neo-Nazis. Nashi, the pro-Russian Ukrainian party, is a fascist movement. It is Kremlin ideologues like Aleksandr Dugin who are the fascists.
IGG: How should we think of Ukraine now?
SS: Today’s Ukraine, thanks to Putin’s war in Donbas, is a militarized nation. There, for the past eight years, the evening news on television has begun with news from the front. Half a million people had acquired military experience – and guns – from the ongoing war. Their Cossack identity is founded on the concept of struggle, freedom, and independence. Their fighting spirit should be no surprise.
IGG: So, Ukrainian resistance will last a long time?
SS: Not just Ukraine. Poland will also have to militarize, because it is the conduit between Ukraine and Europe. That is bad news for Polish democracy. The current illiberal government will either come to an agreement with the opposition, or it will count on Europe turning a blind eye to what it does at home because it is defending the West. The second option seems more likely to me.
History is coming back. We are all dusting off old books about world order. Intellectually, this is the most interesting moment in my life. Yet at the same time, life as we knew it has ended, especially in Poland.
IGG: That is already apparent. We now have well over 1.5 million refugees, 80% of them are women with children, and the number is growing. How will this influence Polish democracy and European democracy? The wave will spread over the entire EU.
SS: Until recently, Poland was one of the most ethnically homogeneous societies in Europe, rife with anti-refugee, anti-Ukrainian phobias. It is Putin who brought us together. For now, we have enormous enthusiasm and an almost boundless wish to help. And it’s the same throughout the EU – the outpouring of support for the refugees, from governments and ordinary people alike, has shown Europe at its best.
But it cannot last. People will get tired. The emotional economy, like the real one, is cyclical: Today’s euphoria will become tomorrow’s resentment. There will be an expectation of gratitude, a narcissism of kindness, an envy of public assistance. Perfect ground for nationalism. In Poland, what is needed is financial help from the West. Otherwise, Poland will be unable to support such a mass of new arrivals. Poland could suddenly have a 10% minority! To the extent that the refugees fan out across the EU, the impact on European democracy will depend in part on how effectively EU institutions respond to the new challenges member states must confront.
@∴ L'esprit de l'escalier you're should start summarizing your posts. that's a lot to read breh..
forget that this war is fought with propaganda, brehs...
i believe that the hearts and minds of US citizens are and will continue to be with Ukraine despite higher gas prices and inflation in general...to a point.
i also believe that the hearts and minds of RU citizens are and will continue to be with Putin despite inflation and sanctions...to a point.
forget about bread & circuses, brehs...
the entire Western world has streaming services, online gaming, payment apps and some level of social welfare.
Putin got no bread or circus for the people, just him at a bum ass wannabe Trump rally...
but back to the main point, even if the dems lose the midterms, Biden is still swinging the big dikk so far as international affairs go.
2 years later Biden and the dems could ride that to wins all around
yall complain about tweets.
you all complain about articles.
You all complain about long videos.
You all ask for specific time stamps on nuanced podcasts
Bruh, how do you inform yourself? IG clips? Tik toks?
is this a message board or the classified ads?
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
The orthodox angle is nothing new.
Manufacturing news.
Manufacturing news.
Its "nothing new" because I'm the first person to bring it up on here and continually proven it to the point that you're "accepting" it as obvious.
A month ago, yall couldn't say this.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Convince us
Ukraine 'Doing a Fantastic Job' of Blocking Russian Reconnaissance, Top Marine Says
Ukrainian servicemen stand guard at a military check point in Kyiv on March 16, 2022. AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES / FADEL SENNA
THREATS
Ukraine 'Doing a Fantastic Job' of Blocking Russian Reconnaissance, Top Marine Says
“I'm not sure [the Russians] have a good picture of what's in front of them.”
BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY
STAFF REPORTER
MARCH 16, 2022
The Russians are struggling with recon. That’s just one of the latest Ukraine battlefield assessments Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger gave on Wednesday.
It appears that Ukrainians are disrupting the Russians’ movements, Berger said, in part by preventing Russians from having a clear understanding of “what’s in front of them,” and confusing the invading forces.
In addition, Ukrainians are winning the “information space,” Berger said, and using the “inherent strength” of being in a defensive position against an invading force, which can be difficult to overcome, Berger said.
“I think they're proving to be very disciplined, very well trained, very well led, and very inspired,” Berger said during a Washington Post Live virtual interview with columnist and author David Ignatius.
Russian forces in Ukraine, however, have been surprisingly bad at “combined arms,” he said, referring to the military discipline of using infantry, armored units, or artillery together against an enemy. While it’s not completely clear why the Russians are struggling, Berger believes one possibility is that the “picture that Ukrainian forces are painting” for the Russians could be causing confusion.
“In other words, their effectiveness at stripping away the reconnaissance for the Russian forces–which is what Marines are very, very good at–could be part of the equation. Said another way, if you're a Russian tactical commander right now on the ground, I'm not sure they have a good picture of what's in front of them. And I think Ukraine’s doing a fantastic job of denying that,” Berger said.
Reconnaissance is a particularly elite function in the Marines Corps, and recon Marines have a somewhat legendary status, dating back to World War II. Berger said the Ukrainians are performing scouting and counter-scouting roles of recon very effectively.
Reconnaissance can be gathered about the enemy and environment through a combination of means, like scouts and surveillance drones. Each side is trying to find out how many enemy troops are in an area, where they are located, and if they are close together or spread out. The troops would use that information to make decisions.
“I think what he's saying is that the Ukrainians are doing a good job of disguising where they are so the Russian commanders can't really figure out, ‘Do I have a whole battalion of Ukrainians up ahead of me or is it just a smaller number?’” a former senior military official told Defense One.
“And so that can tend to slow down an advance by a military force, because they're not really sure of what's ahead of them…They don't want to drive into a kill zone.”
The Ukrainians also have an advantage over Russian forces because they are protecting and defending their homeland, whereas the Russians are on the attack which requires more people, the former senior military official said.
“It’s easier, again, to defend because you're just sitting there waiting for attackers to come and you can do all these things to put the attackers at a disadvantage. The attackers then have to then move into a situation, and I think that's where [Gen. Berger]'s talking about. If the Russians are unsure of what situation they're moving into, that causes them to be much more cautiou
Putin's Fascism
Putin's Fascism
On March 2, Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies published a statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It condemns “Vladimir Putin’s deliberate, coldhearted, and Orwellian abuse of the language of the Holocaust.” In Putin’s claim “that Russia must invade Ukraine to “denazify” and end a “genocide,” it finds numerous evils, including “a diversion from his own fascism” and “an expression of antisemitism.”
If Putin’s invasion has been justified in part by employing expressions of antisemitism, how does this square with the fact that Putin has made it a point to disassociate himself from the racist and antisemitic legacy of Nazism? To help decode the Russian leader’s position, it’s instructive to look at the positions espoused by Alexander Dugin, a Russian intellectual who has done much over the years to formulate what appears to now be the Kremlin’s dominant ideology. While often described in Western media as “Putin’s brain,” Dugin’s influence on Russian leaders has waxed and waned over the years. More than political influence, his major contribution has been his ability to make the geopolitical ambitions of Putin’s post-Soviet Russia intelligible.
Dugin began his intellectual career as a critic of the Soviet Union, identifying with underground nationalist and spiritual movements. Some of these groups, such as the ultranationalist Pamyat, promoted antisemitic sentiments. Eventually he disavowed these ties and emerged as a leading spokesperson for Eurasianism, a political movement that sees Russia playing a central role in the geopolitical order bridging the divide between Europe and Asia.
The French scholar Marlene Laruelle has described Dugin’s political philosophy as an attempt “to rehabilitate fascism in Russia” by stressing its nationalist orientation while disowning its associations with Nazism and racism. Tellingly, Putin’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine has exemplified this vision.
Alexander DuginWikipedia
Fascism embraces a mythic past, where the nation, once great, has experienced humiliation and loss of land, the result of weakness and decadence brought on by liberal democracy. To make up for these losses, real and supposed, fascist leaders encourage violent reassertion of previous greatness, as well as the destruction of liberal democracy in favor of a one-party state or, more typically, a single autocratic ruler who is synonymous with the nation.
In the Russian nationalist version of the mythic past, Ukraine is central. According to this mythology, there are no Ukrainians—just lost Russians living, whether they know it or not, in the heart of historic Russia. Under Putin, Russia has been harshly sexist and homophobic, familiar manifestations of fascist ideology. But Russia’s violent imperial war against a neighboring cosmopolitan democracy that it seeks to absorb is the clearest manifestation yet that its animating ideology is something akin to classical fascism.
Dugin and Putin both claim to be opposed to racism and Nazism. They insist that their primary enemy is not any one people, religion, or race, but rather “confused” cosmopolitans, liberals, and secularists. This 20th-century set of chiefly antisemitic stereotypes is also used to describe liberal democracy.
Putin has enjoyed the support of Russia’s chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, and Dugin counts right-wing Israeli Zionists among his comrades. As Dugin explained in April 2021 in the Israeli journal Dehak:
The Gaon of Vilna said: in the End of Days the main enemy will not be the husk of Ishmael [Islam] or the husk of Rome [Christianity], but rather the husk of Jacob [Jews], those who are designated as the mixed multitude, the assimilated people who, according to the Gaon of Vilna, have underwent modernization and colonization. [In the End of Days], the chief enemy of the Jewish tradition will come from its own house and not from the outside in the form of Christianity and Islam. The chief enemy … is the Jewish People. They are the chief enemy of traditional Judaism … Perhaps this is not well understood, but I think this interpretation is very important. In our own community, in a similar way, the chief enemy of the Russian nation are liberal Russians and not the representatives of other groups. ... In my opinion, it follows, we need a deep de-colonization of [the forces of modernization] from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Israel, in Russia and Europe and in the United States. In the United States this means being made free from the heavy hand of the elite-racist ultra-liberal that seeks to annihilate American values.
Here, Dugin represents himself as the champion of Judaism—or at least his conception of traditional Judaism—against the forces that would destroy it: Jews themselves. Dugin represents “traditional” Jews as those who are attached to the land of Israel. The enemy of Judaism are the assimilated, cosmopolitan Jews, those who are part of “modernization.” More generally, Dugin says that each national community’s existential threat consists of members of that community—the ones who embrace cosmopolitanism, liberalism, tolerance, and democracy.
Dugin’s appeal here is transnational—it is made to the traditionalists in every group opposed to feminism, secularism, LGBT rights, and liberal tolerance. For Dugin, the enemy of each group is to be found within its midst: those who support multicultural, liberal societies. Traditionalists can and do operate within the parameters of liberal democracy, of course. But in the new Russian fascism, traditionalism is seen as inconsistent with and opposed to liberal democracy.
Increasingly, the global far right denounces racism and antisemitism even while working to extinguish liberalism and multiculturalism. By identifying “real” Jews as the ones connected with the land—specifically Israeli nationalists—the global far right believes it is justified in its repeated use of antisemitic tropes aimed at Jewish targets.
Thus, for many in Putin’s circle, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not really Jewish. Similarly, former New York City Mayor and Donald Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani—along with Brexit backers Raheem Kassam and Andy Wigmore—have sought to challenge the Jewish identity of George Soros, in the context of attacking him for his philanthropic and political efforts. Never mind that the rabbis, the State of Israel, and Adolf Hitler would all consider Soros a Jew—“I’m more of a Jew than Soros is,” said Giuliani. That’s because for them, “real” Jews are religiously traditionalist and quintessentially nationalist—and not invested in, say, liberalism or democracy.
According to nationalists and traditionalists, liberals, cosmopolitans, and progressives undermine defined and necessary ethnic and religious identities. It is this set of values that contemporary Russian nationalism associates with democracy. Dugin’s Russian nationalism tries to appeal to what it imagines as traditionalist Jewish allies in an attempt to justify violent opposition to liberal democracy.
The Duginist invocation of traditionalism is clearly meant to appeal to members of minority groups historically targeted by fascism, above and beyond merely using them as tokens for narrow political purposes. But is Russian fascism free from racial, ethnic, gender, and religious hierarchies? Is it free from the antisemitism that is central to so many traditional European versions of fascism?
When a contemporary society’s institutions were formed under conditions of explicit discrimination, they will continue to contain practices that perpetuate various disparities, even if no one within those structures has an explicitly discriminatory attitude (a key insight of critical race theory). Far-right movements and political parties often campaign on a platform of eliminating attempts to reform or replace these discriminatory practices, as well as introducing new ones, like opposing immigrants, women’s rights, religious and sexual freedoms, and the freedom to teach history.
In a very straightforward sense, this traditionalism is not free from antisemitism. A majority of the world’s Jews still choose to live outside of Israel, and most of them would not meet Dugin’s standards of religious traditionalism. A majority of Jews, then, are Dugin’s—and Putin’s—enemies.
It is one thing to wage cultural battles within the boundaries of liberal democratic politics, which preserve minority rights and allow the regular replacement of political leaders by democratic means. Traditionalists can and often do operate within this sphere.
Fascism breaks these boundaries. In fascist ideology, liberal democracy is itself the existential threat to traditionalism. Putin’s willingness to massacre people he falsely regards as his own points to his real enemy: cosmopolitan liberal democracy.
In Putin’s ideology, it is Ukrainian liberal democratic citizenship that represents the real threat to Russian greatness. Traditionalism demands a “deep decolonization” of these modernizers everywhere, perhaps especially the Jewish ones.