re: Putin, "Victory will be ours."

Putin wants nato away from his backdoor. Same way we don't want Russia in Cuba. Sounds reasonable.

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“There will be peace when we will achieve our goals,” Putin said, repeating a frequent Kremlin line. “Victory will be ours.”

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There is no chance for peace anywhere as long as the cia and state department are funded.

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We have now sent $75 Billion to Ukraine to stop him. If we only send a few Trillion more it might slow him down. We know Zelensky is getting a lot of our money. He might be splitting some with Putin in return for moving very slowly.

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We have already slowed Putin down, in fact he’s been rolled back from his initial gains.

Well, the Russians can impose their own peace in Ukraine.

The terrain isn’t ideal for an insurgency, it won’t be easy to hide, but beyond that, I don’t think the population would support one. Ukraine will be so physically and emotionally spent when the war ends. Arestovich said recently that Ukraine has suffered more than 300k dead. How many wounded is that, 900k? And this is in a country with a prewar population between 22 to 40 million.

There was no insurgency in remnants of the Confederacy and the Germans didn’t try and fight one in 45. These were two societies that suffered similar casualty rates to what Ukraine is experiencing now.



* the last census was taken in 2001. Kiev believes the population has dropped due to emigration, but estimates vary. There’s little appetite for finding out.

** Moldova and Transnistria could be a real problem though. You could see Transnistria become Russian territory (for the second time, the Russians took it from the Ottomans in 1812) and Moldova looks like it will become a part of Romania.

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That looks like a lot of money and resources and above all lives wasted for marginal gains

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I realize this is not what you’ve read, but the war has been very good for Russia. There’s been a substantial investment in the a Russian economy, partly due to the governments own spending, but much of it is oligarch money that’s coming home. Europe is no longer a safe place for rich Russians to invest their money, so they’re investing it in Russia instead. There’s also a lot of Middle Eastern money coming in as well.

Imagine if we onshored our economy and what that would look like.

The other half, and why things are going so well, is what it’s being invested in. It’s going into Russias ability to make things. And that’s everything from high end chip manufacturing, to Russian cheese.

Unemployment is very low right now, and as the Economist put it, Russias risk is overheating the economy.

The territorial gains will also have a real benefit too. Ukraines mineral wealth and industry is in the East.

Post war Ukraine, the state that exists when the conflict ends, will be smaller and will have very little industry. Agriculture will be its greatest strength.

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they were woefully unprepared to fight.

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The Russians started modernizing their forces after the 2008 war in Georgia, and serious work began in 2012. But yes. They were not prepared for this war.

The war has been hugely beneficial for their armed services though. They will emerge as a very experienced and very dangerous force. It’s also an invaluable, you can not place a value on it, laboratory for testing and developing equipment. This will be very useful for their industry.

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What are his actual goals?

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By his own words, he wants to be the second coming of Peter the Great.

Simply calling Putin 'stupid' and 'evil' doesn't change the fact that he has very real and clear (to him) goals he wants to achieve.


Not sharing or understanding his goals doesn't make them go away either.

Trump is right to call Putin smart. Just because we don't agree with Putin's objectives doesn't mean he's some crazed tyrant. He's quite methodical and knows what he wants.

I do not come to praise Putin...