Serious people are debating Putin's mental health, now. This invasion was so poorly planned and executed, it's really baffling ... unless you add in Putin maybe not playing with all of his marbles. Which, judging from the international humiliation the Russians are suffering in this fiasco, might lead a non-stable man to do something dramatic. Like actually use nukes. I mean, everything he said he'd do, he has done so far. And now he says that he is activating his nuclear weapons arsenal in preparation, and making really nasty statements about raining down destruction on anyone who gets in the way of him peeing all over Ukraine. I know I'm a drama queen and always looking for the worst, but this doesn't seem too far-fetched for the shambolic mess that the NKVD, Russia, and the ruling oligarchs have become...
Well, and debating his physical health. People who couldn't find Ukraine on a map last week are now yammering on incessantly about sunflowers. We persist in this idea of "a button" that can be "pressed." There is no button. There's a bunch of nukes, and there are a bunch of people with the training and control to turn them from implements of policy to weapons of Armageddon. I find it tiresome that the same people proudly posting Spetznaz raiding grocery stores because their supply lines are cut are the ones presuming as gospel truth that Putin can pick up a phone and end the world.
I agree there are a number of intermediaries that need to be convinced it's a good idea to push the final button to ignite the rocket with the nuclear tip ... ... but one would assume there are some similar checks and balances around deploying 200k baby-faced infantry to "exercises" on the Ukrainian border ... ... and further checks and balances before those kids are told to breach the border. All of which has happened, with clearly little preparation or forethought. So while I do hope the nukes are better secured and harder to activate, I don't have much faith in the performance art troupe that is the Russian chain of command.
There's this whole "1982 = 2022" thing people are doing right now and I'm just not having it. YOU CAN CALL TROOPS BACK. That's the whole point of the "nuclear triad" - you have bombers to spook the shit out of people, ICBMs to give irreversible first strike and subs to put fear into the hearts of people who think they might survive if they can take the other guy out first. There's a whole philosophy and policy to nuclear armageddon that no one running for election has had to think about seriously for thirty years so every fearful SOB automatically assumes no one has ever thought about. We deploy troops all the time. Troops here, troops there, troops everywhere, often to ridiculous extremes. More than that, you can't parallel park a troop carrier without it showing up on Google Maps anymore. The level of situational awareness in this our current moment is un-fucking-real from a cold war perspective. I mean, look at this shit. kk now check this out: Dude went to jail for giving that to Jane's in 1984. The information landscape now, as compared to then, is no comparison at all. We know more about North Korea now than we knew about the Soviet Union then. STRATCOM entertained the notion that there were secret missile bases under Moscow. Serious nuclear physicists wrote books about the Soviets conducting secret nuclear tests on the far side of Venus. People keep not reading this: ...despite the fact that it's a story about how 20 years of nuclear policy were shaped by measuring the shadows on the fins of missiles as taken from space. You're assuming that rolling conscripts across a border you've already disregarded "has some similar checks and balances" with ending human civilization. It's not a safe assumption to make. - WWIII - The Day After - Threads - Red Dawn - Wargames - Sum of All Fears - Hunt For Red October - Dr. Strangelove - Fail Safe fuck even - Spies Like Us Take, as their fundamental impetus for nuclear armageddon, the coarse misunderstanding of simple events. That whole "red phone" thing is more than a trope at this point, it's a goddamn legend. It's also a myth - launch authority for Soviet missiles in Cuba was with the Cubans. The fastest nuclear readiness the Soviets ever had was about 28 hours. A quarter of the Russian military is currently involved in Ukraine. This is a "demilitarization" operation from a Russian perspective, not a land war. Right now they're talking about "neutralizing intelligence facilities" while actually attacking civilian targets with cluster munitions. A big part of this is the Russian insistence that it's no big deal - which is exactly the opposite posture the Russians would take if there was a chance in hell of a nuclear attack.
TL;DR: we got one shot of a missile site we didn't understand before U-2 flights over Russia were grounded and as a consequence we increased the amount of warheads we deployed by a factor of ten over a Soviet anti-aircraft strategy to take out a bomber we never built.
Friedman's comments read as a "let's get along". Deripaska's out on a limb though. Not pulling punches. Probably highlights how close he is to America in relative terms. He probably figures of all the notorious oligarchs, he stands the best chance of permanent defection.
I would wager that 95% of the solutions within the American and European intelligence community go through the oligarchs. The general public take on this is looking at all the sticks and refusing to see the carrots. I've seen no mention of American RQ-4s calling down attacks on Russian shipping outside of intelligence Twitter, for example, and my only question about these supposed 70 MiGs theoretically headed to Ukraine is "are they going to be replaced by F35s or Eurofighters?" People are very upset that Hungary won't allow offensive weapons through its territory without recognizing that the consensus view on Hungary was they'd be Soviet again in a heartbeat. It seems to me as if the American intelligence community has been permitted to do their jobs. It makes sense; they were built against the Soviets so this is about as close to design intent as I can imagine. Someone pointed out that Biden is the first president we've had since Bush Senior with any foreign policy experience and it's kinda lookin' like American geopolitical infighting isn't going to be nearly as much of a factor as it has been recently.
I hope Sleepy Joe uses substantially all of his State of the Union to talk about the implications of Ukraine for the US and the world and shames the fuck out of the Tucker Carlson (who apparently gets featured on Russian State TV now) wing of the party. Then I hope that every democrat uses "Putin is a savvy genius" in every fucking TV ad this year. All politics isn't local when the threat is an ascendant USSR.
I dunno, Deripaska could be maneuvering in the hopes of a repeal of the U.S. sanctions specifically targeting him. I'm glad they managed to briefly mention that, good job, CNN. To first order, the oligarchs are simply reacting to their new economic predicament, surely. Deripaska, who received 2016 polling data from Manafort, might be in a boat similar to Firtash, the guy Giuliani hoped would manufacture dirt on Hunter Biden. Serves as a nice reminder that the previous administration treated Ukraine like an extra-judicial sandbox where Putin and Trump's middlemen could play.
Whatever it is, it's certainly self-serving. That's the problem with leading a pack of self-serving billionaires. As soon as they don't see it as in their personal interests to play along, the jig is up. They all saw what happened to michael khorokowski back in the day, so clearly they think that staying silent at this point is likely to be worse than that. Which says a lot.
Anyone in 2022 still saying "Why shouldn't we allow multi-multi-multi-billionaires??" is either making a bad faith argument or a total idiot. It's economic autocracy mirroring political autocracy (and vice versa), it's no wonder the two coexist so often. Kneecapping or outright eliminating democracy is the best way to allow wealth hoarding. Hopefully we can find a domestic solution to American billionaires' seeing Trump as in their personal interests before it's too late.
The ruble absolutely cratered today in what must be one of the most dramatic one-day losses for the currency of a big country in modern times. That's not sustainable. Hyperinflation is all but guaranteed if that continues. As Lenin said, the easiest way to ruin a country is to ruin its money.