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[mainiac]

As I said before the best solution for Ukraine is to sell Crimea to Turkey. You say it's illegal to sell territory without asking the population first? Pfff. We'll let Turkery to hold the referendum, sometime later. After they deport Russians away. It worked in Abkhazia when they forced Georgians away

I really hope this is a joke.

[palsch]

Moscow correspondent of the WaPo does an AMA. In case anyone wanted to get a look at the thinking of a western journalist living in Russia.

A few interesting answers there, but this one jumped out at me;

Does Russia really believe the uprising was provoked? Or are they using that as justification for their actions, which are actually driven by other motives?

No, I think this is one place where Western diplomats and commentators often slip up. They say things like: Putin can't possibly believe that, can he? Yes, I do think Russia believes the uprising was provoked by the EU and the US. The appearance of top US and EU politicians and diplomats on the square during the uprising (Victoria Nuland, John McCain, Catherine Ashton, and many others) only served to reinforce the Kremlin's suspicions.

[XXSockXX]

A few interesting answers there, but this one jumped out at me;

Does Russia really believe the uprising was provoked? Or are they using that as justification for their actions, which are actually driven by other motives?

No, I think this is one place where Western diplomats and commentators often slip up. They say things like: Putin can't possibly believe that, can he? Yes, I do think Russia believes the uprising was provoked by the EU and the US. The appearance of top US and EU politicians and diplomats on the square during the uprising (Victoria Nuland, John McCain, Catherine Ashton, and many others) only served to reinforce the Kremlin's suspicions.

Well, I think one thing we learned in this thread too is that the Russian perspective on these events is very different from the Western one. Of course we can dismiss that as propaganda, but the fact remains that many people believe it. Maybe there is really a need for a fact finding mission, to get to a narrative that is acceptable to both sides, but I doubt that will work with the biases and distrust on both sides here.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

About 'russian thinking'.
While it is horribly pretentious to try and do this, I will anyway.


With what misko said earlier in mind:

So, on a more, analytical note, the news from FreedomLand:

I've noticed two broad narratives in the US about Putin, what he wants, why he invades, and what can solve the crisis (well sorta). They are broad yet coherent, and have both negative and positive things to say about Putin (though it leans negative, shockingly). Here is a bit of my armchair analysis (the only way to analyze news).

I've euphemistically divided these into "Putin the Wolf", and "Putin the Bear". Remember, these aren't value judgments (although they do lend themselves to them), this is just me describing what they see.

Spoiler: Putin the Wolf (click to show/hide)

This theory is based overwhelmingly on a rejection of Putin's justifications, and has him as a cynical, calculating opportunist who is more concerned with what he can do for Russia then events in Ukraine. In this version, he loses Ukraine; but, determined to carve something out of his unexpected failure, he takes advantage of Pro-Russian sentiment to launch a coordinated attack aimed at ensuring his influence; whether it be over all of Ukraine, the Eastern part, or only Crimea, and whether it be through mere influence to outright annexation. Even if he loses the west, this Putin can still be satisfied with Crimea.

Here, he is not monolithically concerned on Ukraine in and of itself, but wants it as part of his efforts to strengthen Russia, and himself. Under this narrative, he is taking advantage of the inherent slowness of western governments to blindside them and leave them one step behind, allowing him to weather their counter-measures. The positive aspect of this is that his realism means he has more then once concern; if Ukraine turned out to be too costly, through diplomatic, economic, militarily, etc, he would be moved to de-escalate, if it wasn't already his plan. The negative aspect is this Putin is cunning, and has an advantage in any engagements whether diplomatic or otherwise.

An interesting side-note: There are two sub-narratives to this, regarding blame for diminishing the costs Putin see in intervention vs. the benefits. One (preferred by Republicans) has Obama's weak leadership to blame; the US disengaging from the world, especially in places like Syria, let Putin think he could act with impunity, and imagines the US ceding diplomatic room to Putin. The second blames the EU; faulting their timidity and poor negotiating for causing the crisis in the first place, and highlights their economic dependence (esp. Germany, which indeed is the most diplomatic to Russia of the EU nations) as the reason Putin does not fear economic backlash (the US, which has already started sanctions, and continues planning actions against individuals and the state, trades much less with Russia, and has less bite).

Spoiler: Putin the Bear (click to show/hide)

This narrative is more interesting: it takes Russian justification at more or less face value, but links it to Putin's dreams of Russia's glorious return to dominance and a special place in World Politics. It takes it's cue from Putin's famous remarks on the old Soviet Union:

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory.

Putin is here motivated not by blind cost-benefit analysis, but more like a romantic longing for the old power that Russia held for so many years. Often, this is linked more to the 19th century then the 20th; to the sort of glorious imperium once ruled by the czars of old. Here, Putin saw he was losing Ukraine, the kindred people to his Russia, to the west which has scorned Russia so.

This Putin is more irrational, more devoted, and less movable. He will not under any circumstance disengage from Ukraine totally; the costs to him would be too great. The barest minimum would be strong influence over the new government, but he would likely want to settle for much more. Here, invading the east of Ukraine or annexing Crimea are far, far more likely, and even the whole of Ukraine is not impossible. Economic sanctions and diplomacy are almost irrelevant unless he thinks he will win enough, and he doesn't. The idea of Russians, ethnic Russians, the people he governs, would be taken by the corrupt west is too much. He will not let the west win here, so close to home; how could he imagine himself the leader of a new Russia if he can't even keep Ukraine under his wing? Letting Russian people turn their back on him, he won't let it.

The positive aspects is this Russia will concede to anything as long as protects it's bases, is far less happy about alienating the rest of Ukraine, and more likely in the long term to fail (sorry pro-putininites, but it's true). The negative aspect is he is more likely to attack, more likely to conquer, and more likely to disregard the west

Anyway,the US government is disorganizedly planning all sorts of measures, with Obama organizing sanctions against Russian individuals, and Congress scrambling to press sanctions against Russia itself and others, possibly through an expansion of the Magnitsky Act, which froze assets of Russians involved with human rights violations, and by aiding Ukraine directly, through loan guarantees and direct aid and such things.

My impression is more of the wolf, after all it's his job as a politician to be cunning, he's ex-KGB and everything, and intelligence agencies don't hire for sentimentality.
However, I think the alternate impression of 'the bear' can be construed because that's more reflective of the Russian people themselves, (can any ruskies on here offer their opinion on this?). And Putin, being the wolf, taps into this latent nationalistic feeling of the general population for the brownie points.
So in Russia he's viewed as the bear, just like the culture at large, and the lipservice he pays to this alternate image confuses analyses of his character.
tl;dr- He's a wolf in bear's clothing.

Am I onto something here or should I lurk more?

[palsch]

Well, I think one thing we learned in this thread too is that the Russian perspective on these events is very different from the Western one. Of course we can dismiss that as propaganda, but the fact remains that many people believe it. Maybe there is really a need for a fact finding mission, to get to a narrative that is acceptable to both sides, but I doubt that will work with the biases and distrust on both sides here.

One thing you will find with that is you need to go very deep to create the relative context.

You will notice in this thread that nearly everyone believes their own politicians are utterly incompetent. This is easy when you have to live with them. It's pretty hard to believe the clowns who are utterly failing to accomplish anything of merit on the local scale (read, any government ever) could pull of grand conspiracies and plots on the international scale. It's much easier to believe that about foreign leaders.

So it's easy for, say, a Russian to believe that Putin is a fool but has his heart in the right place and is taking actions he was forced into by western intervention in Ukraine. At the same time they might believe that Obama is playing a masterful game of 3 dimensional chess and elegantly set up the downfall of the Ukrainian government to install a NATO puppet, revoke Russian access to the Black Sea and oppress Russian speakers in Crimea.

At the same time believing such a thing is considerably harder for people who have watched Obama trying and failing to, say, shutdown a single prison over the course of six years (or pass a budget, or set up a healthcare website), but who are far more willing to believe that an ex-KGB agent is the architect of a scheme to establish a new greater Russia by establishing Russian populations he then has to move in to 'protect' once they are 'threatened' by western liberal values.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Woo polarizing media. Most everyone is competent and are dealing with other competent people. Extremes are a result of biased media/political science.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyone read the books Gai-jin or Tai-pan? While the former is rather bad and they're both dripping with the author's political & cultural biases, I found they gave me a better grasp of how politics/business works behind the scenes.

[XXSockXX]

-snip-

Yes, that is generally what I meant earlier when I said that it is difficult to voice a differentiated viewpoint when people on both sides think the other side is basically the devil.
I don't think for example the EU acted all that clever in this whole chain of events, starting with the trade agreement that forced Yanukovych to decide which side to pick. I do trust however that my own politicians do have good intentions overall and do not seek an actual conflict. Of course if you reject that basic premise and attribute any outcome that could be explained by incompetence to evil imperialistic intentions, it's very hard to get to a common point of view.
Of course the distrust goes both ways, the "West" has a very hard time to trust Putin and Russia in general too, so why should it be different the other way round. How we could come to a better mutual understanding, I don't know. In times of crisis that's harder than ever.

-snip-

I don't fully buy either explanation, though I tend to agree a bit more with the "bear" interpretation. The old block thinking, nationalism, hurt pride and everything are a major factor in this. Putin is probably trying to restore some of Russia's lost imperial glory, but he may very well feel genuinely deceived and threatened by the West.
I don't think he really wants a war with Ukraine, that wouldn't have popular support in Russia, but he feels right to employ methods that we perceive as aggression, and feels justified to do so because he perceives many things the West (and the US specifically) have been doing in the last decades as the same thing.

[palsch]

Yes, that is generally what I meant earlier when I said that it is difficult to voice a differentiated viewpoint when people on both sides think the other side is basically the devil.

It's less about believing the other side is evil and more that we are likely to overestimate the competence (and so likely hood of conspiracy theories and deep plots involving) foreign leaders while underestimating the competence of our own.

It's entirely possible that the same effect influences people who support foreign leaders over their own, or who distrust local media while taking foreign state media as gospel. Saw a fair amount of this with people citing Russia Today as a trusted news source over the last year. Seems to be fading out again now.


But my point is that's one of the deep biases you would have to account for in any attempt to create a "narrative that is acceptable to both sides". It's as much cultural context as any clear bias. And only one secondary aspect of such context which is still a gross generalisation.

[XXSockXX]

It's less about believing the other side is evil and more that we are likely to overestimate the competence (and so likely hood of conspiracy theories and deep plots involving) foreign leaders while underestimating the competence of our own.

It's entirely possible that the same effect influences people who support foreign leaders over their own, or who distrust local media while taking foreign state media as gospel. Saw a fair amount of this with people citing Russia Today as a trusted news source over the last year. Seems to be fading out again now.


But my point is that's one of the deep biases you would have to account for in any attempt to create a "narrative that is acceptable to both sides". It's as much cultural context as any clear bias. And only one secondary aspect of such context which is still a gross generalisation.

Well, realistically you could only have the leading politicians on both sides agreeing to a common viewpoint. I don't think this is possible on a scale much beyond that. There are multiple interpretations in the press coverage alone, and that does not account by far for the multitude of opinions people tend to have, some of which are pretty outlandish (and that is only what I've read or heard locally, not accounting for the rest of the world).

[Knit tie]

Any news so far?

[GlyphGryph]

Ukrainian PM has declared Crimean Parliament illegitimate.

Considering most of the parliament that was elected isn't actually allowed to the participate, and unknown individuals who are currently making it up have decided to entirely side with Russia 100% no matter the outcome of the referendum, this is... unsurprising.

Not sure if that's new?

[Dutchling]

At a news conference Thursday, Temirgaliev said, "From today, as Crimea is part of the Russian Federation, the only legal forces here are troops of the Russian Federation, and any troops of the third country will be considered to be armed groups with all the associated consequences."

Note that Temirgaliev is a Ukranian/Crimean/Tartar of the Party of Regions, and not a Russian official.

[XXSockXX]

Since the Crimean parliament does not accept the government in Kiev either, declaring it illegitimate is unlikely to have any effect. The US and EU have condemned the Crimean referendum (now scheduled for March 16) about joining Russia, but that is unlikely to have any effect either.
No big news elsewhere either.
There are some very mild EU sanctions against Russia now, talks continue with little outcome so far. The proposed contact group hasn't been established yet.
The US has moved a few fighter planes to Lithuania and Poland, which both serves to calm down the worried Baltic states and to do a bit of sabre-rattling on the NATO side.
Tymoshenko and Klitschko have asked the West for stronger measures, but I don't know how realistic that is at this point. Klitschko talked about Ukraine joining the EU and NATO, that seems far in the future right now to me.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Any news so far?

Not much. Starring matches continue. Crimean Parliament keep passing absurd decision and so on

But my friend said that he witnessed Ukrainian column that includedBM30s moving from the West to either Crimea or Eastern borders.  Quite worrisome I'd say. That means that Ukrainian army doesn't count out that serious large scale fighting will begin. BM30s aren't for police actions or defending bases. Those are for creating moon landscapes

[Helgoland]

There are some very mild EU sanctions against Russia now, talks continue with little outcome so far. The proposed contact group hasn't been established yet.

These sanctions, however, come with a timeline: If Russia won't cooperate in the next few days, the sanctions will be expanded to include travel restrictions and the freezing of bank accounts; if the crisis persists, economic sanctions will be deployed.