Here's an interesting discussion in the Financial Times with Timothy Snyder. I've mentioned him a few times - he's an expert scholar on Ukraine, Russia and more and thinks the west and the US have been very wrong about Putin for a long time.
The article starts by mentioning that a Ukrainian friend of Snyder's who has been documenting Russian war crimes was recently killed when Russia destroyed a restaurant in the Donbas with a missile recently.
The whole article is a great read but this is the part I would highlight:
Quote:
"Putin is really not our problem," Snyder responds. "I mean, the last 30 years have shown quite clearly that we don't actually have much ability at all to influence Russia . . . time after time we have demonstrated we don't change anything inside Russia."
He continues: "I find the Prigozhin interlude honestly quite reassuring, because it shows us that there are Russians who perfectly well understand the situation in Ukraine; that Russians are also capable of completely forgetting about Ukraine when there's a greater stress when there's an actual succession struggle going on, all they talk about is themselves.
"We drive ourselves round and round in anxious circles about what Russia is thinking about this war, and we're not letting ourselves realise that the Russians will find ways out for themselves . . . They don't need for us to have our focus groups and our studies and our exit ramps. Anthropologically speaking, our exit ramps are not applicable to their highways, if you'll forgive that stupid metaphor?"
He quickly alights on a more elegant turn of phrase: "It's two different fairy tales, as the Poles say."
In Russia, the west seems to forget it is not seeing a mirror nation-state to its own. It is a different paradigm of power altogether, driven by "Weberian notions of charismatic leadership", says Snyder.
"The thing is, Russia can't have a domestic policy," Snyder muses. "The elite have stolen all the money, all the laws are corrupted, and there's almost no social mobility or possibility of change in most Russians' lives, so foreign policy has to compensate and provide the raw material the scenography for governance."
As to the meta-discussion about this thread, I think in time the credibility of the posters will become self-evident, even if for whatever reason it hasn't already. Just like we saw the same person predicting with delusional certainty that Trump would win on election night in 2020 (and lost bets over it) and predicted in July 2020 that COVID was disappearing in Europe and that the US would follow suit in August 2020, and claimed that Damar Hamlin's career was 100% over due to a heart injury from the COVID vaccine, we will be able to evaluate who had good takes and who had bad takes in this thread.
I'm willing to stand behind my statements. I won't pretend that every single thing I've posted has turned out to be 100% true - as sycasey points out we are very much in the fog of war but I strive to only post high quality content and to include limitations where I find it appropriate. I evaluate the credibility of my sources and stick with ones who have been strong. I'm pretty careful not to make statements that I don't think are accurate (unlike the shills) and it's important to me that I not damage my credibility, even if no one else is keeping track or cares.
I don't think I've made a single wild predictions which turned out to be laughably false like the McDoofus of the Putin wing and like we've seen time and time again in this thread from Putin's guard. I haven't made very many predictions or projections at all because I don't know what will happen, certainly not to the level of specificity that the Putin guard pretends they can predict.
The war is playing out in real time and a lot of the future will depend on the level of Western support. If the US were to permit Ukraine to receive better aid (F16s, ATACMS, etc.), Ukraine's chances will improve. I don't know what will happen and neither does anyone else.
I do have some theories which I've been clear about and I'm careful to share them. There are also obvious things that I know - Putin and the Kremlin are reprehensible and that they are running a concerted and massive misinformation campaign. There really is nothing to debate there. I haven't made fanciful projections about death counts because I have no basis for doing so. I haven't ever stated what I thought the current casualty numbers are because I have no basis to do so. Other people have for reasons which I think are pretty obvious. The people doing so have in every case been amplifying Russian talking points.
We already know enough to determine who has been credible in this thread and who isn't. Unfortunately it's a massive amount of work given the volume of information shared, so I don't blame people for not doing it. That's why I put people on ignore - combating their misinformation (which they receive in firehose form) is more or less a full-time job.
But anyone paying attention can remember the Bakhmut discussion as an example. The Russian shills claimed that it was a decisive strategic win and hugely important for Russia's war efforts for reasons that they pretty much made up. Several months later, Russia has gotten no military benefit from Bakhmut and may end up losing it because Wagner isn't there to fight. Official Russian channels claimed in the wake of the Prigozhin mutiny that Bakhmut wasn't strategic and was just a vanity campaign by Prigozhin. If Ukraine retakes Bakhmut, the Russian shills will claim it didn't matter with as much force as they claimed that it mattered when Russia took it. It's not just a coincidence that they align 100% with Russian propaganda. I see this type of brazen propaganda all over the internet and I'm certain if I turned off ignore and started scrutinizing the Putin guard's posting history again, I would find it to be rife with obvious misinformation, always to the benefit of Putin and Russia. That's not worth my time and it doesn't seem like anyone really cares at this point.
I also am aware that most people don't care for or bother to read what I post here and that's perfectly fine with me. I am happy enough to be ignored. I am using this thread somewhat as a journal that I can go back and reference later to assess how I did in sharing information about this war. That's just sort of how my brain works because I find it interesting.
