Announcement made on the deck of the Moskva’s sister ship Ukraina, which has sat at dock unfinished since the end of the USSR.
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The russians are attacking Belgorod again
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Yes, I am. But I am trying to understand what makes sense from their perspective. A lot of analysis is either based on just giving up by concluding “it makes no sense” eg “Putin’s gone mad” or reaching for comfortable “common sense” explanations that have been widely agreed as applicable to previous wars.
The theory of “land grab, resources etc” still survives - mainly from US isolationists insisting the war is just a “territorial dispute”. But it simply doesn’t make much sense in the modern world.
If any Russian regime was deluded enough to think it did make sense, they could not possibly still think it does.
Yet the theory still lives on, along with others that directly contradict it such as the continuing belief that they expected a quick victory (which in fact is what Western analysts predicted - the Russian documents captured show that they were hoping to be engaged in “stablization operations” east of the Dnieper following a decapitation strike at Kyiv and advance from Donbas and along south coast and did not have a plan B for the forces deployed to Kyiv).
As Ukraine’s Armed Forces CinC Zaluzhniy said:
They wanted to take Kyiv. Militarily this was the right decision—the easiest way to achieve their goal. I would have done the same. I know Gerasimov [the head of Russia’s armed forces] well (not personally, of course). There was no way out for him. He concentrated on Donbas to preserve whatever resources he had left. As of today, the situation in Donbas is not easy. But strategically it is a no-win situation for the Russian army.
There is a vast difference between a failed operational tactic of attempting to take Kyiv quickly so as to make subsequent operations much easier against a disorganized enemy and the nearly unanimous “analysis” that they expected a quick victory (based on absolutely nothing more than the fact that they boasted of such expectations and Western analysts solemnly pontificated on the same lines).
Relying on surprise to take Kyiv could conceivably have worked, without any possibility of actually ending the war quickly. But commanders kept in the dark to preserve surprise could not prepare any plans and ended up having to retreat completely, not even able to surround and bombard Kyiv as part of the wider effort, which did continue in the Donbas and still does a year later.
Something makes sense to the regime about continuing the war, even though they now know they are fighting NATO, not just Ukraine, and were not expecting that.
The theories advanced to explain why they are doing so, whether based on delusions of imperial grandeur, grabing land and resources or just being “insane” simply do not explain why they don’t just give up now.
It is becoming increasingly accepted that Putin’s fate is tied to the war. To a much lesser extend the survival of the regime itself is coming into question. The recent Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs statement was less unequivocal than the headlines:
Regime change in Moscow ‘definitely’ the goal, Joly says, as Canada bans Russian steel, aluminum imports
But such distorted headlines are themselves part of a changing public perception of what is necessary and possible. It looks like there is already a strong campaign in the USA to denounce the Biden administration as having a policy of regime change. It remains to be seen whether they will continue to insist they don’t or adapt to the fact that it is the only way the war can end.
It is of course conceivable that the regime once had different aims but is now fighting for survival.
But the main basis for other theories of why they launched this war is not that they intrinsically make sense but that they fit with preconceptions.
That is particularly obvious with preconceptions about “land grab, resources etc”.
The complete collapse of absurd official explanations of the Iraq war as a search for WMDs strongly reinforced the overwhelming consensus among the foreign policy establishment that the war was a really bad idea and a total failure because it destabilized the region. (My view was that it was a success because it destabilized a region that badly needed to be destabilized).
It also strongly reinforced prejudices among the majority of public opinion that the war was a grab for oil resources, despite the sheer absurdity of such theories (as evidenced by some links expounding them here).
An invasion to grab oil would install a “friendly” local administration dependent on the invaders that would agree to the necessary arrangements. In Iraq that would necessarily have meant some Baathist general from the dominant Sunni Arab minority. Instead the US appointed a temporary occupation administrator who did not even speak Arabic to make it utterly clear that they were not staying and the first two orders were to dissolve the Baath party and its armed forces.
Without them there was nobody who COULD assist with seizure of Iraq’s oil, Without the Baath party and its armed forces there was no option but to hold free elections as promised. No seizure of Iraq’s oil actually happened but the expected seizure remains vivid in the imaginations of people who “explained” the Iraq war to themselves on that basis and they still write articles about it (though mainly one has to look for articles from many years ago, when it was not so blindingly obvious who runs the Iraqi oil industry).
So at this stage of the conflict I am still expecting completely incoherent “common nonsense” theories to “explain” the war. But I expect the logic of the war itself to gradually make it as clear to the rest of the world as it is to Ukraine’s leadership that the existance of democracy in Ukraine is incompatible with autocracy in Russia.
Will they have capability for some SEAD missions?
I don’t see why you think a land and resources grab is incoherent it’s exactly what Russia did in the russo-Georgian war (using the same justification) and in the 2014 annexation.
Sure, they hit the capital this time but the capital of Ukraine is a far easier target than Tbilisi, particularly if Belarus lets you cross their border.
NATO expansion, ethnic cleansing, nazis, blah blah blah, the excuses have been the same each time but each time once the conflict is finished Putin celebrates the return of more of the former USSR to the Russian federation
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Maybe???
MiG-29G/MiG-29GT
East German (then sold to Poland) MiG-29 / 29UB upgraded to NATO standards, with work done by MiG Aircraft Product Support GmbH (MAPS), a joint venture company form between MiG Moscow Aviation Production Association and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace in 1993.[168]
MiG-29AS/MiG-29UBS
Slovak Air Force performed an upgrade on their MiG-29/-29UB for NATO compatibility. Work is done by RAC MiG and Western firms, starting from 2005. The aircraft now has navigation and communications systems from Rockwell Collins, an IFF system from BAE Systems, new glass cockpit features multi-function LC displays and digital processors and also fitted to be integrate with Western equipment in the future. However, the armaments of the aircraft remain unchanged. 12 out of 21 of the entire MiG-29 fleet were upgraded and had been delivered as of late February 2008.
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On your other point re: oil resources, the US government’s objectives were pretty clearly laid out in Hilary’s (fairly tame) emails. For those who bothered to read them there wasn’t a lot of actual ‘scandal’ in them but it did reveal a lot about how the US government thought at the time.
Concerns were all about protecting commercial interests and energy security. They don’t care about who owns the oil, it’s the deployment of US capital to profit from the value add activities on those resources and the assurance of availability of said resources for US energy needs. ■■■■ with that agenda and you find out. Quickly.
Edit: so in the case of Ukraine, you’ve got recently discovered gas assets that are ripe for fracking capability that Russia doesn’t have, you’ve got a bunch of rare earth minerals that Russia and China are primary sources for, and you’ve got a govt that was prepared to accept western capital and IP to develop them. There’s your motive for both Russia and the US
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Won’t go into a long discussion as would have to agree to disagree. Nobody here has mentioned anything to do with “seizure”, another convenient straw man you have set up to argue against. You obviously haven’t read anything about the Iraqi oil industry post-war, how Iraq’s oil deposits were opened up to Western companies and who got the profits from its exploitation.
Future Center - Why are foreign oil companies planning to leave Iraq? (futureuae.com)
Western oil firms remain as US exits Iraq | Features | Al Jazeera
I have a similar view to @andrewb re Iraq and oil access. I accepted this as motivation when Brendan Nelson confessed this publicly. There is no reason why access to oil to drive western economies should be the only motivation for invading Iraq, but it was the essential driver (I think).
The goal would’ve been to install a west-friendly democracy because of course they would sell us oil and be eternally grateful to us for liberating them.
That sounds so naive as I write it that I wonder if @ArthurD is right afterall 
I think these types of big decisions to go to war are driven by a multiplicity of goals. Putin has to get many onside and different reasons to invade work better with different constituencies.
His personal reason might be just to die as Putin the Great and to have great historical pieces written about him after his death. He has probably achieved that but hopefully those pieces will refer to him as Putin the Destroyer.
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Exactly. The various reasons that have been posited why Putin started this war including economic, political, existential self-protection, russian Imperialism etc. etc. are not mutually exclusive.
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Mounting evidence that Norway blew up Nordstream
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How does Norway profiting from the situation become evidence of their causing it?
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It’s more the commercial interests. Someone has to pay for the infra to extract the resource, someone has to pay for the infra to process the extracted resource, someone has to pay for the infra to transport the processed resource.
There’s lots of US IP and capital directed to those activities… For instance, Russia doesn’t have the IP to extract shale oil
There’s also considerable annuity income streams attached to resource improvement and transport
■■■■ with that, find out.
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It’s probably pique when there was a backlash to the installation of a Putin mural in the Cathedral of the Army dedicated to the Great Patriotic War ( the Resurrection of Christ Cathedral)
Liberation of Ukraine from the enemies defeated in the Great Patriotic War and the return of the Borderlands to a Russian identity would then justify a mural to him, the resurrection of the Russian State
(He might also have been concerned at the former Warsaw Pact allies signing on to NATO and the former CMEA drifting to the EU, noting that the US had successfully intervened in Latin America to conserve truth, justice and the American way of life)
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Also, as previously posted, as announced in February, Norway is dedicating some of the profits accruing to its Future Fund to increase military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine (despite inflation caused by the War reducing the Fund value).
This, in addition to its NATO commitments and a significant increase in defence expenditure to protect its Arctic land and sea borders with Russia.
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It was a joke, forgot to use sarcasm font. Two people got it.
As others like Vexler have pointed out, Vlad is pre-occupied by what russian history books will write about him in 300 years’ time. i.e. He is obsessed with his legacy as a Great and Historical Leader who shaped the very World. History is replete with examples of autocrats and dictators obsessed with the same thing. Add to this his own comments and writings and it is a straightforward reason, no need to go into psychology, mythology or say he ‘is mad’ - it is plain to see as the nose on your face as an upfront reason. If russia had secured a fast victory in Ukraine and then split the west he may have achieved this, but judging by the results so far, I think most history books will remember Vladimir Vladimirovich more like this:
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