Thread by @shaunjlawson

Take a look at this map. It's of the current situation at 9am today courtesy of the excellent @remilitari.

What's the first thing any military or diplomatic mind would notice? Look at Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, Crimea in the south - but no Russian route between them.

Other than, that is, one small bridge from the Russian mainland.

Apart from that, Crimea has been effectively cut off since 2014 - which is why I assume this Russian attack has been very long in the planning, with NATO's 'threat' used as a false pretext.

Russia claiming to be acting in defensive or security interests goes back a very, very, very long way.

It's why, even now, many on the left and in left-wing historiography tend to sympathise with Stalin's behaviour after World War Two.

His country had incurred most of the suffering. His country had been invaded by Germany twice in a generation.

And the North European Plain is, notoriously, flat: easy for military forces to take, very hard to defend.

Simple geography is a large part of why so much of mainland Europe has changed hands so often over the centuries.

But when it came to negotiations with the US - where public opinion was hugely supportive of the Soviets immediately after the war, and Churchill's Iron Curtain speech was initially ridiculed - Stalin balked at EVERYTHING.

He demanded massive reparations from Germany, despite the lessons of what happened when that had been tried.

He made no good faith attempts to engage with the Americans, British and French at all.

And when the USSR and Eastern Europe were all offered Marshall Aid, he turned it down flat.

The very nations of Eastern Europe which we'd gone to war to liberate were now under Soviet lock and key. No rights, no autonomy (except Yugoslavia), no dissent or opposition allowed.

That is to say: Stalin, cynical to the very end, used the need for 'defensive security' as the coldest possible pretext. To control half of Europe against its will.

The Soviet Union was extraordinarily good at using something faintly plausible but actually outrageous to justify its behaviour.

Essentially, to lie - but as long as there was a tiny kernel of truth somewhere, its supporters and apologists would back it.

That's despite the Berlin Blockade of 1948-9. Despite the horrendous repression of the Hungarian and Czechoslovak uprisings in 1956 and 1968.

And even despite a wall being built to divide a whole city in half: separating friends, families, colleagues, for almost 30 years.

What's the latest such pretext? NATO expansion of course. Yet with the sole exception of Albania (2009), when did NATO last accept members from Eastern Europe? 2004. THAT long ago.

(North Macedonia, which joined in 2020, is in south-eastern Europe and nowhere near Russia).

So what does Russia *actually* mean when it talks about its 'security needs'? It means Luhansk and especially Donetsk... and it means Crimea.

Remarkably, given it's such a massive, continent-sized land mass, Russian access to prized warm water ports is extremely limited.

That has all sorts of military and even commercial knock-on effects.

Hence why the main purpose of its invasion MUST be to annex the areas between the breakaway republics and Crimea, probably including Odesa too.

If it was clear that that's what it's doing, there'd be outrage - but there wouldn't be anything like as much fear or panic across the world.

Especially given the Russian ethnicities of so many of those living in that part of Ukraine.

You could also argue, in theory at least, that its current massive show of power is intended to:

1. Force the government in Kyiv into a quick surrender, before under the old Stalinist basis of 'what we have, we hold', Ukraine is carved up

2. Force the people to flee westwards.

Point 2) would suit Russia perfectly. Because it'd leave mostly ethnic Russians in the land it (presumably) wants to keep hold of.

I'd be extremely surprised if we see Russian ground forces marauding anywhere west of Kyiv... and this morning, was just as surprised to hear of Russian helicopters and paratroopers near Lviv, way out west.

The Mayor of Lviv claimed they'd been repelled.

But in the confusion and fog of war, it turned out that - according to the Lviv region security services - they were Ukrainian helicopters.

But here's the thing; and it's this which has so shocked the world, I think.

Putin's Russia has always been a deeply cynical actor on the world stage. But in international relations terms, it's never been an *irrational* actor.

The extent to which it's lost the PR war so completely and utterly is remarkable.

The number of casualties it's already experiencing are remarkable.

Its leader's barking mad, will-someone-please-put-him-in-a-padded-cell-for-his-own-safety drivel about 'Nazis and drug dealers' in Kyiv and even issuing threats to Sweden and Finland are anything but rational.

This isn't rational either. It's terrifying, but it sure ain't rational.

Does it seriously think the world will just accept its war crimes against the civilian population and recognise the puppet state it wants to create?

https://twitter.com/fpleitgenCNN/status/1497519335350452231

All this JUST to unite Russian peoples and gain a relatively small strip of land?

All those sanctions it's incurring (including shortly being kicked out of SWIFT too), the isolation it faces, the pariah status it will be stuck with, JUST to achieve that?

Does not compute.🤔

These are extraordinarily high costs it's bringing on itself. For who knows how long?

Which leads me to the following conclusion. During the Cold War, it was astonishing how little anyone knew about internal goings-on in the USSR.

Even in 2022, it's the same now with Russia.

We either get the most execrable bullshit from its President, Foreign Minister or ambassadors... or from those high profile Russians who've fled over the years, we get - quite understandably - especially bellicose pro-Western rhetoric.

But we don't get actual understanding.

Exactly how does such a colossally sized land mass operate its economy remotely effectively when the rouble is in the drain and when - and this is bad news for sanctions - it does far, far less trade in dollars than might be imagined?

You know how, to give just one example, staff on Russian superyachts are paid? In Euros. A stable currency which isn't the dollar.

That makes massive European sanctions all the more vital.

I think Russia believes it can become, like 1930s Germany, entirely self-sufficient.

It clearly believes that sanctions will have no impact.

Which given global economic interdependence - aren't its oligarchs reliant on that? - completely baffles me... but we just don't know *anything* about its internal make-up.

We know so incredibly little that while we *assume* Putin makes all the decisions, maybe he actually doesn't?

Maybe it's actually the oligarchs closest to him who do: oligarchs we know nothing about, who keep their wealth completely hidden and laundered.

Maybe the oligarchs have pushed this invasion because they think - which would be stark raving mad on their part, maybe the worst case of hubris ever known since Hitler declared war on the US if so - it'll be good for business?

Watch this video here. I've never seen Putin look more anxious and frankly, scared. As he tries to justify the economic fallout to business leaders.



A lot of people saw that video and concluded "he's panicking already! He's shitting himself!"

But the thing is, maybe he's ALWAYS like that with the oligarchs? Maybe it's THEY who hold all the power here, and he knows it?

Memo to the West: freeze ALL their assets anywhere you find them.

"That's a nice superyacht you have. It'd be a shame if something *happened to it*".

Let me put it this way.

In the West, we know how corrupt our system has become. We know that wealth just funnels upwards to our own, in practice, oligarchs. Most people believe the true financial superelite control huge numbers of things even in democratic politics.

So why in the world don't we make the same assumptions about dictatorships?

How could dictators operate with such (apparent) impunity if they weren't themselves dependent on those who are the most powerful financially?

Those who, because they're very serious, untouchable criminals, might *themselves* be behind the murders of others who've fallen foul of them?

That's just me thinking out loud. I don't *know* that. None of us know almost anything at all about what goes on inside Russia.

But to me, the idea that a country the size and power of Russia, with all its history, culture and global fame (now, global infamy), and with a huge nuclear arsenal, would entrust its entire future to one man who seems to be going crazy is batty.

Meaning it surely doesn't.

But if it really has gambled everything on autarky, without upsetting its handful of most powerful oligarchs despite them having fingers in pies all over the world, and it somehow succeeds... well, it'll be quite unlike any modern state we've ever known.

Interesting times. To say the least.