This is a brief guide for selected threads. It will include materials on the current war and briefs useful for prognosing the future of the region once the war is over 🧵
TL;DR Russian army is overrated, Ukrainian army underrated. Putin expected Ukrainians to surrender. Thus he sent only one echelon of troops, that's not a proper Blitzkrieg. He didn't expect any resistance and thus failed
TL;DR Ukraine is waging the info war controlling the supply of *accurate* data. Meanwhile Russian efforts focus on portraying Putin as alpha. But that's a psyop to break resistance. In fact he's timid, risk averse, ignore the psyop
TL;DR Brief on Kadyrov's regime and its role in modern Russia as the supplier of Putin's psyop troops. Includes a short overview of Chechen history, the origins of Kadyrov's rise + his main three henchmen: Delimkhanov, Lord, Patriot
TL;DR As long as ppl believed in Communism Kremlin legitimised its rule as the path to it. After nobody believed they started legitimising through WWII. Meanwhile real history of Soviet-Nazi collaboration is forgotten
TL;DR Putin initially built his reputation and popularity through a Special Operations disguised as a small victorious war. He repeated this little trick every time his image waned. In Ukraine he just scaled up, mistakenly
6. FSB: State Security as the core of Putin's regime
TL;DR How the party regime of the USSR evolved to the state security regime of Russian Federation and how latter is different from the former. It's the mafia state, not the ideologues state
7. Valentina Matvienko: a sociological portrait of Putin's elite
TL;DR History of Russian ruling class through a biography of one single functionary Valentina Matvienko. The only woman in Security Council. What kind of people they are, how they behave
8. Isn't Ukraine just a separatist Russian province?
TL;DR Why you should not blindly trust the ethnic maps of Ukraine and how to interpret them correctly. Language =/= identity. Brief history of the country and its interactions with Russia
TL;DR Depopulation and migration reshapes Russia. The entire country collapses into two old imperial agglomerations of Moscow and St Petersburg and one new - of Krasnodar. New centre of gravity in the south gonna change a lot
TL;DR Uneasy relations of Kremlin with generals. In peacetime army is easily controlled through procedures. But in the war procedural power wanes, generals become proud and independent. Thus you gonna kill them en masse after each war
TL;DR Putin is afraid of Ukraine because it's East Slavic country and thus relatable to Russians. Russians compare themselves with Ukrainians and can get wrong ideas looking at them. So Ukraine must be crushed
TL;DR An interpretation of Russian imperial history 1698 till now through the rise and demise of three assabiyahs: the Praetorians, the Monarchy and the Party
TL;DR It's BS that Russia picked up absolutist practices from the Horde. It's correct though that the Horde actively built Muscovite power and Tatars inside Muscovy were instrumental in building absolutist rule
To be continued. I'll be putting longreads on my Substack, see - "How did Russia got so big", on the political economy of Russian imperial expansion
Next threads will cover sleeping institutions in Russia: federalism, autonomies and parliamentarianism
TL;DR "Moderation" out of fear of nukes is insane. Some nuke owners are malevolent. If they see that scaring u to get concessions works, they'll 100% repeat this trick scaling up. That's how u got WWII and how u'll get nuclear war
TL;DR Putinism = supreme leader rules + controlled parliament rubberstamps. To keep parliament under control you need a plug, a pseudo party called "United Russia". The only real parliamentary dissent comes from the Communists
TL;DR "Elite" paratroopers are glorified riot police. They were used as airborne only in Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968. In Ukraine 2022 they expected to route a mutiny but faced a regular army and were destroyed
TL;DR Russia ran out of cheap oil& gas. New deposits are in the Arctic terrain, cost of production is huge. Chinese market can't compensate the loss of Western. Chinese use their leverage and set prices far below the break even point
TL;DR Best deterrence strategy is to bluff that you've limited your choices by eliminating the human factor. But in fact - keep the human factor, keep choices and the space for manoeuvres. Nobody will want to check it
TL;DR Russia is now fascist. No return to status quo is possible. Regime must be broken. Fortunately it can be broken quickly via sanctions and brain drain. But if the regime isn't broken it can evolve to sth much stronger
TL;DR Russia is technologically dependent from the West. It can't change this under current sociopolitical structure. Growth of complex industries might entail renegotiation of power balance which is unacceptable
23. Why sanctions are effective and how to make them even more so
TL;DR Sanctions should restricting Russian technological import, resources export, maximise brain drain. Technological chains collapsing, Russia will lose the war, which will topple regime
TL;DR Russian army isn't used to fight wars against regular armies. It also holds low position in Russian dominance hierarchy. Ruling state security fears rivalry from the military and makes every effort to castrate them
TL;DR Playing predictable is suicidal when your adversary is trying to hack your strategy. If he is sure, you're dove, he'll play hawk and scale up. That's how WWII happened and WWIII will. Don't project too predictable image
26. Crisis and Jubilee: What's happening in Russia?
TL;DR Financial capital is debt. Political capital, too. During crisis both are being defaulted on en masse which leads to redistributes of power, property, status. This process is accelerating rapidly
TL;DR If you want to cooperate, you need to give them what they need, not what you think they should need. Thus deescalation with Putin is unrealistic: the West can't give him anything. But it can give much to soldiers and officials
TL;DR Many perceived East Ukraine as just continuation of Russia. And yet, it now fights very hard against Russian army. Why? Putin's conflict manufacturing strategy disappointed East Ukrainians in Russian alliance
TL;DR Russia used to have huge military capacity. Fertility was high, population young, thus Tsars had lots of manpower. Now Russia's old and lacks youngsters. Give soldiers the way out and pay cash for sabotage
TL;DR Mass support for Z-war in Russia is very much exaggerated through governmental leverage and incentive system. Mass Z-rallies are fake, people press-ganged there. Protests against the war are brutally suppressed.
TL;DR Russia is portrayed as autarkic but that's BS. Its major military victories resulted from the alliance with main economic powerhouses of the era. Stalin's industrialization was fully managed by Americans
32. Military casualties in Ukraine and the end of Russia as we know it
TL;DR Russia is suffering huge casualties in Ukraine, not only among the army, but also among state security. Their massacre brings the end to Russia as we know it
TL;DR Sociopolitical changes are not made by word gibberish but by elite rearrangement. Identify counterelites and raise them up. In Russian case it would be regional elites and cops. Give them salt
TL;DR Russian minorities are wildly overrepresented on Ukrainian battlefields as cannon fodder. In return for their blood they are awarded with forced assimilation and loss autonomy. Many question their support of Z
35. Z-aesthetics: how Russian militarism looks like
TL;DR Z-propaganda has deeply morbid, necrophilic vibes. That's not a recent thing. It is a well-established tradition of Wagner company. At this point Russian militarism evolved to the pure death cult
TL;DR Smart and rich people know that institutions work procedurally, even if illegally. Their policies are algorithms which are full of bugs, you just need to hack them. Dumb and poor view institutions as humans and get fucked
TL;DR Obama's sanctions of 2014 sabotaged modernisation of Russian army. New sanctions undermine Russian military efforts, break its communication lines & destroy consumer goods supply thus breaking the country apart
38. Three scenarios for the Russian future. Part 1. North Korea
TL;DR If the West deescalates, it will prove Putin is a genius, Z-war was a great decision and those who doubted him are idiots. His power will increase and Russia will turn into North Korea
TL;DR Kadyrov is a TikTok warlord with TikTok troops. How could he rise so high then? Well, because he shares mindset and values of Russian ruling elite. If Soviet Union was the Evil Empire, than Russian Federation is Bullshit Empire
TL;DR Should Putin keep power Russia turns into a huge North Korea. Should Putin be changed for some Good Tsar with oppositionary background, Russia gonna have its Imperial Reboot. But what Russia truly needs is the National Divorce
TL;DR Soviet-Russian army is a multitool designed for the nuclear war. It's not that great for a conventional war. Meanwhile, Ukrainians were preparing for the conventional war and their progress was underestimated
TL;DR Putin reportedly arrested Surkov. For years, the grey cardinal of Kremlin Surkov overmatched its domestic politics and policy in Ukraine. Today we'll discuss the role of Surkov in Putin's rise to presidency
43. War of memes: why Z-war won't end with peace
TL;DR Z-war is not about NATO or CSTO. It's about memes. Russia aims to transform the old "Russian" (=Church Slavonic) sacred community into the unitary Russian nation state extirpating Ukrainian culture
TL;DR Although Z-war is inspired by Russian ethnonatinalism, minorities are heavily overrepresented on the Ukrainian battlefields and in Russian casualty lists. Russian victory would be against their interests
47. In this thread I'll be collecting podcasts and broadcasts where I have presented my position on the current war. I'm including here both English and Russian language talks in a chronological order, so they will be easier to navigate through
TL;DR Some argue that Putin won't declare mass mobilisation on May 9, because that would be stupid. I disagree. That would be stupid and he still absolutely can do this. That however will create revolutionary risks
TL;DR Total mobilisation in Russia didn't start yet. But it is going in Donbass which is the main reserve of the cannon fodder for Russia. Kremlin might want to scale up this model all over Russia but that gonna be risky
TL;DR Apart from mining the formalised data, a special focus must be made on studying the lived experiences. That's how you get the tacit knowledge of how institutional (technological, etc) cultures do really function
I want to discuss some general principles I use for making prognoses on example of this thread. On Feb 27 I predicted Russia gonna lose this war. Let me outline some of considerations that helped me to make this prediction
TL;DR Neither Westerners, nor Russians understand the meaning of Z. Some point out to Z originally being a sign on the vehicles. Sounds fair. That however, doesn't explain much as it is centrally enforced. By whom?
TL;DR Russia tends to avoid small manageable risks, thus accumulating large risks it can't manage. This includes the cadre policy as well. If you don't retire the elderly gradually, they just die all at once
54. The place of Chechnya within the Russian regime
TL;DR Russia is extremely centralised which makes it fragile. It needs an informal and largely independent face to make the regime more robust. That's why Kadyrov is the last line of Putin's defence
TL;DR Russia is almost totally dependent upon the technological import from the West. That also means that powerful industrial interest groups in the West are financially dependent upon the export to Russia
TL;DR It looks like before 2022 Russia may have been avoiding the technological import from China in its military industry due to the perceived risk asymmetry. With these concerns gone, Russia will be now cured of Sinophobia
Most regional barons in Russia are losing. And the more complex economies they built, the more they lose. The only winners are southern agrarian and the cannon fodder suppliers. Soon they may be disaffected too
59. How a German company built Putin's war machine
TL;DR Putin trained his army of invasion in Mulino, his only modern training centre. It was built by @RheinmetallAG probably even *after* 2014. Investigate them & politicians that allowed this to happen
TL; DR Sergey Kirienko is little known in the West. And yet, he's a major architect of Putinism. He's responsible for Putin's rise to power, for centralisation of the regime in 2000s and now for all the domestic policy plus Ukraine
TL;DR Moscow is what Weber would call a "Fürstenstadt": city built around a princely court and living off its expenses. It's also very large, unsustainable and expensive to maintain. Which explains the destitution of its vast empire
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Today I will introduce one more concept critical for understanding of how the manufacturing industry has evolved over the last few decades. It is the shift of technological knowledge from esoteric to exoteric
In the pre-digital era, manufacturing used to be mysterious, esoteric
To visualize how the manufacturing worked in the pre-computer/early computer age, imagine the atmosphere of magic, mysticism, enigma. That would be not very far from truth.
To illustrate the idea, I will give you one simple, straightforward example. The train car production.
Train production is a very, very rare example of a Russian machinery industry that survived through the post-Soviet collapse. Of course, it contracted. Of course, it suffered losses. Still, it made it through, while most of the Soviet machinery sector was simply wiped out.
As I have already pointed out, general audience, analysts, strategists & decision makers included holds unrealistic notions of how the global economy is organised. Now that is because they never see the back end of industrial civilisation
So let me show you some
There is a major delusion of seeing Europe as a sort of retired continent that "lags in tech" or even "doesn't produce anything". To some extent, it is just American hubris.
But there is more in there than just hubris. There is also some honest, sincere ignorance. The thing with most people is that they see only facade of industrial civilisation. They never ever had a chance to look behind the curtains
Tu-160M, the "White Swan" is the largest, the heaviest and the fastest bomber in the world. Originally a Soviet design, the plane you see today has limited continuity with the USSR. It was created in late 2010s, as a combined project of Putin's Russia and Siemens Digital Factory
Original Tu-160 was created as a domesday weapon of the Cold War. Designed in the 1970s, it was officially launched into production in 1984. And yet, with the collapse of the Soviet Union the project was aborted. In 1992, their production ceased.
No Nuclear War, no White Swans.
With the fall of USSR, Russia suffered a catastrophic drop in military expenditures. As the state was buying little weaponry (and paying for it highly erratically), entire production chains were wiped out. That included some ultra expensive projects such as strategic bombers.
I have repeatedly pointed out that the modern Russian military industry has little continuity with the Soviet one. Destroyed in the 1990s, it was effectively created anew in the Putin's era. Still, it may sound too abstract, so I will zoom in on one specific example:
Stankomash
Located in Chelyabink, Stankomash industrial park hosts major producers for the nuclear, shipbuilding, oil & gas and energy industries. It also produces weaponry, including mine trawls and artillery ammunition (based on the open sources)
All under the umbrella of Konar company
Some examples of the Stankomash manufacture. These photos well illustrate the philosophy of Soviet/Russian dual use industry. In the peace time, you focus primarily on civilian products, in the war time you convert it all to the production of weaponry.
No offence, but this is a completely imbecile, ignorant, ridiculous framing. I have no explanation for all this debate except for a complete & determined ignorance of the foreign policy making class, and their refusal to learn literally anything about the material world.
"Components" framing makes sense when we are discussing drones. Why? Because drones are literally made from the imported components. You buy like 90% of them in China, and may be you make like 10% domestically. For the most part, you just assemble what you bought in China.
Not the case with missiles. Most of what the missile consists of, including its most critical, hard to make parts is produced domestically. Why? Because you cannot buy it abroad. More often than not, you cannot buy it in China. You can only make it yourself, domestically.
Contrary to the popular opinion, Andrey Belousov's appointment as a Minister of Defense makes perfect sense. From the Kremlin's perspective, war is primarily about industry & economy. Now Belousov is the central economic & industrial thinker (and planner) in the Russian gov.
Born into a Soviet Brahmin economist family, Belousov is an exceedingly rare case of an academician making a successful career in the Russian gov. Even more noteworthy, he rose to the position of power through his academic work and publications.
This is unique, ultra rare.
Belousov's career track:
1976-1981 Moscow State University ("economic cybernetics"). Basically, economics, but with the heavy use of then new computers.
1981-1986 Central Economic Mathematical Institute
1986-2006 Instutute of Economic Forecasting
2006-2024 Government