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
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No. Describing Russian regime as "kleptocracy" is misrepresentation. It's not technically false, just absurdly reductionist. Let's be honest, if Putinism was *entirely* about stealing it would not be able to wage wars or produce armaments. And it produces hella lots of them
Keep in mind that public rhetorics work according to the rhetorical logic. Public position doesn't have to be factually accurate, it has to be rhetorically advantageous for it to work. They talk about "corruption" so much because it's rhetorically advantageous. That's it
When you don't have a positive agenda/vision of future or it's too hideous, you talk about "corruption". Examples - Lukashenko or Yeltsin. "Anti-corruption fight" is an ideal topic for a power hungry politician. Because talking about corruption = avoiding the actual conversation
Kremlin may not have a grey cardinal. But it has a bald engineer. The Kinder Egg is a major architect of Putinism. In 1998 he made Putin the FSB Chief. In 2000s he dismantled the regional autonomy imposing the centralised rule. Now he manages Putin's domestic policy and Ukraine🧵
Sergey Kirienko was born as Sergey Israitel in a mixed Russian-Jewish family. After the divorce his mother changed his surname from father's "Israitel" to her own "Kirienko". That could be a pragmatic decision. A boy with a Slavic name would have better career chances in the USSR
In childhood Kirienko lived with his mom in subtropical Sochi. Here he started the bureaucrat career as a Komsomol manager (комсорг) of his high school class. NB: the role of Komsomol in Soviet to post-Soviet transition is underrated. Komsomol management were its main benefactors
Last time I discussed Volgograd - the poorest large city in Russia. Today I read a news about relatives of a Volgograd corporal KIA in Ukraine who are fighting over 12 million rubles of compensation. His aunt illegally appropriated all the money, so other relatives are suing her
That's something that misses from most of discussions. Compensations for soldiers KIA in Ukraine are huge. They are absolutely enormous by the standards of poor Russian province. 12 million rubles is the entire fortune for Volgograd
Average salary in the Volgograd oblast is about 38 000 rubles. So 12 million is 315 average monthly salaries (median is lower). In other words, the coffin money amount to 26 average yearly salaries in Volgograd region. Average guy will never ever earn that much money in his life
Many wondered: why during the Chechen wars many families opposed the war, while now almost nobody does? Well, one answer is that during the Chechen wars monetary compensations to families were negligible, while now the "coffin money" (гробовые) are quite good. You can buy a car
Also notice the location. It's Saratov. There is a major gap between more successful Middle Volga regions like Tatarstan, Samara and Ulyanovsk (green) and much poorer Lower Volga such as Saratov (yellow) or Volgograd (red). Socioeconomic situation in the latter is *way* worse
The gap is not only economic, but also cultural. In some respects the Middle vs Lower Volga dichotomy resembles the nanfang vs beifang dichotomy in China. Saratov and Volgograd are paradoxically much more "beifang", Muscovite and Great Russian than regions to the north of them
Great question. You see, many scenarios that kinda seem plausible ("Dagestan Rebellion") are unlikely to happen exactly because they're just too foreseeable. Muslim rebellion in Caucasus seems plausible not only to you, but also to Kremlin. So it took certain precautions (not🧵)
Regarding Dagestan, Kremlin identified potentially disloyal settlements. Such as Gimry for example. At the entrance to any of them they put a checkpoint with an armoured vehicle standing there 24/7. They check documents, don't allow any outsiders and kinda show they keep control
To my best knowledge, they tended to put the National Guard from Tatarstan to guard potentially disloyal settlements in Dagestan. Kinda control Muslims with Muslims. These guys stand at the most risky positions, but overall Dagestan was full of federal forces when I visited it
Moscow woman reported on her son who was dodging the draft. He is 26 and would turn 27 in three months. In Russia you can't be conscripted once you're 27, so time is short. He tried to launch an IT startup but failed and closed it in Jan 2022. After a conflict she reported on him
Another similar publication. A mother was upset about her 22 y.o. son playing in Counter Strike and earning on it, so she reported about him dodging the draft. Btw: that's a news from late May 2022, so the war had been going for three months mk.ru/social/2022/05…