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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Mar 17

How to sabotage Russian war efforts?

There are ways to sabotage Russian war capacities by focusing on its three major bottlenecks: demographic, economic & institutional. Let's start with demography. Russian started this war suffering from the shortage of young draftable males🧵

That's a very underrated fact. Many argue that the demographic pressure of growing population (Africa, Middle East) increases a risk of war/revolution. But Russia doesn't have this pressure. Compare it's demographic pyramid with Syria: Russia's quickly depopulating. It grew old

In fact, Russian-Ukrainian war is may be the first major war between two quickly depopulating nations. For this reason it can't be directly compared to Iran-Iraq or other conventional wars between relatively big but young powers. Russia, Ukraine are both old. Few youngsters there

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Mar 16

How Putin managed to derussify East Ukraine in just 8 years?

Discussion on the potential deescalation of the war in Ukraine with all security implications it has illustrates the difference between the goal- oriented and the system-oriented thinking 🧵

For example if you want to deescalate the war in Ukraine, what would your best strategy be? Goal-oriented people understand that the only person who could stop the war immediately is Putin himself. Thus they suggest focusing on negotiations with him and persuading him to back off

Sounds reasonable. And yet, this approach ignores the factor of human will. And goal-oriented people lowkey admit it. For example, when justifying Putin's actions they often point out that it was wrong for the West to "provoke a bear". They strip the other side of any agency

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Mar 15

Today I’ll suggest some specific measures to end this war. To start with, the very idea of deescalation as the ultimate goal is absolutely insane. It would mean repeating Napoleon’s mistake. Napoleon worked hard on deescalation – that’s why he lost a war he could’ve totally won🧵

You may object. Invasion to Russia with an enormous pan-European army doesn’t look like deescalation, does it? Yes, Napoleon’s means were destructive. And yet his goals were highly constructive. He didn’t want to overthrow the Russian empire, he wanted to reach a favorable peace

Wars are not launched for military goals. They are launched for political goals. And the political goal of Napoleon was to force Russian Emperor Alexander I into the alliance against Britain and into the Continental Blockade system without breaking Russian empire

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Mar 14

Crisis and Jubilee: What's happening in Russia?

Russia's spiralling into a deep crisis. It was visible before the war but now it's rapidly accelerating. And every major crisis entails mass redistribution of power, property and status. Because crisis is essentially a Jubilee🧵

In Ancient Israel every 49th year was the year of Jubilee. Jubilee was a huge managed default. Debts forgiven, indentured servants released. The land cleared of debt and returned to previous owners. Jubilee annuls any obligations you took previously, you don't owe anything now

The most obvious element of Jubilee are huge queues before Russian ATMs standing day and night. Previously, you could delude yourself that your bank deposits are what you own. Nope. It's what you borrowed to the bank. This loan can be defaulted on. Especially during the Jubilee

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Mar 13

How to defeat Putin?

Many recognise the importance of coercive measures against Russia and necessity to give it a way out

And yet, some presume that the way out should be given to Putin to force him to negotiate. That's a disastrous idea. There's no way he can roll back now🧵

Consider negotiations between Russian and Ukraine. They didn't reach any agreement, and they couldn't. Why? Look whom Putin sent as a chief of delegation - Medinsky. Medinsky is a MGIMO professor who wrote the book on greatness of Russia and was appointed a Minister of Culture

If Putin was aiming for negotiations he would send someone from intelligence/security apparatus. But instead he sent Medinsky, a cheap propagandist with no authority and no influence, who's looked down upon in Kremlin. Putin doesn't aim for negotiations or for peace with Ukraine

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Mar 12

Why Russian army is so weak?

When Russia invaded, experts thought it'd win in 24-72 hours. Two weeks later the war's still going. How come? On paper Russian superiority's overwhelming

Although Russia projects warlike image, its military r weak and don't know how to fight wars🧵

Notwithstanding with its warlike image, boosted by massive PR campaign, Russian military have nearly zero experience of fighting conventional wars against other regular armies. They were quite successful in suppressing civilian riots ofc, in Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, etc

Russians were less successful in suppressing guerrilla movements in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Guerillas didn't much heavy weaponry, didn't have proper air defence. And yet, Russians suffered high casualties and lost the First Chechen War, despite overwhelming material superiority

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