Thread by @SusanKBradford

This article is way too long to repeat here, but the breadth of her knowledge & expertise on 🇷🇺& Putin is fascinating— its a must read! Give her ALL the jobs!

Pertinent parts follow. I use abbreviations & emojis when poss to save character space.

apple.news/A10zguy8gR9SjI…

2/…If Putin wants Ukrainian territory so badly, why is he raining down such destruction on civilian areas & committing so many human rights abuses in occupied areas?

Hill: This is punishment, but also perverse redevelopment.

3/You cow ppl into submission, destroy what they had & all their links to their past & their old lives, & then make them into something new &, thus, yours. Destroy 🇺🇦 & Ukrainians. Build New 🇷🇺 & create Russians. Its brutal but also a hallmark of imperial conquest.

4/& it’s how they did it in the 18th century.

Hill: Exactly. Putin wld ❤️to control the territory. But control involves actually having ppl on ur side. & that is really a big❓

We've seen in all of these territories, 🇷🇺 shipping ppl out or detaining them, from entire families &

5/kids to teachers, admins & local police, & then proxy citizens sent in from 🇷🇺 itself.

Putin's initial goal when he launched the invasion was the collapse of central 🇺🇦 authority, the imposition of a puppet gov in Kyiv, & all local govs swearing allegiance to Moscow,…

6/probably w some political commissar-type proxy leaders put in place around the country — the kind of thing that we saw happening in 2014 in the Russian-occupied territories of Donetsk & Lugansk & Crimea. But of course, that didn't happen.

7/So the prob that Putin has is controlling ppl in these territories rather than playing his own version of Potemkin villages.

We've recently had Elon Musk step into this conflict trying to promote discussion of peace settlements. What do you make of the role that he's playing?

8/It's very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin.

There was a conf in Aspen in late Sept when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet — incl recognition of Crimea as 🇷🇺 bec it’s been mostly 🇷🇺 since the 1780s — & the suggestion that the 🇺🇦 regions

9/of Kherson & Zaporizhzhia shld be up for negotiation, bec there shld be guaranteed 💦 supplies to Crimea. He made this suggestion bef Putin’s annexation of those 2 territories on Sept 30. It was a very specific reference.

10/Kherson & Zaporizhzhia essentially control all the 💦 supplies to Crimea. Crimea is a dry peninsula. It has aquifers, but it doesn't have rivers. It’s dependent on 💦 from the Dnipro River that flows thru a canal from Kherson. It’s unlikely Elon Musk knows abt this himself.

11/The reference to 💦 is so specific that this clearly is a message from Putin.

Now, there’s sev reasons why Musk’s intervention is interesting & significant. 1st of all, Putin does this alot. He uses prominent ppl as intermediaries to feel out the gen’l political environmt

12/QUICK NOTE HERE—- anybody worried that Musk has control of that satellite program used by 🇺🇦 while he’s actually transmitting Putin’s messages for how he wants to take over 🇺🇦? Is it weird that 🇷🇺 made progress in air attacks lately rt at same time as 🇺🇦 gets spotty reception?

13/moving on…& continue…
to basically test how ppl r going to react to💡. Henry Kissinger, for eg, had interactions w Putin directly & relayed messages. Putin often uses various trusted intermediaries incl all kinds of business ppl.

14/I had intermediaries sent to discuss things w me while I was in gov. This is a classic Putin play. It's just fascinating, of course, that it's Elon Musk in this instance, bec obviously Elon Musk has a huge Twitter following. He's got a longstanding reputation in 🇷🇺 thru Tesla,

15/the SpaceX space programs & also thru Starlink. He's 1 of the most popular men in opinion polls in 🇷🇺. At the same time, he's played a very imp part in supporting 🇺🇦 by providing Starlink internet sys to 🇺🇦, & kept telecommunications going in 🇺🇦, pd for in part by the 🇺🇸 gov.

16/Elon Musk has enormous leverage as well as incredible prominence.

🚨🚨🚨🚨Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they're just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin🚨🚨🚨🚨

SOUND FAMILIAR??? #TraitorTrump

17/Putin is very comfortable dealing w billionaires & oligarchs. That's a 🌎 that he knows well. But by using Musk this way, he goes right over the heads of Zelenskyy & the 🇺🇦 gov.

AGAIN — SOUND FAMILIAR—?🚨This is what TFG did w 🇦🇫 & the Taliban, skipped over Afghan leaders!!🚨

18/Putin is basically short-circuiting the diplomatic process.🚨He wants to lay out his terms & see how many ppl r going to pick them up. All of this is an effort to get 🇺🇸 to take themselves out of the war & hand over 🇺🇦 & 🇺🇦 territory to 🇷🇺🚨#IStandWithUkraine paying attention?

19/You compared Putin's invasion of 🇺🇦 to Hitler's invasions of other countries in WWII, of Czechoslovakia, of 🇵🇱. Do u still see it that way? Do u 🤔 that Putin has become Hitler-like in how he 🤔 of himself & how he seeks territory?

20/Hill: Yes, but also like Kaiser Wilhelm in WWI as well. Look, exactly 100 yrs bef Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, in 1914, 🇩🇪 invaded the low countries of Europe & 🇫🇷. WWI was fought as a Great Power conflict to eject 🇩🇪 from 🇫🇷, 🇧🇪 & the 🇳🇱. And WWII in Europe, of course, was…

21/a refighting territorially of many of the outcomes of WWI.

Part of the prob is that conceptually, ppl have a hard time w the💡of a WW. It brings all kinds of horrors to mind — the Holocaust & the detonation of ☢️ weapons in Hiroshima & Nagasaki & the dawning of the ☢️ age.

22/But if u 🤔 abt it, a WW is a great power conflict over territory which overturns the existing intern’l order & where other states find themselves on diff sides of the conflict. It involves economic warfare, info warfare, as well as kinetic war.

We're in the same situation.

23/Again, Putin invaded 🇺🇦 in 2014, exactly 100 yrs after 🇩🇪 invaded the low countries & 🇫🇷— & just in the same way that Hitler seized the Sudetenland, annexed 🇦🇹 & invaded 🇵🇱. We're having a hard time coming to terms w what we're dealing w here. This is a great power conflict,..

24/the 3rd gr8 power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It's the end of the existing 🌎order. Our 🌎 is not going 2b the same as it was bef. Ppl worry abt this being dangerous hyperbole. But we have to really accept what the situation is 2b able to respond

25/Each war has been fought differently. Modern wars involve info space & cyberspace, & we've seen all of these at play here. And, in the 21st century, these are economic & financial wars. We're all-in on the financial & economic side of things.

26/🇷🇺's invasion of 🇺🇦 has turned global energy & food security on its head bec of the way 🇷🇺 is leveraging ⛽️ & oil & the blockade Putin has imposed in the Black Sea against 🇺🇦 🌾 exports. 🇷🇺 has not just targeted 🇺🇦 agricultural production, as well as port facilities …

27/for exporting 🌾, but caused a global food crisis. These are global effects of what is very clearly not just a regional war.

Keep in mind that Putin himself has used the language of both WWs. He's talked abt the fact that 🇺🇦 did not exist as a state until after WWI, …

28/aft the dissolution of the 🇷🇺 Empire & the creation of the USSR. He has blamed the early Soviets for the formation of what he calls an artificial state. Right from the very beginning, Putin himself has said that he is refighting WWII.

29/So, the hyperbole has come from Vladimir Putin, who has said that he's reversing all of the outcomes territorially from WWI & also, in effect, WWII & the Cold War. He's not accepting the territorial configuration of Europe as it currently is.

30/What we have to figure out now is, how are we going to contend with this?

Let's talk about the situation inside 🇷🇺. Do u 🤔 Putin was surprised by the wave of protests that followed his announcement of what he called a partial mobilization? Or was he expecting that?

31/Hill: Yes, he was expecting pushback which is why he called it partial when it’s really a stealth full mobilization. The goal is to try to get the military up to full strength & get everybody he possibly can. The prob is that all these new forces are not battle ready.

32/Many have had minimal military training. It’s very clear that most of them are going to be used as cannon fodder.
Putin’s responding not just to the setbacks on the battlefield, but to setbacks in the info war in the domestic arena.

He's getting pushback from the party of war

33/We have to remember there were nationalists since the collapse of USSR in the 1990s who wanted to retake 🇺🇦, not just Crimea, & reabsorb all the Russian-speaking territories. People in the cohort around Putin have pushed the invasion of 🇺🇦 for some considerable period of time,

34/& he has to keep them on his side. They are not satisfied. They want 🇺🇦 dismembered. The shock, perhaps, is how many Russians have fled the mobilization. Altho 🇷🇺authorities have been going to the borders to forcibly conscript ppl lining up to leave, …[REPORT ON THIS MSM]!!!

35/they still haven’t taken the step of closing all the borders off. Putin & the Kremlin are aware that they would get a massive backlash if they did. We’ve already seen violence in Dagestan & other places where ethnic minorities have borne the brunt of recruitment.

36/I 🤔 they r very, very aware that they've got to leave a safety valve open bec otherwise there might be more protests, & more violence in resp to the mobilization.

If there r more protests & more violence, does that pose a threat to Putin as leader?

37/How weak or vulnerable is Putin's position rn?
Hill: Back to the USSR period, there were tens of thousands of violent protests across the USSR over the yrs. This didn’t lead to the disintegration of the USSR bec of severe repression. It was something messy they had to deal w.

38/They decapitated the opposition, & that's what Putin's done. 🇷🇺 is back to the USSR. Opposition leader Navalny is in isolation in a penal colony. The repressive capacity of the gov is pretty significant. They’ve bn taking thousands of ppl off the streets & putting them in jail

39/I 🤔 Putin feels he can decapitate any organized opposition. He has to just be careful to control the sheer number of opposition protests, which is, again, why they're keeping the safety valves open.

WHY ARENT RUSSIANS DOING MASS PROTESTS? He cannot jail them ALL!

40/Putin knows Russian history. WWI did lead to mass protests.

The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War earlier in the 1900s also led to mass protests that got out of hand & discredited the czarist system. All of this could discredit him. So, there is some real risk.

41/What he's making sure of is that there's no 1 who could lead these protests & make them coalesce.If u 🤔 back to when Navalny was poisoned in 2020, he was out in the Urals region & Siberia, pulling together opposition grps at a time when there were many protests going on in 🇷🇺

42/He was poisoned bec he was getting some traction. Nonetheless, the mobilization chips away at Putin’s popularity bec ppl feel that they've got no hope.They're no longer able to 👀 the war on their 📺 screens & switch it off & forget it's happening.They're forced to confront it

43/Support for the war was already fairly passive, but active support for the war is declining & support for Putin himself will decline as well. And he's got to keep placating the hardliners. So, he's got to take extreme actions.

44/You're going to start hearing more & more stories of ppl who've gone to the front completely unprepared & got killed. That will reduce tolerance for the “sp military operation”. If that happens, it could impact Putin's standing among the elite.

45/He's been pretty much unassailable as long as he's bn the only really truly popular politician in 🇷🇺. But if he starts to look like a loser, then he no longer seems infallible. He's no longer the strongman & arbiter of the system. Altho elites are invested in him & his system,

46/there may eventually come a pt where ppl start saying, “maybe somebody else, Vladimir Vladimirovich, maybe somebody else might handle the system better.” It could start with the hardliners trying to push themselves forward.

47/That's why, again, we see him doubling down. He’s got himself in a corner in the war & in a corner domestically at 🏡. He has made himself the face of this war in 🇺🇦. His Sept 30th speech basically said it's his war, his annexation, his 🇷🇺.

48/& so, everything will fall on Putin if it falls apart.

49/Along those lines, what do you make of the fact that some Americans, primarily in the Trump wing of the GOP & some Fox News personalities, are expressing doubts abt how much support 🇺🇸 should direct to 🇺🇦? Is there something abt this conflict that you don't 🤔 they understand?

50/This goes back to the pt I tried to make when I testified at the 1st impeachment trial against TFG. There's a direct line betw that epi & now. Putin has managed to seed hostile sentiment toward 🇺🇦. Even if ppl 🤔 they’re criticizing 🇺🇦 for their own domestic political purposes

51/bec they want to claim that the Biden admin is giving too much support for 🇺🇦 instead of giving more support to 🇺🇸, etc. — they're replaying the targeted messaging that Putin has very carefully fed into our political arena.

52/People may think that they're acting independently, but they are echoing the Kremlin's propaganda.

BOOM — there it is! @FoxNews is echoing #kremlinnewspeak

53/What Putin is trying to do is to get us to talk abt the threat of ☢️ war instead of what he is doing in 🇺🇦. He wants 🇺🇸 & Europe to contemplate, as he says, the risks that we faced during the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Euromissile crisis.

54/He wants us to face the prospect of a great superpower war. His solution is to have secret diplomacy, as we did during Cuban Missile Crisis, & have a direct compromise betw 🇺🇸 & 🇷🇺.

But there's no strategic standoff here. This is pure nuclear blackmail.

55/There can’t be a compromise based on him not setting off a ☢️ weapon if we hand over 🇺🇦. Putin is behaving like a rogue state bec, well, he is a rogue state at this pt. & he's being explicit abt what he wants. We have to pull all the diplomatic stops out.

56/We have to ensure that he's not going to have the effect that he wants with this nuclear brinkmanship.

SIDE NOTE: AND IMHO President Biden is doing the exact right thing! We don’t negotiate w terrorists!

57/please read the article— there’s TONS more.

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