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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
@kamilkazani
Feb 28, 2022 • 63 tweets • 23 min read • Read on X
Thread of threads

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 🧵 Image
1. Why Russia will lose this war?



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
2. Information Warfare



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
3. Kadyrov's kingdom



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
4. "Ukrainian Nazism" - Putin's take



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
5. How Putin came to power



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 A brief on Ukrainian history. What factors defines it, and how it has been different from Russia long before the Muscovite expansion
9. Ukrainian Geography

…

TL;DR Geographic factors that shaped the history and the present of Ukraine. Steppe, rivers, Crimean appendix. The East vs West problem
10. A crash introduction into ethnopolitical situation in Ukraine



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
11. Russian demography



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
12. Russian army



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
13. Why Putin is afraid of Ukraine so much



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
14. Russian assabiyahs

…

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
15. The Horde and Russian Imperiogenesis



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

kamilkazani2.substack.com/p/how-did-russ…
16. Why honour matters



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
17. Russian parliamentarism



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
18. VDV: Why Russia lost this war



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
19. Russian exports



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
20. Dynamics of nuclear deterrence



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
21. What's happening in Russia



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
22. Why Russia can't produce anything



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
24. Why Russia army is so weak?



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
25. How to defeat Putin



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
27. Give them salt



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
28. Why East Ukraine fights so hard?



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
29. How to sabotage Russian war efforts?



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
30. How popular is Z-war in Russia?



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.
31. Why Russia can't win against the West?



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
33. Cops as the true and only revolutionary class



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
34. World War Z and Russian minorities



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
36. How to hack the system



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
37. How sanctions are killing Russia



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
39. TikTok warlord



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
40. Imperial Reboot

…

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
41. Why Russia is losing this war?



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
42. Surkov and the rise of Putin



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

44. Finished. Have been writing for three days
45. About Lukashenko and his uneasy relations with Putin

46. Who fights for Russia? Part 1. Russians



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

48. The prospect of total mobilisation



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
49. Z-war and total mobilisation



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
50. We need more Harvard projects



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
51. How do I make predictions?



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
52. Who stands behind Z? (a hypothesis)



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?
53. Why Russia is more fragile than you think



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
55. What's happening with Russian economy?



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
56. Chinese Russian alignment



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
57. Order №338



TL;DR

1. Russian empire uproots any ability for personal initiative and collective action, be it pro or against Kremlin

2. Maidan Effect: Revolution -> cadre change -> many staunch supporters of the new order in army & intelligence
58. Regional Divergence in Russia



TL;DR

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
60. Kirienko



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
61. Die Fürstenstadt



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

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Nov 16
Why the USSR failed?

There are two ways for a poor, underdeveloped country to industrialise: Soviet vs Chinese way. Soviet way is to build the edifice of industrial economy from the foundations. Chinese way is to build it from the roof.

1st way sounds good, 2nd actually works. Image
To proceed further, I need to introduce a new concept. Let's divide the manufacturing industry into two unequal sectors, Front End vs Back End:

Front End - they make whatever you see on the supermarket shelf

Back End - they make whatever that stands behind, that you don’t see
Front End industries are making consumer goods. That is, whatever you buy, as an individual. Toys, clothes, furniture, appliances all falls under this category. The list of top selling amazon products gives a not bad idea what the front end sector is, and how it looks like. Image
Read 18 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Nov 13
Nation state is not some basic property of reality (as many falsely presume). They do not just organically grow out of the “ethnically drawn borders”. That is not how it works. They usually grow out of the *administratively* drawn borders, on whichever continent.
First they draw administrative borders based on whatever rationales and considerations. Then, these arbitrarily drawn administrative borders turn out to be surprisingly stable, more stable than anyone could ever expect. Eventually they become borders of the nation states.
States do not grow out of ethnicities. States grow out of the administrative zones, fiscal zones, customs zones et cetera. Basically, a Big Guy got a right to collect taxes and rents over these territories, but not those territories. Then the border between what he can milk…
Read 5 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Nov 9
Why have elections?

Every election in the US attracts huge global attention. People in Pakistan, people in Paraguay, people in Poland, people in Papua New Guinea are monitoring the course of elections and tend to hold strong opinions regarding whom they would prefer to win Image
Why would that be the case? Well, one obvious reason would be that the US elections are, in fact, seen as the world elections. People in Paraguay do not vote in the US and yet, the US elections have a very strong impact on the fortunes of Paraguay.

Or Russia, in this case: Image
And I am not discussing the economic fortunes only. In terms of politics, in terms of culture, in terms of discourse, American relations with the rest of the world tend to be strikingly one-directional. Much or most of the global discourse comes downstream from the Unites States Image
Read 14 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Oct 26
There is hardly any other genre of literature more factual, and more realistic than the sci-fi. It is exactly its non-serious, seemingly abstract character that allows it to escape censorship and ostracism to a far greater degree than it is normally possible for a work of art. Image
Sci-fi allows you to to present the most painful, insulting, insufferable, obnoxious, criminal and traitorous arguments in a non-serious way, as a fun, as a joke. In this regard, it is far superior to any other genre. Compare three ways to sell a heresy: Image
By its very nature, sci-fi is inseparable from the social commentary. For this reason, quality sci-fi should be always read as a self-reflection and self-criticism of the society it is written in.

If the "Gulliver’s Travels" is a reflection on Britain… Image
Read 7 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Oct 25
What you should know about Tatarstan?

Tatarstan is a large and wealthy ethnic republic located, in the very middle of Russia. While being culturally and institutionally distinctive, it is not really peripheral. It sits in a few kilometres from the population centre of Russia🧵 Image
While Tatarstan does not sit in the centre of Russia geography-wise, it does so demography-wise. The Russian centre of population (red star), located somewhere in southwest Udmurtia, is literally in a walking distance from the Tatarstani border.

It is the very middle of Russia. Image
If you look at the Russian administrative map, you will see that most ethnic republics (colored) occupy a peripheral position. The main exception are republics of the Volga-Ural region (green), located in the middle of Russia & surrounded by the Slavic sea.

How did that happen? Image
Read 33 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 17
Wagner march was incredible, unprecedented to the extent most foreigners simply do not understand. Like, yes, Russia had its military coups in the 18th c. But those were the palace coups, all done by the Guards. Purely praetorian business with zero participation of the army.
Yes, there was a Kornilov affair in 1917, but that happened after the coup in capital. In March they overthrew the Tsar, then there was infighting in the capital, including a Bolshevik revolt in July, and only in September part of the army marches to St Petersburg.

Half a year after the coup. Not the same thing
I think the last time anything like that happened was in 1698, when the Musketeers marched on Moscow from the Western border. And then, next time, only in 2023.

(Army leaves the border/battlefield and marches on the capital without a previous praetorian coup in the capital)
Read 17 tweets

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