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
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Rumours about Trump being a Russian agent may be exaggerated. It is a fact though that the Russian propaganda perceived him as a potential ally. Consider this patriotic song. On 0:25 you can hear laments about the "President beyond the ocean [Trump] being stripped of his power"
That's song "Uncle Vova [Putin], we're with you" released in November 2017, just ten months after Trump's inauguration. Therefore, laments about Trump being "stripped of his power" refer to the constitutional checks on his power rather than anything else
Within the official Russian discourse, President is perceived as a quasi monarchical figure and as the only source of legitimacy. He is casually referred to as "Sovereign". All the civil servants are Sovereign's men. All the federal or municipal budgets - the Sovereign's money
FYI: Mulino is where German Rheinmetall company was building (in their own words):
"Measuring over 500 square kilometres, the state-of-the-art Russian army training centre in Mulino designed to train a reinforced mechanized infantry or armoured brigade"
Mulino was modelled after the training center of Bundesehr in Altmarkt. In order to proceed with the construction, the Rheinmentall entered in the strategic partnership with Russian stated owned defence company Oboronservis
That was the high point of Serdyukov's reform. Serdyukov tried to modernise the Russian army importing ready solutions from the West: from the armaments to the tactics. And the Rheinmetall was more than ready to help to train the Russian troops
It might be more accurate to describe Daudov (Lord) as the commander-in-chief (вице-премьер по силовому блоку)
Regarding his rhetorics the level of religious observance in Chechnya is vastly exaggerated. I'd even say that being really observant is a sign of nonnocformity there
The large mosque in the centre of Grozny is nearly empty with exception of Friday and religious holidays. Theoretically everyone is supposed to pray five times a day. Very few do that in reality. You might think they pray at home, but majority doesn't. It's certainly an exception
I find that most discussions about Chechnya amount to savagery-porn. Like some paint Chechens as "evil savages". Some as "noble" ones. But that's all projections, because they're neither. Not that much of traditional society or culture survived through the 20th century
He assimilated. He bears Russian name and gave Russian names to his children. He's baptised. Russian masses would considered as almost Russian. His Chinese-style palace or books portraying him as Subaday would hurt his Russified image though. But may be this is exactly his plan
If Shoygu looked too Russian he could be seen as a potential successor, thus risking a conflict with Putin. Perhaps it's more rational to play "Asian" card in order *not* to be seen as a heir
NB: Shoygu remained in government under all Presidents and PMs since 1991. He's cunning
Shoygu never objected to interest groups. He always courted the media. Once journalists who came to Chechnya from Moscow to broadcast his accomplishments lost in the mountains, got scared and wanted to leave. So he drove after them, knelt before them and asked for forgiveness