“The Day of Infamy”

A post on VoxUkraine by Yuriy Gorodnichenko (Dept. of Economics, UC Berkeley):

…

February 24, 2022 is the day of infamy too: Russia attacked Ukraine, bombed Ukrainian cities, killed innocent Ukrainians on the Ukrainian soil. It can’t be clearer: Russia is the aggressor; Ukraine is the victim. Ukraine has only one threat to Putin: Ukraine can be a free and successful country and thus give hope to Russians to become one day a free, successful country too. As I said before, this is the war with far reaching consequences for the global order, for the free world, and for the security for each of us no matter where we are.

It is a test for all of us.

Entire post here.

 

36 thoughts on ““The Day of Infamy””

  1. Anonymous

    I realize there must be a market for the mass of Ukraine coverage, which I find repetitive and poor quality. Fine. OK. But I am specifically interested in more of a country-level military strategic level of coverage. Where are the troops? What bridges are important, what bridges have been taken. Are there any set piece battles–haven’t heard of a single large scale engagement. How far are the troops outside Kiev? Which border crossings are under U vs R control.

    Not geopolitics. Not domestic politics. Not fluffheads who are covering this in the style that reporters cover hurricanes. Not isolated explosions. But some synthesized, military strategic view. Again, this is not to deny anyone else the interest in discussing the history, future, human issues, domestic politics, etc. But there has got to be someone covering this aspect for people like me. Who want that kind of war news.

    Caveat: of course, I realize amateur analysts are not omniscient and I’m fine with honest speculation. But looking for something more synthesized and military geographic. Think there would be some YT channel, blog whatever covering this and hitting my market niche. But can’t find it by Google. (I did find it for the Libyan conflict though, so it is possible.)

    1. David S

      Marginal Revolution has some links to a few people and sites, but since this peacekeeping operation is less than 3 days old it’s hard for anyone who isn’t in the Pentagon to get a real-time picture of events on the ground. I’ll offer my armchair analysis:

      -Putin might still be expecting to take Kyiv as easily as the Taliban took Kabul. That could still happen, but based on the current position of Zelensky, the material losses of the Russian military, and the size of the metro area things coould get uglier and last longer than Putin expects. Urban warfare favors the defender and Russian logistics seem to be pretty crappy. If Putin continues to focus on the city I think a good strategic move by the Ukranians is to turn it into a “poisoned pawn” by defending it with a few thousand hardcore troops while they work on operations against Russian supply lines and other weak points in parts of the country.

      -The Russians are proud they took Melitopol and have been greeted by the population as liberators. So what? To connect with Russian forces a few hundred miles north (after Kyiv is mopped up in a few days) should be as simple as Lee’s campaign into Pennsylvania. If the goal is to split the country in half and then drive westward then I would like to have a few more troops—800,000 mechanized infantry would be a good number.

      -Putin should cut his losses, liberate and occupy the Donbas region, and get interviewed by Tucker.

      1. Anonymous

        David: thanks.

        [Pre-emptive caveat on all the spellings.]

        Yeah, I get the impression that they are sort of lining up to control eastern U, at least temporarily, further out than the two statelets (L and D sorry, forget the names…but very similar MO to the pieces they carved off of Georgia). Like maybe up about half of the Dnieper river and then across to Kahrkive, large city, close to the border and relatively Russophone.

        You can see they are linking Crimea to those states and going after Mariapool (sp), only major port between the Crimea and those statelets. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be making a serious effort at taking Odessa (major port to the west of Crimea). Maybe going after air bases or military assets, but no troops heading “left” from the Crimea, no amphibious operation

        Yes, all eyes are on Kiev. All the forces moving there seems to be about regime change. Don’t get the impression they want to control western Ukraine. Obviously they have the force to literally go in there and kill/capture Zelensky and the rest of the command/control. But it’s definitely a question of how much collateral damage they have to do while doing it. Not like the U government has just folded as happened with Georgia.

        It’s definitely hard to make judgments about things being slow or fast. In both Gulf Wars (I served in the first, no heroism though) we saw small periods of time when it seemed the advancing forces were stuck and it was reported as such in the media. But it was just a blip in the campaign and didn’t affect the outcome a few days later.

        Of course the question is what do they do with it after they’re done. I would think they pull back to their statelets and Crimea, or perhaps some subset or all of the larger eastern region, I sketched out above. They don’t have the huge resources that the US has nor the mindset to try to stay and pacify the whole country (like Iraq or Afghanistan), especially the non-Russian speaking parts. Of course, they will still probably have issues in eastern Ukraine afterwards (internal and from the west), but they had them before. I really think there long term issues would be more related to sanctions, international efforts, as well as US/other provision of aid to continue actions of Ukraine against them (all of which take time to have effect, so are irrelevant in the context of a campaign, but would have time after) rather than the organic capabilities of eastern U to continue operations against the statelets/Crimea.

    2. Baffling

      The people who have that info are busy fighting right now. In the military. They have no time for armchair generals.

  2. Moses Herzog

    Thanks for sharing. Makes a person think. I’ve always said human beings are a strange lot. Capable of so many great things. But also that underlying dark side. We have to do our best to dig inside and find the better parts of ourselves. That usually means getting away from self-navel gazing and thinking about what we can do for others. Always easier said than done.

  3. GREGORY BOTT

    The bigger infamy is the collapse of Putin’s oligarchy on global politics. The damage to bogus “far right” con they have been espousing since 2013 will be very notable. I suspect Republicans will be turning over states evidence by the end of the year. Websites vanishing. For Putin, this is the move for Russia to resoviet eastern Europe. My guess if they got Chinese backing, he probably could care less about the Trump organization anymore or the Oligarchs who put him into power in 1999.

    I don’t see inflationary pressures from this at all in the long run. Quite the opposite in the end. The “west” is going to turn up production to the nigh. No wonder Democrats are gaining in flyover country while losing support on the coasts.

  5. Pgl

    Thanks for this. Ukraine has chosen to fight. Russian citizens have chosen to protest and some members of Putins army. Are so demoralized that they have surrendered. The world must stand up to Putin now.

  6. ltr

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/russia-ukraine-sanctions-offshore-accounts.html

    February 24, 2022

    Laundered Money Could Be Putin’s Achilles’ Heel
    By Paul Krugman

    The United States and its allies aren’t going to intervene with their own forces against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I’ll leave it to others with relevant expertise to speculate about whether we’ll send more arms to the Ukrainian government or, if the Russian attack achieves quick success, help arm the Ukrainian resistance.

    For the most part, however, the West’s response to Putin’s naked aggression will involve financial and economic sanctions. How effective can such sanctions be?

    The answer is that they can be very effective, if the West shows the will — and is willing to take on its own corruption.

    By conventional measures the Putin regime doesn’t look very vulnerable, at least in the short run.

    True, Russia will eventually pay a heavy price. There won’t be any more pipeline deals; there will be hardly any foreign direct investment. After all, who will want to make long-term commitments to a country whose autocratic leadership has shown such reckless contempt for the rule of law? But these consequences of Putin’s aggression will take years to become visible.

    And there seems to be only limited room for trade sanctions. For that, we can and should blame Europe, which does far more trade with Russia than America does.

    The Europeans, unfortunately, have fecklessly allowed themselves to become highly dependent on imports of Russian natural gas. This means that if they were to attempt a full-scale cutoff of Russian exports they would impose soaring prices and shortages on themselves. Given sufficient provocation, they could still do it: Modern advanced economies can be incredibly resilient in times of need.

    But even the invasion of Ukraine probably won’t be enough to persuade Europe to make those sorts of sacrifices. It’s telling, and not in a good way, that Italy wants luxury goods — a favorite purchase of the Russian elite — excluded from any sanctions package….

    1. Anonymous

      pgl,

      the eu is lost, they spend 1/2 or less of their gdp on war as the usa.

      if their boys & money ain’t up for it why do ww iii for them?

      bombing kiev is not pearl harbor, unless you want real war, all of you then go for it.

      pgl and i are too old to hump a 200 round load, a piece of crew served weapon and 3 days’ rats!

  10. Ivan

    Putin doesn’t want a new Afghanistan so his plan is likely to install a puppet regime. He should have studied our luck with that in Iraq an Afghanistan – and also our cost. To retain a puppet government Putin would have to have a large number of troops stationed there. That will become a major drain of cash that he doesn’t have unless he start tapping the kleptocrats.

    In the mean time Biden gets a huge foreign policy win. Trump had alienated the European allies making them set out on their own adventure policy for neutralizing Russia. Merkel thought that with western investments and economic ties she could “civilize” Russia and turn them into a nice new market for German products. It could have been a win/win, but not realistic with Putin in charge. The hard right wing nationalism and paranoia will have to be squeezed out of Russia first – and that is not happening with Putin in charge. Now Europe is back on the US page of isolation and containment that is the only way to deal with an evil empire wanna be. Trump tried to stop Nordstrom 2, but it was Biden that got it done. Competence matters.

  11. Ivan

    It was kind of funny to see that mock cabinet meeting where Putin sat 30 feet away from his advisers – how symbolic is that. They all were sitting looking at their feet and you knew that they realized that this was going to be the policy mistake of a century (or two). Yet they were powerless to even as much as uttering a word to that effect. Most of them probably care deeply about their country. So it must have been painful for them to realize that this moment would mark the beginning of the end of Russia as anything but a joke with ICBMs.

    Their economy is build on natural resources that are steadily losing importance and value. The talent pool of their 110 million population is diminished by a society that drives young people to alcoholism, hopelessness or fleeing the country. Whatever is left is used for idiotic things like cybercrime and hacking, rather than building the next silicon valley. Current structures and policies are pushing that former superpower further down the drain by a dictator who is blind to the real problems – as he puts a paranoid laser-focus on problems that are not. I sure am glad not to be in his cabinet, let alone in that sinking boat of a country.

  12. 2slugbaits

    Well, if there’s a silver lining in all of this it has to be a sense of comfort for the NATO nations. Even though the Russians will probably win in the end, the shockingly poor performance of the Russian army has to be a relief for the NATO countries.

    1. Ivan

      The support for this attack, or even for arming the Ukraine “rebels”, is less than 10% in the Russian public. That may not mean much for a dictator if he has some paranoid delusion that the actions are a question of “survival of the motherland”. However, it does mean that only about 1 out of 10 soldiers truly believe in the mission. Putin has pushed up the expectations for how capable and dangerous his military is so high it is almost certain to fail. The rest of Europe may end up looking at this and realize that Russia is a failed state with nukes.

  13. w

    A man who openly, if vaguely, threatens the world with nuclear war must be removed from power.
    It is utter folly to fight the Russian army or punish Russian banks but to personally exempt the person directly, personally responsible for what is happening.

  14. Anonymous

    third world war started in 1993 when clinton decided to balkanize yugoslavia, and reneged on “not one inch”.

    trump got in trouble for not running third world war forward after obama’s victories in ukraine.

    biden is discovering there is a red line where the ‘death of a thousand cuts’ is resisted.
    stock your fall out shelters,

    or live near a strategic installation and go fast!

    1. pgl

      Putin is the one who plays the modern day Hitler. I get the sense that his own army is realizing this war criminal has lied to them.

    2. pgl

      That’s quite a title!

      ‘Historical Ukrainian Jewish Town Hit by Russian Missiles
      As Russian President Vladimir Putin claims “denazification,” Ukrainians compare him to Adolf Hitler.’

      The reason Trump and his disgusting minions are praising Putin as Trump wants to be our Putin. I have no doubt that Trump would sell out American Jews if it got him more attention.

  16. Moses Herzog

    Here’s another interesting article from VoxUkraine, which points out the fact one of the reasons the Russian government encourages hatred of Jews is because Israel has a good relationship with America:
    https://voxukraine.org/en/the-innocent-ussr-and-constructive-russia-pro-russian-media-manipulations-october-4-10/

    It also points out how natural gas probably has a larger part in this than people realize. It doesn’t have to necessarily be “gas resources in the ground”. When you control Ukraine you control where Ukrainians consume their natural gas, from whom Ukrainians PURCHASE their natural gas, and you control a larger section of the pipeline that transports that natural gas. And it’s amazing how some PhD economists (who shall go unnamed) think that because the natural gas is not directly underground or sourced in Ukraine, that somehow that means natural gas has “nothing to do” with this war.

    1. pgl

      “one of the reasons the Russian government encourages hatred of Jews is because Israel has a good relationship with America”

      The Communist government treated Russian Jews poorly – at least according to a friend who was both a member of that party and Jewish. She was a troubled lady in many ways but she was not shy of telling Americans about how hard life was in Leningrad (which she refused to call by any other name beside St. Petersburg).

  17. Ulenspiegel

    “When you control Ukraine you control where Ukrainians consume their natural gas, from whom Ukrainians PURCHASE their natural gas, and you control a larger section of the pipeline that transports that natural gas.”

    That is a stupid “analysis”.

    1) The issue in Ukraine was that Ukraine stole NG from pipelines.
    2) NS1 and NS2 prevent this.
    3) Ukraine can only buy from Russia, even without invasion. With NS1 and NS2 the NG would come via Germany and Poland back to Ukraine.

    In conclusion, the invasion is about quite a lot of things, but nort really about NG.

    1. pgl

      I do not think Moses is saying Putin invaded solely over natural gas. No it was people like Princeton Steve that tried to makes this all about economics – economics that Stevie rarely gets right. Barkley is much more tolerant of Stevie than I am – in case you have not noticed.

    3. Moses Herzog

      @ UlenRussky
      I doubt you are actually German, I strongly suspect you are Russian and here to sell Russian propaganda. There’s no reason Ukraine couldn’t source much of their energy from Europe, including Europe’s electric grid, which would make it much more secure from Russian hacking. Is it solely about natural gas?? Clearly not, but to say that isn’t a large part of the incentive for the Russian aggression is, uh, stupid.

      The fact that you are consistently pro-Russian on this blog, makes me 100% convinced I came close to dead center target on the issue. Russian leaders are literally making what they consider to be jokes now, about how extremely high natural gas prices are the “new normal” for the west. Seems like your Russian leaders know more about it than you do UlenRussky.

  19. Anonymous

    ‘rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born’ —

    That beast, with the shape of a lion’s body and ‘a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun’ has since moved from devouring the carcass of Yugoslavia into Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Libya, Syria, Somalia, et al, and arrived in Ukraine in 2014.

    you can get people to do atrocities

    yeats’ ‘second coming’ is prophesy.

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