The Carlson/Putin interview
Here’s what I think might be one of the most “fair and balanced” discussions of Tucker Carlson’s interview of Putin:
As for what I think of the interview and the fact that Carlson did it – I’m not going to listen to a long monologue by Putin, which is basically what this interview was. I’ve seen some clips, but I’ve already read many of Putin’s speeches about Russian history and Ukraine and I’m already quite familiar with his point of view. Hearing it again doesn’t interest me unless the interview contained something important and new, which this one apparently didn’t.
As for Carlson, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Tucker did this, and that he mostly gave Putin the floor without interruption. That latter point is what I see as the problem, not an interview itself. Carlson’s foreign policy positions in particular have been at odds with mine well before Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. I have long found Carlson’s knowledge of many areas lacking (see this for just one example).
However, I certainly don’t always disagree with Carlson either, especially on domestic matters. But I stopped listening to him long ago. Not that I ever listened to him a lot, but I got tired of yelling corrections at the screen every time he did a piece on foreign policy.
NOTE: Apparently Colonel MacGregor has become his go-to person on the Ukraine war, which surprises me not at all. Here’s my post on MacGregor. Also, here’s a piece about Carlson and the reaction to 10/7; here’s another. Carlson has long reminded me of a more telegenic and preppy Pat Buchanan.
neo:
You saved the humor (funny in a sick way) for the NOTE: Tucker viewing Lt. Col. MacGreagor as his military expert. LOL
The interview was illuminating in that it showed putins state of mind his stamina and his resoluteness
A year and a half of idle promises about the state of this war have not proven themselves
RFK with a Kennedyesque assessment:
They clearly do not intend to conquer Ukraine.
Extrapolating: much less Poland, Western Europe, etc.
Other voices in the West are a bit more strident.
Boned Looser:
Why listen to any of Roosia’s and Putin’s threats, after all the Baltics and Poland were once part of mother Russia’s empire, when you can see Roosia’s actions? You can see, if you bother to have been watching since the USSR fell and Putin began feeling his oats.
I wonder why oh why the Finns and Swedes don’t view Roosia as you do?
I hope Tucker realized that he’s been wrong about Putin by the end of the interview. Maybe not. A mind is a difficult thing to change.
Foreign policy is complex and there are differing opinions as to how to deal with dictatorships that haven’t given up on the idea of their right of conquest. Obviously, countries that joined NATO after the USSR collapsed did so because they didn’t trust Russia. And Russia’s paranoia about being invaded by Europeans is longstanding and deep seated.
The UN was supposed to be a place where these issues could be resolved. But, like so many idealistic ideas, the UN has become a place where people make speeches and very little is resolved.
Except that the Earth has a FEVER! 🙂
Certainly, anyone who watched the interview must realize that Putin is a paranoid tyrant who is intent on reassembling the “Russian Empire.”
Because of those clearly stated goals he can never be trusted to leave his neighbors alone. Will his successor be any different?
If his goal was to stop the expansion of NATO by invading Ukraine, he failed – Sweden and Finland decided to join NATO after the invasion.
The question is, can Ukraine defeat Russia, or can a durable peace be negotiated? Right now, the war has become a grinding bloodbath. Continuing on seems senseless for both sides. The hawks here want to keep grinding. Apparently, Putin feels the same.
Biden and his advisers have been loath to give Ukraine all they need to win – just enough to not lose. In addition, the arms and money have had few strings attached to them – a point that rankles budget hawks. So, it’s very controversial mess right now.
I know one thing. Everything Col McGregor has said about the war has turned out to be wrong. He’s the Dick Morris of military advisers. 🙂
I say give Donald Trump a crack at solving this issue. He couldn’t do much worse, and I don’t think he’d listen to Col McGregor.
Actually most of the other pundits turned out to be wrong not surprising their track record has been may .300 at this point
So after putin has been bloodied but unbowed after weve depleted most of our ammunition as well as drawn down our fuel reserve what
next
Like adam kinzinger and his girkin and briefly prigozhin fan club
I have found it odd that Carlson seems to be the poster boy for journalism among so many Conservatives. I just don’t see it.
I was curious as to how he would interact with Putin. Based on admittedly cursory evidence, I considered Carlson to be Putin admirer. Is there such a word as Puntinphile?
Carlson rather confirmed my impression. He gave Putin a conduit to broadcast his blatant lies right into America. When do you change the description from interview to soliloquy?
Putin assured us with a straight face, thanks to Carlson, that he has no intention of invading countries such as Latvia, although in the recent past he has decried the treatment of Russian minorities in the Baltic countries. If that tone has a familiar ring, it would be because of the similarity to fairy tales that were spun in the 1930s. Wait, no need to delve into history, Putin took a page from that playbook with his rhetoric about ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
A confrontation wirh sweden would be in putins wheelhouse from his frame of thinking vyborg where nordstream began was originally swedish
As I have said before, Tucker is an Isolationist.
Does he admire Putin? Don’t know, but I think he certainly believes that if we just let Putin have Ukraine everything will be just fine in the future.
As for the ammunition being used up. Some of it was getting old. As what is happening in the Red Sea the next war will be a Naval and Air war. For now we are doing OK, but a protracted encounter would stretch us to the breaking point. Our Navy is not in great shape.
I’ll call this effort at real journalism a damp squib. Clearly, gaining real insight into the mind of this Dear Leader will be stymied because of his built up defenses. Perhaps a charm offensive of letters by Trump — like he conducted with North Korea’s Kim — will yield different results? Lacking something of that magnitude, I don’t see anyone piercing the Dictator-President’s armour.
If Trump becomes President, and if he raises Pompeo back to Secretary of State, what will likely happen will please the NATO friendly as well as the Putin hostile among us.
Pompeo was given too little time to reshape Department of State and foreign policy in general. He was the smartest and best SoS since before Condoleeza Rice (ie, George W. Bush’s second term). Although, much of Trump China policy remains.
I accept that RealPolitik is pretty foreign to the neo-isolationism Tucker evinces. However, reading between the lines, as much as hear objections implicit by our host and others, a Veep Nom for Tucker may still be more additive in 2024 election voter-building block terms than any other “reach out” VP strategy, such as choosing the Dem dissenter RFK, Jr.
Going back to Putin, I’m surely far from feeling that Putin’s regime was seriously threatened by the Wagner Uprising last June.
FROM CNBC:
Nonetheless, the fact that the outspoken Prigozhin could even mount an armed mutiny with his private military company, the Wagner Group, with little resistance and an apparently muted response is widely seen as a deep political blow for Putin and his regime.
“Prigozhin’s armed rebellion indicates a political crisis within Russia and shatters the myth of Russia’s invincibility and overwhelming power,” Hanna Liubakova, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, and a journalist and researcher from Belarus, said in a note Sunday.
Russia experts and political analysts characterized the uprising as “24 hours that shook the Kremlin” and the biggest challenge to Putin and the Russian elite in decades.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/26/wager-coup-putins-regime-looks-deeply-damaged-despite-failure-of-coup.html
Indeed. The biggest challenge to Putin’s rule since his war in Ukraine went hot.
On ukrinform.net they question why in 120 minuets they could not discuss Putin’s lies and delusions. The abduction of thousands of children ect. Putin seems to be focused on some sort of Russian empire no matter what the cost to anyone.
I found the triggernometry video very interesting, there is a certain “cold neutrality” to the evaluation that appeals to me. Doesn’t mean that the people don’t have a side, but they are very careful to point out how Putin views things. This video is also mentioned as a good introduction as to how Russians think.
War the war
in far Ukraine who oh who could be to blame?
Vlad and Brandon oh just two names.
Who oh who helps Putin here? Tucker Carlson who is so dear.
not my day job
Shirehome,
Sadly I do not think we have the industrial capacity to sustain a war with a sophisticated opponent. There was clearly a time in the early 1940s when we could mobilize that capacity and overwhelm any opposition. But there is little to suggest that the will or the ability to mobilize our human or industrial resources on a massive scale exists today.
I read one Defense expert who pointed out that we are intercepting multi-thousand $$ drones with million $$ missiles/ Against second or third rate opponents we can afford that. On the other hand, if we ever got into a hot war with a dangerous opponent; e.g. China, we would go through our inventory of sophisticated weaponry very quickly. This analyst, who makes a lot of sense, says that Mass + Will are the winning combination in a prolonged conflict. Clearly we do not have the will for a serious conflict, nor do we have the necessary mass in terms of industrial capacity to sustain an extended one.
We have fooled ourselves into thinking that an adequate peace posture is the equivalent of a serious war posture
TJ, I desperately believe that we need not only Pompeo, but a number of Pompeo equivalents, in our foreign policy/national defense cadre.
If Trump prevails, I fervently hope that he will bring Pompeo back. I also hope, with reduced optimism, that he will fill his entire governing team with individuals of Pompeo’s character.
Put your ego aside Trump, and beg DeSantis to join your inner circle.
I skipped the first 20 minute history lesson and found the rest fascinating. Even if you hate Putin, he is right about the continued lies of the US government about NATO expansion, France and German leaders on public record saying they lied when they signed the Minsk accords “to buy time”, the US supported coup in Ukraine in 2014, the blow up of the Nordstream pipeline, which all admit was not Russia, winch means the US was complicit in it, and so on. The list of US lies and deception on the world stage, especially Russia, shouldn’t make anyone feel good or proud about our country, even if you think Putin is horrible. a
Russia will end up with what they want, just a matter of how many Ukrainians all the US patriots want to die before they lose interest, like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan…
Whatever:
Time will tell, ya got any other Roosian fables to push? They aren’t original.
Maybe, just maybe, Carlson decided to give Putin enough rope to hoist himself on his own petard?
(Or maybe not.)
Or maybe, just maybe, Carlson’s real target is “Biden”…since there is something REALLY VERY STRANGE (some might even say, “FISHY”) going on here between:
1. “Biden” and Putin, AND
2. “Biden” and Ukraine, AND
3. “Biden” and China, AND
4. “Biden” and the Mullahs (which latter GOLDEN “RELATIONSHIP” also means ‘between “Biden” and Iran’s proxies, friends and allies’).
All THIS in addition to the HYUGE (“just-another”) distraction that “Biden” can manipulate AS WELL AS “Biden”‘s masterful ACHIEVEMENT of twisting Israel’s arm to relinquish much-needed (as it turns out—coincidentally?) store of previously American-provided arms and ammunition by sending it to Ukraine—under the guise of the MORAL(?) and STRATEGIC(?) NECESSITY of helping Ukraine defend itself…
IOW, just another “Biden” victory… Touche!…(?).
Oops!
“…store of…” in the previous post should be “…stores of…”
– – – – – – – – – –
All this garbage being exhausting, confusing, exasperating (and essentially SOUL-destroying…which onslaught is no doubt part of “Biden”‘s UBER-PATRIOTIC intention)…
Let’s go with the “Feel-Good” story of the day! (Once again from the Paper of Record(TM)…a title it, to be fair, shares with the Babylon Bee…even if one gets the impression at times that these two stellar Media MAVERICKS are one and the same….)
“Florida woman donates kidney to a stranger — marries his smitten brother after meeting in hospital”—
https://nypost.com/2024/02/09/news/florida-woman-donates-kidney-to-stranger-marries-his-brother/
It is abundantly clear that everyone interprets this interview through the lens of their preconceived notions about Putin/Russia. Most of this armchair analysis comes down on the side of Putin/Russia BAD! Has everyone forgotten that Russia has an economy approximately equal to that of Australia, and one that is based almost esclusively on energy exports? If we wish to combat Russian expansionism, all that is necessary is to flex our own energy muscles. That would also adversely impact Iran and decrease its ability to foster anti-American, anti-Israel terror attacks by decreasing its ability to fund its proxies. Of course, the Biden/Obama cabal will have none of that, preferring to wage its own proxy war against the boogieman of “Russia, Russia, Russia,” while economically andpolitically supporting Iran and economically devastating America. “Radical transformation,” anyone? Ukraine is itself a failed state, which was shrinking economically and demographically prior to the current hostilities with Russia. Putin is certainly not an American ally, but he and his country are far less a threat than Iran, China and the entire islamic jihadist movement which, parenthetically, Biden/Obama is allowing to bloom domestically. Dearborn is merely one of the islamic beachheads currently being allowed to fester. Its representatives in Congress, like Omar are doing their best to rot out America from the inside, like termites. The more islamic immigration allowed into the country, the greater will be its termite-like effect, as witness the burgeoning amount of anti-Jew demonstrations being witnessed daily in our largest metropolitan areas and throughout the campuses where such activities are encouraged. If democrat party (really, democrat-socialist party) control is continued through the next national election cycle, America will be irretrievably doomed. The anti-Putin/Russia hysteria being ginned up by the Biden/Obama/neocon cabal that has seized the reigns of power is a distraction from America’s real enemies.
Related?:
“The Cult of ‘Antizionism’;
“American progressive ideologues have formed a new ideology based on the negation of an all-powerful phantasm they call ‘Zionism.’ To fight them, we need to understand the origins of their beliefs in the Soviet academic propaganda apparatus.”—
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/cult-of-antizionism-icsz
Thinking about it, the comment in the video about Russia regarding themselves as the protectors of the Slavs reminded me of how WWI kicked off with Russia and Germany mobilizing. I mostly blame the Germans and Austrians, but the Russians were hardly blameless. I was also reminded that the Soviets killed more Russians than the Germans did, and these days Putin is killing more Slavs than anyone else. Strange how that works.
But this is why biden who was bribed with 20 k of gazprom money along with the other three quarter mill to parties to shut the pipeline down which enabled putin to do what they and the iranian ruling council are doing all through out the crescent
You would think that anyone would not be intentionally citing cnbc at this time on any subject
Steve @ 6:18am,
Well stated.
Look at the positive impact a flourishing, thriving, free and independent America had on the world in the 20th century. In your list of U.S. government atrocities in recent years I’d add Afghanistan and our Congress and many state and cities’ legislatures horrendous budgeting.
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decline
@Steve (retired/recovering lawyer)
On the whole agreed, though with caveats. I’ve been getting prodded by a few different people (mostly not here) to try and read and possibly “fisk” or give my response to the interview by Putin, how this lines up with what he or some of his regime’s trustworthy mouthpieces have claimed.
However…
By that logic pretty much all of Eastern Europe and frankly most of the former Soviet Empire was a failed state. But bluntly I would say the Kremlin’s actions .have played a leading role in that failed state (to the extent it is one) much like we see elsewhere with Moldova and Georgia. Not that that should inherently be of great concern to the US were it not for our other concerns, but still.
I agree, but I think it is worth remembering that Putin is quite the willing partner of many of those, and has been for a while. Since Mark Steyn and his misfortunes thanks to Mann have come up, I will note he was one of many analysts (such as VDH) who pointed out Putin’s preference for the PRC all the way back in the early 2000s. Though I think he and many others underestimated Putin’s willingness to appease Muslim factions and even some level of dependence on Chechen factions like the Kadyrov Dynasty, to the point where he is purging those too vocally opposed against them and praising the building of mosques.
While I agree with the logic of seeking an alliance between Russia and the West against threats like the PRC and Jihadis, I do think Putin and those close to him among the “Organs” are not truly open to such a thing and that their preference is long lasting and cannot be purely explained by American or other Western slights or NATO expansion, though he has happily tried to play crybully by citing those things (and doubtless has some sincere sour grapes about those things).
I’d agree with a caveat.
Firstly: That Putin is a “real enemy” of the US, albeit not our most dedicated or fanatical of one.
Secondly: The Putin/Russia Hysteria is indeed a distraction for the left to consolidate their “fundamental transformation” of the West, but Putin has shown himself to be quite willing to maliciously play that distraction. Ask the troops that had to be slotted in to replace the admittedly small but brave Georgian troop contingent in Iraq when Putin played rope a dope with the Georgians by having his catspaws escalate border skirmishes (including artillery bombardments from the South Ossetian capital of Tshkinvali) to try and prompt a Georgian response, before flattening them when the Georgians finally retaliated.
It is also worth remembering how Putin is quite happy to help Biden and Iran triangulate on yet another sellout to Iran.
None of this means we can or should prioritize Putin over our more dangerous enemies, including our own freedom. In spite of being one of the more stalwart anti-Kremlin pro-Ukraine hawks on this blog I have always stated that if given a choice between Putin tap dancing in Galicia and letting the Biden goons have wartime powers, I would have to give my condolences to the Ukrainians but cut losses to try and save what we have.
Who is the greater enemy who lavishes tribute and calls it defense who refuses to protect our own border who sends al qeda cadre figures back to their respective countries so they can build up their strenght who is smashing every sinew of this country
After twenty years of broken and dead bodies the taliban is back in power and were funding them the irgc ruling circles are more powerful and were funding them not to mention the cartels the triad what is happening to the cities of thus country would be considered the war crime of an occupying power who is behind that
@Miguel Cervantes
Agreed, which is why Putin is down my list of priorities and I would encourage others to do the same in prioritizing him. But I do regard him as a real enemy, even if a lesser one. I do not believe he is such by happenstance or due to globalist meddling (though that was an issue and almost certainly did not help), and he is happy to play ball with our greater enemies in ways that hurt us badly.
But on the whole I agree with Steve about the prognosis for our home front and the stakes. Biden and Obama and co are far greater threats right now than the Ayatollah can dream of, at least for now, and they are actively enabling the Ayatollah and other scum. If they are allowed to run much more riot…. Well there’s not going to be much Americanleft to destroy.
But this is exactly where we will end up with darth austin and discount ving wrames (the cipher at jcs) a cia director who admitted in his own memoir how provocative nato expansion was dont even get me started on the two darryls sullivan and blinken or the erotic poetry reader as dni you trust them to order a pizza
So instead of knowing anything about our enemies the praxis is cancellation if one knows anything about russian culture you know they would never give up crimea like us giving up texas (the regime on the other hand)
Ukraine GDP in 2022 was $160 billion USD or about $4,000 per capita. Compare that to a relatively poor EU country, Greece, at $220B USD and $20,000 per capita.
In 2015, after the coup, excuse me “The Revolution of Dignity” Ukraine’s GDP dropped to $91 billion indicating how much trade Ukraine relied on with Russia. This was down from $191 billion in 2013.
So we’re trying to send them $50 billion and the EU has just committed $50 billion this year. No wonder Zelensky hasn’t been deposed over the war. Those in the west and central parts of Ukraine are all getting paid pretty generously to keep this charade that Ukraine will reclaim its pre-2014 borders.
There is little ideology in this, just markets.
They specially wont give up the eastern side of the country because thats the mineral and industrial region
What russia has taken from the robber barron is the need to maximize resource extraction thats how we became a great power in part of course russia was burdened by serfdom which was an impediment to a real fuctioning economy the pla ruling councils have more of less a similar viee
What exactly is the concensus of media industry education and govt as near as i can tell magical thinking re resource extraction energy production transportation etc
Just having the interview in Russia, as opposed to remotely prob made it impossible to be adversarial. I think even someone with a critical view of putin would be careful in how they deal with putin on his territory
As nutty as Strangelove, Turgidson, and Ripper were, they pale in comparison to Senator Roger “First Strike Nuclear” Wicker. The guy is similarly funny, but he is the frighteningly darker real thing.
Which brings us back to the consequences of a stolen election, be they legal or karmic when the legal system fails.
Putin was posted by the KGB into Markus
Wolf’s stomping grounds, that should tell anyone all they need to know.
they gave him dresden not berlin or bonn, so they weren’t that confident at the Red Banner academy,
Triggernometry got some things wrong, in my estimation, especially about the cause and effects of the Maidan revolution. Yes the police were brutal– but the pro-Western elements soon took control, with the aid/encouragement of the US/CIA.
John Derbyshire, reacting to the interview asks the question, “Just WHY Did the US Deep State Declare War On Russia?”
Assuming some of the desire for global domination by the Soviets was ideological– fulfilling the mandate of Communism and bringing utopia to the world– the fall of the Soviet Empire laid waste to that mirage– but it seemed as if our policy continued unabated.
One of the points Putin made in the interview was our Presidents are overridden by the CIA/bureaucratic state. That seems to be the case with all of the modern era– and we were even warned about it by Eisenhower.
Derbyshire asks: “The U.S.A. is an administrative state. Bureaucrats make the key decisions. Why did we not quit NATO in February 1991 when the Warsaw Pact dissolved itself? Because there were too many “iron rice bowls” at stake—too many flunkeys with cozy, well-paid jobs exercising authority over lesser flunkeys.”
“Putin’s main beef is NATO’s eastward expansion, with our apparent intention to continue it all the way across Ukraine to Russia’s borders.”
“Given the facts of mid-20th-century history and the instability of Russia in the immediate post-Soviet years, you can’t blame the Baltic and East European states wanting to be in a defensive alliance.”
“Why did we have to be part of it, though? —in fact the lead decision-maker in it, sometimes overriding the wishes of European countries, according to Putin?”
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/just-why-did-the-us-deep-state-declare-war-on-russia/
Brain E knows more than people who do it for a living, because reasons, and still is playing the sad trombone about the Maidan Revolution; yea the Ukrainian police shot and killed quite a few of the Maidan protestors, but
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail – The Wedding at Swamp Castle).
And Derb is prattling on about NATO and poor, poor Roosia. When in doubt blame the US for Roosian imperialism. That’s what Roosians do Derb, they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. Maroon.
Vlad always seems to have his apologists.
Turtler may have to try and educate Brain E again.
@Whatever
I’ve been getting prodded by a few different people (mostly not here) to try and read and possibly “fisk” or give my response to the interview by Putin, how this lines up with what he or some of his regime’s trustworthy mouthpieces.
Honestly I’d probably spend a lot of time on the “history lesson.” I’m a history nerd who is somewhat unusual in knowing a fair amount of the region and eras, and it is interesting to see how Putin and other Kremlin governments have tried to use and abuse history (though not exclusively).
No, he really, really isn’t.
An important thing to realize is that much of the “Old NATO” membership from the Cold War – and especially many powers in the US – were not at all interested in NATO expansion. This is where you see many of the things with negotiations between Gorbachev and Baker -as-representing-H.W. Bush and so on. They largely wanted to expand NATO to the territory of the former East Germany and call it a day. However, they were acutely aware that they’d not only have to communicate among themselves and with Moscow, but also with their own public (who were usually much more supportive of NATO, especially at the time) and with the former Pact countries. Indeed, this is something Baker explicitly mentioned.
What these people generally DIDN’T seem to appreciate was how the third camp would steamroll to try and get into NATO or at least into some kind of route to NATO membership.
The second was exactly what happened in the 1980s and 1990s. Namely, waves of violence and instability largely but not only caused by the decay of the Soviet Union, starting with things like sectarian wars in the Caucasus, Saddam’s Iraq trying to recreate Babylon, the Hardliner Coup in August 1991 trying to save the USSR by stopping reform only to basically blow it up as the pro-reform SSRs declared independence while the coup being crushed lead the pro-coup SSRs to independence, sectarian fighting in Transnistria, and finally the fighting for succession to Tito and a push to Serbify as much of Yugoslavia as possible causing that.
These two things helped revitalize NATO like most people do not remember. Any idea that NATO was just a Cold War construction meant purely to contain the Soviet Union died during these years and it died in fairly spectacular and humiliating fashion, largely drawn by an interplay between the former Pact states (and to a lesser extent pro-Western neutrals like Austria and Pakistan that felt they were in danger from aftershocks) and an increasingly hawkish public and legislature in the “Old” NATO members.
And this goes on for quite a while. There was remarkably little “deceit” here. Moreover, if anything there has been vastly more deceit coming from the Kremlin, which officially accepted (at least in words if not in truth) the principle that every nation in Europe had the right to determine its alliance or none at all, first in the Helsinki Final Act and then with the Astana Commemorative Accords.
Which I chalk up to them lying now in an attempt to spin their at the time rather stridently pro-appeasement policies as an “Akshually we were playing 4D chess all this time and I, Frau Merkel, secret NeoCon Crusader and anti-Kremlin Hawk, was trying to help prepare Ukraine for a long war to come.”
“In spite of the fact that I outright rejected this at the time. And sabotaged attempts by the US to do similar with Georgia during the first decade.”
While there might have been ELEMENTS of this in French and German policy, probably couched in a mixture of cynically naive and money grubbing terms about deterrence, weapon shipments, and freezing the conflict, fundamentally French and German policy for most of the past 30 years was quite supportive of the Kremlin even after 2014, and avoiding conflict was paramount. Something Obama largely supported.
Which is one reason why there was so much arm twisting around Minsk, and why nobody really had a good response to why or how it collapsed so quickly after it was signed (largely because neither side was inclined to trust the other, and for good reason. But Germany and France were not about to have things like the oil diplomacy be affected by things like the suspiciously armed “Separatists”, many of whom had Russian Federation Land Forces documents, refusing to move their heavy artillery out of the zone).
And before you ask, yes, I have been paying attention to this shitshow for years.
No, he’s not. I’ve beaten this particular meme into the ground multiple times over, but it is intentionally contingent on people not understanding the Ukrainian government, its constitution (and the admittedly glaring lack of an answer for the Rada to deal with what emerged), or so on.
TL:DR, If there was a “coup” in Ukraine in 2014, it was against the democratically elected (albeit corrupt and rather authoritarian) President of Ukraine and his executive cabinet…. by the also democratically elected Parliament/Legislature (the Verkhovna Rada, or what I’ll refer to as this) [b] which was elected at the same time Yanukovych was and in fact dominated by a coalition headed up by him. [/b]
The latter party certainly received no shortage of support and funding from the US, as per the norm in Ukraine’s political wrangling. But that hardly meant it was the CIA in the laundromat with the candlestick, and while people correctly point to Nuland etc. al.’s odious hands involved and the audio leaks, they ignore how many of her predictions or supposed “orders” didn’t go through.
To make a formidably long story short, Yanukovych was not a greatly loved man even in his native, Russophone East, though he was a greatly connected one. After failing to outright rig the election in the crisis that sparked the so called “Orange” Revolution (TL:DR on Pre-2014 Ukrainian Politics: “Orange” referred to mostly pro-Western, generally Ukrainophone or Tatar, pro-EU blocs largely based in the center and West of the Country, “Blue” referred to mostly pro-Russian, generally Russophone, pro-CIS/Russian blocs based in the East and South). However, after the “Oranges” won the coalition they assembled began self-destructing. The large number of literally bribed rent-a-protestors that were a figure of Ukrainian politics up until 2014 and used by basically all sides went home, leaving the actual party faithful, oligarchs, and political animals to fight it out, at which point they started ripping each other apart in spectacular fashion (complete with the “Orange” President most famous for nearly being fatally poisoned and haivng massive scars imprisoning the also-“orange” Prime Minister).
Yanukovych exploited this by basically triangulating, mobilizing his own formidable political base in the East and South who had large affinities with his pro-Russian, relatively blue collar background and language rights, but who were being hit by ongoing tariff wars with Russia and Soviet maldevelopment turning much of their place into basically a Greater Detroit. So he moderated his image and stated he would sign an EU Association Agreement with the EU, essentially bringing in more market exposure from the West. To make a formidably long story short, he won the election along with a large coalition headed up by him (including a predominant number of the people who would throw him out in 2014).
Putin and much of the Kremlin bureaucracy and oligarchs were not happy. They were happier than if the other side had won of course, but they viewed Ukraine policy as one of their pet projects, and in particular economically. So they began a process of carrot and stick. In this case (unwisely) mostly stick, basically twisting Yanukovych’s arm while promising possible renegotiations of the existing Russo-Ukrainian pipeline and tariff deals that had been a blight on the region’s politics for a decade and a half by that point. And that coupled with some failures in EU Negotiations led Yanukovych to effectively go back on one of his promises in an election (shocking, right?). And unsurprisingly for Ukrainian politics, this helped mobilize the now-out-of-power Oranges, who set aside much of the bickering they were engaged in, and began large scale protests.
Again, so far, so normal.
But what nobody quite expected was the scale of these protests. It’s important for me to emphasize how up until this point, politics in Ukraine had broken down RELATIVELY cleanly on cultural and regional issues (indeed, Yanukovych’s party was “The Party of Regions” aka Regionnaires). Sort of like “Blue and Red” states, with the balance of power being on how many people turned out, where, and what swing voters did, with Yanukovych’s coalition relying on Southern and Eastern, Russophone and largely ethnic Russian populations that were an alliance of the blue collar workers and the local oligarchs (while the Oranges were more agricultural workers, white collar middle class, and THEIR local oligarchs).
What nobody quite appreciated was that (regardless of the actual merits of the deal or an EU Association Agreement), Yanukovych was seen as taking a particularly raw deal from Putin. Which made people angry. And not just the usual public. Because again, for mostly Russian speaking Blue-voting mine workers like in the Donbas that had been a crucial part of Yanukovych’s support base, they had lived their entire lives with the knock on effects of the tariff war and were cautiously supportive of an Association Agreement or almost anything.
So when this came through, a surprising number of them went out to the streets to protest. And a surprisingly larger number of them stayed home and sat on their hands in things like the Ukrainian equivalent of byelections and the all-important Rent A Protestor vote. It’d be a bit like if in November 2024, the Dems suddenly found the California Bay Area’s voter turnout dropping by a quarter and MAGA rallies being held on the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh and some members of the DNC’s Congressional representation – including the “Black Caucus” – are making noises both privately and in public about being dissatisfied with affairs and possibly coming out against the party. At the same time as you have some members of your base (I emphasize SOME since this was not anything like a majority or even a plurality of “Ukrainian Blue” Voters, but enough to raise alarms) out protesting shoulder to shoulder with supposedly chauvinistic MAGA cowboys and literal Neo-Fascists.
You can imagine how our dear DNC Doyens would react to this.
And indeed, Yanukovych reacted badly to this. And while he’d always been a corrupt thug of a man (with the rap sheet – both literal and figurative – to prove it) and not exactly the most pacifistic of men, But when faced with protests both outside and inside his party that were significantly larger and broader than he was used to, he began to crack down. Only he went too far, not just morally but politically. In addition to the legal and moral hazards of undermining and circumventing a bunch of constitutional guarentees with the collectively-known “Dictatorship Laws” and granting police excessive power to use violence and excessive immunity, it contained a bunch of things that backfired on him badly.
For starters, it largely criminalized peaceful assembly. Which in addition to looking bad publicly and on the world stage, suddenly meant that every single Rent A Protestor (some of whom had quite literally lived their entire lives as mercenaries taking pay from one side or the other) had their “occupations” deleted. And rather than get a new job, they simply crossed the line en-masse to join the Oranges, which probably gave the Euromaidanites control of the streets in most of the country North of the Isthmus and West of Central Donetsk.
Things came to a head with the so called “Maidan Square” massacre. To keep to what we can prove, a relatively peaceful protest (in contrast to the more violent conflicts) got shattered by unknown snipers gunning down both police and protestors alike in keeping with what we know of some Soviet anti-protest doctrines to try and squelch cascading situations. This was probably the final straw and Yanukovych faced an insurrection from within his own Coalition, who forced him to accede to an agreement with the opposition’s leadership in the legislature, calling for among other things new elections.
This was rejected by many of the more radical elements among the protestors (as Brian E has documented), especially Right Sector. However, it DID succeed in mapping a way out and dividing the opposition. But then the Legislature used its power to summon Yanukovych and a bunch of other members of his cabinet to appear before them to answer questions about their actions in the last couple years. This was something Yanukovych and his close compatriots were hesitant to do for fairly obvious reasons, and there was also an uncertain but real threat to their safety.
So Yanukovych basically fled the capital, stopping by to loot some of the Presidential properties, and then fled first to eastern Ukraine and then out of the country altogether. It took the Legislature about a day to realize what had happened and some more arguments among themselves. And here we get to the “Coup”, such as it is.
The Ukrainian Constitution does not have a good answer for what to do in this kind of situation, short of impeachment. There IS a Constitutional method to remove the President in a way other than impeachment, but it is basically their equivalent of Article 25 for someone who is clearly indisposed. Yanukovych wasn’t psychologically or physically indisposed, he was perfectly alive and fine. He was just refusing to execute his duties by appearing to answer the Parliament’s questions (which were clearly a trial balloon for impeachment). Apparently at the time the Oranges did not have the votes to pass an impeachment and it was deemed not wise to try and wait since it wasn’t clear how long that would take. So Parliament effectively passed a bill removing Yanukovych from office on grounds of incapacity to carry out his office.
This is controversial, and justifiably so. Brian E has argued it was unconstitutional, and not entirely without cause. I also have issue with it, for obvious reasons, and think an Impeachment would have been better. And the fact that the Constitution’s wording has not changed to fix this even years later (meaning this was still very much an ad hoc address) says nothing good. However, the fact remained that Yanukovych was paralyzing the legal running of the government by refusing to attend to his constitutional duties (to say nothing of his violations of the constitution), and for better AND worse – as our founders pointed out – Parliamentary systems give much more power to their legislatures to interpret or create constitutional law than we do (indeed it was something they identified as prone to abuse in the British system).
If there was a “coup”, this was it. And note I haven’t talked a lot about foreign actors, such as Obama, Power, Soros, etc. who were supporting the Oranges or Putin and Lukashenko and co supporting the Blues. Not because they weren’t present or involved. But because we tend to overstate their importance at the expense of actually understanding the Ukrainian cess pit their influence had to operate in, and how it wasn’t going to jump just because they did.
This is simply not true, and it’s bad logic. Indeed, most don’t admit “it was not Russia’, especially given the Russian government’s long and sordid history of false flag operations through its history and how this happened at the opportune time. In any case it also ignores the question of an Accident (which I believe the Swedes have since ruled out but which was worth considering) or a Third Party (such as the Ukrainians or subfactions inside Russia interested in it). I have heard a theory that the blast was organized by the PRC, which I had not heard of before but which fits neatly into the puzzle in a way I hadn’t thought of, since it explains an anti-Western faction inclined to get more leverage on Russia.
Agreed, and it doesn’t. But that needs to be put into context. Especially given lies about US “Lies”, such as the bullshit “Ukrainian Chemical Weapons Labs” (based on shoddy and probably unethical but not weaponized chemical research the US outsourced to Ukraine in order to get around US Regulations, and which the Russians knew well about and continued on through) and claiming the Moskva was sunken in an onexistent storm.
Funny, considering Russia and the Soviet Union’s own track record in Afghanistan and to a lesser extent Iraq. Especially given how Russia is increasingly dependent on its Muslim sub populations and the PRC.
And the Ukrainians are as a whole not so interested in giving the Kremlin what it wants (whatever that may be, and many of its claims have been grandiose like “Novorossiya”) and the Kremlin has thus far proven incapable of seizing what it wants by force, and not just because of Western support (though also because of it). The drive on Kyiv mostly fell apart before the Western aid started arriving in earnest, and especially before what pre-2022 aid had been given could be redirected from the Donbas front.
@Brian E
What tends to get overlooked – especially by this – is how that dependence on trade with Russia was hardly purely natural or organic, and certainly was not stable. Long before Russian and Ukrainian troops killing each other became a fixture of our world, large scale economic conflicts over tariffs, oil pipelines, and trade agreements had gone on for decades between the two. And indeed between Russia and most of its Western neighbors, even the slavishly pro-Russian “Union State” dictatorship in Belarus. Indeed, one of the major sparks for Euromaidan/the” Revolution of Dignity” was Yanukovych promising to negotiate an Association Agreement with the EU – and getting elected on that platform – only for Putin to arm twist.
Making this about “Zelensky” being “deposed” is personalizing it too much, much like those that believed Poroshenko (who fought the vast majority of the 2014-2022 Donbas War) leaving would. If Zelenskyy was revealed to have the wrong kind of Cheese Pizza or the like, he’d probably be removed and replaced with someone else vowing to continue the war to regain Ukraine’s territory, and who if anything would be even more hawkish.
We might attribute this in part due to Western patronage, but the reality is that the Ukrainian public has generally been much, MUCH more hawkish than the West’s diplomatic corps for a long while. This is also why I view things like Merkel and Obama’s face saving claims about the reasons they pushed for Ukraine’s signing the Minsk Agreements as self-serving lies. That doesn’t necessarily mean it would be IMPOSSIBLE for that to change (and indeed it is telling Zelenskyy got to power on a relatively dovish by Ukrainian standards platform), but I do think it speaks to the level of coercive force needed for it to change.
Even if true they wouldn’t be the only ones.
Utter bullshit. Markets are important and have been in this region for centuries, but there's plenty of ideology involved. And this IS a region that saw a relatively small scale and more regionally Galician, Ukrainian Fascist Partisan group withstand the Soviet Union and the might of its new proxies for about a decade after WWII was over in spite of being surrounded on all sides.
It stands to reason what we see in Ukraine will probably be larger and bloodier.
Soon after which Yanukovych’s flight from Kyiv to avoid answering questions about police brutality, violations of the Ukrainian Constitution, etc. gave his opponents the opening to remove him from office and helped spark that.
This is almost the exact opposite of reality in my opinion.
The truth is, the US Deep State has generally had a much more preferable opinion of Russian governments than the American Public. I’d say this is true at least as far back as the FDR Years and possibly well before. While it’s certainly true that the Military side of the Deep State continued using the Russians as a military comparison (as the obvious other conventional military threat, helped in part by the Russians doing the opposite), they are less influential in these arenas than the Foreign Policy doyens at Foggy Bottom and the Bureaucracy. And THOSE Generally tended to be quite soft on the Kremlin and its various sins.
There are plenty of reasons for this, the most obvious being that if nuclear armed great powers like the US and Russia can’t at least grudgingly tolerate each others’ existence in relative peace, things might escalate to the risk of a Fallout game. That along with the general Foreign Policy “Go Along to Get Along” we see as far back as Talleyrand’s Grandfather creates the atmosphere of a lot of relative chumminess.
One that I note largely persists to this day, for all of the sometimes apocalyptic grandstanding (such as the odious Wicker as Banned Lizard shows), Biden is still happy to be in the room while his handlers try to triangulate with the Russians to give Iran’s Ayatollah what he wants.
We see this in things such as the massive pro-appeasement, pro-“Detente” policy trusts that Reagan and Thatcher had to fight. And that’s before we even address the dreams of what a Russian-American partnership might entail (illusionary promises or not), such as a united front against Islamist Terrorism (which has generally fallen apart because the Kremlin won’t stop making deals with htem even without factoring in American and Western weak wills).
In sharp contrast, “The Organs” in the Russian State – both the Security Organs and the Bureaucracy – are reflexively much more anti-American than our own Deep State is anti-Russian. They don’t just use us as a boogeyman or hypothetical enemy when doing spread sheets about military procurement. They earnestly hate us. Moreover, while Putin isn’t nearly the best possible evil he paints himself as or the real moderate (I’d probably trust any given Novgorodian without a background in the bureaucracy or security services more), he IS , RELATIVELY mild as far as anti-Western kneejerk attitudes go. Which led to him being chewed out by that.
“Seemed as if.”
Quaint weasel words. The truth is, by and large our policies towards Russia Did Not Continue unabated – indeed one of our core problems was generally having way too much tolerance for bullshit coming from Moscow, in part due to the desire to avoid destabilizing first Gorbachev, then Yeltsin, and ironically then Putin . Had I told you in 1986 that the USSR would collapse, and that in 1990 a Rogue Russian Army would bombard the capital of Moldova in support of Russian Supremacist Separatists, and the US would do nothing about it, you’d probably drop your jaw. But that’s a decent summary of the actions of the Russian Army in Transnistria.
The truth is, we DID change our policy substantially towards Russia (indeed I would argue in some ways we changed it both too much and too little). And where we didn’t I would argue it was often for very good reasons. Such as how Communism may be a special spice but even without it we don’t have much reason to want adventurous Russian armies violating their neighbors’ borders.
This is true especially regarding Trump, but I think that overstates it. And he is particularly “conveniently” overlooking that much of the way the CIA/Bureaucratic State operated was by pressing for resolutions that were more favorable to Putin than public sentiment favored. Anybody remember Georgia?
No, no it doesn’t seem to be the case with all of the modern era, and no Eisenhower did not really warn about it (though he came close by talking about the MIC and the Scientific Industrial Complex, but not the already entrenched problems of the bureaucracy that’d metastasize in the decades after he left).
Congratulations Derbyshire. You’ve reached the level of Civics 101.
But if anything, the US is LESS of an administrative state than almost any government in the Western World since about the Century of the Soldier in the 1500s. Because the truth is that even in our decayed and corrupted state the citizenry and influence groups have a lot more options than those under – say – Richelieu’s France other than “Comply, Go into Hiding, Rebel, or Emigrate”. And I challenge anybody to argue that any administrative state would prefer my own California’s problems with propositions. Bureaucrats make key decisions, and frankly far too many for the good of the world or ourselves. However, they don’t make ALL the Key Decisions.
And indeed, one of the core issues for this was public sentiment and lobbying overriding the bureaucratic preferences such as those against NATO expansion.
In contrast, Russia is FAR more of an administrative state than we are and has been since the rise of Moscow. To one degree or another the current Russian state is descended from a system where the aristocratic bureaucrats would refer to their monarch (not yet a Tsar at first) as their shepherd and themselves, quite literally, as “Your Slave(s)”. Putin only wishes he could get that level of deference today (especially since the imperial center is not quite what it used to be), but he arose from that background as an authoritarian functionary and is used to its language, and quite literally overriding the will of the people more blatantly than even the most extravagant Daley vote rigger would like.
This is what we call Derbyshire Begging the Question. Moreover, he’s doing so in a secularly stupid and dishonest fashion for a couple reasons.
Firstly; In an administrative state or bureaucratic landscape, justifications are key. So even if his interpretation of events were true (and as I’ll address later, it really isn’t) that doesn’t help us without understanding the WAYS these turkeys defended their rice bowls with justifications X, Y, and Z.
Secondly: Contra Derbyshire, a surprisingly large number of the Bureaucrats and Administrative Deep State were on board with dissolving NATO, and even more were in favor of not enlarging it beyond say East Germany. So if we’re looking for explanations behind our current conflicts with the Kremlin (both due in actuality and using the Kremlin’s stated – and probably insincere in large part – reasons) we’ll need to look elsewhere.
So in response to Derbyshire’s posturing, I would advance a couple responses.
Firstly: “Why Dissolve NATO? It is not enough to know that one can do something, but it is useful to understand why one should do so, especially given the background of bureaucratic inertia.” The fear of a united Germany – which I’d argue has largely been justified – was even more potent in Feb 1991 than it was today, especially with the lack of Soviet pressure to keep the Germans behaving and even the risk (recognized to some degree) of yet another Berlin-Moscow Axis to screw over the countries in its near abroad. Remember, Ismay’s Definition was “Americans In, Russians Out, AND GERMANS DOWN.” Even without “Russians” involved the first and last of those remain in place. And that’s besides talking about its use addressing other threats (such as the growing instability in the Middle East and especially the Balkans at the time), and the Rice Bowls case.
Secondly: “Why the hell would you dissolve NATO in February 1991? The World looks like it’s about to explode.”
It’s convenient to look back in early 1991 and see relief, peace, and harmony. Especially compared to now. And to be fair for many of the world that was true. But it’s hardly unilaterally so. Saddam had already invaded Kuwait with the intent to annex it and was waving off demands to get him to leave (and this was at a time when it was predicted getting him out might lead to a bloody multi year war). The Soviet Union was still intact and still had powerful puritanical hardliners like Yazov, who were engaged in illegal attempts to do things like quell Baltic autonomy. In August 1991 they would try to stage a coup (which NATO did not foresee but which was the kind of event the West feared), and a united NATO front proved key in preventing it.
Worse, the Soviet Empire was starting to fissure along sectarian lines, with infighting happening in the Caucasus and Moldova even beyond what the hardliners hoped or wanted, as Azeris and Armenians and Transnistrians and Moldovans, and Georgians and Ossetians and Ingush and Abkhaz killed one another. It was not at all clear how badly this would go. And at a time when WMD was littered throughout the former USSR. It led to things like this one novel featuring a US-Russian Alliance invading Ukraine under the control of a rogue state.
And then Yugoslavia began to implode as Tito’s death and failure to groom an heir coupled with sectarian power grabs helped cause it to burst.
And at the same time most of the former PACT states and some of the SSR Governments are all lining up to ask “How can we get into NATO?”
All of this was happening and hitting policy makers around the same time in the first and second quarters of 1991.The world was still a very scary place, and in some limited ways became even scarier because while the Soviet Monolith was terrifying in its (seeming) power and unity, the lack of it pushed the risk of desperate or stupid actions by bad actors in it and the risk of others. It also meant you couldn’t just talk with Moscow.
No, no it’s not. And anybody claiming this is so has not studied Putin’s policies much. In particular it is one reason I thank the Swedes and Finns for their action, in large part because it helped pull the rug out from this particularly narrative.
Putin’s main beef with NATO is the belief that he and the government in Moscow have a natural right to dominate its near abroad, and indeed to do so more vastly and often brutally than even Olney’s Gun held the US Had the right to do in Hispanic America. NATO and other international organizations (remember: the spark for the crisis in Ukraine was an ASSOCIATION agreement with the EU, Not NATO, though one can make an argument there is a correlation) undermine Russia’s ability to do so.
“Mid-20th Century History? John Bitch, get on my level, let’s talk Medieval History.”
Again, Russia or Proto-Russian States have either outright exercised or at least claimed hegemony over the Baltics for centuries. After Aleksandr Nevaskoy defeated the Crusaders at Lake Peipus in 1242, he justified rounding up their local Southern Baltic levies and massacring them on the grounds they were “traitors” to Novgorod’s hegemony over the region, which he claimed were centuries old (citing Yaroslavl the Wise).
One of the most oddly Tom Clancy like events of the Renaissance was Ivan Grozny’s Livonian War, where he crossed over into the weak and divided Livonian Confederation dominating what is now Estonia and Latvia to try and conquer it and install a puppet King, only to be beaten back by local resistance and an uneasy Western alliance of the Swedes, Dano-Norwegians, Poles, and Hungarians.
And when Pyotyr the Great made his move to force a Baltic bridgehead, he did so by attacking the then-Swedish city of Narva. And while that ended disastrously the war it sparked would ultimately see him win and inaugurated a quarter millennium of Russian domination. The Baltic Peoples had reasons to not want to go back under Russian Hegemony (which they have usually regarded as brutal, arbitrary, capricious, racist, and corrupt) WAAAAY Before “the facts of mid-20th century History.”
While conversely, various Russian factions have wished to do so.
To make a long story short, we didn’t. At least at the start.
However, we had little reason to trust the often hostile and perfidious leadership in the USSR and Russian “Organs”, had surprisingly large sentimental and even practical reasons to support these countries or at least the stated rules allowing them to exist, and faced a popula groundswell.
This is Putin being a sociopathic liar, if not outright projecting matters onto it. He wants to ignore the fact that the people in the “Near Abroad” have agency (in spite of knowing full well they do, as his latest pipeline talks with Lukashenko attest). In part because a full reckoning of why these countries went the way they did would invariably involve touching on “the facts of history” that are not flattering to his odd cult of Russian imperial nostalgia – both Tsarist and Soviet – and also point to his own failures in wooing and keeping states in his orbit. Because one of the things that tends to get ignored in most discussions of this is how much of an asshole Putin and the Russian siloviki have been to the countries in their “Near Abroad”, and how they have treated the likes of even Belarus when it comes to economic problems, with habitual overreach and then retraction.
Great history, Turteler, thanks.
Thanks Turtler….
Just out of curiosity, when Obama mentioned to Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” after the 2012 election—to which Medvedev murmured something along the lines of, “Yes, I understand”—what do you think Obama was referring to…?
That is, what could Obama NOT do, or NOT agree to, BEFORE the election that he could do or agree to AFTER the election, which he felt sure he’d win?
Or was he merely stating a general policy of friendlier more amenable relations?
OTOH, can one more specifically point to events where Obama facilitated—or did not oppose—Putin’s policies between 2013-2016?
(Or might he have been talking about matters Iranian?)
Thanks!
It was iran it was missile defence it was the decapitation of the polish cabinet at smolensk
I always knew that Tucker Carlson was a Buchananite Palecon. In all his years on Fox he never mentioned Israel and I knew the reason was because he knew that the overwhelming majority of Fox viewers were pro Israel and at heart he was an anti-Semite in the style of Charles Lindbergh and Pat Buchanan.
I’m very happy to see that the conversation has never really focused on Carlson’s interview style to the same extent as the original article did.
Personally I enjoy an interview where the interviewer lobs an open ended question at the subject and then stays out of the way while the subject answers at length. I think that leads to the follow up discussions such as we see in the conversation here being about the veracity of the answers offered.
I think this is especially important when the subject of the interview has been effectively censored for years in the west.
So, thank you Tucker and bravo to all the commenters here!
Vlad has been censored in the west ….. LOLx11
Ever hear of that media organ of the Russian Federation, RT? Censored, LOL.
“Brain E knows more than people who do it for a living, because reasons, and still is playing the sad trombone about the Maidan Revolution; yea the Ukrainian police shot and killed quite a few of the Maidan protestors, but…”– om
As many as 20 Berkut police were killed, so let’s not forget this was an armed conflict. And while it may have started with the Berkut coming down hard on the protesters, it soon became a coordinated effort by multiple groups opposed to Yanukovich’s decision to not sign the EU application into the “heavenly hundred”, which was the magic number of deaths which would trigger the full-scale support of the Cia/State.
I’ve tried to make it clear– and I’ll repeat this for the umpteenth time, I’ve come to the position that the Donbas was justified in declaring it’s independence from Ukraine and seeking the aid of Russia based on the actions of the re-established Ukraine government after the overthrow of Yanukovich. The record is clear there was support for maintaining ties with Russia at the time Ukraine declared its independence.
Triggernometry, in my reading of events, got this wrong.
Turtler,
Sure eastern europe had a right to seek membership in NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union, the fact remains the US made promises to the Russian leadership. Granted it should have been in the form of a treaty– which would insure the successive administrations honored those commitments. This one of the failings of our system. Congress/the People have been left out of much of the process. For that there was a reaction and at least a paranoia by Russia as to our motives. Bill Burns and Fiona Hill among others thought the 2008 decision was a mistake.
Earlier I had suggested that less then a majority of colonists supported the Revolutionary War. You pointed out I was using a letter that was referring to a different issue. While the support may/was closer to 50%, there was a significant minority that stayed loyal to the crown.
For that they were beaten, tarred, property stolen and even hanged. Estimates are 60,000 of those fled the colonies for Canada and Florida.
As that relates to the Donbas, there was about 30% that favored separation from Ukraine. Some of those same brutal actions applied to those that maintained their support to Ukraine?
Was Russia instigating/behind all of this? Was the CIA/State instigating/behind the actions that led to the overthrow? Did the colonists seek the aid of a foreign power to aid their fight for independence? Did the Donbas seek the aid of a foreign power, etc?
@Brian E
Much more dubious. And there’s a reason why there is generally a lot of assertion of that but remarkably little in the way of spelling out what these promises were, when they were made, who made them, where, and to whom. In large part because a lot of times things start to implode when you scrutinize many of the supposed promises, as I pointed out with tbe Baker/Gorbachev meeting.
In any case, US leaders struggle to get their own successors – let alone the other party and the public – to accept promises, and have limited at best right to bind other parties to it, especially without running it through Congress to make it a treaty or legally enforceable agreement. This is something that all sides involved were well aware of, and indeed Baker explicitly warned the Soviets about.
Moreover the Soviets and now Russians have known this well enough to exploit it, such as parsing Bush’s personal promises to do an end run to Obama, especially re Georgia. The idea that the tricky, perfidious U.S. rule lawyered a naive and trusting Russia may have some kernels of truth, but it tends to vastly downplay the other actors involved. Starting with the fact that as much as the American left may wish, the U.S. isn’t a full dictatorship yet and the executive cannot or at least should not be able to override the legislature Willy nilly (as Obama and co learned regarding the last Iran sellout).
Which would bring up the process of passing it through a legislature which along with the public was generally more hawkish and pro-NATO than most administrations, and specifically to slam the door in the face of say Poland after years of hearing of Soviet villainy and while you had ongoing wars in the Balkans and former Soviet space. That would be a tough sell, and there’s a reason it generally had few attempts to make it but that many of those in favor of disengaging from NATO ultimately rolled back from it.
Honestly I view it as one of its strengths. It limits the power of an imperial Presidency to go against public or legislative will on the foreign stage, and it has had multiple salutary effects such as hamstringing Obama and co’s Iran deal.
It also generates gridlock and maintains a balance of power.
True, but that goes back to the importance of Congress and how they weighed in on the matter. Which was generally in favor of NATO expansion, especially given the rather convincing positioning and portrayals of a lot of the former Pact countries’ new governments. It is less sexy than talking about rice bowls and the deep state and bureaucrats, and to be sure there has been plenty of dodgy shit done by unelected bureaucrats that has had an impact on this issue (like the research grants to Ukraine) but in this case it is truer.
Which is fair. But conversely I can point to the U.S. and these countries’ reasons to be paranoid or at least concerned about Russia’s motives. Especially given there were far more concrete and damaging effects, as I have talked about with the Kremlin generally not playing nice in its near abroad and nickel and diming even the likes of Lukashenko’s Belarus.
I have never had much respect or even like for either of those, and this certainly isn’t going to change it. Especially given how I note how Hill went out of her way to lie about things like Ukrainian influence operations in the U.S. regarding Trump and whitewashing Hunter Biden.
The fact that those two played a significant role in the failed policies of rope a dope in the 2000s also does not give me much reason to respect them as hallowed experts that can give sage advice on this particular case.
On this much I agree, and I would go further to point out that things went worse. Patriot militias and their Allie’s (especially Amerindian tribes) tortured and murdered on a fairly large scale. Mostly Loyalist militias and forts, but also Loyalist civilians or those who were just in the way (such as the pointless and cruel murder of a pacifist, neutral, Christian Lenape at Gnadenhutten). We tend to have a fairly sanitized view of war in general here in the West and that goes Triple for the American Revolutionary War. It also applies to a host of other wars and conflicts, including those in former Soviet space. And I will freely talk about paramilitary and even government sponsored violence, even when it is done by “my side” or those that I generally sympathize with. For instance the outcome of the first spate of inter Georgian conflicts had less to do with Georgian loyalists being too squeamish to commit terrorism, burn down Ossetian or Abkhaz towns, and so on so much as to them being less disorganized and fatally divided in their own civil war, meaning that the separatists had the initiative in starting hostilities and in the case of Georgia basically never relinquished it (unlike in Ukraine where things went downhill.)
As that relates to the Donbas, there was about 30% that favored separation from Ukraine. Some of those same brutal actions applied to those that maintained their support to Ukraine?
Sure, and then some. It is also worth noting that while there was counter protests and some shoving matches or even violence (the Odessa customs house arson is rightly pointed out as an exemplar), the escalation from that to wholesale war and cleansing was much more sudden. By March 15th Reshat Ametov’s mutilated body was dumped in public as a clear warning sign and over the next few weeks the deployment of Russian troops and provocateurs as well as generally rising tensions escalated it.
In particular you saw massive, coordinated attacks on Ukrainian military positions. This makes it UTTERLY different from even the bloodiest interpretation of events in Ukraine for the past 20 some years prior, since nobody was stupid or bloodthirsty to enough to attack Ukrainian regulars, and the regulars remained generally uninvolved except for light public order work. Indeed, one of the turning points of the crisis was the Ukrainian military explicitly refusing what they (correctly I believe) interpreted as illegal orders from Yanukovych to clean the streets using violence while declaring what he had said and saying they would remain in their barracks. Which was politically and legally wise but turned out to be militarily disastrous with the deployment of Russian troops and their help in galvanizing paramilitary separatist attacks, leading to a bunch of sieges (some nonviolent, most decidedly not) of various points of entry. Some of that can be attributed to defections among the Ukrainian regulars and other paramilitaries as some went Separatist and others did not, or to squabbles between loyalist garrisons and separatist populations, but by and large that does not seem too likely. Especially outside of Crimea.
This would be a bit like if in response to the Quebec Act the militias of the United Colonies got together and encircled the British garrisons in Boston and Quebec, accompanied by troops with intentionally generic and untraceable uniforms and standards but who speak Spanish and seem to have the support of a fleet whose flagship seems really really really big and appears to have had the words “Santisima Trinidad” hastily painted over.
Pretty much. Not necessarily “all” of it as in every single angry speech, violent clash, or the like. However as a coordinated military move, yeah the finger points quite firmly to the Kremlin. The fact that we can trace the movements of some highly placed big name players noted as Kremlin patsies in prior ops like Dobkin across the border paints the Russian government as prime instigator and accelerator of this.
One does not have to pretend there were no real grievances or tensions in the region, and we can talk a great deal about that. However, the descent of the situation into armed conflict – and ESPECIALLY armed conflict of such violence, brutality, and escalation – was unprecedented in recent Ukrainian history and he evidence firmly blames Moscow, in much the same way that no amount of waxing poetic about real or imagined tensions between Sudeten German “Bohemians” and Czechs can explain the existence of the Sudeten Freikorps as something other than an organization centrally directed from Berlin by the Fuhrer and the Nazi German government, and that all those involved in it deserve trial and likely execution for state sponsored terrorism, crimes against the peace, and/or treason.
I draw similar conclusions to the leadership of the Donbaschukuos and their patrons.
In a word no. The CIA in particular has dropped more balls than I can name in Ukraine. State was more active and activist, but as far as I can tell it was never anything like the driving force. And for a reason you might not expect: it was so goddamn incompetent. People correctly point to State walking hand in hand with Soros and other governments (mostly in the EU) in financing Orange groups to rally against Yanukovych and his Allies, and they are not wrong to do so. However, this tends to overlook that they had been doing it for years with mixed success, and actively opposed both Yanukovych and many of the party members who won election (several of whom would go on to turn on him).
Moreover they seemed to have focused too much in Kyiv and Galicia and to a lesser extent Crimea (where they unsurprisingly did not gain much traction) and on working with the Ukrainian military detachments abroad. This is one reason why they were caught flat footed time and again first during Euromaidan and especially after Yanukovych’s ouster.
They did. They did NOT, however, welcome foreign troops on American soil almost from day one of the conflict and giving them great leeway to do so. Indeed the argument about seeking diplomatic recognition – let alone support – was fierce and wasted valuable time, and then the debate about whether to allow foreign military onto American soil and under what arrangement dragged on further (which is one reason why the French were the only ones to formally do so). To say that there does not seem like there was anything like this kind of debate in the separatist camp is an understatement, and supports my argument that this was much less like Boston 1775 and a heck of a lot more like Brno 1939.
Also I suspect that if leading members of the Continental Congress began dying in strange conditions that pointed to the involvement of French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Prussian; or Fenwickian intelligence they would be much much harsher with and leerier about accepting support.
Considering how Russian troops showed up to “help” in Crimea without any kind of formal or regular “seeking of aid” (or at least none that the Russian or formerly Crimean authorities have deigned to publicize precisely because they understand such an appeal would be even more damning as evidence of a premeditated crime of aggression and crime against the peace), even before the fighting started in the Donbas, I have far more reason to believe the Russian government imposed itself on the situation and then began trying to radicalize existing anti-Maidanites and recruit others to serve as collaborators.
To which I would argue “which actions”? One of the things I think is most damning about the events is how condensed they were, in part to intentionally take advantage of the weakness of the caretaker government before elections. We have Russian spec ops in Crimea by March 15th.
Sure. But there is significantly less evidence of support for large scale attacks on Ukrainian military personnel in their barracks (many of whom of course were locals). Maybe I have missed occasions of military bases or personnel being harassed or even attacked during things like the Orange Revolution or Euromaidan (I am only human), but if such things happened they sure as hell were never so widespread, coordinated, violent, or heavily armed.
No interpretation of the CIA’s role in Euromaidan includes it giving divisional or corps level artillery to the Maidanites, unlike what pounded loyalist positions in places like Donetsk and Luhansk.
Moreover, even if I DID believe there were justifications for secession, I do NOT believe there was justification for state terrorism, political murder, and unilateral military aggression and annexation, which is precisely what the Russian military and the separatists did. Great is the guilt of an unjust war, and as I like pointing out with this and also with the U.S. Civil War there is really no interpretation of events or timelining that paints this as a 1775-6 style of gradually escalating conflict culminating in a decisive break and decision to seek foreign aid and independence. And moreover that the behavior of the “independentists” was particularly bellicose and belligerent. Tarring and feathering customs officers in 1773 or so is well worth noting (especially since we have forgotten how brutal tarring and feathering really is), but the Founders did not start advocating unilateral attacks on the British army in its barracks until after 1775 and they certainly didn’t engage in the hypocritical, criminal, and hyperbelicose warmongering South Carolina’s leadership did in 1860-1. Let alone what the Russian government and its local proxies did here.
Which is why I find this interpretation singularly unconvincing.
there are tradeoffs to everything, now the Russian people once upon a time, really did hold democracy as an ideal, but that notion was worn away by the imposition of shock policies recommended by the Duke Brothers, Sachs and Summers, which created the oligarchs, where most of Russia’s infrastructure was parcelled off by the same players who backed the Yeltsin regime in 1996, operating from Davos, democracy rightly or wrongly became associated with the rampant social tumult of the Yeltsin years, so was restraint on behalf of their Orthodox Brothers, in Serbia, now these notions were at the edge of the political system but they migrated to the center, as time went by
most of the political class including Gaidar and Chubais, was discredited by those events,
again this is the thinking of those that would become the Siloviki, not merely Putin,
but Ivanov and Sochin, who really should have stayed in the Shadows, as an oil man, hes terrible at it,
Fukuyama’s cardinal misunderstanding considering he had mansfield and huntington as teachers, was not realizing that resetting the clock back to 1917 had consequences in many respects,
Now the wests views of these events should be a sequel to burn after reading, in the witchhunt after the Ames reveal they seriously misread the environments that led to Putin, the UK didn’t do much better with Christopher Steele,
Post soviet Russia has been a wilderness of mirrors because of this, occasionally someone like a tretyakov, whose bio was ghosted by peter early,
he gave us all the insights into strobe talbott continuing to be a fool, since victor louis, gave him his entree into journalism translating Kruschev or how Sagan was fooled with the TTAPS data that underlay the nuclear freeze (curiously he died the same day the Chapman ring flew to Vienna)
and or puteyev, who was the jeremy irons character in red sparrow, from the perspective that jason matthews fmr division chief sees it, with the proviso that the book suggests anna chapman is still working for us, Puteyev had been declared dead at some point after the reveal, then Buzzfeed gave him up in North Carolina, and eventually someone took a shot at him in Miami in 2020
with very few bread crumbs, one was left to the Nellie Ohrs of the world to make sense of things, and from her time at Vassar to Fusion related operations they gobbled together some free lance research, a fast talking conman like Igor Danchenko, who had the right credentials, who was suspected of being a Russian asset himself could pass a dossier to Steele, based on table scraps, from super sekreet sources, like Stepan Halper, although that was another basket of apples