The media won’t give me great answers to this question and I think this I trust this community more, thus I want to know from you. Also, I have heard reports that Russia was winning the war, if that’s true, did the west miscalculate the situation by allowing diplomacy to take a backseat and allowing Ukraine to a large plethora of military resources?
PS: I realize there are many casualties on both sides and I am not trying to downplay the suffering, but I am curious as to how it is going for Ukraine. Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning, those have existed forever, but they seem to have grown louder now, so I was wondering what you thought about it. Also, I am somewhat concerned of allowing a dictatorship to just erase at it’s convenience a free and democratic country.
I agree with what you said and appreciate the insight. Thanks for writing it.
I think part of it from Russia’s side is definitely an attempt to rebuild Stalin’s buffer to the west, but there are echoes of the appeasement that took place before WW2. Crimea was quick and done.
Then, it’s a repeat years later in an attempt to grab more. Thing is, since then there was a lot of election tampering in the form of misinformation and it continues as an attempt to turn Americans against each other. Russia is waging war via the Internet and it’s working.
I think the US government is unable to control it because there is no direct control of social media companies, and social media companies are ineffective. Their interests are purely financial and to truly be effective, it would require significant investment.
The US is instead providing just enough support, but I think it’s purposely done. What happens if they were to provide double? Ukraine pushes Russia back to the border and then what? They continue forward? That’s WW3. Even if they stop at the border, Putin may be forced to stop and may lose power. Then you’re dealing with a potentially worse successor who wants to destroy at all costs…again a dangerous unknown.
They’re doing it this way on purpose to bleed Russia slowly over time. Russia expected to drive a 40 mile column into the capital and finish fast. A long war is not sustainable for Russia economically and the population isn’t interested either (as shown by the huge expatriation that took place when conscription was announced).
If enough western countries continue to provide arms, it will damage Russia for a long time to come.
I think that even with 100% top down control trying to stop the misinformation campaigns, it would still be extremely hard to control it. I always think of the fact there’s drug trade in prisons. If people can smuggle drugs into a prison, they can figure out a way to act as agent provocateurs in online discussions. People just aren’t controllable like that, no matter how much power you have.
However I think Russia’s cultural attacks are backfiring, just as our strategy of draining them through war attrition is backfiring. In both cases, the target is adapting. Russia’s army is getting stronger, and America’s citizenry is getting better at maintaining important conversations in the midst of attempted derailments.
Like, it’s easy to hijack a ship in times of peace. But you go after a ship in that same lane 10 years later, now that ship is bristling with weaponry and everyone on board is some kind of piracy veteran.
A long campaign of small attacks makes the target stronger. It’s so foolish on both parties’ parts to think you can whittle a living thing down the same way you whittle down a dead stick. A living thing being whittled gets more and more formidable the longer you harass it.