What if Putin didn't miscalculate?

[Tomconroy]

Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s).

Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.

“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.

If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.

https://nyti.ms/3tYGlWF

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[samsingh]

38. russia can't find buyers for most of their resources today - adding more is not helping their

economy.
putin is a butcher abroad and has sent tens of thousands of his people to die for nothing but his ego.

sounds a lot like trump

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. I think that analysis presupposes several things going Putin's way that are not likely

1) It will be a long time before freedom-loving Ukrainians forgo popular, effective, unifying liberal leaders like Zelensky.

2) It supposes Putin will actually hold the eastern provinces even though he has lost many many supporters among even the Russian speaking residents there.

3) It supposes Odessa and the coastline falls, including Mariupol. It supposes that they can be effectively occupied for a long time.

4) It supposes that the West won't be able to extract concessions from Russia, financial concessions that can help rebuild Ukraine.



5) It supposes Ukrainians have less resolve than what they have already clearly demonstrated.


Sure, Putin may have had this plan as a fallback plan he never expected to have to take, but as Plan B it too may be a miscalculation and is likely to fail. What is Plan C? Lick his wounds for a couple of decades?

[NJCher]

16. Good analysis

Yesterday I was looking at the map of natural gas resources and the areas the Russians captured. The same idea occurred to me—is this a natural gas heist?

However, I rejected the idea for some of the reasons you cited. You thought of some I didn’t think of.

I would add that he would be paying a very high price for a resource that has to go to the back of the line because of global climate change. In the US, after all, they are considering how to phase out using natural gas for cooking.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Wars are usually not about people but about resources of some kind

Vietnam for example. Gulf War. Hitler was after Russian oil in the Caucasus.

[sarge43]

7. Difficult to find any war that wasn't fundamentally about resources

King and Country and all the other variations are motivators, not the reasons.

[NJCher]

20. Actually

One of our veteran US diplomats published a piece that said that’s a fallacy. This person said war is often caused by big egos, misunderstandings, and other stupid stuff like that.

It is we who see the destruction and inanity of it that ascribe the motive of “resources” to it later.

[stopdiggin]

36. +1. interesting

Russia (with it's various rulers) and it's/their enormous appetite for territory - would be a pretty fair case in point. Ego and hubris have to be assigned a pretty good sized role in human history.

https://www.rbth.com/history/327269-histography

[Ferrets are Cool]

41. Bush jr invaded a sovereign country because of he ego....Cheney

(the mastermind of the entire operation) signed off on it because of OIL.

[NJCher]

50. would a guy who puts out photo ops like this

let ego get in the way of strategic decisions?

?20160726135356

[Ferrets are Cool]

55. When you are a dictator, you don't have to worry about your MA opponents

beating you. The other two were all ego. This invasion is all about resources, IMO.

[NJCher]

56. macho decisions are based on emotions

not logic.

It's all about how Putin feels about himself.

[JHB]

4. No, he's a miscalculating loser. His goal was clear from the accidentally-published "victory lap"

A month ago a Russian state outlet accidentally published a "victory lap" article laying out Putin's triumphant vision for restoring Russia to its "proper" state. It had been written in advance and queued to publish at a time when Putin had expected to have been in control of Kyiv and installed a puppet. Nobody thought to cancel the auto-publish before it was already online and archived.

That he was keen to bring the natural resources in the east under his direct control was never in dispute, and there had been some speculation that he might have "magnanimously" agreed to leaving western Ukraine as a land-locked rump state, but the announcement, written before anyone knew how badly the invasion would go, proves that he was always after the whole thing.

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100216422034

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/brave-new-world-of-putin-an-article-by-the-propaganda-publication-ria-novosti-which-was-to-be-published-after-the-occupation-of-ukraine/

An article by the propaganda publication RIA Novosti, which was to be published after the occupation of Ukraine, is preserved in the Web Archive. The Kremlin’s propaganda publication RIA-Novosti accidentally published an article that was to be published after the rapid occupation of Ukraine. It was quickly removed, but the Internet Archive web service managed to save it].

It describes Putin’s imperial plans for the total Russification of Ukraine and Belarus and change of the world order.

RIA Novosti is a Russian state-owned domestic news agency, known for its systematic support of the Kremlin, violation of journalistic standards and work according to so-called “temnik” (directives and agendas from the government).

Although RIA deleted the article after publication, the author Petr Akopov was probably proud of his text, so the English translation on a marginal site The Frontier Post (English language daily newspaper founded in Peshawar, Pakistan).

[louslobbs]

34. This👍🏻

N/T

[Steven Maurer]

5. That analysis isn't even remotely correct

Russian troops are getting slaughtered. The Ukrainian military is growing massively. Their top issue right now is that they literally don't have enough weapons for all the volunteers they're getting.

There have even been scattered attacks shooting into Russia proper.

There is simply no way that Russia will be able to annex any part of Ukraine.

If that's not a miscalculation, I'm not sure what you could call it.

[stopdiggin]

37. THAT, I think, might be too much optimism

(although we'd all dearly love to see it)

There is simply no way that Russia will be able to annex any part of Ukraine.

I'm not sure there's a lot of support for flat assertions that territory and borders remain absolutely intact. With a lot of opinion leaning against. Unfortunately.

[Steven Maurer]

64. I've been following this closely

At this point it's obvious. The Russian military, and society, have been hampered by so much corruption for so long, they're basically useless in a real battle. The only reason they were able to win in other nations like Georgia is simply because those nations were very small in relation to the military.

I have yet to hear an opinion from any military expert that the RF can sustain this conflict even into the summer. They're even running out of civilian cities they can safely bomb. The ones they can bomb are gone and the rest it is extremely unsafe for them to try to.

In the time between your post and mine, Russia has lost 3 more aircraft and more than a dozen vehicles of every stripe.

[stopdiggin]

66. with respect for you observations ..

My own take is - while Putin may well have bitten off more than he can chew - I don't think that necessarily means that he is headed for an utter 'tails between your legs' defeat and retreat. That too is a serious misreading of what is actually taking place this past week. Putin can keep 'pounding' Ukraine for quite a good while yet - from a safe distance, and without the need for any real ground force strategy. And I think it is very likely that there will be territory involved (perhaps couched in terms of 'independent states', or 'autonomous governments' - which really translates to Russian influence and 'puppets'.) when the chits get counted at an, inevitable, negotiating table. I wish I were more optimistic, but at this point in time I just can't muster it.
----- -----

[Steven Maurer]

68. Oh, he can certainly still cause a lot of property damage to be sure...

...but that's different than being able to degrade the ZSU's military capabilities.

Quite the reverse in fact. They are getting more formidable by the day.


There are a couple of other things to note:
* There is no such thing as a "safe distance". Ukraine has proven that it can strike just as deeply into RF lines as the reverse.
* You don't "gain territory" unless you can keep enemy soldiers from advancing across it. Russian forces have yet to do that once.
* The war isn't over until BOTH SIDES say it is. There's a reason why Robin Williams crying "time out" in the middle of a gunfight was a joke.
* Ukraine now has a motivation to keep pounding Russia until they lose absolutely everything, including Crimea.
* The west has every motivation to keep giving them new advanced military equipment to try out on the Russians.
* Russia is so overwhelmingly screwed by the embargo they can't get equipment to even produce more tanks
* Their economy is in a freefall. This has its own issues. People who can't get food don't care about the war effort.

There is simply no way this ends up well for the current Russian government, much less a "victory" for them.

[oldsoftie]

43. Its going to be tough to get the Russians OUT of south & east UKR.

yes, they have been demoralized & decimated elsewhere, but can we see that same thing start happening to them in those other places? And I'm curious WHY it hasn't happened at least in the South; because I would think the largest attacking force would have been in the north to try to get Kyiv. And they've been spanked.

[mucifer]

6. So Russia is cool with bankrupting itself and having it's military considered a laughing stock. Oh

and the dead generals thing is what they are going for?

I don't buy it.

[3Hotdogs]

19. Putin don't give a shit about no dead generals. He fells like Trump....

Only losers get captured or killed.

[Tomconroy]

57. Europe and in particular Germany continue to subsidize

Russia's war on Ukraine by buying oil and gas.

[Starfury]

8. Beau disagrees...

No, this has been a text book example of how NOT to prepare and execute a war. Don't overthink it.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

46. Wow.. who is this guy? Absolutely fascinating! Thanks

[erronis]

48. Beau has been a staple of the Video section on right-hand side of DU home page.

He has some very good observations over the years. Worth while going back and looking at a few of them historically.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

49. Thank you, I will!

[BeyondGeography]

9. A recipe for a forever war that would break Russia

Ukrainians will never go along with it, they’ll always have access to weaponry, the West will never lift sanctions or buy anything from Putin. Otherwise, brilliant plan.

On edit, checked who authored this. Figures.

[harumph]

10. I just read the paper copy of Bret Stephens' analysis

He is flat out wrong. Putin might extract some concessions in the end - but he sure as shit
didn't plan it this way. He's on like plan 'E.'
The longer and more consistently the west pressures Putin, the less he'll get away with.
Europe needs also to get serious about distributed nuclear power generation.

[AllyCat]

28. Neo-con climate change denier.

He does not have an opinion I trust.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

47. When you said plan E made me think. Lots of people may be correct

Putin may have had a series of options depending on what happened. Rhetorical: Does it really matter?

[Jetheels]

11. I think it's true that we don't completely know what Putin's intentions and plans are, but

I’m hesitant to believe too much coming from a climate change denier.

[brush]

12. Ukraine will never stand for being landlocked...

by letting Putin take over it's ports in the south.

I doubt the West will either as Ukraine feeds many other countries with it's agricltural products flowing out of its ports.

No way will they stand for having to pay Russia to get their exports to what was once their own ports.

That won't happen. And Putin has expounded quite often about how he wants to reunite the Ros people, which he considers Ukraine being a part of.

Ukrainians of course see it differently.

[smb]

24. Well, There's An Easy Solution

Putin has expounded quite often about how he wants to reunite the Ros people, which he considers Ukraine being a part of.

Well, if that's what he wants he can just yield to his rightful sovereign:

Link to tweet

[brush]

26. That's what I'm talking about. Ukraine out dates Russia.

[IronLionZion]

40. Kiev outdates Moscow

but the history of the Rus is more complicated and involved Mongols and shifting their capital east to get further away from Europe. Kievan Rus fell to the Mongols but a few centuries later the Duchy of Moscow was able to defeat the Mongols.

[FreepFryer]

13. Too clever by two and a half!

[NJCher]

22. !

😅

[SergeStorms]

14. As for Ukraine becoming a "welfare case.....

for the west", as long as the Nord Stream II pipeline is closed Ukraine will still get royalties for every cubic meter of natural gas that travels from Russia to Germany.

That would also prevent shut downs by Ukraine, which they've done two times before.

Ukraine would have money coming in from those royalties, which are substantial.

[Amishman]

21. Not to mention there is a lot of talk of turning over the frozen Russian overseas assets to Ukraine

to fund their reconstruction effort.

Ukraine's 2020 GDP was ~150 billion USD. The value of the frozen Russian assets is at least double that. Those funds would pay for a lot of reconstruction and modernization of infrastructure.

[SergeStorms]

32. Yeah, there's going to be....

a lot of new construction going on when this is finally over.

I'd love to see Russia's assets given to Ukraine. They broke it, they should pay to fix it. Reparations have to be part of any negotiations.

[stopdiggin]

44. well yes, but ...

Aren't negotiations (whenever they really get serious) going to be essentially between Ukraine and Russia? With it fairly hard to imagine Ukraine having a real strong 'upper hand?'

[SergeStorms]

61. Depends on what Russia wants, I guess.

And how soon they'd like to rejoin the world community. They won't be able to live under these sanctions much longer, and every day Putin pisses off more people who would like to give him the old "Gadaffi" treatment.

[stopdiggin]

63. very much hope you're right. -(nt)-

[Joinfortmill]

15. That would be the frosting on the cake. I still believe he wants the whole cake.

[Woodwizard]

17. The loss of hundreds of armored vehicles.

And the dismal performance of his troops and air force was just all a ruse?

I am going to stick with simple he thought by intimidation they would fold. It exposed how corrupt the Russian military system is, non maintained equipment no efficient supply system, the backbone of any military.

And why was all this stuff not maintained? I think that answer is all those nice mansions and yachts, why maintain a force when the bluff has always worked before.

[sarge43]

29. Putin handed military analysts around the world intell gold.

Old play books are being shredded and new ones written. They'll be filed under A Big Ole List of Fuck Ups You Do Not Want to Make.

[gab13by13]

18. Sounds to me like something Trump would say,

Putin is brilliant. NOT.

[dalton99a]

23. "Putin Is A Genius" - by a NYT genius who denies global warming

[Paladin]

25. I'm old enough to remember the NYT opinions section being genuinely liberal.

Instead of a hidey-hole for brain-dead, overpaid conservatives like Stephens, who ought to be drawing a paycheck from Tucker Carlson.

[gab13by13]

27. A lot of right wing rags get linked here.

The Hill, Business Insider

[JHB]

30. It's Brett "Brettbug" Stephens.

That alone is cause for great skepticism about whether "this analysis is right".

[yardwork]

31. Wrong. Russia could end up relinquishing Crimea before this is over.

[Trueblue Texan]

33. I've also considered this...

The real engine of evil is dependency on fossil fuel. Without it Putin's power fizzles. If the world would unite around development of alternatives to fossil fuels, we could be free of our enslavement to these evil powers and maybe save our own asses in the process.

[Johnny2X2X]

35. Some good points

When looking at things through American glasses, it's easy to look at this and think about how much Russia has lost in this, how Russia's economy is in the toilet for perhaps decades now. How their standing is shot, how they're now viewed on par with North Korea. But that assumes Putin cares one bit about Russia's standing, its people, or its economy. Putin is a narcissist, he only cares about his own personal gratification, and I think as he's aged he wanted chaos and to cause suffering, he's getting that. He knows the suffering of the Russian people don't matter to him because he has absolute control of their media and can make them think whatever he wants.

Putin is a lesson for America, he's what happens when elections stop mattering, when the government doesn't answer to the people at all. He's the Republican vision for the United States.

[the_sly_pig]

39. No.

Poopin is surrounded by puppets and sycophants. This is the result of their form of government. It's what will happen to our country if another idiot like trump is elected.

[dlk]

42. It's looking like a gross miscalculation

What we’re learning is Russia has enjoyed an outsized and largely undeserved reputation on the world stage. Putin may have changed that for the foreseeable future.

[Arazi]

45. Putin told us he wants all of Ukraine. He said it straight out

He’s said Ukraine is a “fake” artificial country. He firmly believes (for many years now), that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a tragedy and these ex-satellite states need to be brought back under the Russian umbrella.

New revelations of his messianic thinking about Russian supremacy are just added impetus.

I believe Putin is going to try to just settle for a land bridge and the resources in the Ukrainian south, but I wouldn’t discount Ukrainian fury combined with western military assistance. They’ve been fighting to re-take the Luhansk and Donetsk regions back for 8 years. I sincerely doubt they’re going to let Putin “settle” for any part of their country anymore

[Puppyjive]

51. War is always about the resources

Because Putin only knows how to steal.

[Happy Hoosier]

52. Don't buy it.

The Russian military was humiliated before the world. BILLIONS of dollars in military equipment destroyed and his economy WRECKED for at least a decade. Not to mention the worst casualties since WWII.

Fer crissakes, he attempted an airborne assault on Hostomel in the opening days and got an "elite" airborne regiment WIPED OUT. That was no feint. That was a genuine attempt to seize Kyiv and decapitate the Ukrainian government.

If this was always the plan. it was a shitty one.

What is happening now is an attempt to find the pearl in a pile of shit. He DOES hope that the West will be willing to accept it in light of the failure to seize all of Ukraine. But make no mistake, he wanted Ukraine to be a Belarus-style puppet-state.


WAAAAYYYY too many "analysts" trying to wipe the egg off their face after touting the Russian military as a mighty, US-challenging force and Putin as a military genius. And being WRONG.

[Texin]

53. It's a credible argument; BUT a savvy leader doesn't launch a full-scale military

invasion of a sovereign democratic nation with all the resources they have and start bombing the civilian democratic population. Putin has single-handedly bankrupted his country's coffers (which means the oligarchs of which he is wealthiest) and put that country under increasingly severe sanctions.

It was a miscalculation IMO. He misjudged the Ukrainian military capability and sorely underestimated the spirit of a civilian population that was determined to beat back their invaders, along with the outrage of the rest of the democratic governments (and most of their populations). Moreover, he grossly underestimated Zelensky's capabilities and determination to lead that nation through its crisis. Putin thought Zelensky was another tRump - a television personality. I guess he forgot (or chose to ignore) the fact that Zelensky is a lawyer (legal education teaches a person to think and to interpret nuanced and complicated legal precedent and existing statutes, etc.), not an illiterate chump like TFG.

[William Seger]

54. Nope, that actually doesn't make any sense

[Torchlight]

58. Price of men and material lost results in a negative cost/benefit

Beyond that immediacy, the conjecture bundles every worst-cases scenario into a one-size-fits-all conclusion that lacks any real evidence to support it.

I'll stick with hubris and incompetence on his part unless or until measurable data to the contrary is presented.

[lagomorph777]

59. Of course it's all about the theft.

He did miscalculate; thought he could steal the whole country. I don't think he'll end up with anything but a hollowed-out military.

[Mad_Machine76]

60. Are his ultimate gains

going to outweigh the costs, though? That's the real question IMHO.

[Tomconroy]

62. I put this up, not because I agreed or disagreed, but because

It made me think. I'm still thinking about it.

[uponit7771]

65. K&R, I've been saying this on OSINT for nearly 3 weeks

[Quixote1818]

67. This NATO Advisor pretty much shreds this take in this video

[iemanja]

69. Right, because what he wants the world to see

is that he is a loser who can't execute a military operation against a smaller country.
These conspiracy theories are ridiculous.