@fox_news the only thing i can think is that he must have thought he had nothing to lose since iwrc he announced he'd be retiring last year?
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@fox_news that's kinda what we were wanting to know, but yeah i guess you can't really say

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@fox_news i just wonder what on earth is going to happen to russia after this

like, ukraine is of course the one to worry about and send aid and stuff but

i can't help but wonder what this is going to do to the upper echelons of russia's political stage

obviously in a just world everyone even remotely involved gets sacked and barred from holding any position with more power than mcdonalds shift manager ever again, but this isn't a just world

i'm pretty confident that at least the most closely involved people are going to get the boot, though. and hopefully the whole thing will result in the long term in marginally better people in charge over there

i just hope we make it to that without too many more lives lost
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@fox_news the scary thing is, i'm not entirely sure they *won't* do that
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@fox_news @Felthry I agree with the fox. Those possibilities are unlikely enough, and so beyond your ability to influence, that they are only worth worrying about if - and only if - they happen.

@fox_news @Felthry And there's a number of factors operating against those odds, like the chain of personnel between orders being given and orders being executed breaking down, and things like equipment failures, so I'm inclined towards the lower end of that ballpark figure.

It's not impossible, nor is it probable. It's merely possible, and it is a possibility that cannot be fully accounted for nor controlled from here.

@Goldkin i feel like it would probably help if we knew exactly what nato was

i thought it was like, international trade agreements? why does russia care?
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@Felthry (If you'd like sourcing on this lmk. I personally started researching this when trying to figure out why the hell 45 was blackmailing Zelenskyy at Putin's behest a few years ago.)

The odd part about this is it... may actually be that simple, because this is Putin's personal war, and he rules his country and inner circle through coercion. So small man who is an increasingly isolated sociopath, with wins carving out smaller territories...

@Felthry ... decides to go all in, without any of the discipline, supply chain economic understanding, or wartime discipline necessary to do so, and this is the disaster that follows.

Re, NATO: this is extremely reductive, but consider it a defense alliance of necessity established to prevent a repeat of World War 2. Basically, it establishes a unified defensive bloc that ensures all of Europe will defend itself against a repeat of Hitler.

@Goldkin oh, i thought it was trade agreements?

also why isn't russia part of it then, they were on the same side as the rest of europe in ww2
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@Felthry For the most part? Hesitancy and suspicion of the West after attempts to become a capitalist nation failed miserably, leading to Putin's rise in the first place. Which led to trade agreements with India and China in lieu of the West, while using the West primarily as a vehicle of laundering plundered wealth and assets for Putin's oligarchs and Putin himself.

@Felthry This suspicion of the Western model as poisonous and in chronic decline is part of what influenced Putin to instead choose Soviet-style colonial expansion instead of globalized democratic rule. And it seems to be part of why he made such a mistake here in thinking his forces would be hailed as heroes and that Ukraine and the West would simply capitulate and roll over, after his experiences with using Trump and Congress as puppets.

@Felthry In effect, he gave himself too much confidence by having success in narrowly scoped wins in Georgia and Crimea (etc), financial corruption in the West, and a seeming sincere belief that his Soviet coercive model of rule is superior, and that support in Ukraine was Western influence, not sincerely held identity and a desire to not live under Russian occupation.

All a recipe for... a poorly reasoned, terrible war on Ukraine.

@Felthry So that has now happened, and we can see the impact. His attempts to then transform Ukraine into a puppet state again (under Yanukovych or a similar leadership) have fallen through, so he's now resorting to what he did with Assad in Syria: bombing runs to level Ukraine instead, then install his own people by force or by proxy after the infrastructure is razed to the ground.

That is approximately the shape of it, as I understand it.

@Goldkin it just feels like everything he's doing is just going to make an enemy of the entire world, and i can't understand why he either can't see that or doesn't care
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@Felthry Sociopath's gonna sociopath, especially given he's surrounded himself with yes men. Speculation on why he's now more erratic now, after decades of measured action, ranges from him boxing himself in due to covid to simply operating on poor information and pivoting to what has worked before.

Irony is, this is part of what lead to the fall of the Soviet state he so desperately wants to rebuild in the first place.

@Goldkin I also fail to see how anyone could have lived through the later years of soviet russia and think "yes, good, this is how i want things to be, i will make things like this again"
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@Felthry I mean. For him, life is good. He's enriched himself and his inner circle extremely and doesn't give a care for the average Russian whatsoever. What does he care if he kills thousands or tens of thousands to further enrich himself, until they are literally beating his door down and leading him away from the palace?

@Felthry (Which is, by the way, why it is so essential for folks like him to not obtain power, or if they do, for systems to be in place so they are not in power for very long.)

@Felthry (With pardon for errors and typos on my end there because mobile.)

Suffice it, this is a brew for him not looking for an off-ramp because he's committed, not receiving information on the facts on the ground, and seems to be ignoring the history of how this has played out for his predecessors because of ideas that exist in his own mind. Unclear what happens next, but that shapes itself around his fall if it fractures too far.

@Felthry What there is to be done given that is a completely separate can of worms, and all I'll say after that is this is why aid to Ukr is pretty important right now.

@Felthry The main thing that it prevents is dividing and conquering European and Baltic states, by establishing that war on one state is war on all of them, and triggering defense pacts accordingly.

Which, a nation like Russia finds kind of terrifying, given Putin's isolating influence and colonialistic interests in former Soviet states. So he's been fighting deniable proxy wars to largely prevent their involvement... until now.