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As expected, the bad takes are proliferating
I clicked open two "explainers" this morning from Twitter and they were both... kinda bad.
So let me reiterate that recommendation for kleptocracy expert Casey Michel. And of course, journalists Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa have covered - and predicted - this situation and its history on Gaslit Nation, their podcast, and posted a collection of threads and transcripts the other day.
NOT recommended:
-An explainer that starts by taking Putin's statements at face value to analyze without noticing that they are sweaty-toothed rambling obsessive temper tantrums is not gonna be a good explainer. Every narcissistic dictator surrounds themself with yes-men and becomes more and more isolated from reality checks and any kind of real advice, because the people around them ultimately are too scared to do anything but say what they want to hear. This was happening to Trump, documentedly, from numerous sources as they eventually jumped ship from his administration, and it is also documentedly happening to Putin, who has been in a bunker obsessing about Imperial glory and Stalin.
-An explainer that tries to analyze what looks like a miscalculation from somebody like that as a secretly clever play in a game of 3D chess has also completely missed the point.
-An explainer that tries to peg Russian hostility towards the Balkans to their Nato membership completely fails to understand how Nato and uh, the history of the post-Soviet republics has worked. To wit, they joined Nato BECAUSE they were justifiedly frightened of Russian aggression. Because Russian aggression and threats and attempts to install puppet governments and interfere in their politics never went away in the first place.
-Also, I've been the fly on the wall through multiple discussions as my classmates exchanged stories and memories from Soviet Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, and Lithuania. I guarantee that the post-soviet economic collapse due to privatization and evil capitalism, as miserable as it was, was not broadly experienced as substantially less stable and safe. Scarcity is unstable and unsafe, obviously. But on the other hand... before the fall of the USSR... just EVERYTHING was hazardous. Because evil dictatorship. The citizens weren't big fans of that either.
-And also no, the conflict with Russian separatist forces in Donbas since 2014 cannot be fairly characterized as the west unwisely sending money to Ukrainian nativist fascists who villainously wanted to ethnically cleanse poor innocent Ukrainians of Russian descent, unavoidably thus 'provoking' Putin to 'strike back' by trying to occupy Ukraine. What the ACTUAL fuck did I just read? It sounded like a Bernie bro conspiracy theory on Reddit!
So let me reiterate that recommendation for kleptocracy expert Casey Michel. And of course, journalists Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa have covered - and predicted - this situation and its history on Gaslit Nation, their podcast, and posted a collection of threads and transcripts the other day.
NOT recommended:
-An explainer that starts by taking Putin's statements at face value to analyze without noticing that they are sweaty-toothed rambling obsessive temper tantrums is not gonna be a good explainer. Every narcissistic dictator surrounds themself with yes-men and becomes more and more isolated from reality checks and any kind of real advice, because the people around them ultimately are too scared to do anything but say what they want to hear. This was happening to Trump, documentedly, from numerous sources as they eventually jumped ship from his administration, and it is also documentedly happening to Putin, who has been in a bunker obsessing about Imperial glory and Stalin.
-An explainer that tries to analyze what looks like a miscalculation from somebody like that as a secretly clever play in a game of 3D chess has also completely missed the point.
-An explainer that tries to peg Russian hostility towards the Balkans to their Nato membership completely fails to understand how Nato and uh, the history of the post-Soviet republics has worked. To wit, they joined Nato BECAUSE they were justifiedly frightened of Russian aggression. Because Russian aggression and threats and attempts to install puppet governments and interfere in their politics never went away in the first place.
-Also, I've been the fly on the wall through multiple discussions as my classmates exchanged stories and memories from Soviet Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, and Lithuania. I guarantee that the post-soviet economic collapse due to privatization and evil capitalism, as miserable as it was, was not broadly experienced as substantially less stable and safe. Scarcity is unstable and unsafe, obviously. But on the other hand... before the fall of the USSR... just EVERYTHING was hazardous. Because evil dictatorship. The citizens weren't big fans of that either.
-And also no, the conflict with Russian separatist forces in Donbas since 2014 cannot be fairly characterized as the west unwisely sending money to Ukrainian nativist fascists who villainously wanted to ethnically cleanse poor innocent Ukrainians of Russian descent, unavoidably thus 'provoking' Putin to 'strike back' by trying to occupy Ukraine. What the ACTUAL fuck did I just read? It sounded like a Bernie bro conspiracy theory on Reddit!
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Argh.
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People knowledgeable about the region are talking about increasing delusions, which I guess is only natural for someone who is getting more and more isolated and just being told what they want to hear really! It's not that his speeches are useless - he made public statements and made very clear that his plan was invading. I don't think anybody in the Russia-adjacent parts of the world doubted that at all, in spite of the general unhniged tenor. Unfortunately the unhingedness just renders the devolving narcissist more dangerous.
Apparently plenty of journalists and governments and even analysts in the West (the analysts, at least, should know better - they're supposed to have studied the personal history and context!) refused to believe it because it didn't make logical sense to them (which also tripped up almost everybody in the media and government when it came to Trump - because they refused to listen to experts on authoritarianism and personality disorders who were trying to tell them). But there were also plenty of experts - including Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa notably - saying that he absolutely meant it. You see in some of the stuff in Kendzior's Twitter thread that they actually predicted the date.
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