AIBU to ask what your next move would be if you were Putin?

[Chowbellow]

So. You're Putin. You rule a massive amount of people. You're ex KGB. You want to take over the world perhaps (or maybe just want to play!).
What is your next move now that the West is in crisis as you won't supply them with oil/gas?
Your people are dying but you've loads of people. You've invaded a non NATO country so you know they won't touch you.

That’s brilliant lol 😂

With regards to the west - divide and conquer. I will threaten nuclear conflict but ultimately want to avoid it - that is a game with no winner. Why attack the west directly when don't need to? I can inflict economic damage, sow seeds of suspicion and dissention between allies, distract and divide without incurring any losses.

I've been watching / reading things with an East German theme recently. The Stasi were close comrades of the KGB. I've been watching / reading and thinking Putin.

I do not believe he wants to restore the Soviet Union. It was an economically stagnant monolith. I do think he wants to reestablish a sphere to influence. I don’t believe this will be achieved through military engagement, but corruption from within (the latter we see already). Conventional warfare is expensive, and an outside threat usually unites people against the aggressor. The way to break a country apart is to turn the people against one another and exploit this.

Ukraine is different to the Baltic states. Russia as it is now, was born from Kievan Rus’. There’s an idea that it is rightfully Russian, a region rather than a separate country. Outside of sentiment, it’s a buffer zone, was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, is rich in natural resources, is a conduit for gas, and provides access to central and Western Europe as well as a warm water port.

Some of it is a restoration of national pride/Russia’s role as a power player on the world stage. He wants revenge on those that wrote Russia off and a non entity when the USSR collapsed.

i also don’t think it’s just Putin that should be looked at, but also what, or who, is behind him. Russia has been building and strengthening economic and political ties with China and India for quite a few years now. To what degree is he acting as a surrogate, distraction, and/or weapon?

Right now he’s doing something simple but effective in turning off the gas. People WILL start turning against supporting Ukraine as they suffer from this. They will start pressuring politicians to reverse course, and they will reverse course because they don’t want their own governments destabilized.

I think he will continue to dig in with the Ukraine war, and wait it out. I think there’s a lot of propaganda being shared in all presses, for reasons of shoring up support and morale, as such it’s hard to determine what the true picture is of how it’s playing out. Either way, in war, tides can and do turn. It’s early days.

Oh, it’s also salient to consider how Russia views herself. It’s hard to shorthand, but a country’s art is often illuminating. Here are a few stanzas from a translated poem by Aleksandr Blok. It’s not a great poem, Blok himself didn’t actually like it particularly, but it gives some insight as to self image and national myth:

“You are but millions. Our unnumbered nations
Are as the sands upon the sounding shore.
We are the Scythians!
Try to wage war with us—you'll try no more!

You've had whole centuries. We—a single hour.
Like serfs obedient to their feudal lord,
We've held the shield between two hostile powers—
Old Europe and the barbarous Mongol horde.”

allpoetry.com/The-Scythians

haven’t posted one of the racially wince-inducing lines from the excerpt, but FYI they are there in the poem if anyone wants to click on the link.

Yes.

And Russia experiences freezing winters every year.

They have the infrastructure and resources.

The west don't.

We are walking blind into something we don't know the future of because of a long standing hatred between Russia and the west.

But we know Russia are militarily strong.

Without them the west wouldn't have won the war.

I think that there are perspectives in every argument and we don't hear their perspective so we can't understand their behaviour if we haven't even heard their side.

I'm a little shocked actually that I'm so ignorant of a lot of their history with the West.

This.

If I was Putin I'd want people to try and understand my motivations so we can meet in the middle.

I'd want people to realise my own propaganda is as valid as their own and realise all countries are using propaganda.

As an English person myself - writing as a MNer - I fear how much Russia use death as a weapon against those who deflect - and I don't agree with Putins actions because I'm against war - but I feel to understand his motives helps me rationalise it.

Good lord there's some ahistorical nonsense on this thread.

I've never forgotten the Soviet Union were our allies in WW2 – and I've never forgotten the rest of it, either.

The Soviet Union wasn't fighting for us by any stretch of the imagination. It was fighting for itself, and that only after Nazi Germany invaded it.

Before then, in 1939, Stalin's Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. The pact wasn't just "don't invade us and we won't invade you", it included "and we Nazis won't mind if you, Stalin, annex some of your neighbours". And by 1940 the Stalinist Soviet Union had done just that: annexing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, parts of Romania and parts of Poland, including carrying out the Katyn Massacre (which decapitated Polish society because it targeted the most educated).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

Of course the pact wasn't worth the paper it was written on. Hitler just used it to keep Stalin off his back while he was overstretched elsewhere – then invaded the Soviet Union at a time of his convenience in 1941.

At the end of WW2, Stalin cemented Soviet control of the annexed neighbouring countries to create a communist superpower. When the population voted with its feet and left, the state machine gunned them. The Soviets built the Berlin Wall to keep Soviet Bloc citizens in, not to keep foreigners out.

The people of the Soviet Union suffered unspeakably during WWII. They then suffered unspeakably after WWII. More than 14 million people were sent to gulags (forced labour camps) over the decades before and after the war.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Post-war_era_and_death
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

One of the things (among many) that's really upset me about Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been the Russian shelling of the national seed bank (Yuriev Plant Production Institute), which is a global treasure.
www.euronews.com/green/2022/08/06/ukraines-national-seed-bank-is-still-standing-but-could-be-lost-forever-warn-scientists

It's a betrayal of the heroic dedication and sacrifice of the Russian scientists in WW2 who gave their lives to protect the Petersburg seed bank (Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry) during the Siege of Leningrad.

www.opindia.com/2022/01/the-siege-of-leningrad-russian-scientists-starved-themselves-to-death-to-preserve-vavilov-seed-bank/

The Russian people I could cry for, as for those of Ukraine. But rewriting history to make the pore lil Russian state a victim of those meanie westerners doesn't help the Russian people at all.

Shortly before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas described perfectly the Russians' classic negotiation technique:
twitter.com/munsecconf/status/1512451999622643714

Transcription of Kaja Kallas, the Estonian Prime Minister:

Russia is making the demands. Russia is threatening. And now if we think: “Oh let’s offer them something, then they actually get something that they didn’t have before.”

And I’ve quoted this foreign minister, Alexei [should be Andrei] Gromyko, a Soviet-time foreign minister, several times, who said about the negotiation tactics of the Soviet Union, three things:

First, demand the maximum. Do not ask, but demand something that has never been yours.

Second, present ultimatums. You know, threaten.

And third, do not give one inch in negotiations, because there will always be people in the West who offer you something.

And then in the end, you will have one-third or even one half of something you didn’t have before. So we have to keep that in mind all the time.

twitter.com/munsecconf/status/1512451999622643714

So to answer the OP's question: if I were Putin, I would be doing that. ^

Oh look, I already am.

@PerkingFaintly

yes, absolutely about the Vasilov seed bank and the brave scientists who stayed with it but out of interest, we have surely replicated the contents of the seed bank somewhere?

Also, in terms of WW2 I don’t think we did recognise Russia’s contribution at the end of the war and this is so significant, isn’t it? I agree about the original motivation of Russia at the start but the country lost so many on the front, then was brutalised again under Stalin. I think we have to recognise that your analysis is one that we can recognise in the West but is removed from the experiences of the populace who saw the old eastern countries seemingly integrated into the west whilst they were still viewed with suspicion (unless they were Uber rich).

I don’t know

That's interesting.

Thank you for those facts.

This thread is teaching me lots and I've always believed that whatever your views on someone's actions you have to understand their motivations to solve it.

@PerkingFaintly good one. I forgot Kaja Kallas' explanation of Putin's tactics at the start of the war, so thanks for reminding.

Yes, Putin has done just that. Straight out of the Russian playbook.

Lots of people have already fallen for Putin's manipulation and insidious misinformation campaign (including on mn) going by the victim blaming and ignoring the totally illegal and unspeakable suffering he has forced on Ukraine as a result of his tactics and holding the world to ransom on energy, food and nuclear threat.

I'm not sure what you mean by "didn't recognise Russia's contribution at the end of the war".

I've known for decades about the vital part Russia played in defeating the Nazis. It's even part of our national consciousness because of the Cambridge Five, whose motivation for spying for the Soviets included helping them in WW2.

So I've recognised Russia's contribution for as long as I can remember, in awe of the courage of many of the Russian people.

Should that recognition have taken the form of saying, "Take whatever land and people you want, Joseph, to do whatever you want with"?

No, I don't think so.

I used to find the Cold War-era, hysterical, Reds Under the Bed commie-bashing very irritating, but that didn't make me think the Soviet Union was a nice cuddly place to be.

Similarly I was glad when Gorbachev oversaw perestroika and more freedom for people in the Soviet Bloc, but horrified at the way Russia went about its economic reforms, enabling the growth of the oligarchs and the absolute trashing of ordinary Russians's financial situation. I was aghast at the particular sort of western capitalist consultants the Russians brought in to help make the transition, as I thought it didn't bode well for the Russian people as a whole. It''s this period of western consultants to which Putin now points to pretend A Big Boy Dun It And Ran Away, However it was a Russian decision to take this route in the first place. The Russian government didn't have to, and could easily have opted for less cut-throat models. Not least because it had the transitional experience of so many African countries to draw on, of how not to put your whole economy up for grabs by a few well-placed actors.

I also don't recognise the picture someone tried to draw upthread (or possibly on another current thread) of the US "failing to embrace post-communist Russia". My memory is that the US fell over themselves to embrace Russia. But again, embracing and seeking links with Russia didn't and should never mean forgetting that this is a major power which will act in its own interest. So embracing doesn't been giving carte blanche to.

I'm perfectly able to have immense respect for many of the Russian people (particularly those who risk their lives to try to build a better, more just Russia), while having nothing but contempt for the megalomaniac, empire-building dictator-for-life they are currently saddled with.

This excellent documentary about Putin is still available on BBC iPlayer. I learned so much from it.

Much of it is from the point of view of interviewees, eg Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov; and IIRC Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia during the 2008 Russian incursion that has annexed part of Georgia.

Putin, Russia and the West
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01b434y/putin-russia-and-the-west

Thanks. I'll watch that whilst I'm cooking the roast.

Thanks to everyone who replied. I started the thread as a fun sort of thread but I've been educated by all of you, to say the least. Now, if only our Western leaders would tell us what the fuck is going on behind the scenes, we'd sort the whole situation out!

Yes yes yes yes to the posters who have agreed that we believe we're not subject to propaganda here while we most certainly are. I know that we don't black out every media source (which Russia has done to its citizens since the invasion) but we selectively black ourselves out. We have many sources of information freely available, but we tend to rely on one or two preferred sources and they're usually Western sources so will have a different spin.

There are two sides to every story and until we start to understand Putin and Russian logic/ethos, we're on the high road to nothing.

Talking about having respect for Russia, are folk aware he has absolutely no respect whatsoever for us, or for any democracy?

He has an ideological belief in strongman autocracy, and sees democracies as weak by definition. When people give in to him, he despises them for it.

Basically he's the kid in the playground who sells you a sob story so you offer him your lunch – then he brags to his mates what an idiot you are to have fallen for it.

If you don't give him your lunch, he'll punch you in the face and take it anyway.

I genuinely don't know how one deals with people like this, but I do know that giving in to them isn't a successful strategy.

In sports, knowing the tactics of your opponent is one of the most useful things you'll know. We know his tactics somewhat, but knowing what motivates him and what motivates his soldiers is also important.

I recall a 1 hour rant of his a few weeks into the invasion where he spoke about Lenin and different parts of Russia's history but I switched off lol. He was trying to argue that the Ukraine belongs to Russia historically and I couldn't fact check it and presumed he was talking bollocks. But he did lay out a sort of manifesto. Not knowing much about Russian history I found it all confusing.

are folk aware he PUTIN has absolutely no respect whatsoever for us, or for any democracy

He doesn't even have respect for his own soldiers.

Mind you, how many British and American soldiers have died in the last 20 years in wars that Russia wasn't involved in?

Do WE have any respect for him though?

I think his allegiance with China is because 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'.

China hates the West. He doesn't like China I suspect. But they have a common enemy. Us.

I'll try to find this rant of his. Some of you will know more about whether he was talking bollocks or not.

Putin has contempt for the very concept of democracy.

Not just in a convenient, self-serving, "you do you, but I'm enjoying being an autocrat" sort of way, but contempt for the actual existence of democracies.